Barthe (river)

Stalag Luft I was a German World War II prisoner-of-war (POW) camp near Barth, Western Pomerania, Germany, for captured Allied airmen. The presence of the prison camp is said to have shielded the town of Barth from Allied bombing. About 9,000 airmen – 7,588 American and 1,351 British and Canadian – were imprisoned there when it was liberated on the night of 30 April 1945 by Soviet troops.

Pruchten is a municipality in the Vorpommern-Rügen district, in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Germany.

Barth is a town in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern in north-eastern Germany. It is situated at a lagoon (Bodden) of the Baltic Sea facing the Fischland-Darss-Zingst peninsula. Barth belongs to the district of Vorpommern-Rügen. It is close to the Western Pomerania Lagoon Area National Park. In 2011, it held a population of 8,706.

Barth (German: Bahnhof Barth) is a railway station in the town of Barth, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Germany. The station lies on the Velgast-Barth railway and the train services are operated by Deutsche Bahn.

Zingst (German pronunciation: [ˈt͡sɪŋst]; Polabian Sgoni) is the easternmost portion of the three-part Fischland-Darß-Zingst Peninsula, located in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Germany, between the cities of Rostock and Stralsund on the southern shore of the Baltic Sea. The area is part of the Pomeranian coast. The Zingst Peninsula forms an eastward-running spit, nearly 20 km (12 mi) in length, and has a width of just 2 to 4 km (1.2 to 2.5 mi). Zingst separates the Baltic Sea from the lagoon of Barther Bodden, which is part of the Darss-Zingst Bodden Chain, a large estuary. The shallow waters of the inlet are a major stopover for the migratory European crane. In spring and autumn, up to 3,000 birds gather here on their migration route to and from Spain. Most of the estuary and the eastern end of the peninsula are part of the Western Pomerania Lagoon Area National Park. Until the early 1870s, Zingst was an island, separated from Darß by the Prerowstrom, a narrow inlet. A storm tide in 1874 closed the inlet, which had connected the bodden with the Baltic Sea. A road now connects Zingst and Darß, running along a 100 m (330 ft)-wide isthmus. The soils of Zingst consist almost entirely of sand. The sand is white in colour, which makes it popular with sunbathers and tourists. Dunes border the Baltic Sea and enclose low ground about half a metre below sea level. The low-lying land results in boggy conditions in the interior of the peninsula, and these bogs offer habitat to a wide variety of wildlife. The ruins of a Slavic fort, the 'Hertesburg,' are on the Zingst peninsula near Zingst municipality.

The uninhabited island of Barther Oie belongs to the German federal state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and lies in the lagoon of Barther Bodden, between the town of Barth and the Baltic seaside resort of Zingst. The Baltic Sea island has an area of about 850 by 800 metres (2,790 ft × 2,620 ft) and rises, like its sister island of Kirr, only 1 metre (3 ft 3 in) above sea level. Today the island is a nature reserve in the West Pomeranian Lagoon Area National Park.

The Barther Bodden (German for Barth Lagoon) is a bodden water between the Zingst peninsula and the mainland town of Barth. It is a brackish lagoon that is part of the Darss-Zingst Bodden Chain. Its largest inflow is the Barthe stream. Large parts of the Barther Bodden have a depth of less than 2 meters, so that shipping is very restricted. Today, it is limited almost exclusively to sport boats and pleasure cruisers. To the north is the Zingster Strom, the river-like section of the bodden south of Zingst. Here the bodden reaches its greatest depths of over six metres. To the northwest lie the well-known islands of Kirr and Barther Oie, both important breeding areas for gulls, terns, waterfowl and waders. These rise just a few centimetres above the water level of the bodden and are out of bounds to visitors. The Kirr is used as cattle pasture and, during the autumn migration is an important stopover for cranes.

The Bodstedter Bodden is a lagoon, of the type known as a bodden, that is part of the Darss-Zingst Bodden Chain and the Western Pomerania Lagoon Area National Park in northeastern Germany. It lies south of the peninsula of Fischland-Darß-Zingst on the coast of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. The heavily indented, reed fringed shoreline forms a picturesque landscape with the result that the villages near the shore are popular tourist destinations. The western boundary of the bodden with the Koppelstrom forms the so-called Borner Bülten (Bulte i.e. small swampy, islands of reed). The Koppelstrom is the transition to another lagoon, the Saaler Bodden. To the east the Bodstedter Bodden is separated from the Barther Bodden and Zingster Strom by the Meiningen Narrows. To the south of the bodden is the lake of Redensee and the village of Fuhlendorf. To the northeast, the Prerower Strom, a former estuary, empties into the bodden. The deepest point of the bodden (10 metres in depth) lies just in front of the Meininger Bülten, the small reed islands by Meiningen. The rest of the bodden is only rarely deeper than 3 metres.

Zingst is a municipality in the Vorpommern-Rügen district, in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Germany. It is located on the peninsula of Zingst.

The Darss-Zingst Bodden Chain (German: Darß-Zingster Boddenkette) is a waterbody on the Baltic Sea coast northeast of Rostock in Germany. It consists of a string of several lagoons or bodden arranged in an east–west direction that are separated from the open sea by the Fischland-Darß-Zingst peninsula. The surface area of these lagoons is 197 km2 and the average water depth is only about two metres. The individual lagoons of the Darss-Zingst Bodden Chain are the: Saaler Bodden Bodstedter Bodden Barther Bodden and Grabow(listed from west to east; not mentioned here are several smaller stretches of interlinking water). The salt content of the water rises from west to east, because only at the eastern end of the bodden chain is there a link to the Baltic Sea via the Gellenstrom stream and the small opening between Großer Werder and Kleiner Werder, where the waters are able to mix. There used to be other links to the sea like the Prerowstrom stream to the north (dammed after 1872) and the Permin and Loop by Fischland to the west (dammed in the 14th century). The rivers Recknitz and Barthe discharge into the Darss-Zingst Bodden Chain and, in all, it has catchment area of 1,578 km2. On the south shore of the bodden chain lie the towns of Ribnitz-Damgarten and Barth. The northern part of the Darss-Zingst Bodden Chain belongs to the Western Pomerania Lagoon Area National Park.

The Prerower Strom, Prerow Strom or Prerowstrom is an arm of the Baltic Sea in northeast Germany. It begins near the island of Schmidtbülten in the Bodstedter Bodden and winds its way through the countryside of the peninsula of Fischland-Darß-Zingst, where it separates Darß from the peninsula of Zingst. It ends at the harbour of the village of Prerow that gives it its name. The Prerower Strom is part of the Western Pomerania Lagoon Area National Park.

Wieck auf dem Darß is a municipality in the Vorpommern-Rügen district, in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Germany.