The Spreewald

The Landscape

About 100 kilometres from the German capital city Berlin, the Spreewald region stretches over a total area of more than three thousand (3,173) square kilometres, split into the Lower and Upper Spreewald. In its core, 75 km long and 15 km wide, is the area designated by UNESCO in 1991 as the Spreewald biosphere nature reserve.

This landscape of lowland and water meadows, unique in Central Europe, developed around 20,000 years ago in the Ice Age. The landscape was named after the Spree, a river with a 970 km long network of waterways winding through extensive meadows, forests and scattered settlements.

Several thousands of animal and plant species, many of them very rare and on the list of endangered species, can be found in the Spreewald. Hundreds of butterfly species, numerous dragonflies, mussels, snails and slugs, batrachians, fish, mammals, and birds have their home here. For example, the black and white stork, crane, white-tailed eagle, otter, hoopoe, or the curlew all live in the various biotopes.

The flora of the Spreewald displays a similar variety. The banks of the small rivers are shadowed by slender alders, mighty poplars and oak-trees, creating a romantic leafy canopy above the streams. Various herbs such as Pfeilkraut, Wasserstern as well as water lilies are part of the rich aquatic plant world.

The development of the Spreewald as a cultivated landscape is closely connected to the people who have utilized and developed it for centuries. The very intense cultivation of large areas has unfortunately strongly affected the balance of nature. However efforts have been made over the last few years to repair the damage. So the Spreewald has been divided into different protected zones, whose core is kept untouched by humans. A number of individual measures help to maintain the natural habitats of plants and animals, but also ensure that other areas of the Spreewald are still available for economic use.

The Legend of the Spreewald's Origin

One legend tells that the Spreewald was formed as follows: The devil was ploughing fields in the region. He ploughed with two big black oxen, roaring and shouting terribly. The ploughing was hard and heavy going and the oxen were making a very slow job of it. So the devil took his hat and threw it, cursing, at the oxen. They got frightened, ran off and leapt criss-cross in all directions, still pulling the plough behind them. The deep furrows left by the plough caused many small streams to form where before there was one straight river bed.