Art stele Günter Rieck
"Created the popular artists' bar "Kupferkanne" from an old bunker and a spacious park in the surrounding heathland"
No, the beginning on Sylt was not easy for Günter Rieck. The sculptor served as a naval officer in the Second World War and arrived in Hörnum shortly before the surrender. The journey back to his hometown of Stettin was long and uncertain, so Rieck initially stayed on Sylt. He was assigned a half-buried anti-aircraft bunker near Kampen as his quarters. Difficult times began for the newcomer. Rieck supplemented his meager unemployment benefit from the state by fashioning and selling vases from the silt of the Kampen mudflats to earn a living. But Günter Rieck did not give up and bravely dug through: He cleared more rooms in the bunker, installed windows, and created a small studio. From this, the artists' bar "Kupferkanne" grew in 1949, with the start-up capital just enough for a few simple seats and a few bottles of alcohol. Friends dropped in for a glass of wine, and soon the first guests arrived. And the dreary bunker was transformed into a labyrinth of comfort: winding corridors and narrow steps led to enchanted grottos lit only by candlelight. Everything seemed to be on the right track for Günter Rieck when the former bunker became a bone of contention. While the idiosyncratic location was welcomed by many Sylt residents and guests, a front of rejection was forming on the other side: The nightclub's immediate neighborhood
Some tradition-conscious Frisians decided that a burial mound from the Bronze Age was unacceptable and took the matter to court. The legal dispute dragged on until 1952. Then, after a local hearing, the Higher Administrative Court ruled: The "Kupferkanne" could stay. Like a magnet, the original tavern on the edge of the village continued to attract night owls, among them numerous celebrities of renown. In 1960, there was another innovation to report: a stone barracks – during the war, it housed accommodations for soldiers taking up positions at the heavy gun battery on Kampen's west side – became the "Kupferpfanne" restaurant. But Günter Rieck focused not only on his thriving business, but above all on nature. Over the course of three decades, he created his botanical life's work: he personally laid out a 28.000 square meter parkland with 30.000 pine trees and heather plants. Through regular pruning, Rieck ensures that the plantings grow as wide and dense as possible, and not too tall. The result: a perfectly formed, green idyll that can still be admired today.
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Arrival & Parking
Car: From the direction of List and Wenningstedt you can reach Kampen via the main road.
Bicycle: The old island railway line provides a north-south connection as a cycling and hiking path. A cycle path runs alongside Braderuper Weg from Keitum/Braderup to Kampen.
On foot: You can reach Kampen from the Westerland/Wenningstedt and List directions both via the beach and along the hiking trail along the former island railway line. From Wenningstedt, a wooden walkway leads through the dunes over the Red Cliff to Kampen. From the Braderup/Keitum direction, you can walk along the heathland paths along the mudflats.
Bus: You can reach Kampen with line 1 from Westerland and List.
To reach the stele, please get off at Kampen Mitte.
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Sylt Marketing GmbH
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Kampen Tourism Service
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