Even though the 4th of July is not a holiday in Germany, I still get the day off as a U.S. Federal government employee. I also had off on the 3rd to make it a 4-day weekend, so we used the time to visit a few cities in northern Germany.
The Historic Centres of Stralsund and Wismar is a UNESCO site comprised of two separate cities, both bordering the Baltic Sea. They are about an hour and 20 minutes away from each other by car and are also located in two different German states. Stralsund is in the state of Western Pomerania and Wismar is in the state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommen.
We started our trip on Wednesday after work and drove for a few hours, stopping overnight just outside of Hanover. We left there early on Thursday and drove directly to Stralsund for a day of sightseeing.
The city is known for its Brick Gothic architecture.
The Town Hall, seen above, is a striking example of that. It was built in 1370 and to this day the mayor’s offices are located there.
There is a passageway through the town hall that dates back to 1680.
There used to be 40 shops on the ground floor and warehouses on the floor above that. The bronze bust that you see depicts King Gustav II Adolf of Sweden. Stralsund actually belonged to Sweden from 1648 to 1815. Today you can take a ferry from Rostock, about an hour away from Stralsund, and be in Sweden in just over 6 hours.
Taking the passageway opposite the bronze bust, you see the Baroque Gateway of the Church of St. Nicholas.
St. Nicholas is the patron saint of sailors and merchants. The church, dedicated to him, dates back to 1276 and was reconstructed in the 14th century. It is the oldest church in Stralsund.
There is a small entry fee to get into the church.
It’s well worth it to see the beautiful interior. The colors on the archways, the paintings on the pillars and the 19th-century organ have all been restored.
Among other works of art in the church is this statue of the Virgin Mary, Jesus and Sainte Anne, sculpted in the 13th century.
And this astronomical clock is from the year 1394.
This guy is carved on the outside of what’s called the Shopkeepers’ pew, dating from 1574.
He’s holding a club, and the inscription below him translates to “Only for shopkeepers! Anyone else gets it on the nose from me!” So much for Christian behavior in the church.
Okay, just one more photo of the interior.
The church originally had 56 altars, but most were removed during the Reformation. The few remaining altars such as the one shown above are very ornate.
Back outside on the Alter Markt (Old Market) square, the brick building you see here is called the Wulflamhaus.
It was built around 1350 and was a merchant’s house commissioned by Bertram Wulflam, who later became the mayor of Stralsund. The gables, pillars and decorations imitate those of the town hall that you saw earlier and which is just across the square. There is now a restaurant on the ground floor but you can go inside and see what some of the living spaces would have looked like.
Since we were at restaurant anyway, we stopped for lunch. Sean had the Tipple of the Day, a Stralsunder beer.
It is brewed by what is now called Störtebeker BrauManufaktur, which was chosen as the best brewery in Europe in 2010. (At the time it was still called the Stralsund Brewery.)
I had a mineral water with my lunch, which is also one of the brewery’s products.
After lunch we made our way to the Knieper Town Gate, first documented in 1293 and later renovated in the 15th century.
It was part of the old city wall, which was first documented in 1256. A plaque on the other side of the gate memorializes a Swedish lieutenant who defensed Stralsund against Napoleon’s forces. He was shot in front of the gate in 1809. There is now an apartment at the top of the gate. How cool would it be to live there? Unless it’s haunted by the Swedish lieutenant, of course.
Not far from the Knieper gate are the ruins of the St. John’s Monastery.
It was established in 1254 but was partially destroyed by a fire in 1624 and was further damaged during World War II. Unfortunately the gate was locked when we were there, so I had to take that photo through the gate.
In this lovely courtyard near the monastery, you can see a rectangular monument to the Stralsund Jews.
The monument was moved from is former location because it was sadly vandalized after German Reunification.
Looking down this street you can see the St. Nicholas church that was mentioned earlier.
You are actually seeing both towers of the church – the one in front with the clock on the face of it and the one behind with the Baroque spire. Both towers originally had Gothic spires that were destroyed by a fire in 1662. The southern tower was given the Baroque spire in 1667 but due to lack of funds, the northern steeple got only an emergency roof.
The red building seen here is the Scheele House, named after Carl Wilhelm Scheele.
He was born there in 1742 and later discovered oxygen. The credit for that discovery, however, was given to Joseph Priestley because he published his findings first. Regardless, I’m just glad someone discovered it because I don’t know how we’d breathe otherwise.
The next stop on our walking tour was the Stralsund Harbor. On the way we passed this pub called Zur Fähre, which means The Ferry.
It is one of the oldest pubs in Europe, having been established in the year 1332.
Sean was particularly interested in seeing this ship called the Gorch Fock.
When he read that the former training ship had been built at the Blohm & Voxx shipyard in Hamburg, he said “Hey, the Eagle was built there too!” You may know that Sean is retired from the U.S. Coast Guard, and the Eagle is a training cutter for that branch of the military. Sean correctly guessed that the Gorch Fock is the Eagle’s sister ship. Small world. Both ships were taken from Germany as war reparations, which I did not know about the Eagle.
You can go on board the Gorch Fock, but we didn’t in the interest of time.
Unbelievably, the harbor area has been open to the public only since 1990.
It was closed during the entire time that Stralsund was part of East Germany.
The bridge that you see in that photo is one of the largest in Germany with a length of 4 kilometers (just under 2.5 miles) and a pylon that is 128 meters (just under 420 feet) high. It was opened to vehicle traffic in 2007.
Next up on the tour was the Holy Spirit Hospital.
The first mention of the hospital was in 1256. Its original purpose was to care for lepers and those affected by the plague. It later expanded to caring for anyone who needed it, including providing aid to the elderly or shelter to travelers.
This nice little alley is called Badstüberstraße.
Bad (pronounced bahd) is the German word for bath, and the street takes its name from the public baths that used to be there. The walking tour brochure that we were using says that there was a pub at the baths and also that “the high art of love” was conducted there. I guess that’s what the kids are calling it these days.
All the homes on the Badstüberstraße have been restored by the owners.
These are the beautifully restored Baroque side doors of St. James’ Church.
The church was built in the 14th century and was heavily damaged over the years by both fire and various wars. It is currently being renovated and is not being used for religious purposes.
The brochure describes it as a “cultural church” that is used for things like concerts and art exhibitions. We did go inside to see the few things that remain such as the pulpit and the organ, but not too much else. There was an exhibition going on that appeared to be about the evils of plastic products.
There is no mention in the brochure of what these building area, but I liked the colors and decorations.
And as you can see, the sky was finally starting to turn blue after a day of gray skies and intermittent rain.
The house shown here was the Executioner’s House.
It served as both living and working quarters for the city executioner from about 1289 to 1842. I’m not sure I’d want to live in a place where people were executed for hundreds of years, would you?
The last church we visited in Stralsund was St. Mary’s.
From 1625 to 1657 it was actually the highest building in the world, but after the spire was struck by lightning the building’s height was shortened by 46 meters (150 feet). It still has one of the highest naves in the world at about 33 meters (108 feet). You can climb 366 steps to the top of the tower, but we opted not to do that.
Like the St. Nicholas church that you read about earlier, many of the decorations from St. Mary’s were removed during the Reformation.
There are still some beautiful works inside the church but the most stunning aspect is probably its overwhelming height.
The Küter Gate in the middle of this next photo is one of only two well-preserved city gates of the original ten.
The other is the Knieper Gate that you read about earlier. The Küter Gate once served as a prison and then later as a residence.
The building to the left of the Knieper Gate housed the Stralsund Playing Card Company until 1931.
The four symbols on their playing cards – as opposed to the hearts, diamonds, clubs and spades that American cards have – were hearts, bells, acorns and leaves. All four symbols are visible on the building, and over the left-hand and right-hand windows in the close-up photo above, you can see the bell and heart symbols.
At the end of our tour we passed by the former Wertheim Department Store. The building now houses several other stores and you can go inside to see the original art nouveau atrium.
The atrium is inside a clothing store, so people just go in and photograph the atrium while the workers are folding clothes or whatever.
The last street we walked down in Stralsund was this colorful one, which led us back to the garage where we’d parked the car.
On our way out of town, we stopped to take a look at this monument because it’s not often that you see the Russian hammer-and-sickle symbol on a memorial.
It was difficult to read the dates on it, but it appeared to be some kind of World War II monument.
After our day in Stralsund was over, we drove to the city of Lübeck, about 2 hours away. That was our base for 3 nights as we explored both Lübeck and Wismar, the other half of the UNESCO site that includes Stralsund.
Lübeck and Wismar will be covered in separate blog posts soon, so keep an eye out for those!
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