Drawehn

In the German federal system of natural geographic regions, the Drawehn forms the eastern end of the Lüneburg Heath (D28), the Ostheide, bordering the neighbouring area of Wendland and Altmark (D29).

Sources from the 14th to the 16th century counted the entire upper and lower geest west of the Jeetze plain and east of the Uelzen-Bevensen Bowl as well as the Dahlenburg Basin as the Drawehn.

In this sense the term is defined as the main ridge of the East Hanoverian End Moraine including its foothills as well as the flatter eastern slopes to the fluviatile Lüchow plain.

The glacier of the most recent, Weichselian glaciation only reached the northeastern edge of the present Elbe valley depression, so that the existing terminal moraines beyond that point there were only affected periglacially, for example in the shape of solifluction over the frozen ground, by meltwater erosion and sediments or through wind-blown deposits of sand.

It is therefore geomorphologically younger than the geest in western and central Lower Saxony, but clearly older than the young moraine landscapes in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and Ostholstein (= Baltic Uplands).