Oppach (landscape)
The Oppach is a small landscape area in today's Elbe-Elster district . It originally consisted of several parts, which were mostly overgrown with oaks and alders, as well as a swamp area.
It lies on the border with the Niederlausitzer Heidelandschaft nature park .
geography
It reached as far as the villages of Würdenhain and Reichenhain , which it encompassed on three sides. In Würdenhain it extended to the line Teichwiese - Reichenhainer Weg - Pfaffenweg. In the east he came across the Große Röder , in the west the Prieschkaer Lachenhufen and the Kliebingwald. It was about 1,700 acres, 3 km long and 2 km wide.
history
The area of today's districts Würdenhain and Reichenhain was largely completely covered with forest and quarry about 1000 years ago. The former sorbent settlement Prieschka had a small open corridor at that time.
German farmers were later transferred from the lords of the Würdenhain lordship to the edge of the large forest area for clearing. Most of the rest of the forest remained an accessory to the castle and was mentioned as such in 1445 with the name "Opack, der Eichwald". In the official inheritance book from the 16th century, the oak forest is described as follows: "A wood called Oppach has several parts of oak and alder and a wet floor." The meaning of the name Oppach is obscure, a plausible explanation of words has not yet emerged can not be found.
Already in 1545 there was a forester in Würdenhain, but mostly they lived in Reichenhain in the local hunter's house (as in 1783 and 1826). The last forester is said to have lived in Prieschka.
During the Thirty Years' War in 1637 the plundering and searing multitudes of the Swedish general Banér , who was encamped in Torgau, marched through the Oppach. The village of Reichenhain was particularly hard hit. According to the old Würdenhain church book, many victims of the plague were buried "in the oak forest" when the black death lived in the village in 1680.
In 1763 the Milchberg was left for several years to be inseminated with grain in order to promote the wood approach, since the wood seeds had not yet taken root in the moss. The forest was apparently left to its own devices. The Mühlberg office reported at that time: "In general, the nature of the Oppach inevitably requires that the wood be brought back to the ground as much as possible."
The entire Oppach was measured in 1833 for the purpose of separation. The peripheral areas had already largely turned into fields and meadows. There were 1.38 hectares of clay pits. The rights of the neighboring villages of Oppach, which did not include the village of Saathain, were compensated for by guarding, grazing, fishing, removing gathering and harvesting wood, clay, sand and gravel through large complexes that were separated by dead straight borders. So new district boundaries of the four mentioned villages were formed. Prieschka received 276 acres, 59 of them the manor. In 1852, the Würdenhainers canceled the communal use of their roughly equal severance payment and, among other things, created the 23-acre cattle area, on which every Hüfner could raise four cattle. Bull keeping was also regulated by a cooperative and two bull meadows were divided. In the separation, these institutions were dissolved again. The rest of the Oppach existed from 1833 until around 1912 as the Royal Forest District. In that year, the Saathain manor exchanged it for bought farm forests in Züllsdorf .
The land reform of 1946 divided the remainder of the old Oppach exchanged at Saathain to the farmers of the surrounding villages, with about 150 acres falling to Würdenhain. While the old Hufenflur between Würdenhain and Prieschka was partly reforested with pine trees, the Oppach is now completely deforested.
literature
- Rudolf Matthies : History of the village Würdenhain . 1953 ( Online [accessed on March 14, 2015] Compiled as part of the National Reconstruction Work with subsequent additions by Ursula, Heinz and Matthias Lohse).
Web links
- Sub-district page of Würdenhain on the community homepage of Röderland ( Memento from March 8, 2009 in the Internet Archive )
- Homepage of the village of Prieschka
Coordinates: 51 ° 27 ′ 50 ″ N , 13 ° 26 ′ 41 ″ E