Warnemünde Week: Foundation of the WSC 100 years ago characterised German regatta events

Ursula Meer

· 22.08.2025

Sailors have been competing off Warnemünde for almost 100 years. The west pier is a popular lookout point.

The regatta fields directly in front of Warnemünde's seaside backdrop are the ideal area for sporting competitions in all boat classes with fresh wind and waves.

The larger of the WSC's two red buildings was built by the club itself during the GDR era.

The first Warnemünde Week in 1926 marked the beginning of a tradition.

Uwe Jahnke, four-time GDR sailing champion, has campaigned for the Warnemünde Week and sailing training throughout Germany for decades.

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Photo: Landesverkehrsverband Mecklenburg-Vorpommern 1937

The Warnemünde Sailing Club was founded 100 years ago. It has been organising the "Warnemünde Week" ever since, despite many adversities in its German-German history.

Topics in this article

Beginnings of the Warnemünde Week
Caesura caused by the Second World War
More space is needed
"Delegation trips" and Republikflucht during GDR times
Warnemünde Week after the fall of the Wall
100 years of constant change

The gurnard must go! For almost three decades, it adorned the flag of the Warnemünde Sailing Club (WSC): a black fish with a red eye on a white background. The colours of the German Empire - unheard of in the GDR! Today, we can only guess why the founding fathers of the club gave it a militant emblem in 1925 in the form of a sea fish showing its teeth: "There were some rather caustic assumptions. It was also intended to symbolise that the people of Warnemünde would never again allow themselves to be oppressed by the people of Rostock," according to the club chronicle. "After all, the gurnard is inedible!"

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The club founders are bailiffs, traders and master craftsmen. Their 22 boats, between 3.40 and 10.47 metres long, moved into quarters on new jetties on the east side of the central pier soon after the club was founded, and the sailors moved into a newly built clubhouse. In those days, the imposing racing schooners of the time with their wide overhangs rarely sailed off Warnemünde, and it was mainly boats in the seven to eight metre class that entered races. However, the former fishing village can score points with an open sea area with beautiful waves, the west pier and a wide beach, from where you can watch the racing action almost within touching distance.

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Beginnings of the Warnemünde Week

The WSC recognises the potential and, just one year after its foundation, organises its first major race with triangular courses off the mouth of the Warnow and courses across the high seas. 47 yachts, including Wilhelm II's former imperial yacht "Meteor", start this series of regattas, which marks the beginning of the Warnemünde Week. It also marks the beginning of the WSC's almost 100-year commitment to the popular regatta at the gates of the city.

It is abruptly interrupted at the beginning of the Second World War. The last Warnemünde Week took place in 1939, sailing was taboo in the Mecklenburg Bay, which was mined at the beginning of the war. The sailing-obsessed people of Warnemünde, however, are hardly deterred from their races and organise one last race in 1940 with a good 100 boats on the Breitling, the Unterwarnow and in Rostock harbour, before sailing comes to a standstill for years.

"All the fishing boats had fled Warnemünde on 1 May 1945. All sailing and motor boats were to be reported for reparations and handed over to the Soviets. But nobody came forward," says chronicler Gerhard Martens, describing the situation after the Second World War. A few wooden blasting boats can still be rowed, a few dinghies can be sailed. All boat traffic on the river is prohibited, but the boats are still used for fishing and angling. Meanwhile, the sailors meet at the clubhouse inn and dream of better times. Meanwhile, they have to hand over their clubhouse and part of their jetty facilities to the lake police.

Caesura caused by the Second World War

What is left of the club's once large fleet can hardly be described as "boat stock": a 5-KR coastal cruiser, a Sharpie dinghy and two self-built boats of indeterminable type. Nevertheless, in 1950, eight sports enthusiasts revitalised the former club as the sailing division of the "Betriebssportgemeinschaft (BSG) Anker Warnow-Wert". They are hungry for sailing and throw their mini fleet directly into the water due to the lack of a slipway. They set up their Knurrhahn stander on the regulars' table of a pub and start to build systems and boats from anything they can find: Dinghies made from crate boards, sails from old sheets and duvet covers. Those who can, have dinghies built in Kühlungsborn, the Warnow shipyard provides some pirates.

With minimalist equipment, the people of Warnemünde organise another sea regatta with Einheit Rostock in the same year. As a concession to the German Sports Committee in East Berlin, it was given a different name to that of the imperial era and was now called the "Baltic Sea Week". 25 boats from East and West Germany sail the course, "more badly than well, because not everything that swam sailed," says Gerhard Martens, describing the bumpy start. He himself wins - with a small coastal cruiser whose stern had been bombed off during the war. Repaired, the boat was "floatable and sailable. Even though it was leaking, the crew could not be denied victory. It just needed a little more cleaning."

Just one year later, the Cold War also had sailing in its grip. Officially, no Baltic Sea Week is allowed to take place, but the people of Warnemünde do it again: they do sail. Even with the participation of boats from the West, although they are not allowed to race on the open Baltic Sea and have to confine themselves to the Breitling.

More space is needed

For the close-knit community of now 100 sailors at the Mittelmole, improvisation is becoming a permanent state of affairs. The number of boats grows faster than the number of berths on the west side of the Mittelmole, so that almost half of all boats are distributed on land in the grounds of a former building yard. The section has to change its name once again, to "BSG Motor Warnowwerft", and replace the Knurrhahn stander with one featuring two intertwined Ws, henceforth known as the "Warme-Würstchen-Stander".

In order to accommodate the increasing number of boats taking part in the Baltic Sea Week, the sailors have floating docks built at the shipyard for the eastern side of the centre pier. "For good words, countless bottles of spirits and a few hundred marks. All illegal, of course," is how Gerhard Martens describes the clandestine project after reunification.

Politicians got wind of this, sensed the potential of the internationally orientated regatta to be cosmopolitan and jumped on board. This is how the makeshift harbour on the Mittelmole becomes today's marina in 1960. The sailors paid a high price for this: part of the site gave way to a new road, boat sheds were demolished and the clubhouse was allocated to the state sports school. In order to distance themselves from the ideological appropriation of their event, the sailors henceforth call it the "International Baltic Sea Regatta". They sail in a squadron around Hiddensee and take to the regatta courses in their private boats or in the section's own 30-seater cruisers, which are "organised" in a roundabout way.

"Delegation trips" and Republikflucht during GDR times

Although a yacht sailing away on the open sea must have caused some discomfort for the border regime, the Baltic Sea Week courses, such as the route around Bornholm, which is still popular today, can be maintained. Approved with forms and supported by an informal code of honour among sailors, which states that no-one is to take off during the regattas so as not to harm the other sailors. It is said that the Baltic Sea Week has only been used twice in 40 years to escape from the republic.

Here and there, however, the sailors dared to take the forbidden look outside the box. The former chairman of the WSC, Dr Thomas Schmidt, sailed long voyages as a student on so-called "delegation trips" to Riga, Tallinn and St Petersburg. "We had the task of leaving the sea area of the GDR by the shortest route. We were then allowed to sail to our destination, had to report there and sail straight back after our stay," he says, describing the authorised border crossing, adding: "The fact that we sometimes secretly turned off to Karlskrona or Rönne is another story."

Others went over to the West. Schmidt remembers Klaus Fischer, who had sailed some spectacular regattas for the BSG on the 30er and one day left with his own boat. He remembers a father and son who took part in an authorised trip across the border the year before reunification and sailed straight to Denmark. Against the wishes of the rest of the crew, who had to take the ferry back home.

Warnemünde Week after the fall of the Wall

With the fall of the Berlin Wall, the restrictions disappear, but the challenges do not. One part of the sailing community feels connected to the BSG and the shipyard that has supported the section for decades. Another wants to get back to the roots. In the end, exactly the six people needed to found a registered association were found. Thomas Schmidt, as a member of the board, goes to Rostock town hall to have the association registered. "They wanted to throw me out at first," he recalls. "At the time, the city didn't think an independent association was necessary." But he remains adamant: "We wanted to be our own masters!"

When the association was founded, the club also wanted to get the old clubhouse back. However, this did not work out: The property is transferred to the state sports association due to ownership issues that are difficult to prove. The WSC is left with a clubhouse built in the 1970s from "procured" funds and a former rescue shed. It has more success elsewhere: the last International Baltic Regatta is held in 1990, and the following year it becomes the "54th Warnemünde Week". WSC member Uwe Jahnke takes over the management - a task that he carries out with enormous energy for 17 years and which earns him the nickname "Mr Warnemünde Week".

The new start is difficult. Nobody in the western sailing world knew where Warnemünde was. The international regular starters from the Eastern Bloc stayed away due to a lack of foreign currency. The city of Rostock attempted to take over the sailing event along the lines of Kiel Week. But on the WSC stander, the gurnard shows his teeth again and the WSC finally goes it alone. "It felt like we were there with all hands on deck," says Thomas Schmidt. "The members and their families all worked hundreds of hours on a voluntary basis."

Other players are now also involved in the organisation of the regatta, which has become a firm fixture in the calendars of ambitious sailors from all over the world. As the organising club, however, the WSC with its 200 members is always at the forefront when it comes to organising the popular competitions.

100 years of constant change

Germany's first Optimist came to Warnemünde in 1960. The first class regattas were sailed here just one year later. This marked the beginning of the dinghy's worldwide triumph.

The WSC inaugurates its first clubhouse on the Mittelmole in 1926. The joy is short-lived: after the war, the building goes to the maritime police and later to the state sports association.

A sociable club life was and still is standard today. Members meet throughout the year - for skat, spring country walks, summer parties and Christmas parties.

With few berths at the jetty and no premises of its own, the club always had to improvise when transporting and storing the boats. In winter, no corner was left unused.