Morgen

A Morgen (Mg) is a historical, but still occasionally used, German unit of area used in agriculture. Officially, it is no longer in use, having been supplanted by the hectare. While today it is approximately equivalent to the Prussian ''morgen'', measuring 25 ares or 2,500 square meters (), its area once ranged from , but usually between . In the 20th century, the quarter hectare became standard for one ''morgen''. The Morgen unit of land measurement was also used in the Netherlands, Poland, Lithuania, and parts of the Dutch colonial empire, such as South Africa. It was also used in the Balkans, Norway, and Denmark, where it was equal to about .

The word is identical to the German and Dutch word for "morning" because the measurement was determined by the area that can be ploughed with a single-furrow horse or ox plough in one morning (measured from morning to noon).Duden; Definition of ''Morgen'' (in German)

/ref> The ''morgen'' was usually defined as a rectangle with sides of an even number of local Rod (unit), rods, as turning while ploughing was to be avoided as much as possible.

The area measure of the morgen varied regionally, but it was usually between one-fifth to half a hectare (2,000 to 5,000 m²). In northern Germany, there were also morgens of 6,000 to 9,000 square meters, and in the marshes, up to over 11,000 square meters. With the standardization in the late 19th century (the metrified morgen introduced by the North German Confederation in 1869), four morgens equaled one hectare in the German Empire, which is why the morgen was sometimes referred to as a quarter hectare (vha) to distinguish it from traditional measures.

In the 20th century, the morgen, with its size of 25 ares, established itself as an agricultural area measure. However, with the increasing average farm size (from 2005 to 2015 by 36.4% to 59.6 hectares or 238.4 morgens), it has lost significance compared to the hectare. This is particularly evident where the average farm size in eastern Germany is around 1000 morgens.

The ''morgen'' was commonly set at about 60–70% of the ''tagwerk'' (German for "day's work") that referred to a full day of ploughing. The next lower measurement unit was the German "rute" or Imperial rod, but the metric rod length of never became popular.

Comparative measures to the Morgen in German-speaking regions

The following table shows an excerpt of morgen sizes as used in German-speaking regions. Some morgen were used in a wider area and thus had proper names. The actual area of a morgen was considerably larger in fertile areas of Germany or in regions where flat terrain prevails, presumably facilitating tilling. The next lower measurement unit to a morgen was usually in "Quadratruten" square rods.

Poland

The Polish terms for the unit were ''morga, mórg, jutrzyna'', the latter being a near-literal translation into old Polish.

Austria–Hungary

The term "morgen" was used in the Austrian Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria where 1 morgen was equal to .

South Africa

Until the advent of metrication in the 1970s, the morgen was the legal unit of measure of land in three of the four pre-1995 South African provinces: the Cape Province, the Orange Free State, and the Transvaal. In November 2007, the South African Law Society published a conversion factor of ''1 morgen = 0.856 532 hectares'' to be used "for the conversion of areas from imperial units to metric, particularly when preparing consolidated diagrams by compilation".

See also

*Arpent
*Dutch units of measurement
* German obsolete units of measurement
* List of unusual units of measurement

References

{{EB1911, wstitle=Morgen, volume=18, page=836

Afrikaans words and phrases
Dutch words and phrases
Obsolete units of measurement
Units of area