Morgen


A morgen was a unit of measurement of land area in Germany, the Netherlands, Poland and the Dutch colonies, including South Africa and Taiwan. The size of a morgen varies from. It was also used in Old Prussia, in the Balkans, Norway and Denmark, where it was equal to about
The word is usually taken to be the same as the German and Dutch word for "morning" or "tomorrow". Similarly to the Imperial acre, it was approximately the amount of land tillable in the morning hours of a day by one man behind an ox or horse dragging a single bladed plough. The morgen was commonly set at about 60–70% of the tagwerk referring to a full day of ploughing. In 1869, the North German Confederation fixed the morgen at a 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 never became popular. The morgen is still used in Taiwan today, called "kah"; 1 kah is roughly.

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. 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.
Region NameSize in m²original definition
- metric -Viertelhektar = vha2,500
Homburg1,906160 QR
Franconia2,000
FrankfurtFeldmorgen2,025160 QFeldR
Oldenburg2,256
KasselAcker2,386150 QR
Prussia Magdeburger Morgen2,553.22180 QR
Waldeck-PyrmontMagdeburger Morgen2,553.22180 QR
Bremen2,572120 QR
Schaumburg2,585120 QR
Hanover 2,608120 QR
Hanover 2,621120 QR
Cologne RhinelandRheinländischer Morgen3,176150 QR
Bergisches LandBergischer Morgen2,132120 QR
Württemberg 3,152384 QR
FrankfurtWaldmorgen3,256160 QWaldR
BraunschweigWaldmorgen3,335160 QR
BavariaTagwerk3,407400 QR
Baden3,600400 QR
OldenburgJück4,538160 QR
Danzigca. 5,000300 QR
HolsteinTonne 5,046240 QGeestR
Schleswig-HolsteinSteuertonne5,466260 QGeestR
Kulmischer Morgen5,601.17300 QR
East FrisiaDiemat 5,674
Mecklenburg6,500300 QR
Altes Land 8,185
Hamburg9,658600 QGR
KehdingenMarschmorgen10,477
Altes Land10,484480 QR
Land of Hadeln11,780540 QR

Poland

The Polish terms for the unit were morga, mórg, jutrzyna, the latter being a near-literal translation into old Polish.
UnitMiaraSążeń², Łokieć² m²
1 morg 316006439.025754.64
1 miara 533.332929.071918
1 sążeń² wiedeński 4.02373.6
1 łokieć² wiedeński 0.9

Austria–Hungary

The term morgen was used in the Austrian Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria where 1 morgen was equal to.

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 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".