Calau

The Calau country lies west of Cottbus, where Lower Lusatia opens toward the southern edge of the Spree Forest. Calowe first appears in written records in 1279; its old Sorbian root means swamp or bog, fitting ground threaded by wet woodland and small waterways. The town occupied a useful place on the Salt Road that carried salt from Halle across Lusatia and onward toward Poland.

In 1367 Emperor Charles IV bought Lower Lusatia and joined it to the Bohemian Crown, and it passed to the Luxembourg, Jagiellon and, from 1526, Habsburg kings. The Protestant Reformation won most of its people. Under the Peace of Prague in 1635 Ferdinand II gave the Lusatias to Saxony, and Prussia annexed the town in 1815. Calau's people spoke Lower Sorbian as well as German. Its position made it a meeting point between open farmland, wet woodland and higher forested ridges, so the surrounding routes and habitats change within a short distance.