Zeischa () is an Ortsteil of the spa town of Bad Liebenwerda in the district of Elbe-Elster in southern Brandenburg. The village is located about three kilometres from the town centre in the Lower Lusatian Heath Nature Park on the banks of the Black Elster River.
According to tradition, Harigsburg Castle, in the vicinity of Zeischa, which was first documented in 1391, was once a Slavic knight's stronghold that protected the crossing of the Black Elster River. Since immemorial, the inhabitants have lived from agriculture, cattle breeding and fishing. Towards the end of the 19th century, the first forest tree nurseries were established, and their fields can still be seen in the Elster valley. Around the same time, gravel extraction began north of the village, creating an 80-hectare dredging pond, part of which has been used as a recreational area since the 1960s.
Zeischa, which belonged to the before its incorporation in 1993, currently has 472 inhabitants.
The former village school, constructed in 1904, and the grave of Liebenwerda mayor Elias Borßdorff, who was killed by Swedish mercenaries near Zeischa during the Thirty Years' War, are designated as monuments of the state of Brandenburg.
Geography
Geography and natural space
Zeischa, in the Elbe-Elster region, is a district of the spa town of Bad Liebenwerda in southern Brandenburg. The village lies immediately to the east of the town and extends from there to the . It lies to the right of the Black Elster at the mouth of the Kleine Röder in the Breslau-Magdeburg glacial valley, which reaches its narrowest point about ten kilometres to the east in the seven-kilometre-wide lowlands and then swings to the north-west. The Hohenleipisch-Plessa terminal moraine rises to the north-east of the village. The landforms of this area were formed between 230,000 and 130,000 years ago during the Saale glaciation. In the south-facing outwash of the Hohenleipisch-Plessa terminal moraine, Saale glacial sands, gravel sands and gravels are found, which are characterised by their purity and high homogeneity. They have been mined industrially in Zeischa since the end of the 19th century. The resulting gravel pit, located to the north of Zeischa, now covers an area of about 80 hectares.
Parts of the village are included in the 6011-hectare Elsteraue , which is divided into three ecological areas. The Elsteraue II sub-area is located in the region of Zeischa. One of the tasks of the landscape conservation area is "to preserve the area because of its special importance for natural recreation in the area of the spa town of Bad Liebenwerda". Zeischa is also surrounded by the Lower Lusatian Heath Nature Park, which covers an area of 484 square kilometres in the Elbe-Elster and Oberspreewald-Lausitz districts. Its centrepiece, the , with one of the largest contiguous sessile oak forests in Central Europe, lies north-east of the in the former Liebenwerda Heath.
Climate Zeischa is situated in the so-called Black Elster area of the inland climate, although there is a transition to the continental climate. The regional climatic elements are not very pronounced and are essentially determined by the peculiarities of the east-west oriented relief of the Breslau-Magdeburg glacial valley and the mountain ranges of the terminal moraines bordering it to the north and south.
The month with the least precipitation is February and the month with the most precipitation is July. The average annual air temperature at the Doberlug-Kirchhain weather station, located 20 kilometres to the north, is 8.5 °C. The annual variation between the coldest month of January and the warmest month of July is 18.4 °C.
History
Origin and foundation of the village Zeischa, whose round hamlet form of the old village centre with the open square is still recognisable today, was probably founded in the course of the medieval German land expansion. The village was first settled by Slavic Sorbs. From the earliest times, the inhabitants of the village have been engaged in agriculture, animal husbandry and fishing.
The so-called Harigsburg castle, which secured the river crossing, was once located close to today's Elster bridge. According to tradition, around the year 1000, it was a protective fortress of the Slavic knighthood under the knight Aribo. In the chronicle of the town of Liebenwerda published in 1837, the author Carl von Lichtenberg described a feud from the years between 1058 and 1072. In the course of the conflict that broke out between the and the unspecified Heyder knights over the election of the abbot of the Dobrilugk Abbey, the village of (a deserted area between and ), the outpost and Harigsburg Castle are said to have been destroyed. The defeated Heyder knights were ultimately punished and deprived of their possessions. In addition, the captured knight Aribo was sentenced to starvation.
Since the Cistercian abbey of Dobrilugk, among others, was only founded between 1165 and 1184 and other dates in the work were later disproved, Lichtenberg's information mentioned without clear sources is considered uncertain from today's perspective.
Veste Harig was first mentioned in documents in 1235. In that year, Margrave Henry of Meissen enfeoffed the honey master Ulrich von Rummelshain with the "Land an der Premnitz", an area that included the villages of Thalberg and Knissen as well as the Veste Harig on the Black Elster. However, there is still no tangible proof of the existence of the fortress. The Liebenwerda local historian surmised in the Local History Calendar of Liebenwerda published in 1955 that Harigsburg Castle was subsequently rebuilt. However, it is not known when it actually disappeared, as it was never mentioned again. It was only in June 2011 that two local researchers were able to identify the exact location using historical ordnance survey maps and aerial photographs, where they found 700-year-old shards of hard-fired grey ware, thus providing archaeological evidence of the castle.
First documented mention and development of the place name The village was first mentioned in documents in 1391 concerning the payment of levies to the Liebenwerda town church and castle chapel. In the document, the village is mentioned with the name Czscheisaw. The village subsequently appeared under various place names. Around 1422, Zeischa was also mentioned as Cziso, which is similar to the modern Polish word Cisza and means "calm" or "quiet" in English.
Other spellings of the place name were: 1457 Cziszaw, Czysow, 1460 Zcysow, 1489 Cscheyscha, 1490 Tscheischa, 1500 Zcscheissow, 1504 Zschopsau, 1529 Czischa, 1550 Zeischa, Zceyschaw, 1555 Zscheischaw, Tschissa, 1608 Zeise, Zscheischa, Zeischa and 1752 Zscheischa.
The village was part of the Saxon Electoral Office of . The inhabitants had to go to the in the neighbouring village of to the north, to which Zeischa, Dobra itself, Liebenwerda (except for the castle district), Maasdorf (Bad Liebenwerda) and belonged.
From the Thirty Years' War to the Wars of Liberation Like many neighbouring villages, Zeischa was affected by the Thirty Years' War. As early as 1612, however, a fire destroyed large parts of the village when five farmsteads burned down. One event in the war that followed, which brought much misery and plundering to the entire region by passing troops, occurred on 26 May 1634 and is still remembered today: on that day, the mayor of Liebenwerda, Elias Borßdorff, was dragged to his death by horses near the village by Swedish troops after he refused to hand over the town treasury and 25,000 thalers in contributions, as well as other demands. Almost three years later (1637), troops under the Swedish general Johan Banér camped in Torgau, some thirty kilometres to the west, from January until early summer. They roamed the neighbouring Elbe-Elster region, plundering and burning villages. Zeischa was not spared during this period. By 1659, due to the war, only five of the original fourteen families were left.
During the Coalition Wars in the spring of 1813, the area between Haidchensberg in Liebenwerda and Zeischa was besieged by Prussian troops. The troops marched as far as , about a kilometre to the south, to keep Napoleon's soldiers at bay. The autumn also saw huge French and Prussian troops movements in the run-up to the Battle of Leipzig. At the end of September 1813, the corps of the Prussian generals Dobschütz and Tauentzien, with 30,000 men, took up quarters in Liebenwerda for ten days.
From the Congress of Vienna to land reform Following the provisions of the Congress of Vienna in 1815, the Kingdom of Saxony, to which Zeischa belonged, had to cede large parts of its territory, which meant that the town now belonged to the in the Prussian province of Saxony. During the subsequent administrative reorganisation in 1816, the was created, into which a large part of the Mühlberg office, the and parts of the were absorbed.
Like almost all villages located on the Black Elster, Zeischa was also threatened by constantly recurring floods from the river, which flows through the lowlands with numerous tributaries. During the Seven Years' War in 1763, it was reported that eleven farmers in Zeischa tried in vain to wring yields from their fields because the constant flooding of the Black Elster was spoiling the crops. From the 16th century onwards, the Saxon government therefore tried a wide variety of measures to control these forces of nature and contain their effects. After the Prussian provincial government had been developing plans for regulation since 1817, the large-scale Elster regulation works from Zeischa in the direction of Würdenhain finally began in 1852. By 1863, the river had been given its current bed and diked over a length of around ninety kilometres, at times employing up to 1,200 workers. This made it one of the most narrowed rivers in Central Europe.
With the regulation of the Black Elster, most of the streams were filled in and the meadows close to the river could gradually be cultivated. After the first forest nursery was founded in neighbouring Haida in 1875, tree nurseries soon became established in Zeischa. In 1883, the Zeischa tree nursery owner Gottfried Reichenbach began cultivating woody plants. He was followed by the brothers Eduard and August Andrack in 1888. The cultivation areas of the Zeischa tree nurseries stretch through the lowlands close to the Zeischa village centre to the present day. At the same time, the incipient industrialisation of the Zeischa area had an increasing impact on the village. In June 1874, the Upper Lusatian railway from Kohlfurt via Biehla to Falkenberg/Elster (Węgliniec-Roßlau railway line) was handed over. Zeischa also got its own station at this time.
Towards the end of the 19th century, the village gradually developed another characteristic tradition. In 1888, Carl Weiland, a businessman and manufacturer from Liebenwerda, began quarrying gravel to the north-east of Zeischa, creating the quarry pond that now characterises the landscape. Initially, Weiland supplied mainly to the road building industry, but increasing railway construction also brought growing sales. A hard stone factory was built in the eastern corridor. The Zeischa gravel proved to be a very good concrete gravel, even without extensive processing. The company was given a siding to the neighbouring railway line, which also used areas in the Haida corridor and was occasionally served by the gravel works there. Around 1900, the company was divided into two lines: the so-called Liebenwerda gravel line with the Zeischa gravel pit on the one hand, and the Maasdorf estate line with the Schwarzkollm and Kamenz quarries on the other.
The Maasdorf manor was finally divided up in 1945 as part of the land reform, and the Zeischa family estate also became public property. It could only be reacquired by the heirs after German reunification.
GDR