Düben Heath

It is bounded in the west by the town of Dessau, in the north by the Elbe valley (Wittenberg, Pretzsch), in the southeast by Torgau, in the south by Eilenburg and the course of the Mulde through Bad Düben and Bitterfeld.

The Düben Heath is a terminal moraine landscape formed during the Saale glaciation (Plateau of Gräfenhainichen-Schmiedeberg) with predominantly sandy soils.

In the western part around Gräfenhainichen and Bitterfeld, lignite was extracted until the end of the 1980s in open pits; as a result large areas of the natural woodland landscape were destroyed.

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 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.