The 1872 Baltic Sea flood (German : Ostseesturmhochwasser 1872), often referred to as a storm flood, ravaged the Baltic Sea coast from Denmark to Pomerania, also affecting Sweden, during the night between 12 and 13 November 1872 and was, until then, the worst storm surge in the Baltic. The highest recorded peak water level was about 3.3 m above sea level (NN).
In the days before the storm tide, a storm blew from the southwest across the Baltic that drove the sea towards Finland and Balticum . The result was flooding there and extreme low water levels on the Danish-German coastlines. As a result, large quantities of water were able to flow into the western Baltic from the North Sea. The storm increased in strength, and changed direction. The winds now blew from the northeast, and drove the water masses back in a south-westerly direction. Because the water could only flow slowly back into the North Sea, huge waves caught coastal dwellers by surprise on the morning of 13 November 1872 and caused floods over a metre high in coastal towns and villages.
Of all the German coastal settlements, Eckernförde was most heavily damaged due to its location on the Bay of Eckernförde which was wide open to the northeast. The entire town was flooded, 78 houses were destroyed, 138 damaged and 112 families became homeless. In Mecklenburg and West Pomerania 32 people lost their lives on land due to the floods. The Danish island of Lolland, which still has areas enclosed by dykes today that lie below sea level, was badly hit. In the Greifswald village of Wieck almost all the buildings were destroyed and nine people drowned. Houses were rubbled as far as the centre of Greifswald. Peenemünde was completely swamped. On Falster 52 died; on Lolland 28.
In all the flood cost the lives of at least 271 people on the Baltic Sea coast; 2,850 houses were destroyed or at least badly damaged and 15,160 people left homeless as a result.
As a result of this disaster, which also flooded large parts of Prerow on the Darß, the Prerower Strom, which had hitherto separated the island of Zingst from Darß, silted up. In 1874, the Prerow-Strom was finally filled in and protected with a dyke; Zingst thus became a peninsula.
The Koserower Damerow was destroyed and the island of Usedom near Koserow split in two. Following a further flood in February 1874, in which the remains of the buildings were destroyed and a layer of sand up to 60 cm thick left behind, Damerow was abandoned.
This flood counts statistically as a 100-year flood. A storm flood of similar dimensions today would cause far more damage because the coastal region is much more densely populated than at that time.
The flood is referenced in the 1877 novel The Breaking of the Storm by Friedrich Spielhagen, where a parallel is made between the natural disaster of the flood and the stock market crash of 1873. [1]
Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, also known by its anglicized name Mecklenburg–Western Pomerania, is a state in the north-east of Germany. Of the country's sixteen states, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern ranks 14th in population; it covers an area of 23,300 km2 (9,000 sq mi), making it the sixth largest German state in area; and it is 16th in population density. Schwerin is the state capital and Rostock is the largest city. Other major cities include Neubrandenburg, Stralsund, Greifswald, Wismar, and Güstrow. It was named after the two regions of Mecklenburg and Western Pomerania
The Western Pomerania Lagoon Area National Park is Mecklenburg-Vorpommern's largest national park, situated at the coast of the Baltic Sea. It consists of several peninsulas, islands and lagoon shore areas in the Baltic Sea, belonging to the district of Vorpommern-Rügen.
The Darß or Darss is the middle part of the peninsula of Fischland-Darß-Zingst on the southern shore of the Baltic Sea in the German state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. The peninsula's name is of Slavic origin. There is a large forest in the Darß. In recent times, the name "Darß" has also been used to refer to the entire peninsula.
Eckernförde is a city located in the Kreis of Rendsburg-Eckernförde, Schleswig-Holstein, northern Germany. Situated on the coast of the Baltic Sea, approximately 30 km north-west of Kiel, it has a population of about 23,000. Eckernförde is a popular tourist destination.
Zingst is the easternmost portion of the three-part Fischland-Darß-Zingst Peninsula, located in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Germany, between the cities of Rostock and Stralsund on the southern shore of the Baltic Sea.
Barth is a town in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern in north-eastern Germany. It is situated at a lagoon (Bodden) of the Baltic Sea facing the Fischland-Darss-Zingst peninsula. Barth belongs to the district of Vorpommern-Rügen. It is close to the Western Pomerania Lagoon Area National Park. In 2011, it held a population of 8,706.
Lubmin is a coastal resort in the German state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. Lubmin is situated near Greifswald and on the Bay of Greifswald.
Fischland-Darß-Zingst is a 45 km (28 mi) long peninsula in the coastal district of Vorpommern-Rügen, in the German state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. The three parts of the peninsula, from west to east, are Fischland, Darß and Zingst.
Eckernförde Bay is a firth and a branch of the Bay of Kiel between the Danish Wahld peninsula in the south and the Schwansen peninsula in the north in the Baltic Sea off the lands of Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. The bay extends around 17 km (11 mi) deep into the land and is 10 km (6.2 mi) wide at its entrance where Booknis-Eck and Danish-Nienhof mark the endpoints. The bay is up to 28 m (92 ft) deep. The border to the Kiel Fjord lies at the Bülk Lighthouse. The once forested Danish Wahld peninsula between Kiel Fjord and Eckernförde Bay constituted the borderland between the Saxons and the Danes until the Middle Ages. At the inner end of the bay lies the town of Eckernförde.
Bodden are briny bodies of water often forming lagoons, along the southwestern shores of the Baltic Sea, primarily in Germany's state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. These lagoons can be found especially around the island of Rügen, Usedom and the Fischland-Darss-Zingst peninsula. Some of them are protected reserves, forming the Western Pomerania Lagoon Area National Park.
Born auf dem Darß is a municipality in the Vorpommern-Rügen district, in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Germany. It is part of the peninsula Darß, to which also belong the villages of Prerow and Wieck. Born is situated at the southern shore of the peninsula Darß at the coastal lagoon, between Wieck and the Baltic seaside resort Ahrenshoop.
Wieck auf dem Darß is a municipality in the Vorpommern-Rügen district, in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Germany.
Vorpommern-Rügen is a district in the north of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Germany. It is bounded by the Baltic Sea and the districts Vorpommern-Greifswald, Mecklenburgische Seenplatte and Rostock. The district seat is the Hanseatic city of Stralsund.
The Darss-Zingst Bodden Chain is a waterbody on the Baltic Sea coast northeast of Rostock in Germany. It consists of a string of several lagoons or bodden arranged in an east–west direction that are separated from the open sea by the Fischland-Darß-Zingst peninsula. The surface area of these lagoons is 197 km2 and the average water depth is only about two metres.
The Permin is a bay in the Saaler Bodden lagoon south of Wustrow in northeast Germany. Originally, the Permin was a channel between the Saaler Bodden and the Baltic Sea and the southern estuarine channel of the River Recknitz. It borders on the Fischland in the south.
Kirr is an island in the Darss-Zingst Bodden Chain south of the Zingst Peninsula on the German Baltic Sea coast. It is separated from the peninsula by the Zingster Strom. The island is a nature reserve within the Western Pomerania Lagoon Area National Park. It was formerly and is sometimes still called Großer Kirr or Große Kirr. This is to distinguish it from the northwestern part of the island, which was still a separate albeit much smaller island in the Zingster Strom in the second half of the 20th century, that used to be called Kleiner Kirr or Kleine Kirr.
The Prerower Strom, Prerow Strom or Prerowstrom is an arm of the Baltic Sea in northeast Germany. It begins near the island of Schmidtbülten in the Bodstedter Bodden and winds its way through the countryside of the peninsula of Fischland-Darß-Zingst, where it separates Darß from the peninsula of Zingst. It ends at the harbour of the village of Prerow that gives it its name. The Prerower Strom is part of the Western Pomerania Lagoon Area National Park.
Fischland is an isthmus on the southern Baltic Sea coast on the Bay of Mecklenburg in northeastern Germany. It is part of the peninsula of Fischland-Darß-Zingst. Fischland was an island until the 14th century and was bounded by the navigable estuarine branches of the River Recknitz: the Permin in the south and the Loop in the north. In more recent times its southern boundary has usually been considered to be the Recknitz Meadowland and the Rostock Heath. To the west and east its boundaries are more obvious: on the one side is its active cliffed coast on the Baltic, and on the other the coastline alongside the Saaler Bodden, only a few centimetres above sea level. Fischland is about 5 km long, between 500 metres and 2 km wide and runs from southwest to northeast.
Historical Western Pomerania, also called Cispomerania,Fore Pomerania, Front Pomerania or Hither Pomerania, is the western extremity of the historic region of Pomerania, located mostly in north-eastern Germany, with a small portion in north-western Poland, at the southern coast of the Baltic Sea.
