Heart of the “Spreewald economic area“ is a nature protection area, which was declared “UNESCO Biosphere Reserve“ in 1991. The Spreewald Biosphere Reserve is situated 100 km south-east of Berlin in the Lausitz region. It is known for its traditional irrigation system, which consists of 1,300 km small channels (called ‘Fliesse’) within the 48,400 hectares area.

About 50,000 people live in the biosphere reserve. Many of them are descendants of the first settlers in the Spreewald region, the Slavic tribes of the Sorbs/Wends. Until today, they have preserved their traditional language, customs and clothing. People mostly depend on tourism.

Around this protected area as a first pillar, the whole tourism organisation and promotion was build, using the classical means of transport the “Kahn“, which is a type of wooden boat as major tourist attraction.

Mr. Irlbacher stressed that it took more than a decade to harmonize the often diverging interests between nature protection and conservation and the use of landscape and resources for touristic or other purposes.

Slightly different to this “Spreewald Tourism Region“ there is a “Spreewald Economic Region“, which is defined by the second pillar of regional development in the Spreewald region: the production and processing of agricultural products mainly a type of small cucumber/gherkin, which is processed to a kind of sour pickle.

This “Economic Region“ is deliniated not by natural criteria, but by clearly defined political-administrative borders, although cutting through the three incolved districts. It took a long and serious discussion and decision-making process to come to the current border line, but there was a very clear need for this clear-cut decision. The whole process started during the early nineties, when the traditional cucumber production practically collapsed as can be seen on the following graph.

This was aggrevated by the fact, that the region was facing an even more severe crises due to the closing of the huge lignite mining companies because of mainly environmental concerns. Thousands of jobs were lost and unemployment rate increased to extreme figures.

In this situation the “Spreewald e.V.“ (a registered association) was founded to find ways out of this double dilemma and revitalise the two major traditions in the region: tourism and cucumber production.

Starting point was the creation of the regional umbrella brand “Spreewald“, which was registered at the German Patent and Brand Authority in 1991 and enlarged in 2002. This brand stands for the regional identity and keeps all regional development activities under one overarching umbrella.

Additionally to the German protection, the Spreewald Association started in 2003 to register this regional brand in 32 other countries in order to prevent others from using the “regional trademark“