Schöpsdorf

Schöpsdorf , in Upper Sorbian Šepšecy , was a village in the Hoyerswerda district in the Cottbus district . The place on the Spree was incorporated into Merzdorf in 1957 and dredged over by the Bärwalde opencast mine from 1981 .

geography

Schöpsdorf was in the form of a square alley village or a round square village with a lane southwest of Merzdorf on the right bank of the Spree. In the south, between Schöpsdorf and the upstream Uhyst , surrounded by the Spree and an artificial arm of the Spree, were the island ponds.

The road from Bautzen via Boxberg to Weißwasser ran east of the village at the district boundary , and today it passes west of the former location as federal highway 156 .

history

Local history

Archaeological investigations in the run-up to the open pit made it possible to ascertain a greater number of prehistoric settlement traces. This proves that the area was already settled in the Stone Age . A knoll southwest of the location on the Spree was particularly productive. The first farmers were probably in the 4th millennium BC. Active as two sherds from the time of the stitch line ceramics suggest. Finds of the Lusatian culture have also been made from the Middle Bronze Age and the Early Iron Age .

Other important finds are a battery of iron smelting furnaces, 330 of which have been identified, and a shard that proves the Slavic settlement of the region along the Spree valley. Only the proof that Schöpsdorf existed as a settlement before the second phase of the German eastern settlement was not possible. The first documentary mention in 1418 as Schwebsdorf together with Merteinsdorf in King Wenceslas IV's feudal book falls during this phase when German immigrants from Swabia settled in Lusatia. However, it was possible to prove that there was significant forest management and wood processing in the vicinity as early as the 13th and 14th centuries.

In its development, Schöpsdorf was closely associated with Merzdorf. Already in a Meißner diocese register from 1495 the membership in the Merzdorf church is mentioned, which at that time was still a branch church of Klitten . And when lessons were being given in Merzdorf, the Schöpsdorf children went to Merzdorf.

During the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648) there were several plague years in Saxony and Upper Lusatia, which had belonged to the electorate since 1635 , from which Schöpsdorf was not spared. Schöpsdorf was not spared in later wars either, for example billeting was ordered in 1706 during the Northern War and in 1728. When French soldiers pillaged and devastated fields in the Milkel and Uhyst area prior to the Battle of Bautzen in 1813 , Schöpsdorf is not explicitly mentioned, but it can be assumed that soldiers also advanced there.

In 1815, at the end of the Congress of Vienna , Schöpsdorf was in the part of Upper Lusatia that had to be ceded to the Kingdom of Prussia . First belonging to the Brandenburg district of Spremberg , Schöpsdorf was separated from the district of Hoyerswerda in 1825 and placed under the province of Silesia .

The Hoyerswerda district administrator wrote in 1881: "The communities of Bärwalde, Merzdorf and Schöpsdorf are among the poorest communities in the district, the lands there consist mostly of very light sandy soils and only provide extremely low yields."

The sideline at that time was largely limited to forestry work, which the population of Schöpsdorf was dependent on for a long time due to its remoteness. Industrial work was found for the population until the First World War, when every 15 kilometers away in Koblenz the pit Werminghoff (today Knappensee ) open-minded and a briquette factory was built. In contrast, there was a relatively early connection to the power grid, when Rudolf Hünlich, the owner of the Bärwalder estate, built a small hydroelectric power station there on the Spree in 1919 and supplied the neighboring villages with electricity. Hünlich also had the road from Uhyst via Schöpsdorf to Merzdorf expanded, as he was interested in getting to his estate on good roads.

Since the 1920s, the coal companies in the region were active in buying up mining rights. In the Uhyst / Merzdorf area, these were primarily Eintracht Braunkohlenwerke und Brikettfabriken AG (Eintracht AG) and BUBIAG (Braunkohlen- und Briquettindustrie Aktiengesellschaft Berlin). Since the early 1930s, properties in Schöpsdorf have also been sold, primarily to BUBIAG.

The expansion of Uhyst towards the end of the Second World War as a defense node had a devastating effect on Schöpsdorf. After the Berlin operation was heralded in the morning hours of April 16 when the 1st Ukrainian Front crossed the Oder and Neisse rivers , the Red Army was already at Neustadt / Spree an der Spree in the evening hours of April 18 , on April 19 the troops of the 5th Guard Army and the 2nd Polish Army in the Klitten area. In the days that followed, the course of the front around Klitten, Boxberg and Uhyst changed several times due to German counter-attacks. The fighting, which was costly on both sides, reached Merzdorf on April 26th. Polish and Soviet troops advanced from both sides of the Spree and occupied the place around 4 p.m., at 11 p.m. Schöpsdorf was also taken. Uhyst could not be stormed until the night of April 29th, Mönau fell on April 29th in the afternoon. The six Polish soldiers who died in the battle for Schöpsdorf were exhumed in 1946 and reburied in the Zgorzelec cemetery of honor .

Five farms were totally destroyed as a result of the fighting, three others were badly damaged, and the Spree bridge was blown up. In addition, there were no draft animals to work the fields and 13 men (over 10% of the Schöpsdorf population) had died in the war.

As a result of the administrative reform of 1952 , the municipality, which has been Saxon again since 1945, in the smaller district of Hoyerswerda became part of the Cottbus district . On January 1, 1957, the communities Schöpsdorf and Bärwalde were incorporated into Merzdorf.

After the land reform completed in 1946 , it took until October 1959 for an agricultural production cooperative (LPG) to be founded in Schöpsdorf . Even if the Sorbian costume had long been discarded, the Sorbian language was still part of everyday life in the LPG.

In February 1965, a meeting of community representatives informed about the planned opening of the Bärwalde opencast mine, and in December 1969 the residents first learned of the need to relocate Merzdorf. When this was underway in Merzdorf, this problem became the order of the day in Schöpsdorf in 1976. The period 1980/1981 was specified for resettlement; four families had to resettle in 1979 because of the relocation of the Spree.

On March 8, 1981, the people of Schöpsdorf had their farewell party, in July of the same year it was formally decided to dissolve and delete the district of Schöpsdorf.

Population development

year	Residents
1823	96
1825	89
1861	117
1871	115
1880	122
1885	121
1905	90
1910	100
1913	101
1916	101
1917	90
1919	108
1925	110
1930	92
1933	102
1939	102
1946	89
1950	101
1951	113
1975	67

The adjacent table of the population of Schöpsdorf was taken from Meusel's Schöpsdorf - Streiflichter from history . The group of authors has compiled values ​​from various sources. As a result, the figures were not collected according to a uniform standard, but they do represent clues that allow an event-based change to be derived. In addition, the values ​​show that the population from 1820 to around 1970 was in a range of around 90 to 120.

A list of taxable hosts from 1658 indicates that Schöpsdorf was particularly hard hit by the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648) and the plague. Although the village area of ​​290 hectares corresponds to about 12 Franconian hooves and thus would offer space for 12 whole farmers, there were 18 places in Schöpsdorf, six of which were in the abovementioned directory. The remaining landlords were 3 full farmers , 4 half farmers , 4 gardeners and one cottage owner . Actually, eight positions were in desolation, two were only recently filled again by newcomers from the villages of Tzschelln and See . While it is unclear whether Schöpsdorf was founded by German or Sorbian settlers, this directory also shows that all but one of the names listed are clearly of Sorbian origin.

In 1748 and 1777 the seven farmers continued to work in Schöpsdorf. By 1748 the number of cottagers increased by two, while in 1777 only two gardeners, but nine cottagers were named. Another economy was in desolation. By 1838 the number of gardeners rose to three and that of cottagers to ten. In 1863 there was only one full farmer, four half farmers, one gardener and 12 cottagers.

The population increased from 89 to 121 from the first Prussian census in 1825 to 1885. According to Muka's statistics of the Sorbs in Upper Lusatia, the Schöpsdorf population was purely Sorbian at that time. Thereafter, the population decreased to 90 by 1905, but five years later there were 100 residents in 22 households. Despite the First World War , the population of Schöpsdorf in 1919 was slightly above the pre-war level. 108 inhabitants lived in 23 households.

The number of inhabitants fell slightly in the second half of the interwar period, so that on May 17, 1939 there were still 102 inhabitants. The Second World War did not leave Schöpsdorf unscathed, with the censuses on November 3, 1945 and October 29, 1946, only 89 inhabitants were identified.

In the later post-war years the number rose again, so that 113 inhabitants were recorded in 1951. According to Ernst Tschernik , a majority of 73.9% of the population was still Sorbian-speaking in 1956 . Even after the merger of Bärwalde, Merzdorf and Schöpsdorf, the total number of inhabitants in the three towns rose slightly from 486 in 1950 to 497 in 1964; the decline was limited until 1971, when 476 inhabitants were recorded.

Some of the Schöpsdorfer left the place before the resettlement period, so that in 1975 only 67 inhabitants were recorded. The demolition in 1981 was preceded by 55 resettlements in 18 households. Ten households moved to the neighboring Uhyst , the remaining eight were distributed to the nearby towns of Groß Särchen , Klitten , Kreba , Lips , Maukendorf and Weißkollm , or moved to the cities of Hoyerswerda and Weißwasser .

Place name

The place name is first documented in 1418 as Schewbsdorf . Other forms of name are Schebißdorf (1571), Schobsdorf (1572), Schebsdorff (1658) and Schöpsdorff (1759). In 1791 there is a simplified notation Schoͤpsdorf . Sorbian variants are identified as Ssypschezy (1800), Sypschez (1831/1845), Seṕšecy (1843), Sepšecy (1843) and Šepšecy (1969).

The derivation of the name is difficult because it seems to be based on the nearby river Schöps , in Sorbian Šepc , which Ernst Eichler and Hans Walther consider unlikely, especially since Schöpsdorf was on the Spree and the mouth of the Black Schöps only a few Kilometers downstream.

Since the name was written with -b- for a relatively long time , Schöps may have been interpreted at a later date . The name is possibly derived from the Middle High German word schoub (straw bundle) and then, as a ridiculous name, indicates the poor soil yields. Another possible interpretation would be a derivation from the Middle High German schöpetz "mutton, blended ram", which names a village in which sheep are kept.

memory

Information board at the memorial for Merzdorf and Schöpsdorf on Bärwalder See

There is a memorial for Merzdorf and Schöpsdorf on the north bank of the Bärwalder See .

In Hoyerswerda Neustadt, after the fall of the Wall, some streets in residential complex 8, which previously bore the names of killed GDR border soldiers, were renamed after villages that had been devastated by opencast mines in the former district area. At the entrances to the eleven-story high-rise building at Schöpsdorfer Strasse 31–35, previously Siegfried-Widera- Strasse, five metal plaques by the Seidewinkler artist Manfred Vollmert have been reminding of Schöpsdorf since the end of 2011 .

Sources and further reading

literature

• Günter Meusel et al .: Schöpsdorf - highlights from history . Ed .: Council of the Hoyerswerda district. Bautzen 1983.
• Frank Förster : Disappeared Villages. The demolitions of the Lusatian lignite mining area until 1993 (=  series of publications by the Institute for Sorbian Folk Research in Bautzen . Volume 8 ). Domowina-Verlag, Bautzen 1995, ISBN 3-7420-1623-7 , pp. 216-223 .
• From the Muskauer Heide to the Rotstein. Home book of the Lower Silesian Upper Lusatia District . Lusatia Verlag , Bautzen 2006, ISBN 3-929091-96-8 , p. 263 f .

Footnotes

1. ↑ Federal Statistical Office (Ed.): Municipalities 1994 and their changes since 01.01.1948 in the new federal states . Metzler-Poeschel, Stuttgart 1995, ISBN 3-8246-0321-7 .
2. ^ Ludwig Elle: Language policy in the Lausitz . Domowina-Verlag, Bautzen 1995, p. 250 .
3. ↑ Schöpsdorf in the Digital Historical Directory of Saxony
4. ↑ Ernst Eichler and Hans Walther : Oberlausitz toponymy - studies on the toponymy of the districts of Bautzen, Bischofswerda, Görlitz, Hoyerswerda, Kamenz, Löbau, Niesky, Senftenberg, Weißwasser and Zittau. I name book (=  German-Slavic research on naming and settlement history . Volume 28 ). Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1975, p. 280 .
5. ↑ Mirko Kolodziej: The village choir is still half intact , in: Sächsische Zeitung , February 16, 2013, Hoyerswerda edition, p. 16.

References

The list of abandoned locations in the Lausitz coal area gives an overview of other places that were partially or completely canceled in the Lausitz coal region .

Web links

Commons : Schöpsdorf / Šepšecy  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Coordinates: 51 ° 23 '  N , 14 ° 31'  E