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Location Mutschau and the surrounding area around 1893

Mutschau was a former church village in today's Burgenland district in Saxony-Anhalt . Between the years 1957 and 1958, 1033 residents were resettled as a result of the lignite mining , the community was devastated and then completely dredged over. The deletion from the municipal register took place on December 1, 1962, with the simultaneous assignment of the corridor to Hohenmölsen, about four kilometers to the north-west . This officially ended the 1000 year old existence of the settlement. The former location is now part of an arable land .

history

A church and a manor already existed in Mutschau in the early Middle Ages . According to early local researchers, the place was founded around the year 1080. Existing entrenchments in the area were probably built during the investiture controversy , especially the fighting between Heinrich IV and Rudolf von Rheinfelden . The church in Wildschütz was part of the Mutschau parish . The right of patronage was exercised by the manor in Mutschau until the middle of the 19th century. On June 24th, 1774 a fire broke out in the village, in which 21 farmsteads and the church burned down within only half an hour. In 1813, 30,000 soldiers camped in Mutschau after the Battle of Lützen . The village was looted, but the inhabitants were given an escape to Zeitz in good time .

Around the year 1840 the place had 65 houses with 506 inhabitants. The fields of the district were described as extremely fertile and the community as very wealthy. In 1864, extensive alterations and renovations were carried out on the Romanesque Mutschau church. There were three bells in the tower, two of them from the 15th century and one from the world-famous bell foundry of the Ulrich brothers from 1779. The whereabouts of the bells is unknown. In addition, there was a Ladegast organ in the church from 1866 .

Until the middle of the 20th century, the church village was dominated by agriculture. The Gutshof von Mutschau achieved great fame throughout Germany and Austria in the 1920s and 1930s for its multi-award-winning pedigree and herdbook breeding of Simmental cattle . The Vorwerk had been owned by the von Mutschau family for centuries, as evidenced as an ancestral estate since 1209 . Little is known about gender in nobility research . The family probably only appeared for a short time, but in large numbers. In 1295/96 nine children of Hermann von Mutschau are attested. In 1495 Hans von Kayn bought the manor on Takau. The aristocratic von Kayn family originally came from Meißen and owned several estates in the Naumburg-Zeitz Abbey until the 18th century . In 1836 Johann Gottlob Weidling is mentioned as the landlord of Mutschau, whose descendants were largely responsible for the breeding success and who ran the farm until 1945 in the family estate.

destruction

Although the early 20th century southeast of Mutschau of digestion of mine Margarete took place and five kilometers away from 1936 Braunkohlekraftwerk Deuben originated, the place remained on until the mid-1950s mining spared. Only after the founding of the GDR did lignite mining reach a new dimension. The GDR almost exclusively used domestic brown coal to generate energy. The maximization of the production volumes led to the use of huge areas. Places that were in the coal fields were consistently dredged. Centuries-old manors, churches and cultural monuments were destroyed, cemeteries desecrated, entire forests cleared, rivers and streams relocated, canalized or diked. The mining of lignite took place in the GDR with practically no consideration for people or environmental concerns.

In 1949 the decision was made to expand the Pirkau opencast mine , which had been in operation from 1940, on a large scale in a northerly direction. The towns of Pirkau (1951), Streckau (1954), Mutschau (1957) and Köttichau (1960) fell victim to this opencast mine . The majority of the residents were relocated to newly built apartment block settlements, namely Hohenmölsen-Süd and Zeitz (Völkerfreundschaft district).

In the more recent research and reappraisal of the SED dictatorship , Mutschau often serves as a prime example of the maxim “brown coal at any price” practiced in the GDR and the associated propaganda . In 1957 , the circle of writing workers from VEB Braunkohlenwerk Deuben wrote a chronicle entitled Mutschau. Past and present events. It was suggested that only miners lived in Mutschau, for whom resettlement in the general interest was a matter of course. This ceremony was not an isolated incident. A book or brochure with an identical message was published about almost every site that was to be dredged. The publication on Mutschau stands out from others because it untruthfully speaks of “joint decisions”, “progressive developments” and, similar to military doctrine , of “proud mourning in the place”. The group photos shown should confirm these statements. Otherwise, the 76-page “Chronicle” shows mainly biological and geological conditions of the former community along with mining land maps.

However, Mutschau was not a pure mining village. In addition, in very few cases they left their old homeland voluntarily. For many rural residents, moving to a city was a great challenge. There are no official statistics on suicides or old people who did not survive the forced relocations. The GDR government treated such findings as classified information . In addition to the loss of huge fields and thus productive areas, the resettlement of people from devastated places led to population density in the cities and increasing supply problems. This resulted in tensions between the urban population and the former villagers. Not infrequently, “newcomers” felt pushed to the edge by the locals and lived next to each other rather than together.

Mutschau also shows how unrestricted the GDR leadership went about devastating places. Although there was particularly rich bitumen coal with a tar content of 30 to 70 percent in several places in the central German lignite district , the bitumen content in Mutschau and the surrounding area was only a maximum of 3.5 percent. That was known since 1911. This turf could hardly be used even for briquette production without the addition of bituminous coal, since good pressed coal can only be achieved if the finished briquette has a bitumen content between 4 and 14 percent. The bitumen-poor Mutschau seam was completely unsuitable for coal refining , which, however, represented the main basis of the economic self-sufficiency efforts in the GDR.

The coaling of the Pirkau opencast mine was completed in 1969. The remaining holes were then tipped with waste material from the Profen opencast mine . In the following decades the area resembled a lunar landscape. The recultivation of the post-mining landscape began in 1988 . The former district is now part of an arable land. A so-called home stone on the nearby Mondsee , along with other villages, is a reminder of Mutschau.

Web links

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Federal Statistical Office (Ed.): Municipalities 1994 and their changes since 01.01.1948 in the new federal states. Metzler-Poeschel publishing house, 1995.
  2. ↑ Central German Brown Coal District, Changes and Perspectives, Issue 18, Zeitz / Weißenfels, p. 30. LMBV , accessed on March 7, 2019
  3. ^ Gustav H. Heydenreich: Church and School Chronicle of the City and Ephorie Weissenfels since 1539. Leopold Kell, Weissenfels, 1840, pp. 286–290.
  4. ↑ Thuringian-Saxon Association for Research into Patriotic Antiquity and Preservation of its Monuments (Ed.): New communications from the field of historical and antiquarian research. Volume 11. Verlag E. Anton, 1867, p. 317.
  5. ^ Holger Brülls: Ladegast organs in Saxony-Anhalt. State Office for Monument Preservation and Archeology Saxony-Anhalt - State Museum for Prehistory, 2005, p. 166.
  6. ^ German Society for Zuchtungskunde (Ed.): Work. Edition 45.Bayerischer Landwirtschaftsverlag, 1929, p. 58.
  7. ^ University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences in Vienna (ed.): Progress in agriculture. Volume 5. Julius Springer, 1930, p. 28.
  8. ^ Johann Siebmacher: The coats of arms of the Saxon nobility. Bauer & Raspe, 1972, p. 113.
  9. ↑ Dieter Rübsamen: Small rulers in the Pleissenland. Studies on the history of the Central German nobility in the 13th century. Böhlau, 1987, p. 87, footnote 116 and p. 234, p. 298.
  10. ↑ History and Antiquity Research Society of the Osterland (ed.): Communications of the History and Antiquity Research Society of the Osterland. Hofbuchdruckerei Altenburg, 1866, pp. 384–385.
  11. ^ Jacob Christof Iselin: Newly increased historical and geographic general lexicon . J. Brandmüller, 1743, p. 481.
  12. ↑ Willi Holpert: Das Höhenfleckvieh in Central Germany. Dissertation. Weimar, 1929, p. 60 f.
  13. ↑ Central German Brown Coal District, Changes and Perspectives, Issue 18, Zeitz / Weißenfels, p. 30. LMBV , accessed on March 7, 2019
  14. ^ Resettlements: Political and economic framework conditions in the GDR archive of lost places, accessed on March 7, 2019
  15. ^ Rolf Dieter Stoll, Christian Niemann-Delius, Carsten Drebenstedt, Klaus Müllensiefen: The lignite opencast mining: Significance, planning, operation, technology, environment. Springer, 2008, p. 442 f.
  16. ↑ Central German Brown Coal District, Changes and Perspectives, Issue 18, Zeitz / Weißenfels, p. 30. LMBV , accessed on March 7, 2019
  17. ^ Short chronicle of the city homepage Hohenmölsen, accessed on March 7, 2019
  18. ↑ Franz-Josef Brüggemeier, Gottfried Korff, Jürg Steiner: Unter Strom. Energy, chemistry and everyday life in Saxony-Anhalt 1890–1990. Drei Kastanien, 1999, pp. 71-77.
  19. ^ Gerhard Albrecht: Mutschau. Past and present events. Leipzig, 1957, p. 2 f.
  20. ↑ Susanne Hose: Time Machine Lausitz. Verlag der Kunst Dresden in the publishing group Husum, 2003, p. 16 f.
  21. ↑ Rolf Dieter Stoll, Christian Niemann-Delius, Carsten Drebenstedt, Klaus Müllensiefen: The brown coal opencast mine. Significance, planning, operation, technology, environment. Springer Science & Business Media, 2008, p. 565.
  22. ↑ Albert Kirschgens: Dissipated home. Open pit lignite mining and its consequences. Alano, 1985, p. 12 f.
  23. ^ Otto Stutzer: Coal. General coal geology. Borntraeger, 1914, pp. 168-169.
  24. ↑ Pressed coal. Meyer's Großes Konversations-Lexikon Zeno.org , accessed on March 8, 2019
  25. ↑ Dieter Hoffmann, Kristie Macrakis: Science and Technology in the GDR. Walter de Gruyter, 2018, p. 287.
  26. ^ Carsten Drebenstedt: Recultivation in mining. Technical University Bergakademie Freiberg, 2010, p. 130 f.
  27. ↑ Central German Brown Coal District, Changes and Perspectives, Issue 18, Zeitz / Weißenfels, p. 30. LMBV , accessed on March 7, 2019