Ostfalen
The term Ostfalen describes the eastern part of the tribal duchy of Saxony between the rivers Leine , Elbe , Saale and Unstrut . Ostfalen is to be distinguished from Ostwestfalen , which in old Saxony was in Engern to the west .
history
At the end of the Saxon Wars of Charlemagne , the Saxons were defeated in 785 and Duke Widukind was baptized . The Christianization of the Saxons followed. For this purpose, the dioceses of Hildesheim and Halberstadt were established around 815 , with the Oker as the border . The Saxon lands were integrated into the Franconian Empire and divided into the dominions of Westphalia , Engern and Ostfalen. The ending -falen is of Germanic origin and refers to the plain that was (initially) divided by the Weser into Ostfalen and Westphalia.
After the imperial ban was imposed on Heinrich the Lion in 1180 , the division of Eastern Westphalia into smaller territories followed, for example the Duchy of Braunschweig-Lüneburg , which Otto the child was given as an imperial fiefdom in 1235 . At that time, other areas of power in East Westphalia were the secular areas of the bishops of Halberstadt and Hildesheim , the archbishop of Magdeburg and the Quedlinburg monastery . The imperial district of Goslar and the counties of Blankenburg and Wernigerode were also part of Eastern Westphalia. Through inheritance divisions , the domains became smaller and more numerous. The Duchy of Brunswick-Lüneburg also fell apart. The Principality of Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel emerged from this as the largest single part . The "Ostfalen consciousness", which was already weak at the time, was largely lost. However, remnants of self-confidence have survived locally, especially in the eastern part of the East Westphalian region, for example in the former Brunswick exclave Calvörde (today Saxony-Anhalt) or in the area of the former county of Blankenburg, whose Protestant communities belong to the Brunswick regional church .
With regard to the recent past, it should be taken into account that the situation after 1945 with the demarcation line between the British and Soviet occupation zones, and in particular the division of Germany - which ran right through East Westphalian territory - was another turning point for a region whose borders were permeable up to the early 20th century, also in an economic sense. Even after reunification , the consequences of decades of alienation remained noticeable. An insufficient number of permanent or successful collaborations at the administrative level of the states of Lower Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt was also criticized, although the unification of the Harz National Park in 2006 can be named as an example.
Country of Ostfalen
In his 17-country model in 1995 , the geographer Werner Rutz proposed the establishment of a state of Ostfalen , which should consist of the southeastern Lower Saxony districts and communities, i.e. roughly correspond to the southeastern part of historic Ostfalen.
Current usage of the term
While the area west of the Weser is officially known as Westphalia , Ostfalen is no longer common. The term now seems to have been reduced to linguistics and local history. The name was used at times as a designation for the Ostfalengau around Hildesheim . More recently, attempts have been made to revive the name in south-eastern Lower Saxony and western Saxony-Anhalt . So today it is related to different area sizes and compositions, depending on interests. Partly deviated from historical Ostfalen.
The Ostfalen portal defines Ostfalen based on the Brockhaus definition (first half of the 20th century):
“Ostfalen generally refers to the area ruled by the early medieval tribe of the 'Ostfalen', which at the end of the 8th century was essentially circumscribed by the Carolingian bishoprics of Verden, Hildesheim and Halberstadt. This land around the Harz was the home of the Ottonian royal and imperial dynasty (landscape close to the king) and was shaped by numerous foundations of monasteries and castles. Romanesque, town charter and Reformation, mining and technology history created world cultural heritage in Hildesheim, Goslar, Quedlinburg, Dessau-Roßlau and Eisleben. As a cultural landscape, Ostfalen today describes an area that is covered by three federal states: Lower Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt and Thuringia. The Ostfalen portal connects people from Hanover to Magdeburg, Göttingen to Halle with their common cultural landscape. "
Other uses of the term Ostfalen today
When VEB BKK Bitterfeld was converted into the MIBRAG stock corporation, parts of the operations of the former BKW Harbke were spun off. A GmbH emerged from the maintenance workshop. On December 27, 1990, the company "Industriewerke Ostfalen GmbH" was entered in the document roll 373/1990 of the notary Michael Schneider from Dortmund. The name was intended to document the regained belonging to the region, which was lost through the establishment of the two German states. With this, the term "Ostfalen" has been brought into focus after the fall of the Wall and taken up further.
In 2004, the search for a common designation for the Braunschweig / Wolfsburg region that would be acceptable throughout Germany and Europe did not go beyond attempts such as "Region Middle-North". The term Ostfalen didn't matter. At the same time, the name “ Braunschweiger Land ” is kept, tied to the borders of the former Free State and the Guelph Duchy.
The proposal of a commission established with the regional reform on July 1, 2007 in Saxony-Anhalt to name the newly created district of Börde “Ostfalenkreis” was not implemented.
In the community of Barleben north of Magdeburg, however, the name was picked up in the "Technologiepark Ostfalen".
In 2009, the Braunschweig / Wolfenbüttel University of Applied Sciences was renamed Ostfalia - University of Applied Sciences .
dialect
.jpg)
The term "Ostfälisch" comes from the linguistics of the 19th century, which for the first time dealt with the dialects in this area almost comprehensively and found similarities and peculiarities. Since some of these can be traced back to the (scanty) written documents of the Old Low German period, the name of the eastern part of the former Old Saxon tribal duchy, which has since disappeared, was revived for this purpose.
The districts around the cities of Braunschweig and Wolfsburg ( Peine , Gifhorn , Helmstedt , Wolfenbüttel ) as well as the districts of Börde , Harz , Goslar , Hildesheim and parts of the Hanover region are part of the Ostfalen linguistic area. The dialect area is not congruent with the historical Ostfalen. So the ostfälische Platt was also once part of the diocese Minden scoring area of Hanover and formerly the Archbishopric Mainz belonging Eichsfeld spoken.
World Heritage
In the area of historical Ostfalen there are five sites that have been named UNESCO World Heritage Sites . These are the ensemble of Michaelis Church and St. Mariae Cathedral in Hildesheim , the Fagus factory in Alfeld , the Rammelsberg mine with the old town of Goslar and the Upper Harz water shelf , the old town of Quedlinburg and the house where Martin Luther was born and died in Eisleben .
Places with flashy endings
In the historical area of Ostfalen there is a noticeable accumulation of place names with the endings -leben , -büttel and -rode . However, since these endings are also common in other regions, it is only the mixture of these places that makes something “typically Ostfälisch”. In the area between Braunschweig and Magdeburg there are numerous place names with the ending -leben, around Braunschweig there are often those with -büttel and in the area between Harz and Wolfsburg the ending -rode is often found.
See also
literature
- Ursula Föllner, Saskia Luther, Dieter Stellmacher (Ed.): The Ostfalen area. History, language and literature of the country between Weser and Elbe on the low mountain range threshold (= literature - language - region. Vol. 9). Peter Lang Edition, Frankfurt am Main 2015, ISBN 978-3-631-65054-7 .
- Theodor Müller: East Westphalian regional studies. Verlag Waisenhaus-Buchdruckerei, Braunschweig 1952.
- Robert Slawski: Ostfalen. Landscape between Harz and Heide. Jörg Mitzkat, Holzminden 2007, ISBN 978-3-931656-90-4 .
- Dieter Stellmacher (Ed.): Ostfalen. On the history and language of a north German landscape (= publications by the Ostfälisches Institut der DEUREGIO Ostfalen. Vol. 5). Publishing house for regional history, Bielefeld 2005, ISBN 3-89534-555-5 .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Everyday riddle: Everyone knows Westphalia - is there also Ostfalen? ( Memento of the original from October 28, 2010 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. RP-online.de, August 9, 2005
- ^ Robert Slawski: Ostfalen. Landscape between Harz and Heide. Jörg Mitzkat, Holzminden 2007, ISBN 978-3-931656-90-4 , pp. 10-11.
- ↑ Werner Rutz: The division of the Federal Republic into Länder: a new overall concept for the territorial status after 1990. Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft, Baden-Baden 1995, pp. 82–95.
- ^ Siegfried Müller : The citizen city. From 1241 until the residency in 1636. In: Klaus Mlynek , Waldemar R. Röhrbein (ed.): History of the city of Hanover. Volume 1: From the beginning to the beginning of the 19th century. Schlütersche Verlagsgemeinschaft, Hannover 1992, ISBN 3-87706-351-9 , pp. 67–135, here p. 94.
