Morgen
A morgen was a unit of measurement of land area in Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, Lithuania and the Dutch colonies, including South Africa and Taiwan. The size of a morgen varies from 1⁄2 to 2+1⁄2 acres (2,000 to 10,100 m2). It was also used in Old Prussia, in the Balkans, Norway and Denmark, where it was equal to about two-thirds acre (2,700 m2).
The word is identical with the German and Dutch word for "morning", because, similarly to the Imperial acre, it denoted the acreage that could be furrowed in a morning's time by a man behind an ox or horse dragging a single bladed plough. The morgen was commonly set at about 60–70% of the tagwerk (German for "day work") referring to a full day of ploughing. In 1869, the North German Confederation fixed the morgen at a one-quarter hectare (2,500 m2) but in modern times most farmland work is measured in full hectares. The next lower measurement unit was the German "rute" or Imperial rod but the metric rod length of 5 metres (16 ft) never became popular. A unit derived from the Dutch morgen is still used in Taiwan today, called "kah"; 1 kah is roughly 2 acres (8,100 m2).

Germany
The following table shows an excerpt of morgen sizes as used in Germany - some morgen were used in a wider area and so they had proper names. The actual area of a morgen was considerably larger in fertile areas of Germany, or in regions where flat terrain prevails, presumably facilitating tilling. The next lower measurement unit to a morgen was usually in "Quadratruten" square rods.

Poland
The Polish terms for the unit were morga, mórg, jutrzyna, the latter being a near-literal translation into old Polish.

Austria–Hungary
The term morgen was used in the Austrian Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria where 1 morgen was equal to 2⁄3 acre (2,700 m2).

South Africa
Until the advent of metrication in the 1970s, the morgen was the legal unit of measure of land in three of the four pre-1995 South African provinces – the Cape Province, the Orange Free State and the Transvaal. In November 2007 the South African Law Society published a conversion factor of 1 morgen = 0.856 532 hectares to be used "for the conversion of areas from imperial units to metric, particularly when preparing consolidated diagrams by compilation".

See also
Arpent
Dutch units of measurement
German obsolete units of measurement
List of unusual units of measurement

References

This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Morgen". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 18 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 836.