Located near the Weser, Bollen is now part of the city of Achim and lies in Lower Saxony, but is located right on the border with Bremen.

Until well into the 20th century Bollen was in the parish of Arbergen, together with villages further inland on the Geestrücken such as Uphusen (now also to Achim), Mahndorf, Arbergen and Hemelingen, with the latter 3 villages today part of Bremen.

The oldest documented occurrence of Bollen is in the 13th century (see Reinhard Dietrich, Heimatkalendar for Kreis Verden 2011). The place was known for its agriculture and characterised by its proximity to the Weser, as it was in the middle of the flood area of the river. Until the Second World War, there was a ferry that served mainly the Bollener farmers, allowing them to reach their lands on the other side of the Weser. These lands had been separated due to a change in the course of the river centuries before. So it was also that until the modern era a shepherd's house on the so-called "Boller Holz" and a large farm (Rathswiehe) on the left bank of the Weser  belonged to the parish of Arbergen.

This local heritage book forms the beginning of a series, which also covers the above-mentioned towns of the former parish Arbergen. It has been consciously limited to the families/persons who have lived in Bollen, while connections to the other places of the parish are noted, so that the connection to the other local heritage book is simple.

The local heritage books of the other places of the parish are now also all recorded up to the end of the 19th century, at the OFB Hemelingen (completed to about 1860 – a work in progress).

I used the Arbergen church books as sources, which were at first slightly sketchy, and were considered lost for decades because they were sent to a mine in Central Germany during the Second World War but, unlike Bremen archival material, did not reappear in the DDR Central State Archives in Potsdam. Instead surprisingly, in the wake of the "Perestroika" in the early 90s, they were retrieved from Moscow and sent to Bremen and were subsequently filmed and copied by the State Archives. However, some parts are completely unreadable, but fortunately I was able to reconstruct most of them.