Rügen under Swedish rule

The holiday island of Rügen is not only Germany’s largest and best-known island, and the most beautiful after Usedom , but also has a rich history. From 1648 to 1815, it was part of Sweden . Historian Dr. Fritz Petrick, who worked for many years at the University of Greifswald and now lives in retirement (or semi-retirement) on Rügen, wrote about this period of Swedish rule in the third volume of his five-volume history of Rügen. Rather than succumbing to the temptation to write as complete a chronology as possible, he focuses on subjects that have received little or no in-depth attention so far. The introduction also establishes that Sweden’s King Gustav II Adolf first set foot on German soil on Rügen in 1630—not at Peenemünde on Usedom.
Petrick writes about the “Wrangel era,” Rügen as a transit region to Sweden, the nobility and peasantry, towns and market villages, intellectual life, and the role of Ernst Moritz Arndt. He compares Swedish cadastral maps from around 1700 with present-day conditions and points to Swedish plans to build a new town on the Mönchgut peninsula. Guest contributor Klaus Haese describes Rügen as a subject in the visual arts, including in the work of Caspar David Friedrich.
Fritz Petrick’s book also encourages visitors holidaying on the Baltic Sea to explore Rügen with their eyes open and take a closer look at the traces of its Swedish period that are still visible today.

Fritz Petrick (ed.)
THE HISTORY OF RÜGEN
From its beginnings to the present in five volumes

Volume 3: Rügen under Swedish rule, 1648–1815, by Fritz Petrick
16.5 x 24 cm, paperback, 152 pages
Over 50 photographs, illustrations, maps and plates
ISBN 978-3-9808999-6-3
rügendruck GmbH, 2009
€14.80