Culture and history
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Prince's Grave (Fürstengrab) near Niederhaverbeck
So-called Hannibal's Grave (Hannibals Grab) near Wilsede
Sieben Steinhäuser, Grave D
Tumuli on Lüneburg Heath
Early history[edit]
Pollen analyses show that the dry geest soils of North Germany have been cultivated since about 3000 BC. Clearance by fire and the cultivation of crops on the Pleistocene sandy soils quickly led however to soil degradation. So the land cleared by fire could only be used for a short time. The settlements moved frequently and woods elsewhere were cleared. Even at that time the first Calluna (heather) heaths appeared. Evidence of relatively dense settlement is found especially in Uelzen district. On Lüneburg Heath there are numerous Megalithic sites and tumuli from the Neolithic and the early Bronze Age. The most famous are the Oldendorfer Totenstatt (Oldendorf Grave site) and the Sieben Steinhäuser (Seven Stone Houses). But even in the Lüneburg Heath Nature Reserve there are more than a thousand tumuli, especially near Nieder- and Oberhaverbeck. The largest of these tumuli is the so-called Prince's Grave (Fürstengrab). Also near Wilsede there is the well-known stone and juniper group known as Hannibal's Grave (Hannibals Grab).
Transition to settlement culture[edit]
After the withdrawal of the Lombards in the migration period, from about 700 AD Lüneburg Heath belonged to the Duchy of Saxony, which was conquered by Charlemagne in the 9th century and became part of the Frankish Empire. The resulting close control of the population and the Christianization meant that the rural settlements had to stay in one place and could no longer move about freely. The land had to be farmed more intensively which led to the heathland spreading.
Settlements[edit]
Wilsede Heath Museum – a typical timber-framed hall house (Fachhallenhaus)
Lüneburg Heath was always relatively sparsely populated due to the poor soils in the area. The region was dominated by heath farming which was a less intensive form of land usage necessary for its large areas of barren terrain and heathland. An important economic sideline of past centuries was heathland beekeeping. The villages were usually encircled by small tracts of woodland, sometimes interrupted by fields or meadows, and merged without clear boundaries into the surrounding landscape. The farmsteads were arranged relatively arbitrarily, many stood very close to one another; others were spread out at some distance from each other. They were loose cluster villages (lockere Haufendörfer). In order to prevent cattle trampling flat the gardens attached to the houses, village roads were enclosed with wooden fences and, later, with characteristic stone walls. The typical design of farmhouse was the Fachhallenhaus, a large timber-framed single building, in which people and animals lived under a single roof. Each village had relatively few complete farms; in Wilsede there were only four, in the church village (Kirchdorf) of Undeloh there were eleven, but that was an exception. In addition there were Koten (small, single houses), sheep pens and shared bakehouses. The farms themselves, however, were very large. In Wilsede all the features of a heath village described here may still be seen. Wilsede Heath Museum (Heidemuseum Wilsede) was established in a Fachhallenhaus and it gives an insight into the working and living conditions of a heathland farm around 1850. Walsrode Heath Museum was one of the first German open air museums and also portrays the life of heathland folk. In rural parts of the region they still sometimes use today a Low German dialect called Heidjerisch. This word derives from the name given to inhabitants of the Lüneburg Heath – the Heidjer.
Heath convents[edit]
In the Lüneburg Heath region, six nunneries from the Middle Ages survived, which became Protestant convents after the Reformation. These establishments are the abbeys of: Ebstorf, Isenhagen, Lüne, Medingen, Wienhausen and Walsrode.
The end of heathland farming in the 19th century[edit]
Pine forest
Heath Landscape, painting by Arnold Lyongrün (1912)
From 1831 feudalism was abolished in the Kingdom of Hanover and those heathland areas that were common land for the villages were divided amongst the individual farmers. Heathland farming died out at the end of the 19th century. Many farmers sold their land to the Prussian treasury or the Hanover monastic chamber, who afforested the land with pines. As a result, the area of heath was drastically reduced. In the late 19th century a number of farmers from the area were encouraged by British authorities to settle in the Philippi area of Cape Town, South Africa due to their knowledge of farming in barren sandy soils.
In 1800, large parts of Northwest Germany had been covered with heaths and bog. Today, by contrast the only large, continuous areas of heath remaining are in the Lüneburg Heath Nature Reserve and on a few military training areas.
The changing perception of the heath[edit]
The heath in late autumn painting by Erwin Vollmer 1942
As late as the turn of the 18th to the 19th century, the barren and almost treeless heathlands were still perceived as hostile and threatening environments, as evinced by two travel logs of journeys between 1799 and 1804:
As I had traversed the Hanoverian dominions in so many directions, I did not expect to find nature clothed in charms, or a high degree of population, fertility, and cultivation. Next to Lauenburg, I think it is the worst tract of an equal extent that I ever met with. The soil is one vast sandy desert, which is either naturally bare, or covered with patches of heath or grass.
— Charles Gottlob Küttner: Travels through Denmark, Sweden, Austria and part of Italy, in 1798 & 1799. London 1805.
On leaving Zell we passed through a dark wood, of at least two leagues in extent; and from that city to Harburgh, in a line of nearly twenty German miles, we travelled over sandy plains and extensive heaths. At a great distance, geese, ducks and sheep of a very poor appearance, never failed to indicate the vicinity of some wretched hamlet. What habitations! Whole families, of the most wretched appearance, and covered with tattered garments, associate together, eat and sleep with their cattle. Near these real catacombs we observed growing a few stalks of rye and barley, and here and there a few tufu of buck-wheat. The straw is short and stunted, and the ears of a diminutive size. Population and agriculture must ever be dependant on each other.
— Michel Ange Mangourit: Travels in Hanover, during the years 1803 and 1804. London 1806.
The poem Der Heideknabe ("The Heath Lad") from the year 1844 by Friedrich Hebbel stresses the unearthly atmosphere and the bleak solitude of the heaths:
:(...) Out, out of the town! And there it stretches,
The heath, misty, ghostly,
The wind swishing over it,
Oh, every step here is like a thousand others!
And all so still, and all so quiet,
You look around for signs of life,
Only hungry birds dart by
Out of the clouds, to spear worms (...).
Towards the middle of the 19th century the first positive descriptions of the heath emerged, initially inspired by the romantic movement. With the Industrial Revolution in Germany, unspoilt nature became more important for people, providing a welcome contrast with the rapidly burgeoning cities. Because the heathlands of North Germany were being increasingly decimated by cultivation and reforestation, they now appeared to be worth protecting. Numerous writers and painters portrayed the beauty of the heath, particularly when it was in bloom in August and September. One important heathland artist was Eugen Bracht. The most famous heath poet was the local writer Hermann Löns (1866–1914), who spent some time living in a hunting lodge near Westenholz. He worked the heath countryside into his books and promoted the foundation of the first German nature reserve on Lüneburg Heath. His purported remains were buried in a juniper copse at Tietlingen near Walsrode in 1935. His works were a source for Heimatfilme that were shot on Lüneburg Heath, such as Grün ist die Heide ("The Heath Is Green") from 1932 and remade in 1951 and 1972, as well as Rot ist die Liebe ("Red is Love") from 1956.
History of conservation on Lüneburg Heath[edit]
Around 1900, there were growing demands to save the heathland and bogs of northwest Germany, which were threatened by reforestation and drainage. On Lüneburg Heath, Wilhelm Bode, then the pastor at Egestorf, was particularly active in pressing for the preservation of the endangered countryside. He had learned in 1905 of plans for building weekend houses on the Totengrund. In order to prevent this, he persuaded Andreas Thomsen, a professor from Münster, to acquire the area as a nature reserve. In 1909, Pastor Bode and district administrator (Landrat) Fritz Ecker prevented the planned reforestation of the Wilseder Berg.
Totengrund around 1960
In the same year, an appeal by Curt Floerike appeared in Kosmos magazine, citing the establishment of national parks in the United States and calling for them in Germany. In order to realise this goal, the Nature Park Society or Verein Naturschutzpark (VNP) was founded in Munich on 23 October 1909. They planned to create national parks in the Alps, the Central Uplands and in the north German geest region. By 1913, the society had 13,000 members.
The area of Lüneburg Heath near Wilsede was selected as the location for the north German national park. Using the VNP's funds, more than 30 km2 of heathland were purchased or rented by 1913. In 1921, a police ordinance placed more than 200 km2 of Lüneburg Heath under protection, the first time this had been achieved in Germany. One problem that arose as early as the 1920s was the steadily increasing number of visitors. In 1924, in order to keep visitors away from sensitive areas of heathland, a volunteer Heath Guard (Heidewacht) was founded.
The Reich conservation law was passed in 1933 and Lüneburg Heath was designated as an official nature reserve. Although plans to build a motorway through the park and for the heath to be used as a military training area were stopped, in 1933 the Heidewacht was disbanded, mainly because it was made up of members of social democratic youth organisations. In 1939, a new law that granted the chairman of the VNP – now called Führer – wide-ranging powers. Jews could no longer be members of the society.
Tank tracks near Wilsede
Between 1891 and the Second World War, large military training areas were established on Lüneburg Heath, including the largest one in Europe, the Bergen-Hohne Training Area on the Südheide. Here the heathland has largely been preserved, albeit no longer accessible to the general public.
A large area of the nature park belonging to the society near Schneverdingen was taken over by the British Army of the Rhine in 1945 for use as a tank training area. In the 1950s, during military exercises, British tanks even pushed forward as far as the Wilseder Berg. Not until the Soltau-Lüneburg Agreement, was signed in 1959 between the Federal Republic of Germany, the United Kingdom and Canada, were the boundaries of the tank training area fixed. Continual exercising over the area by armoured vehicles completely destroyed the vegetation on the Osterheide near Schneverdingen, forming large areas of sand dunes. In 1994, the British returned the so-called "Red Areas" of the Soltau-Lüneburg Training Area to the Nature Park Society who, with the help of money from the federal government, set about the work of renaturation. Nowadays hardly any traces of the tank training area are left. The base camp for military exercises, Reinsehlen Camp, has been turned into a nature reserve.
Forest fire[edit]
In August 1975, fire broke out on the Südheide which turned out to be the biggest forest fire in West Germany to that date.
Serious forest fires broke out in the southern part of the area near Stüde, Neudorf-Platendorf, Meinersen and then by Eschede near Celle, with devastating effects and fatalities.
