Heidmark

The heathland farmers lacked meadows and pastures. In order to ensure their economic survival, early on they had to acquire pastureland in the "Krelinger Bruch" far from their farmsteads, as can be seen from the register of wills of 1667. At harvest time they had to stay in the Bruch until all the hay was dry. That could take two weeks or more.

"Holland trippers" (Hollandgänger) were also mentioned in the records from 1786. These folk shouldered their scythes and left in May on foot for Holland in order to mow in return for payment. The majority of these Hollandgänger were day labourers (Häuslinge) and were told to go and earn this extra income. After 1850 these trips to Holland gradually died away. The last "Holland tripper" from the eastern Heidmark is mentioned in the documents in 1865.

In ancient times, in addition to the ruler (the duke), the nobility had hunting rights in the Heidmark. The chief hunting rights in the Heidmark were granted to the von der Wense and von Hodenberg families.

In the register of wills in 1667 it says:

"Moreover, the von der Wense family have the freedom to shoot and have brought down deer and wild boar in their spruce forests, from which most noble lords are also not excluded. They may also, as far as their law and tradition allows, go hunting with the Strickjagd. The von Hodenbergs at Hudemühlen are entitled to bring down deer and wild boar in their own forests, but only permitted to use Strickjagd in the Amstvogtei of Fallingbostel, as far as their authority allows. And they may keep stores with their farmers and therefore attend the hunt twice a year, once in the grass season (between Easter and Midsummer) and once in the hay season (between Michaelmas and Christmas)... "[2]

The farmers of the Heidmark, for whom hunting "was inherited from the blood of their forebears", as tradition has it, would have reimbursed themselves. They poached whenever they could. That was considered an unwritten right and not as a sin. Nevertheless the gendarmes had to track down the poachers and hand them over to the courts.

Tradition has it that once Goding (thingsteads or Gogerichte) and Holting (forest courts or Holzgerichte) were convened in Dorfmark, Fallingbostel, Ostenholz and at the Heidhof. At the Heidhof sentences were passed in the manner of a vehmic court (Femegerichte). The last execution in the Heidmark was in 1777. However that has been passed by word of mouth from generation to generation, because the documents associated with it were destroyed in a fire in 1784. Over centuries it has been reported that the owner of the Jacobshof in Ahlften, Johann Hinrich Apenriep, who came from Castens Hof in Meimen, had collected the executioner, Holdorf, from Lüneburg and had driven him to Fallingbostel. Holdrof had then beheaded a woman or a girl.

For a very long time the lives of the heath farmers were closely linked to the churches. A deed by the Emperor, Otto III, of 7 May 986 documents that there were already churches and abbeys in Walsrode and Ahlden at that time. The church at Dorfmark was first mentioned in 1006. The other parishes were not mentioned in the records until later, however. For example: Schwarmstedt was first mentioned in 1221, Düshorn in 1230, Meinerdingen in 1269 and Bierde in the 15th century, but were probably established long before then.

The inhabitants of the Heidmark went through the Reformation in the reign of Duke Ernest the Confessor who had accepted Lutheran teaching early on. There were and are many churches and parishes in the Heidmark. These Evangelical-Lutheran parishes were and, to some extent still are, meeting places for the community.

• In Bad Fallingbostel there is a Heidmarkstraße.

Monument to Heinrich von Quintus Icilius (1864)

Farmhouse on the Heidmark in an old Fachhallenhaus

Cemetery of the Unknown Soldiers

• in Bad Fallingbostel:
  • the Heidmarkhalle
  • Museum of the Archaeological Society (Archäologischen Arbeitsgemeinschaft e.V.).
    In the Megalithpark Osterberg large stones are exhibited, that were pushed into the Heidmark from Scandinavia by massive ice sheets during the ice ages.
  • the Hof der Heidmark farmhouse with Rummelsburg Heimatstube, a Low German house in the Liethwald
  • the Protestant St. Dionysius Church in the town centre
  • the Quintus monument at St. Dionysius Church
• in Oerbke:
  • Cemetery of the Unknown Soldiers (Friedhof der Namenlosen), a war cemetery in which around 30,000 Russian prisoners-of-war from the Second World War are buried in mass graves
• in and near Ostenholz:
  • Timber-framed church with a wooden tower dating from 1724
  • Hoher Stein, a memorial to the evacuation of the villages in 1936 when the Nazi military training area was created
  • the Sieben Steinhäuser, neolithic dolmens in the south of the military training area
• in Wense:
  • Estate churche (Gutskapelle), a splendid church dating from 1558
• in Vierde:
  • Bronze Age gravesite.
• in Dorfmark:
  • the Protestant St. Martin's Church
  • the grave of Erich von Manstein
• in Fahrenholz
• Bronze Age tumuli
• Neolithic dolmen just before Krelingen