image author: Sabine Menge/pixelio.de

The Große Moor in Melbeck has a very special history. Here the peat was cut for firing the saline in Lüneburg. Already in the Middle Ages towns like Lüneburg depended on raw materials from the surrounding region. When wood as energy provider for home firing, breweries, brickworks and the saline became scarce and expensive one started looking for alternatives. Since the end of the 18th-century peat played an important role, alone the saline used half a million cubic metres annually. In the middle of the 19th-century peat was replaced by hard coal.

Today only small remnants of collapsed moor blocks can be seen but they still give a good impression of the once mightiness of the high moor. Wide parts of the high moor were changed to green land from 1914 onwards and are used agriculturally today.

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