100 years of DHH: Germany's oldest sailing school offers training from Opti to Sextant
Ursula Meer
· 23.10.2025
Christoph Schumann still remembers his first steps on board well today. It was the summer of 1965: as a ninth-grader, he arrived at the Hanseatic Yacht School Glücksburg (HYS). The watchman looks for his name on a long list and growls: "Schumann, Christoph, there! On board the 'Gudrun', leaving tomorrow." The boy hesitates: "What do you mean, tomorrow? I can't even sail!" The guard replies dryly: "Neither can the others."
The motto of the Deutscher Hochseesportverband Hansa e. V. (DHH) is: "Learn to sail properly". And so the very next morning, Schumann clings to the jib boom while the spray creeps through the net beneath him. Shaking with fear, he struggles with a Zeising. The captain shouts: "He's got to get out of there, let's go!"
That is also interesting:
The mainsail tears in a jibe and five young men tow it to the sailmaker in Svendborg. "The first day took some getting used to," says Schumann, looking back. And yet the trip would shape his life, because: "The shared experience and discovering foreign harbours really interested me." Christoph Schumann went through the entire training programme at the DHH, became an instructor there for many years and later worked as a sports journalist, including as editor of YACHT. He also worked on the DHH board for several years.
Around 15,000 DHH members throughout Germany
Even if not all DHH course graduates immediately put their heart and soul into the profession, many remain on board for decades. As members, volunteers or instructors in what the current First Chairman Tomas Hoffmann describes as "Germany's largest sailing club" - only with a completely different structure. The approximately 15,000 members of the DHH are spread all over Germany. Instead of evening get-togethers in their home harbour, they meet regularly in some cities for regulars' tables or joint events.
Theoretical training also takes place at various locations in Germany. Fixed locations for the core business of the DHH, training and cruises, are the Chiemsee Yacht School in Prien and the mother ship, the HYS in Glücksburg.
In the years when Tomas Hoffmann was also pushed onto the planks as a boy, rather involuntarily and with similar experiences to Christoph Schumann, staying on board is not a matter of course from today's perspective. They were allowed to travel the seas on proud schooners and learn sailing as a communal experience and craft, with jibs and gaff topsails, the sheets and halyards equipped with tackles at best, "with a huge amount of fuss", as Hoffmann recalls. "Some ships didn't even have an engine. You had to be able to sail!"
Commands, rituals and discipline in the early days
Instead, many of the instructors are former naval officers with loud commands, strict rituals and discipline. The young sailors line up for the morning roll call in white suits, the so-called "Takelpäckchen", which must always be clean, with red bobble hats on their heads.
The cultural change began in the 1960s with Rudolf Koppenhagen as head of HYS, a former corvette captain, but above all a passionate long-distance regatta sailor. "The tone changed with him," recalls Christoph Schumann. "We no longer just practised seamanship and knots and things like that, but also sailed regattas, with prize-giving and everything that goes with it."
In the 1970s, the uniform clothing and naval officers as instructors gave way, "not because they were bad, but because we also wanted to demonstrate a different style in staffing," explains Tomas Hoffmann. "Today, the DHH is a completely normal sailing school, but the old character clung to the association for a long time," adds Christoph Schumann. "For a long time, parents still sent their children there so that they would have to do something properly and not become such a wimp."
Founded in 1925 to cultivate "ocean sports in German form"
A little of what lies in the wake of the association still resonates here. To mark its 100th anniversary, the DHH worked with an independent historian to take an unvarnished look at its past and write down the history in a club chronicle "so that the present and future can learn from it", as Tomas Hoffmann says.
"Some parents sent their son to the Hanseatic Yacht School so that he would have to do something real and not become such a wimp."
When high-ranking personalities from the navy, business and science met in Berlin-Charlottenburg on 28 January 1925 to found the Deutscher Hochseesportverband Hansa e. V., they had a common goal: an institution for naval training for young men. Under the guise of cultivating "German-style ocean sports", the organisation secretly circumvented the Treaty of Versailles. The Reichsmarine also indirectly docked onto military experience, academic ambitions and economic networks.
The HYS in Neustadt becomes the operational core of the association: six-week courses, cruises in the North and Baltic Seas, physical training, drill and signalling. The training teaches the young men seamanship, but is also a form of physical training. The association's magazine "Der Blaue Peter" publishes sailing reports from all over the world, from sailing students travelling to the South Seas or the East Indies in 1929, "where we were mistaken for a group of poor sinners on pilgrimage to distant shores because of our white work clothes, as white is the colour of mourning in those countries. We were harshly harassed by the pious population with alms."
"In the 1929 magazine, sailing students report on trips to the South Seas or the East Indies. It goes down well with young people."
Stories that appeal to young people. The DHH's programmes become increasingly popular and the association expands: Bavaria gets a yacht school on Lake Chiemsee, where mainly young women are trained, followed by locations on Lake Constance, Lake Ammersee and Lake Steinhuder.
Influence of the Second World War
With the harmonisation of sport from 1933, the DHH becomes part of the Nazi system. The First Chairman Adolf von Trotha founds the Reichsbund Deutscher Seegeltung, the HYS is placed under the control of the Navy SA as a "Seesport-Führerschule" and supplemented by "Strength through Joy" programmes at sea. After a brief guest appearance in Sierksdorf, the HYS moves to its current location in Glücksburg on the Flensburg Fjord in 1936. The previously whimsical magazine "Der Blaue Peter" changes its tone and eventually gives way to a magazine called "Die Flagge" with a swastika on the cover. The appropriation is complete.
After the Second World War, we had to rebuild from the ruins of nothing", is how the chronicle "50 years of DHH" describes the new beginning. The membership register was saved from the bombs and contact could be re-established with former members, even though many had left for good.
The second phase of the DHH's life begins in Hamburg: Ludwig Dinklage, head of the DHH's Hamburg sailing community since 1940, initiates the re-founding of the Seglerkameradschaft Hansa (SKH) in 1945, which is registered as the successor association. Under Dinklage's chairmanship, it soon had around 200 members. The SKH takes over what is left of the boats in the Neustadt DHH fleet - saved from confiscation "with a lot of cunning and trickery" - but the whereabouts of larger units have yet to be determined.
Proud ships and sporty dinghies
In January 1951, the decision is finally made to restart the DHH. The Hamburg shipowner Erich F. Laeisz becomes First Chairman, the Bremen banker Dr Otto Wachs Second Chairman and Treasurer. The course for further reconstruction is set. The Hanseatic Yacht School in Glücksburg is reopened in the same year. The first, modest training courses start in 1951 in Padua dinghies donated by Erich F. Laeisz, supplemented by chartered boats and old, partly war-damaged schooners.
The location on Lake Chiemsee is also reactivated. The fleet is expanded to include more boats, the most famous of which is contributed by Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach. The industrial magnate is a passionate sailor, which runs in the family, as does the construction of large, fast yachts called "Germania". He donates its number V, a 20-metre yacht from the Abeking & Rasmussen shipyard, to the DHH in 1962 along with a financial injection for the reconstruction of the HYS. Under the name "Nordsee", she became the flagship of deep-sea training for two decades. Other proud ships of an older design become the property of the association and characterise the image of the HYS at sea for many years under the red and white gull banner.
"After the Second World War, the boat stocks were saved from confiscation with a lot of cunning and trickery."
Their era ended in the 1990s. Tomas Hoffmann explains: "The high repair and maintenance costs were not financially viable." More importantly, however, young people preferred fast, sporty boats with spinnakers, gennakers and harnesses. Optis, sporty dinghies, catamarans and seaworthy X-yachts are replacing the old ladies, and more recently also J40s.
The whole concept simply works
The DHH's radius of action also changes. In the decades following its founding, further yacht schools were established, sponsors were found and partnerships were agreed with larger companies. The DHH travelled the world, setting up locations in the Mediterranean and meeting the ever-growing sailing dreams with blue-water cruises to the Seychelles or North America. "We thought that we had to offer our members something," says Tomas Hoffman. "But that doesn't correspond to our statutory objective and our non-profit status. I've cut back on all that in recent years, so that we now only concentrate on the two schools and do the cruising business from Glücksburg in the North and Baltic Seas and on the Atlantic."
This change has not harmed the association. The number of members is as stable as the number of volunteers who are involved in everything from kitchen duties to training courses and events.
The fact that they can book courses and cruises at half price is of secondary importance, the chairman surmises: "I was standing on the jetty here in Glücksburg yesterday when the entire ocean-going fleet arrived, ten ships between 38 and 60 feet, mainly manned by volunteers. It was a unique atmosphere, which of course makes them happy. They have a challenging sport, a great site and a fantastic fleet of boats. The whole concept just works."
