Wismar and Stralsund: one World Heritage property, two towns

The short answer

The Historic Centres of Stralsund and Wismar are a single World Heritage property made up of the old towns of two separate towns on Germany's Baltic coast.[1] The two cities' joint World Heritage site says they submitted a joint nomination at the end of 2000, and that the World Heritage Committee, meeting in Budapest, decided in favour of the inscription on 27 June 2002.[4]

Sharing an inscription does not make them one place. Each town has its own old town, its own churches and its own free World Heritage visitor centre, and XTOUR holds no route or travel-time data between them. The joint site is published by the two cities' World Heritage offices, so it is the cities' own account of the property.[3]

Why two towns share one listing

The joint site explains the pairing by what the towns have in common: waterfront locations, a retained medieval street plan, brick buildings and traces of the period when both were Swedish. Both were founded as planned towns, and the site gives their first written mentions as 1229 for Wismar and 1234 for Stralsund.[1]

The nomination took time. The joint site says plans to propose parts of the two historic centres already existed in GDR times, that work only began at the end of 1995, and that in 1998 Germany's culture ministers placed the two towns seventh on the national Tentative List. From 1999 the cities worked on one joint nomination, each with its own management plan. In 2001, before the decision, they founded the German World Heritage Foundation, which the site says supports endangered World Heritage sites outside Germany.[2][4]

The two criteria

The joint site says the property meets criteria (ii) and (iv), two of UNESCO's ten.[5] It summarises its case for each.

• Criterion (ii), exchange of values. As members of the Hanseatic League, the site argues, the towns took part in an exchange of ideas and building techniques across the Baltic and North Sea. It points to six monumental brick churches that combine Italian brick technique with the cathedral forms of northern France, and to Stralsund's town hall as a model for town halls of the southern Baltic.[5]
• Criterion (iv), an outstanding type. The towns are presented as examples of Hanseatic trading ports at the height of the league, with their medieval plans and plots intact. The site singles out Wismar's preserved medieval harbour basin and the Grube, which it calls the last man-made medieval waterway in a north German historic centre, and Stralsund's island position between the Strela Sound and ponds dammed soon after the town was founded.[5] The city of Wismar's own World Heritage page makes the same claim for the Grube.[17]

The joint site also calls the archaeological subsoil of both towns an archaeological monument of outstanding importance, and of utmost significance as World Heritage.[6][5] Its protection page says each town's management plan dates from 2000, updated for Wismar in 2013 and for Stralsund in 2015, and that buffer zones surround the property: in Stralsund the harbour islands and parts of three adjacent suburbs, in Wismar a belt of 108 hectares.[10] XTOUR has not read UNESCO's own entry for the property; the criteria above are as the cities state them.

How the two towns differ

The joint site is careful about difference as well as likeness. It says Stralsund's plan is oriented towards the sea, while Wismar's connected the port to the east-west trade route and emphasises a commercial town with a strong export trade.[6] Its history page says Wismar's wealth in the second half of the 14th century came mainly from its beer, renowned throughout the Hanseatic League, and that the Peace of Stralsund, signed with Denmark on 24 May 1370, marked the height of Hanseatic power.[7]

The Swedish period also arrived differently. Stralsund allied with Sweden in 1628 after the imperial army under Wallenstein failed to take it; Wismar fell to Sweden in 1632; after the Peace of Westphalia both were under Swedish rule. Wismar became the seat of the Royal Swedish Tribunal, a supreme court for all of Sweden's German possessions, and from 1720 Stralsund was the capital of Swedish Western Pomerania.[8] The ends differed too: Stralsund passed to Prussia in 1815, while Wismar went back to Mecklenburg early in the 19th century as a pledge for 100 years, with Sweden giving up its claim only in 1903.[9]

What the joint site points to in each town

Stralsund. The town hall, dating from the early 14th century, with a north façade completed around 1350 and, in the site's words, the most striking example of "Sundische Gothic", the local Brick Gothic style from about 1330. Two of the original ten city gates survive, the Kütertor and the Kniepertor. The Dominican monastery of St Katherine now houses the STRALSUND MUSEUM and the German Oceanographic Museum.[6] Inside St Nicholas' Church, the history page notes fittings named after the merchants' trade routes, the Bergen travellers' altar and the Novgorod travellers' stalls.[7]

Wismar. The joint site lists the Alter Schwede, a Gothic gabled house on the market built around 1380; the Wasserkunst, the ornate pavilion built on the market between 1580 and 1602 to house the collecting tank of the wooden water main; the Water Gate, the one survivor of five harbour gates; and the Swedish Provianthaus and armoury.[6]

Wismar's three town churches

Wismar's three main churches belong to the city: its page says a federal decision of September 2008 assigned St Nikolai, St Marien and St Georgen to the city's ownership, and that the city has spent about 43 million euros on restoring and rebuilding them since 1990.[18] They are in very different states.

• St Nikolai was built from 1381 to 1487 as the church of seafarers and fishermen. In a storm in 1703 its spire collapsed and wrecked the roof, the nave vaults and the interior; by the end of the 18th century the pulpit and altar had been renewed, which is how the late Gothic church came to have a Baroque interior. The city says it is used exclusively, and free of charge, by the Protestant parish.[19]
• St Marien was modelled on St Mary's in Lübeck. Its nave was badly damaged in an air raid on the night of 14 to 15 April 1945 and blown up in August 1960; only the tower, over 80 metres high, still stands. Since 2001 archaeologists have uncovered the foundations, and the nave's plan has been rebuilt to plinth height, with an exhibition on Hanseatic church building around the tower.[20]
• St Georgen, the church of the craftsmen and tradespeople, decayed after the war, almost without a roof, until a storm on 25 January 1990 brought down a transept gable. The city says that event started the rebuilding, half paid for by the German Foundation for Monument Protection, and that it reopened in 2010 as a church and a "Kulturkirche" for concerts and exhibitions.[21]

The two visitor centres

Both cities run a World Heritage visitor centre, and the joint site says both are free.[2]

The Stralsund World Heritage Exhibition has been in a Baroque palais at Ossenreyerstraße 1, near the town hall, since 2011.[11] Its page describes globes, films, animations and media tables, an animated film on how the town plan changed over time, and an outdoor sandbox where children dig for the buried town.[12] The World Heritage House at Lübsche Straße 23 in Wismar opened in June 2014; the joint site calls it the third visitor centre of its kind in Germany, after Regensburg and Stralsund.[11] Its ground-floor room has the Wismar town plan inlaid in the floor, and upstairs is a restored room of French panoramic wallpaper, installed in 1828 by the then mayor.[13]

Guided city tours are run by the two tourist offices: the joint site says Stralsund's are offered from April to October and in December, and Wismar's all year.[14]

Where the official pages disagree

Checked on the same day, the official pages do not agree on three practical points.

• Days open. The joint site's home page and Stralsund's tourism office both say the two exhibitions open daily.[16][2] The Stralsund exhibition's own page, on the joint site and on the city's site, says it opens daily from April to October but Monday to Saturday from November to March.[15][12]
• The Stralsund wallpaper hall. Both pages say the palais has an 18th-century wallpaper hall that cannot open every day, to protect the paper.[15] The joint site's page offers a guided tour every Thursday at 16:00 from April to September.[12] The city's page instead says the Thursday 14:00 old-town tour includes the hall from June to September, with a separate tour of the hall in May and October. The city's page also says experts disagree on whether the painter Jakob Philipp Hackert made it.[15]
• Counts. The city's exhibition page says it presents all 54 German World Heritage sites; the German Commission for UNESCO now gives 55.[22][15]

XTOUR does not resolve these, and has not verified which page is current.

What XTOUR does not know

Neither Wismar nor Stralsund is yet a destination on XTOUR, and XTOUR holds no route, travel-time or transport data between them or from other German cities. XTOUR does not state opening hours, prices or accessibility for any building here beyond what the pages above say, and those are the cities' own statements. For what the Hanseatic League was, see the Hanseatic League explained; for Lübeck, whose town law the joint site says the Wendish Hanseatic towns shared and whose St Mary's was the model for Wismar's, see Lübeck's old town and the European Hansemuseum.[20][7] Germany lists XTOUR's German destinations.