KCobblestone is the scourge of cyclists. Here, however, it doesn’t bother us because everyone dismounts anyway – out of respect and curiosity. The Elbstraße is the visiting card of old Lauenburg, a town that once became rich thanks to shipping and trade. The street winds its way along the Elbe for four hundred meters, separated from it only by a row of houses. Twieten lead down to the shore in between, sloping, narrow alleys through which rubbish used to be flushed. And over which the Elbe water flows upwards in flood years.
Lauenburg is the starting point of our bike tour. It runs nineteen kilometers west along the Elbe to Geesthacht. They are part of the Elbe Cycle Route, which is 1300 kilometers long. From here it is 932 kilometers to the source in the Giant Mountains and 159 kilometers to the mouth in Cuxhaven. It’s only a short distance, but it’s tough. Because it is lined with evidence of industrial culture and life on the river in the past. And since nineteen kilometers is quite a manageable distance, there is enough time to look around Lauenburg a little.
lampreys and groceries
Captains and business people used to call Elbstraße home. They had succeeded and they showed it: rose windows, carved beams and countless windows, which were particularly expensive at the time, adorn the half-timbered facades, some of which date back to the seventeenth century. Signs on many of them provide information about the buildings and their former inhabitants. For example, number 8 was home to Elbe fishermen who mainly caught houting and lampreys. Merchants resided in number 16. Here was the “roast district” where the rich lived. Schnapps, soap and candles were made in-house, and eight employees advised customers on groceries and ship items. In 1919, the Edeka cooperative was founded right here. And night watchman Voss once made his fortune at number 20. He had prevented a burglary at Fagle’s and as a thank you he was allowed to pick up a Köm, the typical aquavit of northern Germany, every morning until the end of his life.
The most popular photo motif in Lauenburg: the bronze figure “Der Rufer” by Karlheinz Goedtke.
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Photo: Dirk Eisermann / Laif
However, the most popular photo motif in Lauenburg is not a house, but “Der Rufer”. The skinny bronze guy in dungarees, boots and shirt, the Elbe sailor on his head, has been standing there since 1956 and calls and calls and calls across the Elbe – whatever. At that time, the mayor decided that a monument was needed. He commissioned the Schleswig-Holstein house and court sculptor Karlheinz Goedtke – and the influential skipper brothers who were to be immortalized in the monument were appalled. No captain would put a rope in the hand of this linnet, this hunger hook, because the next gust would blow him away. Should Lauenburg be the city where there is nothing real to eat? But the mayor prevailed, the Rufer found its place on the water and Lauenburg its landmark, where all cyclists can enjoy the view of the Elbe.
The Elbe is sometimes the Mississippi
Right in front of you is the paddle steamer Kaiser Wilhelm, built in Dresden in 1900, restored in Lauenburg in the 1970s and now a monument on the water. On some Sundays in the summer he still drives and coughs and spits steam and soot, the heaters sweat, the passengers beam, and everyone feels as if they are traveling on the Mississippi and not on the good old Elbe.