A Rundling is a form of circular village, now found only in Northern Germany , typical of settlements in the Germanic - Slav contact zone in the Early Medieval period.
93-510: The Rundling was a relatively common village form created by German law , but housing Slav farmers. It usually comprises a central, circular village green owned in common with individually owned farmsteads radiating out around it like the spokes of a wheel. The best examples are now only in a small area of Lower Saxony in Germany near to the town of Lüchow . Nineteen of these villages were put forward as an ensemble for consideration as
186-617: A church to the village circle (even in the middle – why not?), they did not do so. There must have been a sense that it was not appropriate to do so, or there would be examples among the 200+ villages in Wendland, and there are not, even in the villages set on higher ground. Not only are there no churches, there are no schools or communal buildings, no shops and virtually no trade outlets. The villages are made up entirely of farm dwellings.{Wolfgang Meibeyer: Rundlinge und andere Dörfer im Wendland, Weddel, 2005, ISBN 3-9810610-0-4 } Although
279-469: A consensus has arisen in recent decades that they were founded in the 12th century , on land that had not been previously cultivated , probably because of its essentially low lying boggy nature , its tendency to be flooded and the relative poverty of its sandy soil . The current leading theory is that of Professor Dr Wolfgang Meibeyer, who believes that all the Rundlinge were developed at more or less
372-669: A duke, but remained independent. Their leaders met in the temple of Rethra . In 983, many Wend tribes participated in a great uprising against the Holy Roman Empire , which had previously established Christian missions, German colonies and German administrative institutions ( Marken such as Nordmark and Billungermark ) in pagan Wendish territories. The uprising was successful and the Wends delayed Germanisation for about two centuries. Wends and Danes had early and continuous contact including settlement, first and mainly through
465-711: A homogeneous people, but to various people, tribes or groups depending on where and when it was used. In the modern day, communities identifying as Wendish exist in Slovenia , Austria , Lusatia , the United States (such as the Texas Wends ), and Australia . In German-speaking Europe during the Middle Ages , the term "Wends" was interpreted as synonymous with "Slavs" and sporadically used in literature to refer to West Slavs and South Slavs living within
558-424: A new town regarded the original model as a Rechtsvorort , or roughly a legal sponsor of the newly chartered town. For instance, Magdeburg became the sponsor of towns using Magdeburg Rights, and its lay judges could rule in ambiguous legal cases in towns using such rights. Certain city rights became known under different names, although they originally came from the same source; the name of some city variants designates
651-430: A path to the local church or one to the local mill , and in later years these paths may have been widened to take vehicles, and may today form a route through the village. Although very many Rundlinge of today have retained their separateness, many have expanded during the last century and have modern houses added, typically in one direction away from the original round. This occasionally leads to an elongated village with
744-873: A possible World Heritage Site , but the decision in December 2023 [[Elbe-Jeetzel Zeitung 4.12.2023 See published article https://rundlingsverein.de/ ]] was negative and there are no plans for resubmitting. At the City Hall in Oslo on 11 June 2015 the Rundlings verein was awarded the Grand Prix for the European Union Prize for Cultural Heritage / Europa Nostra Award 2015. This was in recognition of 46 years of voluntary work in preserving these ancient settlements. Such villages were originally found across
837-502: A second home for a large number of West Berliners , who were anxious about their position, surrounded as they were on all sides by an unfriendly state. It was largely Berliners who invested in the old property of the Wendland, which was cheap and spacious. They rescued whole villages from certain ruin. At the same time the local population, reflecting post-war prosperity, was embracing modernization, and pulling down old hall houses to replace them with far less sympathetic modern housing, which
930-522: A single oak tree. Nothing else is load-bearing, although the half-timbered construction with infill does give some extra stability. The infill these days is likely to be brickwork , but was originally wattle and daub , covered with a lime mixture. The oldest house in Wendland of this construction is around 1611, but only about 10 are 17th century in origin, most of the others being 18th century. They are comparatively rare, as less than 80 remain in Wendland. The more recent form which became common throughout
1023-419: A strip of central Germany from Kiel to Bohemia (where they are occasionally referred to as a Rundling, Runddorf, Rundlingsdorf, Rundplatzdorf or Platzdorf ), often indicated by village names ending in -itz , -ow and -thin . Virtually all such Rundlinge are now only to be found in the small area of Wendland . There are no contemporary historical records of the founding of these circular villages, but
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#17327808645721116-487: A time of greater prosperity in Germany, and this was reflected in Wendland too with the arrival of some industry. A few large brick buildings typical of the time called the Gründerzeit were built in the modern style, and were often faced sideways to the village green, but these were the exceptions. Most farmers had only enough spare to renovate their houses, occasionally replacing the half-timbering with brick, or tiling
1209-1923: A tourist plan. The Rundlingsverein , which has long supported the preservation of these unique villages for posterity, put its weight behind the unsuccessful bid from the Samtgemeinde for UNESCO recognition. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikipedia_Rundling_List_of_93_villages19112021.pdf The 93 villages are as follows: Banzau, Bausen*, Beesem, Belau, Belitz, Beseland, Beutow, Bischof, Breese im Bruche, Breustian, Bückau, Bussau*, Dambeck, Diahren*, Dolgow*, Dünsche, Gistenbeck, Gollau, Göttien, Grabau, Granstedt*, Groß Gaddau, Groß Sachau, Großwitzeetze, Gühlitz*, Guhreitzen, Gümse, Güstritz*, Jabel*, Jameln, Jeetzel, Jiggel, Karmitz, Karwitz, Klautze, Klein Breese, Klein Heide, Klein Witzeetze, Klennow*, Köhlen*, Kremlin*, Kriwitz, Krummasel, Kukate, Künsche, Küsten, Lensian*, Loge, Lübeln*, Luckau, Lütenthien, Mammoißel*, Marleben, Marlin, Metzingen, Meuchefitz, Mützen, Nienbergen, Nienwedel, Pannecke, Penkefitz, Platenlaase, Predöhlsau, Prezier, Prießeck*, Püggen*, Puttball, Ranzau, Reddebeitz, Reetze, Rehbeck, Saaße, Saggrian, Salderatzen, Satemin*, Schlanze, Schmarsau (Dannenberg), Schmarsau (Lemgow), Schreyahn*, Seerau in der Lucie, Solkau, Spithal, Tarmitz, Thunpadel, Thurau, Tobringen, Tolstefanz, Trabuhn, Tramm, Vasenthien, Wöhningen, Zadrau, Zeetze. The 18 starred villages plus Ganse* formed part of Lower Saxony's bid for World Heritage status. Niedersachsen schlägt die Schöninger Speere und die Rundlinge für die Tentativliste zum UNESCO-Welterbe vor Council of Europe Culture and Cultural Heritage German town law The German town law ( German : Deutsches Stadtrecht ) or German municipal concerns ( Deutsches Städtewesen )
1302-749: A wide strip of land running from the Baltic Sea near Kiel and Lübeck down both sides of the Elbe river right down to the Czech Lands in the south. This corresponds to the Eastern Colonisation of Henry the Lion after 1147 and others in the so-called Wendenkreuzzug , or Wendish crusade , where the Pope had given his agreement to a northern crusade to conquer and convert the pagan Slavs, at
1395-471: Is "around" (o) + "the field" (pole). The village green in the middle was (and sometimes still is) called the " maydan ". There does not appear to be a connection between opole and rundlinge, although the Germanised population still often bears surnames such as Kophal ( Polish : Kowal , "smith"), Ribeck ( Polish : Rybak , "fisherman") and similar. They can also be found elsewhere, such as Byšičky in
1488-628: Is a local Polish variant of the Magdeburg rights, modelled after the town rights of Środa Śląska in Lower Silesia , granted in 1235 by Polish ruler Henry the Bearded of the Piast dynasty . The purpose of creating the Środa law was to conform the so-called German law to the interests of Polish authority. Major cities chartered with Środa law were Kalisz , Legnica and Radom . Resulting from
1581-476: Is a more difficult question to answer than one might think. Originally there were perhaps a thousand such villages created in the 12th and 13th centuries, perhaps 400 of which survived into the 19th century. In Hanoverian Wendland alone there are over 200 which were clearly still Rundlinge at the time of the Verkopplungskarten (a type of enclosure map, marking the ownership of land and property) in
1674-428: Is commoner in Wendland than almost anywhere else across Northern Germany (although even here there are only 40 surviving examples), and there are two Wendland villages, Prießeck and Püggen, where it is the commonest form. It does not appear to be a transition between the two and the four pillar-row models but a genuine attempt to get the best of two different models, an experiment which ultimately did not make it through to
1767-489: Is one of the reasons for future military campaigns against them by the Carolingians, especially Charles Martel and Charlemagne. While the Wends were arriving in so-called Germania Slavica as large homogeneous groups, they soon divided into a variety of small tribes, with large strips of woodland separating one tribal settlement area from another. Their tribal names were derived from local place names, sometimes adopting
1860-399: Is striking that most Rundlinge are situated on the 20 meter above sea-level line. Slavic settlers seem to have chosen this level so that they had access to both arable (in front of the village) and pasture land (behind the village). Access was from the higher Geest land, where there were through paths, and the villages originally were cul-de-sacs.The villages were fairly densely scattered across
1953-494: Is the division of village land into triangular "slices of cake" shapes, between wet pasture land and drier arable land, and the creation of exactly calculated strip farming on the arable land, to ensure absolute fairness of division between farmers, equal under the law. The illustration from the Heidelberger Sachsenspiegel (Cod. Pal.germ.164) of 1300, shows the relationship between the nobility (in green),
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#17327808645722046-544: Is today north-eastern Germany. This did not, however, affect the Wendish people in today's Saxony , where a relatively stable co-existence of German and Slavic inhabitants as well as close dynastic and diplomatic cooperation of Wendish and German nobility had been achieved. (See: Wiprecht of Groitzsch). In 1168, during the Northern Crusades , Denmark mounted a crusade led by Bishop Absalon and King Valdemar
2139-529: The Ben Nevis seeking greater liberty, in order to settle an area of central Texas, primarily Serbin . The Wends succeeded, expanding into Warda , Giddings , Austin, Houston, Fedor, Swiss Alp, Port Arthur, Mannheim, Copperas Cove, Vernon, Walburg, The Grove, Bishop, and the Rio Grande Valley. A strong emphasis on tradition, principles, and education is evident today in families descendant from
2232-715: The Reichsdeputationshauptschluss of 1803, almost all of the 51 reichsfrei cities of the Holy Roman Empire were mediatised by the territorial princes; the remaining imperial free cities of Frankfurt , Bremen , Hamburg , and Lübeck became sovereign city-states . The only remnants of medieval town rights (statutes) included in the Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch of 1 January 1900 were single articles concerning family and inheritance laws. The cities of Hamburg, Bremen, and Berlin are currently administered under Landesrechte , or laws of
2325-452: The Holy Roman Empire . The name has possibly survived in Finnic languages ( Finnish : Venäjä [ˈʋe̞.næ.jæ] , Estonian : Vene [ˈve.ne] , Karelian : Veneä ), denoting modern Russia . According to one theory, Germanic peoples first applied this name to the ancient Veneti . For the medieval Scandinavians , the term Wends ( Vender ) meant Slavs living near
2418-650: The Lusatian Sorbs in present-day Eastern Germany, with international diaspora. The term "Wends" derived from the Roman-era people called in Latin : Venetī , Venethī [ˈwe.ne.t̪ʰiː] or Venedī [ˈwe.ne.d̪iː] ; in ‹See Tfd› Greek : Οὐενέδαι , translit. Ouenédai [u.eˈne.ðe] . This people is mentioned by Pliny the Elder and Ptolemy as inhabiting
2511-532: The North German plain to Poland , where one form of farmhouse predominated. This was the area of the Low German Hall House ( Niederdeutsches Hallenhaus ), an all-in-one building of considerable size which housed not only the farmer and his family, but also most of his farmyard animals , his hay loft and his implements. Typically the hall house had the animals and the barn buildings at
2604-538: The Partitions of Poland , Magdeburg law continued to be used in western Imperial Russia until the 1830s. Wends Wends ( Old English : Winedas [ˈwi.ne.dɑs] ; Old Norse : Vindar ; German : Wenden [ˈvɛn.dn̩] , Winden [ˈvɪn.dn̩] ; Danish : Vendere ; Swedish : Vender ; Polish : Wendowie , Czech : Wendové ) is a historical name for Slavs who inhabited present-day northeast Germany. It refers not to
2697-569: The Rechtsvorort they became famous from, not necessarily that that specific style of rights originated from the Rechtsvorort . As territorial borders changed through the passage of time, changes to German city rights were inevitable. During the course of the 15th, 16th, and 17th centuries, the town laws of many places were modified with aspects of Roman law by legal experts. Ultimately, the older towns' laws, along with local autonomy and jurisdiction, gave way to landed territorial rulers. With
2790-618: The Rundling shape and the Rundling farmhouse architecture are two separate developments, with several hundred years between them, and which therefore need to be kept separate in our minds, it is the interplay between the two which makes the Wendland Rundlinge of today so attractive to the visitor. We have seen that the Rundling form seems to have been a planned form of division of property in newly colonized areas east of Germanic lands , and there are historically examples in
2883-754: The Wends , and it corresponds more or less with the current administrative boundaries of the district of Lüchow-Dannenberg . Two related Slavic ethnic groups were the Wenden of the Spreewald and the Lusatian Sorbs of Upper Lusatia ( Oberlausitz ), together making a group of about 60,000 who still are said to be able to speak Sorbian in the Spreewald, an area of Eastern Germany near the Polish border around
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2976-478: The Westphalian towns of Soest , Dortmund , Minden , and Münster . As Germans began settling eastward, the colonists modelled their town laws on the pre-existing 12th century laws of Cologne in the west, Lübeck in the north ( Lübeck law ), Magdeburg in the east ( Magdeburg rights ), and either Nuremberg or Vienna in the south. The granting of German city rights modelled after an established town to
3069-516: The federal states of Germany . Many towns granted German city rights had already existed for some time, but the granting of town law codified the legal status of the settlement. Many European localities date their foundation to their reception of a town charter, even though they had existed as a settlement beforehand. German town law was frequently applied during the Ostsiedlung of Central and Eastern Europe by German colonists beginning in
3162-448: The "opole"-toponymns still exist. This separate Slavic language remained more generally in use in the region of Lüchow until the 18th century, and there is a written chronicle and dictionary still in existence drawn up by Johann Parum Schultze of the village of Süthen, in around 1725, which marks the increasing loss of the old language. The area of its historical use is now often called Wendland after those Slavic peoples who were called
3255-404: The 13th century. As Germans began establishing towns throughout northern Europe as early as the 10th century, they often received town privileges granting them autonomy from local secular or religious rulers. Such privileges often included the right to self-governance, economic autonomy, criminal courts, and militia . Town laws were more or less entirely copied from neighboring towns, such as
3348-609: The 14th century. In the 15th century, many towns in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania were chartered with the Środa town law used in much of Poland, although this was done through the duplication of Polish administrative methods instead of German colonization. In the 16th century Muscovy granted or reaffirmed Magdeburg rights to various towns along the Dnieper acquired from the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth . After
3441-489: The 19th century is called in German Vierständerhaus which means that the roof construction is carried by four rows of pillars carrying beams. This means that the central barn area is narrower than for Zweiständerhäuser but the two single storey sides are larger. The overall building will also be larger, and are sometimes three stories high, or have two stories with much larger hay lofts and storage above
3534-684: The Baltic coast. In the 1st millennium AD, during the Slavic migrations which split the Slavs into Southern, Eastern and Western groups, some West Slavs moved into the areas between the Rivers Elbe and Oder - moving from east to west and from south to north. There they assimilated the remaining Germanic population that had not left the area in the Migration period . Their German neighbours adapted
3627-527: The Baltic shores (and, in turn, the Wends often raided the raiders). The Holy Roman Empire and its margraves tried to restore their marches. In 1068/69, a German expedition took and destroyed Rethra , one of the major pagan Wend temples. The Wendish religious centre shifted to Arkona thereafter. In 1124 and 1128, the Pomeranians and some Lutici were baptised. In 1147, the Wend crusade took place in what
3720-815: The Czech Republic. In present and formerly Slavic speaking countries in Central/East Europe many references to the opole can still be found, like the cities of Opole (formerly Oppeln) in Poland, Opolye in Russia, Opole Ter in Hungary or Apoldu du Jus in Romania, which is indicative of the Slavic origin of the concept, as German colonisation never reached the most eastern parts of the Slavic lands where
3813-606: The German-Roman Empire) explicitly recognised in its Art. 31 that the German-Roman Empire was a multi-national entity with "diverse nations distinct in customs, manner of life, and in language". For that it stipulated "the sons, or heirs and successors of the illustrious prince electors, ... since they are expected in all likelihood to have naturally acquired the German language, ... shall be instructed in
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3906-774: The Germanic tradition (e.g. Heveller from Havel , Rujanes from Rugians ). Settlements were secured by round burghs made of wood and clay, where either people could retreat in case of a raid from the neighbouring tribe or used as military strongholds or outposts. Some tribes unified into larger, duchy-like units. For example, the Obotrites evolved from the unification of the Holstein and Western Mecklenburg tribes led by mighty dukes known for their raids into German Saxony . The Lutici were an alliance of tribes living between Obotrites and Pomeranians. They did not unify under
3999-529: The Great against the Wends of Rugia in order to convert them to Christianity. The crusaders captured and destroyed Arkona , the Wendish temple-fortress, and tore down the statue of the Wendish god Svantevit . With the capitulation of the Rugian Wends, the last independent pagan Wends were defeated by the surrounding Christian feudal powers. From the 12th to the 14th centuries, Germanic settlers moved into
4092-674: The Kingdom of Hannover at this time. We know that the Government of Prussia had become alarmed at the numbers of fires caused by putting an open fire in the same building as the hay loft and a thatched roof, as well as the animals. They had therefore issued a decree in the early 18th century forbidding the building of traditional hall houses, and requiring farmers to separate out the functions of cooking and storage. This seems to have led to different solutions in Prussia from those traditional to
4185-535: The Middle Ages, the kings of Denmark and of Denmark–Norway used the titles King of the Wends (from 1362) and Goths (from the 12th century). The use of both titles was discontinued in 1973. The Wendish people co-existed with the German settlers for centuries and became gradually assimilated into the German-speaking culture. The Golden Bull of 1356 (one of the constitutional foundations of
4278-864: The Polabian Slav tribes (mentioned above) in the north and by others, such as the Sorbs and the Milceni , further south (see Sorbian March ). The Germans in the south used the term Winde instead of Wende and applied it, just as the Germans in the north, to Slavs they had contact with; e.g., the Polabians from Bavaria Slavica or the Slovenes (the names Windic March , Windisch Feistritz , Windischgraz , or Windisch Bleiberg near Ferlach still bear testimony to this historical denomination). The same term
4371-581: The Saxons. The Saxons paid tribute to the Merovingian Kingdom since Chlothar I (511-561). They had to pay 500 cows yearly and had the obligation to guard the sector of the Frankish border against the Wends. However, the Saxons broke their oath under Dagobert I which resulted in frequent raids of Wends into Frankish territory and spreading out over Thuringia and other territory. The Saxon duplicity
4464-425: The Slavs as a separate ethnic group with their own language, Wendish ( Wendisch ) or Polabian ( dravänopolabisch ), which is the language used for the majority of the Rundling names, and still to this day for certain unusual features of local rural architecture and land-use. In other parts of Europe, outside of Wendland, different terms might be in use. In Slavic languages the term was "opole". Opole etymology
4557-705: The Teutonic Order in Prussia and along the lower Vistula in Eastern Pomerania, and in the Duchy of Masovia . Other variants included Brandenburg, Litoměřice, and Olomouc law. Litoměřice law and codes based on that of Nuremberg , such as Old Prague and Cheb law, were introduced into Bohemia during the reign of King Wenceslaus I , while German colonists introduced Brünn (Brno) and Olmütz (Olomouc) law in Moravia . South German law, broadly referring to
4650-445: The Wendish lands in large numbers, transforming the area's culture from a Slavic to a Germanic one. Local dukes and monasteries invited settlers to repopulate farmlands devastated in the wars, as well as to cultivate new farmlands from the expansive woodlands and heavy soils, with the use of iron-based agricultural tools that had developed in Western Europe. Concurrently, a large number of new towns were created under German town law with
4743-431: The area to be colonized, with each one barely a kilometre from its neighbour. This means that there were very many, fairly small, settlements. In very very few cases have they been amalgamated into larger villages or subsumed as suburbs of towns. Even today this pattern has continued. Of the 324 named settlements in today's Lüchow-Dannenberg , over 200 are or were once Rundlinge , and virtually none have been swallowed up by
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#17327808645724836-410: The barn. There is a third form which is called a Dreiständerhaus , with three rows of pillars. This looks like a two pillar-row house on one side, with lower eaves, and a four pillar-row house with higher eaves on the other. It also looks lopsided because the barn door is no longer central under the roof apex. This hybrid form can be found across all the eras but was commoner during the 18th century. It
4929-401: The basis of Riga law in Riga , used for some towns in the lands of the Livonian Order in Livonia , Estonia , and Courland . Magdeburg law was popular around the March of Meissen and Upper Saxony and was the source of several variants, including Neumarkt law ( Środa Śląska ) in Poland, used extensively in central and southern Poland, and Kulm law (Chełmno law), used in the State of
5022-444: The cities to the north, which would have swallowed up the "primitive" Rundlinge and its "primitive" rural architecture over the centuries. It is less easy to see why Uelzen, Prignitz and Salzwedel should have so few existing Rundlinge , as they did have them as recently as the 1820–1850 series of enclosure maps, Verkoppelungskarten . Prignitz, Salzwedel and the Altmark were politically parts of Prussia, and Wendland and Uelzen parts of
5115-535: The closest South Danish islands of Møn , Lolland and Falster , all having place-names of Wendish origin . There were also trading and settlement outposts by Danish towns as important as Roskilde, when it was the capital: 'Vindeboder' (Wends' booths) is the name of a city neighbourhood there. Danes and Wends also fought wars due to piracy and crusading. After their successes in 983 the Wends came under increasing pressure from Germans, Danes and Poles . The Poles invaded Pomerania several times. The Danes often raided
5208-523: The codes of Nuremberg and Vienna , was used in Bavaria , Austria , and Slovenia , and was introduced into the Kingdom of Hungary during the rule of King Béla IV . Jihlava law was a variant used frequently by mining communities in Bohemia, Moravia, the mountains of Upper Hungary , and Transylvania . Other town laws were only suitable for or were modified to fit local conditions, such as Głubczyce , Görlitz , Goslar, Lüneburg, Lwówek Śląski , Nysa , Spiš, and Székesfehérvár laws. The Środa/Neumarkt law
5301-435: The course of the Ostsiedlung , which reached its peak in the 12th to 14th centuries, this land was settled by Germans and reorganised. Due to the process of assimilation following German settlement , many Slavs west of the Oder adopted the German culture and language . Only some rural communities which did not have a strong admixture with Germans and continued to use West Slavic languages were still termed Wends . With
5394-419: The early Christianisation , and even today it has no motorways, virtually no railways, very little industry, very little employment and a shrinking population. If it is known for anything today, it is known for its decades-long fight against the deposit of radioactive waste in Gorleben , a site chosen by the politicians of a generation ago precisely because so few people live there. From the 1880s onwards began
5487-430: The early 13th century. Because many areas were considered underpopulated or underdeveloped, local rulers offered urban privileges to peasants from German lands to induce them to immigrate eastward. Some towns which received a German town law charter were based on pre-existing settlements, while others were constructed anew by colonists. Many towns were formed in conjunction with the settlement of nearby rural communities, but
5580-582: The early parts of the 19th century. Many had already succumbed to catastrophic fires, and been fully or partially rebuilt, not always as Rundlinge . Modernization has led to the destruction of many of the older hall houses, and their replacement by modern housing, sometimes but not always affecting the circular structure of the villages. The Rundlingsverein analysed 210 villages in 2012–2014, and categorised 93 villages in Wendland as still recognizable as Rundlinge to an untrained eye, and of these about 30 are of sufficient interest to tourists to warrant developing
5673-400: The encroachment of towns, or have been amalgamated into larger villages, although since the reforms of 1972, most have lost their political separateness. Prior to 1972 each village had its own separate political status, which led to there being 230 entities, Gemeinden , in what was then and still is one of the most sparsely settled areas of modern Germany, East or West. The smallest of the 230
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#17327808645725766-499: The front facing the village green , whereas the farmer lived at the back facing his garden or smallholding . The design of the house put the main open fire in the middle at the back of the barn area, the smoke disappearing through small apertures in the front facade. The hall house was an invention of the North German plains, and did not exist to the south of a line from Dortmund to Brunswick to Wittenberg to Stettin . This meant that only about one tenth of its entire width crossed
5859-459: The gradual decline of the use of these local Slavic tongues, the term Wends slowly disappeared, too. Some sources claim that in the 13th century there were actual historic people called Wends or Vends living as far as northern Latvia (east of the Baltic Sea) around the city of Wenden . Henry of Livonia (Henricus de Lettis) in his 13th-century Latin chronicle described a tribe called the Vindi . Today, only one group of Wends still exists:
5952-437: The grammar of the Italian and Slavic (i.e. Wendish) tongues, beginning with the seventh Year of their age." Many geographical names in Central Germany and northern Germany can be traced back to a Slavic origin. Typical Slavic endings include -itz, -itzsch and -ow. They can be found in city names such as Delitzsch and Rochlitz . Even names of major cities like Leipzig and Berlin are most likely of Wendish origin. Today,
6045-426: The increasing addition of flax - weaving to the incomes of the farmers. In any event most of the originally semi-circular villages became more nearly circular, although there were in fact many slightly differently shaped solutions. Some of the Rundlinge today are more oval in shape, others more irregularly shaped. The original "one entrance to the village green" model was in some cases altered to take account, say, of
6138-401: The introduction of legally enforced markets, contracts and property rights. These developments over two centuries were collectively known as the Ostsiedlung (German eastward expansion). A minority of Germanic settlers moved beyond the Wendish territory into Hungary, Bohemia and Poland, where they were generally welcomed for their skills in farming and craftsmanship. The Polabian language
6231-462: The kings of Sweden were officially called kings of the Swedes , the Goths and the Wends (in Latin translation: kings of Suiones , Goths and Vandals ) ( Swedish : Svears, Götes och Wendes Konung ). After the Danish monarch Queen Margrethe II chose not to use these titles in 1972 the current Swedish monarch, Carl XVI Gustaf also chose only to use the title King of Sweden" ( Sveriges Konung ), thereby changing an age-old tradition. From
6324-504: The local landlords (with a straw hat) and the farmers, who clear the undergrowth of bush, and build the villages on greenfield sites. Later the local landlords act as administrators carrying out the wishes of the nobility, and creating churches and infrastructure. It was exactly so that the rundling villages were created. These villages were usually small, with only a few farmsteads , averaging perhaps around 5–7, and built away from tracks or roads, around an open central village green , which
6417-402: The lowest roof, was called a Zweiständerhaus because the whole construction rested on two rows of pillars (front to back) carrying beams across the centre. They were pillars and not posts because they rested on stones and were not set in holes in the ground as their predecessors had been. A typical house might have 14 rows of pillars, with a corresponding 14 beams, each of them being originally
6510-465: The new Federal Germany led to many moving on. The subsequent division of Germany into East and West affected Wendland a great deal, as it became isolated to the north, east and south by the Inner German Border for almost 40 years until 1989. This development, whilst largely negative for the region, had two major positives. Firstly the rural isolation of the Rundling villages was not affected negatively by industry or motorways, and secondly Wendland became
6603-408: The old Rundling at the end.{} One anomaly, which marks out these villages from others in other parts of Europe, is that the Rundling villages virtually never have a church in them. There are churches, even quite ancient ones, but they and their burial grounds are almost always well outside the Rundling itself. This could have come about because the Rundlinge were usually built only just above
6696-591: The old houses being demolished, thought through alternative uses for the buildings and supported the initiatives of the Denkmalpflege (the government agency for the protection of monuments in Germany) to preserve the cultural heritage of the Rundlinge and their hall houses .{ 50 Jahre Rundlingsverein im Wendland, published by the Rundlingsverein eV, September 2019} How many Rundlinge there are
6789-475: The only remaining minority people of Wendish origin, the Sorbs , maintain their traditional language and culture and enjoy cultural self-determination exercised through the Domowina . The third minister president of Saxony Stanislaw Tillich (2008–2017) is of Sorbian origin, being the first head of a German federal state with an ethnic minority background. In 1854, the Wends of Texas departed Lusatia on
6882-446: The open entrance to the village, in effect closing the village in and allowing only one track in from outside. This development appears to have been ordained from above, rather than being the result of more than one son taking over a farmstead. This gives us the tightly packed Rundling of today with up to 20 farmsteads. The greater prosperity, and therefore greater population density of the Rundlinge of those times may have been related to
6975-472: The outside to give better warmth inside. Most Rundlinge survived intact. Up to the Second World War , the small scale farming of areas such as the Wendland was still just sustainable, although the domestic flax industry had by then disappeared. Briefly in the late 1940s and early 1950s, Wendland became home to very many refugees from the east, but the increasing pull of the industrialised parts of
7068-463: The poor end of the scale. This has continued right up to the present day, with its unfortunate position as part of the old West Germany sticking out into the old East Germany , so that it was bound on three sides by an electric fence which was the barrier to the Communist East for most of the second half of the 20th century. Wendland has always somehow been passed by, right from the times of
7161-611: The reign of King Casimir III of Poland , numerous towns were chartered with Środa town law throughout the Kingdom of Poland in the 14th century, especially in Masovia , Galicia , and Volhynia . By 1477, 132 towns and thousands of villages in Poland were granted Środa law. Many Transylvanian Saxon settlements in Transylvania, especially in the regions of Altland , Burzenland , and Nösnerland , received South German town law in
7254-525: The same time as others were taking part in southern crusades to retake Jerusalem from the Muslim Turks . However the architecture of the much later mediaeval farmhouses to the south of Wittenberg was different from those in the north, and so different parts of the north–south Rundling strip through Germany looked different as a result. The farmhouses of Wendland were a part of an enormous east–west area running from parts of Eastern Netherlands across
7347-455: The same time in the 12th century, to a model developed by the then Germanic nobility as suitable for small groups of mainly Slavic farm-settlers . Whether these settlers were there by choice, by conquest or by forced settlement is no longer known. It does seem to have happened without much bloodshed, and the following centuries showed a living together of Germans and Slavs. This eventually led to an assimilation and eventual disappearance of
7440-549: The southern shore of the Baltic Sea ( Vendland ), and the term was therefore used to refer to Polabian Slavs like the Obotrites , Rugian Slavs , Veleti / Lutici , and Pomeranian tribes . For people living in the medieval Northern Holy Roman Empire and its precursors, especially for the Saxons , a Wend ( Wende ) was a Slav living in the area west of the River Oder , an area later entitled Germania Slavica , settled by
7533-497: The strip of land running north to south that was part of the 12th century Wendenkreuzzug , which created the Rundling form. Within this strip were the cities of Kiel, Lübeck and Hamburg and the four rural areas of Uelzen , Wendland , Prignitz and the Altmark around Salzwedel . The three types of hall house are called after the number of rows of pillars which carry the roof construction. The oldest form, which would also have
7626-643: The term they had been using for peoples east of the River Elbe before to the Slavs, calling them Wends as they called the Venedi before and probably the Vandals as well. In his late sixth century work History of Armenia , Movses Khorenatsi mentions their raids into the lands named Vanand after them. The Wends are mentioned in Fredegar IV.74-75. The lived east of the river Elbe and were neighbours of
7719-569: The towns of Bautzen and Cottbus . There are very many circular shaped villages all across the world, but only those created by the Ostsiedlung in the 12th and 13th century should use the name Rundling . Although superficially similar to the Opole in Poland, or the villages around a village green in the UK, they do not have the same genesis and history as the Rundlinge of central Germany. The key
7812-432: The towns' urban rights were jealously guarded. Initially German town law was applied only to ethnic Germans, but gradually in most localities all town-dwellers were regarded as citizens, regardless of ethnic origin. Lübeck law spread rapidly among the maritime settlements along the southern shore of the Baltic Sea and was used in northern Mecklenburg , Western Pomerania , and parts of Pomerelia and Warmia . It formed
7905-484: The very end of the 19th century when almost the last hall houses were being built.{Dr Dirk Wübbenhorst: Page 221 "Hauslandschaften in Lüchow-Dannenberg" Hannoversches Wendland Band 20, HALD Wolfgang Jurries, Luchow 2023 ISSN 0931-6051 } Why only Wendland should retain the Rundling form, plus the Low German Hall House , is not immediately clear, but will have more to do with the relative wealth of
7998-523: The water-table, whereas the churches needed higher ground to give enough depth for their burials. It could also be as a result of each village being too small to maintain a church, so the church had to serve several villages. However most researchers believe that it shows that Christianisation came late to the villages, after their basic structure had been created. There are reports by the church authorities of heathen practices well into modern times. It also suggests that, even where it had been possible to add
8091-547: The wider area, favouring Querdielenhäuser or transverse farmhouses, with the barn entrance to the side. In the Altmark they also had the tradition of putting gatehouses across the fronts of their farmsteads, thus blocking the view of the large barn doors from the centre of the village green. It is however probably as much poverty as decrees that led farmers to "make do and mend" rather than demolish their old houses and build new ones in their stead. And Wendland has always been at
8184-464: Was Liepehöfen , which had the princely number of 3 adult voters. Instead of 230 there are now 27 Gemeinden . The original shape of the Rundlinge was semi-circular or horse-shoe shaped. Most became circular through a period of time in the later Middle Ages , probably between 1500 and 1550, when population densities increased. This led to the original farmsteads being split into two, three or four, and additional wedge-shaped land being made available at
8277-448: Was a part of the commons , not allocated to any one particular farmer. The leading farmer, called a Schulze , had a slightly better plot, set in the centre opposite the entrance to the village, and usually extra land outside the circle called by its Wendish name Güsteneitz . They are almost always to be found on the border between low-lying wetter land near to water and higher drier land more suitable for cultivation, called here geest .It
8370-510: Was a set of early town privileges based on the Magdeburg rights developed by Otto I . The Magdeburg law became the inspiration for regional town charters not only in Germany, but also in Central and Eastern Europe who modified it during the Middle Ages . The German town law (based on the Magdeburg rights) was used in the founding of many German cities, towns, and villages beginning in
8463-467: Was cheaper to maintain and warmer in winter! This trend was noticed with alarm by many lovers of the old hall houses in their picturesque circular villages, and the Rundlingsverein was brought into existence in 1969 to educate the population to the potential loss of a heritage that had become unique not only in Germany but in the whole of Europe. It was those early pioneers that eventually stopped
8556-522: Was sometimes applied to the neighboring region of Slavonia , which appears as Windischland in some documents prior to the 18th century. Following the 8th century, the Frankish kings and their successors organised nearly all Wendish land into marches . This process later turned into the series of Crusades . By the 12th century, all Wendish lands had become part of the Holy Roman Empire. In
8649-559: Was spoken in the central area of Lower Saxony and in Brandenburg until around the 17th or 18th century. The German population assimilated most of the Wends, meaning that they disappeared as an ethnic minority - except for the Sorbs . Yet many place names and some family names in eastern Germany still show Wendish origins today. Also, the Dukes of Mecklenburg , of Rügen and of Pomerania had Wendish ancestors. Between 1540 and 1973,
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