- Morgen
-
For other uses, see Morgen (disambiguation).
A morgen was a unit of measurement of land in Germany, the Netherlands, Poland and the Dutch colonies, including South Africa and Taiwan. The size of a morgen varies from 1/2 to 2½ acres, which equals approximately 0.2 to 1 ha. It was also used in old Prussia, in the Balkans, Norway and Denmark, where it was equal to about two-thirds of an acre (0.27 ha).
The word is usually taken to be the same as the German and Dutch word for "morning". Similarly to the Imperial acre, it was approximately the amount of land tillable by one man behind an ox in the morning hours of a day. The "morgen" was commonly set at about 60-70% of the "tagwerk" (literally "day work") referring to a full day of ploughing. In 1869, the North German Confederation fixed the morgen at a quarter hectare (i.e. 2500 square meters)[1] but in modern times most farmland work is measured in full hectares. The next lower measurement unit was the German "rute" or Imperial rod but the metric rod length of 5 metres never became popular. It is still used in Taiwan today, called "ka." 1 ka is 2934 "tsubo" (Japanese) or "phêng" (Taiwanese).
Contents
Germany
The following table shows an excerpt of morgen sizes as used in Germany - some morgen were used in a wider area and so they had proper names. It is noteworthy that the actual area of a morgen was considerably larger in fertile areas of Germany, or in regions where flat terrain prevails, presumably facilitating tilling. The next lower measurement unit to a morgen was usually in "Quadratruten" square rods.
German sizes of morgen Region (Timespan) Name Size in m² original definition (QR = Quadratruten) - metric - Viertelhektar = vha 2,500 (100 QR) Homburg 1,906 160 QR Franconia 2,000 Frankfurt Feldmorgen 2,025 160 QFeldR Oldenburg 2,256 Kassel Acker 2,386 150 QR Prussia (1816–1869) Magdeburger Morgen 2,553.22 180 QR Waldeck-Pyrmont Bremen 2,572 120 QR Schaumburg 2,585 120 QR Hanover (before 1836) 2,608 120 QR Hanover (after 1836) 2,621 120 QR Cologne Rhineland Rheinländischer Morgen 3,176 150 QR Bergisches Land Bergischer Morgen 2,132 120 QR Württemberg (1806–1871) 3,152 384 QR Frankfurt Waldmorgen 3,256 160 QWaldR Braunschweig Waldmorgen 3,335 160 QR Bavaria Tagwerk 3,407 400 QR Baden 3,600 400 QR Oldenburg Jück 4,538 160 QR Danzig ca. 5,000 300 QR Holstein Tonne (Tønde) 5,046 240 QGeestR Schleswig-Holstein Steuertonne 5,466 260 QGeestR Kulmischer Morgen 5,601.17 300 QR East Frisia Diemat (h) 5,674 Mecklenburg 6,500 300 QR Altes Land (Harburg & Stade) 8,185 Hamburg 9,658 600 QGR Kehdingen Marschmorgen 10,477 Altes Land 10,484 480 QR Hadeln 11,780 540 QR South Africa
Until the advent of metrication in the 1970s, the morgen was the legal unit of measure of land in three of the four pre-1995 South African provinces - the Cape Province, the Orange Free State and the Transvaal. In November 2007 the South African Law Society published the a conversion factor of 1 Morgen = 0.856 532 Hectares to be used for the conversion of areas from imperial units to metric, particularly when preparing consolidated diagrams by compilation.[2]
References
- ^ See de:Morgen (Einheit) -German version of Wikipedia
- ^ "Instructions for the Conversions of Areas to Metric". Law Society of South Africa. 2007-11. http://www.lawsoc.co.za/webs/surveyorgeneral/2007_11_area_conversion.doc. Retrieved 2010-03-10.
See also
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.Categories:- Obsolete units of measure
- Units of area
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.
