Stülper Huk

The Stülper Huk is a small, raised peninsula on the lower Trave river near Lübeck in Schleswig-Holstein. It sits at a bend of the river opposite the Pötenitzer Wiek and Dassower See, within the Dummersdorfer Ufer nature reserve. The site commands a view over an ice-age meltwater channel that once shaped the landscape. Archaeologists have found flint tools here dating back to the Stone Age, showing people visited long before written records. The name ‘Huk’ comes from Low German, meaning a corner or point of land jutting into water. The place gained military importance in the 12th century when Henry the Lion ordered a fortress built on the Hirtenberg spur. The Abodrites destroyed it about thirty years later during a siege linked to the 1181 imperial ban on Henry. The remains were later identified as Alt-Travemünde, the original mouth of the Trave before the town moved downstream. Excavations in the 19th and 20th centuries uncovered ramparts, ditches and the foundations of a round tower roughly thirty to forty metres across. Written sources from Helmold of Bosau and Arnold of Lübeck describe how Count Adolf II fortified the site after a raid by the Slavic prince Niklot in 1147 or 1149. Visitors walk along grassy paths that follow the old ramparts and cross narrow causeways once used as the only approach. The exposed stone foundations of the tower stand near the crest of the Hirtenberg, giving a sense of the strategic height once held by the fortress. Below, the Trave curves past mudflats and reed beds frequented by waterfowl. Interpretive signs explain the layers of history from Stone Age hunters to medieval warlords. The surrounding nature reserve offers quiet walks with views across the river to the wooded shores of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.