Westerwald Lakes
Seven ponds in the Westerwald of the Rhineland-Palatinate
The Westerwald Lakes (German: Westerwälder Seen) lie within the eponymous Westerwald Lake District (Westerwälder Seenplatte) in the Westerwald forest within the town quarters of Hachenburg, Westerburg, Montabaur and Dierdorf in the German state of Rhineland-Palatinate.
The lakes consist of seven ponds:
Brinkenweiher
Haidenweiher
Hausweiher
Hoffmannsweiher
Postweiher
Dreifelder Weiher (also Seeweiher)
Wölferlinger Weiher
At 123 hectares, the Dreifelder Weiher is the largest.
Since 2019, the seven ponds and the riparian forests, covering a total area of 228 hectares, have been owned by the NABU National Natural Heritage Foundation.
History
All seven ponds were man-made. The first large fish ponds were created as early as the 12th century by monks for fish farming. In the 17th century, Count Friedrich von Wied had the facilities expanded and created what is now known as the Westerwald Lake District, comprising seven ponds. For centuries, fish farming and the annual fish migration shaped the region. Since 2019, the lakes have been part of the NABU National Natural Heritage Foundation, which works together with the state of Rhineland-Palatinate to protect and preserve this valuable lake landscape.
“Westerwald Lakes” enters the record as seven ponds in the Westerwald of the Rhineland-Palatinate. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Westerwald, Lakes and Seven can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Westerwald Lakes” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.