Morgen

A morgen (Mg) is a historical, but still occasionally used, German unit of area used in agriculture. Officially, it is no longer in use, having been supplanted by the hectare. While today it is approximately equivalent to the Prussian morgen, measuring 25 ares or 2,500 square meters (0.62 acres), its area once ranged from 1,906 to 11,780 square metres (0.471 to 2.911 acres), but usually between 0.25 to 0.5 hectares (0.62 to 1.24 acres). In the 20th century, the quarter hectare became standard for one morgen. The Morgen unit of land measurement was also used in the Netherlands, Poland, Lithuania, and parts of the Dutch colonial empire, such as South Africa. It was also used in the Balkans, Norway, and Denmark, where it was equal to about 0.27 hectares (2⁄3 acre). The word is identical to the German and Dutch word for "morning" because the measurement was determined by the area that can be ploughed with a single-furrow horse or ox plough in one morning (measured from morning to noon). The morgen was usually defined as a rectangle with sides of an even number of local rods, as turning while ploughing was to be avoided as much as possible. The area measure of the morgen varied regionally, but it was usually between one-fifth to half a hectare (2,000 to 5,000 m2). In northern Germany, there were also morgens of 6,000 to 9,000 square meters, and in the marshes, up to over 11,000 square meters. With the standardization in the late 19th century (the metrified morgen introduced by the North German Confederation in 1869), four morgens equaled one hectare in the German Empire, which is why the morgen was sometimes referred to as a quarter hectare (vha) to distinguish it from traditional measures. In the 20th century, the morgen, with its...