May 14, 2012

0206 GERMANY (Mecklenburg-Vorpommern) - Gellen Lighthouse on Hiddensee Island


Hiddensee is a island in the Baltic Sea, the largest in the Western Pomerania Lagoon Area National Park, located west of Rügen on the German coast. A car-free island. Quite natural, since it has 16.8km long and about 250m wide. I know mansions, even in Romania, with more land around them. But it is very beautiful, so that it was a popular holiday destination for East German tourists during GDR times and even today continues to attract tourists. Perhaps that is why (because it's beautiful, not because attract tourists) was chosen as the eternal resting place by Gerhart Hauptmann (Nobel Prize for Literature in 1912) and Walter Felsenstein (Austrian theater and opera director).

The island, accessible by ferry from Schaprode on Rügen or from Stralsund, is divided into an undulating, over 70m-high northern part (Dornbusch), a dune and heath landscape in the central area (Dünenheide) and a flat southern part, the Gellen. Gellen is actually a tongue of land, protected as an important bird reserve and not accessible to the public. It consists of post-ice age sand depositions and is growing annually by a few metres to the south. On Gellen, just behind the dunes, a short distance south of the ferry terminal at Plogshagen, is located the lighthouse from the picture, built in 1905 and with 12.3m high. It marks the northern entrance of the so-called Gellenstrom channel.

About the stamps
About the first two stamps, depicting Tagetes (20c) and Tulip (10c) and belonging to the set Blumen (17 values), I wrote here. The last stamp is part of the series German lighthouses, about which I wrote here.


Sender: Irmgard / irMSt (postcrossing)
Sent from Siegen (Germany), on 23.01.2012
Photo: Bildagentur Huber / Schmid

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