Bärwalde (Boxberg)

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Municipality Boxberg / OL
Coordinates: 51 ° 24 ′ 45 ″  N , 14 ° 31 ′ 30 ″  E
Height : 123 m
Area : 6.11 km²
Residents : 165  (Dec. 31, 2008)
Population density : 27 inhabitants / km²
Incorporation : January 1, 1994
Incorporated into: Lohsa
Postal code : 02943
Area code : 035774

Bärwalde , Bjerwałd in Upper Sorbian ? / i , is a village in the Sorbian settlement area of Upper Lusatia , which belongs to the Saxon community Boxberg / OL in the district of Görlitz . The Bärwalde opencast mine was named after him, the remaining hole of which was flooded to the Bärwalder See . Audio file / audio sample

geography

Bärwalde is located on the right bank of the Spree , on the edge of the Upper Lusatian Heide and Pond Landscape Biosphere Reserve . The surrounding area is formed by heather forests and post-mining landscapes . To the west is the former Lohsa opencast mine ( Lohsa II reservoir ), to the northeast is the charred part of the Nochten opencast mine and to the south is the Bärwalder See. The town of Sprey is about one kilometer northeast of the street village , the Boxberg power plant is about two kilometers east of Bärwalde. To the south of the locality, the federal highway 156 runs between Boxberg and Uhyst . Before the development of the Bärwalde opencast mine and the necessary relocation of the Spree, it flowed from Uhyst in a northerly direction past Schöpsdorf and Merzdorf Bärwalde.

The distance to the federal motorway 4 (Dresden – Görlitz) is about 20 kilometers. The nearest train stations are in Uhyst (about 10 km away, Hoyerswerda – Görlitz line ) and Weißwasser (about 20 km away, Cottbus – Görlitz line ).

Bärwalde (Boxberg), aerial photo (2019)

history

Basalt grotto in the Bärwalde landscape park

Archaeological finds indicate settlement activity as early as the Paleolithic and early Iron Age . Documentary mention was Berwalt first time in 1400 in a Bautzen tax register.

Bärwalde belonged to the Uhyst estate at least since the early 17th century . There were several changes of ownership over the course of the century. In 1677, Heinrich Wenzel von Hundt and Alten-Grottkau, who also owned the Merzdorf and Mönau estates , is known as the owner.

The iron hammer burned down in 1686. It was only rebuilt in 1773 by the new landowner Matthäus Lange, as the hydropower of the Spree and the regionally still existing lawn iron ore provided good location factors. Charcoal was used to produce the necessary charcoal from the abundant supply of wood in local forests. For the Bärwalder farmers, forestry was a necessary job to secure a livelihood, as agriculture was not very productive on the poor soils.

After the Wars of Liberation , the Kingdom of Prussia was able to take over a large part of the Saxon lands in 1815 , including the Lower Lusatia and the greater part of the Upper Lusatia . As a result, Bärwalde came to the Silesian district of Hoyerswerda in 1825 . The district administrator wrote to the government of the Liegnitz district in 1881 : "The communities Bärwalde, Merzdorf and Schöpsdorf are among the poorest communities in the district, the lands there consist largely of very light sandy soils and only provide extremely low yields."

Friedrich Hermann Rötschke (1805–1893), the designer of the Kromlauer Park , took over the estate in 1875 and began building a landscape park with basalt grottos . In the design of the park, he included the natural course of the Spree, the Mühlgraben and the existing trees in Bärwalde. He could not complete this project.

Bärwalder Castle

Between 1923 and 1964, the Bärwalde power station, a small hydroelectric power station on the Spree, supplied 26 places with electrical energy. Bärwalde Castle, built in 1922/1923 and formerly owned by the landlord Rudolf Hünlich, housed a lung clinic from 1950 to 1991. The castle is now a listed building and, like the building of the former power station, serves as a residential building.

On January 1, 1957, Bärwalde and Schöpsdorf were incorporated into Merzdorf. In this way socialist structures should be consolidated and the collectivization of agriculture should be promoted. Lignite mining began in the immediate vicinity of the town in 1973 with the opening of the Bärwalde opencast mine. Unlike Merzdorf and Schöpsdorf, Bärwalde was not directly affected by it, which is why Bärwalde became an independent municipality again on July 1, 1978. As a result, Bärwalde was parried from Merzdorf to Uhyst.

On January 1, 1994 the communities Hermsdorf / Spree , Litschen , Lohsa , Steinitz , Weißkollm and Bärwalde merged to form the community Lohsa. Since Bärwalde is only one kilometer south of the Boxberg district of Sprey , but several kilometers east of the other districts of Lohsa due to open-cast mining, the place was incorporated into Boxberg on January 1, 1998 at the suggestion of the then Lohsaer mayor. This was accompanied by a change of district from the Kamenz district to the Lower Silesian Upper Lusatia district .

Population development

year Residents
1825 115
1871 161
1885 156
1905 145
1925 102
1939 99
1946 133
1950 102
1988 215
1999 179
2008 165

For the year 1658 15 taverns are mentioned in Bärwalde, in the year 1777 there are five possessed men and three cottagers .

While the population increased to 161 in the 19th century by the time the empire was founded , a slight decline was recorded after that, which accelerated in the early 20th century. In 1939, shortly before the outbreak of World War II, only 99 inhabitants are recorded. After the war, the number rose briefly as a result of refugees and displaced persons, but was back to pre-war levels by 1950. As a result of the resettlement of Merzdorf and the construction of the Boxberg power plant , the number of residents is more than twice as high in 1988 at 215. However, this number is also falling, so that the value has fallen by a quarter to 165 within 20 years.

Around the year 1880 Arnošt Muka determined 138 Sorbs and 7 Germans for his statistics of the Sorbs in Upper Lusatia in Bärwalde , which corresponds to a Sorbian population of 95%. At that time the place was still in the central Sorbian language area. In 1956 Ernst Tschernik counted a Sorbian-speaking population of only 38.5%. Since then, the use of Sorbian in the village has continued to decline.

Place name

Forms of name are Berwalt (around 1400), Bernwald (1418), Berenwalde (1608), Beerwalde (1626 and 1845), Beerwalda (1658) and Bärwalde (1900). The Sorbian name Bjerwałd is a translation of the German name.

Although the large forest areas in the area suggest that the name can be traced back to forests in which many berries grow, Hans Walther points out that this derivation cannot be clearly proven. He also considers a personal name Bero or Bern as an origin to be possible.

Attractions

Atonement cross from the 14th / 15th centuries century

In addition to the castle with its park, Bärwalde has other sights. Shortly before the demolition of Merzdorf, the atonement cross there was brought to Bärwalde. This granite cross from the 14th or 15th century is 1.67 m long, 69 cm wide and 18 cm thick. Two skewers are chiseled into it, but only the right skewer is fully visible due to damage on the left side.

The Bärwalder See , the largest lake in Saxony and the third largest lake in the Lusatian Lakeland , was created by the flooding of the former open-cast mine . This is being gradually expanded for tourism by the municipality of Boxberg.

literature

  • From the Muskauer Heide to the Rotstein. Home book of the Lower Silesian Upper Lusatia District . Lusatia Verlag, Bautzen 2006, ISBN 978-3-929091-96-0 , p. 264 .

Individual evidence

  1. Quoted from Günter Meusel et al .: Merzdorf. From the story of a small heath village . Bautzen 1979, p. 45 .
  2. a b c Federal Statistical Office (ed.): Municipalities 1994 and their changes since 01.01.1948 in the new federal states . Metzler-Poeschel, Stuttgart 1995, ISBN 3-8246-0321-7 .
  3. Bärwalder residents have arrived in their new home. In: Lausitzer Rundschau . Local review for Weißwasser and Niesky. February 2, 2008. ( Online ( Memento of the original from May 8, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this note. ) @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.lr-online.de
  4. a b Bärwalde in the Digital Historical Directory of Saxony
  5. a b From Muskauer Heide to Rotstein , p. 264.
  6. Ernst Tschernik: The development of the Sorbian population . Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1954.
  7. ^ Ludwig Elle: Language policy in the Lausitz . Domowina-Verlag, Bautzen 1995, p. 249 .
  8. Ernst Eichler , Hans Walther : Oberlausitz toponymy - studies on the toponymy of the districts of Bautzen, Bischofswerda, Görlitz, Hoyerswerda, Kamenz, Löbau, Niesky, Senftenberg, Weißwasser and Zittau. I name book . In: German-Slavic research on naming and settlement history . tape 28 . Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1975, p. 18 f .
  9. ^ Frank Förster : Disappeared Villages. The demolition of the Lusatian lignite mining area by 1993 . In: Series of publications by the Institute for Sorbian Folk Research in Bautzen . tape 8 . Domowina-Verlag, Bautzen 1995, ISBN 3-7420-1623-7 , pp. 127-133 .

Web links

Commons : Bärwalde / Bjerwałd  - collection of images, videos and audio files