Various forms of tourism developed along the southern, western and parts of the northern and eastern Baltic Sea coastline in the 19th and 20th centuries. They were, and still are, of major economic significance. They also played an important role in shaping modern societies and fostered cultural exchange.
This research project looks at how tourism developed and examines its ruptures, continuities and evolution. Central importance is attached to the human-sea-relationship. A first change around 1800 made the sea a recreational area, while a second change in the perception of the sea around 1970 that focused on ecological problems endangered the romantic and healthy picture. Furthermore the project asks about the interactions between tourism and social subsystems such as medicine, art, mass media, politics and the military. Which discourses have left a lasting mark on tourism?
In order to find specifics, disruptions and continuities, we have adopted a long-term and wide-area perspective. If necessary, this macro-perspective must be disrupted by zooming in to a micro-perspective to expand research and understanding. This is because linking the two levels – similar to global microhistory – can help avoid an excessive focus on structures and make possible empirical analyses. The project deliberately transcends national boundaries, which would have only allowed a comparative analysis. Regional and transnational approaches offer a more plausible framework for examining the phenomenon of Baltic Sea tourism. Whether the Baltic Sea can be seen as an historical region at all and, if so, what would characterise this region is a controversial issue among scholars. It is generally agreed, however, that the Baltic countries, Scandinavia, and historical Prussia and Mecklenburg are Baltic Sea regions. It was therefore decided to adopt a transregional approach and to examine cross-societal structures and cross-border interactions and interdependencies.
Two parts of the research project involve geoinformation systems as digital humanities tools. Firstly, the open access software QGIS helps to illustrate and analyse the movement of visitors to the Baltic Sea in the 19th century. For example, the guest lists of certain prominent seaside resorts in the then Mecklenburg/German Empire, the Russian Empire and Scandinavia are being evaluated in order to understand transnational and regional interrelations and to provide explanations for patterns in tourist movements. In a wider framework, we will also look for signs of the development of a Baltic Sea identity amongst the elites of this region in the 19th century.
Secondly, the digital geographic method is used to analyse ambivalent relations between the military and tourism. Georeferencing military and tourist maps makes it possible to identify zones where the two areas are in conflict.
The research project will also focus on the relationship between tourism and the environment in the Baltic Sea region. Since a general environmental history of the Baltic Sea region has yet to be written, this part of the project will provide answers to at least the most pressing questions.
When the sea was reinterpreted from a threatening natural force to a place of contemplation in the Romantic period, did the Baltic Sea become a place of recreation. Of equal importance for the development of Baltic Sea tourism were the health-promoting properties that were ascribed to seawater. The spread of balneological practices along the Baltic Sea coast is described here from the perspective of a discursive histoire croisée.
These properties of seawater are an important factor in the analysis of Baltic Sea tourism as a comprehensive phenomenon. After all, not only the healing properties of the water but also its transformation into a harmful element (“the dirtiest sea in the world”) since the late 1960s had the same effect on almost all of its coasts. The discharge of untreated suburban and industrial wastewater, feed and pesticides from agriculture, oil contamination, and the sinking of large amounts of chemical weapons after the Second World War placed a considerable burden on the marine ecosystem. Starting in 1969, the coastal countries of the Baltic Sea on both sides of the Iron Curtain began a series of negotiations to tackle this international problem. This process culminated in the establishment of the Convention on the Protection of the Marine Environment of the Baltic Sea Area (Helsinki Convention). Many local authorities, on the other hand, turned a blind eye to these problems until, by the end of the 1980s, it became necessary to ban swimming at popular beaches around the Baltic Sea.
Public awareness of the impending ecological emergency increased. The project will examine the impact of the awareness of environmental problems on tourism by examining advertising material produced by tourism associations. An initial analysis of this material shows a shift from the romantic to the collective gaze (John Urry), i.e. the focus was no longer on lonely beaches and nature but on groups of people and swimming pools.
Politics affects tourism on two levels, by attempting to control it and by using it for political purposes. This project seeks to identify attempts to control tourism which have proved successful in the long term (e.g. holiday home law in Denmark) and which quickly became outdated (e.g. “structural change” in Schleswig-Holstein). The role of political upheavals, nation building, and system changes is examined from a long-term perspective.
On a second level, the project addresses genuinely political tourism, which was used – in particular by the socialist countries – for public diplomacy purposes.
The relationship between tourism and the military has always been ambivalent. On the one hand, wars destroy or repurpose tourist infrastructure and disrupt tourist practices. Tourist infrastructure is also repurposed and closed in peacetime, e.g. when restricted military zones are established. Particularly in the 20th century, there were many convergences and conflicts in the maritime area, which was reserved for civilian and military shipping until coastal areas became tourist destinations in the Romantic period. On the other hand, wars create tourist attractions (battlefield tourism, dark tourism, etc.), and military installations attract tourists even in peacetime.
This part of the project therefore looks at how the military, as one of several social subsystems, has influenced tourism. Research will focus on Germany, owing to the systemic differences between the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic and their common history.
It will also consider the perspective of tourists, who reacted in different ways to representations of the military and whose interest in it was guided by various motives.
Historisch-Geografische Informationssysteme (HGIS) in der Tourismusgeschichte: Transnationale Besucherströme des Ostseetourismus im 19. Jahrhundert, in: Zeitschrift für Ostmitteleuropaforschung 70/3 (2021): Embracing Digital Methods: Towards a New History of Space in Central and Eastern Europe, S. 357-388.
Zu Gast im Sozialismus: Skandinavische Touristen als Adressaten deutsch-sowjetischer Public Diplomacy, in: Quaestio Rossica 8/5 (2020), S. 1629–1644. DOI 10.15826/qr.2020.5.549 .
Changing Elites – Persistent Arenas. The Seaside Resort of Heiligendamm and its International Dimension, in: Peter Heyrman / Martin Kohlrausch / Jan de Maeyer (Hg.): Leisure and Elite Formation. Arenas of Encounter in Continental Europe, 1815-1914, Berlin 2020 (=Elitenwandel in der Moderne / Elites and Modernity 22).
Public Diplomacy and Personal Encounter: The Triangular Relations between East Germany, Scandinavia and the Soviet Union at the Baltic Sea Week (1958—1975), ЭНОЖ История 10/7 (2019): Вопросы истории международных отношений в Скандинавско-Балтийском регионе в XIX—XXI вв. DOI: 10.18254/S207987840006557-1 .
Letzte Änderung: 15. November 2021