The Serrahn Hills (German : Serrahner Berge) are a forested ridge in the municipality of Carpin in the Mecklenburg Lake District in the east German state Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. The village of Serrahn, which gives the hills their name, is located just north of the ridge. To the east is the lake of Schweingartensee, a little to the southwest is the Großer Fürstenseer See.
German is a West Germanic language that is mainly spoken in Central Europe. It is the most widely spoken and official or co-official language in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, South Tyrol (Italy), the German-speaking Community of Belgium, and Liechtenstein. It is also one of the three official languages of Luxembourg and a co-official language in the Opole Voivodeship in Poland. The languages which are most similar to German are the other members of the West Germanic language branch: Afrikaans, Dutch, English, the Frisian languages, Low German/Low Saxon, Luxembourgish, and Yiddish. There are also strong similarities in vocabulary with Danish, Norwegian and Swedish, although those belong to the North Germanic group. German is the second most widely spoken Germanic language, after English.
Carpin is a municipality in the Mecklenburgische Seenplatte district, in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Germany.
Schweingartensee is a lake in the Mecklenburgische Seenplatte district in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Germany. At an elevation of 72 m, its surface area is 0.747 km².
The hills, which are up to 124.2 m above sea level (NHN) , are located in the eastern part of the Müritz National Park. The hills were first mentioned in an official document dated 1569. This states that der Schweingahrdische See zwischen Zerrahnschen undt Goldbowischen Holtz belegen ("the Schweingarten lake is located between the Serrahn and the Goldbow Woods").
Normalhöhennull or NHN is a vertical datum used in Germany.
The Müritz National Park is a national park situated roughly in the middle between Berlin and Rostock, in the south of the German state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. It extends over large portions of the Müritz lakeland in the district of Mecklenburgische Seenplatte. Müritz National Park was founded in 1990. The total area is 318 km2. Near the city of Waren visitors can get information on the national park at the Müritzeum.
During the period 1614 to 1623, documents record the sale of building timber and firewood from the Zerrahnschen Bergen. After that, the forest must have been thinned so much before the mid-16th century that by the end of that century large flocks of sheep grazed the Serrahn Hills from time to time.
At the end of the Thirty Years' War much of the surrounding area was devastated and the forest spread again. Thus in 1688 we hear that the Zerrahnschen Berge stet reich von Eychen Mast undt dannen Holtz, undt können darin feist gemacht werden 465 Schweine (the "Serrahn Hills are rich in oak mast and their trees and 465 pigs can be kept there").
The Thirty Years' War was a war fought primarily in Central Europe between 1618 and 1648. One of the most destructive conflicts in human history, it resulted in eight million fatalities not only from military engagements but also from violence, famine, and plague. Casualties were overwhelmingly and disproportionately inhabitants of the Holy Roman Empire, most of the rest being battle deaths from various foreign armies. In terms of proportional German casualties and destruction, it was surpassed only by the period January to May 1945; one of its enduring results was 19th-century Pan-Germanism, when it served as an example of the dangers of a divided Germany and became a key justification for the 1871 creation of the German Empire.
At the beginning of the 18th century at the instigation of the Duke of Strelitz, Adolphus Frederick II, numerous glassworks and potash distilleries were founded in the region, but the Serrahn Hills remained unaffected due to poor road communications and its forests remained largely intact. This made it a popular hunting area as well as a botanical forestry research site for the dukes of Mecklenburg-Strelitz.
In GDR times, the hills were designated as a nature reserve and became well known as the centre of the great state hunting grounds called the Wilhelminenhof Wildlife Research Area (Wildforschungsgebiet Wilhelminenhof).
Since June 2011, the beech forests of the Serrahn Hills, along with four other German beech forests, have been recognised as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. They are the last remaining semi-natural beech forests in Germany. [1] [2]
Natural beech wood is a beech wood, that is able to replenish and sustain itself on its own.
