What was the first thing that struck me? The space between A and B. This mathematical-sounding concept is actually a description of my first encounter with Schleswig-Holstein. That was around 1985, when, travelling by car, I suddenly realized how long you could drive without passing through a village or even a small town.

It was the altogether unique landscape “in-between” that characterized this area. I have now been living in this federal state for 15 years and that first impression has neither been replaced nor invalidated by any later one. It still provides the visual key to this stretch of land situated between the North Sea and the Baltic.

Of course it is the towns, the localities, that make up the image of the state, but here they don’t do so as forcibly and distinctly as in other states. Although I do not wish to subscribe to the cliché of the pure unspoilt nature on Germany’s northern edge, nevertheless, those clichés have to be addressed, for they still very much determine the impression that Schleswig-Holstein makes.

There’s the sea, the sheep, the dikes, the cows and the extensive flat land. Add to that the wind, the lighthouses and the ships. And finally the inhabitants. Even in the television advertisements the latter are characterized as being taciturn and reserved – in other words, as typically northern German. This view of Schles-wig-Holstein is not altogether wrong, but it is not right either. So let’s take a closer look!