The village of Ohrdorf lies in the north German state of

Lower Saxony Lower Saxony (german: Niedersachsen ; nds, Neddersassen; stq, Läichsaksen) is a German state (') in northwestern Germany. It is the second-largest state by land area, with , and fourth-largest in population (8 million in 2021) among the 16 ...

in the district of

Gifhorn Gifhorn () is a town and capital of the district of Gifhorn in the east of Lower Saxony, Germany. It has a population of about 42,000 and is mainly influenced by the small distance to the more industrial and commercially important cities nearby, ...

and belongs to the town of

Wittingen Wittingen () is a town in the district of Gifhorn, Lower Saxony, Germany. It is about northeast of Gifhorn, and southeast of Uelzen. Division of the town Wittingen consists of 27 districts: History The earliest identified record of Wittin ...

The village takes its name from the river

Ohre The Ohre is a river in northern Germany, left tributary to the Elbe. Its total length is . Its source is north of Wolfsburg, in Lower Saxony. It flows generally south-east, at first following the border of Lower Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt. After B ...

, which rises near the village and empties into the

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 ...

north of

Magdeburg Magdeburg (; nds, label=Low Saxon, Meideborg ) is the capital and second-largest city of the German state Saxony-Anhalt. The city is situated at the Elbe river. Otto I, the first Holy Roman Emperor and founder of the Archdiocese of Magdebur ...

.Rudi Fischer: ''800 Jahre Calvörde – Eine Chronik bis 1991''. In East German times the state border ran down the centre of the Ohre not far from the village. The nearest settlement on the East German side was

Haselhorst Haselhorst () is a locality in the borough of Spandau in Berlin. It is located between Siemensstadt and the Old Town of Spandau and is separated from the Hakenfelde locality by the River Havel. Overview The manor of Haselhorst was incorporate ...

; but it was no longer accessible after the 1950s and the road link was not reopened until 1990. St. Laurence Church (''Laurentius-Kirche''), built in 1235, is a

fieldstone church A fieldstone church (german: Feldsteinkirche) is a type of church, built using fieldstone of glacial erratics and glacial rubble. Such cathedrals and monasteries occur mostly in areas where the ice ages have deposited such rock material on the on ...

and has a

Gothic Gothic or Gothics may refer to: People and languages *Goths or Gothic people, the ethnonym of a group of East Germanic tribes **Gothic language, an extinct East Germanic language spoken by the Goths **Crimean Gothic, the Gothic language spoken b ...

polyptych A polyptych ( ; Greek: ''poly-'' "many" and ''ptychē'' "fold") is a painting (usually panel painting) which is divided into sections, or panels. Specifically, a "diptych" is a two-part work of art; a "triptych" is a three-part work; a tetrapty ...

from the year 1470. According to legend the altar was intended for a church in Wittingen. The wagon on which the altar was carried, broke a wheel in Ohrdorf, an incident that the villagers exploited in order to make the driver drunk and to take the altar for their own church. The

pulpit A pulpit is a raised stand for preachers in a Christian church. The origin of the word is the Latin ''pulpitum'' (platform or staging). The traditional pulpit is raised well above the surrounding floor for audibility and visibility, access ...

dates to 1700, the ceiling paintings to 1711. North of Ohrdorf is a residential

windmill A windmill is a structure that converts wind power into rotational energy using vanes called windmill sail, sails or blades, specifically to mill (grinding), mill grain (gristmills), but the term is also extended to windpumps, wind turbines, and ...

Sources

* Albert Almstedt: ''Die Kirche in Ohrdorf''. Munich:

Deutscher Kunstverlag The Deutscher Kunstverlag (DKV) is an educational publishing house with offices in Berlin and Munich. The publisher specializes in books about art, cultural history, architecture, and historic preservation. History Deutscher Kunstverlag was fo ...

1984. (Große Baudenkmäler. 357) * Adolf Meyer: ''Zur Geschichte der Ohrdorfer Windmühle oder wie Vollhöfner Krüger seine Interessen verfolgte''. In: ''Kalender für den Landkreis Gifhorn'', Jg. 1988, S. 121-126. * Marion Kothe: ''Innerdörfliche Integration. Zur Bedeutung von Ehe und Vereinsleben auf dem Lande''. Göttingen: Schmerse, 1995. (Beiträge zur Volkskunde in Niedersachsen. Bd. 9 : Schriftenreihe der Volkskundlichen Kommission für Niedersachsen. Bd. 10) esearch based on interviews of ten couples in Erpensen, Suderwittingen, Ohrdorf and Schneflingen

References

{{authority control Gifhorn (district) Wittingen Villages in Lower Saxony