Information from Wikipedia:
The village was first mentioned in 1293; at that time it consisted of three farmsteads. In 1895, the industrialist Richard Toepffer acquired the "Aevermannschen Hof", a heath farm in need of renovation, in Lopau. Around 1900, the village had 123 inhabitants and a school. In 1922, the estate was sold to the state. In 1942, the Gauleiter Telschow received the farm and 40 hectares of land as a gift from the state. He built a bunker on the site, parts of which are still preserved today. In 1970, 62 people still lived in Lopau.[1] Toepffer's estate itself was demolished by the German army in 1978. The "Schilling House", named after a displaced person who lived here after the Second World War, was the home of the overseer's family in Toepffer's time, and is now a home for the Munster Forest Youth. The former forest workers' home (old forestry office) now serves as the Federal Forestry Administration's operational and residential building.
When shooting range 7 of the Munster Nord military training area was built in the early 1980s, Lopau fell into the security zone and its residents were relocated.
The Bundeswehr's original plan to build the shooting range near the edge of the village and to build a tank ring road through the valley met with resistance from the local population and led to the founding of the Save the Lopau Valley action group. The opening of the shooting range was subsequently delayed by over ten years. The designation of the valley as a nature reserve failed due to a veto by the Bundeswehr. On shooting range 7, tanks are only allowed to drive on paved roads so that the water in the Lopau's source area is not polluted.