Using Gis For Visualization Of The Changing Landscape Of The Brown Coal Mining Areas At The International Building Exhibition (Iba) Fuerst Pueckler Land.pdf

Using GIS for Visualization of the Changing Landscape of
the Brown Coal Mining Areas at the International Building
Exhibition (IBA) Fuerst Pueckler Land
Erich BUHMANN
1 Changing Landscapes: From Fuerst Pueckler to Brown Coal
Mining to Waterfront Parks
Today, the Cottbus region south of Berlin is dominated by 24 open, large-scale, brown coal
mining areas. As described by STEINITZ, this region once very looked very different. In the
early 19th century, Prince Hermann von Pueckler-Muskau (1785-1871) laid out a huge
landscape park on his estates at muskau, now divided by the German-Polish border. His
extravagant devotion to landscape as art, and a disregard of practicalities resulted in the
forced sale of the beautifully embellished Muskau in 1846. He retired to his smaller
property at Branitz, near Cottbus, and began work there, creating more English inspired
gardens and the famous pyramid tomb. The landscape park at Branitz has survived the 20th
century in surprisingly good condition. The portion of the Muskau park extending into
Poland has pletely neglected since 1945, although some improvements are on the
way.

The region surrounding the two landscape parks has suffered major devastation and related
pollution problems resulting from extensive open cast lignite mining and industrial
development. With the demise of mining and hea