all news: The history of Kiel Week. Never-before-seen photographs now on display in Kiel

This year, Kiel Week looks back on 125 years of history. To mark the occasion, the Kiel Maritime Museum is showing the major special exhibition "125 Years of Kiel Week", which provides an impressive overview of the diversity, significance and history of Kiel Week.

From 15 June to 30 September, paintings, photos, models and even an original sailing boat and the legendary "Felka" prize will be on display in the museum directly on the banks of the fjord.

The anniversary exhibition - together with the show specially designed for children by Kiel's children's culture office "Clear for the turnaround! Children on a Regatta Course" - will be opened on Friday, 15 June at 5 pm by City President Rainer Tschorn. During the Kiel Anniversary Week (16 to 24 June), the museum is offering an accompanying programme with sailing, steamboat and lunchtime tours.

What is now regarded as the largest regatta event in the world and the most beautiful summer festival in the north began very small 125 years ago. On 23 July 1882, the starting signal was given for a sailing regatta in which 20 boats took to the starting line - a sensational turnout for the time, as the foreign yachts had come to the Kiel sailing area under adventurous conditions. Inspired by the success of the first race, the event was continued on a regular basis. However, it was not given its name until 1894, when the Kieler Zeitung referred to it as "Kiel Week" in its report on the sailing races. Within a few years, it developed into the most important German sailing event, not least thanks to the strong support of Kaiser Wilhelm II, who came to Kiel every year.

The historical events of the first half of the 20th century also gave Kiel Week a chequered history. The outbreak of the First World War signalled the end of the "imperial" Kiel Week. The glamour and glory were now over, the city was no longer the summer capital of the empire and social centre. In the 1920s, Kiel focused on culture and broke new ground with the Autumn Weeks for Art and Science, while the sailors continued to hold their regattas, albeit on a reduced scale and without a prestigious programme. A social programme developed only hesitantly. Kiel Week was unable to return to the glamour of the pre-war period. The National Socialists recognised the renowned sailing festival as an opportunity for effective propaganda. Immediately after coming to power in 1933, they seized Kiel Week and turned it into a propaganda event for the "new" Germany.

As early as 1947, just a few years after losing the Second World War, the city ventured a new beginning on the initiative of the then Lord Mayor Andreas Gayk. Gayk developed a new concept for Kiel Week: he defined politics, culture, sport and the public festival as the main pillars of the festival week. Together with sailing, they still form the essential components of Kiel Week today. Kiel Week is now the world's largest sailing event and also the biggest summer festival in northern Europe.

The exhibition in the historic fish hall centres on the history of sailing. The exhibition spans a wide range from the competitions of the large, luxurious racing yachts of the imperial era to current developments in regatta sport. Magnificent paintings by the most important marine painters such as Willy Stöwer, Hans Bohrdt and Fritz Stoltenberg give an idea of the splendour of the imperial Kiel Week, while photographs by the well-known Kiel sports photographer Helmut Beckmann offer fascinating insights into the regatta events.

A star boat - the centrepiece of the exhibition - provides an immediate introduction to the subject. For the first time, an original boat is on display in the Maritime Museum. With a length of seven metres and a mast height of more than eight metres, the rigged boat is an impressive exhibit that brings the sport of sailing to life in the old fish hall. Built by Abeking & Rasmussen in 1963, the star boat was sailed for one season by the well-known Kiel sailor Bruno Splieth.

The European champion and Olympic participant Bruno Splieth was one of the best German star boat sailors and won Kiel Week several times. His name was hardly ever absent from a Kiel Week in the 1950s and 60s. Employed by the British as a sailing instructor at the British Yacht Club in 1945 and active on the board of the Kiel Yacht Club until his death in 1990, Splieth was closely associated with sailing in Kiel. Bruno Splieth sailed several boats with the name "Bellatrix". The "Bellatrix XII", built by Abeking & Rasmussen in 1963, was sold to Munich after the season. She changed hands several times before being acquired in 2001 by Andreas Krause, the owner of the Krause & Wucherpfennig yacht shipyard in Kiel-Friedrichsort. Andreas Krause refurbished the boat, which he took over with a broken mast, for the exhibition and generously loaned it to the museum.

The "Felka" prize on loan from the North German Regatta Association is one of the most magnificent, but also one of the heaviest prizes in German regatta sport. The silver punch bowl, weighing several kilos, decorated with putti and crowned by an eagle, exudes the pomp and splendour of the imperial era. In 1912, the Berlin sailors Felix Simon and Karl Hagen donated the / "> Felka" prize to the Imperial Yacht Club. Their shortened first names gave the trophy its name. Simon and Hagen owned a yacht of the same name, with which they won the internationally contested "Coupe de France" off Trouville in 1906. In the rematch the following year, the "Felka" was defeated by a French yacht, and the newly built "Felka II" did not have the luck of victory either. Simon and Hagen sold the boat and used the proceeds to donate the famous "Felka" prize, for which the large yachts sailed on the Kiel-Travemünde sea race until the outbreak of the First World War. Only those who had won three times were allowed to take the trophy home for good.

During the Weimar Republic, the prize was awarded in the 40 square metre racing cruiser class, where it was finally won by the Swede Gustav Estlander in 1926. After his death in 1930, the prize was returned to the Imperial Yacht Club, which now offered it for the 6 metre R yachts. Sailors in the Dragon class have been competing for the trophy since 1949. After club member Andreas von Eicken won it three times on "Caramba", this trophy has belonged to the Norddeutscher Regatta Verein, which is one of the co-organisers of the Kieler Woche regattas, since 1991.

In 2006, the Kiel City and Maritime Museum was able to take over the collection of the Kiel sports photographer Helmut Beckmann (1926-2007). He followed the Kiel races with his camera from the 1960s onwards and took photographs for the Kieler Nachrichten newspaper from 1968 to 1991. His pictures offer fascinating insights into the regatta events and the development of sailing over four decades. Well-versed in numerous sports, Helmut Beckmann was particularly interested in sailing. The regattas of the Kieler Woche were a focal point of his photographic work. Countless impressive regatta pictures are thanks to his sure instinct for a good motif. The exhibition shows his motifs as diavographs, a sophisticated digital printing process from the Kiel-based company Print & Service. In addition, the large photographs that are displayed in the windows of the Schifffahrtsmuseum zum Wall as outdoor advertising are also motifs by this Kiel photographer. With the photographic legacy of Helmut Beckmann, the Kiel City and Maritime Museum owns a unique photographic chronicle of the Kiel Week regattas.

The exhibition offers the museum the opportunity to show its outstanding collection of sailing ship models again after a long time. The most important boat classes of Kiel Week - from the centreboard sloop, which cruised the fjord in the 1880s, to the Paralympic class of 2.4mR boats, which has been sailing in the Olympic part of Kiel Week since 2002 - show the changes in regatta sport and yacht building. A contemporary model of a large schooner yacht points back to the first decades of Kiel Week, when the large boats such as the imperial "Meteor", the "Germania" from Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach or the "Hamburg" dominated the races. The two-metre yacht model gives an idea of the enormous dimensions of these ships, which were over 40 metres long. Also on display are the Maritime Museum's latest acquisitions, the 1:25 scale models of a kite and a 2.4mR boat, with which Kiel sailor Heiko Kröger won a Paralympics gold medal in Sydney in 2000.

In addition to sailing, all other facets of Kiel Week are also documented in the exhibition. The photographs by important Kiel press photographers such as Friedrich Magnussen, Hermann Nafzger and Jan Köhler-Kaeß show the numerous political, social and cultural highlights of the great summer festival. A colourful school of fish reminds us of the popular play line on the Krusenkoppel. Last year, the theme of this largest children's cultural event in Northern Europe was "Neptune's Realm", and some of the results are now hanging in the historic fish hall.

The photo exhibition "Die Kieler Woche im Pressefoto", created by Imke Scholvin-Watts, paints a multi-faceted picture of Kiel Week from the first years after the Second World War to the end of the 1980s. She was able to draw on the extensive photographic collection of the city archive, which documents the history of the festival week over the last 60 years almost completely.

To accompany the exhibition, the book "Kieler Woche" by Katrin Kroll will be published by Wachholtz Verlag at a price of 14.80 euros. On 160 pages with over 200 illustrations, the author takes the reader on an exciting journey through 125 years of Kieler Woche history.

Parallel to the anniversary exhibition "125 Years of Kiel Week", the Maritime Museum offers young visitors the exhibition "Ready for the turn! Children on the regatta course", organised by the Kiel Children's Culture Office. In two separate rooms, children between the ages of eight and twelve can experience the different facets of regatta sport in a fun and entertaining way.

Kiel Maritime Museum
Wall 65
24103 Kiel
Phone 0431/901-3428
www.kiel.de/kultur

Opening hours: Daily 10 am to 6 pm
Admission: 3 euros, reduced 1.50 euros

125 years of Kiel Week
Duration: 15 June to 30 September 2007
Opening hours: daily 10-18 h

Opening of both Kieler Woche special exhibitions
"125 years of Kiel Week" and "Ready for the turnaround! Children on the regatta course"
Friday, 15 June, 5 pm, by City President Rainer Tschorn

Public guided tours: July and August Sundays 11.30 a.m.
For groups by appointment on 0431/901-3428
Special tours for children:
I'll show you! Kids explain the sport of sailing