Lübeck: The Doors
August 2004
Location:
Lübeck, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany
I spent the last day of my Germany holiday in Lübeck. The hotel I had chosen was in the bucolic countryside near the Elbe-Lübeck Canal outside town. But I spent most of the day taking in the sights of the city. Naturally this included buying marzipan at Niederegger.
Weather:
Partly cloudy, clearing up toward evening.
Instructions:
Click the thumbnails for a larger version. Some images also have a much larger version at 1024 by 768 pixels. You can download them one by one, by clicking on the wallpaper link next to the image. Alternatively you can download a zipped archive of all of them. The zipped archive includes instructions for making a screensaver of the images.
The entrance to the hotel in Oberbüssau outside Lübeck. It was incredibly posh but not very good. Still, you've got to agree that it looks nice.
I took a walk in the countryside around the hotel. This is a farm nearby. It turns out that the Elbe-Lübeck Canal passes near Oberbüssau. In fact, the poplars you see in the fond flank the canal.
But before I got to the canal, I took this photo of stubble fields with crows and the spires of Lübeck in the background. The twin spires on the left belong to the Marienkirche, and the ones on the right belong to the cathedral. Both were originally completed in the thirteenth century. The lower, dark round tower in the middle is the Holstentor, the most famous landmark in Lübeck.
There was plenty of traffic on the canal, even though it was a Friday evening. This is one of the smaller canal users.
And here we have a larger vessel that has just passed a lock. The canal was built in 1900. It allows boats to cross from the river Trave to the river Elbe, in effect connecting the Baltic with the North sea without having to go round Denmark. It's only 67 km long so it's a considerable time saving.
The lock itself, looking toward Lübeck. As you can see the canal is in excellent condition. It is not a museum but still very much in commercial use.
I spent the next day wandering around Lübeck before it was time to go to the airport for my flight back to London. This narrow alley caught my attention. The brick step gable at the end of it is very typical of Lübeck and the other old Hanseatic League towns.
Another remnant of the wealth that trade and commerce brought Lübeck.
This is the Dorneshof, originally built in 1458. It was originally an almshouse but now it serves as assisted accommodation for elderly people.
I found many very pretty doors in Lübeck. These are the first ones in geometric shades of grey, white and black.
These green doors are the entrance to Lübeck's continuing education centre. Even though the style is much less restrained on these doors than the previous, grey ones, you can still see the similarity in how the symmetry emphasizes the two door-halves and how the different colours make the carvings stand out. There is nothing figurative or functional about the way the doors are carved and painted. It's l'art pour l'art.
Somewhere between the earlier, very restrained grey doors and the more exuberant green doors, is the style of these grey doors. Here it is also more obvious that the lock and handle hasn't been incorporated into the design in any of these doors. Nor have they been completely hidden. Instead they sit like an afterthought on one of the door-halves, disturbing the symmetry.
The final door is different. For one thing, it is a single door, for another there is glass in the door itself, rather than above it. This door is much newer. It opens onto a factory for posters and labels, Hermbergsche Litographie.
