Germany (Lonely Planet, 6th Edition) - Andrea Schulte-Peevers [649]
Güstrow Information ( 681 023; www.guestrow-tourismus.de, in German; Franz-Parr-Platz 10; 9am-7pm Mon-Fri, 10am-5pm Sat, 11am-5pm Sun May-Sep, 9am-6pm Mon-Fri, 10am-4pm Sat, 11am-4pm Sun Oct-Apr) can help with accommodation.
Return to beginning of chapter
Sights & Activities
Güstrow’s 16th-century Schloss ( 7520; www.schloss-guestrow.de; adult/concession €3/2; 10am-6pm daily mid-Apr–mid-Oct, 10am-5pm Tue-Sun mid-Oct–mid-Apr) is home to an historical museum as well as a cultural centre, art exhibitions and occasional concerts.
Built between 1226 and 1335, the Gothic Dom ( 682 433; www.dom-guestrow.de, in German; Philipp-Brandin-Strasse 5; 10am-5pm Mon-Sat, 2-4pm Sun mid-May–mid-Oct, reduced hours rest of year) contains a copy of Ernst Barlach’s Hovering Angel, a memorial for the fallen soldiers of WWI; this copy was made secretly from the original mould after the Nazis destroyed the original sculpture.
* * *
ERNST BARLACH
One of the most important German expressionists, Ernst Barlach’s sculptures and drawings are found across Germany, but it’s especially hard not to notice him in Güstrow, where he spent the last 28 years of his life.
Born in 1870 outside Hamburg, Barlach visited Russia in 1906, soon after finishing his art studies, and this trip was to forever influence his work. Based on sketches he made there, his squarish sculptures began bearing the same expressive gestures and hunched-over, wind-blown postures of the impoverished people he encountered.
Although Barlach greeted WWI with enthusiasm, he soon came to realise the horrors of war, which also became a recurring theme in his work. He gained widespread fame for the WWI memorial in Magdeburg’s cathedral Click here. His profoundly humanist approach did not sit well with Nazi aesthetics, however. He was declared a degenerate artist in the 1930s and banned from working, while 381 of his works were destroyed.
Barlach died in 1938 in Rostock at the peak of the ideological frenzy, without ever seeing his work resurrected, as it was after WWII. He is buried in Ratzeburg.
* * *
The Barlach memorial in the Gertrudenkapelle ( 844 000; Gertrudenplatz 1; adult/concession/family €4/2.50/6.50; 10am-5pm Tue-Sun Apr-Oct, 11am-4pm Tue-Sun Nov-Mar) displays many of his original works. More of his bronze and wood carvings are housed along with a biographical exhibition at his former studio, the Atelierhaus ( 822 99; www.ernst-barlach-stiftung.de, in German; Heidberg 15; adult/concession/family €5/3.50/8.50; 10am-5pm Tue-Sun Apr-Oct, 11am-4pm Tue-Sun Nov-Mar), 4km south of the city at Inselsee; take bus 204 or 205.
Return to beginning of chapter
Getting There & Around
Trains leave for Güstrow once or twice an hour from Rostock’s Hauptbahnhof (€6.90, 25 minutes). Hourly services to/from Schwerin (€13.30, one hour) require a change in Bad Kleinen.
Return to beginning of chapter
NEUBRANDENBURG
0395 / pop 67,517
Neubrandenburg has few pretensions. It bills itself as ‘the city of four gates on the Tollensesee Lake’, and that’s pretty well what it is. A largely intact medieval wall, with four gates, encircles the 13th-century Altstadt (although you have to peer hard through some harsh GDR architecture to see it), and the lake is great for boating or swimming. Although there’s little else to detain you, the town also makes a handy staging post for forays into the Müritz National Park to the south.
Return to beginning of chapter
Orientation
Consider the circular city wall as the rim of a clock face. The train station is at 12 o’clock; to get to the tourist office and the middle of the Altstadt, you simply have to walk straight down Stargarder Strasse to the middle of the face. The four gates are located as follows: Friedländer Tor at 2 o’clock, Neues Tor at 3 o’clock, Stargarder Tor at 6 o’clock and Treptower Tor at 9 o’clock. Inside the walls is a grid of north–south and east