Kreis Anklam

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.

The documentation of names of physiographic objects from the area of former Kreis Anklam (currently a part of Kreis Vorpommern-Greifswald, Bundesland Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Germany) was made by Otto Bollnow (1877-1959), local scientist and headmaster of the local elementary school. The documentation was compiled between 1927 and 1935 based on queries carried out by school teachers from villages of the former Kreis Anklam. It lacks data from several towns, as the teachers failed to submit the query results. Bollnow handed the organised source documentation over to Holsten in 1935.

The original documentation was drafted in German (including the Lower German dialect), with fragments of Slavic, Polish and Kashubian vocabulary. The documentation comprises 77 sheets, some of them double-sided, comprising a typed index (72 sheets) and a handwritten index (2 sheets), as well as a map and letters.

The vast majority of the topographic maps with locations of physiographic objects and their names also survived in the documentation.

Andrzej Chludziński