Versfleth

Versfleth lies beneath the waters of the Weser in the Wesermarsch district. Once a small island settlement, it stood near today’s Ritzenbütteler Sand close to the later village of Flethe. The place first appears in records in 1139 when a farm was given to Bremen’s St Paul’s monastery. The village was destroyed by a storm surge around 1280. Later, in the 19th century, the Weser’s course was straightened, shifting the river so that most of the old site now lies in its bed. A ruined chapel on the dyke is thought to mark the spot where the counts of Versfleth once had a fortress chapel built about 1150. In 1234 troops from Oldenburg and Bremen burned the village and killed the farmers; the noble dead were buried there. Visitors walk along the modern dyke above the buried village. The Weser flows just below, carrying away the last traces of the old island. A small stone cross on the dyke recalls the vanished settlement. The river’s shifting waters still uncover occasional bricks and bones when winter storms scour the banks.