Geestenthorp

Geestenthorp, later Geestendorf, stood on the left bank of the Geeste near its mouth in the Weser. The village belonged to the Vieland under the prince-archbishops of Bremen. In 1428 the archbishop pledged his possessions here and elsewhere in the Vieland to the city of Bremen, bringing the village into the financial and territorial dealings of its powerful neighbour.

Its church reveals another part of local change. A chapel dependent on Wulsdorf was recorded in 1420; a papal indulgence of 1436 described it as ruinous and supported rebuilding. Before 1500 it had become a parish church in its own right. Sovereignty changed again after the Thirty Years' War: Geestendorf passed under Sweden in 1648, Denmark in 1712 and electoral Hanover in 1715. These transfers concerned an established church village beside the Geeste, before the construction of the later nineteenth-century port of Geestemünde transformed the surrounding area.