Region called Griese Gegend

Located in Southwest Mecklenburg, bordered by the road Hagenow-Ludwigslust in the north, by the line between Ludwigslust and Dömitz in the east and by Lübtheen in the west. This forms a triangle that covers the region of the "Griese Gegend".

Johannes Gillhoff of Glaisin knows very well where that is:

"The Griese Gegend stretches somewhere between the river Elbe and the railway Berlin-Hamburg... It is the region where the young people do not take somebody to court to settle differencesimmidiatly. Disagreements are settled by a simple procedure that might include: a few cracked teeth, a few bruised ribs - and that is all. Now we know roughly where the Griese Gegend is located."

This region recieved it's name from the grey sandy soil. Gries = grey also were the working clothes of the farmers. In contrast to the dyed overalls in other areas the people of the Southwest wore undyed, grey linen clothing when they looked for work in other areas. So they were nicknamed "de Griesen" (the grey people).



Most of the soil is sandy, except some marshy areas along the rivers. Problems with the shifting sand ocurred time and again. The sand covered the fields and the streets and buried the houses and sometimes forced people to abandon their village.
The yield was also much lower then in more fertile regions of Mecklenburg. That is the reason why the farmers had to pay less taxes.
The poor soil wasn't very tempting for the aristocratic lords of the manors.That is why most of the villages stayed in the property of the "Domanium", meaning they belonged directly to the mecklenburgian dynasty. So they were kept from "Bauernlegen" and many old farm courts still exist today. Bauernlegen means that the owner of the villages tore down the farmhouses to use the property as farmland or as pasture for large herds of sheep. The people were move to little houses the Lord had built on his land where thea had to work for him.

During the early colonisation in the 13th and 14th century the farmers from Northwest Germany (Saxony) and the Netherlands preferred the richer soil in the north. So the Wenden people (a Slavic tribe) who had been living here for a long time survived for much longer than in other areas in Mecklenburg. Villages with a majority of Wenden inhabitants are said to have still existed up to the 16th century. Names of locations and families still show the Slavic influence today.

It is especially the parish of Leussow that I have dealt with.

Fritz Reuter writes in his "Urgeschicht von Meckelnborg-Swerin und -Strelitz" very impressively about the founding of the Griese Gegend (plattdeutsch version see at the german version):

When God made the world he started with Mecklenburg. He began his work at the region near the Baltic Sea and finished it with his own hands: on one side Ratzeburg and Schwerin, on the other side until Stavenhagen and Brandenburg. Then he showed his Holy Angels how to do it and spoke to them and said they should continue in this way.
Well, Raphael started at Neu-Strelitz and Mirow, and Gabriel at Groß-Bäbelin, Serrahn and Krakow, and Michael took the department of Lübtheen and Grabow and Dömitz, but it came out like that.
Well, the work of apprentice is not the work of a master.
But our Lord was very sad because his good work was going to be so messed up, and he gathered them once more and said: "Now pay attention! I will show you once more." And then he made the Röbel area and the Lübz area and the Sonnenberg of Parchim and said: "Now use this as an example!"
But out of pure laziness or pure stupidity? They muddled along and did not add enough clay to the sand. And they finished the area from the King of Prussia's Mark Brandenburg until Gräfenhainichen and Treuenbriezen, and the King of Hannover's Lüneburger Heide until Gifhorn and Celle. Then our Lord shouted: "Stop it! That does not work! You are going to spoil my whole Germany...

from Fritz Reuter, Urgeschicht von Meckelnborg, s. Literaturliste

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