Mecklenburg’s Switzerland – at the heart of things

• Home
• Portrait of the region
• Worlds of Experience
• Accommodation
• Travel packages
• Travel information
• Tourist information
• Imprint

• Lakes and rivers
• Nature
• Art and Culture
• The National Geopark
• Brick Gothic Architecture
• People and Places

|

Worlds of Experience - People and Places

The mentality of the people of Mecklenburg is deep and hard to fathom from outside. They don’t wear their hearts on their sleeves. History has taught them to go about their daily work stoically, taking as their guide the maxim “Let them talk, we’ll get on with own business”. So it is said that they maintain a refined distance to the rest of the world – which doesn’t mean that they are not interested in what is happening outside their own range of experiences. It is simply that their nature does not dispose them to follow short-lived trends. So they wait to see what turns out to be useful before they put it into practice. At the same time, they can quietly achieve great things, like Otto Lilienthal, whose experiments with flying machines laid the foundations for the Wright brother’s first manoeuvrable aircraft. Or Siegfried Marcus, from Malchin, who constructed the first petrol-driven car in 1870, even before G. Daimler and K.F. Benz. Or Alexander Behm, who invented the first echo sounder in 1913; it was soon to be used on the oceans of the world for measuring depths and locating fish shoals, etc.

Whether on the cost or inland, water has left its mark on the people of Mecklenburg. There’s plenty of it! It can be a barrier to be overcome, or a medium of transport. And so Mecklenburg gave birth to intrepid seafarers who, with mercantile skill, dominated trade and politics around the Baltic for almost four centuries, which, admittedly, did not meet with approval on all sides. Internal and external pressures eventually brought this dominance to an end, and in Mecklenburg this led to the hegemony of the lesser landed nobility. To them, it is true, we owe countless manor houses and castles and a number of agricultural innovations, but they also clung to feudal traditions and stifled progressive ideas and social change. Serfdom persisted in Mecklenburg until the early 19th century, and a large part of the rural population lived in great poverty.

Nevertheless, Mecklenburg produced many outstanding scholars and artists whose work enriched world culture. For example, Heinrich Schliemann, who fulfilled his dream and brought back the glories of Troy to an admiring world; or Caspar David Friedrich, who embodied the Romantic ideals of the age in his paintings, finding fitting motifs in his homeland. Other creative spirits who were born in Mecklenburg or came to live here also found their inspiration in the local landscape and people, for example writers or artists such as Fritz Reuter, Gerhard Hauptmann, Ernst Barlach, Hans Fallada, Uwe Johnson, Christa Wolf. The tranquillity of the country seems to bring the strength necessary for great work.