Biesterberg

Biesterberg
The Biesterberg near Lemgo (view from the northeast)
height	218  m above sea level NHN
location	Lemgo, Lippe district , North Rhine-Westphalia , Germany
Coordinates	52 ° 0 '23 "  N , 8 ° 53' 38"  E Coordinates: 52 ° 0 '23 "  N , 8 ° 53' 38"  E
Nature reserve on the Biesterberg

The Biesterberg is a mountain in Lemgo . It is located in the south of Lemgo and has a height of 218  m above sea level. NHN .

Until 1993 the area was used as a training area for British troops . The military training area is now a nature reserve .

history

On today's Biesterberg, a small settlement was formed in the early Middle Ages that bore the name Bist (probably from Old High German bisut = place, clearing, village). With the founding and growth of Lemgo in the late 12th / early 13th century, the village fell into desolation , leaving only the field names "Biesterberg" (Lemgo) and "Am Biesberg" (Brake). The fields on the Biesterberg were given as a fief to citizens of Lemgoer Neustadt. Due to intensive pasture use, the mountain remained largely unforested. In the years 1883 to 1887 the Biesterberg was transferred to the city and the citizens were compensated. About 20 hectares of the area fell to the Brake dairy, the north-western area with the inferior soils was reforested with a spruce forest by the city of Lemgo. A large part of the southern area was still used as Hudewald and served the citizens of the area as a recreational area.

During the First World War , the Biesterberg served the 2nd Battalion of the 67th Infantry Regiment as a training area. In 1936, the Wehrmacht acquired the area on the Biesterberg from the city of Lemgo and used it together with the areas of the Brake dairy for their exercises. To the southwest of the summit, two halls were built by 1938 in which tethered balloons were built and tested for the purpose of enemy observation. These systems were dismantled immediately after the end of the war.

From 1953 the British occupation forces confiscated the site at Biesterberg and set up a tank training area of ​​almost 50  hectares . In the 1980s, the site was also used for hand-to-hand combat training, and a helicopter landing pad was set up to transport soldiers between Biesterberg and Detmold Air Base. With the withdrawal of the British from Lemgo in 1993, the Biesterberg fell back to the German state.

For some years the future use of the Biesterberg was unclear, the construction of wind turbines had already been approved, when finally in 2000 the entomologist Hans Retzlaff from Lagens drew attention to the special value of the flora and fauna and thus initiated the conversion of the area into a nature reserve. The Lemgoer Staff Foundation was significantly involved in this process, and in May 2003 it acquired around 20 hectares of land from the Lippe regional association .

Nature reserve

74.44 hectares on the Biesterberg have been designated as a nature reserve since 2009. The area includes the former military training area and mixed forests adjacent to the southeast. In order to preserve the poor lawn areas and protect them from encroachment , they are grazed extensively by sheep and, if necessary, dekussed . Individual bushes in the meadow and on the edge of the area offer various species of birds, including the red-backed shrike , the necessary habitat. Still waters , rough meadows and pastures as well as dry and semi-dry grasslands are listed as protected biotopes .

Numerous endangered Red List plant species can be found in the meadows , for example the fringed gentian , the shield speedwell or the stone whorl . Endangered animal species in the nature reserve are various bird species, including birds of prey, several species of butterflies and the crested newt .

Landwehr

The Landwehr cultural monument runs along the southern edge of the nature reserve . This former fortification around Lemgo was probably built before 1400 and consisted of a ditch-wall-ditch system. The walls were planted with impenetrable, thorn-studded hedges, which effectively prevented entering or leaving the city area outside the restricted areas. The Biological Station Lippe is trying to restore the original condition over a length of about 30 meters.

Biesterberg district

The Biesterberg district is located on the western slope below the spruce forest. The settlement is characterized by numerous multi-storey buildings and three high-rise buildings. At the time of the military training area, soldiers of the British Army lived here. After their departure, the apartments were mainly occupied by migrants, mostly Russian- Germans. As a result of high unemployment , a social hotspot developed, similar to that in the Detmold district of Hakedahl . To improve the situation, the Biesterberg district meeting place was founded at the end of 1999 , and in 2002 it was one of the winners of the “Socially Integrative City” competition.

literature

• Hermann Hentschel, Georg Kramer, Wilhelm Koch, Martin Noltekuhlmann: Biesterberg near Lemgo (=  Lippe cultural landscapes . Issue 5). Lippischer Heimatbund , Detmold 2006, ISBN 3-926311-42-8 .

Web links

Commons : Biesterberg nature reserve  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• "Biesterberg" nature reserve in the specialist information system of the State Office for Nature, Environment and Consumer Protection in North Rhine-Westphalia
• Biesterberg as a hiking destination
• Biesterberg nature reserve

Individual evidence

1. ^ Hermann Hentschel, Georg Kramer, Wilhelm Koch, Martin Noltekuhlmann: Biesterberg near Lemgo . S. 21-24 .
2. ↑ Documentation of the competition Preis Soziale Stadt 2002 ( Memento from September 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ), accessed on August 20, 2014 (PDF; 2.5 MB)