Drawehn

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The Drawehn is a region of hills in northeastern Lower Saxony, Germany. It is partly forested and partly farmed, and lies between Lüneburg and Uelzen to the west and Lüchow-Dannenberg to the east. It is named after the Slavic tribe Drevani. In German geography, the Drawehn forms the eastern end of the Lüneburg Heath and the Ostheide, and it borders Wendland and Altmark. Culturally, the area is closely tied to Wendland.

The exact boundary of the Drawehn is unclear. Sometimes the name refers to the whole East Hanoverian End Moraine ridge; other times it refers only to the southern part, with the northern part called Göhrde. Historically, from the 14th to the 16th century the term covered a larger area west of the Jeetze plain and east of the Uelzen-Bevensen Bowl, including the Dahlenburg Basin, i.e., the main ridge of the East Hanoverian End Moraine plus its foothills and the eastern slopes down to the Lüchow plain. The northern end is split into Göhrde and Klötzie. Klötzie (also called Elbhöhen) is the northern edge of the ridge, up to about 70 meters high, sloping down to the Elbe valley between Hitzacker and Neu Darchau. Göhrde refers to the wooded Göhrde State Forest in the northwest part of the ridge.

Geologically, the Drawehn formed during four major advances of the Scandinavian ice sheet about 350,000 to 130,000 years ago. The most recent Weichselian glaciation barely reached the Elbe valley, so much of the morainic landscape was shaped by earlier glaciations and by meltwater, wind-blown sand, and periglacial processes. The last two Saale glaciation stages, Drenthe II and Warthe, created the East Hanoverian Terminal Moraine, making the Drawehn younger than the geest in western and central Lower Saxony but older than younger moraine landscapes in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and Ostholstein.