History of East Frisia
The history of East Frisia has developed quite independently within Germany, because the region was relatively isolated for centuries by large moors in the south of the region and at the same time turning to the sea . Feudalism was not very pronounced in East Frisia in the Middle Ages , instead the system of allegiance to the Frisian Freedom was created . It was not until 1464 that the House of Cirksena was enfeoffed with the imperial county of East Frisia. However, absolutism remained unknown in East Frisia. In the two centuries after around 1500, the Netherlands had a noticeable influence - politically, economically and culturally. In 1744 the county lost its independence within the Holy Roman Empire and from then on belonged to Prussia , after the Congress of Vienna (1815) to the Kingdom of Hanover , from 1866 again to Prussia and from 1946 to Lower Saxony .
The centuries-long struggle against the tides of the North Sea is also characteristic . In the flat land on the coast, people began to protect themselves against the floods around the year 1000 by building terps and dykes . However, there were repeated severe setbacks in the form of devastating storm surges that led to dike breakthroughs, floods and land losses.
Progress in agricultural use has been made through improved amelioration of the marshes and the planned reclamation of the moors (from 1633). Trade, especially sea trade , has played an important role at almost all times. The city of Emden was one of the leading port cities in Europe around 1600 and at the same time developed into a refuge for Calvinism . Agriculture and fishing were the main industries for centuries. The industrialization , however, took place late.
Early history
The earliest traces of human presence can be found from the Upper Paleolithic reindeer hunters of Hamburg culture . Mesolithic sites and later evidence of Neolithic settlements of the bell beaker culture , the megalithic culture and the ceramic cord culture follow . In 2016 and 2018, amateur archaeologists found two human jawbones on Spiekeroog and Baltrum. They are 7500 and 5500 years old and the oldest human remains found in the southern North Sea area to date. The Spiekeroog lower jaw comes from a 40-year-old man who lived in the 6th millennium BC, i.e. still at the time of the hunter-gatherers. The lower jaw of Baltrum also belonged to a male adult, who however lived about 2000 years later, i.e. in the transition period to the first rural cultures on the North Sea coast.
Nationally significant finds from the early period are the oldest cremation burial in northwest Germany (dated to 2700-2900 BC) and the plow from Walle from around 1000 BC. Estimated. An exact dating of the find is still pending.
The oldest finds of human settlement in East Frisia were made near Hesel . Among other things, remains of a cult site were discovered there. A number of stone weapons and ceramics are available from the Neolithic Age . Hune graves (Utarp and Tannenhausen ) and finds of stone axes date from the time of the megalithic culture . The most important find from the Bronze Age is the gold disc from Moordorf . The population thinned noticeably with the swamping of the landscape.
A new settlement did not take place until the second century BC. The settlers from the large association of Germanic Ingwäons probably came from Jutland and Scandinavia . Pliny the Elder names Chauken and Friesen from the large union of the Ingwäons. It cannot be clarified to this day whether the original Frisians ("Frisii") mentioned were of Germanic origin or were Germanised only when they moved there.
While Chauken originally lived in the area between Ems and Weser , around the turn of the century, the Frisians slowly began to penetrate this area. The Chauken were partly ousted by them and partly accepted into their tribal association. The Chauken have not been mentioned since the second century. It is unclear whether they were absorbed into the tribal association of the Saxons or the Franks . From the land side, Saxon tribes pushed into the Geest areas. The later East Frisians emerged from the mixture of these groups.
The border between Friesen and Chauken had drawn across East Friesland. It is assumed that places whose name ends in -um (formerly -hem ) were Frisian settlements ( e.g. Jemgum , Bingum , Petkum , Borssum ), while places on -ens are of Chaukic origin (e.g. Esens , Wiesens , Popens , Schortens ).
12 BC The Romans first reached East Frisia under their general Drusus . A few years later, Germanicus anchored in the Amisia ( Ems ). Bentumersiel (today the municipality of Jemgum), which may have been used to supply and protect the ships, is one of the few places in Lower Saxony where finds indicate the presence of Roman legionaries at the beginning of the 1st century AD.
Middle Ages (until 1464)
Migration of peoples, army kings, failed Christianization
With the fall of the Roman Empire from the 4th to the 7th centuries, written sources about the region dried up.
There are few archaeological finds for the 5th and 6th centuries, suggesting that there was a sharp decline in settlement during this period. The reason for this could be a rise in sea level and the resulting flooding of the marshes and the watering of the Geest . It is likely that part of the population crossed over to England with the Saxons , Angles and other Germanic peoples. One of the few exceptions that speak for continuous settlement in the region is the runic solidus of Schweindorf .
During the migration period , the Chauken population residing in eastern East Frisia was probably incorporated into the federal tribal association of the Saxons. Finds of new ceramic forms from the area west of the Weser, where the Saxons lived at this time, indicate a cultural rapprochement. Evidence of armed conflicts, such as fire horizons , however, is missing.
In the 7th and 8th centuries, a new settlement began as part of an expansion of the Frisian settlement area. This extended in the west to the Sincfal (north of Bruges ) and included South Holland, Utrecht and Westgelderland. Sausages and the North Frisian Islands have also been settled since the 8th century , and later the mainland opposite. Finds from this period indicate that the settlers came from the Frisian areas west of the Lauwers .
Until the first dykes were built, settlement was only possible in higher geest areas and on so-called terps in the marshland, which was often flooded by the North Sea . From around 1000 AD, dykes made it possible to colonize the entire march. The motto Deus mare, Friso litora fecit (God created the sea, the Frisian the coast) alludes to this.
Between 650 and 700 a Frisian army kingship emerged , which is still sometimes misunderstood as the formation of a large empire. It is undisputed that these army kings defended themselves against the Frankish expansion (and the associated Christianization), which probably brought together large parts of today's West Friesland , East Friesland and areas up to the Weser (Magna Frisia). The first known name of an army king is Aldegisel , who apparently supported the Christian missionary Wilfrid from 678 . His son and successor Radbod , like his father, had his main power center in the west, in the Utrecht area. In 716 he stood with his army in front of Cologne and in the same year defeated the Franconian caretaker Karl Martell , who suffered his only defeat. In Wilhelmine times, Radbod († 719) became a champion of Germanic freedom and, since he was not baptized, stylized the anti- Roman clerical forces in connection with the so-called church struggle . Industrial complexes such as the Radbod colliery in the eastern Ruhr area were also named after him. It is still part of folklore today.
Part of the Franconian Empire, Christianization
Radbod's successor was Poppo. In vain he opposed the reconquest of western Friesland by the Franks, and after 720 all parts of the country west of the Vlie were in Franconian hands. Karl Martell finally defeated the Frisians in the Battle of the Boorne (734). Poppo found death in the process. After defeating the Saxons in 785, Charlemagne conquered all of Friesland, including the eastern areas as far as the Weser . The Ius paternae hereditatis , the right to their paternal inheritance and thus their free inheritance, was withdrawn from the Saxons and Frisians who had fought against Karl . To secure his conquests, Karl also had Frisian law recorded and summarized with Franconian laws in an overview, the Lex Frisionum .
The Franks resumed the failed Christianization by the missionaries Liudger and Willehad . East Friesland was partly assigned to the diocese of Bremen and the other to the diocese of Münster . A monastery landscape emerged on the Dutch and German North Sea coast with a high point in the 12th and 13th centuries. Altogether, from West Friesland to Groningen to East Friesland, around 120 founding of the various orders can be proven. In East Friesland itself, there were more than 30 monasteries, monasteries and comrades before the Reformation .
When it was integrated into the Franconian Empire, Friesland was divided into several counties. In the area between the Ems and Weser estuaries, these were the Emsiga in the southwest, the Federitga in the northwest, Nordendi with Herloga in the north, Wanga in the northeast, Asterga in the east and Riustri in the east. The inner geest initially remained nameless. The rulership of these areas was given to foreign nobles. It is assumed that at that time there was no established class of noble families in the region, since otherwise they would have been taken into account as counts in the enforcement of the county constitution in the Franconian Empire. Among the foreign count families who were deployed in East Frisia were the Westphalian Cobbons , who apparently held rights in western East Frisia. They were later followed here by the Counts of Werl . In the east of East Frisia, the Saxon Billungers have been named as county owners alongside the Counts of Stade since the 10th century , followed by Heinrich the Lion .
However, they all failed to consolidate their respective claims to power, because from the 9th century East Friesland was the target of multiple Viking raids in which the population was left to their own devices. Karl organized the defense of the country by setting up a kind of “ coast guard ” in Friesland along the coast and especially at the estuaries , which relied on the self-help of the armed and loyal Frisians. They were released from military service in foreign territories. This was first recorded in the so-called Common Frisian Seventeen Küren, legal texts of the Frisian land law in Latin, Frisian and Low German, which were probably created around 1080. It says that the Frisians do not have to go further east than the Weser on any army voyage and further west than the Fli ( Seegatt between Vlieland and Terschelling ).
From this the Frisians developed the political myth that Charlemagne was the founder of Frisian freedom . The class so privileged by Karl, however, was likely to have been thin, since it consisted exclusively of men who were loyal to the king and from whom Karl had therefore not withdrawn the Ius paternae hereditatis . Only when Charles' son, Louis the Pious , returned it to them in 814, did all the Frisians who owned the land enjoy the freedom of the king. In return, they paid the king a fee called huslotha or koninckhuere .
When the foreign counts tried from the 11th century to convert their Frisian counties into their own dominions, this was destroyed by the resistance of the Frisians. By the 12th century at the latest, the freedom of the Frisians had prevailed across the board and the Frisians began to organize themselves in autonomous regional communities.
Replacement of the count's courts, consular constitution, Frisian freedom
Towards the end of the Carolingian era, a network of districts increasingly decoupled from the ruling groups in the heart of the Franconian Empire emerged. They sent elected representatives every year, the so-called “ Redjeven ” (judges, councilors), who both exercised the jurisdiction and ran their districts. The group of the big ones reached back in part to the Frankish conquest, but the feudalism widespread in Europe remained little developed in East Frisia. Rather, the Frisians saw themselves as peasants who were free of landlord ties and who were neither tied to the Scholle nor developed vassal relationships like those that had arisen in the Carolingian rulers. It is true that there were unfree people, but their number must have been small.
The replacement of the count's jurisdiction by the consular constitution began before the 12th century. Every year from the 12th to the 14th century, elected envoys of the seven Frisian Zealand countries gathered in the Frisian Freedom on the third day of Pentecost at the Upstalsboom in Rahe (today a district of Aurich ). The number seven is to be understood symbolically, in fact it was emissaries from far more regions. They were already elected in the respective districts at Easter. At the Upstalsboom they spoke right and made political decisions of supraregional importance. These assemblies are documented for the period between 1216 and 1231 and 1323 and 1327.
East Frisian chiefs
During the 14th century, the Redjeven constitution fell into disrepair. The outbreak of the plague may also have contributed to this, but perhaps even more so the three severe storm surges. The most devastating of these was the Second Marcellus Flood (1362), also called Groote Mandränke . It not only claimed thousands of lives, but also led to the first break-in of the dollar and an expansion of Leybucht and Harlebucht . The first Dionysius flood (1374) widened the Leybucht to the north - which later increased the economic importance of the north as a trading town. The Second Dionysius Flood (1377) led to dike breaches at Lütetsburg and Bargebur .
There were also external threats. The descendants of the counts who were appointed to the Frisian districts in Carolingian times and only associated with the king, such as the Counts of Oldenburg, but also clerical rulers such as the bishops of Munster, had by no means given up their efforts to integrate the north into their system of rule.
Some influential families took advantage of this situation and created a system of rule in which they, as chiefs (hovedlinge), gained power over more or less large areas. In doing so, they did not establish a feudal system, as was to be found in the rest of Europe, but rather a system of allegiance that resembled older forms of rule of Germanic cultures in the north, in that the inhabitants of the respective spheres of power were in a relationship of dependence on the chief, and were obliged to him in various ways The rest, however, kept their freedom and were not tied to the clod.
Until the end of the 14th century, the power struggles of the chief families were a local problem. After the Vitalienbrüder had been expelled from the Baltic Sea island of Gotland by the Teutonic Order in 1398 , they were accepted by some of the East Frisian rulers who used them as a force. The pirates benefited from the seclusion of East Frisia on land routes with simultaneous access to the sea routes off the East Frisian coast. One of the pirates who found shelter here was Klaus Störtebeker . He quartered himself in Marienhafe , which at that time was still on the Leybucht and thus had access to the open sea. This led to considerable tensions with the Hanseatic League , whose armies invaded East Friesland several times in the period that followed. The cities of Hamburg and Bremen in particular saw themselves damaged by the pirates. However, the involvement of the Hanseatic League did not resolve the conflicts among the chiefs, but made them even more complicated. In 1401 the Hanseatic League fought a successful naval battle against the pirates off Heligoland . Parts of East Frisia, including Emden, were mainly occupied by Hamburg forces. They did not leave Emden until 1453.
The Battle of the Wild Fields on October 28, 1427 marked the end of the influence of the chief family tom Brok in East Friesland. The tom Broks tried to take control of East Frisia in the second half of the 14th century. It was not until the rise of the Cirksena around 1430, when Edzard Cirksena had asserted himself as the leader of a League of Freedom , that this phase marked by long feuds ended, but at the same time the special status of the regional social constitution. Ulrich Cirksena , a member of one of the last influential chief families, was in 1464 by Emperor Friedrich III. raised to the status of imperial count and enfeoffed with East Friesland as imperial county. It belonged to the Lower Rhine-Westphalian Empire .
Modern times (until 1918)
The rule of the Cirksena (1464-1744), denominational wars
Under the rule of the House of Cirksena , who was raised to hereditary prince status in 1662 , East Frisia developed politically, culturally and economically. The county reached the greatest extent under Edzard the Great , under whose rule the Reformation began to spread in East Frisia and the East Frisian Land Law was drafted. However, the counts were unable to enforce a strong aristocratic rule in East Frisia as they did in the other states of the empire, since the Frisian estates largely knew how to uphold their rights of freedom. Leer and Aurich developed into the most important cattle trading centers in the region. In 1508, the Gallimarkt , which still exists today, was held for the first time in Leer . Even Ocko I. tom Brok is said to have brought Jews to East Frisia in the 14th century , but the contacts probably go back a lot further, especially since both Frisians and Jews were very active in long-distance trade. The oldest synagogue community was established in Emden around 1550; further communities sprang up in all of the larger towns. The political and economic upswing was accompanied, underpinned and strengthened by the establishment of the University of Groningen under its rector Ubbo Emmius (1547–1625), the most important East Frisian humanist and historian .
A severe setback for the Emden trade occurred in the form of the Second Cosmas and Damian Flood in 1509. If the Ems ran in a northward curve past the city until the flood, it looked for a straight path into the Dollart and after the storm surge on to the North Sea: The port of Emden threatened to silt up. The Dollart reached its greatest extent after the flood, the first polder in the Rheiderland with the Bunderneuland was not wrested from the sea until 1605 , others followed only in 1682 (Charlottenpolder) and 1707/08 with the Norder- and Süder-Christian-Eberhards-Polder and the Bunder prospect polder - almost exactly two centuries after the flood.
The Reformation arrived around 1520. Unlike in most regions, however, it was not the authorities that were in charge here. Count Edzard I supported the spread of the new doctrine, but was too weak in his position to enforce a particular creed. Lutheran Protestantism and Calvinism existed side by side in East Friesland without one denomination gaining the upper hand. Rather, the country was split into a Lutheran East and a Calvinist West. Catholic churches, however, no longer existed in East Frisia after the Reformation, and Catholic Christians hardly existed.
At the end of the 1520s, the Anabaptist movement also spread to East Frisia . The Schwäbisch Hall furrier and later Lutheran messenger Melchior Hofmann is considered the initiator . This "most successful lay preacher of the Reformation period" came to Emden in 1529 via the Baltic States and the Scandinavian countries, where - after a short stay in Strasbourg - he began to set up what he called the covenant of baptism in 1530 . Around 300 East Frisians were baptized in the Great Church and shortly afterwards founded the Emden Anabaptist Congregation, which lives on to this day under the name of Mennonites and which became one of the important germ cells of the Dutch Reformation.
The monasteries were secularized and partly used as secular buildings. Most, however, were demolished and the building material obtained in this way was used to build houses or to build fortifications for the cities. Most of your archived documents, contracts, image and written sources have been lost.
In 1556 he came to an agreement with Sweden. The Swedes were allowed to trade duty-free in all of East Frisia, the same applied to East Frisian merchants in Sweden.
1568 East Frisia fell into the conflicts of the Dutch War of Independence , when Dutch troops, known as Beggars , under their leader Louis of Nassau after the Battle of Heiligerlee into Rheiderland dodged. Spanish troops under Duke Alba followed them. On July 21, 1568, the two associations met at the Battle of Jemgum , which ended in a victory for the Spaniards. Albas Heer then roamed the Rheiderland for three days, pillaging, pillaging and raping.
The city of Emden in particular benefited in the following years from the influx of religious refugees from the Netherlands, led by Menno Simons from Witmarsum - the Mennonites were named after him - but also from France and England. The city was also a stronghold of Calvinism through the work of Reformed preachers , for example through Johannes a Lasco . At times it looked as if the city could become a third Reformation center alongside Wittenberg and Geneva .
Emden experienced its greatest heyday between 1570 and the end of the Thirty Years War and became one of the most important European ports and shipping companies. This was primarily due to the large number of Dutch religious refugees who settled here. Several thousand merchants, ship owners and craftsmen settled in the city, the population rose by 1600 to almost 15,000. Emden was thus one of the most important port cities in Northern Europe. The city acted more and more confidently towards the count. The tensions culminated in the Emden Revolution in 1595 , during which Count Edzard II was forced to renounce most of his rights in Emden. As early as 1561, after disputes with representatives of the port city, the Cirksena had moved their court to Aurich, which until then had only served as a summer residence.
The legal scholar Johannes Althusius, who was appointed city syndicus in 1604, strengthened the position of the city in the following decades, especially towards the counts and neighboring cities. At that time Emden was not de jure a free imperial city. With the Netherlands as the protective power behind them and extensive independence from the East Frisian Count House, Emden was de facto a free imperial city. Kappelhoff coined the term quasi-autonomous city republic for this .
During the Thirty Years' War, East Frisia suffered great hardship from the troops of Count von Mansfeld . The only exception was again Emden, as the recently completed Emder Wall protected the city. Merchants from Emden founded the first feudal settlement in East Friesland, (West) Großefehn, in 1633.
On the one hand, the war secured the right to stay in East Frisia for wealthy Jews due to the constantly growing need for money of the warring parties, but on the other hand it also burdened them to a previously unknown extent. Her list of financial commitments was long. In 1629 the Emden Jews (as representatives of the Jewish communities of East Friesland) paid 180 guilders protection money per year, 200 guilders peat money and about 2000 guilders in various consumption taxes, for a total of 2580 guilders. In addition, there were rent, marriage fees, and extraordinary fees to the sovereign: 4 guilders protection money per household plus 150 Reichstaler entry fees.
In the 16th and 17th centuries, the typical form of the East Frisian farmhouse, the Gulfhaus , was initially created in the marshes, where better drainage systems made arable farming possible - previously only livestock was possible there. As the marshland is very fertile, rich harvests are possible. In the marshland there are therefore more (larger) Gulfhöfe, there also called plaats , than on the Geest. Many smaller farm workers' houses are also built on the same principle as the large farms.
The Thirty Years' War was followed by an incomparable development of power by the East Frisian estates, which made themselves largely independent of the respective sovereign. The attempt to restore the sovereign power failed. The East Frisian landscape later emerged from the representation of the East Frisian estates , which still bears their coat of arms, but has since changed from a political institution to a cultural institution.
The Principality of East Frisia came under the influence of the Netherlands and was politically, culturally and economically close to it. The Netherlands stationed troops in central locations, including in the fortress Leerort near Leer and in Emden. During the Dutch War from 1672 to 1679, troops from various states passed through East Frisia, which had to buy the withdrawal through payments.
Fight between the Princely House and the Estates, Brandenburg-Prussia
The Princess of East Friesland took advantage of this situation and negotiated a protection treaty with the Prince-Bishop of Münster in 1676 in order to be able to enforce her claim to power over the estates. At the beginning of September 1676, eight companies from Munster marched into East Frisia as border guards. For their part, the estates now needed a protective power in order to be able to compensate for the dominance of the princess in domestic politics, which Brandenburg offered itself for . They were interested in East Frisia because this offered the opportunity to relocate the Brandenburg-African Company from Königsberg to the strategically much better located port of Emden, especially since it was considered one of the best in Europe at the time. In 1682 , Elector Friedrich Wilhelm took advantage of the renewed conflicts between the Princely House and the East Frisian estates. The city of Emden in particular was interested in weakening the royal house and came to an agreement with the Brandenburg ruler. This now had troops deployed in East Frisia, whereupon on April 22, 1683 a trade and shipping contract was negotiated with the estates of Emden. From then on, Emden became the headquarters of the Brandenburg-African Company and outpost of Brandenburg-Prussia . In order to have a suitable port for his overseas colony Großfriedrichsburg , the Brandenburg Elector Friedrich Wilhelm signed a contract with the city of Emden on May 2, 1683 and made it the seat of the Electoral African-Brandenburg Company .
The Christmas flood in 1717 had devastating consequences for East Frisia. In December of that year there was a stormy wind from the southwest for a few days. On the Saturday before Christmas, it turned into a north-west storm, pushing the water from the Atlantic through the English Channel into the North Sea. The dikes were unable to cope with the water masses and finally broke on December 24th around midnight, so that the floods could then penetrate into the country unhindered. Half of East Frisia was then under water. The hurricane raged for three days and continued to push water through the broken levees. So the water that was already in the land could not drain away. The storm surge caused severe damage even in places far from the coast , such as Riepe , Simonswolde Forlitz-Blaukirchen and Ayenwolde . According to a damage report published by the Emden preacher Gerhardus Outhof in his book Verhaal van alle de hooge waterfloeden in 1718, 2,787 people lost their lives in East Frisia. The livestock also suffered heavy losses. A total of 2259 horses, 9514 cattle, 2589 sheep and 1048 pigs (15410 animals) drowned. In addition, the disaster completely destroyed 1030 houses and damaged others in 1833.
In 1726/27 the so-called appeal war broke out , which was expressed in a renewed conflict between Prince Georg Albrecht and some of the estates, which split into "obedient" and "unruly" ones. The prince emerged victorious from this conflict. Even the city of Emden, which was at the head of the "unruly" estates, submitted. However, due to the negotiation errors of Chancellor Enno Rudolph Brenneysen , the parties involved in the conflict did not come to a peaceful agreement. Although the chancellor and the prince demanded severe punishment of the renitents, they were amnestied by the emperor in 1732. When Prince Georg Albrecht died on June 11, 1734, Carl Edzard took over the official duties at the age of 18 as the last surviving descendant of Georg Albrecht. He too could not resolve the conflicts with the estates.
At this time the course was set for Prussia's takeover of power in East Frisia. The city of Emden, which was politically isolated and economically weakened after the War of Appeal, played an important role. The aim of the Emden city center was to regain its position as the capital and trading metropolis. From 1740 the opinion prevailed that this goal could be achieved with Prussian help. To this end, a contract should be created that recognized the Prussian entitlement . The economic position of Emden should be supported by protective measures and subsidies and the existing privileges (such as stacking rights ) confirmed. The negotiations on the Prussian side were led by the directorate councilor in the Lower Rhine-Westphalian Reichskreis , Sebastian Anton Homfeld , who on November 8th, 1740 presented an initial opinion on the procedure to be followed when the inheritance occurred.
Homfeld was considered one of the leading representatives of the unruly estates. On March 14, 1744, two treaties were concluded, collectively referred to as the Emden Convention . On the one hand, this was the Royal Special Declaration and Insurance Act , and on the other, the Agitation and Convention Act , in which primarily economic regulations were made. Furthermore, Prussia relied on the expectance issued by Emperor Leopold I in 1694 , which ensured the right to enfeoff the Principality of East Frisia in the event of a lack of male heirs. Despite the resistance of the Electorate of Braunschweig-Lüneburg , Prussia prevailed.
Prussia, Netherlands, France (1744–1814)
When Carl Edzard , the last East Frisian prince from the house of Cirksena, died on May 25, 1744 , King Friedrich II of Prussia asserted his right of succession, which was regulated in the Emden Convention . He let East Frisia, starting from Emden, occupied without resistance, whereupon on June 23 the country paid homage to the crown. The state capital Aurich remained the seat of the state authorities, received a war and domain chamber and became the government capital of the Prussian province of East Frisia. The entire inventory of the palace, including the East Frisian prince library and the furniture, was auctioned off in several auctions immediately after the beginning of Prussian rule, so that hardly anything has survived today.
Prussia recognized the independent position of East Frisia within the state and installed a largely autonomous chancellor. The first chancellor was the above-mentioned, extremely influential Sebastian Anton Homfeld, from a family of notables from the Rhine region, to whom rumors attribute the poisoning of the last East Frisian prince.
In 1751 and 1755, Friedrich II visited East Frisia. The Prussian rule brought a considerable economic upswing for East Frisia and increased opening to the outside world. The city of Emden, for example, benefited from the establishment of a free port in 1751. This makes the port of Emden one of the oldest free ports in Europe. In 1754, the establishment of fire insurance was ordered by royal order - the Ostfriesische Landschaftliche Brandkasse , which is still publicly owned . The postal system was also expanded.
In the period from 1757 to 1761 during the Seven Years' War , various warring powers marched through East Frisia, whose population suffered particularly in 1761 from the troops of the Marquis de Conflans .
With the reclamation edict for East Friesland of 1765, the high phase of moor colonization and the establishment of many new fen settlements began , especially in the area of today's ( velvet ) communities of Hesel , Uplengen , Jümme , Rhauderfehn , Ostrhauderfehn , Moormerland and Ihlow - essentially within the city triangle Emden – Aurich – Leer and in what is now the southeastern area of the district of Leer . In addition, there were Berumerfehn as the only significant fehn foundation in the Norderland and Wagnersfehn as the only fehn foundation in the Harlingerland near Esens.
Polders for land reclamation were also pushed forward. At the Leybucht the Leysander Polder (1769), the Hagenpolder (1770) and the Schulenburger Polder (1781) were diked, at the Harlebucht the Friedrichsgroden (1765), Schweringsgroden (1804, completely completed 1833), Friedrich-Augustengroden and Neu-Augustengroden (1806/10) and Kielgroden (1810). Finally, on the Dollart , the landscape polder (1752) and Heinitzpolder (1773) were added.
This internal colonization made it possible to feed the growing population and at the same time continue to carry out agricultural exports. In 1744 there were still 83,000 inhabitants in East Frisia, in 1770 there were around 100,000 and in 1805 120,000. The good economic situation made it possible in the years 1798/99 to realize a long-cherished, but up to then not implemented water connection between the administrative center of Aurich and the seaport town of Emden: the trek low .
After the battle of Jena and Auerstedt in 1806, East Friesland was incorporated into the Kingdom of Holland and thus into the French sphere of influence. This annexation was recognized by Prussia in the Peace of Tilsit in 1807 . In 1808, the East Frisian estates were dissolved under Dutch rule .
On July 9, 1810, the Ems-Orientale (Osterems) department became part of the French Empire. The western East Frisia (Rheiderland) was spun off from East Frisia due to old Dutch claims and added to the Dutch department Ems-Occidental with the capital Groningen, the Département Osterems was assigned the lordships of Jever and Kniphausen with Varel. France brought modern legal ideas to East Frisia and took the first steps towards a comprehensive restructuring of the social system. In 1811, by order of Napoleon, the East Frisians had to take on the previously unknown family names and give up their previous, complicated system of patronymic inheritance of names - but this only finally caught on in the middle of the 19th century. Mayors were also introduced into the villages for the first time. Up until then, the village societies had no central administrative office, as the responsibility was shared among the olderlings, dikers and other local dignitaries. In addition, the Civil Code was introduced, which guaranteed equality before the law, personal freedom and protection of private property. Numerous French customs officers were deployed to enforce the continental barrier, some of whose descendants still live in East Frisia. During this economically difficult time, some East Frisians became wealthy through the smuggling of England, including tea . The levying of troops in East Frisia caused greater resentment. In 1811 riots broke out on the Fehnen when the men were supposed to be drafted into the navy, which ended only after two death sentences.
Nevertheless, most of them (including the Jews living here, who were granted civil rights and full equality under Dutch and later French occupation) found the foreign rule oppressive and took part in the wars of liberation against Napoleon . After the collapse of his rule, the Prussians again moved in between 1813 and 1815 and the old national borders were restored. East Frisian soldiers took part in the battles of Ligny and Belle Alliance (Waterloo).
The Hanoverian Period (1815–1866)
In the Congress of Vienna , Prussia was granted part of the Grand Duchy of Warsaw , the Province of Posen , and Western Pomerania , Westphalia and the Rhine Province, but East Friesland had to cede it to the Kingdom of Hanover. Great Britain, which wanted to prevent the establishment of Prussia on the North Sea coast, was in the lead. In the spring of 1813, Prussia had to undertake to pay for British war supplies and cede East Frisia to Hanover, which was linked to Great Britain in personal union.
“The King of Prussia cedes the Principality of East Friesland to the King of Great Britain and Hanover under the conditions mutually stipulated in Article 5 on Ems shipping and trade in the Emden port. The estates of the principality will retain their rights and privileges. "
Despite the contractual assurance, the privileges of the estates were not reintroduced by the kings of Hanover. It was replaced on June 17, 1817 by a provincial government for East Frisia, which was directly subordinate to the State and Cabinet Ministry. On May 10, 1823, the Aurich Landdrostei was finally set up as the central authority of the kingdom, which took over the tasks of the provincial government. In contrast to Prussia (which, for example, had always accepted the absence of the East Frisians in its army), no special role was provided for East Frisia within the Kingdom of Hanover. In addition to these legal changes, the following period was characterized by economic stagnation and sometimes regression.
In 1846, after 13 years of deliberation, the East Frisian landscape , in which representatives of the Harlingerland now also sat, received a new constitution. At least she assured her that she would be involved in laws that only affected East Frisia.
At that time, about 142,000 people lived in East Frisia. By the end of the Hanoverian era, the population had increased by around 37 percent to 194,033. The poor economic conditions - which lasted for a long time despite the construction of the Hanoverian Western Railway from 1854–1856, which initially connected Leer and Emden to the railway network - led to a wave of East Frisians emigrating to the USA, which reached its first peak around 1848/50. The main destinations were the states of Illinois and Iowa , which still have regions today where Low German is spoken. The emigrants preferred to move in with people with whom they had already lived in their home villages. From 1882 to 1971 the newspaper Ostfriesische Nachrichten - Heimatblatt der Ostfriesen in America - was published in the United States .
When the country became Prussian again with the annexation of the Kingdom of Hanover by Prussia in 1866, this met with enthusiasm in East Frisia. In fact, there was an economic upswing from the 1880s at the latest. In addition, the cultural connection with Germany ("Duitsland") finally prevailed, and the use of the German language in schools became common (in some areas Dutch and East Frisian Platt were spoken before).
Prussian Province in the German Empire, First World War (1871–1918)
East Frisia was now part of the Prussian province of Hanover. From the Landdrostei the administrative district Aurich was formed, whereby the designation Landdrostei as well as the office structure remained until 1885. In that year, the districts of Aurich, Emden (excluding the city of Emden), Leer, Norden, Weener and Wittmund were formed. Emden was added as an independent city.
With the founding of the empire on January 18, 1871 by the proclamation of Wilhelm I as German Emperor , East Friesland was incorporated into the constitutional-monarchist federation of 22 individual states and three free cities, but was still under Prussian influence. So the Ems-Jade Canal was built from 1880 to 1888 , which owed its creation to Prussia's wish to have its naval port Wilhelmshaven , located as an exclave in the then Grand Duchy of Oldenburg , across the waterway with Prussian East Frisia, to which Wilhelmshaven belonged politically until 1937 , and the Emder Connect port .
In economic terms, agriculture and cattle breeding remained dominant, especially cattle breeding, as it had been since the middle of the 16th century. Aurich and Leer were important cattle trading places at this time. Industrialization, however, took place very slowly. The shipyards in Leer and Emden gained importance. The district's trading centers were also located here. In terms of economic development, the Prussian state concentrated on Emden. As a result, the city developed into the seaport of the Ruhr area and an important transshipment point for bulk goods such as ores and coal. The Dortmund-Ems Canal, completed in 1899, provided a boost . In 1913 the large sea lock was inaugurated in the city . With an internal length of 260 meters, it was considered one of the largest sea locks in the world. With the construction, a new harbor basin was created, the new inland port. The throughput in the port of Emden increased from 0.4 million tons in 1899 to 3.5 million tons in 1913. The other cities only followed this development to a limited extent. Only in Leer there was modest growth after the port was modernized from 1901 to 1903.
Population growth in the region continued. In 1905, 251,666 people lived in East Frisia, about 30 percent more than at the beginning of Prussian rule. At the turn of the century, economic growth began that lasted until the beginning of the First World War . From 1906 the Nordgeorgsfehnkanal was created, which enabled the scheduled and industrial peat removal of the Wiesmoors, a roughly 100 square kilometer, inaccessible high moor area in the geographical center of the East Frisian peninsula. For the first time, large and heavy machines were used in the peatland colonization. The extracted peat was used from 1909 in the Wiesmoor peat power station to generate electricity for large areas between the Ems and the Lower Elbe.
As in the rest of the empire, the beginning of the war was enthusiastically celebrated. Many young men volunteered. The East Frisian Infantry Regiment No. 78 stationed in Aurich was initially sent towards Belgium and was deployed on both the Western and Eastern Fronts. After the end of the war it was disbanded in mid-1919.
One day before the emperor's abdication, the first soldiers' council for “maintaining public order” was founded in Aurich and Emden on November 8, 1918 . A little later, Leer, Norden, Esens, Wittmund and Dornum followed. On November 10, 1918, in front of around 100,000 enthusiastic demonstrators in Wilhelmshaven, the North Sea station and all surrounding islands and naval bases as well as the associated Oldenburger Land were proclaimed the socialist republic of Oldenburg / East Frisia. Bernhard Kuhnt was appointed President of the Free State of Oldenburg on November 11 ; he held office until March 3, 1919. On January 27, 1919, the KPD tried in vain to carry out a putsch in the twin towns of Wilhelmshaven-Rüstringen. In the rural, rather conservative population of East Frisia, the workers 'and soldiers' councils were unable to establish themselves, so they gradually dissolved there after the election to the Weimar National Assembly .
The 20th century
Weimar Republic
During the Weimar Republic, in 1922, Jann Berghaus was the first East Frisian to become the regional president in Aurich . He held this position until the Prussian strike in 1932.
As a predominantly rural region, East Frisia experienced a relatively favorable economic phase after the First World War. With their surpluses, the farmers served a market that grew rapidly. While more industrialized regions and cities were hit by the Great Depression only later , the region caught hold of it early. From 1924 there was a sharp drop in the price of agricultural products by up to 40 percent. This led to a fatal chain reaction in the city of Aurich, which is heavily dependent on agriculture. The value of the farms halved, the rural population became impoverished. This often led to foreclosures under value, which with a certain delay led the banks into a crisis and ultimately swept trade and commerce with it. Measures by the district government to stimulate the economy again, such as investments in dyke construction and land reclamation projects, peatland cultivation and the construction of several pumping stations, were mostly ineffective in terms of direct economic success. The country's expansion overall benefited, however.
Long-term success was primarily due to two measures: Since 1925, the Northwest German Power Plants, which in 1921 had taken over the peat extraction in Wiesmoor from the state domain administration, built the 30 acres (around 75,000 square meters) then the largest greenhouse plants in Europe that used the waste heat from the peat power plant. From 1923, on the initiative of Mayor Dr. Erich vom Bruch planned the Nesse peninsula at the harbor, which had been used for agriculture until then. Several industrial companies settled here, including a factory owned by Deutsche Libby GmbH. The most modern and largest cattle market in the German Empire was also established there in 1927.
The city of Emden was also cut off from its main market, the Ruhr area, due to the occupation of the Ruhr by France . The import and export of ore and coal decreased significantly. This brought domestic industry, namely shipbuilding, to a standstill. The following years were marked by high unemployment, strikes and recession. During this time, the previously insignificant anti-Semitism spread in East Frisia, which was directed against the Jewish cattle trade, which some met with prejudice and distrust during the agricultural crisis at that time. In particular, the case of Borkum pastor Ludwig Münchmeyer , who incited the audience with anti-Semitic hate speech and was then forced to give up his office as pastor in the so-called Münchmeyer trial , caused a sensation throughout the Reich.
In 1932 a district reform was carried out in East Frisia. The Weener district was dissolved and integrated into the Leer district. The district of Emden was also dissolved after the independent city of Emden had already incorporated some areas of the district four years earlier. Most of the Emden district, including the area of today's municipalities of Krummhörn , Hinte and Werdenum , came to the north district , a smaller part ( Oldersum , Tergast ) to the Leer district, which almost reached its present size.
In the Reichstag elections of 1932, 44.2% of the electorate in the Aurich administrative district voted for the NSDAP . The election of 1933 finally sealed the end of democracy in East Frisia as well.
National Socialism
After coming to power
After the National Socialist seizure of power , there were several major events in Aurich in the following years with several thousand enthusiastic listeners. In the 1933 Reichstag election , the NSDAP in the Wittmund district achieved its top result with 71 percent of the votes cast.
From 1933 onwards, democratically elected politicians were ousted from office by means of slander campaigns, sometimes with brute force. Mayor Dr. Erich vom Bruch committed suicide in May 1933 after massive allegations and threats; in October Emden's mayor, Dr. Wilhelm Mützelburg literally "thrown out of the town hall" after physical abuse by the National Socialists. The media were brought into line , which met little resistance. The most important organ of the NSDAP was the Ostfriesische Tageszeitung (OTZ) founded in 1932 , which became the leading regional medium. With the provisional law for the alignment of the states with the Reich, the Reich government was able to pass laws.
Two years later the economic situation appeared to be improving. The economic stimulus program that had already begun in the Weimar Republic was considerably expanded by the National Socialists in East Frisia. On January 1, 1933, Ostfriesland had 21,888 unemployed, at the end of 1935 there were 248 and by 1938 the number had fallen to 31, which was also due to the introduction of general conscription.
Associations and clubs were structured according to the leader principle , Jewish members were pushed out and the free market economy restricted. The National Socialists also intervened in the administrative structures: East Frisia was now part of the Weser-Ems Gau of the NSDAP.
From the beginning of 1933, Jews in particular had to suffer from repression by state organs. Socialists and communists were taken into “ protective custody ” and some were imprisoned in concentration camps. Two months after the seizure of power and four days earlier than in other parts of the German Reich , the boycott of Jewish businesses began in East Frisia . On March 28, 1933, the SA posted itself in front of the shops. During the night, 26 shop windows were thrown in Emden, which the National Socialists later wanted to blame the Communists on.
On the night of November 9th to 10th, 1938, SA troops took part in the nationwide November pogroms , euphemistically also called Reichskristallnacht . That night the synagogues of Aurich, Emden, Esens, Leer, Norden and Weener were burned down. The synagogue in Bunde had already been sold to the merchant Barfs before 1938 and redesigned (the synagogue is still standing today, but cannot be recognized as such due to several renovations). The Jemgum synagogue had already fallen into disrepair around 1930. The local synagogue of the Jewish community in Neustadtgödens had already been closed in 1936 and sold to a private person in June 1938, so that the building was spared. The synagogue on Norderney was sold in 1938, the one in Wittmund was sold for demolition in June 1938. Only the synagogue of Dornum is preserved today, which was sold to a carpenter on November 7th, 1938. Male Jews between the ages of 16 and 60 were rounded up and sometimes humiliated for hours. They were then deported via Oldenburg to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp , from which they could only return after weeks. The pressure of persecution increased further, and two years later, in April 1940, the East Frisian towns and rural communities reported to the district president, earlier than anywhere else in the Reich, that they were " free of Jews ".
Second World War
Preparations for war also began very early in East Frisia. With the introduction of general conscription , Emden and Leer also became garrison towns after Aurich .
During the World War, Emden, as the economic and industrial center of East Frisia, was repeatedly the target of air raids , which initially only caused minor damage. On September 27, 1943, 165 people were killed in a bomb attack in Esens. The “poor and workers house” was completely destroyed, 102 school and rural year children died in the basement of the building . Esens - even without military significance - was hit by stray bombers, who actually had Emden as their target, as a so-called "Target of Opportunity". Aurich was bombed three times during the war. 17 people were killed and 24 injured. On September 6, 1944, Emden was bombed again. When allied bomber units attacked, around 80 percent of the city center and thus almost all of the historic buildings were destroyed, including the town hall. On the other hand, the bombs only caused comparatively little damage to the shipyards and port terminals.
Towards the end of the war, the Engerhafe concentration camp was built in 1944 . Those imprisoned here under inhuman conditions had to dig anti-tank trenches around the city of Aurich, which was declared a fortress. Shortly before the completion of the “all-round defense of Aurich”, the camp was closed on December 22, 1944. 188 prisoners died within the two months of its existence.
At the end of April 1945, allied ground troops reached East Frisia. In the southern Rheiderland , some smaller villages and farms were razed to the ground by flamethrowers . In Weener , house fights and artillery fire damaged or destroyed some houses. On April 30, Leer was captured by British Canadian troops. They reached Oldersum and Großefehn by May 2nd. On May 3rd and 4th, 1945 a delegation from Aurich negotiated successfully with the advancing Canadians to surrender the city without a fight. This took place on May 5, 1945, after a treaty signed on May 4 near Lüneburg for the unconditional surrender of the three German armies operating in northwest Germany came into force at eight o'clock on the same day.
post war period
After the end of the Second World War, East Frisia became part of the British zone of occupation . Canadian soldiers were also stationed in East Frisia. In the Netherlands there were considerations to annex some areas of Germany , whereby the Dollart, the Ems estuary and Borkum were considered in order to cut off Emden from sea trade. However, these plans failed due to the resistance of the Western Allies.
In 1946 the British from the states of Hanover , Braunschweig , Oldenburg and Schaumburg-Lippe formed the state of Hanover , from which the state of Lower Saxony later emerged. East Frisia was added as the administrative district of Aurich within the province of Hanover.
The country was populated by many refugees and displaced persons from the eastern areas of the German Reich . In 1945 around 295,600 people lived in East Friesland, a year later there were 364,500, and in 1948 it was 390,334. In 1950, the provisional maximum was reached with 391,570 inhabitants, of whom 16.3 percent were displaced. After that, the population gradually decreased again. In 1959 Ostfriesland had 358,218 inhabitants, of which 38,678 were displaced, which corresponded to a share of 10.8 percent.
The infrastructure in some rural communities was extremely poor after World War II. This is made clear by the following official note.
“In 1947, twelve communities in the district [which often only consisted of a village and its surrounding area] had no access to the road network and were in the moor areas, but also for the most part on the Geest, from October to April of motorized vehicles at all otherwise very difficult to reach "
Between 1948 and 1952, more than 113 kilometers of paved roads were built in the Aurich district alone (at that time consisting of what is now the area of the municipalities of Aurich, Ihlow, Südbrookmerland and Großefehn), with concrete chunks from former (military) airfields in the Wittmund district as well as debris from the The cities of Emden and Wilhelmshaven, which were badly damaged in the war, were used.
It was also the Aurich district that had the highest proportion of small apartments. A study in 1941 had already shown that of 11,555 apartments in the district, 2,745 were classified as harmful and 1,819 as inhumane. The high proportion of communities in bog areas played a particularly important role. However, the situation in the moor areas of the other counties was comparable.
Unemployment was extraordinarily high in the early 1950s. As of December 31, 1951, there were 405 unemployed for every 1,000 employees in the Aurich district, which is the highest unemployment rate in Germany alongside Deggendorf . The displaced were particularly hard hit.
Reconstruction after the war took the longest in Emden due to the massive destruction. Barrack camps still existed in the city at the beginning of the 1960s . From 1959 to 1962, the Emden town hall was rebuilt according to the historical model - but in a more matter-of-fact, less mannerist style. The inauguration was deliberately scheduled for September 6, 1962 - that is, the day 18 years after the building was destroyed.
Economic miracle, administrative reforms, cultural self-awareness
Increasing mechanization has increasingly lost jobs in agriculture. The economic miracle did not pass East Friesland by either. Emden remained the industrial core of the region, where ships were launched again after approval by the Allies in 1950 . In 1964, construction began on what is still the most important industrial company to this day, the Volkswagen factory in Emden . In 1977 the last VW Beetle built in Germany rolled off the assembly line there, and the VW Passat has been manufactured there ever since .
However, the shipyard crisis that began in the 1970s gradually led to a reduction in jobs at the largest shipyard, Nordseewerke in Emden, to the current level of around 1,450 employees. The office machine manufacturer Olympia also closed two branch plants in Norden and Leer in the early 1980s.
The steel crisis on the one hand, but also the diversion of imports of ores to Rotterdam on the other, meant a steady reduction in the handling of ores and later also coal for the port of Emden. Other branches of the economy were unable to absorb these job losses. Apart from the tourism sector, which has always been a stable, albeit highly seasonal, factor on the labor market, service industries in the peripheral region were also unable to compensate for the loss of jobs. East Friesland therefore suffered from an above-average unemployment rate for decades. In the mid-1980s, for example, it was around 20 percent in the area of the employment office in the north during the winter months.
In 1984 the wind turbine manufacturer Enercon was founded in Aurich , which today has more than 4,000 employees in East Friesland and also secures employment at a large number of suppliers in the region. In the 1980s, Leer began to rise to become the second largest German shipping location after Hamburg. The largest private service company in East Frisia is the Bünting Group in Leer, a trading company with around 7500 employees, but not all of them in East Frisia. The industry in Emden has proven to be a stable factor with the VW plant and the North Sea works as well as the transshipment in the port of Emden , which has become the third largest car loading port in Europe over the past two decades. The unemployment rate has declined since the mid-1990s and is now within the German average.
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, an extensive urban redevelopment program began in Norden. As a result, many small workers' houses were demolished and replaced by up to eight-story residential buildings that were perceived as modern. Plans to carry out a so-called area renovation in the small-scale old town of Leer and to replace the historic buildings with residential and commercial buildings in keeping with the zeitgeist of the time were not implemented. Instead, most of the old houses have been refurbished. Today Leer has the best preserved historical city center in East Frisia. Plans to fill in part of the port were also not realized.
The first high-rise building (eight floors) was completed in Emden as early as 1959. At the end of the 1960s and beginning of the 1970s, several high-rise buildings with up to eleven storeys were added, including the so-called glass palaces in the Barenburg district .
With the North Sea Hall (1972), the Kunsthalle (1986), the Johannes a Lasco Library in Emden (1995) and smaller museums in other East Frisian locations, the cultural infrastructure has been significantly expanded since the early 1970s. In 1973 Emden became a university of applied sciences .
In the course of local government reform in 1972, the former East Frisian community of Gödens was incorporated into the Oldenburg community of Sande . Within East Friesland, many small communities with a population in some cases only three-digit numbers were merged to form larger communities or integrated communities . In this way, for example, the municipalities of Uplengen and Krummhörn were created from 19 municipalities each, which consisted only of villages and their immediate surroundings. Cities have also incorporated surrounding communities on a larger scale. As an example, the city of Aurich can be cited, which incorporated 20 communities and thus grew to a size of 197 square kilometers. Thus the present size of the cities and municipalities was essentially established. Since then, there have been changes in the city and municipality boundaries only through the exchange of space to a lesser extent.
In 1978 the district of Aurich was combined with the districts of Osnabrück and Oldenburg in the district of Weser-Ems . Since 1978, East Frisia is no longer an independent administrative unit. Only the East Frisian landscape as a landscape association is still active throughout East Frisia - politically, however, only in the field of cultural policy, which includes the maintenance of Low German, the processing of the history of East Frisia, the preservation of the cultural heritage and, since 2006, parts of regional marketing. "The landscape", as it is called for short, is a corporation under public law and a higher municipal association , but explicitly not a regional authority . The landscape assembly as the highest body is made up of elected representatives who are to be nominated by the three district assemblies and the Emden city council and sees itself as the identity-creating institution of all East Frisians. Around oll 'May (May 10th), on which in earlier times the Administration College - a forerunner of today's Landscape College - submitted its report to the Parliament of the Landscape , the landscape organizes a specialist conference on one of its areas of responsibility. On this occasion, honors are held and deserving non-East Frisians for the region receive honorary citizenship, the so-called " indigenous ". In addition, a culture prize is awarded to excellent projects or people. Among the landscapes and landscape associations in Lower Saxony , the East Frisian landscape, launched in 1464, is by far the oldest - all others were only founded in the 20th century.
Research institutions, archives, libraries and museums
On behalf of its regional authorities (the three East Frisian districts of Aurich , Leer and Wittmund and the city of Emden) and the State of Lower Saxony, the East Frisian landscape performs central municipal and decentralized state tasks in the fields of culture , science and education and operates appropriate institutions for this purpose.
The Aurich location of the Lower Saxony State Archives , which is responsible for the East Frisia area, preserves archive material on East Frisian history. The North-West Lower Saxony Economic Archive collects historically valuable documents from the region's economic life. The city of Emden has an archive that is considered one of the most comprehensive municipal archives in Lower Saxony. The documents, writings and files kept there go back to the end of the 15th century. Among other things, there is the certificate for the award of the city arms in 1495. Further city archives can be found in Leer, Wittmund and Norderney.
The landscape library is the largest scientific library in East Friesland. It sees itself committed to the tradition of state book ownership in East Frisia and derives from this the claim to be an East Frisian regional library. The Johannes a Lasco Library is a specialist library on the history of Calvinism in Europe. The East Frisian State Museum is a museum about the history of the city of Emden and the East Frisia region and shows how they are embedded in European history. Specialized catalogs are published for individual special exhibitions.
See also
The Wikipedia article
- History of the city of Aurich
- History of the Brookmerland
- History of Emden
- History of the city of Leer
- History of the city of North (East Frisia)
- History of the city of Esens
- Jade region
offer more detailed information on the history of individual East Frisian cities and sub-regions.
literature
- Jan Wybren Buma (ed.): The Brokmer legal manuscripts . Nijhoff, The Hague 1949 (Oudfriese Taal- en Rechtsbronnen 5).
- Karl Cramer, The History of East Frisia - An Overview. Isensee Verlag, Oldenburg 2003, ISBN 3-89598-982-7 .
- Walter Deeters : Small history of East Frisia. Verlag Schuster, Leer 1992, ISBN 3-7963-0229-7 .
- History of the Rheiderland . Risius, Weener 2006 ff.
- Heiko Heikes: The Ukena . In: Yearbook of the Society for Fine Art and Patriotic Antiquities in Emden . Volume 34, 1954, pp. 15-52, ISSN 0341-969X .
-
Onno Klopp : History of East Frisia . 3 volumes. Rümpler, Hanover 1854–1858.
- Volume 1 Digitized version of the first volume
- Volume 2 Digitized version of the second volume
- Volume 3 Digitized version of the third volume
- Hajo van Lengen : peasant freedom and chief rule . In: Karl-Ernst Behre, Hajo van Lengen: Ostfriesland. History and shape of a cultural landscape . Ostfriesische Landschaft, Aurich 1995, ISBN 3-925365-85-0 , pp. 113-134.
- Hajo van Lengen (ed.): The Frisian freedom of the Middle Ages - life and legend . Verlag Ostfriesische Landschaft, Aurich 2003, ISBN 3-932206-30-4 .
- Almuth Salomon : Frisian historical images, historical events and collective memory in medieval Friesland . Ostfriesische Landschaftliche Verlags- und Vertriebsgesellschaft, Aurich 2000, ISBN 3-932206-19-3 ( Treatises and lectures on the history of East Frisia , Volume 78).
- Heinrich Tjaden: Illustrated East Frisian History . Verlag Schwalbe, Emden 1913 (with a map of the Rheiderland before the flood).
Web links
- Biographical lexicon for East Frisia
- More information on the history of East Frisia at Monumente Online
- Ernst Friedländer, Ostfriesisches Urkundenbuch, Volume I and II digitized
Individual evidence
- ↑ This article is about the historical region of East Frisia, which today includes the city of Emden and the districts of Aurich, Leer and Wittmund, see the definition of the East Frisian landscape: Statute of the East Frisian Landscape , Article I (Principles), Paragraph 2: " East Friesland comprises the local authorities in the districts of Aurich, Leer and Wittmund and the city of Emden. "
- ^ Karl-Ernst Behre / Hajo van Lengen: Ostfriesland. History and shape of a cultural landscape . East Frisian Landscape, Aurich 1995, p. 40 f.
- ↑ Kiefer: Finds are among the oldest in East Frisia. Retrieved December 19, 2018 .
- ^ A successful year for the archaeologists of the East Frisian landscape. (PDF) In: News from culture, science and education. East Frisian Landscape, December 19, 2019 .
- ^ Find of the month - East Frisian landscape. Retrieved December 19, 2018 .
- ↑ Archaeological Service of the East Frisian Landscape: The Stone Age
- ^ City of Aurich: Walle
- ↑ Wolfgang Schwarz: The prehistory in East Friesland . Leer 1995, ISBN 3-7963-0323-4 , p. 106.
- ↑ Working group of local chronicles of the East Frisian landscape: Hesel (PDF; 29 kB)
- ↑ Pliny the Elder, Naturalis historia 16: 1, 2–4.
- ↑ Klaus-Peter Johne: The Romans on the Elbe: The river basin of the Elbe in the geographical world view and in the political consciousness of Greco-Roman antiquity . Akademie Verlag, Berlin 2006, ISBN 3-05-003445-9 , p. 295.
- ↑ Norbert Fiks: The Romans in Ostfriesland , e-book for download (PDF; 376 kB).
- ^ E. Strahl: Bentumersiel . ( Memento of the original from February 1, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Lower Saxony Institute for Historical Coastal Research
- ↑ a b This and the following according to Wolfgang Schwarz: Prehistory and early history , in: Karl-Ernst Behre / Hajo van Lengen: Ostfriesland. History and shape of a cultural landscape , Ostfriesische Landschaft, Aurich 1995, ISBN 3-925365-85-0 , pp. 72–75.
- ^ Rolf Meurer: Hydraulic Engineering and Water Management in Germany: Past and Present . Parey, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-8263-3303-9 , p. 17.
- ↑ Dieter Lang, Gert Richter: Germany: Portrait of a Nation. Schleswig-Holstein, Hamburg, Lower Saxony and Bremen . Volume 6. Bertelsmann-Lexikothek-Verlag, Gütersloh 1988, ISBN 3-570-08716-6 .
- ^ FM Stenton: Anglo-Saxon England . 3rd edition, Oxford University Press, Oxford 1971, ISBN 978-0-19-280139-5 , p. 136.
- ^ Rudolf Vierhaus: German biographical encyclopedia . 2nd, revised and expanded edition. Walter de Gruyter, Munich / Leipzig 2005 to 2008, ISBN 978-3-598-25030-9 , p. 157.
- ↑ a b c Hajo van Lengen: Peasant freedom and chief glory . In: Karl-Ernst Behre, Hajo van Lengen: Ostfriesland. History and shape of a cultural landscape . East Frisian Landscape, Aurich 1995, p. 113 f.
- ^ Horst Haider Munske , Nils Århammar : Handbuch des Frisian: Handbook of Frisian Studies . Max Niemeyer Verlag, Tübingen 2001, ISBN 3-484-73048-X , p. 543.
- ^ Eckart Krömer , Heino Schmidt, Hajo van Lengen: Ostfriesland . Series of publications by the Lower Saxony State Center for Political Education, Leer 1987, p. 44.
- ^ Karl-Ernst Behre, Hajo van Lengen: Ostfriesland. History and shape of a cultural landscape . East Frisian Landscape, Aurich 1995, p. 99.
- ^ Karl-Ernst Behre, Hajo van Lengen: Ostfriesland. History and shape of a cultural landscape . East Frisian Landscape, Aurich 1995, p. 89.
- ^ A b Eckart Krömer, Heino Schmidt, Hajo van Lengen: Ostfriesland . Series of publications by the Lower Saxony State Center for Political Education, Leer 1987, p. 45.
- ^ Karl-Ernst Behre / Hajo van Lengen: Ostfriesland. History and shape of a cultural landscape . East Frisian Landscape, Aurich 1995, p. 113f.
- ^ Seventeen Common Frisian Freies. In: Author's Lexicon . Volume VIII, Col. 1192 ff.
- ^ Karl-Ernst Behre / Hajo van Lengen: Ostfriesland. History and shape of a cultural landscape . East Frisian Landscape, Aurich 1995, p. 115.
- ^ Heinrich Schmidt: The eastern Friesland around 1400. Territorial-political structures and movements . In: Wilfried Ehbrecht (Ed.): Störtebeker - 600 years after his death . Porta-Alba-Verlag, Trier 2005, p. 87.
- ↑ Thomas Hill: The city and its market: Bremen's surrounding and external relations in the Middle Ages (12th – 15th centuries) . Steiner, Stuttgart 2004, ISBN 3-515-08068-6 , p. 292.
- ^ Heinrich Schmidt: Political history of East Frisia . Self-published, Leer 1975, p. 79.
- ^ Heinrich Schmidt: Political history of East Frisia . Self-published, Leer 1975, p. 92.
- ↑ Niedersachsen.de: History of the Regions: Ostfriesland ( Memento of the original from February 1, 2009 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.
- ↑ aurich.de: The Catholic Church
- ↑ Diether Götz Lichdi: The Mennonites in the past and present. From the Anabaptist Movement to the Worldwide Free Church , Lage 2004 (2nd edition), p. 66
- ↑ Diether Götz Lichdi: The Mennonites in the past and present. From the Anabaptist Movement to the Worldwide Free Church , Lage 2004, p. 67
- ↑ Hans-Jürgen Goertz: Religious Movements in the Early Modern Times , Volume 20 in the series Enzyklopädie deutscher Geschichte (edited by Lothar Gall and others), Munich 1993, ISBN 3-486-55759-9 , p. 29
- ^ Rolf Bärenfänger : The East Frisian monasteries from an archaeological point of view . In: Karl-Ernst Behre / Hajo van Lengen: Ostfriesland. History and shape of a cultural landscape . East Frisian Landscape, Aurich 1995, p. 241.
- ↑ History of German trade: the Schiffarth, fishery, inventions, arts, trade, manufactories, agriculture, police, serfdom, customs, coinage and mining, the cutting arts, maritime law and exchange law, city economy, and luxury , Volume 3, p. 550, digitized
- ↑ Bernd Kappelhoff: Emden as a quasi-autonomous city republic 1611–1749 . Self-published, Pewsum 1994 (Ostfriesland in the protection of the dike, volume 11).
- ^ Siegfried Lüderitz: Westgroßefehn . In: Working group of local chronicles of the East Frisian landscape , PDF (PDF)
- ^ Thorsten Melchers: Ostfriesland: Prussia's atypical province? Prussian integration policy in the 18th century . Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg, Diss., 2002, p. 122, also available for download .
- ↑ Aiko Schmidt ( Ostfriesisches Landesmuseum Emden ): Artwork of the month December 2003: The Christmas flood 1717 . Accessed November 6, 2013.
- ^ Thorsten Melchers: Ostfriesland: Prussia's atypical province? Prussian integration policy in the 18th century . Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg, Diss., 2002, p. 168.
- ↑ Martin Tielke: The new library of the East Frisian landscape in Aurich (PDF)
- ^ Homepage of the customs on free ports ( Memento from January 5, 2010 in the Internet Archive )
- ^ Thorsten Melchers: Ostfriesland: Prussia's atypical province? Prussian integration policy in the 18th century . Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg, Diss., 2002, p. 473.
- ^ Walter Deeters: Small State and Province. General history of modern times . In Karl-Ernst Behre / Hajo van Lengen: Ostfriesland. History and shape of a cultural landscape . East Frisian Landscape, Aurich 1995, ISBN 3-925365-85-0 , p. 161.
- ^ A b c Walter Deeters: Small State and Province. General history of modern times . In: Karl-Ernst Behre / Hajo van Lengen: Ostfriesland. History and shape of a cultural landscape . Ostfriesische Landschaft, Aurich 1995, ISBN 3-925365-85-0 , p. 167.
- ^ A b Walter Deeters: Small State and Province. General history of modern times . In: Karl-Ernst Behre / Hajo van Lengen: Ostfriesland. History and shape of a cultural landscape . East Frisian Landscape, Aurich 1995, ISBN 3-925365-85-0 , p. 169.
- ↑ a b c HGIS Germany: Landdrostei Aurich (1823–1865) (PDF; 23 kB)
- ↑ HGIS Germany: District Aurich (PDF).
- ^ Eberhard Rack: Regional studies of East Frisia . Arbeitsgemeinschaft der Sparkassen Ostfriesland, Norden 1974, without ISBN, p. 247.
- ↑ Martin Wein: City against its will. Municipal development in Wilhelmshaven / Rüstringen 1853–1937. Tectum, Marburg 2006, p. 262.
- ^ Herbert Reyer: Revolution and a new democratic beginning in the city and the district of Aurich in the years 1918–1920 . In: East Frisia between republic and dictatorship . East Frisian Landscape, Aurich 1998, p. 85 f.
- ↑ a b Biographical Lexicon for East Friesland : Jann Berghaus
- ↑ a b Working group of the local chronicles of the East Frisian landscape, Rudolf Nassua: The world economic crisis and its consequences in Aurich (PDF; 48 kB)
- ^ Aurich district: Activity report 1948 to 1952 . Verlag AHF Dunkmann, Aurich 1952, p. 29.
- ^ Biographical lexicon for East Friesland: Dr. Erich vom Bruch
- ^ Herbert Reyer (ed.): Aurich in National Socialism . Verlag Ostfriesische Landschaft, Aurich 1989, p. 71.
- ^ Ostfriesische Nachrichten of November 1, 1932: Adolf Hitler in Aurich .
- ^ Herbert Reyer: East Frisia in the Third Reich - The Beginnings of the National Socialist Tyranny in the Aurich District 1933–1938 . Ostfriesische Landschaftliche Verl.- und Vertriebsges., Aurich 1992, ISBN 3-932206-14-2 , p. 14.
- ^ Heinrich Schmidt: East Frisia in the protection of the dike: Political history of East Frisia . Self-published, Leer 1975, without ISBN, p. 483, see also entry in the German National Library ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. .
- ↑ See also the documentation by Gerd Rokahr : The bombing raid on Esens on September 27, 1943 , published as a booklet for the exhibition of the same name in the "Müllerhaus", the Esens municipal gallery, from September 27 to November 2, 2003.
- ↑ Silke Wenk : Places of remembrance made of concrete: Bunkers in cities and landscapes . Links, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-86153-254-9 , p. 183
- ^ Eva Requardt-Schohaus: The repressed autumn of Engerhafe . In: Ostfriesland-Magazin (issue 11/1994) .
- ^ Rudolf Nassua: The end of the war in East Friesland . In: Working group of local chroniclers of the East Frisian landscape PDF (PDF)
- ^ Günther Möhlmann: Ostfriesland, wide country on the North Sea coast . Burkard-Verlag, Essen 1969, p. 55.
- ^ Aurich district: Activity report 1948 to 1952 . Verlag AHF Dunkmann, Aurich 1952, p. 16.
- ^ Aurich district: Activity report 1948 to 1952 . Verlag AHF Dunkmann, Aurich 1952, p. 54.
- ^ Aurich district: Activity report 1948 to 1952 . Verlag AHF Dunkmann, Aurich 1952, p. 8.
- ^ Ostfriesland-Magazin , edition 10/2008, p. 92.
- ↑ A detailed map showing the extent and the (current) population numbers can be found at aurich.de . The population tripled, the area of the city grew by a factor of 33.
- ↑ Ostfriesenelandschaft.de: Portrait- Die Landschaftsbibliothek Aurich- From the reference library to the “Ostfriesische Bibliothek” ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. .
