Qualla: Müritz National Park

Müritz National Park: Introduction

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Michael Paul Gollmer (Mipago), CC BY-SA 3.0. East Germany had two days left when Muritz National Park came into existence. The park was declared on 1 October 1990; the state that declared it was dissolved on the 3rd. In its final weeks the outgoing government pushed through a programme of national parks and reserves across a collapsing country, work driven largely by Michael Succow, a biologist appointed deputy environment minister a few months earlier who understood exactly how briefly the window would stay open. Muritz was the largest of them, and it still is: 322 square kilometres of moraine, sandur and standing water, the biggest terrestrial national park in Germany, protected by a signature from a government that no longer exists.

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Image: Michael Paul Gollmer (Mipago) | CC BY-SA 3.0

Müritz National Park: Two Parks with a Town Between Them

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bybbisch94, Christian Gebhardt, CC BY-SA 4.0. The park is not one continuous shape but two, split by the town of Neustrelitz. The western and much larger section runs from the eastern shore of Lake Muritz inland; the smaller Serrahn section lies east of the town. Both sit on ground the last ice age left behind - terminal mor...

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

Müritz National Park: Where the Havel Starts

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jörg Braukmann, CC BY-SA 4.0. Somewhere in the Muritz section, in ground too wet to walk across easily, the Havel begins. It is a modest start for a river that will collect the Spree, run through Potsdam and Brandenburg an der Havel, and reach the Elbe more than three hundred kilometres later. The source sits...

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Image: Jörg Braukmann | CC BY-SA 4.0

Müritz National Park: The Beeches That Went on the World List

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bybbisch94, Christian Gebhardt, CC BY-SA 4.0. In 2011 the beech forests of the Serrahn section were added to the UNESCO World Heritage list, joining ancient beech stands in Slovakia and Ukraine as part of a single transnational site. The reasoning has less to do with beauty than with evidence. When the glaciers withdrew, bee...

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

Müritz National Park: A Hundred Pairs of Cranes

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bybbisch94, Christian Gebhardt, CC BY-SA 4.0. The park's inventory runs to 54 mammal species and 214 birds. Red deer move through the forest in numbers large enough to shape it. White-tailed eagles nest by the water and ospreys fish it, dropping feet-first from a hover. More than a hundred pairs of cranes breed here, and in ...

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

Müritz National Park: Tank Tracks and Juniper

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bybbisch94, Christian Gebhardt, CC BY-SA 4.0. The landscape carries its uses openly. About 3,500 hectares of what is now national park served the Soviet forces as a tank training area during the Cold War, ground churned by armour and closed to everyone else, which is one reason it survived unbuilt. Elsewhere the open stands ...

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