Salchau (desert)
Salchau was a village in the Colbitz-Letzlinger Heide . The place, inhabited by 365 people in 1935, was demolished in 1936 to create a military training area and thus devastated .
history
The first Salchau
Salchau was first mentioned in a document in 1235 as Selechowe . Further early written mentions followed in 1246 ( Selchow ) and 1278 ( Selegow ). The place was inhabited by Wends and was therefore also called Wendisch-Salchau . The Heerstraße Neuhaldensleben - Stendal ran through the village .
In 1235 half of the village came to the Neuendorf Cistercian monastery . In 1246 the monastery in Salchau planted vineyards . The village had its own church, the ruins of which could still be seen until 1850.
Salchau became a desert for the first time around 1450, the reasons for this are unknown. The place is no longer mentioned in a confirmation document from Neuendorf Monastery in 1457. For several centuries it was quiet around Salchau. In 1544 the forest areas were secularized, came into electoral Brandenburg property as Markgrafenheide, were hunted from Tangermünde and later from the Letzlingen hunting lodge and administered by the Neuendorf office.
Resettlement from 1700
Vorwerk and stacking jug
In the period before the year 1700 the monastery was built on the site of the old one Salchaus Vorwerk with cattle and sheep . From 1707 the Heidereiter Johann Valentin Wachs received permission to lay a pile of wood in the Salchaus area . This was a place where the wood felled in the surrounding forests was settled and sold. The timber industry became a determining factor in Salchau. At the same time, the right was granted to serve beer to woodworkers and travelers. This is how the Gasthof Stapelkrug , which existed until 1936, was created . The inn was conveniently located at the intersection of the Bremen - Magdeburg - Halle an der Saale road , later Reichsstraße 71, and the Heerstraße Neuhaldensleben - Stendal, which explains the economic success of the stacking jug.
Hunting lodge
In 1727, on the orders of Leopold II, a princely hunting lodge with a garden and stable was built in Salchau for parforce hunting . In addition to the residential building, there were four more buildings for the kitchen, wash house, dog, horse and cattle stables. There was a separate dog kitchen for the pack of hunting dogs. For more than 20 years this large hunting lodge was the center of Leopold II's frequent hunting pleasure. When Leopold II took office in 1747, this era ended and the significance of the hunting lodge declined. Another reason was that the manager of the Vorwerk, bailiff Schrader , resisted the intended development of the house into an estate through further land acquisition. The princely hunting lodge also existed until 1936.
Salchau gained a certain supra-regional attention around 1748 as the first place in the province in which potato cultivation was carried out.
In 1739 and 1749, settlers , probably from areas on the Rhine , were settled in Salchau , which belongs to Prussia . Twelve landowner offices were set up. With them, agriculture gradually gained greater importance, even if forestry remained dominant until 1936.
Development in the 19th and 20th centuries
In 1825, Joachim Wachsmann was the first trained teacher to take up his service in Salchau. Initially without a schoolhouse, which was not built until 1826. Previously, school lessons had been given by craftsmen in the buildings around the village pond. Wachsmann, born in 1805, worked as a teacher in Salchau until 1875. He laid out a school garden and discovered the previously buried well in the old village of Salchau.
In 1832 the population of Salchau was 235 (22 fireplaces), in 1835 229 inhabitants (24 houses). In 1840 the population was 246 and in 1885 376.
Unlike the old Salchau, the new Salchau did not have its own church. At first it belonged to the church of Burgstall , later to Letzlingen . After church services were held in the Salchau school again and again from 1889 due to the dilapidation of the Letzlinger church, the community acquired a harmonium in 1902 . When the school was rebuilt in 1906, the roof of the school was designed in the shape of a cross with a view to the church services. However, until the end of 1936 it was not possible to permanently seal the roof.
The lack of water supply was problematic for Salchau. Until 1885 there was only one well in the upper village . The villagers therefore often had to get the water they needed from the well at the village pond, which, however, was often also exhausted. In this case, the water had to be fetched from a well in the Schönfeld desert 2.5 km away in the direction of Borne . In 1885 and 1886, miners from Hornhausen built a total of six wells that were 120 feet (87.68 m) deep.
In 1892 the population of Salchau reached its highest value with 385 people (89 of them school children). In 1910 the population had dropped to 346.
In the period before the First World War , coal smoldering gained greater economic importance for Salchau at times.
In 1904, a caterpillar plague and the associated increased forestry activities made the place prosperous. Various new houses and barns were built. A cockchafer plague was recorded for 1914 . The place suffered from major forest fires several times . Large fires raged in 1917, 1925 and 1929.
Salchau received a church bell from the consistory in 1913, but it was only hung in the school's roof tower in 1922, which was initially found to be too weak. A pedal harmonium for church services was purchased for 1200 Reichsmarks in 1918 .
In 1919 Salchau was connected to the power grid.
Salchau suffered victims in the First World War, and a plaque of honor was unveiled in 1920 to commemorate them.
In 1927 and 1928 the laying of water pipes took place.
In 1929 four new settlement houses were built on the north side of the village, but they only existed for a short time.
The end from 1933 to 1936
In 1933 (other information: 1934) the village community erected a war memorial on the square in front of the school. In the year of the takeover of the Nazis , a local group that formed in Salchau NSDAP , the Labor Front and the National Socialist Women .
On December 7, 1934, near the village rushed a Junkers F 13 of Lufthansa from.
In 1934 plans were announced that the village of Salchau should be "relocated" in order to make the Colbitz-Letzlinger-Heide a large continuous shooting range. The first work began in 1935, and there were still 365 residents in the village. Some residents called for decisive action against the eviction, but most were afraid of government coercion such as expropriation . Some of the residents hoped for an economic improvement through compensation and the planned relocation in Blumenberg near Wanzleben . This time was marked by quarrels and disputes in the village.
For the Army Research Institute in Hillersleben , a 30 km long, 750 meter wide, completely straight strip was cut through the Colbitz-Letzlinger-Heide, which was to serve as a shooting range in the future. This strip running from Hillersleben to Börgitz hit the southern part of Salchau. Due to the large number of workers who were busy with the work for the strip, a concrete track running along there, a railway line and bunkers, Salchau experienced a last brief economic boom.
Farmer Hermann Horn was the first to leave the village before Christmas 1935 . He moved to Hassel near Arneburg .
In January 1936, the demolition work began in Blumenberg to make room for the new farms for the Salchau farmers. The required explosions were carried out by the Magdeburg Pioneer Battalion No. 4 . In February 1936, forest farms for two foresters from Salchau were built in Dolle .
As of January 31, 1936, the Salchau postal service, previously provided by the innkeeper Bierbaß , was discontinued. From then on, the mail was delivered from Dolle. The post truck that drives to Salchau twice a week also stopped its tour to Salchau and only drove as far as Dolle when coming from Wolmirstedt .
On February 19, 1936, the Salchau men's gymnastics club gave their farewell pleasure at the inn Horn . In March, a large number of the residents were relocated to Blumenberg.
Salchau after 1936
The village area became part of the military training area. After Germany's defeat in World War II , the military training area in the Soviet occupation zone and later in the GDR was used by the Soviet army . The surviving war memorial was blown up in 1978. Plans to give up military use after the fall of 1989/90 and the later withdrawal of Soviet / Russian troops failed; today the military training area is used by the German Army Combat Training Center in Letzlingen. The citizens' initiative Offene Heide advocates civilian use of the area.
In 1938 a street in the city of Magdeburg was named Salchauer Strasse , which still bears this name today. Furthermore, streets with the same name also remind of Salchau in the villages of Süplingen , Letzlingen and Born (Westheide) .
In view of the fact that the construction of the military training area is likely to be seen in connection with the German preparations for the Second World War, the resettled Salchau residents were also referred to as the first displaced persons of the Second World War in later years.
Salchau today
At Salchau today the Bundeswehr put up entrance signs with the inscription "former Salchau" at the old village, two of which are on the former Reichsstrasse 71 and one on the Salchauer Chaussee from the direction of Letzlingen . The restoration of the war memorial took place in autumn 1995 and was inaugurated on May 16, 1996. Remains of foundations can be seen not far from the monument. An old well shaft was redesigned as a well above ground. About 300 meters east of the memorial is the former cemetery, this is enclosed with a hunter's fence and all around with boulders, about in the middle there is a birch wood cross. The former location is now part of the district of Letzlingen. In 2009, in the middle of the old village location of the former lower village, a military combat village consisting of five buildings was built in solid brick construction for house-to-house fighting . According to the speech of the then head of the combat training center (GÜZ), Colonel Gerd Kropf during the Salchau meeting in 2010, none of the houses is on the foundations of the former residential buildings and according to Dr. Kleemann from Letzlingen, currently 10 former residents of the village, as of May 2019, including 4 men and six women "Original sound from Mr. Kleemann, 4 sons and 6 daughters who were born in Salchau".
literature
- Dr. Karl-Ulrich Kleemann: The Heidedorf Salchau - History and stories of a village in the Colbitz-Letzlinger Heide from the 13th century to the present. May 2006
- Wilhelm Könecke: The desert village of Salchau. Ohrekreis-Generalanzeiger from February 16, 2000
- Walter Nehring: Salchau yesterday and today. The Central German from May 31, 1936
Individual evidence
- ↑ See also
- ↑ here
- ↑ https://www.volksstimme.de/lokal/gardelegen/salchautreffen-symbol-fuer-verlorene-heimat
Coordinates: 52 ° 26 ′ 27.2 " N , 11 ° 34 ′ 22.4" E