Dragon regatt at the Kiel Week in the 1960s
This year the Kieler Woche looks back on 125 years of history. On this occasion, the Kiel Maritime Museum is showing the large special exhibition "125 Years of the Kiel Week", which gives an impressive overview of the diversity, importance and history of the Kiel Week.
From June 15th to September 30th, paintings, photos, models and even an original sailing boat and the legendary "Felka" award can be seen in the museum on the banks of the Förde.
The anniversary exhibition will be opened by Mayor Rainer Tschorn on Friday, June 15, at 5 pm - together with the show by the Kiel Children's Culture Office, "Ready for a change! Children on a regatta course", specially designed for children. During the anniversary Kiel Week (June 16 to 24), the museum offers an accompanying program with sailing, a steamboat and lunch tours.
What is now considered the largest regatta event in the world and the most beautiful summer festival in the north began very small 125 years ago. On July 23, 1882, the starting signal for a sailing regatta was given, in which 20 boats took part - a sensational participation for that time, because the foreign yachts had come to the Kiel sailing area under adventurous conditions. Inspired by the success of the first race, the event was continued on a regular basis. It only got its name in 1894 when the Kieler Zeitung spoke of the "Kieler Woche" in its report on the sailing races. Within a few years it developed into the most important German sailing event, not least thanks to strong support from Kaiser Wilhelm II, who came to Kiel every year.
The historical events in the first half of the 20th century also brought an eventful history to the Kiel Week. The outbreak of the First World War marked the end of the "imperial" Kiel Week. It was all over and over, the city was no longer the summer capital of the empire and the center of society. In the 1920s, Kiel focused on culture and broke new ground with the Autumn Weeks for art and science, while the sailors continued to hold their regattas, albeit on a reduced scale and without a representative program. A social program developed only hesitantly. The Kieler Woche was unable to build on the glamorous pre-war period. The National Socialists recognized the opportunity for effective propaganda in the renowned sailing festival. Immediately after taking power in 1933, they seized the Kiel Week and turned it into a propaganda event for the "new" Germany.
As early as 1947, only a few years after the lost Second World War, the city dared a new beginning on the initiative of the then Mayor Andreas Gayk. Gayk developed a new concept for the Kiel Week: He made politics, culture, sport and the folk festival the main pillars of the festival week. Together with sailing, they form the essential components of the Kiel Week to this day. Meanwhile, the Kiel Week is the world's largest sailing event and at the same time the largest summer festival in Northern Europe.
The focus of the exhibition in the historic fish hall is the history of sailing. The exhibition spans a wide range from the competitions of the large, luxurious racing yachts of the imperial era to the current developments in regatta sport. Magnificent paintings by the most important marine painters such as Willy Stöwer, Hans Bohrdt or Fritz Stoltenberg give an idea of the splendor of the Imperial Kiel Week, while photos by the well-known Kiel sports photographer Helmut Beckmann offer fascinating insights into the regatta events.
A star boat allows a direct introduction to the topic - the highlight of the exhibition. For the first time, an original boat can be seen in the Maritime Museum. With a length of seven meters and a mast height of more than eight meters, the rigged boat is an impressive exhibit that brings sailing to life in the old fish hall. Built in 1963 by Abeking & Rasmussen, the star boat was sailed for a season by the well-known Kieler Bruno Splieth.
The European champion and Olympian Bruno Splieth was one of the best German star boat sailors and won the Kieler Woche several times. His name was hardly missing from a week in Kiel in the 1950s and 60s. Employed by the British in 1945 as a sailing instructor in the British Yacht Club and on the board of the Kiel Yacht Club until his death in 1990, Splieth was closely associated with Kiel sailing. Bruno Splieth sailed several boats called "Bellatrix". The "Bellatrix XII", built by Abeking & Rasmussen in 1963, was sold to Munich after the season. It changed hands several times before it was acquired in 2001 by Andreas Krause, the owner of the yacht yard Krause & Wucherpfennig in Kiel-Friedrichsort. Andreas Krause has restored the boat that he took over with a broken mast for the exhibition and generously loaned it to the museum.
With the "Felka" award on loan from the Norddeutscher RegattVerein, one of the most splendid but also the heaviest prizes in German regatta can be shown. The silver punch weighing several kilos, decorated with putti and crowned by an eagle, breathes the pomp and splendor of the imperial era. In 1912 the Berlin sailors Felix Simon and Karl Hagen donated the> "> Felka" prize to the Imperial Yacht Club. Their abbreviated first names gave the trophy its name. Simon and Hagen owned a yacht of the same name with which they won the internationally contested "Coupe de France" off Trouville in 1906. At the revenge next year, the "Felka" was defeated by a French yacht, and the newly built "FelkII" did not have the luck of victory either. Simon and Hagen sold the boat and used the proceeds to donate the famous "Felka" prize, for which the large yachts sailed at the Kiel-Travemünde sea competition until the outbreak of the First World War. Only those who had emerged as the winner three times were finally allowed to take the trophy with them.
In the Weimar Republic, the prize was announced in the 40 square meter racing cruiser class, where it was finally won by the Swede Gustav Estlander in 1926. After his death in 1930, the prize was returned to the Imperial Yacht Club, which now advertised it for the 6-meter-R yachts. The dragon class has been fighting for the trophy since 1949. After the club member Andreas von Eicken won it three times on "Caramba", this trophy has belonged to the North German RegattVerein since 1991, which is one of the co-organizers of the Kieler Woche regattas.
In 2006 the Kiel City and Maritime Museum was able to take over the collection of the Kiel sports photographer Helmut Beckmann (1926-2007). He has followed the Kiel races with his camera since the 1960s, and from 1968 to 1991 he took photos for the Kieler Nachrichten. His pictures offer fascinating insights into regatta events and the development of sailing over four decades. Knowing numerous sports, Helmut Beckmann was particularly interested in sailing. The regattas of the Kieler Woche formed a focus of his photographic work. Countless impressive regatta images are thanks to his sure instinct for a good motif. The exhibition shows his motifs as diavographs, a sophisticated digital printing process by FirmPrint & Service in Kiel. In addition, the large photos that are placed in the windows of the Maritime Museum zum Wall as outdoor advertising are also motifs of this Kiel photographer. With the photographic legacy of Helmut Beckmann, the Kiel City and Maritime Museum owns a unique pictorial chronicle of the Kiel Week regattas.
The exhibition gives the museum the opportunity to show the excellent stock of sailing ship models again after a long time. The most important boat classes of the Kieler Woche - from the Schwertslup, which crossed the fjord in the 1880s, to the Paralympic class of 2.4mR boats, which has been sailing in the Olympic part of the Kieler Woche since 2002 - show the changes in regatta sport and the Yacht building. A contemporary model of a large schooner yacht points to the first decades of the Kieler Woche, when large boats such as the imperial "Meteor", the "Germania" by Gustav Krupp von Bohlen and Halbach or the "Hamburg" dominated the races. The two-meter yacht model gives an idea of the enormous dimensions of these ships, which were over 40 meters in length. You can also see the latest acquisitions by the Maritime Museum, the 1:25 model of a kite and a 2.4mR boat, with which the Kiel sailor Heiko Kröger won a Paralympics gold medal in Sydney in 2000.
In addition to sailing, all other facets of the Kiel Week are also documented in the exhibition. The photographs of important Kiel press photographers such as Friedrich Magnussen, Hermann Nafzger and Jan Köhler-Kaeß show the numerous political, social and cultural highlights of the great summer festival. A colorful school of fish is reminiscent of the popular game line on the Krusenkoppel. The motto of this largest children's cultural offer in Northern Europe last year was "Neptune's Empire", and some of the results are now hanging in the historic fish hall.
A multi-faceted picture of the Kiel Week from the first years after the Second World War to the end of the 1980s is shown in the picture show "The Kiel Week in the Press Photo" by Imke Scholvin-Watts. Here she was able to fall back on the extensive photographic inventory of the city archive, which almost completely documents the history of the festival week over the past 60 years.
The book "Kieler Woche" by Katrin Kroll will be published by Wachholtz Verlag at a price of 14.80 euros to accompany the exhibition. On 160 pages with over 200 images, the author takes readers on an exciting journey through 125 years of Kieler Woche history.
Parallel to the anniversary exhibition "125 Years of Kiel Week", the Maritime Museum is offering young visitors the exhibition "Ready for the turnaround! Children on a regatta course", which was set up by the Kiel Children's Culture Office. In two separate rooms, children between eight and twelve years can experience the different facets of regatta sport in a playful and entertaining way.
Kiel Maritime Museum Wall 6524103 KielTelephone 0431 / 901-3428www.kiel.de/kultu
Opening times: 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. daily Admission: 3 euros, reduced 1.50 euro
125 years of the Kiel Week Duration: June 15 to September 30, 2007Opening times: daily 10 a.m. - 6 p.m
Opening of both Kiel Week special exhibitions "125 years of Kieler Woche" and "Ready for the turnaround! Children on regatta course" Friday, June 15, 5 p.m., by Mayor Rainer Tschor
Public tours: July and August on Sundays at 11:30 a.m. For groups by appointment on 0431 / 901-3428Special tours for children:I'll show you! Kids explain the sport of sailing