The Düben Heath (german: Dübener Heide) is a landscape in

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...

in eastern

Saxony-Anhalt Saxony-Anhalt (german: Sachsen-Anhalt ; nds, Sassen-Anholt) is a state of Germany, bordering the states of Brandenburg, Saxony, Thuringia and Lower Saxony. It covers an area of and has a population of 2.18 million inhabitants, making it the ...

and northern

Saxony Saxony (german: Sachsen ; Upper Saxon: ''Saggsn''; hsb, Sakska), officially the Free State of Saxony (german: Freistaat Sachsen, links=no ; Upper Saxon: ''Freischdaad Saggsn''; hsb, Swobodny stat Sakska, links=no), is a landlocked state of ...

, between the rivers

Elbe The Elbe (; cs, Labe ; nds, Ilv or ''Elv''; Upper and dsb, Łobjo) is one of the major rivers of Central Europe. It rises in the Giant Mountains of the northern Czech Republic before traversing much of Bohemia (western half of the Czech Repu ...

and the

Mulde The Mulde () is a river in Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. It is a left tributary of the Elbe and is long. The river is formed by the confluence, near Colditz, of the Zwickauer Mulde (running through Zwickau) and the Freiberger Mulde (with ...

, on the northern edge of the

Leipzig Bay The Leipzig BayDickinson (1964), p. 29.Dessau Dessau is a town and former municipality in Germany at the confluence of the rivers Mulde and Elbe, in the '' Bundesland'' (Federal State) of Saxony-Anhalt. Since 1 July 2007, it has been part of the newly created municipality of Dessau-Roßlau ...

, in the north by the Elbe valley (

Wittenberg Wittenberg ( , ; Low Saxon language, Low Saxon: ''Wittenbarg''; meaning ''White Mountain''; officially Lutherstadt Wittenberg (''Luther City Wittenberg'')), is the fourth largest town in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. Wittenberg is situated on the Ri ...

, Pretzsch), in the southeast by

Torgau Torgau () is a town on the banks of the Elbe in northwestern Saxony, Germany. It is the capital of the district Nordsachsen. Outside Germany, the town is best known as where on 25 April 1945, the United States and Soviet Armies forces first ...

, in the south by

Eilenburg Eilenburg (; hsb, Jiłow) is a town in Germany. It lies in the district of Nordsachsen in Saxony, approximately 20 km northeast of the city of Leipzig. Geography Eilenburg lies at the banks of the river Mulde at the southwestern edge o ...

and the course of the Mulde through

Bad Düben Bad Düben (), until 1948 Düben is a town in the district of Nordsachsen in Saxony in Germany. It is situated at the southern end of the Düben Heath Nature Park ( Düben Heath), between the rivers Elbe and Mulde, which runs through the city cen ...

and

Bitterfeld Bitterfeld () is a town in the district of Anhalt-Bitterfeld, Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. Since 1 July 2007 it has been part of the town of Bitterfeld-Wolfen. It is situated approximately 25 km south of Dessau, and 30 km northeast of Halle (S ...

. The Düben Heath is a

terminal moraine A terminal moraine, also called end moraine, is a type of moraine that forms at the terminal (edge) of a glacier, marking its maximum advance. At this point, debris that has accumulated by plucking and abrasion, has been pushed by the front edge ...

landscape formed during the

Saale glaciation The Saale glaciation or Saale Glaciation, sometimes referred to as the Saalian glaciation, Saale cold period (german: Saale-Kaltzeit), Saale complex (''Saale-Komplex'') or Saale glacial stage (''Saale-Glazial'', colloquially also the ''Saale-Eiszei ...

(Plateau of Gräfenhainichen-Schmiedeberg) with predominantly

sand Sand is a granular material composed of finely divided mineral particles. Sand has various compositions but is defined by its grain size. Sand grains are smaller than gravel and coarser than silt. Sand can also refer to a textural class of s ...

y soils. Beneath this

Pleistocene The Pleistocene ( , often referred to as the ''Ice age'') is the geological Epoch (geology), epoch that lasted from about 2,580,000 to 11,700 years ago, spanning the Earth's most recent period of repeated glaciations. Before a change was fina ...

cover lie lignite-bearing strata. The majority of the Düben Heath is covered by

forest A forest is an area of land dominated by trees. Hundreds of definitions of forest are used throughout the world, incorporating factors such as tree density, tree height, land use, legal standing, and ecological function. The United Nations' ...

. The eastern part of the Düben Heath, with the resort of

, is designated as a

nature park A nature park, or sometimes natural park, is a designation for a protected natural area by means of long-term land planning, sustainable resource management and limitation of agricultural and real estate developments. These valuable landscape ...

. In the western part around

Gräfenhainichen is a town in Wittenberg district in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. Geography The town was the seat of the offices of the administrative community (''Verwaltungsgemeinschaft'') of Tor zur Dübener Heide until it was disbanded in January 2011. It lies a ...

and

lignite Lignite, often referred to as brown coal, is a soft, brown, combustible, sedimentary rock formed from naturally compressed peat. It has a carbon content around 25–35%, and is considered the lowest rank of coal due to its relatively low heat ...

was extracted until the end of the 1980s in open pits; as a result large areas of the natural woodland landscape were destroyed. Since then, the pits have been remediated and the hollows with water. In the vicinity of Gräfenhainichen on a peninsula in the flooded ''

Ferropolis Ferropolis, "the city of iron", is an open-air museum of huge mid-20th century industrial machines in Gräfenhainichen, a city between Wittenberg and Dessau, Germany. These can measure up to 30 meters high and 120 meters long, and weigh up to 1, ...

'' open pit a

museum A museum ( ; plural museums or, rarely, musea) is a building or institution that cares for and displays a collection of artifacts and other objects of artistic, cultural, historical, or scientific importance. Many public museums make these ...

of technology has been established, where open pit mining equipment and

railway vehicle The term rolling stock in the rail transport industry refers to railway vehicles, including both powered and unpowered vehicles: for example, locomotives, freight and passenger cars (or coaches), and non-revenue cars. Passenger vehicles can be ...

s are displayed. The dialects spoken in the Düben Heath in former times were as different as the landscape of the heath is varied. These dialects are sub-groups of the

Upper Saxon German Upper Saxon (german: Obersächsisch, ; ) is an East Central German language spoken in much of the modern German state of Saxony and in adjacent parts of southeastern Saxony-Anhalt and eastern Thuringia. As of the early 21st century, it's mostl ...

dialect, which is one of the central German languages. The development of these dialects was a result of several settlement phases, shaped by the borders of different domains and foreign influences. With the settlement of displaced persons from the

former eastern territories of Germany The former eastern territories of Germany (german: Ehemalige deutsche Ostgebiete) refer in present-day Germany to those territories east of the current eastern border of Germany i.e. Oder–Neisse line which historically had been considered Ger ...

in the late 1940s, the migration of labour, the influence of literature, press, radio and television, the dialects of the Düben Heath are now hardly spoken.

Literature

* ''Archivbilder DÜBENER HEIDE'', Author: Manfred Wilde, Sutton Verlag GmbH, Erfurt, 1999 * ''Aus dem Volksmund der Heimat - Wörterbuch der Dübener Heide'', Author: Otto Kieser, Herausgeber: Verein Dübener Heide e.V., 2nd edition, 2007

External links

www.duebener-heide.dewww.naturpark-duebener-heide.comTourism in the Düben HeathPressel Heath Woodland and Moor Region – the most beautiful part of the Düben Heath
{{DEFAULTSORT:Dubener Heide Forests and woodlands of Saxony Forests and woodlands of Saxony-Anhalt Geography of Saxony Geography of Saxony-Anhalt Protected landscapes in Germany

See also

Literature

External links