Palmer Ort

Last updated April 30, 2019

The Palmer Ort is the southernmost point of the German Baltic Sea island of Rügen and its peninsula of Zudar. The cape lies on the territory of the municipality Garz/Rügen.

The Baltic Sea is a marginal sea of the Atlantic Ocean, enclosed by Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Sweden, northeast Germany, Poland, Russia and the North and Central European Plain.

Rügen is Germany's largest island by area. It is located off the Pomeranian coast in the Baltic Sea and belongs to the state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania.

The Zudar is a peninsula on the German Baltic Sea island of Rügen. It is about 18 square kilometres in area and sharply divided.

Location

Palmer Ort marks the boundary between the Bay of Greifswald and the sound of Strelasund. On the land side, there is a small coastal defence wood in front of the Palmer Ort. Through it runs a woodland path to the Palmer Ort, part of which is laid out as a nature trail, "Know Your World" (Erkenne Deine Welt). The nearest settlement is the small hamlet of Grabow, about 1 kilometre to the northeast. At Palmer Ort itself there is a narrow, natural sandy beach which is not often frequented by visitors because of its isolation. Anglers use the beach to fish for pike.

The Bay of Greifswald or Greifswald Bodden is a basin in the southwestern Baltic Sea, off the shores of Germany in the state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. With an area of 514 km², it is the largest Bodden of the German Baltic coast.

The Strelasund or Strela Sound is a sound or lagoon of the Baltic Sea which separates Rügen from the German mainland. It is crossed by a road and rail bridge called the Rügendamm in Stralsund. It runs northwest to southeast from a small shallow bay just north of Stralsund called the Kubitzer Bodden through to another such bay, the Greifswalder Bodden in the southeast. The sound is nowhere much more than 3 km wide, reaching its greatest width towards its southeast end. It is roughly 25 km long.

The northern pike, known simply as a pike in Britain, Ireland, most of Canada, and most parts of the United States, is a species of carnivorous fish of the genus Esox. They are typical of brackish and fresh waters of the Northern Hemisphere.

In winter ice floes at the Palmer Ort often pile up to form heaps of ice several metres in height.

Ice jams occur on rivers when floating ice accumulates at a natural or man-made feature that impedes its progress downstream. Ice jams can significantly reduce the flow of a river and cause upstream flooding—sometimes called ice dams. Ice jam flooding can also occur downstream when the jam releases in an outburst flood. In either case, flooding can cause damage to structures on shore.

Palmer Ort in history

In 1372, a ship with 90 pilgrims on board sank off the Palmer Ort in a storm. They were travelling on a pilgrimage to St. Lawrence's Church on Zudar. There is a story that there had been a painting of the Blessed Virgin Mary there, which was said to work miracles, but which disappeared after the disaster.^[1]

A pilgrim is a traveler who is on a journey to a holy place. Typically, this is a physical journey to some place of special significance to the adherent of a particular religious belief system. In the spiritual literature of Christianity, the concept of pilgrim and pilgrimage may refer to the experience of life in the world or to the inner path of the spiritual aspirant from a state of wretchedness to a state of beatitude.

A pilgrimage is a journey or search of moral or spiritual significance. Typically, it is a journey to a shrine or other location of importance to a person's beliefs and faith, although sometimes it can be a metaphorical journey into someone's own beliefs.

During the Pomeranian campaign of the Great Northern War, Palmer Ort was the scene of hostilities. An invasion fleet of 500 ships from Prussia, Denmark and Saxony sailed towards Palmer Ort on 11 November 1715. Sweden, to which Rügen belonged, gathered its forces in the area of Palmer Ort. The invasion fleet was fired upon from the Zudar peninsula, but no significant losses occurred. The fleet did not actually intend to land at Palmer Ort, which was strongly held by the Swedes, but could not implement its real plan for the landing, due to unfavourable wind conditions. A few days later, however, much of the fleet put off to the northeast in the fog, unnoticed by the Swedes, and landed unscathed at Groß Stresow. One of the Prussian columns there commemorates this landing. Some ships were left in front of Palmer Ort to continue to feign a landing attempt there.

The Great Northern War (1700–1721) was a conflict in which a coalition led by the Tsardom of Russia successfully contested the supremacy of the Swedish Empire in Northern, Central and Eastern Europe. The initial leaders of the anti-Swedish alliance were Peter I of Russia, Frederick IV of Denmark–Norway and Augustus II the Strong of Saxony–Poland–Lithuania. Frederick IV and Augustus II were defeated by Sweden, under Charles XII, and forced out of the alliance in 1700 and 1706 respectively, but rejoined it in 1709 after the defeat of Charles XII at the Battle of Poltava. George I of Great Britain and of Brunswick-Lüneburg (Hanover) joined the coalition in 1714 for Hanover and in 1717 for Britain, and Frederick William I of Brandenburg-Prussia joined it in 1715.

Prussia was a historically prominent German state that originated in 1525 with a duchy centred on the region of Prussia on the southeast coast of the Baltic Sea. It was de facto dissolved by an emergency decree transferring powers of the Prussian government to German Chancellor Franz von Papen in 1932 and de jure by an Allied decree in 1947. For centuries, the House of Hohenzollern ruled Prussia, successfully expanding its size by way of an unusually well-organised and effective army. Prussia, with its capital in Königsberg and from 1701 in Berlin, decisively shaped the history of Germany.

Denmark, officially the Kingdom of Denmark, is a Nordic country and the southernmost of the Scandinavian nations. Denmark lies southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and is bordered to the south by Germany. The Kingdom of Denmark also comprises two autonomous constituent countries in the North Atlantic Ocean: the Faroe Islands and Greenland. Denmark proper consists of a peninsula, Jutland, and an archipelago of 443 named islands, with the largest being Zealand, Funen and the North Jutlandic Island. The islands are characterised by flat, arable land and sandy coasts, low elevation and a temperate climate. Denmark has a total area of 42,924 km² (16,573 sq mi), land area of 42,394 km² (16,368 sq mi), and the total area including Greenland and the Faroe Islands is 2,210,579 km² (853,509 sq mi), and a population of 5.8 million.

Palmer Ort as a namesake

In 1968 a buoy tender belonging to the East German navy, the Volksmarine, was given the name of Palmer Ort. The town of Stralsund named one of its roads Zum Palmer Ort.

A buoy tender is a type of vessel used to maintain and replace navigational buoys. The name is also used for someone who works on such a vessel and maintains buoys.

The Volksmarine was the naval force of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) from 1956 to 1990. The Volksmarine was one of the service branches of the National People's Army, and primarily performed a coastal defence role along the GDR's Baltic Sea coastline and territorial waters.

Stralsund, is a Hanseatic town in the Pomeranian part of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Germany. It is located at the Southern coast of the Strelasund, a sound of the Baltic Sea separating the island of Rügen from the mainland.

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References

↑ Martin Holz: Rügens unbekanntes Land ("Rügen's unknown land"), Berliner Zeitung, 18 February 2005.

Coordinates: 54°13′15″N13°23′36″E / 54.22091°N 13.39331°E / 54.22091; 13.39331

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[1] Martin Holz: Rügens unbekanntes Land ("Rügen's unknown land"), Berliner Zeitung, 18 February 2005.