Wallenstein's Camp

©Badische Zeitung

The other day, I read an article in the Badische Zeitung about archaeologists digging up a graveyard dating from the Thirty Years War near Stralsund, a German city on the Baltic Sea. The diggers unearthed bones, sculls, lances, swords, and firearms.

This reminded me of Generalissimo Wallenstein’s venture into the north of Germany. Wallenstein is well known for his widely publicized aborted siege of Stralsund. The annual bicycle trip of 2005, together with some former classmates from high school, took us into this region along the Baltic coast.


So I was all excited when I discovered written on a map Wallensteins Lager (Wallenstein’s Camp),  a place hidden in the woods.

Instantaneously Friedrich Schiller came to mind, who wrote his dramatic trilogy (Wallensteins Lager, Die Piccolomini, Wallensteins Tod), Leopold von Ranke with his book Geschichte Wallensteins and Golo Mann, who composed an opus magnum of 1293 pages about Wallenstein.



Eventually, I convinced my fellow bikers to detour on our way from Graal-Müritz to Rostock to visit Wallensteins Lager. I was pretty deceived when there was nothing else to see at the magical place but an identification plate on a cable box lost in the wilderness.

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