Hiking through the forests of the Lakeland, the attentive observer can sometimes find settlement remains. Some were abandoned hundreds of years ago, but the village of Krüselin not so long ago.
Almost in Brandenburg, a good two kilometers before the border, there is a clearing in a wooded area. At first glance, however, it is not obvious that this clearing has a turbulent history behind it, but an information board provides information about the former village that was located here. The deserted village Krüselin (name 1393 Truzelin, from 1422 Krüselin, after Kühnel = sand place) is already located in the area of the sand of the landscape-defining Weichselian period, which is mainly characterized by shallow gravel deposits. Krüselin was a former church village from the German eastern colonization of the 14th century It was first mentioned in 1393 and first abandoned in 1440. Many years later, however, people remembered the old village and rebuilt it as a dairy in 1724. In 1885 almost 60 people lived in the village. Since the beginning of the 20th century Krüselin served as a district forester's office and also housed three forest workers' homesteads. The German Wehrmacht used the village as a hiding place from the Red Army at the end of the Second World War. The village was completely destroyed by fighting. Today, house foundations, an old well shaft made of rock masonry and a pond complex still testify to the existence of the village of Krüselin. On the village square there is a silver lime tree with a memorial stone for the son of the forester family Knebusch, who fell shortly before Christmas 1915. Lake Krüselin, which is barely 2 kilometers away, and the former Krüselin Mill (now a restaurant), on the shore of which it is located, also bear in their names a memory of the present-day deserted village.
