Kranenburg (Oste)

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Kranenburg is a municipality in the district Stade, Lower Saxony, Germany, lying on the river Oste. It consists of the villages Kranenburg and Brobergen and is part of the Samtgemeinde Oldendorf. It has a population of 772 as at December 31, 2003. Thereof account 546 on Kranenburg and 226 on Brobergen.

Both villages are lying on the right side of the Oste river, but part of the municipality lies on the left side, called "Hollander Höfe", which were the old ancestral seat of the gentry family "von Brobergen". There is a pram ferry in Brobergen crossing the Oste, connecting the "Hollander Höfe" with the village Brobergen. It is a station of the "Deutsche Fährstraße".

The place lies on the border of the marshland near the Oste. The river Mehe, a tributary of the Oste, has its estuary near Brobergen.

The village Brobergen was an own municipality, but then got part of Kranenburg in the course of a reformation of municipality borders in Lower Saxony in 1972.

[edit] History

Kranenburg was first mentioned in 1375 as Kronesborg.

Brobergen was first the name of a landscape, which referred to a larger area along the Oste between Gräpel and Burweg. In a charter from 1141 it is said, that the duke of Stade gave Brobergen as a feud to one of the three brothers Dudo, Adiko and Ricbert, after they founded the monastery "Marienkloster" in Stade. In 1286 it was first mentioned, that there was a village by the castle, which was the seat of the von Brobergen family. The family lasted until 1618, when it extincted. At this time the manor was sold to merchants from Hamburg, the ownership changed some times in the next time between various merchants until in 1837 it was purchased by the farmers of Brobergen, who pooled together to become free of the ownership of their land by other persons.