Dead moor
The Dead Moor is an approximately 33 km² moor in the Hanover region in Lower Saxony . It is a partially peated raised bog with smaller fen areas. The moor in the Hanoverian Moorgeest region borders on Neustadt am Rübenberge , Eilvese and the Steinhuder Meer . A regulated degradation of peat in rural hand-stitched began in the middle of the 18th century, the industrial peat extraction began in the early 20th century and continues to this day. Parts of the moor are under nature protection .
location
Without the mineral islands, the moor consists of 27 km² of raised bog and 6 km² of low moor. It is located in the Steinhuder Meer nature park . It is located west of Neustadt am Rübenberge and east of the Steinhuder Meer . In the south it is bounded by the Wunstorf Air Base and extends to the B 6 in the north . The district road K 347, the Moorstraße, has cut through the moor between Neustadt am Rübenberge and Mardorf since the 1960s . The reason for the construction of the road was the better accessibility of the area by the fire brigade in case of moor fires.
Emergence
After the last ice age , bodies of water formed on the subsoil from water-retaining layers of clay. A reed beds of aquatic and marsh plants let the water areas silt up . From this a fen developed from quarry forest of alders and willows. As the moor grew, it came out of the nutrient-rich groundwater area and created a transitional moor , later a treeless raised moor . Dating of oak trunks at the peat base showed that the process of bog formation around 1700 BC. Began. In the course of time, a layer of peat up to 8 m thick with many tree stumps formed . The lower black peat layer is 1.4 to 3.4 m, the younger white peat layer above it varies between 1.0 and 3.7 m. The formation of the moor happened independently of the development of the Steinhuder Meer.
Peat quality
The little decomposed peat of the Dead Moor has only a low calorific value . In earlier times it was therefore only suitable for heating a stove without being able to generate much heat. Because of its poor quality, the peat used to be not transported to remote areas, but used relatively close to the mining area. Transports to Bremen are hardly known, rail and farm wagon transports to Hanover are more frequent. After firelighters appeared and hard coal was increasingly used as fuel, peat sales declined as early as the 19th century. In the middle of the 19th century there was a brief boom when peat was used for iron production in the ironworks founded in Neustadt in 1856. This only lasted until the hut went down around 1880. In the 20th century, the peat sales increased enormously at times due to other uses such as potting soil, peat litter, peat litter, insulating material.
history
In earlier centuries, the Dead Moor was an impassable and useless area for farmers from the surrounding villages and arable citizens of the nearby towns of Neustadt am Rübenberge and Wunstorf . Only the edge areas of the marshland have been used extensively for cutting peat since the Middle Ages . The peat was mainly used as fuel for their own needs. In the course of time, usage rights to logging and pasture in the moor developed habitually. This unregulated state of wild peat cutting repeatedly led to disputes. This was first documented in 1673 through disputes between Wunstorf citizens and peat cutters from Steinhude , who were active on the east bank of the Steinhuder Meer.
First regulated peat extraction
In order to end the overexploitation through wild peat cutting on the edges of the bog, the first regulations were introduced in the middle of the 18th century. The interior of the moor, which is hardly accessible, was still untouched at this time. In 1752 a moor comparison was concluded in Neustadt am Rübenberge . Each citizen was given a plot of moorland in the eastern edge of the moor, the so-called Neustädter Bürgermoor , which is around 1000 hectares in size . The citizens thus waived any further claims in the rest of the moor. A similar regulation was made for the citizens of Wunstorf on the southern edge of the moor. The inhabitants of the villages on the moor were only given peat plots to be thrown off, after which the land fell back to the state. A bog guard supervised all dismantling measures by the citizens.
In the middle of the 18th century, the systematic state cultivation of peatlands began in the Electorate of Hanover in order to gain arable land. Apart from the bog parcels of the citizens, the much larger part of the bog, called fiscal bog, was state. There began around 1750 peat cutting on a larger scale in order to gain new arable land on the pitted areas. In the beginning, experienced peat cutters from the Bremen area were used. The workers dug a canal from the moor to the line to ship peat to Hanover. Since the burning quality of the peat was poor, the ferry service was stopped again around 1800. To the west of Neustadt, the colonist village Großmoor was founded from barracks in the middle of the moor around 1780, in which 64 people lived from peat cutting 50 years later. After 1945 around 50 people still lived there until the settlement was abandoned around 1990. The Moorkolonie Moordorf, now part of Poggenhagen, was built south of Neustadt in 1756 . The residents cut peat in summer, farmed and worked on Gut Poggenhagen in autumn and winter.
Early industrial settlement
In 1855 there were plans to build a glassworks on the edge of the Dead Moor and heat it with peat extracted there . After difficulties with the companies involved, the government approved the construction of a steelworks for the production of railroad tracks in 1856 . The railway connection from Neustadt, which had been in place since 1847, and the hope of being able to use peat as fuel were beneficial for the industrial settlement. As early as 1857, 1,100 recruited workers from Silesia and Westphalia were involved in construction, drainage and potting work. After completion, blast furnaces , puddle furnaces , steam engines and a rolling mill with peat firing were running . However, the company was bankrupt as early as 1858 because of the risky financing. Peat was also not used as fuel for iron smelting and hard coal had to be bought. In 1869 the entrepreneur Bethel Henry Strousberg bought the smelter to produce rails for railway construction in Romania. Around 500 employees were already working there in 1869. After Strousberg's arrest in St. Petersburg in 1875, his companies went bankrupt, including the iron and steel works in Neustadt in 1878. The ironworks were finally stopped in 1888. Then a company for roofing felt and peat processing used the factory building until 1975.
Large-scale peat extraction
As early as the 19th century, peat mining expanded to the inner moor area. Peat cutters not only cut the peat for their own use, but also for sale. After the Strousberg bankruptcy, peat mining continued on a larger scale through a peat litter factory founded in 1890. The industrial-style mining began when the Dyckerhoff peat processing company was founded in 1908. She acquired the right to peel off 3000 hectares of moorland, which should then be used as arable land. The company settled in the former steel works. After the buildings burned down in 1911, they were rebuilt near the Moordorf peat cutter settlement. In order to remove the peat sod, the company operated a field railway in the bog as early as 1912 , which at that time had a length of 15 km. There was a siding with the Deutsche Reichsbahn . There was also a 6 km long cable car for peat removal, which existed until 1951. After a rope break and a gondola crashed over the protective structure above Moordorfer Straße, it was shut down. In 1918 peat cutting machines were used for the first time, with which half of the peat was extracted by 1921. The machines were soon abolished as trade unions feared that they would destroy jobs.
After the Second World War from 1945 onwards, the need for peat as a fuel increased enormously because there was a shortage of wood and coal. The population also continued to dig peat by hand for their own fuel supply. The companies also extracted their peat by hand until the early 1960s. Since the post-war period , peat mining has been expanded by several companies. They received the right to kill until 2019. The milled peat method has been used since the 1970s, which leaves large areas of fallow land.
Peat cutter
The peat extraction was a seasonal business, as the moor could only be worked from spring to autumn. During this time, a lot of workers were needed for cutting peat. Already in the 19th century there were only a few people willing to work in the local population, which was due to the poor working conditions and meager wages. The peat extraction companies recruited around 500 seasonal and migrant workers , mostly from Poland, Russia and the Ukraine, to join their small core workforce . When foreign workers could no longer be employed in World War I , around 500 prisoners of war cut peat. They were housed in camps in Neustadt. The subsequent global economic crisis and the Second World War had an unfavorable effect on the demand for peat. From 1939 onwards, around 500 prisoners of war were again used to mine peat. Polish and Soviet forced laborers were added later.
Historical descriptions
In historical descriptions, the area of the Dead Moor is described as a vast, desolate area. The court archivist Georg Landau wrote about the area in 1859:
- "... a terribly desolate area, not inhabited by any bushes."
Travel writer Johann Georg Kohl wrote in 1864:
- "It is a two-hour long and wide desert."
A map made in 1770 (see picture above) describes the moor as a large peat bog, a boggy desert .
Conservation and renaturation
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In 1970 a small section of the Dead Moor on the east bank of the Steinhuder Meer was placed under nature protection. From the 1980s onwards, the unchecked peat extraction led to increasing criticism from local environmentalists. The conflict about the use of the bog between the mining projects of the peat companies and nature conservation interests intensified. The remaining peat extraction companies were accused of being responsible for the destruction of the bog. However, this process started centuries ago because people used peat as fuel and cultivated bog to gain agricultural land. In the 1980s, conservationists called for a restoration of the bog, which was done in 1990 by an official restoration plan.
In the southern part of the bog parts are within the protected area network Natura 2000 under natural protection provided. Today the areas of the Dead Moor no longer have the treeless character of a raised moor. This is especially the case in the area of the east bank of the Steinhuder Meer and the adjacent Wunstorfer Moor . Due to the drainage measures for peat extraction, the areas consist of bog forest with birch and pine. The tree population is partially removed by decussing measures . In the south-eastern part of the moor there are renaturation measures in order to create a raised moor again. It takes place on areas that were pitted between 1970 and 1990 using the milling process. For rewetting drainage ditches were filled and there was a unintended lake. In the course of time, typical bog plants have already settled.
During Expo 2000 there was a regional Expo project called The Dead Moor Shall Live . On a 200 hectare peat area provided by a peat company, the moor was renatured by closing drainage ditches and removing trees and bushes .
fauna
In the Dead Moor there are many endangered bird species that use the area as a breeding and migration area. The southern area is designated as an EU bird sanctuary . Among the bird species, there are mainly teal , tree falcon , red kite , lapwing , crane , goat milker , gray woodpecker and woodlark . The natterjack toad and the moor frog are common amphibians . With slow-worm , forest lizard , sand lizard , grass snake , viper and Schlingnatter all Lower Saxony reptile species in the area are found. Other animal species are wild boar and deer. Due to the extensive and extensive grassland , the moor is populated by moisture-loving insects. These include crickets, grasshoppers, butterflies and dragonflies.
Others
There were major bog fires in 1920, 1959 and 2009. The fire on October 15, 1959 after a hot and dry summer triggered a disaster alarm. The damage amounted to 1.3 million DM .
The history of peat extraction in the Dead Moor is documented in the peat museum in Neustadt am Rübenberge, which is located in Landestrost Castle .
In the northern area of the moor, the overseas transmitter Eilvese was set up on a solid sand island in 1914 and was in operation until 1931. The reason for choosing this location was the boggy subsoil with a high groundwater level, which increased the emitted power of the transmitter.
literature
- Hubert Brieden, Heidi Dettinger, Dirk Herrmann, Helge Kister, Manfred Richter: People in the moor, natural and social history of the swamp at the Steinhuder Meer. Neustadt 2001, ISBN 3-930726-09-2 .
- Hubert Brieden: Dead Moor. Detective novel . Publishing Region and History, Neustadt aR 1999, ISBN 3-930726-06-8 .
- The historical development of peat extraction in the Dead Moor near Neustadt am Rübenberge, Hanover district. In: TELMA, reports of the German Society for Moor and Peat Studies. Volume 14, 1984, ISSN 0340-4927 .
Web links
- History of the Moordorf settlement in the Dead Moor
- Information about the nature reserve "Ostufer Steinhuder Meer" in the Dead Moor
- Information on the "Wunstorfer Moor" nature reserve in the Dead Moor
- Information on the planned nature reserve "Totes Moor" from the Hanover region
Coordinates: 52 ° 30 ′ 42.6 " N , 9 ° 23 ′ 44.6" E