Located in the very east of Brandenburg on the border with Poland, the Oderbruch is a unique European cultural landscape. Now also with EU seal.
The cultural landscape of Oderbruch now officially bears the European Cultural Heritage Seal. The project “The Oderbruch – people make landscape” should receive the EU seal at a ceremony in Brussels on Monday evening, as announced by the Brandenburg Ministry of Culture.
The award was given to Europe’s largest populated polder landscape because, according to the EU Commission, the ideals and history of the European Union are symbolized here in a special way. Local actors had been trying to do this for a long time. Around 36 Oderbruch locations had joined the project, which was prepared over two years. With the award, the Oderbruch should gain public and political attention.
The region arose after the drainage almost 270 years ago, was settled by Prussian King Frederick II with colonists and is maintained as a habitat by a sophisticated water system. Only two projects – in addition to the Oderbruch, the Fulda monastery and Petersberg in Hesse – had the German Conference of Ministers of Education forwarded 2020 to the EU Commission for application. The pandemic had made the further procedure more difficult.
