Everything has a beginning
Founded in 1889, the Travemünde Week celebrates its 134 th anniversary this year. The most beautiful regatta week in the world was created when the Hamburg merchants Hermann Wentzel and Hermann Dröge sailed around Travemünde. The winner received a bottle of the well-known red wine “Lübeck Rotspon”.
It was not until nine years later – in 1898 – that the Lübeck Yacht Club was founded following an appeal by Emperor Wilhelm II to form an institution to professionally organize the Travemünde Week. Since then, the Lübeck Yacht Club has been the main organizer of the sailing week with its clubhouses on the Wakenitz, at the Leuchtenfeld in Travemünde and at the former Mövenstein seaside bathing resort. Co-organizers are the Hanseatic City of Lübeck, the North German Regatta Association (NRV) and, from this year, on the Zurich Yacht Club.
Because of the First World War, the Travemünde Week did not take place in the period from 1914 to 1920. In 1921 the first post-war event was organized again. Also in 1932 the sailing event was cancelled (because of the world economic and banking crisis), in 1940/41 there were the Travemünde war regattas, which had a different name, but were quite similar to today’s event. In 1942/43, a slimmed-down version was held over one weekend. In the following years, the Travemünde Week was cancelled four times due to the war. It has been held every year since 1948. The outage in 2020 due to the Corona pandemic was the twelfth outage in history. In 2021, the regatta week could be held again in full. However, the land programme was still very reduced.
the attracTion point
For decades, the Travemünde Week has been the centre of attraction for thousands of active sailors and hundreds of thousands of enthusiastic spectators and visitors who enjoy both the major sporting event and the fine festival on land. Nowhere in the world is sailing so closely linked with a varied land programme as in Travemünde. Family atmosphere, top sports, summer, beach feeling and shows are the highlights that characterize the Travemünde Week year after year.
In the recent past, the Travemünde WEEK has gained an outstanding reputation as a championship venue in particular.
Year after year, a wide variety of classes come to the mouth of the Trave River to hold their German, European or global title competitions here. Not only for the class associations but also for the sailors the Travemünde Week is the best opportunity to present themselves.
