Uffe (Wieda)

Part of the middle course of the Uffe through Bad Sachsa

The Uffe is a German river in the states of Lower Saxony and Thuringia.

It has its source on the Großer Bockstalskopf in Lower Saxony, a subpeak of the Ravensberg mountain, and flows through the town of Bad Sachsa down to the village Neuhof. From there the Uffe is known as the Sachsengraben ("Saxon Ditch") and continues to the village of Branderode.

The stream then sinks into the gypsum karst, before reaching the River Wieda beyond the village of Obersachswerfen. The Wieda, too, regularly dries up behind the hamlet of Wiedigshof.

Until the middle of the last century the Uffe divided in the village of Neuhof. The main stream flowed towards Klettenberg and Holbach where its water power was used in several mills. This stream is still called the Uffe today. The branch running towards Branderode is called the Sachsengraben and passes the villages of Branderode and Obersachswerfen before discharging below Schwinden into the Wieda, which flows into the Zorge downstream of Schwinden. The waters of the Zorge pass down the Helme, Unstrut and Saale into the Elbe.

Today the Uffe has no direct route beyond Neuhof (a sewage farm intervenes) and it now begins in front of a bridge (Branderode - Klettenberg road) about 5 metres above the Sachsengraben. Due to the lack of a link to the 'main' Uffe, it is usually dry there, is filled by springs and flows through the villages of Klettenberg and Holbach, by the B 243 federal road, onto the Ichte.

Into the Ichte flows from Klettenberg and Holbach a stream, that branches near Branderode and Neuhof from the Uffe and the Sachsengraben. This produces a fork in the Uffe, in which one stream empties into the Wieda and the other into the Ichte.

— Heimatkunde der Stadt Nordhausen, p. 24, E. Haacke’s Buchhandlung, Nordhausen, 1904.

Between Bad Sachsa and Neuhof, the Uffe flows immediately past the foot of the Sachsenstein, a former coral reef in the Zechstein Sea. Here, by a section of the Northeim–Nordhausen railway, are the ruins of an old castle, the Sachsenburg.

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Coordinates: 51°33′14″N 10°39′21″E / 51.5538°N 10.6557°E / 51.5538; 10.6557

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