The village Of

Past History

The Oberlausitz area is not only full of scenic beauty but also boasts a rich and highly important historic past. Some of its past history is luckily still in evidence today.

The first proven settlements in the area around Görlitz took place in the Mesolithic Stone Age (around 10000-4000 BC). Finds of flint stone tools point out to a still unsettled population of hunters and fishermen of an unidentified people who only lived in simple huts. Village settlements made of fixed wooden houses and a settled hunter and fishermen folk who were also active in agricultural farming and cattle breeding took place in the Neolithic Stone Age (4000-2000 BC).

A more dense settlement took place in the Bronze Ago (2000 – 750 BC) and the Iron Age up to about 400 BC.

In the time before Moses lead the children of Israel from Egypt into Canaan; men already lived on the shores of the River Neiße. Men with shiny bronze weapons to fight off their enemies; men who already new how to build houses and weapons and make jewellery and were actively conducting business with peoples from far away. It was around the time of 1500 BC, which gave us the oldest finds in our immediate homeland.

Based on the finds, we can today depict a true picture of the high culture – one speaks about the “Lausitzer Culture” of the inhabitants of our region. Weaving, pottery and metal handicrafts reached their peak.

At the time, it was customary to burn the dead, and it is precisely these burial sites in and around Görlitz, Ludwigsdorf and Zodel with their numerous burial gifts that show us the peak of a culture, which was no longer present 2000 years later.

Fortresses, castle ramparts and refuges were being built at that time and one can see their remains on the Landeskrone (Ringwall) today. The cult sites at Totenstein near Königshain also originate from this period.

The finds cease around 400 BC. Around 300-400 AD is there renewed evidence of settlements in our region; in this case it was an East Germanic Burgundian tribe that moved on approximately 400 AD. Subsequently in approx. 600 AD, the tribe Milzner tribe settled in our area.

Some of the finds in and around Zodel:

• 5.12.1936 Choirmaster Friedrich Tzschoppe in Görlitz found Bronze Age fragments in the choir garden (now the site of the Traugott Gerber Museum);
• 8.03.1938 on the manor grounds of “Ober-Zodel” a number of Mesolithic Stone Age flint stone tools were found;
• 20.07.1938 during an official digging on the property of Erich Büchner (Storch-Büchner) several urn graves were uncovered with approximately 16 urns from period of “Lausitzer Culture”.
• 8.09.1938 on the Neiße the front of an oak dug-out canoe from the Neolithic Stone Age was found. On 23.04.1941, on the Zodler “Riss” a 12,6 m dug-out canoe was found.

Numerous other finds were also made by local farmers, school children and Choirmaster Friedrich Tzschoppe. The ground in our region still hides many past historical cemetery grave yards. (3000-5000 years old). The location is known, but is not being excavated.

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