In terms of thousands of years of German history, the town of Moringen in Lower Saxony is a relatively new town; just shy of being 300 years old.
Well, maybe I should say the new town of Morigen, since a fire ripped through the place in 1734 destroying more than a hundred homes and over 150 businesses—including its brewery.
Townsfolk used this unforeseen circumstance to totally remake the place, instituting new building methods and making wider streets to keep this from happening again. Hence, a whole new Moringen.
The 18th century also gave Moringen its first orphanage; which, in turn, became a black mark on the town.
How could an orphanage do that? Isn’t an orphanage supposed to help children?
Yeah, except when some Royal Yahoo decides to turn it into a “workhouse” for drunks, prostitutes, and debtors.
In the grand scheme of things, that’s not so horrible—its true ugliness came from 1933–1945 when the former orphanage became a concentration camp housing political prisoners and juveniles.
After the war the Camp was used to help displaced persons, and now it houses a permanent exhibit on the Holocaust.
That’s not the only museum in Moringen, there’s a Local History Museum and the Gasometer Museum which details the (very) early 20th century Gas Works.
All of these sights came after Moringen’s great fire, but a number of places are still around. The chapel in the village of Behrensen (one of the 9 hamlets of Moringen) dates to before the Thirty Years’ War in the 17th century; and it wasn’t the fire that destroyed the George Chapel in Lutterbeck, it was the Thirty Years War itself.
Oh wait, the George Chapel wasn’t rebuilt until 1736—so I guess that’s new too. Anyway, I guess we’ll have to go to Fredelsoh where you’ll see the 12th century monastic church of Sts. Blasius & Mary. And the Martini Church is a Romanesque Church, which means it comes from the Middle Ages.
Isn’t it nice to know not all of Moringen is new? Still, they should bring back the brewery. ;-)
