Parforceheide

The Parforceheide between the south of Berlin and the east of Potsdam is one of the last large contiguous forest areas in the Berlin-Brandenburg metropolitan region.

The highway cuts through the forest, which is connected by two pedestrian bridges over the roadway; a new rest area built in 2004 on the A 115 is called Parforceheide.

Worth mentioning is the almost 22-hectare Wüste Mark farmland, which lies in the middle of the Parforceheide and was farmed as an exclave by a Berlin farmer from Zehlendorf until 1988.

[2] The Parforceheide is geologically part of the Berlin-Brandenburg landscape of Teltow, whose name goes back to the original term "Telte" for the Bäke river.

The special feature of the Parforceheide is that the boulder clay typical of ground moraines is largely absent and therefore older deposits, meltwater sands from the advance phase of the inland ice, are present on the surface.

With its sparse stand of pine trees, the forest offered ideal conditions for King Frederick William I's need to cut the wide tracks through the wood required for par force hunting.

This form of hunting requires paths that are as flat and clear as possible in a forest with as little undergrowth as possible, as the riders have to follow the packs of hounds that chase the game to exhaustion.

A central square was created around seven kilometers from the royal city palace, from which 16 dead-straight double tracks (racks) were cut into the forest in a star shape - with names such as Priestergestell, Breite Gestell, Turmgestell or Weg nach Kohlhasenbrück.

[4] The writer Theodor Fontane hiked through the Parforceheide via the Stern to Güterfelde in 1869: From Kohlhasenbrück we take a southerly direction, meandering along footpaths through a well-kept copse and then enter a clearing from which we can see the racks radiating through the forest.

According to Fontane, the house was a Dutch building, square in red brick, with a gable in the front, a hunting horn above the door and an etched star in the center window.

Today, Stern and Jagdschloss are located directly next to the 115 freeway and are shielded from the high volume of the six-lane arterial road by visual and noise barriers.

In addition to the ecological and recreational aspects, which were already important at the time, the background to the purchases was to secure the water supply for the rapidly growing population in the greater Berlin area and to curb rampant land speculation.

The pressure of the growing towns led to the establishment of pitch distilleries such as Albrecht's tar kiln, and the wood from the forest was used extensively for building houses and fires.

With their equally low demands on nutrient and water supply, oaks, beeches and birches in particular complement the pine forest.

The shallow ice age lake is located to the east on the edge of the forest directly in front of the village of Güterfelde and covers an area of just under 5 hectares.

Known as the "Pearl of Parforceheide" due to its location in the forest and its bathing beach, the Haussee was threatened with silting up after the nearby extensive sewage fields were abandoned at the end of the 1980s.

It runs under the highway to Drewitz (rarely marked footpath on the right and left) into the individually designed Kirchsteigfeld district, which was built by an international ensemble of architects after reunification.

According to district forester Bernd Krause, however, extensive areas of heather have developed in recent years and there has also been a marked return of blueberry.

The deciduous tree, which can grow up to six meters high, likes the acidic loam-clay soils of the Teltow, whose dry and nutrient-poor sandy areas are also suitable for undemanding grasses such as sheep's fescue and lichens.

Occasionally there are also Berlin imports from the Grunewald: in February 2005, a pack of black leopards swam through the nearby Griebnitzsee and devastated 1,300 m2 of meadow next to the forest, much to the annoyance of the Brandenburgers.

Birds include the goshawk, sparrowhawk and especially the black woodpecker, reptiles are represented by the slow worm, amphibians in large numbers by the common toad, whose population is developing well in the many small ponds.

In the group of insects, the number of nests of the largest European wasp, the hornet, is increasing significantly, while the populations of the red wood ant continue to decline in the Parforce Heath.

The imposing longhorn beetle, whose backward-curved antennae can reach a length of ten centimetres in males, is now strictly protected under the EU Habitats Directive.

In 1994, Berlin and Brandenburg introduced a new cross-state forestry framework plan (FRP) with the aim of coordinating and sustainably securing the utilization, protection and recreational functions of the forest.

The seven-member voluntary advisory board, which included two very committed citizens from Kleinmachnow and Güterfelde who were concerned about the Parforceheide and the Bäketal, resigned as a result.

[14] In 2014, the application for a special helicopter landing pad by a Schönefeld furniture company in the Parforceheide on the former military training area near Güterfelde on the Haussee was announced and publicly criticized.