Fischerstrand Baabe

Around 1911, civic planners in Baabe, on the German Baltic island of Rügen, decided to build a seaside bathing facility. They had identified the ideal location: the exact stretch of shore where local fishermen had hauled their boats ashore for generations. Construction began. Wooden piles were driven into the sand.

The fishermen considered this development and responded that same night. Working quietly in the dark, they sawed the piles down. The bathing facility was not built.

What exists instead, more than a century later, is the Fischerstrand: a working fishermen’s landing where boats are still drawn up on the beach and weathered net-drying sheds stand much as they have since the fishermen negotiated themselves a proper alternative site. The protest lasted one night. The sheds have lasted considerably longer. Somewhere in the ledgers of Baabe’s civic planning office, there may still be a proposal for a bathing facility, waiting on revised estimates.