Heiligendamm has seen best, worst of German history

HEILIGENDAMM, Germany (Reuters) - The elegant Baltic seaside resort of Heiligendamm has seen the best and the worst of German history since it was founded in 1793 as an exclusive summer spa for European nobility.

Proud to be Germany's first seaside resort, Heiligendamm -- this week hosting a summit of the Group of Eight (G8) industrialized nations -- is less happy about of its Nazi past.

In 1932 it became the first town in Germany to name a street after Adolf Hitler and to make its infamous summer visitor an honorary citizen -- a title formally revoked in April to avoid anyone making an issue of it at the summit.

Heiligendamm, near Rostock in the former East Germany with Sweden across the sea to the north, was used as a naval training station during World War Two.

Known as the "White Town by the Sea" because of a string of striking 19th-century classicist white buildings on its promenade, it tries to make the most of its traditions as a summertime haven for blue bloods, the rich and famous.

Yet the resort with just 280 residents north of Berlin has struggled to recover from the ravishes of the Communist era in the 18 years since the Berlin Wall fell -- in stark contrast to other resorts nearby, rebuilt and now flourishing again.

"The aim has been to restore the glamour to the town that it had before World War Two," deputy mayor Norbert Sass told Reuters. "It will never be a place for mass tourism. It was, and is, an upscale spa with an upmarket hotel."

While the five-star Kempinski Grand Hotel and the Kurhaus next to it have been splendidly restored for the G8 meetings, other 19th-century gems are in a sorry state of disrepair.

Their decrepit, vacated appearance recall the Communist era and remind visitors what much of bankrupt East Germany looked like in 1990 at reunification. During the Communist era, Heiligendamm was turned into a sanatorium for the masses.

While nearby resorts like Kuehlungsborn and Warnemuende have been rebuilt since 1990 and restored to their pre-war glory with the help of an army of small private developers, Heiligendamm has relied on bigger individual investors and is far from finished.

"We're hopeful restoration work will finally go forward now with the other buildings on the promenade," said Sass. "Thanks to the G8 meeting we've had much badly needed state investment for streets, parking lots, bike paths and the promenade."

But he said Heiligendamm needed much more than that. There was once a golf course but it became a pasture that cows now graze on. To help attract better-heeled 21st-century guests, the town wants to build a new golf course, tennis courts, equestrian centre and a clay-pigeon shooting range.

Frank Mohr, a local historian, said even if Heiligendamm could not replicate the luxurious and exclusive atmosphere of centuries past, it was still an architectural masterpiece.

"The Kurhaus is one of the most important examples of classical architecture in northern Germany," he said of the 1816 building by Carl Theodor Severin.

"Despite all the turmoil, there has not been any design change to the buildings on the promenade since 1874. It looks the same now as it did during its heyday right up to the 1920s."