The first general municipal elections took place on 15 September 1946. From 1947‚ CARE Packages arrived in the town, filled with food and such like, mainly sent by Americans of German origin. Apart from the returning population of the town, increasing numbers of refugees from Germany's eastern territories had to be absorbed, so that in the 1950s a new quarter of the town, "Flachsfeld", was built. At the same time, the town also spread out over the fields between the few houses of Buscherhof and the Oerath Mill, forming a new large quarter, the "Marienviertel". Almost all its roads, which lay on both sides of the old "Marienweg", a Marian pilgrimage route that ran to Holtum, bore the names of east German towns. Not until 1956 and 1957 did the town's population receive the last repatriates from the war and from POW camps at Erkelenz Station.