Qualla: Bad Zwischenahn

Bad Zwischenahn: Introduction

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit --Xocolatl (talk) 17:25, 14 April 2011 (UTC), CC0. The local way to eat a smoked eel in Bad Zwischenahn involves a tin spoon, a glass of grain schnapps called *Ammerländer Löffeltrunk*, and a small ritual cheer that the host and the guests take turns reciting. When the eel is gone, the schnapps does double duty: you also use it to clean your fingers. This is a town that has spent most of its life as a lakeside resort on the Zwischenahner Meer, a broad shallow lake where ferries still run between Bad Zwischenahn, Dreibergen and Rostrup. It is also a town whose 20th-century history is shadowed by darker things - a Luftwaffe airfield that became a test site for rocket-powered fighters, and a psychiatric hospital eight kilometres east whose patients were murdered in their beds during the Nazi euthanasia programme.

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Image: --Xocolatl (talk) 17:25, 14 April 2011 (UTC) | CC0

Bad Zwischenahn: A Lake and a Spa

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit yeowatzup, CC BY 2.0. The first written mention of Zwischenahn dates from 1124, in connection with the founding of St John's Church by Count Egilmar of Oldenburg. The lake - the Zwischenahner Meer - is the reason the town exists and the reason it became a *Kurort*, a designated spa town, picking up th...

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Image: yeowatzup | CC BY 2.0

Bad Zwischenahn: Adlerhorst

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Frank Vincentz, CC BY-SA 3.0. Between 1933 and 1945 the lake town also became something else. Bad Zwischenahn was one of the Nazi strongholds in Ammerland, and during the war the airfield at Rostrup - named *Adlerhorst*, Eagle's Nest - was the largest Luftwaffe base in northern Germany. From here, Luftwaffe u...

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Image: Frank Vincentz | CC BY-SA 3.0

Bad Zwischenahn: Wehnen

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit JoachimKohler-HB, CC BY-SA 4.0. Eight kilometres east of Bad Zwischenahn, in the village of Wehnen, stands what is today the Karl-Jaspers-Klinik, an academic psychiatric hospital affiliated with the University of Oldenburg. It was founded in 1858. Between 1933 and 1945 it was something else. Patients here were ...

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Image: JoachimKohler-HB | CC BY-SA 4.0

Bad Zwischenahn: Spoon and Eel

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit JoachimKohler-HB, CC BY-SA 4.0. The town that absorbed all of that history is still, day to day, a lake resort. Trains on the Oldenburg-Leer line stop at Bad Zwischenahn station with Intercity and regional services. Ferries criss-cross the Meer to Dreibergen and Rostrup. The water is good for boating, bathing a...

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Image: JoachimKohler-HB | CC BY-SA 4.0