First time. Research in Lübeck

A long List

As a family researcher, I have traveled quite far in Germany in the 15 years of my work. The share of online work is getting higher and higher, but visits to archives are always necessary and in demand. Hamburg, Hanover, Leipzig, Rostock, Bremen, Darmstadt, Munich, Stuttgart, Freiburg…. The list of cities and their archives where I have already done research is long. Where I have not yet been professionally, I have often been privately. But never in Lübeck.

Sweet

Yet I often encountered Lübeck in my childhood, especially at Christmas time. On the packaging of the world-famous Niederegger Marzipan, the logo with the initials of the company founder Johann Georg Niederegger is emblazoned on a stylized image of the Holsten Gate. In my perception as a child, the Holsten Gate was always a candy, not a late medieval city gate made of bricks.

Company History

The history of the company (https://www.niederegger.de/en/history/) is an – almost – uninterrupted family history. Niederegger was born in Ulm in southern Germany in 1777 and came to Lübeck as a confectioner in 1803. In 1806 he founded his almond empire, and when Napoleon imposed a trade embargo, he imported the indispensable raw material from Italy by smuggling it via Heligoland.

Mechanized production began in 1930 with the construction of a factory, which was rebuilt after World War 2 and expanded in 1958. In 1962 the family business moved to its present location. Today it is run by the 8th generation, but in 1838 the management passed into the hands of a confectioner and later into those of his descendants, who also came from Ulm, but was not related to Niederegger.

The Gate

Because of the marzipan, but also because of other images, the Holsten Gate, like the Bremen Town Musicians or the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, has acquired the status of a world-famous landmark. And now I finally stood in front of it, on my first time in Lübeck!

The Holsten Gate is significant not only as a symbol, but also as a building. Its name, by the way, is simply explained by the fact that it led out of the city to the west, to Holstein. It was completed in 1478 by the wealthy citizens of Lübeck as part of a multiple city fortification. At some time, there were four Holsten gates, one in front of the other, of which the other three were demolished in the course of industrialization in the 19th century. The fourth gate almost did not escape this fate either. In 1863, the citizens decided in favor of its preservation by only one vote. The gate was already in ruins and on the verge of collapse.

A Landmark

After the restoration, which lasted until 1871, the founding year of the German Empire, Lübeck began to make friends with its gate. In 1927, Alfred Mahlau designed the logo for Niederegger Marzipan, which is still used almost unchanged today. Further restorations of the gate took place in 1933/34 and 2005/06.

For almost 70 years, between these two construction measures, a swastika stamped into a rain pipe at the very top survived. It was considered the last National Socialist symbol still on a building and was to be removed in the course of the renovation. However, it was stolen beforehand by an unknown person who had climbed up the scaffolding.

Since 1950, the Holstentor has housed the City Museum, which does not omit the transformation of the rooms into a Hall of Fame and Honor at the time of the National Socialist dictatorship.