Teltow [] is both a geological

plateau In geology and physical geography, a plateau (; ; ), also called a high plain or a tableland, is an area of a highland consisting of flat terrain that is raised sharply above the surrounding area on at least one side. Often one or more sides ...

and also a historical region in the German states of Brandenburg and Berlin. As an historical region, the Teltow was one of the eight territories out of which the March of Brandenburg was formed in the 12th and 13th centuries. As a result of the (1239–1245) the question of territorial lordship of the newly created heart of the expanding

march March is the third month of the year in both the Julian and Gregorian calendars. It is the second of seven months to have a length of 31 days. In the Northern Hemisphere, the meteorological beginning of spring occurs on the first day of March ...

was finally decided here. Between 1835 and 1952 there was also a county, ; in addition a town immediately south of Berlin, in the present-day county of Potsdam-Mittelmark, bears the name

Teltow Teltow [] is a town in the Potsdam-Mittelmark district, in Brandenburg, Germany. Geography Teltow is part of the agglomeration of Berlin. The distance to the Berlin city centre is , while the distance to Potsdam is . The Teltow Canal links th ...

Geography and geology

Boundary

The Teltow is not a unified region, either from a historical or a landscape perspective. The present-day term is defined by an

ice age An ice age is a long period of reduction in the temperature of Earth's surface and atmosphere, resulting in the presence or expansion of continental and polar ice sheets and alpine glaciers. Earth's climate alternates between ice ages and gre ...

that consists mainly of ground moraine elements. Its natural northern border is defined by the range of the Tempelhofer Berge, among them the

Kreuzberg Kreuzberg () is a district of Berlin, Germany. It is part of the Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg borough located south of Mitte. During the Cold War era, it was one of the poorest areas of West Berlin, but since German reunification in 1990 it h ...

rising to , along the southern bank of the

Spree Spree may refer to: Geography * Spree (river), river in Germany Film and television * '' The Spree'', a 1998 American television film directed by Tommy Lee Wallace * ''Spree'' (film), a 2020 American film starring Joe Keery * "Spree" (''Numbers ...

. To the east the borders are formed by the rivers Dahme, as well by the

Havel The Havel () is a river in northeastern Germany, flowing through the states of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Brandenburg, Berlin and Saxony-Anhalt. It is a right tributary of the Elbe and long. However, the direct distance from its source to its mo ...

and

Nuthe The Nuthe is a river in Brandenburg, Germany, left tributary of the Havel. Its total length is . The Nuthe originates in the Fläming region, near Niedergörsdorf. It flows north through Jüterbog, Luckenwalde, Trebbin and Saarmund. The Nuth ...

to the west. To the southwest, the countryside around the

Pfefferfließ Pfefferfließ is a river of Brandenburg, Germany. It flows into the Nieplitz near Körzin. See also *List of rivers of Brandenburg A list of rivers of Brandenburg, Germany: A * Alte Oder * Alte Schlaube B * Bäke *Berste * Black Elster * ...

is also counted as part of the Teltow, although it has no clear boundaries. The regional border in the south is unclear, because the ground moraines here were often eroded by ''

urstromtal An ''urstromtal'' (plural: ''Urstromtäler'') is a type of broad glacial valley, for example, in northern Central Europe, that appeared during the ice ages, or individual glacial periods of an ice age, at the edge of the Scandinavian ice sheet and ...

'' processes. For example, there are many small island plateaux. The boundary of the cultural landscape is general seen as the Baruth Urstromtal. Further south is the heathland of the Fläming. The Havel river separates the Teltow from the Nauen Plateau to the northwest. The Nuthe-

Nieplitz Nieplitz is a river of Brandenburg, Germany. It flows into the Nuthe near Gröben. See also *List of rivers of Brandenburg A list of rivers of Brandenburg, Germany: A * Alte Oder * Alte Schlaube B * Bäke *Berste * Black Elster * Briese * ...

Lowland, an ''urstromtal'' feature, separates it from the

sander A sander is a power tool used to smooth surfaces by abrasion with sandpaper. Sanders have a means to attach the sandpaper and a mechanism to move it rapidly contained within a housing with means to hand-hold it or fix it to a workbench. Woodw ...

plateau of the

Zauche Utrata (german: Zauche) is a village in the administrative district of Gmina Izbicko, within Strzelce County, Opole Voivodeship, in south-western Poland. It lies approximately north-east of Izbicko Izbicko (German: Stubendorf) is a village i ...

in the southwest and the

Berlin Urstromtal Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitue ...

forms the boundary with the Barnim Plateau in the northeast. It is, however, disputed whether the

Müggelberge The Müggelberge (also formerly called the ''Müggelsberge''; en, Muggle Mountains) are a wooded line of hills with heights up to Catrin Gottschalk, Vermessungsamt Treptow-Köpenick: ' In: Bezirksamt Treptow-Köpenick von Berlin (publ.): ''Rathau ...

hills, which are up to above sea level (NN), in southeast Berlin are part of the Teltow. From a geological standpoint they certainly are, because the hills have a similar development history. However, these upland remnants are completely isolated within the Berlin Urstromtal. If the River Dahme is taken as the eastern boundary of the Teltow the Müggelberge are neither part of the Teltow geologically nor from a cultural landscape perspective.

Geology, geomorphology and soils

Bedrock

One geological feature is the 80 metre-high Sperenberg hill on the northern rim of the Baruth Urstromtal. Uniquely for Brandenburg, the hill is made of

gypsum Gypsum is a soft sulfate mineral composed of calcium sulfate dihydrate, with the chemical formula . It is widely mined and is used as a fertilizer and as the main constituent in many forms of plaster, blackboard or sidewalk chalk, and drywa ...

. The rising column of

Zechstein The Zechstein (German either from ''mine stone'' or ''tough stone'') is a unit of sedimentary rock layers of Middle to Late Permian (Guadalupian to Lopingian) age located in the European Permian Basin which stretches from the east coast of Englan ...

-age

salt Salt is a mineral composed primarily of sodium chloride (NaCl), a chemical compound belonging to the larger class of salts; salt in the form of a natural crystalline mineral is known as rock salt or halite. Salt is present in vast quant ...

has pushed through all the more recent deposits here to form a

salt dome A salt dome is a type of structural dome formed when salt (or other evaporite minerals) intrudes into overlying rocks in a process known as diapirism. Salt domes can have unique surface and subsurface structures, and they can be discovered usi ...

. Because all the readily soluble salts have been leached out, only a solution residue has been left on the surface of the gypsum. Rock salt is only found at a depth of 45 m (about 0 metres above NN). The gypsum hill is also of historic scientific interest, because it was here, in 1867, that the first borehole in the world to reach a depth of 1,000 metres was drilled. The

geothermal gradient Geothermal gradient is the rate of temperature change with respect to increasing depth in Earth's interior. As a general rule, the crust temperature rises with depth due to the heat flow from the much hotter mantle; away from tectonic plate bo ...

was found to be about 3 K/100 metres; this was also a first. Sperenberg gypsum was mined from the

Middle Ages In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire ...

to 1957 in several quarries. Other salt domes, which do not quite reach the surface, occur under Mittenwalde and the Blankensee lake. For the geological structure of the Teltow, they are of secondary significance, however.

Saale glaciation

While the deeply buried sediments of the Elster Ice Age have virtually no impact on the current appearance of the Teltow, the subsurface, sandy, gravelly sediments of the so-called Berlin Elbe course occur over a wide area. These deposits formed between the Elster and Saalian ice advances, when 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 Re ...

flowed northwards from the location of present-day

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 fi ...

and crossed the area of the Fläming which did not yet exist. These sediments are of great economic importance, both as

groundwater Groundwater is the water present beneath Earth's surface in rock and Pore space in soil, soil pore spaces and in the fractures of stratum, rock formations. About 30 percent of all readily available freshwater in the world is groundwater. A unit ...

conduits and for the building materials industry. But they only outcrop at a small sand pit at Lindenberg near Jühnsdorf. The old Elbe strata are overlain by the very thick (40 metres or more) sediments of the

Saale ice age 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 (called the Wolstonian Stage in Britain), covers the mi ...

. These are usually the depositions of

proglacial lake In geology, a proglacial lake is a lake formed either by the damming action of a moraine during the retreat of a melting glacier, a glacial ice dam, or by meltwater trapped against an ice sheet due to isostatic depression of the crust around th ...

s or

glacial till image:Geschiebemergel.JPG, Closeup of glacial till. Note that the larger grains (pebbles and gravel) in the till are completely surrounded by the matrix of finer material (silt and sand), and this characteristic, known as ''matrix support'', is d ...

. At several points they even break through the Weichselian deposits and are immediately on, or at least very close to, the earth's surface (for example, in Glienick near

Zossen Zossen (; hsb, Sosny) is a German town in the district of Teltow-Fläming in Brandenburg, about south of Berlin, and next to the Bundesstraße 96, B96 highway. Zossen consists of several smaller municipalities, which were grouped together in 200 ...

). Because the Saale ice shoved the underlying sediments strongly,

Tertiary Tertiary ( ) is a widely used but obsolete term for the geologic period from 66 million to 2.6 million years ago. The period began with the demise of the non-avian dinosaurs in the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event, at the start ...

deposits are found at the surface in places. For example, in Schenkendorf near Königs-Wusterhausen in the second half of the 19th and the first half of the 20th century,

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 extracted.

Weichsel glaciation and post-glacial development

Today's Teltow plateau in Brandenburg-Berlin was formed around 20,000 years ago during the Brandenburg stage of

Weichsel glaciation Weichsel may refer to: * Vistula river (Weichsel in German) * Weichselian glaciation * Peter Weichsel Peter M. Weichsel (born 1943) is an American professional bridge player from Encinitas, California. College and war years Early Weichsel s ...

. The Weichsel

ice sheet In glaciology, an ice sheet, also known as a continental glacier, is a mass of glacial ice that covers surrounding terrain and is greater than . The only current ice sheets are in Antarctica and Greenland; during the Last Glacial Period at La ...

pushed southwards right over the Teltow before reaching the northern edge of the Baruth Urstromtal, the limit of its expansion to the south.

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 ...

s can be found there, for example, around Dobbrikow in Luckenwalde (Weinberg) and near Sperenberg. However, the line of terminal moraines is very patchy and is traces out an

ice front A glacier terminus, toe, or snout, is the end of a glacier at any given point in time. Although glaciers seem motionless to the observer, in reality glaciers are in endless motion and the glacier terminus is always either advancing or retreating ...

. To the north are ground moraines that have been deposited over a large area. Only south of

Ludwigsfelde Ludwigsfelde is a town in the north of the district Teltow-Fläming in Brandenburg. Geography Location The town is located south of Berlin in the district Teltow-Fläming on the plateau of Teltow. In earlier times, it was part of the district ...

, does the contiguous ground moraine plateau of the Teltow begin.

Literature

* Theodor Fontane: ''Wanderungen durch die Mark Brandenburg.'' Teil 4. Spreeland. Blankensee. Ullstein, Frankfurt am Main/Berlin, Ausgabe 1998, . Zitat Seite 274. * N. Hermsdorf: ''Zur quartären Schichtenfolge des Teltow-Plateaus.'' In: Brandenburgische Geowissenschaftliche Beiträge, 1, S. 27–37, Kleinmachnow 1995. * Herbert Lehmann: ''Das Bäketal in vorgeschichtlicher Zeit.'' Verwaltungsbezirk Berlin-Steglitz (Hrsg.) 1953. (Broschüre) * L. Lippstreu, N. Hermsdorf, A. Sonntag: ''Geologische Übersichtskarte des Landes Brandenburg 1:300.000 – Erläuterungen.'' Potsdam 1997, . * Adolf Hannemann: ''Der Kreis Teltow, seine Geschichte, seine Verwaltung, seine Entwicklung und seine Einrichtungen.'' Berlin 1931. * Carsten Rasmus, Bettina Rasmus: ''Berliner Umland Süd''. KlaRas-Verlag, Berlin 2002, . * Max Philipp: ''Steglitz in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart.'' Kulturbuch Verlag, Berlin 1968. * Gerhard Schlimpert: ''Brandenburgisches Namenbuch, Teil 3, Die Ortsnamen des Teltow.'' Hermann Böhlaus Nachf., Weimar, 1972. Zitat S. 187. * Wilhelm Spatz: ''Aus der Vergangenheit des Kreises Teltow.'' In: ''Groß Berliner Kalender, Illustriertes Jahrbuch 1913.'' Hrsg. Ernst Friedel. Verlag von Karl Siegismund Königlich Sächsischer Hofbuchhändler, Berlin 1913. Zitat S. 212f. * Werner Stackebrandt und Volker Manhenke (Hrsg.): ''Atlas zur Geologie von Brandenburg''. Landesamt für Geowissenschaften und Rohstoffe Brandenburg (heute Landesamt für Bergbau, Geologie und Rohstoffe Brandenburg, LBGR) 2002, 2. Aufl., 142 S., 43 Karten, . * Lutz Partenheimer: ''Albrecht der Bär.'' 2. Aufl. Böhlau Verlag, Köln 2003 . {{Coord, 52.3666667, N, 13.3333333, E, type:landmark_region:DE-BE/DE-BB, format=dms, display=title Regions of Brandenburg Geography of Berlin