Oderbruch

The Prussian king Frederick the Great initiated the drainage of the Oderbruch in order to bring this large tract of marshland under cultivation.

The region experienced two months of heavy fighting which devastated the area at the close of World War II when Marshal Georgy Zhukov led the 1st Belorussian Front through the Oderbruch on the way to Berlin.

Until the 18th century the Oder meandered in several arms through this low-lying area, much of which flooded several times each year, a process which regularly altered the course and importance of the various channels.

[1] In 1895 two chain pumps were constructed at different locations to drain the area northeast of Wriezen and facilitate agricultural use of the lower Oderbruch west of the Neuhagener Insel.

Within a short time huge amounts of water were dammed up and flooded the Oder dike at two locations north of Reitwein.

Even more critical is beaver behavior at the Oder dikes if the grass cover is destroyed, allowing deep and destabilizing holes to arise.

The procedure was to dig a drainage ditch between the two village streets, using the excavated earth to raise the building sites on which homes for the new settlers were erected.

The Red Army crossed the Oder River at Kienitz (Now part of Letschin) and established a 300 square kilometer bridgehead before commencing the Battle of the Seelow Heights at the western border of the Oderbruch.

Innumerable fields were destroyed and villages reduced to rubble, putting an end to the livelihood of large parts of the population.

The Oderbruch is still plagued with the legacy of the war in the form of hazardous military waste which becomes ever more dangerous as the vast amounts of remaining buried bombs, grenades, rockets and infantry shells continue to corrode.