Schköna is a village and a former municipality in

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 ...

district in

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 ...

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 ...

. Since January 1, 2011, it is part of the town

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 ...

. It was part of the administrative community (''Verwaltungsgemeinschaft'') of

Tor zur Dübener Heide Tor zur Dübener Heide ("Gateway to the Düben Heath") was a ''Verwaltungsgemeinschaft'' ("administrative community") in the district of Wittenberg, in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. It was situated southwest of Wittenberg. The seat of the ''Verwaltungsge ...

since January 1, 2005.

Geography and transport

Schköna lies about 9 km southeast of

and about 13 km from

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 cente ...

, in the middle of the

Düben Heath The Düben Heath (german: Dübener Heide) is a landscape in Germany in eastern Saxony-Anhalt and northern Saxony, between the rivers Elbe and the Mulde, on the northern edge of the Leipzig Bay. It is bounded in the west by the town of Dessau, i ...

, putting the community within the

Düben Heath Nature Park The Düben Heath Nature Park (german: Naturpark Dübener Heide), which covers large areas of the eponymous Düben Heath, was the first nature park in Germany that resulted from a citizen's initiative and not from a government office. Around 1990, i ...

. Through the community runs Federal Highway (''Bundesstraße'') B 107.

History

Schköna had its first documentary mention in the

Meißen Meissen (in German orthography: ''Meißen'', ) is a town of approximately 30,000 about northwest of Dresden on both banks of the Elbe river in the Free State of Saxony, in eastern Germany. Meissen is the home of Meissen porcelain, the Albrechts ...

Bishopric Register of 1346 under the name ''Skogen''. This placename, ''Skogen'', is of Slavic origin, but its meaning is unknown. In the

Thirty Years' War The Thirty Years' War was one of the longest and most destructive conflicts in European history The history of Europe is traditionally divided into four time periods: prehistoric Europe (prior to about 800 BC), classical antiquity (80 ...

, Schköna was utterly destroyed by the

Swedes Swedes ( sv, svenskar) are a North Germanic ethnic group native to the Nordic region, primarily their nation state of Sweden, who share a common ancestry, culture, history and language. They mostly inhabit Sweden and the other Nordic countr ...

, as were many places in the region. The

church Church may refer to: Religion * Church (building), a building for Christian religious activities * Church (congregation), a local congregation of a Christian denomination * Church service, a formalized period of Christian communal worship * Chris ...

was only built anew in 1670. In 1950, nearby Hohenlubast was amalgamated with Schköna.

Subdivisions

Schköna has one of these: Hohenlubast.

Sightseeing

*Church in Hohenlubast *Stately home in Schköna *''Wilhemsgrube'', a small, former

strip mine Surface mining, including strip mining, open-pit mining and mountaintop removal mining, is a broad category of mining in which soil and rock overlying the mineral deposit (the overburden) are removed, in contrast to underground mining, in which ...

where

brown coal 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 mined.

References

External links

Gemeinde SchkönaDüben Heath Nature Park
Former municipalities in Saxony-Anhalt Gräfenhainichen {{Wittenberg-geo-stub