Rostock
Too small to be dynamic, too large to be quaint, ROSTOCK is the principal city in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. The most important port on the German Baltic has been everything from a powerful Hanseatic trader to a major ship-building port at the head of the deep-water Warnow River. Its townscape bears the scars of Allied bombers and GDR planners alike. Even the reunification welcomed elsewhere proved a bitter pill when it ended the subsidies that had sustained the ship-building industry, prompting mass unemployment. Although pockets of historical charm remain in the Altstadt, an oval cat’s-cradle of streets above the harbour, and renovation has buffed up the centre into a pleasant enough place, the core is unlikely to detain you for more than a day. The Kröpeliner Tor-Vorstadt district, where a 12,000-strong student population helps fuel the liveliest nightlife on the German Baltic, is one reason to hang around. Otherwise there’s nearby Warnemünde, a chirpy sister resort with one of the finest beaches in Germany. It also hosts the town’s best festivals: regatta week Warnemünder Woche (warnemuender-woche.de), straddling the first and second weeks of July, and classic sail extravaganza Hanse Sail (hansesail.com) in early August.
Rügen
Ever since the Romantics eulogized an island where coast and country collide, RÜGEN has held a semi-sacred place in German sentiments. The great, good and fairly unsavoury of the last two centuries – Caspar David Friedrich, whose paintings did more than any poster to promote its landscapes, Brahms and Bismarck, a couple of Kaisers and assorted grand dukes, Thomas Mann, Hitler and GDR leader Erich Honecker – not to mention millions of families, have taken their holidays on an island renowned for chalk cliffs, 56km of silver sands and beautiful deciduous woodland. Notwithstanding a newfound sheen as coastal resorts reassert themselves as the fashionable bathing centres they were in the early 1900s, Rügen is timeless and uncomplicated, with an innocent, Famous Five quality. Its rural southeast is a gorgeous preindustrial landscape where a steam engine chuffs around small seaside resorts and inland villages knot around cobbled lanes shaded by ancient trees.
Those on a flying visit usually only tick off premier resort Binz, a classic Baltic holiday destination renowned for its handsome Bäderarchitektur, and the Königstuhl at Jasmund, a chalk cliff immortalized by Friedrich in 1818. Do so and you may be forgiven for wondering what the fuss is about – together, they are the busiest destinations on Rügen, and can be overcrowded. With an area of 926 square kilometres, Germany’s largest island has less-populated corners to discover. Places like Putbus, not so much a planned town as a Neoclassical folly writ large; smaller resorts near the rural Mönchgut peninsula; or the Jasmund National Park’s chalk cliffs cloaked in spacious forest. There are curios such as Prora, Hitler’s holiday camp falling into ruin behind the beach, or the lighthouses of Kap Arkona and former fishing village Vitt in the windswept northwest. And then there are places like Hiddensee, a car-free sliver of land just off the west coast that may be the most idyllic spot in the area.
Hitler’s holiday camp
The apogee of the Nazis’ “KdF” or Kraft durch Freude (“Strength through Joy”) movement, their seaside resort known as Kolos (“Colossus”), at Prora on the east coast of Rügen, was built to provide R&R for the German people – up to 20,000 at a time – before the nation’s forthcoming military expansion east. However, construction stalled upon the outbreak of hostilities in 1939 – ironically, the only families to stay here were those bombed out of Hamburg by the RAF in 1945 – then, under the GDR, it was strictly off-limits as a military base. The camp is classic dictatorial architecture – megalomaniac in size, brutal in style – its six-storey reinforced-concrete blocks arcing away behind the coast for over three miles. It takes over twenty minutes just to cycle along the length of the entire complex, which can only be seen from the air, and it is slowly falling into ruin, screened by pine scrub as the debate continues over its future. A proposal to convert it into a hotel came to naught although one building at the north end has been rehabilitated as Europe’s largest youth hostel.
Jasmund and the Königsstuhl
If any one area is responsible for Rügen’s stellar rise from rural backwater to holiday haven it is JASMUND. A thumb of woodland and fields poked into the Baltic, much of it protected as the Jasmund National Park (nationalpark-jasmund.de), the peninsula north of Binz is famous for its wooded chalk cliffs. These are the Stubenkammer popularized in works by Romantic painter Caspar David Friedrich, a stretch of cliffs that extends for several kilometres. Its most celebrated section is the mighty Königsstuhl cleft that juts from the cliffs – the name “king’s stool” derives from a folk tale that whoever scaled its 117m face could claim Rügen’s throne. Partly thanks to Friedrich, it’s a landmark lodged in the national consciousness.
Whether an artist who eulogized raw nature would have set up his easel today is a moot point because the Königsstuhl is one of Rügen’s premier natural attractions. Notwithstanding buses direct from Sassnitz or walking, access is from a sight car park by the main road at Hagen; the car park for the Gasthaus opposite is cheaper for day-long stays should you intend to walk in the area.
Schloss Ludwigslust
Until Grand Duke Paul Friedrich Franz II shifted court to Schwerin 35km north, LUDWIGSLUST was the heart of the Mecklenburg-Schleswig court, realized as a spacious planned town laid at the feet of the Schloss – no doubt about priorities here. His predecessor, Grand Duke Friedrich I, commissioned the first court palace in the hunting grounds of his father Christian Ludwig, and was dogged by money problems almost as soon as the building began in 1772 – as the joke went, Ludwig’s Lust (pleasure) was Friedrich’s Arbeit (work).
Behind the majestic late Baroque facade is the same humble brick used for the courtiers’ houses on approach road Schlossstrasse. Architect Johann Joachim Busch was even more creative within. In place of stucco and carved wood, he employed papier-mâché, euphemistically named Ludwigsluster Carton.
The pinnacle of his achievement is the Goldene Saal, a Louis XVI-style galleried ballroom fit for a Cinderella ball whose gilded Rococo mouldings are all glorious fakes. Even the reliefs of putti above the door turn out to be trompe l’oeil. A carved grandfather clock and Venus de’Medici in later rooms also prove to be papier-mâché. Many of the oils, however, are genuine works by French court painter Jean-Baptiste Oudry.
Schwerin
Encircled by lakes and with a fairytale Schloss that goes straight to the head, SCHWERIN punches far above its weight. Although the names of Puschkinstrasse and Karl-Marx-Strasse give away the past, communism was a hiccup in its history – its centre at least is spared the concrete vandalism of Eastern Bloc architecture – and, crowned as capital of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania in 1990, Schwerin is settling into its time-honoured role as the state’s cultural dynamo.
After Saxony’s Henry the Lion swatted aside an early Slavic settlement on its islet in 1160, the dukes of Mecklenburg took up residence in the fourteenth century, then moved in and out of the royal seat for nearly five centuries. None was more illustrious than the nineteenth. After its elevation to the duchy residence over Ludwigslust in 1837, Schwerin blossomed into a cultural heavyweight with a vigorous arts scene and showpiece architecture, not least that impressive Schloss. Its legacy remains today as a pocket-sized city with the airs and architecture of a historic capital yet none of the urban grit.