Neu-Berich is a relatively young place with a unique and hardly comparable past. When the Edertalsperre was built between 1908 and 1914 about 22 km (as the crow flies) further south, it was certain that the village of Berich, located in the Edertal, would sink into the newly emerging Edersee. From 1908 onwards, the residents were looking for a new place to stay.
A total of 150 families with 900 people in the Waldeck villages of Bringhausen and Berich and in Asel in Prussia had to give up their farms and were relocated. Most of them found their place above the future Edersee. For the others, the princely agricultural administration had proposed moving to the princely domain of Büllinghausen near Arolsen. Karl Meyer, architect and structural engineer at the Weserstrombauverwaltung in Hanover, designed the Neu-Berich settlement, in which eight farming families from Berich and nine from Bringhausen were settled. In addition, five craftsmen, an innkeeper, a day laborer, the community servant (police servant, shepherd and gravedigger) and a teacher from the Eder valley were added. In 1910 the structural preparations for Neu-Berich began, in 1911 the new village was mostly built on its own and in the Franconian style. It was inaugurated on July 13, 1912.
Church in Neu-Berich
With the church from the 13th century (previously part of the Berich monastery), the Bericher took a piece of their old homeland with them to Neu-Berich by relocating the building. At the inauguration of the village, the foundation stone was laid for the church, which - shortened by two yokes - was rebuilt in Neu-Berich. The doors and windows, the stones around the window and portal, the floor, the organ and the altar were brought from Berich on horse or ox wagons. Including medieval panes, the artistic glazing in the three central choir windows was made in 1914 by the glass painting workshop K.J. Schultz sons created. [2] A tablet that reports on a renovation in the former Protestant church in Berich has also been transferred to the new church