Blankenburg

Blankenburg sits on the northern edge of the Harz, a rugged highland that rises above the North German plain. The range extends for about 110 kilometres across parts of the Brunswick, Saxon and Thuringian lands, reaching its highest point at the Brocken. Its western portion is generally higher and carries fir forest; eastward, the Lower Harz descends into plateaus where meadows and arable ground make agriculture more practical. Blankenburg’s position places it between those wooded heights and the settled country below. The mountains acquired wealth from mining. Silver deposits were discovered near Goslar in 968, and mines spread through the Harz in the following centuries. Ore moved along medieval trade routes reaching as far as Mesopotamia, while dense forest long made many valleys difficult to cross. Settlements expanded where land was cleared, and the suffix “rode” marks places created by woodland clearing. By the early nineteenth century many mines were exhausted, towns lost population.

Blankenburg itself is first recorded in 1123, when Duke Lothair of Supplinburg installed Poppo as count in the castle on the limestone rock above the town. The counts of Blankenburg and Regenstein held the district as a fief of the bishopric of Halberstadt. In 1599 the county passed to the dukes of Brunswick-Lüneburg, and in 1707 it was raised to an imperial principality under Duke Louis Rudolf, who built the Little Castle with its terraced garden. Blankenburg belonged to the Kingdom of Westphalia from 1807 to 1813 and then to the Duchy of Brunswick, and a fire in 1836 destroyed much of the town.