Strecknitz Manor

The Strecknitz estate belonged to the territory of the Hanseatic city of Lübeck since the Middle Ages and was successively settled from the beginning of the 20th century. It is named after the Strecknitz stream, which runs along its southern border, coming from Krummesse and being part of the Lübeck Landwehr since 1300.

The first documented mention in 1248 identifies the Strecknitz estate as municipal property, which, at least from 1339, was repeatedly leased to changing tenants, as documented. The rents from such operations were then left to the councilors and mayors, who otherwise served on an honorary basis, as prebends. Thus, the usufruct of the Strecknitz estate was granted to one of the usually four simultaneous mayors for life. Among those thus favored were, successively, Mayors Heinrich Plönnies, Johann Lüdinghusen, Jakob Bording, Heinrich Wedemhof, and Otto Brokes. In 1662, Mayor Gotthard von Höveln leased the estate from the city, which was financially severely affected by the burdens of the Thirty Years' War, but he soon fell out with them. During this time, a severe dispute arose between the flourishing estate economy in Holstein and the regulated guilds in the cities over the "Bönhasen," i.e., the free competition of unregulated craft services, which were provided in the vicinity of the estates and offered to city dwellers at correspondingly lower prices. Höveln gave up the lease of Strecknitz in 1668, one year before his major scandal with Lübeck. The city initially leased the operation and then sold it in 1685 due to acute financial distress for only 28,900 Courantmark to the merchant Daniel von Melle. The estate was soon resold by him at a profit and became, as they say in Holstein and Mecklenburg, a "Walzengut," meaning an operation that was frequently turned over and thus always "on the roll." However, the management continued mostly through tenants.

In 1807, the estate was acquired by August Christian Julius Lüdemann, who also built the nine-axis manor house with a half-hipped roof at the end of the Peter-Monnik-Weg avenue around 1810, which has been used by the Medical Laser Center since 1986. After several changes of ownership, the Heiligen-Geist-Hospital Foundation acquired the estate in 1895 for 370,000 Goldmark.

Settlement in the 20th Century

In 1909, the Foundation sold a partial area of about 20 hectares from the Strecknitz estate to the Lübeck State for the construction of the new Strecknitz Sanatorium, which existed until the Second World War. Today, the buildings are used by the University of Lübeck.

In 1916, the management of the remaining Strecknitz estate was taken over by Heinrich Erasmi, who grew vegetables there for his Charlotte Erasmi canning factory. This necessitated the construction of a reaper's barracks on the farmyard. The Heiligen-Geist-Hospital Foundation sold the remaining estate to the Lübeck State in 1929. This measure is to be seen in connection with other similar measures to prepare for the foreseeable loss of Lübeck's statehood. The Lübeckers sold the state-owned land outside the municipal city area to the wealthy foundations of the Heiligen-Geist-Hospital and the Johanniskloster, controlled by the city, as legal entities, which in turn sold parts of their property within Lübeck's city limits not to the Lübeck State, which was threatened with collapse, but to the continuing city community of Lübeck, i.e., the municipality. This was to make it difficult or impossible for Prussia to expropriate Lübeck's real estate in the surrounding area, especially in the Lübeck enclaves. The sanatorium now took over the management of the agricultural operation with its patients. For this purpose, the area was completely fenced for a length of over six kilometers. The management was already discontinued in the 1930s. During the war, the area became the Hospital-Süd of the Hanseatic city of Lübeck. The Lübeck University of Applied Sciences was also built on the lands of the Strecknitz estate. The last and probably final measure of settlement and building land development was the still ongoing construction of the new Lübeck university district.