Kreis Demmin

The documentation was developed as part of the project initiated by Pomeranian linguist, Dr Robert Holsten (1862-1954), with the aim to collect and compile contemporary folk and archive names of natural and anthropogenic physiographic objects, as well as inhabited and uninhabited places of the pre-war province of Pomerania (from Rügen to Lębork), with the help of teachers and local scientists. The collected set of archive materials – indices and maps with locations of objects – Flurnamen Sammlung – covers the intangible onomastic cultural heritage of the region. Documentation of the names of physiographic objects from the area of the former Kreis Demmin (now partly in the Kreis Mecklenburgische Seenplatte and the Kreis Vorpommern-Greifswald, both in Bundesland Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Germany) was compiled by Robert Holsten in 1935, based on data from field interviews conducted by local teachers in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Their names are mentioned in the index. The original documentation was drafted in German (including the Lower German dialect), with occasional Slavic, Polish and Kashubian vocabulary. The documentation consists of 217 sheets, some of them double-sided, including a typed index (191 sheets), handwritten documents (13 sheets), newspapers (Stettiner General-Anzeiger, 1941, Am Pommerschen Herd, 1928, 1931, Pommersche Heimat, 1928; 13 sheets in total). The vast majority of the topographic maps with locations of physiographic objects and their names also survived in the documentation.

Andrzej Chludziński