Upper Harz
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The Upper Harz (, ) is the northwestern and higher part of the
Harz The Harz (), also called the Harz Mountains, is a highland area in northern Germany. It has the highest elevations for that region, and its rugged terrain extends across parts of Lower Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, and Thuringia. The name ''Harz'' der ...
mountain range in
Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...
. The exact boundaries of this geographical region may be defined differently depending on the context. In its traditional sense, the term Upper Harz covers the area of the seven historical mining towns (''Bergstädte'') - Clausthal, Zellerfeld, Andreasberg, Altenau, Lautenthal, Wildemann and Grund - in the present-day German federal state of
Lower Saxony Lower Saxony is a States of Germany, German state (') in Northern Germany, northwestern Germany. It is the second-largest state by land area, with , and fourth-largest in population (8 million in 2021) among the 16 ' of the Germany, Federal Re ...
. Orographically, it comprises the Harz catchment areas of the Söse, Innerste and Grane, Oker and Abzucht mountain streams, all part of the larger
Weser The Weser () is a river of Lower Saxony in north-west Germany. It begins at Hannoversch Münden through the confluence of the Werra and Fulda. It passes through the Hanseatic city of Bremen. Its mouth is further north against the ports o ...
watershed. Much of the Upper Harz area is up to
above sea level Height above mean sea level is a measure of a location's vertical distance (height, elevation or altitude) in reference to a vertical datum based on a historic mean sea level. In geodesy, it is formalized as orthometric height. The zero level ...
. In a wider sense, it also comprises the adjacent High Harz (''Hochharz'') range in the east, climbing to over in the
Brocken The Brocken, also sometimes referred to as the Blocksberg, is a mountain near Schierke in the German state of Saxony-Anhalt, between the rivers Weser River, Weser and Elbe. The highest peak in the Harz mountain range, and in Northern Germany, ...
massif.


Geography

The region is centred on the geological structure of the region around the municipality of Clausthal-Zellerfeld, merged in 1924. From the Clausthal ''Kulmfaltenzone'', it extends to the western and northern rim of the Harz and is bordered in the southeast by the Acker- Bruchberg ridge beyond the Söse valley. The Upper Harz was, for centuries, dominated by the hugely profitable silver mining industry and is also distinguished by its own
dialect A dialect is a Variety (linguistics), variety of language spoken by a particular group of people. This may include dominant and standard language, standardized varieties as well as Vernacular language, vernacular, unwritten, or non-standardize ...
(see below). The mining area of Sankt Andreasberg occupies a special place in this regard, because it is just east of the Bruchberg. The mines, more than anything else, have left a lasting impression on the region and left their traces in the towns and villages as well as the countryside (see e.g. Upper Harz Water Regale). Clausthal-Zellerfeld was known as "Capital of the Upper Harz" in the heyday of the mining industry. It was also the administrative seat of the former ''
Samtgemeinde A (, ; plural: ''Samtgemeinden'') is a type of administrative division in Lower Saxony, Germany. ''Samtgemeinden'' are local government associations of Municipalities of Germany, municipalities, equivalent to the ''Amt (administrative division) ...
'' ('collective municipality') of Oberharz. Another division into Upper and Lower Harz is based on the function of the Harz as a natural watershed. On this basis "by taking the Brocken as the mid-point, the Upper Harz includes everything to the west of it; the Lower Harz everything lying to the east. All that drains from the western mountains belongs to the catchment area of the
Weser The Weser () is a river of Lower Saxony in north-west Germany. It begins at Hannoversch Münden through the confluence of the Werra and Fulda. It passes through the Hanseatic city of Bremen. Its mouth is further north against the ports o ...
, all that drains from those in the east, to that of the
Elbe The Elbe ( ; ; or ''Elv''; Upper Sorbian, Upper and , ) is one of the major rivers of Central Europe. It rises in the Giant Mountains of the northern Czech Republic before traversing much of Bohemia (western half of the Czech Republic), then Ge ...
".
Heinrich Heine Christian Johann Heinrich Heine (; ; born Harry Heine; 13 December 1797 – 17 February 1856) was an outstanding poet, writer, and literary criticism, literary critic of 19th-century German Romanticism. He is best known outside Germany for his ...
also used the Brocken as the dividing line in his book '' Die Harzreise'' ("The Harz Journey") in 1824 and remarked that the "Lower Harz, as the eastern side of the Brocken is called, as opposed to its western side, called the Upper Harz". This definition extends the ''montane'' Upper Harz eastwards roughly to the state border with
Saxony-Anhalt Saxony-Anhalt ( ; ) is a States of Germany, state of Germany, bordering the states of Brandenburg, Saxony, Thuringia and Lower Saxony. It covers an area of and has a population of 2.17 million inhabitants, making it the List of German states ...
, so that e.g. Braunlage or Hohegeiß may also be counted as lying within the Upper Harz, as well as some high mountain ridges: To the east it transitions to the less prominent Lower Harz which descends gently eastwards. The High Harz (''Hochharz'') refers to the only sparsely populated region around the Brocken (1,141 m), Bruchberg, Wurmberg, Torfhaus and Acker, which lie above 800 m. The High Harz therefore includes most of the Harz National Park.


Upper Harz dialect

One feature of the Upper Harz is, or was, the Upper Harz dialect (''Oberharzer Mundart''). Unlike the Lower Saxon, Eastphalian and Thuringian dialects of its surround area, this is an Erzgebirgisch dialect that goes back to the settlement in the area of mining folk from the
Ore Mountains The Ore Mountains (, or ; ) lie along the Czech–German border, separating the historical regions of Bohemia in the Czech Republic and Saxony in Germany. The highest peaks are the Klínovec in the Czech Republic (German: ''Keilberg'') at ab ...
of
Saxony Saxony, officially the Free State of Saxony, is a landlocked state of Germany, bordering the states of Brandenburg, Saxony-Anhalt, Thuringia, and Bavaria, as well as the countries of Poland and the Czech Republic. Its capital is Dresden, and ...
in the 16th century. The Upper Harz dialect is restricted to only a few places and so forms something of a language island in the Harz. The best known are Altenau, Sankt Andreasberg, Clausthal-Zellerfeld, Lautenthal and Hahnenklee. Today the dialect is rarely heard in everyday life in the Upper Harz. It is mainly members of the older generations that still speak it; as a result it is maintained in the newspapers. For example, there are occasionally articles published in the Upper Harz dialect in the local section of the ''Goslarsche Zeitung''. To illustrate the dialect here is the refrain of a Sankt Andreasberg folk song: :''Eb de Sunne scheint, ebs stewert, schtarmt, ebs schneit,
bei Tag un Nacht ohmds oder frieh
wie hämisch klingst de doch
du ewerharzer Sproch
O Annerschbarrich wie bist de schien.''


Customs and tradition

* Easter Fire (''Osterfeuer''): In the Upper Harz the
Easter Easter, also called Pascha ( Aramaic: פַּסְחָא , ''paskha''; Greek: πάσχα, ''páskha'') or Resurrection Sunday, is a Christian festival and cultural holiday commemorating the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, described in t ...
fires are built with the aid of a wooden frame in the centre of which is a
spruce A spruce is a tree of the genus ''Picea'' ( ), a genus of about 40 species of coniferous evergreen trees in the family Pinaceae, found in the northern temperate and boreal ecosystem, boreal (taiga) regions of the Northern hemisphere. ''Picea'' ...
tree. The tree is several metres higher than the wooden structure that is covered with brushwood and spruce branches. Traditionally the visitors are ''blackened'', i.e. their faces are smeared with soot from the charred wood. In Wildemann at Easter Fire they also carry Easter torches over three metres long. * Kurrende: During the mining era it was common for 10- to 18-year-old
apprentice Apprenticeship is a system for training a potential new practitioners of a Tradesman, trade or profession with on-the-job training and often some accompanying study. Apprenticeships may also enable practitioners to gain a license to practice in ...
s (''Pochjungen'') to parade through the streets in black coats and hats as part of a ''Kurrende'' or school choir in order to earn additional income by singing. From the age of ten - later fourteen - the apprentices worked in the crushing mills or ''Pochwerken'' where they separated ore from the rest of the rock for 12 hours a day. Not until their 18th birthday were they allowed to begin training as miners and work in the mines. The ''Kurrende'' tradition was preserved for a few years after the decline of the mines in the Upper Harz by the, mainly church-based, choirs. Today, on the important holy days, the choral society of St. Martin's parish performs the last ''Kurrende'' in the Upper Harz in Sankt Andreasberg, dressed in traditional costume.


Upper Harz conflict

The town of Elbingerode and the municipalities of Brocken-Hochharz in the district of
Harz The Harz (), also called the Harz Mountains, is a highland area in northern Germany. It has the highest elevations for that region, and its rugged terrain extends across parts of Lower Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, and Thuringia. The name ''Harz'' der ...
decided to merge on 1 January 2010, as part of regional reforms in Saxony-Anhalt, into a new town with the name 'Oberharz am Brocken'. There were major protests against this name in the borough of Oberharz in Lower Saxony. The reasons were that, on the one hand, there was a significant risk of confusion by having two similar names, and on the other hand that the new region had never belonged to the Upper Harz, but was part of the Lower Harz.Stellungnahme der Samtgemeinde Oberharz
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See also

*
Harz The Harz (), also called the Harz Mountains, is a highland area in northern Germany. It has the highest elevations for that region, and its rugged terrain extends across parts of Lower Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, and Thuringia. The name ''Harz'' der ...


References


References

* ''Der Oberharz und seine Grenzen'' ("The Upper Harz and its Boundaries"), article in the special supplement of the ''Goslarschen Zeitung'' of 1 October 2008. * {{Authority control * .