Neustrelitz (;
East Low German
East Low German (german: ostniederdeutsche Dialekte, ostniederdeutsche Mundarten, Ostniederdeutsch; nds, Oostplattdütsch) is a group of Low German dialects spoken in north-eastern Germany as well as by minorities in northern Poland. Together ...
: ''Niegenstrelitz'') is a town in the
district in the state of
Mecklenburg-Vorpommern
Mecklenburg-Vorpommern (MV; ; nds, Mäkelborg-Vörpommern), also known by its anglicized name Mecklenburg–Western Pomerania, is a state in the north-east of Germany. Of the country's sixteen states, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern ranks 14th in po ...
,
Germany
Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...
. It is situated on the shore of the
Zierker See
Zierker See is a lake in the Mecklenburg Lake District, in Germany. It is situated in the district of Mecklenburgische Seenplatte of the state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. The town of Neustrelitz lies at the northern end of the lake.
The lake is at ...
in the
. From 1738 until 1918 it was the capital of the
Duchy of Mecklenburg-Strelitz
The Duchy of Mecklenburg-Strelitz was a duchy in northern Germany consisting of the eastern fifth of the historic Mecklenburg region, roughly corresponding with the present-day Mecklenburg-Strelitz district (the former Lordship of Stargard), ...
. From 1994 until 2011 it was the capital of the district of
Mecklenburg-Strelitz
The Duchy of Mecklenburg-Strelitz was a duchy in northern Germany consisting of the eastern fifth of the historic Mecklenburg region, roughly corresponding with the present-day Mecklenburg-Strelitz district (the former Lordship of Stargard), ...
.
The name ''Strelitz'' is derived from the
Polabian word ''Strelci'', meaning "archers" or "shooters".
[The related ]Polish
Polish may refer to:
* Anything from or related to Poland, a country in Europe
* Polish language
* Poles
Poles,, ; singular masculine: ''Polak'', singular feminine: ''Polka'' or Polish people, are a West Slavic nation and ethnic group, w ...
form '' Strzelce'' is still a common toponym in Poland
Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative provinces called voivodeships, covering an area of . Poland has a population of over 38 million and is the fifth-most populous ...
.
History
The village of Strelitz was first mentioned in 1278. It grew to a small town in the following centuries. In the 17th century Strelitz was a part of the duchy of Mecklenburg-Güstrow, which ceased to exist after the death of the last duke in 1695. Afterwards the new
Duchy of Mecklenburg-Strelitz
The Duchy of Mecklenburg-Strelitz was a duchy in northern Germany consisting of the eastern fifth of the historic Mecklenburg region, roughly corresponding with the present-day Mecklenburg-Strelitz district (the former Lordship of Stargard), ...
was established (1701). This small duchy contained the present-day district and an exclave around
Ratzeburg
Ratzeburg (; Low German: ''Ratzborg'') is a town in Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. It is surrounded by four lakes—the resulting isthmuses between the lakes form the access lanes to the town. Ratzeburg is the capital of the district Herzogtum La ...
, which is today situated in
Schleswig-Holstein
Schleswig-Holstein (; da, Slesvig-Holsten; nds, Sleswig-Holsteen; frr, Slaswik-Holstiinj) is the northernmost of the 16 states of Germany, comprising most of the historical duchy of Holstein and the southern part of the former Duchy of Sch ...
.
In 1712 the castle and the town of Strelitz burnt down. After this disaster the duke and his family lived on their hunting lodge at the lake called ''Zierker See'' (Lake Zierke) to the northwest of Strelitz. Around this place the new town of ''Neustrelitz'' (New Strelitz) was constructed. It became the official capital of Mecklenburg-Strelitz in 1736.
Neustrelitz remained the ducal seat until 1918 and was the capital of the
Free State of Mecklenburg-Strelitz
The Free State of Mecklenburg-Strelitz (german: Freistaat Mecklenburg-Strelitz) was a state of the Weimar Republic established in 1918 following the German Revolution which had overthrown the Grand Duchy of Mecklenburg-Strelitz. The state laste ...
from 1918 to 1933. In 1934 it was merged with Mecklenburg-Schwerin to the ''Gau'' of
Mecklenburg
Mecklenburg (; nds, label=Low German, Mękel(n)borg ) is a historical region in northern Germany comprising the western and larger part of the federal-state Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. The largest cities of the region are Rostock, Schwerin ...
.
The ancient town of Strelitz continued to exist after the fire of 1712; it was a small village, which was suburbanised by Neustrelitz in 1931.
When the
Red Army
The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army (Russian: Рабо́че-крестья́нская Кра́сная армия),) often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic and, after ...
troops of the
2nd Belorussian Front entered the town on 30 April 1945, 681 people committed suicide.
Sights and monuments
The city centre is characterised by
Baroque
The Baroque (, ; ) is a style of architecture, music, dance, painting, sculpture, poetry, and other arts that flourished in Europe from the early 17th century until the 1750s. In the territories of the Spanish and Portuguese empires including t ...
architecture. Its heart is the ''Marktplatz'' (Market Square), with the ''Stadtkirche'' (city church), built in 1768–1778 and the opposite ''Rathaus'' (Town Hall), built in 1841 by Friedrich W. Buttel, a disciple of
Karl Friedrich Schinkel
Karl Friedrich Schinkel (13 March 1781 – 9 October 1841) was a Prussian architect, city planner and painter who also designed furniture and stage sets. Schinkel was one of the most prominent architects of Germany and designed both neoclassic ...
.
The Baroque
Neustrelitz Palace was destroyed in 1945, but the palace gardens (''Schloßgarten'') still exist. Worth seeing are the 18th-century ''Orangerie'' (from orange), initially used as a summerhouse, the ''Schloßkirche'' (Palace Church) built in 1855–1859 in English
Neo-Gothic
Gothic Revival (also referred to as Victorian Gothic, neo-Gothic, or Gothick) is an architectural movement that began in the late 1740s in England. The movement gained momentum and expanded in the first half of the 19th century, as increasingly ...
style, the
Neoclassic Hebe temple (with a replica of a statue of the goddess
Hebe), and the Louise Temple, built in 1891 in the shape of a Greek temple to house the tomb of Queen Louise of Prussia, born Princess of Mecklenburg-Strelitz.
There is a small lake, Glambeck See, where one can swim in summer in a protected area and have lunch at a restaurant overlooking the lake.
Transport
The town has a station on the
Berlin Northern railway
The Berlin Northern Railway (german: Berliner Nordbahn) is a 223-kilometre-long main line route, that runs from Berlin via Neustrelitz and Neubrandenburg to Stralsund on the Baltic Sea coast. Nowadays, long-distance and regional traffic on the ...
and provides direct connections to
Berlin
Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitue ...
and
Rostock
Rostock (), officially the Hanseatic and University City of Rostock (german: link=no, Hanse- und Universitätsstadt Rostock), is the largest city in the German state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and lies in the Mecklenburgian part of the state, c ...
.
File:Fürstensee Großer Fürstenseer See 2010-04-07 207.jpg, Lake ''Großer Fürstenseer''
File:Neustrelitz Glambecker See 2011.jpg, Lake ''Glambecker See''
File:Gymnasium Carolinum.jpg, Gymnasium Carolinum
File:Rathaus Neustrelitz.jpg , Neustrelitz Town Hall
File:Stadthafen Neustrelitz (4).jpg, City harbour
File:Stadtkirche Neustrelitz-IMG 2248.jpg, City church
File:Schlosskirche (Neustrelitz) Front.jpg, Castle church
File:Friedrich-Wolf-Plastik.jpg, Friedrich Wolf Friedrich Wolf may refer to:
*Friedrich Wolf (writer) (1888–1953), German doctor and writer
*Friedrich August Wolf
Friedrich August Wolf (; 15 February 1759 – 8 August 1824) was a German classicist and is considered the founder of modern ...
File:Altstrelitz Kriegerdenkmal 1870-71.jpg, Franco-Prussian War memorial in Strelitz-Alt
Entertainment
The city has hosted the popular
Immergut Festival
The Immergut Festival is a yearly music festival in Germany in Neustrelitz, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. The first edition was organised in 2000. The festival focuses mainly on indie rock and is one of the largest festivals in Germany for this genre.
...
since the year 2000, attended by almost 5000 visitors each year.
Neustrelitz boasts its own theatre with a permanent resident cast. Drama, operas, operettas and musicals are regularly performed there. The theatre seats 400 persons. A review (in German) of a 2017 opera performance of Offenbach´s The Tales of Hoffmann is to be found here. www.myway.de/hoffmann/1617-neustrelitz.html
Notable people
![E](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d2/E._Kraepelin.jpg)
*
Thomas Böttger
Thomas Böttger (born 1957 in Neustrelitz, Bezirk Neubrandenburg) is a German composer and pianist.
Life
From 1975 to 1980, Böttger studied composition and piano at the Hochschule für Musik "Hanns Eisler", Berlin College of Music "Hanns Eisle ...
(born 1957), composer and pianist
*
Andreas Dittmer
Andreas Dittmer (born 16 April 1972 in Neustrelitz, Bezirk Neubrandenburg) is a German sprint canoeist. The dominant sprint canoeist of his generation in 1000 m races, he has won three Olympic and eight world championship gold medals.
Dittmer ...
(born 1972), Olympian winner in canoeing
*
Carl Eggers (1787–1863), artist painter
*
Rainer Ernst
Rainer Ernst (born 31 December 1961) is a German former professional footballer who amassed 56 caps for the East Germany national team. He was the last captain of East Germany before the political change.
Club career Youth career
Ernst ...
(born 1961), footballer
*
Mark Frank (athlete) (born 1977), javelin thrower
*
Ulf Hoffmann
Ulf Hoffmann (born 8 September 1961) is a retired German gymnast. He missed the 1984 Summer Olympics due to their boycott by East Germany and took part in the Friendship Games instead, winning a silver medal in the team competition. He won anoth ...
(born 1961), gymnast
*
Bernhard Horwitz
Bernhard Horwitz (1807 in Neustrelitz – 1885 in London) was a German and British chess master, chess writer and chess composer.
Horwitz was born in Neustrelitz and went to school in Berlin, where he studied art. From 1837 to 1843, he was part ...
(1807–1885), chess master
*
Charly Hübner
Carsten Johannes Marcus Hübner (born 4 December 1972 in Neustrelitz) is a German actor. He appeared in more than eighty films since 2003, including ''Magical Mystery or: The Return of Karl Schmidt'' (in 2017) and The Good Neighbour (''Unter Nachb ...
(born 1972), actor
*
Karl Kraepelin
Karl Matthias Friedrich Magnus Kraepelin (; ; 14 December 1848 – 28 June 1915) was a German naturalist who specialised in the study of scorpions, centipedes, spiders and solfugids, and was noted for his monograph ''Scorpiones und Pedipalpi'' (Be ...
(1848–1915), biologist, founder of the Natural History Museum in Hamburg
*
Emil Kraepelin
Emil Wilhelm Georg Magnus Kraepelin (; ; 15 February 1856 – 7 October 1926) was a German psychiatrist.
H. J. Eysenck's ''Encyclopedia of Psychology'' identifies him as the founder of modern scientific psychiatry, psychopharmacology and psych ...
(1856–1926), psychiatrist, considered as father of modern psychiatry
*
Hans Kundt
Hans Kundt (28 February 1869, Neustrelitz, Mecklenburg-Strelitz – 30 August 1939, Lugano, Switzerland) was a German military officer from a family of military officers. He was the primary military figure of Bolivia during the two decades ...
(1869–1939), German-Bolivian general in the First World War and the Chacokrieg
*
Marie Kundt
Marie Julia Berta Emma Kundt (4 February 1870 – 2 April 1932) was a German photographer
A photographer (the Greek φῶς (''phos''), meaning "light", and γραφή (''graphê''), meaning "drawing, writing", together meaning "drawing with l ...
(1870–1932), photographer, teacher and director of the Photographische Lehranstalt der Lette-Verein Berlin
*
Otto Piper
Otto Piper (1841–1921) was a German architectural historian who, with August von Cohausen (1812–1896), is regarded as one of the two founders of scientific research into castles.
Life
Otto Piper was born on 22 December 1841 in Röckwitz, t ...
(1882–1946), jurist and politician (DVP)
*
Jesco von Puttkamer
Jesco Hans Heinrich Max Freiherr von Puttkamer () was a German-American aerospace engineer, senior manager at NASA, and a pulp science fiction writer.
He was an advocate of human space exploration, and the search for extraterrestrial intelligence ...
(1919–1987), publicist
*
Franz Rademacher (1906–1973), jurist
*
Carl Friedrich Roewer
Carl Friedrich Roewer (12 October 1881, in Neustrelitz – 17 June 1963) was a German arachnologist. He concentrated on harvestmen, where he described almost a third (2,260) of today's known species, but also almost 700 taxa of spiders and numerou ...
(1881–1963), pedagogue, arachnologist and museum director
*
Prince Carl of Solms-Braunfels
Prince Carl (Karl) of Solms-Braunfels (27 July 1812 – 13 November 1875), was a German prince and military officer in both the Austrian army and in the cavalry of the Grand Duchy of Hesse. As Commissioner General of the Adelsverein, he spearhe ...
(1812–1875), German prince and military officer in both the Austrian army and in the cavalry of the Grand Duchy of Hesse, and also founder of the settlement
New Braunfels
New Braunfels ( ) is a city in Comal and Guadalupe counties in the U.S. state of Texas known for its German Texan heritage. It is the seat of Comal County. The city covers and had a population of 90,403 as of the 2020 Census. A suburb just north ...
, Comal County, Texas (USA)
*
Herbert Wagner (born 1948), politician (CDU), Lord Mayor of Dresden 1990–2001
*
Olaf Winter
Olaf Winter (born 18 July 1973 in Neustrelitz, Bezirk Neubrandenburg) is a German sprint canoeist who competed in the late 1990s and early 2000s (decade). Competing in two Summer Olympics, he won a gold medal in the K-4 1000 m event at A ...
(born 1973), Olympian winner in canoeing
*
Albert Wolff (sculptor)
Carl Conrad Albert Wolff (14 November 1814, Neustrelitz – 20 June 1892, Berlin) was a German sculptor, and medallist.
Life and work
His father was the architect and sculptor Christian Philipp Wolff, who died when Albert was only six. At ...
(1814–1892), sculptor
International relations
Twin towns – Sister cities
Neustrelitz is
twinned with:
*
Chaykovsky,
Russia
Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a List of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia, Northern Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the ...
*
Szczecinek
Szczecinek ( ; German until 1945: ''Neustettin'') is a historic city in Middle Pomerania, northwestern Poland, with a population of more than 40,000 (2011). Formerly in the Koszalin Voivodeship (1950–1998), it has been the capital of Szczecine ...
,
Poland
Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative provinces called voivodeships, covering an area of . Poland has a population of over 38 million and is the fifth-most populous ...
*
Rovaniemi
Rovaniemi ( , ; sme, Roavvenjárga ; smn, Ruávinjargâ; sms, Ruäʹvnjargg) is a city and municipality of Finland. It is the administrative capital and commercial centre of Finland's northernmost province, Lapland, and its southern part Per� ...
,
Finland
Finland ( fi, Suomi ; sv, Finland ), officially the Republic of Finland (; ), is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It shares land borders with Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east, with the Gulf of B ...
*
Schwäbisch Hall
Schwäbisch Hall (; "Swabian Hall"; from 1802 until 1934 and colloquially: ''Hall'' ) is a city in the German state of Baden-Württemberg located in the valley of the Kocher river, the longest tributary (together with its headwater Lein) of the ...
, Germany
References
External links
*
{{Authority control
Cities and towns in Mecklenburg
Populated places established in 1733
Grand Duchy of Mecklenburg-Strelitz