Lüchau, Luchau, a family´s name with history

My Genealogy-searching about our family´s name Lüchau started 18 years ago, with a question in a letter from a Luchau family in Wisconsin, USA.
„are we related ?“

That started my interesting detective work. Until that moment I only knew the line ending with my grandparents. Today I know the Lüchau-line until my exact Great---grandfather, born ~1610. He lived in the area of the Northern Germany in the town of Stade, where I live too. In this area are more named Lüchau people back to 1390, but I cannot say how we are related.

I know the first date of the „von Lüchau“ name in 1080, so our family name is nearly 1000 years old.

After I looked for many Luchau-lines and put over 2000 Lüchau-Luchau persons in my file, it shows two town-areas of the Lüchau name-source to me:

 1.) The town Groß Löbichau near the town Jena in East-Germany, is the
       source of the family of knight “von Lüchau“ who lived in the towns of Hof,
       Bayreuth, Nürnberg and Ansbach. Their line stopped in 1756 because
       there was no male heir, so the name didn´t continue.

2.) The town Lüchow in Wendland and the village Lüchow in Herzogtum
      Lauenburg gave their name to many Lüchau-lines in Northgermany, who
      still exist.
      a) Altes Land, Stade, USA, Bremervörde, Wedel SH, Haseldorfer Marsch
      b) Uelzen, Celle
      c) Lüneburg, Lauenburg, Müssen, Flensburg
      d) Braunschweig
      e) Lüchow-SH, Lübeck
      f ) Kopenhagen
      g) Stendal, Werder, Berlin
      h) Hannover, Mosel-Bereich

In the last years I wrote many hundred of pages and made many vacation trips together with my family to visit a big number of Luchau-places like:
Bayreuth-Germany, USA-Wis. Minn. Dak., Terschelling-Netherland, etc. seeing churches, museum, church-offices, town archives, staatarchive, libraries, etc..

What is the meaning of the family name Lüchau, Lüchow?

It is a word of the area of the Slawen folk. (Please don´t mix with the word slave). Today you can find it in the east part of Germany.
„Lüch“means wet area around a river or creek, we see it near the town Berlin: Havelländisches Luch and Rhinluch.

The ending: „au“or „ow“means place or town. The town Lüchow was written in papers around 1700 as Lüchau too. On old maps in the townhall of Lüneburg you can find the words “ways to Lüchau“. 

90% of our name Lüchau your can find in the German part, north of Hannover.

From that area after 1850 you can see many emigrations to the USA, Australia, Columbia.

For Denmark I will say it is not an exact emigration, because Denmark was near to Hamburg in 1800.
The trip of one Lüchau family to Australia ended by a capsized ship near the island of Terschelling, Holland. So no Lüchau is known in Australia.
After 1850 five Lüchau-brothers emigrated from Stade to the Mississippi, Red Wing. MN... their high number of descendants we can find in many states of the US.
From the German area of Mehedorf, Celle and Wedel-SH a few persons emigrated to the USA later.

In the English alphabet you can find no „ü“, so the name changed to:
Luchau, Luechau and Luchauer.

If someone has a question, please send me an e-mail.

I will try to help you. But I need your help too, because I have to do my normal work in the factory so I have less time.

I will be happy to hear from many different Luchau families.

Best wishes from

Hartmut Lüchau