Fichtelsee

Fichtelsee
	The Fichtelsee (northern part)
Location:	Fichtelgebirge , Upper Franconia , Bavaria
Drain:	over the Seebach to Fichtelnaab
Larger places nearby:	Fichtelberg
	Bavaria , Germany
Coordinates	50 ° 0 '56 " N , 11 ° 51' 31" E Coordinates: 50 ° 0 '56 " N , 11 ° 51' 31" E
	Data on the structure
Height of the barrier structure :	20 m
Crown length:	325 m
	Data on the reservoir
Altitude (at congestion destination )	752 m above sea level NN
Water surface	10.5 ha
Maximum depth	16 m
Total storage space :	520 000 m³

The Fichtelsee is an approximately 10.5 hectare man-made reservoir in the wooded saddle between Ochsenkopf and Schneeberg in the municipality of Fichtelberg in Upper Franconia .

It serves as a natural swimming pool and, with its surrounding facilities such as sunbathing lawn, children's playground, sports areas and circular paths, it is a popular local recreation area. A fishing industry is not possible because of the extreme acidity ( pH value average 4.2). The lake path and the Franconian mountain path run along the lake .

history

In the description of the game foreman office Waldeck 1435 "piss an see" appears as part of a border description of the manorial forest 1393 the reference "in den see (= lake) on the Fichtelberge". Matthias von Kemnat reported in his first description of the Fichtelgebirge in 1476 about the "see from which four navigable waters flow crosswise into the world: Main , Naab , Saale , Eger ". Since then, all chroniclers have written about the “world-famous Fichtelberger See” without having seen it. Scientists doubt whether it was a lake in the current sense. Rather, it will have been a water-rich raised bog that is still partially present in the northern part.

For the first time, a lake pond was named in 1607, which was created for the Eisenhammerwerke Gottesgab (now the Neubau district of the municipality of Fichtelberg) together with other water dams; the drain was called Seegraben in 1650. For the additional water supply, the Gregnitz was diverted to the Seeweiher in 1608 , today known as Lochbach. Another supply line from this time was the Paschenbach. Around 1795 there were reports of the construction of a dam by the Gottgab Mining Authority, which in literature is often referred to as the birth of the Fichtelsee. In 1934/35 the dam of the Fichtelseestauweiher was damaged and the lake degenerated into a pond. Therefore, the dam was raised by some factory owners in the upper Naab valley and by the municipality of Fichtelberg, which resulted in the Fichtelsee, which existed until 1983.

southern (newest) part of the Fichtelsee

In 1977/78 the water level of the Fichtelsee had to be lowered because the dam had become leaky. The association for the promotion of tourism and winter sports in the Fichtelgebirge then decided to expand and renovate the Fichtelsee by building a new dam with an expansion of the water area, with the Bayreuth water management authority acting as the sponsor of the construction project. From spring 1983 to summer 1986 a new, 20 meter high earth dam was built south of the old lake with a dam crest length of 325 meters. The entire water area was thereby expanded to 10.5 hectares.

In 1939 the Torf-, See- und Hüttenlohe, the area north and east of the Fichtelsee with an area of 45.4 hectares, was designated as a nature reserve. The lake itself is outside the nature reserve, but is entered on the landscape protection map.

In 1982, the protection of the vegetation around the lake was further extended and declared the Fichtelseemoor natural forest reserve with a size of 139.2 hectares. Of these, 54.6 are designated as a core zone and 84.6 as a protection zone. The core zone remains absolutely untouched by human hands, there is also no forestry use or maintenance, nature is completely left to its own devices. With this measure it was possible to effectively protect the dwarf shrubs, herbs, grasses and peat mosses characteristic of the raised bog, as well as the population of the swamp fountain ( Spirke ).

The extraction of water from the Lohen by the Fichtelberg Mining and Huts Office at the time promoted the drying up of the Fichtelsee moor . After all, the dehydration had progressed so far that the systematic mining of peat as fuel for the Fichtelberger ironworks and glassworks began around 1840. The fuel also reached Bayreuth to heat the penitentiary, the judiciary and the barracks. The last peat cut in the Fichtelsee area was carried out by the city of Wunsiedel after the Second World War . The environment and agriculture ministries are currently trying to restore areas that were previously destroyed by peat extraction. For this purpose, the drainage network was filled in to rewet the areas and to activate the ecological cycles in the bog.

fauna and Flora

There are no fish in Fichtelsee, but the black adder and beaver are special representatives of the fauna at Fichtelsee , although beavers have been observed at the lake since 2005.

As a well-preserved remnant of an upland moor, the Seelohe nature reserve has interesting flora, including the following plants: Spirke , downy birch , rosemary heather , crowberry , bogberry , arm-flowered sedge and cotton grass

literature

Harald Herrmann: The Fichtelsee and its surroundings then and now , issue 4/1994 of Das Fichtelgebirge - series of publications on its history, nature and culture , publisher: Fichtelgebirgsverein eV, Wunsiedel

Web links

Commons : Fichtelsee - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

↑ Erich Walter: Nature guide Bayreuther Land . Gondrom Verlag, Bindlach 1985, pp. 62-64.
↑ DISTRICT OF OBERFRANKEN, specialist advice for fisheries, activity report for the year 2005 ( Memento of the original from December 16, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF file; 1.39 MB). On the OBERFRANKEN DISTRICT website. Retrieved November 30, 2009. @1@ 2
↑ Erich Walter: Nature guide Bayreuther Land . Gondrom Verlag, Bindlach 1985, p. 64.

[1] Erich Walter: Nature guide Bayreuther Land . Gondrom Verlag, Bindlach 1985, pp. 62-64.

[2] DISTRICT OF OBERFRANKEN, specialist advice for fisheries, activity report for the year 2005 ( Memento of the original from December 16, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF file; 1.39 MB). On the OBERFRANKEN DISTRICT website. Retrieved November 30, 2009. @1@ 2

[3] Erich Walter: Nature guide Bayreuther Land . Gondrom Verlag, Bindlach 1985, p. 64.