Geesthacht


Geesthacht is the largest city in the District of the Duchy of Lauenburg in Schleswig-Holstein in Northern Germany, 34 km southeast of Hamburg on the right bank of the river Elbe.

History

A church was built in what is today Geesthacht around the year 800. The town was first named in 1216 as Hachede, then a part of the Duchy of Saxony. A change in the course of the Elbe cut the settlement into two: Geesthacht and Marschacht. In 1296, Geesthacht became part of the Duchy of Saxe-Lauenburg, partitioned from Saxony. Duke Eric III pawned Geesthacht - as part of the Herrschaft of Bergedorf - to the Free City of Lübeck in 1370. In 1401, Duke Eric IV retook the pawned area by force. Geesthacht was ceded as part of a condominium to the Hanseatic cities Hamburg and Lübeck by the Peace of Perleberg in 1420.
In 1811, Geesthacht was annexed to the First French Empire as part of the Bouches de l'Elbe département, but the condominium was restored two years later. In the 1860s, Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel established a glycerin factory in Geesthacht and invented dynamite, with Krümmel becoming the first dynamite factory in the world. Lübeck sold its share in the condominium to Hamburg in 1868, and Geesthacht became a part Hamburg's state territory. The Bergedorf-Geesthachter Railway opened in 1906.
During the Weimar Republic, Geesthacht was a hotbed of radical leftist parties and acquired the nickname Little Moscow. It was granted town privileges by the Hamburg state order of 2 January 1924. The historical town center was destroyed by a fire in 1928. As part of the Greater Hamburg Act of 1937, Geesthacht was transferred to the Prussian province of Schleswig-Holstein, there becoming part of the district of Lauenburg. After the territorial reorganization in Allied-occupied Germany in the aftermath of World War II, the province of Schleswig-Holstein was transformed into the modern state of Schleswig-Holstein. In 1953, passenger service on the Bergedorf-Geesthachter Eisenbahn was suspended.

Politics

At present, the city council is composed as follows:
Independent Mayor Dr. Volker Manow, who replaced Ingo Fokken after his unexpected death on June 29, 2009, was elected on December 13, 2009.

Twin towns

Geesthacht is a major energy and scientific research center. It has the Krümmel Nuclear Power Plant, a boiling water nuclear reactor on the River Elbe, and a 120 MW pumped storage hydroelectrical plant :de:Pumpspeicherkraftwerk Geesthacht|situated within a few hundreds metres of the nuclear power plant. It consists of an artificial lake 80m above the river, where the water is pumped up from, and 600 MWh storage for later use in generating electricity when demand is high. Small wind and solar plants also produce electricity or pump water.
The conservative politician Uwe Barschel, who was later involved in the "Waterkantgate" scandal, took his Abitur at the Otto-Hahn-Gymnasium in Geesthacht and as a student representative invited former Nazi admiral Dönitz to give a presentation on the topic of 'The Modernisation of History Classes'. Following the scandal, his principal committed suicide under the ensuing pressure.

Literature