Qualla: Lusatian Lake District

Lusatian Lake District: Introduction

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mst2005, CC BY-SA 3.0. From the platform of the Rostiger Nagel you can see both halves of the argument at once. The tower is a spike of rusting steel standing where a coal pit used to be, 28.86 metres of weathering plate reached by 162 steps, and the water lapping below it is the pit. Turn north and there is the Großräschener See, another one. Turn north-east and the chimneys of the Jänschwalde power station are still smoking; east and south-east, Schwarze Pumpe and Boxberg. West, the wind farm at Klettwitz. Standing on one spot in Brandenburg you can watch the thing that destroyed this landscape, the thing that is meant to replace it, and the flooded hole in between. Around forty lakes are being made this way across Brandenburg and Saxony. None of them existed a lifetime ago, and none of them are finished.

Read more: Lusatian Lake District on Qualla

Image: Mst2005 | CC BY-SA 3.0

Lusatian Lake District: God Created Lusatia

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit ProfessorX, CC BY-SA 3.0. An old Sorbian saying has it that God created Lusatia and the Devil put the coal underneath. Under the flat sandy country between the Spree and the Neisse lies one of Europe's richest deposits of lignite, or brown coal, and it has been both the making and the ruin of the region. ...

Read more: Lusatian Lake District on Qualla

Image: ProfessorX | CC BY-SA 3.0

Lusatian Lake District: Otto Rindt's Chain

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Lukas Beck, CC BY-SA 4.0. The idea of doing something better with the holes belongs largely to one man. Otto Rindt, born in 1906 in Apenrade in North Schleswig, was a landscape architect who had joined the Nazi Party in 1937 and worked on the Reichsautobahn; from 1958 until the 1990s he spent his career d...

Read more: Lusatian Lake District on Qualla

Image: Lukas Beck | CC BY-SA 4.0

Lusatian Lake District: Locks Where the Diggers Were

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Z thomas, CC BY 3.0. Nine lakes are being stitched together into the Lausitzer Seenkette by canals and locks - the Barbara-Kanal opened in December 2003, the Rosendorfer Kanal in January 2006, the Sornoer Kanal running past the foot of the rusty tower. The channels are small, and so are the boats per...

Read more: Lusatian Lake District on Qualla

Image: Z thomas | CC BY 3.0

Lusatian Lake District: The Rusty Nail

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bybbisch94, Christian Gebhardt, CC BY-SA 4.0. The tower at the mouth of the Sornoer Kanal came out of an architectural competition held in April 2005 and won by the Munich architects Stefan Giers and Susanne Gabriel. It went up between August and October 2008, a construction period of seventy days, and was inaugurated on 23 ...

Read more: Lusatian Lake District on Qualla

Image: Bybbisch94, Christian Gebhardt | CC BY-SA 4.0

Lusatian Lake District: Ground That Moves

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Wolkenkratzer, CC BY-SA 4.0. Mining did not stop when the lakes started. The profitable end of the business was sold off after 1990, ending with Swedish state-owned Vattenfall, which eventually decided it could not preach a green transition at home while digging the dirtiest fuel there is abroad, and sold to...

Read more: Lusatian Lake District on Qualla

Image: Wolkenkratzer | CC BY-SA 4.0