Gotteskoog
The Gotteskoog (Danish: Gudskog , North Frisian: Gutskuuch ) is the largest Koog in the district of North Friesland with 10,400 hectares .
topography
The Gotteskoog extends between Aventoft an der Wiedau (officially: Vidå) in the north and Niebüll in the south. In the west it is bounded by the Alten Wiedingharder Koog and in the east by the Geestkante near Humptrup and Klixbüll . Much of the area is below sea level. Even more than 400 years after the dike was dyed, it is extremely sparsely populated. Today it is administered by the South Tondern Office.
history
Before colonization
During the Saale cold time , a depression formed between two old moraines , today's Geest in the east and the Geestkerninseln in the west. This filled with water in the following Eem warm period and with sand in the subsequent Vistula ice age. After the Ice Ages, the area was cut by the sea through today's Wiedingharde , so that instead of marshland, quarry forests and moors developed here. The optimum temperature of the Roman period caused the sea level to rise. Except for a few remains, the landscape was flooded and the forests disappeared. Even today, only a few meters below the surface, tree trunks preserved from the peatland are found. When the land fell dry again, the peaty soil sagged, so that the area of today's Gotteskoog lies at the deepest point of the North Frisian Marsh.
Embankment
In the Middle Ages the North Frisian marshes, called consisted Utlande , from creeks separate islands. With mounds , people protected from the flood. Dams connected individual islands to the mainland. The area of today's Gotteskoog also contained large inland waters at that time, but otherwise differed little from the neighboring areas. That changed with the first big mandrank in 1362: Watts streams made their way around the slightly higher lying Wiedingharde. East of it to the Geestrand only Halligen remained . Due to the strong currents of the tidal currents flowing around the Wiedingharde, only little growth formed in the following centuries.
To protect against the sea, the Wiedingharder surrounded their land with a ring dike, the so-called Golden Ring , until 1465 and tried again to build dams to the mainland. Neukirchen east of the Koog and Aventoft , located on a Geest island, were not included in the Golden Ring . In 1506, Duke Friedrich of Schleswig and Holstein ordered the Brunsodden Deep to be dammed at the site of the dyke of today's Brunottenkoog. The work begun in 1511 under the personal supervision of the Duke and almost completed failed in 1513.
After Frederick's death, the duchies were divided among his sons. Now the Harden , who had to team up for the dyke construction work, were subordinate to different rulers, which made cooperation difficult. Nevertheless, Duke Johann von Schleswig-Holstein-Hadersleben, to whom the office of Tondern with Böking- and Wiedingharde was subordinate, began planning a dike in 1553, which was to secure both his royal seat and the marshland. At that time Tønder was only protected by a summer dike . After the respective duties, burdens and the resulting privileges of the Harden had been contractually defined, the major project began with the construction of a dike from Hoyer to Ruttebüll and the damming of the Wiedau . This dike was continued up to the Geest near Grellsbüll . In 1556 the dykes of the Hoyerkoog , the Mögeltondernkoog , the Tondernkoog and the Ubergkoog , which used to be called Alter Gotteskoog , were built.
In 1563, the damming of the southern depths was achieved within a year, the ten-kilometer-long dike line to Niebüll cost another three years, with several small Halligen being included. In 1566 the dike was closed in both the south and the north. The Wiedau was now passed through a lock system between Ruttebüll and Rosenkranz. Although Tondern had lost its direct connection to the sea, it had gained security. The villages Neukirchen and Aventoft were included in the Gotteskoog. The new Koog, "if one started and completed in the name of Gades", was called Gotteskoog .
Already in the first decades, beginning with the All Saints flood in 1570 , dyke breaches occurred again and again, some of which could only be repaired after years. To this day, deep water holes, the so-called Wehlen, are evidence of this . Only in 1603 could the last Wehle be fortified again. The last salt water flood occurred in 1825.
Drainage and settlement
But not only the salt water prevented the reclamation of the new Koog. Since the land is lower than the neighboring Köge and also sagged further after the dike, the rainwater from the Geest collects in the Gotteskoog. A quarter of the country was constantly flooded. In addition, the rest of the land was of inferior quality, partly sandy, partly muddy, because little marshy soil had formed. The total area was evenly distributed among the three resins involved. The farmers involved in the construction of the dyke were given the little highlands as property. However, since the new owners were obliged to maintain the dykes, which had to be repaired after a few years, many began to leave the country because their income was too low.
In 1622 the Dutch dike builder Claus Jansen Rollwagen , the son of the dike count Johann Clausen Rollwagen , put Duke Friedrich III. proposed a plan for drainage : sewer trains were supposed to divert the water carried out of the deep trenches by scoop mills. The trolley train still diverts the water to the south today. Rollwagen, which had been granted half of the reclaimed land, received about 1,000 acres. However, since he died in 1631 and his family perished at the Second Mandränke in 1634 on one of the Halligen in Gotteskoog, the country fell to sovereignty. His work, on which all later attempts to drain the land and also today's irrigation are based, made agriculture possible in the Gotteskoog for the first time.
1709 received an interested party an octroy . They had dikes built across the Gotteskoog in order to protect the southern part of the Koog permanently from the floods of the Bundesgaarder See in the northern part that could not be contained . On their behalf, Franz Indervelden, the stable man from Nordstrand and the son of the dike builder Quirinus Indervelden , installed windmills to channel the water from the deeper trenches into the trolley train and the newly created Dreiharder Gotteskoogstrom on the edge of the Geest. During the Christmas flood of 1717 , the entire Gotteskoog was flooded. In 1758, the so-called prospective kog was given its own jurisdiction .
Especially in the northern part of the Kooge, the roads were impassable in winter until the 1930s and the terps became Halligen. Most of the year one could only move about the flooded meadows with cloth sticks pushed in by flat boats . The farmers on the Halligen kept cattle and harvested thatch and rushes . As on the Halligen in the Wadden Sea, they too had to struggle with the erosion of their terps by the water. The only advantage was that fresh water was always available.
Drainage in the 20th century
The drainage measures planned in 1918 were delayed by the transfer of the Wiedau to Denmark and inflation . It was not until 1928 that the Gotteskoog was drained using two pumping stations , one of which in the north pumps the water into Lake Ruttebüller . The water level sank by one meter within a few years and is now 2.10 m to 2.60 m below sea level. However, the quality of the water suffered so that it could no longer be used as drinking water for humans and cattle. In 1930, the endangered sea dikes were by further territorial gains long for kilometers from the sea, the Gotteskoog received with the road from Niebüll to Klanxbüll its first permanent land link after in 1922 to 1927, the Marschbahn had been built up Klanxbüll to the construction of the Hindenburg dam material to be able to get hold of.
As part of a settlement program initiated by the National Socialists in order to create "living space" for unemployed young farmers and farmer sons, the Koogland was developed from 1935 to 1939 by gravel roads and paths. Until then, there was only significant settlement on the ten or so terps and rest halligen, from which the largely natural areas were used as summer pastures. The Landgesellschaft in Kiel bought the land and ran through it at right angles with ditches and ditches. In doing so, the Siemonsgraben with the Verlath (Aventoft) pumping station equipped with an electric pump was created across the trolley train and along the narrow side. All of the mostly boggy land was drained and the extensive reed areas were plowed over with huge plows. The areas were divided into parcels of approx. 20-30 hectares and built on with around 20 uniform settlement courtyards of the simplest quality along the streets and paths. The last of these was occupied in 1937. The acidic, humus-free soil, the inedible water from the drainage ditches and the frequent floods when the rainwater could not be drained through the sewers due to a westerly wind and / or due to inoperable pumps brought the new farmers to the brink of the task. Many of them died in World War II. In the famine years after the end of the war until 1949, every remaining family was happy to be able to feed themselves largely on their own, especially since the harvests were slowly improving after tons of lime and marl had been spread to improve the soil.
In 1953, the northern program began to cultivate the agricultural land, and electrification followed a little later. The water level was lowered by another 50 to 70 cm, so that hardly anything was left of the vast expanses of water. As a result of the drainage, it was found that the soil obtained was very acidic or too salty and that the peat, which was covered by only a little clay , promoted the accumulation of sulfur . 3000 hectares of so-called sick marshes were rehabilitated or reforested with larches , poplars , alders and willows where cultivation was not possible. Effective pasture management and increased settlement only became possible through the supply of clean water from the Geest in 1959.
Today agriculture is practiced in the entire Koog. Reet is still harvested at Gotteskoogsee, but now with amphibious vehicles and no longer by hand. The Deich- und Hauptsielverband Südwesthörn-Bongsiel is responsible for the maintenance of the dykes and sluices.
In addition, tourism is becoming increasingly important. A special attraction is the house of the painter Emil Nolde in Seebüll, which belongs to Neukirchen .
natural reserve
As early as the 1930s, the consequences of drainage for the environment were obvious: the water quality deteriorated rapidly. The water, which had become brackish due to salty groundwater , was no longer drinkable for humans or animals. The dry-falling soils became saline. Plants typical of the past, such as water lilies and cattails, have disappeared, as have the rich fish stocks on which the residents lived.
After the drainage of the Gotteskoog was completed in the 1950s by means of more powerful pumps, only 60 hectares of the vast expanses of water were left.
In the Ramsar Convention , the Gotteskoog area was identified as a "wetland of international importance". As a result, the renaturation of wasteland areas began in 1982 . Today, in the deepest region at 2.5 m below sea level , the Gotteskoogsee, there is a wetland area that is decoupled from artificial drainage and surrounded by a dam and a ring canal . The water level, which in the rest of Koog is lowered to 2.5 m below sea level in winter, has here increased to −1.5 m above sea level. The salt marsh vegetation that had spread on the saline soils quickly disappeared. Reet can be harvested here again in winter.
In addition to geese and Limikolen , the largely inaccessible nature reserve Gotteskoogsee offers the sea eagle living space. Numerous migratory birds also use the area to rest.
Individual evidence
- ^ Anton Heimreich: North Frisian Chronicle . 3rd edition 1819 by Nikolaus Falck Volume 2, p. 210
- ↑ Dirk Meier: The damage caused by the Christmas flood of 1717 on the North Sea coast of Schleswig-Holstein . In: The Coast , 78 (2011), 259–292, p. 273 (pdf, accessed on October 5, 2016)
literature
- Malene Gottburgsen, Wolfgang Hassenpflug: The Gotteskoog. Landscape and inhabitants through the centuries. Bock, Bad Honnef 1991, ISBN 3-87066-233-6
Web links
- Map with the core area of the Gotteskoog (PDF file; 535 kB)
- The Gotteskoogsee on the side of the Deich- und Hauptsielverband Südwesthörn-Bongsiel (with a link to the brochure Leben aus dem Wasser. Der Gotteskoog )