It may have come 65 years too late but a town in western Germany has finally struck off Adolf Hitler from its roll call of honorary citizens.

Dülmen town council, in North Rhine-Westphalia, has removed the title after years of deliberation and two failed attempts to push the motion through.

The Führer was awarded honorary status in April 1933, when city officials – led by the local Nazi party leader, Julius Bielefeld – voted unanimously to bestow the title on him. The Reich chancellor, Franz von Papen, and its president, Paul von Hindenburg, were also awarded the honour.

Dülmen is not alone. Historians estimate some 4,000 German towns and cities awarded similar titles to Hitler and other senior Nazis.

Archivists began researching the topic in the 1990s when councils debated whether to leave Hitler's name on their lists for historicity or to remove it out of respect for others who had been given similar recognition.

Communities have generally been slow to act. Bad Doberan district on the Baltic coast, which hosted the G8 summit in 2007, dropped Hitler's honorary status shortly before world leaders descended, succumbing to international pressure and government fears of the embarrassment it was likely to cause.

Attempts by the Social Democrats (SPD) to change Dülmen's records were initially thwarted because of legal restrictions after it was declared that honorary status "automatically ceases on death". However Waltraud Bednarz of the SPD argued that to leave the city archives unaltered would be "an insult to others awarded this status".

Thomas Schaarschmidt of the Centre for Research into Contemporary History in Potsdam said it was impossible to gauge exactly how many towns and cities regard Hitler as an honorary citizen. "Many town archives were destroyed in the war so there are no official records," he said.