Müggelsee

“Given enough time, water and ice can carve the greatest features of all.”

The Weichselian Glaciation, the last glacial age one-hundred-and-fifteen-thousand years ago, shaped the surface topography of the present day German capital of Berlin.
        The city can be divided into three geological parts: the Barnim Plateau in the north, the Teltow Plateau and the Nauen Plate in the south, and the Warsaw-Berlin Glacial Spillway running from east to west. The Barnim Plateau and the Teltow Plateau are ground moraine plates. A moraine is an accumulation of unconsolidated rock debris, carried along by a glacier. In Berlin, they formed gently rolling hills and plains. The Warsaw-Berlin Glacial Spillway was partly responsible for the siting of the city. During the Middle Ages, trade routes converged on points along this spillway, where valleys could be more easily crossed, making these hubs favorite sites for the founding of towns, such as Berlin.
        In the south lies the Müggelsee, the largest lake in Berlin. It is a kettle hole, a geological formation resulting from the ice of retreating glaciers carving into the ground. The kettle hole was filled with water, and became a lake.
        In the northeast, there is a small area in which tertiary rupelton clay is close to the surface due to salt-tectonic processes. This is an unusual condition: this clay usually occurs at depths of approximately one-hundred-and-fifty to two-hundred meters below the surface. In the mid-nineteenth-century, this clay was baked into bricks, which were then used to construct buildings in Berlin, such as the Red City Hall and the Reinickendorf Borough Hall.¹

Image source: “Müggelsee: Trotz Naturschutzvorhaben, Segeln Wird Nicht Eingeschränkt | SegelReporter.” n.d. Accessed March 7, 2022. https://segelreporter.com/panorama/mueggelsee-trotz-naturschutzvorhaben-segeln-wird-nicht-eingeschraenkt/.