Heidmark

[1] Today it refers to the region between Fallingbostel, Soltau and Bergen which, since the creation of the military training area in 1935–1936 has been largely closed to the public.

The folk in the area around the Sieben Steinhäuser and the Falkenberg suffered much during the Thirty Years War, especially in those villages that lay on the routes taken by the Army.

The life of its farmers was for a long time dependent on sheep farming, but this faded into the background during the first half of the 19th century; the whole landscape changed and fields were cultivated on the heathland with its loamy, sandy soils.

The herds of moorland sheep, the Heidschnucke, disappeared as the tracts of heathland were afforested and made way for plantations of beech, oak and spruce, resulting in the emergence of mixed woods.

When the 'relocation' took place from 1935 to 1938 in order to make way for a military training area for the Wehrmacht, entire villages disappeared forever from the map.

In order to ensure their economic survival, early on they had to acquire pastureland in the "Krelinger Bruch" far from their farmsteads, as can be seen from the register of wills of 1667.

Tradition has it that once Goding (thingsteads or Gogerichte) and Holting (forest courts or Holzgerichte) were convened in Dorfmark, Fallingbostel, Ostenholz and at the Heidhof.

Over centuries it has been reported that the owner of the Jacobshof in Ahlften, Johann Hinrich Apenriep, who came from Castens Hof in Meimen, had collected the executioner, Holdorf, from Lüneburg and had driven him to Fallingbostel.

The inhabitants of the Heidmark went through the Reformation in the reign of Duke Ernest the Confessor who had accepted Lutheran teaching early on.