Lübbenau

Archaeological finds from the Stone Age show early settlement in the area, and the Lower Sorbian name, Lubnjow, can be traced to the personal name Lubin, a short form of Lubomir, meaning 'the peace-loving'. The castle is first recorded in 1301 and the town in 1315. Lübbenau was a lordship town, ruled by a series of noble families until Elisabeth zu Lynar acquired it in 1621; the counts of Lynar then held it until the end of the Second World War, when the family was expropriated after Wilhelm Graf zu Lynar's part in the 20 July 1944 plot against Hitler. The gatehouse in the old town was completed in 1780, and the present castle was built in 1817–20.

The town lived on its waterlogged land. By the 18th and 19th centuries its farmers were shipping gherkins, onions and horseradish to Berlin, Dresden and Leipzig, and the harbour was a loading point for vegetables. Tourism began in 1882, when the local teacher Paul Fahlisch started offering organised punt trips and advertised them in the cities; he also helped found the Spreewaldmuseum.

Under East Germany the town was transformed. The Lübbenau lignite power station, in its day the largest steam power station in Europe, and the opencast mines nearby brought workers from across the country, and the population rose from about 5,600 in 1946 to about 22,000 by 1976, housed in a new town of prefabricated blocks. Pollution was severe, and studies found lung and blood disease among residents. The power station closed in 1996 and was demolished by 2010; some 1,300 flats in the new town were pulled down between 2002 and 2014, while the Spreewald became a UNESCO biosphere reserve in 1991 and tourism took over as the town's main business.

Lübbenau lies in Lower Lusatia and in the official settlement area of the Sorbs, or Wends, a Slavic minority; the town's full name is bilingual, Lübbenau/Spreewald and Lubnjow/Błota. Services in Lower Sorbian were held in the town church until 1867, and a count in 1884 found about 150 Sorbs among some 3,800 inhabitants. Sorbian tradition survives in festive costume, in the decorated eggs shown and sold at the Easter egg fair, and in the villages around the town.

The punt, or Kahn, is the town's symbol. Long flat-bottomed boats, poled along by a ferryman standing at the stern, were the working boats of a landscape where canals take the place of roads, and they now carry visitors to Lehde and beyond. The writer Theodor Fontane took a boat trip from the old loading point at the harbour, and the town still sees itself as the 'gateway to the Spreewald'. The festival on the first weekend of July ends with a parade of decorated punts on the water.

Since 2006 the old town has belonged to Brandenburg's association of towns with historic centres, and the Spreewaldmuseum keeps the region's story, from Sorbian dress to the gherkin trade.

Lübbenau is a small town whose population has fallen since its East German peak of about 22,000 in 1976, as many residents left after the last mine and the power station closed in 1996. The town area is large and mostly meadow and farmland, taking in villages such as Lehde, Leipe, Boblitz, Ragow and Zerkwitz, several of them inside the biosphere reserve. Most residents live either in the old town and its surrounding streets or in the Neustadt, where the remaining prefabricated blocks have been partly renovated.

Tourism is now the main industry: boatmen, guesthouses, restaurants and the gherkin trade depend on the summer season. Gherkins have long been part of the local economy, and they are still grown and pickled across the Spreewald. The lakes south of the town have been created by flooding the old lignite pits, part of a wider effort to give the former mining country a new future.

The rhythm follows the seasons. From spring to autumn the harbour is busy from morning, punts leave in a steady stream, and the canal paths fill with walkers and cyclists; in winter the town is quiet. Regional trains connect it with Berlin.

The Spreewald gherkin is the town's emblem: a pickled cucumber from the region protected by the European Union as a Protected Geographical Indication. Lübbenau has long been its main trading centre, and stalls around the harbour and along the canals sell it in many forms, from mustard gherkins (Senfgurken) to spiced dill pickles (Gewürzgurken). Fermentation in large barrels once took several weeks; today most gherkins are ready for sale after a day of processing. The Spreewaldmuseum has an exhibition on their history, and a long-distance cycle route, the Gurkenradweg, links gherkin sites across the Spreewald.

Horseradish and onions were grown and exported alongside the gherkins, and both still turn up in local cooking. Quark with linseed oil, eaten with potatoes boiled in their skins, is a traditional dish of Lusatia and especially the Spreewald, and Plinse, a name borrowed from Sorbian, are round pancakes, in Lusatia often made with buttermilk. Restaurants around the harbour serve Spreewald dishes alongside fish and game.