The main part of Fischland as well as the Darß and the Zingst were originally islands. They became permanently joined to the mainland as a result of humans sealing the floodwater channels between the 14th and 19th centuries.
During the 1872 Baltic Sea flood, which inundated Prerow on the Darß, the Prerower Strom, that had hitherto separated the island of Zingst from Darß, silted up. In 1874 the Prerow-Strom was finally filled in and sealed with a dyke; Zingst thus became a peninsula.
^Kohl, Horst; Marcinek, Joachim and Nitz, Bernhard (1986). Geography of the German Democratic Republic, VEB Hermann Haack, Gotha, p. 40. ISBN978-3-7301-0522-1.