Lost Land. Kaliningrad Holland.
Kaliningrad Holland is the land adjacent to the Curonian Lagoon and lying below sea level, located in the Polesie and Slavsk districts of the Kaliningrad region. And there are many such landscapes reclaimed from the sea in Europe, especially in the Netherlands. These are the so-called polders. Such lands are formed by rivers, canals, seas over the centuries.
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In the Kaliningrad region there are over 750 km of dams protecting more than 1000 sq. km of polder lands. There is nothing like this in any other region of the Kaliningrad region and in Russia as a whole. This entire drainage system was created by German hydraulic engineers and was inherited by the region from the former East Prussia.
Since the 16th century, people have been draining these lands with systems of dams, canals and pumping stations to make these places suitable for living and agriculture. Today, the area of such territories here reaches 106 thousand hectares!
Between Nemonien (now Golovkino) and Labiau (now Polessk), the Polessk Canal (formerly the Friedrich Canal) was created, connecting the Nemonin and Deima rivers and allowing ships to bypass the bay.
A particularly large amount of work on land cultivation in the territory of East Prussia was carried out during the reign of the Prussian King Friedrich II. In 1801, the first extensive construction plan was developed to strengthen the banks and regulate the bed of the Neman River. Then, already in 1806, a law was issued on the operation, reconstruction and construction of dams in East Prussia.
The canal system was built "for centuries". Before World War II, more than a dozen pumping stations operated in the vicinity of Elkhwerder (Golovkino). In the spring of 1945, retreating German troops blew up most of the dams and pumping stations, flooding almost the entire territory of the Neman Lowland. Then, starting in 1946, the melioration system was steadily destroyed. Not on purpose, of course, but none of the newly appointed directors of collective farms were ready to work on such land. Still, the main part of the system was restored. The surviving canals and pumping stations, as well as the amazing nature of the polder lands, are worth getting to know in more detail.
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Lost Land. Kaliningrad Holland. #139
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