Lübeck – Mrs. Bolms world empire

The daughter

Now we are going ashore. On the Obertrave. And our eyes and our heart and our brain do not even know where they are supposed to suck with beauty, with the brick splendor, which is so sober as it is gorgeous, with the bright sun in the sky, and after the view is once slimming around, over the cute facades and the swans and the seagulls and the glittering waves and over the rigid, waiting towers and over the salmon and the holster There, we can take note of a few people again.

There is a father with his five -year -old in front of the glitter of the trave, behind them floats up and down, and all morning the father and the girl have already been in the old town. You have heard a small concert in the music college, and the girl’s first tooth of the girl has come loose in the middle of the piano game. They ate ice cream, bought marzipa cork and marzipan ham. In the marionet theater, the girl was allowed to wake the puppets so that they could play because of all children in the auditorium – “Berlin!”. The father looks full of his city and daughter, but the daughter looks thoroughly over the water, and now she breaks her father’s heart. She says: »Papa! I also want to spend my childhood in Lübeck! “

The father doesn’t even know what to reply, he is Lübeck, he knows what the little girl feels now: the beauty has hit it. He knows that you shouldn’t grow up anywhere else in the world than here. Something rummages in the father that is too big for him, and then the five -year -old still says under her sweet lure: »Papa! I only have a childhood! “

This is a real story, please excuse. We want to forget them quickly so that I can tell more.

Pride

That we as Lübeck is something special, we would not have come to that by itself, but we were much too northern German for that. Only Ms. Bolm opened our eyes. Ms. Bolm was our class teacher in elementary school, Lieselotte or Hannelore, she or Meta, and she aroused an irrepressible local patriotism within a lesson, who lives in every Lübeck and every Lübeck, whether he has ever got away from the city or happily forever, stranged and returned.

“Lü-Beek” is said that, by the way, Northern German stretching c!

–

Without having guessed something, Ms. Bolm came to the Middle Ages in a specialist lesson and within the Middle Ages on a complicated, not quite tangible story, the names of which we had at best caught on the side: the “Hanseate”. The Hanseatic League, those were not kings, prince and knights, were not campaigns, castles and fanfares, no smoking rubble and crowded corpses, no crows that sparked the eyes. The Hanseatic League were the curious among the adventurous ones, these were somehow respectful, which other people and peoples wanted to overprints and praises, instead of splitting their skulls and burning down their courtyards – but also not that, because today is your enemy of tomorrow and until all eternity, and you cannot really use enemies as a dealer. The best dealer is the one who gives everyone a good feeling, including themselves.

In any case, the Hanseatic Leagues sailed over the sea until they met other traders and they caused satisfaction all around. For example, they made salt from the south to Norway, and for this they took the good dryfish back home and fur, which they had in excess, and so, wherever they came to generate inner joy to the strangers and in themselves, a joy that accompanied them on their way home over the rough lake, meanwhile their shipping paths under Ms. Bolms fingered to red lines, to trade, too, too A network of a presents that spread across the Baltic Sea and to Russia, and then also down the Baltic Sea coast inland from town to town to Münster and Cologne, a network of progress, opportunities and wealth: the Hanseate!

That sounded somehow great. That sounded somehow smarter than everything knighthood and everything psalm singing and burning people: you drive where. Says Moin. Look at what’s nice to swap. And everyone is doing better afterwards.

So, said Ms. Bolm, and now the price question comes. We still admired the red lines on the map over Germany and Europe’s north.

A city, said Ms. Bolm, was the most important of all. In this city, the representatives of all cities involved met regularly, from there the guidelines for trade were specified. This city was called …

Said Ms. Bolm, a little break.

The Queen of the Hanseatic League!

A city, a queen, we didn’t quite know why we should be interested. Mrs. Bolm waited. Mrs. Bolm encouraged. A few thin arms with slim hand went up hesitantly. The usual registration candidates, like Gesche, reported a story about her grandma in Büssau when she was drank. “My grandma in Büssau always says …”

Grandma in Büssau always gives Gesche a good oral note with her Döntjes and considerations, and actually we were always very happy when there was something new to experience. This time she was not a great help. Gesche was referred to himself. She had analyzed the card and lines on it, and had perhaps out of the existing cities, which may have been used to result in the greatest.

Um, uh, Hamburch?

Seriously moved Mrs. Bolm’s head. No, it wasn’t Hamburg. But warm.

Cologne?, Someone called from behind.

München?

Bremen?

Stockholm?

London?

Bonn?

All the best ideas, all mighty cities whose names have been heard on the radio, but every time Ms. Bolm shaken her head, a slight smile now in her wrinkled face. It was perfect for her this year.

The Queen of the Hanseatic League, she finally said, the first among all these beautiful trade cities, the most powerful and most important city in the Middle Ages, was called …

Lübeck.

Wumms. So it all poured out of our eyes. Hanseatic city of Lübeck, the license plate. The entrance signs. The towers. The Holstentor. The tourists. Lübeck, our small, fine, vague like Lübeck – was the queen of the Hanseatic League. Or, as we sometimes care:

LUBEKE / VIFE SCHONE / VAN RIKER EHRE / DRAGEST YOU DIE Krone.

The seagulls

This is how it is in Lübeck (spoken Lü-Beek, by the way, northern German stretching c!). For a while you think, this is a very nice city where I live here, and then, as a primary school child, one morning it becomes clear to you that the town of the world is in the world. From that moment you can no longer cope: Why is Lübeck with all the weight of its great history, with its importance for the entire Baltic Sea area, not at least the capital of a North State with all German federal states that lie by the sea? Why didn’t it even get Schleswig-Holstein, which is now ruled by a ugly fishing village with a war port?

Such puzzles are many, they are all insoluble, and so the Lübeck does what he has always done: he retreats to his Hanseatic city. Makes its old town house a little pretty with mussels and flowers and seagull sculptures and Lübeck motifs in the window, just as if he were paying for it from the tourist office. Then he marches through his narrow, picturesque streets and pits, lets the look wander when he finds a place with a view, and thinks what the green and white VfB-Lübeck fans have already sung in foreign football stadiums fervently, and I with them, as one of them:

Lübeck is the most beautiful city of Däwääääääl!

And of course the fans were right. To emphasize it again if you have just read too quickly now:

Lübeck is the most beautiful city in the world.

The text is an excerpt from Klaus Ungerer’s book “Mein Lübeck”. Mare-Verlag, 160 pages, born with reading ribbon, € 20.