Petri flood 1651

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Map of the island of Iuist (by Karl Ludwig von Le Coq from 1805) divided into two by the Petri flood , with the breakthrough "Hammer", today's Hammersee

The Petriflut of 1651 was a result of two storm surges , the first of which hit the coasts and islands of all of Friesland , the German Bight and the Alte Land devastatingly on February 22, 1651 , while the second on February 4th / 5th. March flooded the city of Amsterdam . It has long been believed in the past that these two disasters were one and the same event. This confusion was due to the fact that at that time the Julian calendar was still in use in northern Germany and parts of the Netherlands , while the Gregorian calendar had been used in Holland and Zeeland since 1582 .

The storm surge on February 22nd

The February 22 storm surge claimed thousands of lives (some sources say 15,000) and caused large land losses. The dune chains on the islands of Juist and Langeoog were split, and settlements such as Dornumersiel , Accumersiel and Altensiel were destroyed. The water reached the Kirchwarft of Fulkum , four kilometers inland from today's coastline, where numerous driven corpses were then buried. The dikes at Minsen , Schillig and on the Jade Bay suffered severe damage. The dikes also broke in the Old Country; the natural monument "Gutsbrack" in Hamburg is a remnant of the floods of that time.

The western part of the island of Buise between Juist and Baltrum , which was broken in two during the First Great Mandrank of 1362, disappeared for good. Juist was torn in two at the site of today's Hammersee and remained so until the second half of the 19th century. The island lost a lot of land and many houses; the foundations of the church were eroded so that it collapsed in 1662.

The storm surge on 4th / 5th March

The storm surge on the night of March 4th to 5th mainly hit the Zuiderzee and its coastal areas, where it was considered the heaviest flood in 80 years. The dikes east of Amsterdam broke in numerous places, flooding the Watergraafsmeer polder and a significant part of the city of Amsterdam. Two large breaks in the Zeeburgerdijk, the Groote Braak ("Big Break") or St. Jorisbraak ("St. Georgs Break") and the smaller Braak , left two large flood lakes in the area of ​​what is now the " Indian Buurt " district in Amsterdam-Oost ; the Braak was diked and filled in in 1714 and the Groote Braak in 1723. The flood also left a smaller lake, the Nieuwe Diep , which still exists today. In the Watergraafsmeer polder, where five people had lost their lives, the dikes were immediately repaired and the water was pumped out, and on July 15, 1652, the inhabitants marched through their polder in procession to celebrate its recovery.

Other areas of the Netherlands were also affected. Houses were torn away in Scheveningen , Katwijk and Den Helder . The new dike between Amsterdam and Haarlem was breached and the area around Haarlem was flooded. A dike was also destroyed at Edam . In Friesland , the dikes around the Dokkumer Grootdiep, the canal between Dokkum and the North Sea, broke and created the small lake “Mâlegraafsgat” (also called “Sint Pitersgat”) that still exists today. In the east of the province of Groningen , the Dollard was hit by the flood.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ East Frisian History: From 1648 to 1668, Volume 5 Tileman Dothias Wiarda Winter, 1795 - 453 pages; Page 56ff . Home u. Tourist association Holtgast e. V .. Retrieved April 8, 2009.
  2. ↑ Storm surges in the North Sea - based on a chronicle by Heinr. Schroeder
  3. ↑ Gutsbrack . hamburg.de GmbH & Co. KG. Retrieved April 8, 2009.
  4. ↑ Baedeker Allianz travel guide: German North Sea coast . 2nd Edition. Karl Baedeker Verlag, Ostfildern 2007, ISBN 3-8297-1150-6 , p. 221 ( google books ).
  5. ↑ On the night of February 25th to 26th, a storm surge broke through many dykes in the northeast of the Netherlands and flooded large areas.
  6. ^ Zeeburgerdijk - History 1 ( Dutch ) Goos van der Sijde. January 16, 2007. Retrieved September 9, 2009.

Web links

literature

  • Marijke Carasso-Kok, W. Frijhoff, Nienke Huizinga, M. Prak, Ester Wouthuysen en Wiard Krook, Geschiedenis van Amsterdam . Uitgeverij Boom, 2005 (Dutch)