Memel is a town in the Free State province of South Africa, located close to the provincial boundaries of both kwaZulu-Natal and Mpumalanga…Memel is a town in the Free State province of South Africa, located close to the provincial boundaries of both kwaZulu-Natal and Mpumalanga, and is situated some 1,730 metres above sea level. The town is perhaps named after the port city of Memel in former East Prussia by a settler with historical links to the Baltic, but there is no direct evidence of this. Today this Baltic city is called Klaipėda in Lithuania. In Lithuanian, Memel means mute, silent and this same name was adopted by speakers of German who later colonized that part of the Baltic. Whilst silence certainly remains one of the fine attributes of the surrounding rural area, it can be difficult to find within the town itself these days as the population of Memel continues to expand. There is also little evidence to support the alternate theory that Memel means surrounded by water, although that is an equally apt description.
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