Grasberg and Worpswede Our History: The Colonization of the Peatland

Timeline

• The first traces of settlements in our area date from the Bronze Age.

• In the 11th century some fishermen settled here.

• In 1180 the Prince-Archbishopric of Bremen was established. The area of today´s Grasberg and Worpswede belonged to it.

• In 1218 Worpswede was mentioned for the first time.

• In 1630 it was occupied by Sweden for a short period of time.

• In 1648, the Prince-Archbishopric became the Duchy of Bremen which was ruled by the Swedish Crown.

• After a Danish occupation from 1712 to 1715 the Duchy of Bremen was sold to the House of Hanover, and became ruled by the House of Hanover and the United Kingdom.

Northern Germany in 1648

• Around the beginning of the 18th century some young farmers settled in the border areas of the peat land and wanted to cultivate it.

• In 1718 the Hanover government developed plans to cultivate the Teufelsmoor and control the cultivation. The "wild" use of peatlands should stop.

• Among the first villages during colonization are Wörpedorf,

founded in 1751 and Eickedorf, founded in 1753. • In 1776 eleven growers bought land from the colonists in

Eickedorf and set up farmsteads.

• In Lilienthal, Otterstein and Bremervörde three peatland offices controlled the colonization.

• Friedrich Meiners was very active in Lilienthal and later in Osterholz-Scharmbeck. He could solve conflicts with the early farmers who did not accept the plans. But soon the first officials needed support.

• In 1760 the House of Hanover sent Jürgen Christian Findorff, an architect and surveyor, as a commissioner.

• The officials knew him, because already in 1754 he had drawn maps of St.Jürgen, Wörpedorf and Eickedorf .

The Colonization of the Peatland

• So in 1760 Jürgen Christian Findorff started the colonization of the Teufelsmoor by the drainage of the bog.

• Settlers were responsible for ship trenches, the ditches and the drainage, and gradually life became better.

• The hard daily work, however, remained. In the early years of the colonization, the cutting of peat and its sale to Bremen was the only income of the farmers.

• The government of Bremen-Verden controlled the drainage, the cultivation and the colonisation of the peatlands.

Jürgen Christian Findorff founded 60 new villages in the Teufelsmoor area, the so-called "Findorffsche Reihendörfer” until

his death in 1792 in Bremervörde.

• The church of Grasberg was already built on a small hill covered with grass in the years 1785 to 1789.

• The first documented mention of Grasberg was in 1811, and officially the village of Grasberg exists since 1st January 1831.

• The municipality of Grasberg as we know it today was formed by the local government reform on 1st March 1974.

Grasberg

Worpswede

• At the end of the 19th century Worpswede became the home of a community of artists.

• In 1884 Mimi Stolte met Fritz Mackensen and invited him.

• In 1889 he settled in Worpswede and the painters Hans am Ende and Otto Modersohn came with him.

• Later they were followed by Fritz Overbeck, Carl Vinnen, and Paula Becker, who married Otto Modersohn.

• Then even more artists came, for example the writers and poets Gerhard Hauptmann, Thomas Mann, Rainer Maria Rilke and the sculptor Clara Westhoff , who married Rilke.

• In 1895 Heinrich Vogeler joined the artists. He was a painter, a draftsman, a designer and an architect.

• Because of industrialization new ways of transporting goods had to be found. The idea came up to build a railway through the Teufelsmoor.

• Vogeler was charged with the building of railway stations along the route. In 1910 the railway station at Worpswede opened.

• It is the only railway station on the Osterholz-Scharmbeck - Bremervörde route which is still kept in its original style.

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Sources