Explore Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania
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.
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Jasmund and the Königsstuhl
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.
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Hitler’s holiday camp
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.
