Ulmen

Ulmen is a town in the Cochem-Zell district in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. It is the seat of the like-named Verbandsgemeinde – a kind of collective municipality – to which it also belongs.GeographyLocationThe town lies in the Eifel some 11 km northwest of Cochem.Constituent communitiesTo Ulmen belong the outlying centres – Stadtteile – of Meiserich, Vorpochten and Furth.GeologyThe Ulmener Maar, only about 11,000 years old, is not only a maar but also Continental Europe’s newest volcano north of the Alps. It is 37 m deep. Volcanic activity can be observed at depths of more than 4 m in the form of rising gas bubbles. The Ulmener Maar has no natural water inflow or outflow. The two tunnels that hold the water at a constant level today were dug in the 19th century.Another maar in town is the 118,000-year-old Jungferweiher, which is considerably bigger than the Ulmener Maar. Formerly used as a fishpond for the lords of the castle, it dried up over the centuries until in the 1930s, it had become a peat bog. In 1942, however, the maar was flooded once again to regulate the water level in the nearby maar.