Oedeme, Lüneburg — Area Guide & Where to Stay

What are the main landmarks in Oedeme?

Gut Schnellenberg is the one set piece. The von Meding family have held the Rittergut since 1360, its classicist manor house was finished in 1802, and a half-timbered estate chapel of about 1674 stands beside it; the Gutsbezirk was folded into the village of Oedeme on 30 September 1928. Schnellenberger Weg leads out to it, though the buildings stay private.

Everything else here is school and house: the Gymnasium Oedeme at Oedemer Weg 77 and the Hanseschule Oedeme at number 94 share one campus, and under the Hanseschule sits a bunker of 4,000 square metres fitted out between 1970 and 1974 as a Cold War standby hospital. That Gymnasium opened in 1971 and counts the Star Division founder Marco Börries among its former pupils. A cemetery on Schaperdrift took its first burial in January 1971.

What is the history of Oedeme?

Oedeme marked 800 years in 2005, and for most of them it was tiny. A knightly family called Odeme settled a hamlet of four households; once knighthood faded in the early 14th century the Benedictine house of St. Michaelis in Lüneburg bought the village outright and held it in serfdom, and abbey lists of 1581 count eight households, four farms and four cottar holdings. From 1397 Lüneburg dug the Lüneburger Landwehr, banks and water ditches meant to force trade through the salt town, and its line follows the stream valley at Oedeme's edge.

In 1821 Oedeme held 147 people. The village counted 147 people in 1821 and 458 by 1939, then 970 in 1949 and roughly four and a half thousand by 2014. Archaeologists opened a cremation cemetery of 8,400 square metres beside Oedeme between 1983 and 1985.

The graves date to the 4th and 5th centuries. British troops took Lüneburg on 18 April 1945, and Bernard Montgomery ran his first headquarters from a farm in Oedeme before moving it on 30 April 1945. Lüneburg absorbed the village on 1 March 1974, together with Ochtmissen, Häcklingen and Rettmer.

Where is Oedeme?

Oedeme covers about 6.4 square kilometres on Lüneburg's south-western edge, bounded north and east by the Hasenburger Mühlenbach, a 15-kilometre stream that runs south-east to the Ilmenau. Two pairs of roads carry the district: Oedemer Weg and Im Dorf from the north-east, Auf der Höhe and Schnellenberger Weg from the north-west, all traffic-calmed through the old cores. West of the last houses the ground turns to pasture, arable and wood, and the Hasenburger Bachtal, a 530-hectare reserve shared with Reppenstedt, Kirchgellersen, Südergellersen and Embsen, begins beyond the district line.

Rettmer lies south, Häcklingen south-east.