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The deserted village Leesen is by open pit Zechau abgebaggertes village (Gertrud III) to the district Zechau the community Kriebitzsch in Altenburger Land in Thuringia belongs.

Geographical location

Location of Leesen in the municipality of Kriebitzsch

Leesen was west of Zechau. Other neighboring towns were Großröda in the south, Kleinröda in the west, Altpoderschau in the northwest and Kriebitzsch in the north. The location is now in the area of the remaining hole in Zechau , which was placed under nature protection.

history

Memorial stone for the excavated site

The village of Leesen was first mentioned on April 1st, 976. The originally Slavic place name of Leesen is "Lysina" and indicates a wooded area. The place belonged to the Wettin office of Altenburg , which was under the sovereignty of the following Ernestine duchies from the 16th century due to several divisions in the course of its existence : Duchy of Saxony (1554 to 1572), Duchy of Saxony-Weimar (1572 to 1603), Duchy of Saxony- Altenburg (1603 to 1672), Duchy of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg (1672 to 1826). When the Ernestine duchies were reorganized in 1826, the place came back to the duchy of Saxony-Altenburg.

Around 1850 the agricultural Leesen had around 150 inhabitants. After the administrative reform in the Duchy of Saxony-Altenburg, the place belonged to the Eastern District (until 1900) and to the Altenburg District Office (from 1900). From a legal point of view, the village was under the Altenburg District Court since 1879 and the Meuselwitz District Court from 1906 . From 1918 onwards, Leesen belonged to the Free State of Saxony-Altenburg , which was added to the State of Thuringia in 1920. In 1922 the place was incorporated into the Altenburg district. Zechau, Leesen and Petsa merged in 1923 to form the municipality of Zechau-Leesen .

The lignite mining around the Leesen in the south of the Meuselwitz-Altenburg lignite mining area began around 1900. Underground pits were "Grube Ida No. 108" in the north of the village, "Grube Gertrud No. 131" in the south and "Grube Eugen No. 132" in the west. In the open-cast mine , the coal was initially extracted from the "Eugen" (1911 to 1915) and "Gertrud II (Petsa)" (1914 to 1932) opencast mines to the south. The Gertrud III opencast mine (Zechau) , which was opened in 1931 , gradually approached the agricultural village from the southeast. After the fulcrum was relocated to the north of Petsa in 1943/44, Petsa was largely relocated to a district in Kriebitzsch specially built for the residents by 1947. Between 1950 and 1952, this fate also met the 1310 inhabitants of the agricultural Leesen and part of Zechau, who were also resettled to Kriebitzsch. This was the largest mining-related relocation of settlements at the time. All graves in the Zechau-Leesen cemetery were reburied in Meuselwitz . After 1952 the site was dredged over.

After the opencast mine on the outskirts of Zechau came to a standstill in 1959 due to carbonization, the now renatured Zechau hole was created in the Leesen area. Today it is a nature reserve of great ecological importance within the mining landscape south of Leipzig. The former local corridor of Leesen is located within the nature reserve south of the remaining hole Zechau III.

Personalities

Walter Libuda (born June 24, 1950 in Zechau-Leesen), German painter, draftsman, sculptor and object artist

Web links

Individual evidence

^ Wolfgang Kahl: First mention of Thuringian towns and villages. A manual. Rockstuhl Verlag, Bad Langensalza, 2010, ISBN 978-3-86777-202-0 , p. 160
^ The Altenburg Office in the book "Geography for all Stands" in the Google book search, from page 201
↑ The locations of the Altenburg district in the Google book search, from p. 83
↑ The eastern district of the Duchy of Saxony-Altenburg in the municipal directory 1900
^ The Altenburg district office in the municipality register 1900
^ Zechau-Leesen in the Thuringia archive portal