History of Europe

Damp 2000:From meadow to holiday resort

Pictures from the past compared to photos from today - preferably taken from the same position:this is the central element of the series "Schleswig-Holstein then and now" . This is how we want to document the change in the cities in the northernmost federal state. An interactive photo comparison makes this particularly clear.

by Sebastian Parzanny

"There really wasn't anything here before, just meadows and a beach. We used to go swimming here as teenagers and had the whole beach to ourselves," say two residents of Damp with a laugh. In front of them the bright sandy beach and the open Baltic Sea, behind them the skyline of Damp. Huge skyscrapers soar into the sky. You could also be in Kiel-Mettenhof or Lübeck-Buntekuh, but on the small Schwansen peninsula in the Rendsburg-Eckernförde district? This is still unusual today.

In 1972 the "Damp 2000" apartment building was still under construction, and one of the most modern holiday resorts in Germany at the time was created, and also one of the largest:the hotel block alone has more than 400 rooms. At the moment there are construction workers there again, because the house is being extensively renovated.

Damp 2000:A resort with 7,000 beds

Pictures from the time without high-rise buildings are not archived by the municipality. There was nothing that could have been photographed. A little away from the beach there were only a few houses in a few settlements. That changed abruptly in 1970:excavators, construction machinery and cranes rolled into the area. A construction consortium from North Rhine-Westphalia had secured the fields directly on the Baltic Sea beach in order to have a gigantic holiday complex with 7,000 beds as well as a marina and a promenade with shops built for around 200 million marks. There were also 300 so-called roof-only houses. The planners had seen them in the GDR and also wanted this Harz model on the Baltic Sea. The unusual holiday homes were delivered and set up by workers from the GDR.

"tent roof houses" or "only roof houses" are actually an invention from the GDR. The Damp 2000 builders had seen these unusual holiday homes in the Harz Mountains and ordered several hundred of them in the GDR. The workers came over in the early 1970s to build the houses. A special feature back then - and even today these holiday homes are usually fully booked in summer.

A shock from a distance

During the construction phase, Damp 2000 was often in the press, especially when protests arose:In the summer of 1972, the Kiel Baltic Sea expert Uwe Muuß described the huge holiday complex as a "bad intervention in nature" in a Spiegel article. Another expert, not named in the report, is quoted as saying, "In ten years these will be slums." Even the head of the Schleswig-Holstein Tourist Association at the time, Gerd Kramer, admitted in an interview with NDR:"It's a shock at first when you see the Damp 2000 holiday resort from afar."

Workers from Spain on the Baltic Sea

Ordering turf to make it greener was Horst Böttcher's first task when he started as a buyer in Damp in 1972, while the building was still under construction. He later became mayor of the municipality.

But the first managers of the mammoth plant had other worries:not enough people applied for the 700 job advertisements. In the provinces, there simply weren't that many skilled workers. Without further ado, 50 seasonal workers were flown in from Gran Canaria, who were trained for the first rush of visitors. In addition, the head chef personally recruited new staff at a trade fair in Hanover.

First task:organize the turf

The young Berliner Horst Böttcher also heard about Damp 2000 for the first time in the Hanover Exhibition Center. The later mayor remembers:"Just a few days later I was here for an interview. They would have preferred to keep me here right away. But then I said:Stop . Stop. I would at least like to get my toothbrush from Berlin," says the 72-year-old, still in the capital's dialect. In the spring of 1973 he began purchasing the resort. "The houses were almost finished, but Damp 2000 was still very, very bare. Almost like a desert. So my first task was to organize kilometers of bales of turf so that it would turn green quickly."

A new marina was also built in Damp in the early 1970s. The first managers of "Damp 2000" advertised with the sailing area. Even today, this is still an argument for many tourists who come specifically to sail. There are now 14 jetties with over 350 berths in Damp. Right in the picture:The museum ship "Albatros", one of the landmarks of Damp.

Trial vacation for 20 D-Mark

In the summer of 1973, the first test tourists came from Hamburg. They were brought to the Baltic Sea in numerous buses. For just 20 marks, they were allowed to "test live" over the weekend in what Horst Böttcher recalled at the time, in the then highly modern apartments. "But this test run ended in total chaos. The buses with the 2,000 or so guests arrived almost at the same time. Nothing worked here anymore," he says and laughs. Then he adds:"Back then, the cohesion was different. It didn't matter whether it was the swimming instructor, the harbor master or we from the administration, everyone then helped at the reception. It was a great time." The absolute highlight was the official opening ceremony on June 13, 1973. Among others, Roberto Blanco and Katja Ebstein sang - a sensation at the time.

Plan B:hotel tower becomes a clinic

However, there was soon the first setback for the mega system. Even during the construction phase of the third high-rise tower, the managers realized that the planned 7,000 hotel beds would never be fully occupied. The plans were changed without further ado:one of the towers became a clinic. The former team doctor of the German national soccer team, Hannes Schoberth, helped set up the clinic and managed it for many years. That's how the big project got the curve.

Mixture of holiday and health location

The mixture of hotel rooms and clinic prevailed to this day:a few years ago, a healthcare group, Helios, even took over the entire complex with hotels and holiday homes. "Not an easy time either. The group was not entirely innocent of that," says Horst Böttcher in retrospect. However, he does not give any details.

Today's Ostseeklink was originally designed as a hotel, but the managers changed their plans in the 1970s:the building became a clinic. During the construction phase there was hardly any greenery in the facility, it looks very different today.

Damp continues to evolve

Damp's landmark, the "Albatros", has long since been on land, and the traditional ship now houses an "escape room".

"Damp 3000, so I can't quite manage this vision," says Hörst Böttcher thoughtfully about the place that has long since become his home. "But I dare Damp 2030:A tourist place has to keep developing. And that's the same here:the rooms are being updated again, we have a new Viking golf course. And there will be an electric charging station soon. Of course," he adds, looking up at the concrete tower:"More high-rise buildings will definitely not be added. I don't think people would still build like they did back then. You wouldn't even get any permits for them anymore."