Kelmis is a municipality

Municipality

A municipality is essentially an urban administrative division having corporate status and usually powers of self-government. It can also be used to mean the governing body of a municipality. A municipality is a general-purpose administrative subdivision, as opposed to a special-purpose district...

 located in the Belgian

Belgium

Belgium , officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a federal state in Western Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts the EU's headquarters, and those of several other major international organisations such as NATO.Belgium is also a member of, or affiliated to, many...

 province of Liège

Liège (province)

Liège is the easternmost province of Belgium and belongs to the Walloon Region. It is an area of French and German ethnicity. It borders on the Netherlands, Germany, Luxembourg, and in Belgium the provinces of Luxembourg, Namur, Walloon Brabant , and those of Flemish Brabant and Limburg . Its...

. On January 1, 2006, Kelmis had a total population of 10,396. The total area is 18.12 km² which gives a population density

Population density

Population density is a measurement of population per unit area or unit volume. It is frequently applied to living organisms, and particularly to humans...

 of 574 inhabitants per km².

The territory around the Vieille Montagne

Vieille Montagne

Vieille Montagne is the name of a former zinc mine in Kelmis , a town in Belgium between Liège and Aachen. The mine's name is French for "the old mountain", and this is also reflected in its German name, Altenberg...

 zinc

Zinc

Zinc , or spelter , is a metallic chemical element; it has the symbol Zn and atomic number 30. It is the first element in group 12 of the periodic table. Zinc is, in some respects, chemically similar to magnesium, because its ion is of similar size and its only common oxidation state is +2...

 mine in Kelmis was semi-independent during 1816–1919 as Neutral Moresnet, with the Mayor of Kelmis as head of state

Head of State

A head of state is the individual that serves as the chief public representative of a monarchy, republic, federation, commonwealth or other kind of state. His or her role generally includes legitimizing the state and exercising the political powers, functions, and duties granted to the head of...

.

In the nineteenth century a Low Dietsch

Low Dietsch

Low Dietsch is a term mainly used within the Flemish terminology for the transitional Limburgish–Ripuarian dialects of a number of towns and villages in the north-east of the Belgian province of Liege, such as Gemmenich, Homburg, Montzen and Welkenraedt....

 dialect was spoken in Kelmis. Today Kelmis is bilingual: German

German language

German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....

 and French

French language

French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...

 and one of the nine municipalities of the German-Speaking Community of Belgium

German-speaking Community of Belgium

The German-speaking Community of Belgium is one of the three federal communities of Belgium. Covering an area of 854 km² within the province of Liège in Wallonia, it includes nine of the eleven municipalities of the so-called East Cantons...

.