Bad Muskau

coat of arms	Germany map
	Coordinates: 51 ° 33 '  N , 14 ° 43'  E
Basic data
State :	Saxony
County :	Goerlitz
Management Community :	Bad Muskau
Height :	110 m above sea level NHN
Area :	15.38 km 2
Residents:	3686 (Dec. 31, 2019)
Population density :	240 inhabitants per km 2
Postal code :	02953
Area code :	035771
License plate :	GR, LÖB, NOL, NY, WSW, ZI
Community key :	14 6 26 010
City administration address :	Berliner Strasse 47 02953 Bad Muskau
Website :	www.badmuskau.de
Mayor :	Thomas Krahl ( CDU )
Location of the city of Bad Muskau in the district of Görlitz

Aerial panorama 2019

Bad Muskau , Upper Sorbian Mužakow ^{? / i} , is a country town in the district of Görlitz in Upper Lusatia ( Saxony ). It gained worldwide fame through the prince and landscape artist Hermann von Pückler-Muskau , who created a unique cultural asset with his landscape park that has become a world heritage site . Bad Muskau is a state-recognized health resort in the Free State of Saxony (place with moorland operation) and is part of the official Sorbian settlement area .

geography

location

The city is located in the north of the district on the left bank of the Lusatian Neisse . The district of Köbeln is the northernmost village in East Saxony, at 98  m above sea level. NN , the Neißetal in Köbeln is also the deepest state office in the district of Görlitz. To the south of the urban area lies the apex of the parabolic Muskau folds . Also on the southern outskirts of the city begins the Muskauer Heide , an extensive forest area that became the first home of the wolves who returned to Germany .

The city ​​shares the Fürst-Pückler-Park with the neighboring Polish town of Łęknica (Lugknitz) on the eastern bank of the river .

Neighboring communities

In the south, Bad Muskau borders on Krauschwitz , in the southwest on Gablenz (both districts of Görlitz), in the west on the community of Jämlitz-Klein Düben , in the north on the community of Neisse-Malxetal (both districts of Spree-Neisse ). In Poland, Łęknica borders on Bad Muskau in the east and Gmina Trzebiel (Triebel) in the northeast (both ary district ). Gablenz and its formerly independent district of Kromlau and Bad Muskau became part of the Bad Muskau administrative community , in which the city acts as the implementing municipality.

City structure

In addition to the core city, Bad Muskau consists of the districts Berg (since 1940) and Köbeln (belonging to Muskau since 1950), of which only Köbeln has district status.

The suburban settlement lies between the city center and Köbeln. To the south of the city center was the former village of Neustadt , which lost its independence in the middle of the 19th century. As a result of city fires and subsequent redevelopment, it is no longer separately recognizable in the city area. After the expropriation of the class rule , the previously independent community of Burglehn Muskau , which included Muskau Castle , was incorporated into the city in 1945.

history

Muskau Castle , the New Castle , mid-19th century.

Mužakow (from Sorbian, roughly "men's town") was re-established in the 13th century in the course of German colonization on the site of a Slavic refuge as a conveniently located trading and manufacturing center on the Neisse . It was first mentioned in a document in 1249. Wenzel von Bieberstein (1421-1465) bought the 1,447 Muskau and gave the city in 1452, the city charter . Until 1551, the town remained in the possession of the von Bieberstein family , whose red five-pointed stag horn the Wilde Mann bears in the town's coat of arms.

The Sorbs still make up a very strongly declined part of the population . The Muskau dialect was spoken in and around Muskau . Today Sorbian is - theoretically, but not actually - the second official language.

The rulership of Muskau was the largest of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation and until 1815 belonged to the Margraviate of Upper Lusatia of the Electorate of Saxony . In 1815, the northern and eastern parts of Upper Lusatia came to Prussia as a result of the Congress of Vienna , which reorganized the political order of Europe after the coalition wars (1792–1815) and from then on bore the official name "Prussian Upper Lusatia". Administratively, this area was integrated into the Province of Silesia and later into the Province of Lower Silesia , which existed until 1945 .

From the Thirty Years' War until 1798 the imperial counts Callenberg , then the counts Pückler, were noblemen. Prince Hermann von Pückler-Muskau sold the civil status in 1845 to the Counts of Hatzfeld- Weissweiler, von Hatzfeld-Schönstein and von Nostitz . In 1846 it came into the possession of Prince Wilhelm Friedrich Karl von Oranien-Nassau and then passed to Count Arnim until 1945 .

In the so-called “anger fire” of 1766, the city burned down completely; Only the town church and the castle on the Burglehn were spared . During the withdrawal of the Napoleonic army from Russia in 1813, Württemberg cuirassiers brought a typhus epidemic to Muskau, which killed around a fifth of the population. The inhabitants lived (with a few exceptions) in the status of hereditary servitude , which was only ended after 1815 under Prussian rule. The Sorbian farmers in the surrounding villages were predominantly Lassites .

Due to the rich clay deposits, a strong pottery trade developed in Muskau, in the heyday of which from the 17th to the middle of the 19th century up to 20 masters produced, who settled in the southern suburb, the Schmelze (now Schmelzstraße) and their famous stoneware vessels because of the fire hazard distant market places (e.g. Vienna ).

The first written mention of alum mining in the town of Muskau comes from 1573. The alum hut, which is located on the site of today's bathing park, was once one of the oldest in Saxony , alongside the huts in Reichenbach, Schwemsal and Freienwalde. The dismantling stopped in 1864.

In the 19th century, lignite was mined in the area between Muskau and Weißwasser .

In 1815, the Count (later Prince) von Pückler began to create his landscape park. Only about 1814 of his "general inspector" as a "model village" to the plans - to increase it, put Pückler place Köbeln by 1816 from the right to the left Neisse banks around after it - burnt down during the war operations Leopold Schefer been recreated entirely was. The construction of the glassworks near Jämlitz as one of the oldest pre-industrial smelters in Lusatia can also be traced back to Leopold Schefer's commitment .

Paper mill around 1900

Despite the war-related freeze on incorporation, the city was able to incorporate the neighboring municipality of Berg and about two thirds of the municipality of Lugknitz on April 1, 1940. In February 1945 Countess Alexandra von Arnim left Muskau on a trek towards Bendeleben in Thuringia, in April Count Hermann von Arnim. Towards the end of the Second World War , the city was severely destroyed by artillery fire from the Soviet Army , which was pushing over the Neisse, and the 2nd Polish Army . In autumn 1945, the castle and large parts of the city fell victim to a fire. A Soviet memorial commemorates the end of the war. In July 1945, Count von Arnim received notification that “the class rule and all businesses had been expropriated without compensation”. Muskau was largely rebuilt with the exception of the city church, the Sorbian St. Andrew's Church and the town hall. The town church was blown up in April 1959.

As a result of the demarcation along the Oder-Neisse line , the municipality Łęknica (Lugknitz) was formed again from the districts east of the Neisse , with parts of Muskau, in particular most of the Pückler Park, added to the former corridors, while the left the Lugknitzer Fluren near Muskau remained.

On July 1, 1950, the previously independent municipality of Köbeln was incorporated.

In Prussian times Bad Muskau belonged to the Rothenburg district (Ob. Laus.) In the Silesian administrative district of Liegnitz , from October 1945 to the Weißwasser district . On January 16, 1947, the community came to the district of Weißwasser-Görlitz , which was renamed the district of Niesky the following year . On July 25, 1952, Bad Muskau was incorporated into the Weißwasser district in the Cottbus district. With a decision in 1990, the district and thus Bad Muskau were assigned to the reorganized Free State of Saxony .

Bad Muskau has a brine source and a unique vitriol source. With the construction of a sanatorium in 1961, the city of Muskau was given the additional designation " Bad ".

politics

View from the Oberweg

City council

The three past Saxon municipal elections on May 26, 2019, May 25, 2014 and June 7, 2009, led to the following results in Bad Muskau:

Party / list	Seats 2019	Share of votes in 2019		Seats 2014	Share of votes in 2014	Seats 2009	Share of votes in 2009
CDU	8th	46.4%		7th	42.9%	5	28.9%
SPD	3	20.2%		3	20.0%	2	11.8%
The left	3	21.1%		4th	24.2%	3	19.9%
VDG *	2	12.3%		2	13.0%	2	13.7%
Free voters	-	-		-	-	4th	23.3%

^* VDG = Association for the Protection of Basic Democratic Rights

mayor

In the 2001 local elections in Saxony, the retailer Andreas Bänder ( CDU ) was elected mayor with 63.4% on June 10th. In the local elections in 2008, he was the only candidate for mayor and was confirmed in office with 96.1%. He was also re-elected in the elections in June 2015.

His predecessor Heidemarie Knoop (Die Linke) continues to chair the left-wing parliamentary group on the city council.

On September 1, 2019, the previous deputy mayor Thomas Krahl ( CDU ) was elected as the new mayor after Andreas Bänder voluntarily resigned from his office. Thomas Krahl prevailed against Frank Budszuhn with 50.1%.

coat of arms

Blazon : "In a green natural colored Wilder Mann with green leaves wreath and Hüftschurz in his right hand a sword lowered with gold stitching and silver blade in his left hand a red deer pole."

The stag bar comes from the coat of arms of the Lords of Bieberstein , who granted Muskau town charter in 1452. This representation comes from seals from the 15th century. The heraldically inadmissible light green of the field next to the dark green of the foliage suggests a corrupt seal implementation of the 19th century; From the 1970s onwards, the city showed a gold shield on its letterheads.

The coat of arms was designed by the heraldist Frank Diemar .

Town twinning

Fish belly bridge over the Neisse before the renovation ...

... and in 2018 with the finished bike path.

The city of Bad Muskau has had a partnership with the neighboring Polish city of Łęknica (Lugknitz) since 2003 . Another German-Polish partnership followed three years later with Bolków (Bolkenhain) on the Wütenden Neisse . All three cities belong to the Neisse Euroregion .

With the city Balve North Rhine-Westphalia is a city twinning which is maintained particularly through the male choirs and shooting clubs of the two cities.

Attractions

Fürst-Pückler-Park

Well-considered paths that keep the visitor out of sight and surprising lines of sight are among the basic elements in Pückler's landscape park . Because of him, Bad Muskau has achieved worldwide fame. In the meantime, it has been included in the UNESCO World Heritage List, together with the part located in Poland.

Several of the sights listed below are located in or near the park itself.

Buildings

• " Old Castle ", built in the 16th century as the gate house of the castle in the Renaissance style
• Prince Pückler's “New Castle”, built from 1646 to 1653 as a baroque three-wing complex, lavishly redesigned in neo-Renaissance style from 1864 to 1866 , destroyed after the end of the war in 1945, rebuilt between 1995 and 2011.
• Orangery in the palace gardens, built by Ludwig Persius in 1844
• Historic alley "Melt"
• Evangelical St. James Church, built in 1564, completely renovated in 1855 and provided with a tower
• Catholic church, brick building with tower, built in round arch style from 1870 to 1873
• Ruins of the Bergschen church in the mountain park above Bad Muskau, restored field stone building from the 13th century
• Pückler's historic botanical winter house
• Self-designed house of the poet and composer Leopold Schefer
• 19th century timber construction of the Hermannsbad sanatorium
• Tower villa and Villa Caroline from the 19th century with seminar house, restaurant, youth and cultural project
• Bad Muskau cinema, built in 1939

• 

  Muskauer Park

• 

  Old castle

• 

  The New Castle

• 

  James Church

• 

  Catholic Church

• 

  Bergsche church ruins

• 

  Water tower in the Berliner Chaussee

Monuments

• Hungerstein (1773, memory of the great famine in winter 1772/73)
• Graves of Leopold Schefer and Machbuba
• War memorial Koebeln
• Soviet memorial, 1945
• Memorial at Postplatz for the local victims of fascism with 14 named persons, including some Jewish citizens, 1965

See also : List of cultural monuments in Bad Muskau

traffic

Street

Bad Muskau is located on the federal highway 115 , which comes from Brandenburg from Forst via Bad Muskau and Niesky to Görlitz . A few kilometers from the city, the federal highway 156 passes through the neighboring town of Krauschwitz. The Bad Muskau – Łęknica border crossing at the Postbrücke (formerly Sorauer Brücke ) touches the park and leads to a Polish market; until the opening of the Krauschwitz – Łęknica border crossing (2011), the Droga krajowa 12 (DK12 ) began there, and has since led from the latter to the Polish-Ukrainian border. For pedestrians and cyclists there are other bridges over the Neisse in the park, the English Bridge and the Double Bridge .

Muskau Forest Railway

Of the earlier Muskau railway connections, only the rebuilt Muskau forest railway is in operation.

The Weißwasser – Bad Muskau railway line and the later extension to Sommerfeld have been closed in the Bad Muskau area. A cycle path was set up in 2014/2015 on a section of the route, which today mainly runs in Poland, which leads over the railway bridge to Bad Muskau and is connected to the Oder-Neisse cycle path by means of a steep ramp .

Personalities

Honorary citizen

See: List of honorary citizens of Bad Muskau

sons and daughters of the town

• Georg Alexander Heinrich Herrmann von Callenberg (1744–1795), electoral Saxon Privy Councilor, registrar of the Free Morality of Muskau, President of the Upper Lusatian Society of Sciences
• Nathanael Gottfried Leske (1751–1786), natural scientist and geologist
• Ursula Margarethe Konstantia Louise Diede zum Fürstenstein (1752–1803), pianist and composer
• Carl Gottlieb Bellmann (1772–1861), organist and composer
• Johann Gottfried Petrick (1781–1826), theologian
• Leopold Schefer (1784–1862), poet and composer; Inspector General of the Muskau estate during the Napoleonic Wars 1811–1815
• Prince Hermann von Pückler-Muskau (1785–1871), park creator, writer and registrar
• Theodor Reich (1823-1892), member of the Reichstag and Landtag
• Alwin Schultz (1838–1909), art and cultural historian
• Bruno von Mudra (1851–1931), general of the infantry and honorary citizen of Muskau
• Werner Richter (1888–1969), writer
• Wolf-Werner von der Schulenburg (1899–1944), Wehrmacht officer, SA brigade leader and National Socialist politician
• Erich Hausen (1900–1973), politician and resistance fighter
• Karl Peglau (1927–2009), inventor of the East German Ampelmännchen
• Hans Halter (* 1938), journalist and author
• Thomas Baum (* 1964), politician, member of the Saxon state parliament
• Olaf Zinke (* 1966), speed skater
• Anni Schumacher (* 1988), beach volleyball player
• Katharina Schwabe (* 1993), volleyball player
• Florian Proske (* 1996), ice hockey goalkeeper

The maternity hospital of the Weißwasser district was located in Bad Muskau until the 1990s. In connection with ice hockey , which is funded in Weißwasser , a number of professional ice hockey players were born in Bad Muskau, including Torsten Heine (* 1979), Ronny Arendt (* 1980), Susann Götz (* 1982), André Mücke (* 1983), Frank Hördler (* 1985), Thomas Götz (* 1985), Lars Morawitz (* 1985), Christian Rösler (* 1987), Markus Lehnigk (* 1988), Ivonne Schröder (* 1988), Elia Ostwald (* 1988) and Toni Ritter (* 1990).

Other personalities associated with Muskau

• The Count Kurt Reinicke of Callenberg founded the dynasty of the Muskauer Callenberger , the time of its existence, upheld the claim that the professional Muskau originally imperial immediacy, then kursächsisches fief was, so no territory of Markgraftums Oberlausitz.
• Karl Friedrich Brescius (1766–1842), clergyman and theologian, was rector of the school, later prince educator and court preacher as well as assessor at the consistory in Muskau
• The Ethiopian Machbuba, who is shrouded in numerous - partly local - stories, lived in Muskau from 1839 until her death in 1840. Her tombstone can still be found here today.
• Pückler's first park inspector, Jacob Heinrich Rehder , worked here and made a significant contribution to the implementation of his ideas.
• The author of "Young Germany" and later famous theater director Heinrich Laube sat 1837-38 as a convicted fraternity (thanks to the intervention of Prince Hermann von Pückler-Muskau) at Schloss Muskau a very commode " imprisonment " time and was during the March Revolution on Suggestion by Leopold Schefer nominated by the Muskauern as a member of the Paulskirche (which he turned down for the sake of another constituency).
• The landscape architect Eduard Petzold was the park director of Prince Wilhelm Friedrich Karl von Oranien-Nassau in Muskau and laid out an arboretum that was famous at the time (but has now disappeared) .
• Hans Ferdinand Maßmann , a Germanist, fraternity member and gymnastics student of Jahn , died on August 3, 1874 in Muskau.

Historical sources

A satisfactory, larger monograph on Bad Muskau is still pending and the sources are difficult: The old city archive burned down in the great fire in 1766 (the “Zornfeuer”). The castle archive (until 1945) is partly in Arnim's private property in Bavaria, the rest was lost during the subsequent conquest of Muskau by the Red Army. Incomplete records of the state rule are in the Bautzen State Archives.

About the time of the Bieberstein rule can be found in the documentation of Julius Helbig documentary contributions to the history of the noble lords of Biberstein and their goods . From the handwritten estate of Major General Paul Rogalla von Bieberstein communicated by Albert Hirtz. Editing, explained and a Regesten -Nachtrag increased from Julius Helbig. Biographies about Muskauer ( Karoline von Arnim , Der last Callenberger ), park guides and the like are at least available. Nathanael Gottfried Leske teaches about the historical Muskau around 1770 and Bettina and Lars Clausen provide detailed information about the period from 1770 to 1820 in their two-volume sociobiography about Leopold Schefer Able to do anything . Over the period after that until 1845, a lot can be put together from the works on Prince Pückler and on Pückler Park, although the Muskau community often falls short. During the Arnim period, Muskau - rulership between Spree and Neisse by Hermann Graf von Arnim and Willi A. Boelcke - was thorough and rich in material.

literature

• Johannes Mörbe: Detailed history and chronicle of the city and the free estate of Muskau, based on credible sources . Breslau 1861 ( e-copy ).
• Julius Helbig: Documentary contributions to the history of the noble lords of Biberstein and their goods . Association for local history of the Jeschken-Isergau, Reichenberg 1911.
• Bettina Clausen / Lars Clausen: Capable of anything . Bangert & Metzler, Frankfurt am Main 1985.
• Hermann Graf von Arnim / Willi A. Boelcke: Muskau - estate between the Spree and the Neisse . Ullstein, Frankfurt am Main / Berlin / Vienna 1978, ISBN 3-550-07377-1 .
• Josef Horschik: stoneware. From Bürgel to Muskau. 15th to 19th century. Verlag der Kunst, Dresden 1978.

Web links

Commons : Bad Muskau  - album with pictures, videos and audio files

Wikivoyage: Bad Muskau  - travel guide

Wikisource: Muskau  - Sources and full texts

• Website of the city of Bad Muskau
• Bad Muskau in the Digital Historical Directory of Saxony

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Population of the Free State of Saxony by municipalities on December 31, 2019  ( help on this ).
2. ↑ Announcement of the Saxon State Ministry for Economics, Labor and Transport on the change of the list of health and recreation places in the Free State of Saxony according to § 3 Abs. 5 SächsKurG from January 20, 2014
3. ↑ Annex (to Section 3, Paragraph 2) of the Saxon Sorbs Act
4. ↑ It burned out and collapsed on April 15, 1945
5. ↑ www.kirchensprengung.de , see also Christians and Churches in the GDR
6. ↑ https://www.wahlen.sachsen.de/Erresult_GR19.php?landkreis=14626&gemeinde=14626010 Results of the 2019 municipal council elections in Bad Muskau at www.statistik.sachsen.de
7. ↑ Results of the 2014 municipal council elections in Bad Muskau at www.statistik.sachsen.de. State Statistical Office of the Free State of Saxony , accessed on May 28, 2014 . 
8. ↑ Mayors elected in 2001 according to districts and their legal status in the Free State of Saxony. ( XLS ; 168 kB) Retrieved June 9, 2008 . 
9. ↑ Mayors elected in 2008 according to districts and their legal status in the Free State of Saxony. ( XLS ; 61 kB) Retrieved June 9, 2008 . 
10. ↑ https://www.statistik.sachsen.de/wpr_alt/pkg_s10_bmlr.prc_erg_bm_a?p_bz_bzid=BM151&p_ebene=GE&p_ort=14626010
11. ↑ Mayor election results 2019. In: State Statistical Office of the Free State of Saxony. State Statistical Office of the Free State of Saxony, accessed on December 11, 2019 . 
12. ↑ Sister cities - getting to know and understand one another better ... In: www.badmuskau.de. City administration Bad Muskau, accessed on December 28, 2018 . 
13. ↑ Worth seeing: Jakobskirche in Bad Muskau. In: Evangelical in the Silesian Upper Lusatia. Evangelical Church District Association Silesian Upper Lusatia, accessed on May 26, 2016 .