Plessa

Plessa
250px
Coat of arms of Plessa Coat of arms
Plessa
Location of Plessa within Elbe-Elster district 250px
Coordinates:
Country	Germany
State	Brandenburg
District	Elbe-Elster
Municipal assoc.	Plessa
Government
• Mayor	Gottfried Heinicke (CDU)
Area
• Total	52.42 km2 (20.24 sq mi)
Population (2013-12-31)
• Total	2,791
• Density	53/km2 (140/sq mi)
Time zone	CET/CEST (UTC+1/+2)
Postal codes	04928
Dialling codes	03533
Vehicle registration	EE
Website	www.plessa.de

Plessa is a municipality in the Elbe-Elster district, in Brandenburg, Germany.

Following a redrawing of local boundaries which took effect on 31 December 2001, the municipality includes two additional settlements, and therefore now includes Plessa-Süd, Döllingen and Kahla.

History

The first surviving record of Plessa appears in the 1406 "Landbethe zu Hayn", where a total area of slightly more than 24 Oxgangs is recorded. The name "Ples(o)" comes from an old Sorbish word for a lake, and probably refers to backwaters of the Black Elster River, now to an extent channelled, but which in the fifteenth century, with numerous small tributaries meandered through the area. Taxes were paid to the Elsterwerda Castle, home to the lords who owned the land.

The earliest record of a simple unadorned wooden chapel appears in 1540, at this stage without any cross or candle sticks for the altar. Preaching at this time would still have taken place in Wendish. In 1792 a stone church was built, but on 25 October 1811 the village, still mostly comprising timber buildings, was struck by a major fire which only four farmsteads survived. Beside the church the adjacent school house was also badly damaged. The present church was erected in 1814, with an organ installed in 1818.

The Oberlausitzer Railway. running from Kohlfurt to Falkenberg, opened in 1874, crossing Plessa, but initially there was no provision for the trains to stop, following opposition to railway development from local farmers who had refused to provide land for a larger line which would open the next year linking Berlin with Dresden. Nevertheless, industrialisation soon began, and Plessa received its own stop on the railway line in 1885, with a station building following in 1891. Shortly after that, in 1894, the "Agnes" Brown-coal mine opened, which led to the establishment in 1897 of the "Plessaer Braunkohlenwerke GmbH" (Plessau Brown-coal company). In 1901 a Briquette factory opened to the north of the railway line. Brown-coal provided a basis for a more general increase in economic activity and the village began to grow, the registered population increasing from 1,200 to 2,063 between 1890 and 1910. The briquette factory developed a side-line in electricity generation, providing a local power network to which 12 electric motors and almost 400 electric lights were connected. The mine director, a man called Friedrich von Delius, nurtured ambitions for the business of power generation and in 1927, after a nine-month construction period, a full-scale power station operated from (and by) the briquette factory came online.

The Second World War cost Plessa 391 dead. The worst days were the 24th and 25 April 1945, when the Red Army broke through. Plessa was identified by the invaders as a "Partisanendorf" (Partisan village): 724 buildings were burned down and 155 villagers died.

After the war the briquette factory and other industrial businesses were nationalised in 1950, shortly after the formal establishment of the German Democratic Republic. By this time the population of Plessa had increased to 3,423. In the next few years the land that had yielded up its lignite on the western side of the Plessa Heath was planted with fruit orchards. The most successful crop came from the sweet cherry trees which are able to tolerate relatively poor soil quality.

On 1 January 1957 Plessa-Süd (previously known as Grödener Schraden) was incorporated into Plessa.

A serious accident took place in 1983 at the Plessa Briquette factory when a coal gas explosion caused several deaths and left many injured.

Local government reorganization followed two years after reunification in 1992, and Plessa became the centre of the Plessa municipal federation, incorporating seven individually small municipalities. In 1998 the power station became a project of the "Fürst-Pückler-Land" regional redevelopment programme.

Demography

File:Bevölkerungsentwicklung Plessa.pdf

Development of Population since 1875 within the Current Boundaries (Blue Line: Population; Dotted Line: Comparison to Population Development of Brandenburg state; Grey Background: Time of Nazi rule; Red Background: Time of Communist rule)

Plessa:
Population development within the current boundaries (2013)

Year Population 1875 1 600 1890 1 820 1910 2 863 1925 3 418 1933 3 801 1939 3 936 1946 4 409 1950 4 946 1964 4 787 1971 4 799

Year Population 1981 4 385 1985 4 178 1989 3 990 1990 3 928 1991 3 824 1992 3 797 1993 3 764 1994 3 700 1995 3 648 1996 3 604

Year Population 1997 3 551 1998 3 560 1999 3 494 2000 3 459 2001 3 414 2002 3 383 2003 3 333 2004 3 316 2005 3 216 2006 3 153

Year Population 2007 3 051 2008 2 991 2009 2 921 2010 2 887 2011 2 864 2012 2 825 2013 2 791

Photogallery

• ElstermühlePlessa2.jpg
• Berzitturm Kahla.jpg