Experiencing Germany

 The “pearl of Ruppinian Switzerland” is just under 70 kilometres from Berlin, picturesquely located on Brandenburg’s longest lake. Neuruppin, which is 750 years old, is above all not only famous for the city’s most famous son: Theodor Fontane.

“Ruppin is in a beautiful location – it has a lake and gardens, and it is surrounded by ramparts. After the great fire […] the city was rebuilt in a kind of courtly style. Long, wide streets cut through it, interrupted only by magnificent squares […]. In the rich seat of a court, full of tall houses and palaces, full of life and traffic, this kind of space-wasting lay-out may be most commendable, but it is objectionable in a small provincial town."

This description of his native town by Theodor Fontane in the first volume of his "Wanderungen durch die Mark Brandenburg" (“Travels through the Mark of Brandenburg”) (1862-1882), still applies today. The town is indeed beautifully situated – on the shores of Ruppin Lake, which is 14 kilometres long, and on the edge of the romantic beech forests of Ruppinian Switzerland.

Early classicist town centre

Im 1256, Neuruppin was awarded city status. After a great fire, which reduced the city to ashes in 1787, Neuruppin was rebuilt in early classicist style with a grid of "long broad streets". The master builder, Bernhard Matthias Brasch, also designed the facades of the two-storey houses which line the streets, some of them very ornate. The architectural ensemble, impressive for its compactness, and which remained practically untouched in the war, has now been placed under architectural conservation.

The impression of "dreariness and emptiness" that Fontane recorded in his travelogue does arise in this north Brandenburg town at times, even in the 21st century. Perhaps Fontane’s impression was due to the fact that the houses are too small in comparison with the width of the streets. Today, this impression is reinforced by the many empty apartments and houses.

The city’s sons

For Fontane lovers, it is well worth visiting the native city of this great German realist writer. It is here on Karl-Marx-Strasse that we find the Löwen-Apotheke chemist’s shop where Fontane was born. Neuruppin Grammar School, which Fontane attended for a short period, is nearby. In the city centre, one also finds the preacher’s widow’s house and the superintendent’s house, where members of the Fontane family lived for a time. Since 1998, Neuruppin has proudly borne the epithet "Fontane’s City."

Karl Friedrich Schinkel, too, was born in Neuruppin. His plans for the rebuilding of the city of Neuhardenberg and his many plans for classicist buildings in Berlin – such as the Neue Wache (Unter den Linden), the Alte Museum (near the Lustgarten) and the Schauspielhaus (on Gendarmenmarkt) – make him the most important German architect of the first half of the 19th century.

City of illustrated broadsheets

In the 19th century, Neuruppin became famous for being a production centre for illustrated broadsheets, which may be seen as a precursor of modern magazines. These printed designs, attractively combining drawings and text, were very popular.

There is a wide variety of different kinds of illustrated broadsheets: accounts of current events, but also of war, the life of princes, and marriage and the family. Songs and sagas were illustrated on the sheets, or craftwork instructions and games. Clients sometimes had pedagogical ambitions, ordering illustrated broadsheets that conveyed bourgeois ideals and role models.

The first illustrated broadsheets were made in Neuruppin even before 1800 by the book printer Johann Bernhard Kühn. Under his son, Gustav Kühn, Kühn’s illustrated broadsheets became famous far beyond the city’s borders. More than 20,000 broadsheets were produced in the print shops and colouring workshops of the three firms Gustav Kühn, Oehmigke & Riemenschneider and Bergemann. Today, Neuruppin has what is probably the biggest German collection of these popular prints; they are on display in the old grammar school.

While “dreariness and emptiness” may once have dominated the disproportionately wide streets of the town, which has a population of 32,000, it is difficult to imagine today that Fontane once had an "impression of boredom" here.