Ditfurt

Basic data
State :	Saxony-Anhalt
County :	resin
Association municipality :	Pre-resin
Height :	125 m above sea level NHN
Area :	23.71 km 2
Residents:	1480 (Dec. 31, 2019)
Population density :	62 inhabitants per km 2
Postal code :	06484
Area code :	03946
License plate :	HZ, HBS, QLB, WR
Community key :	15 0 85 090
LOCODE :	DE DIF
Association administration address:	Markt 7 ; 38828 Wegeleben
Website :	www.vorharz.net
Mayor :	Matthias Hellmann
Location of the municipality of Ditfurt in the Harz district

"Spieker" farm

Watermill

St. Boniface

The "Kantorberg"

"Schützenhaus" restaurant

Local history museum (in the background the church tower of St. Bonifatius )

Ditfurter Kiessee (from the south)

Ditfurt is a municipality in the northeast of the Harz district . The municipality in the valley of the Bode belongs to the Vorharz association and is located about seven kilometers northeast of Quedlinburg . The place is mentioned as early as 800 in records of the Fulda monastery .

geography

The municipality of Ditfurt belongs to the state of Saxony-Anhalt. It is surrounded by the Bode valley.

history

Prehistory and early history

Archaeological finds - u. a. Stone axes from the band ceramic and pottery shards from the string ceramic culture - suggest a very early and continuous settlement of the area around Ditfurt.

middle Ages

The origins of Ditfurt go back to the time of Charlemagne (reign: 768 to 814). After Charlemagne had defeated the Saxons as far as the Saale and Elbe in the Saxon Wars , he had a fortified military road built in the foothills of the Harz region around 800 - what is still known as the "Heerweg" today. His son, Ludwig the Pious , built an imperial residence castle in 820 on the spot where the Ditfurter Vorwerk stands today. This castle consisted, among other things, of a wooden guardhouse (today's town hall) and was surrounded by an approximately two meter high wall (made of clay and brushwood) and a moat. There were four gates (Pölkentor, Schaftor, Krugtor and Zolltor) which were guarded by guards. The last traces of these fortifications can also be found on the ravine and the Salzrinnenstrasse. The settlement of the place then began under the protection of the castle. After the time of Louis the Pious, a supply magazine, the so-called "Spieker" (old German for storage), was built in which the third part of the harvest brought in from the surrounding area was stored to supply the crew.

The crew of the fortification was also used to observe the Heerstraße and the surrounding waiting areas. Three waiting areas are known from this period: the Ihlenstedter waiting room on Heerweg over the Bode, the Heidberg waiting room on the Heidberg and the waiting room on today's Kirchberg.

Heinrich I had a customs house built around 930 (the former inn "Zum Deutschen Häuser" in the vernacular "Tolle"), which also served as a hostel for travelers. In 974 the clustered village of Ditfurt was first mentioned as Deotfurdum in a deed of donation from Otto II to the Quedlinburg Abbey , and afterwards Dhietvorden (1148), Ditvorde (1288) and Ditforde (1458).

In 1333, the abbess Jutta von Kranichfeld converted the castle into a fortress. From the 10th century to 1479 courts, state parliaments and popular assemblies were held on the Hösekinberg (east of Ditfurt). An important market took place in the Bode-Niederung on these occasions, which lasted at least a week. Later this market moved to the new town of Quedlinburg . Ditfurter held the office of marshal of the abbesses for more than 300 years . In documents from Abbess Beatrix II von Quedlinburg from 1147 to 1149 a Hagimar I von Ditfurt and his son Hermann I are mentioned.

Church book records have existed in Ditfurt since 1595.

Up to the 17th century (at that time there were around 150 houses) there were many larger fires, which were favored by the lack of chimneys and thatched roofs. In 1687 chimneys became compulsory.

Number of houses that burned down in the 17th century:


year	Houses
1619	42
1622	56
1634	50
1669	68

Modern times

After the Thirty Years War the place was u. a. largely devastated by billeting and looting , the fields were uncultivated and the population decimated.

With the dissolution of the monastery on August 16, 1802, Ditfurt was released from feudal dependence and from 1803 belonged to the Prussian kingdom . Hereditary interest and tithe were only abolished in the course of the separation in Ditfurt until 1855/56.

In the years 1836/37, 1842/43 and 1846 there were major periods of drought which resulted in poor harvests .

There were major fires in 1825 and 1845 - 144 of 441 houses burned down in 1825.

In 1841 the poor house and in 1843 the road to Quedlinburg was built. In 1856 two stone bridges were built in a south-easterly direction over the Mühlgraben and the Wilde Bode. This made some old wooden bridges (at the Schützenhaus, Langesteg and Landessteg) superfluous.

Until the end of the 18th century, three-field farming was practiced. In the course of the second half of the 19th century , machines and new technologies were increasingly used in agriculture in Ditfurt:

from 1860 seed drills
from 1890 chopping machines
from 1880 row puller for growing potatoes
from 1880 steam threshing machines
from 1890 three furrow plows (replaced the previously common hook plow )

Use of inorganic fertilizers

On July 2, 1862, a pageant coming from Berlin opened the traffic for the newly built railway line between Halberstadt and Thale , which is still in operation today.

Ditfurt at the time of the GDR

Even after the Second World War , Ditfurt was an agricultural village. In 1949 there were 160 farms in Ditfurt. With the land reform of the Soviet occupation zone and the subsequent collectivization of agriculture, the farmers had to bring their land into the newly founded agricultural production cooperatives (LPG). Until the end of the GDR there were two LPGs for animal husbandry and plant production: on October 3, 1952 the LPG (type III) “Progress” and on July 15, 1958 the LPG (type I) “New Life” was founded. From 1958 onwards, large area management was carried out.

Former Sudeten Germans built up a jewelry production in Ditfurt from 1946. The first products were handmade wooden brooches from old wooden barrels. In 1958 the "Harzer Schmuck- und Kunststoffe PGH Ditfurt" was founded, which in addition to jewelry also produced parts for washing machines.

There was also a "fish combine" that processed canned fish. This company was located in the former dairy, which was moved to Westerhausen in 1963 .

From the mid-1970s until 1998, gravel was mined south of Ditfurt. A lake with a size of about 32 hectares was created .

In the vicinity of Ditfurt, in addition to the seed breeding test property, there was a barracks of the Soviet Army and a "radio technical post" with a P-14 radar system for air reconnaissance. Today there are two wind turbines in place of the radar antenna.

Development from the end of the 20th century

After reunification , the lands brought into the LPG were returned to the previous owners in the course of privatization . This resulted in an agricultural cooperative (with 1,407 hectares ) and three independent farms. In total, the place has over 2,200 hectares of agricultural land.

In the mid-1990s, Ditfurt was part of the Bode-Selke-Aue administrative community , which then expanded to become the Ballenstedt / Bode-Selke-Aue administrative community . As a result of the municipal reform in Saxony-Anhalt, Ditfurt joined the newly founded Vorharz community on January 1, 2010.

Population development

Population development
was standing	number	source
2002!December 31, 2002	1907
2005!December 31, 2005	1817
2006!December 31, 2006	1803
2007!December 31, 2007	1764
2011!December 31, 2011	1640
2013!December 31 2013	1565

As of December 31, 2008, the population structure was as follows: 11.1% of all residents were under 16 years of age, 1.7% between 16–18, 8.1% 18–25, 10.0% in the range 25–35, 15.9% 35–45, 24.7% between the ages of 45 and 60 and 28.6% over 60 years. Thus there were a total of 1003 inhabitants (corresponding to 58.7%) in the age range 18–60 years.

Origin of the place name

There is an old legend about the origin of the place name :

The devil and the Lord God made a pact. The devil should rule over the mountains and God over the flat land. When the devil thought about it carefully, he said: “The Harz Mountains are very beautiful, but unfortunately there are very few people and villages there.” So one night he went out and collected many villages in a large sack on the flat land . When the sun rose, the sack was full and the devil was on his way home.

At the bottom of his sack was a village whose church had a steeple so sharp that the point tore a hole in the sack and the village fell out of the sack on the bank of the Bode. The devil saw that a village had fallen out of its sack. But since it was already getting light and he didn't want to be seen going about it, he just said: "Dit's furt" and ran on quickly.

Through the exclamation of the devil, Ditfurt got the name it still bears today.

→ For the origin of the popular designation of the Ditfurter as "Geelbein" see Geelbein , Sage

Etymologically , the place name is explained as follows: The ford through the Bode had the name Diufurt or Deotfurt, which means “Volksfurt” or “large ford” in Old High German .

politics

Municipal council

In the local elections on May 26, 2019 , the 12 seats in the municipal council were held by representatives of groups of voters . The voters group Ditfurt (1,409 votes, 8 seats) and the voters group interest group fire brigade (716 votes, 4 seats) were elected. The turnout in 2019 was 59.9%. Of the eight seats won by the Ditfurt voter community , only six could be filled because not enough candidates were put up. So the council only has ten seats.

mayor

Matthias Hellmann has been mayor since 2017. Rena Jüngst had previously held this office since 1996.

coat of arms

Blazon : "In the blue shield with a golden inboard, two diagonally crossed silver serving knives with golden handles nailed three times in black."

The crossed sideboard knives depicted in the coat of arms can be traced back to the Quedlinburg women's monastery . These knives are without a doubt identical with the coat of arms of Abbess Anna II zu Stolberg . The following publication appeared on this subject in Heimatborn in 1921 (supplement to the Quedlinburger Kreisblatt ):

"Since the council, when he recently took the lap (= tax), and therefore it was necessary to send letters depending on the time, but had no own seal to seal the letters, asked the abbess to follow the advice Give her favor a seal or coat of arms, the council confess itself to be subject to the monastery and the award of a seal or coat of arms is an act that should be eternal, so the abbess will find the right thing, what she wants to give the council and what to him due. In the event that the council received such a thing, it wanted to dig (engrave) the seal of this fair. [...] "

Around 1541 the village of Ditfurt was granted the right to use this coat of arms by the Abbess Anna II zu Stolberg.

The community refers to the depiction of the crossed knives in the coat of arms from 1710 above the entrance door of the former office in Ditfurt and the depiction of the Ditfurt coat of arms in Volume II, Deutsche Ortswappen (Prussia) by Otto Hupp (1925). Here the coat of arms is emblazoned in blue with two diagonally crossed silver serving knives with golden handles.

The current coat of arms was designed by the heraldist Karl-Heinz Fritze († 2012) from Niederorschel . On June 14, 2001, the Ditfurt coat of arms was approved by the Magdeburg Regional Council.

The colors of the parish are blue - gold (yellow).

flag

The flag is blue - yellow - blue (1: 2: 1) striped with the coat of arms of the municipality.

Culture and sights

Museums

In the Ditfurter Heimatmuseum (local history museum) you can see rural, handicraft and village cultural assets. Archeology and the history of agriculture in the region are presented in other sections.

Attractions

Gravel lake
Ditfurt watermill
War memorial (built in 1921) for soldiers from Ditfurt who died in the First and Second World Wars
Burial in the local cemetery for an unknown Hungary and known by name Yugoslavs who deported during the Second World War to Germany and victims of forced labor were
Saint Boniface Church
Free-standing half-timbered town hall in Ditfurt, dated 1534, with late Gothic figures of saints, detention building

Personalities

The noble family von Ditfurth is connected to the place name .
Heinrich Mette (* 1735 Ditfurt; † 1806 Quedlinburg ), gardener, entrepreneur and co-founder of the seed industry in Quedlinburg.
Max Schewe (1896–1951), painter and graphic artist

Economy and Infrastructure

traffic

In the immediate vicinity of the village (between Quedlinburg and Ditfurt) there is a driveway (Quedlinburg Ost / L66) to the newly created federal motorway 36 . Ditfurt has a connection to the railway network with the Halberstadt-Quedlinburg-Thale railway line. Ditfurt is connected to the city of Quedlinburg by a bus line operated by the Harz Transport Authority .

literature

Gustav Brecht : The area of the former Reichsstift Quedlinburg with details of the desert areas, the ditch and the like. the most important field names, map, Quedlinburg 1885²
Friedrich Schrienert: Ditfurter Chronik , self-published by the author, Ditfurt 1904.
Peter Stephan: Ditfurt. Demography and social history of a rural community north of the Harz Mountains over 400 years . In: Harz research , vol. 17, Wernigerode u. Berlin 2002.
Bernd Feicke: Two pieces of files from the Reichsstift Quedlinburg from the 18th century . In: Harz-Zeitschrift 54/55 (2002/2003) 2004, pp. 187–200, esp. Pp. 191–194, 197–199 (Fig. Declaration of consent 1801 for GH Bollmann by the Quedlinburg abbess Sophia Albertina)
Falko Grubitzsch et al.: List of monuments in Saxony-Anhalt, Vol. 7.2 - Quedlinburg district , Halle / Petersberg 2007, Art. Ditfurt, pp. 94-109.
Bernd Feicke: City history and the decoration of historical town halls on the Harz as a symbol of the power and rights of the city ... In: Harz-Forschungen , Vol. 23, Berlin a. Wernigerode 2007, pp. 227–277, esp. 247, 259 (fig.)
Hans Blath, Ernst Kiehl: Ditfurt - Königshof, Amtshof, Heimatmuseum . In: Quedlinburger Annalen 11 (2008), pp. 67-78.
Karl Schirwitz: Two large graves from the Harz foreland: The "Kreienkopp" near Ditfurt , journal of the Harz Association for History and Antiquity 68 (1935), Wernigerode, self-published.