It was not Allied bombs that destroyed the St. Nicholas Church in Anklam in the final days of the Second World War, but a grenade fired by German troops. When the small Hanseatic town had already been taken by the Red Army on April 9, 1945, the Wehrmacht fired at the Gothic building from the other bank of the Peene. The upper part of the tower and the nave collapsed. For more than five decades, the Nikolaikirche remained a ruin, without a roof or windows. Grass and bushes grew where benches and altars once stood.
After the fall of the Wall, a makeshift roof was able to stop the deterioration of the historic building structure. But for the Anklamers, rebuilding it as a place of worship next to the older and larger St. Mary’s Church was less of an option. A group of citizens had another idea that has now taken shape: the Nikolaikirche as the future “Ikareum – The Lilienthal Flight Museum”.
The brick building has been closely linked to the name Lilienthal since the mid-19th century. The aviation pioneer Otto Lilienthal was baptized here in 1848 and around the corner, on Peenstrasse, was the birthplace of the city’s most famous son. Through his systematic scientific studies, which preceded the flight experiments for years and culminated in the publication of the book “Bird Flight as the Basis of the Art of Flying” in 1889, he achieved repeatable gliding flights using self-constructed flying machines.
“I consider the day in 1891 when Lilienthal measured the first 15 meters in the air to be the moment when humanity learned to fly,” wrote the French aviation pioneer Ferdinand Ferber in retrospect.
The decisive factor was the development of a slightly curved wing that generates lift. Thanks to the photographic documentation of his flights of up to 250 meters long from various jump points in and around Berlin, Lilienthal became world famous even before his fatal crash in 1896.
Anklam has been honoring the aviation pioneer for a long time. Today’s Otto Lilienthal Museum near the train station emerged from a department of the local history museum. The exhibition, housed in a villa, has received several awards and was expanded to include a hall in 1996. Not only are the true-to-scale reconstructions of his various aircraft apparatus, the aerodynamic test series and historical exhibits shown here, but the mechanical engineer, the successful manufacturer of steam engines, the brilliant inventor and the humanist Lilienthal are also honored. Together with his younger brother Gustav, he was involved in social and housing projects. They also developed toys such as the iconic Anker brick building sets.
The Lilienthal estate of the house has now been completely digitized. Visitors on site even have the opportunity to practically experience a gliding flight from Lilienthal’s perspective in a simulator – without crashing. But the house aims to be more than just a museum focused on a single person.
The move and the new use of the St. Nicholas Church as an Ikareum will create a visitor magnet that will also inspire young people about the history of technology and the art of engineering. Because Lilienthal’s bionic solution approach, which involves studying nature’s abilities such as bird flight in great detail and applying them to current problems, is more relevant than ever.
The St. Nicholas Church, which was rebuilt in recent years, offers an extremely voluminous space with its columns and vaulted ceilings that are up to 35 meters high. “The central nave is our aviary,” says Peer Wittig, the deputy director of the Otto Lilienthal Museum and chairman of the Nikolaikirche support group during the tour. “This will be the future location for our model aircraft.” The church has long since had a roof again, new glazing and floors.
The renovation was financed in accordance with monument preservation with funds from, among others, the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and Media and the state government. At the end of September 2023, the Bundestag Budget Committee approved more than one million euros for the future Lilienthal presentation. This means that the Ikareum also becomes an extracurricular learning location with more interactive exhibits.
With the first expansion stage completed in 2022, the pilot exhibition Lilienthal Lab can be viewed in the impressive nave with its gray, beige and reddish ancient bricks. Behind the large letters from A to T there are explanations of the church and Lilienthal history.
At an event in the monument, the dream of flying could already be experienced when flying objects from the Festo company floated through the church interior in February 2023. Their Smartbirds, a groundbreaking invention from 2011, use bionic technology to imitate bird strikes. At the experimental air show, high-tech swallows and artificial large butterflies fluttered through the church backdrop.
By the way: The robot birds developed by the company for control and systems engineering from Esslingen, Swabia, based on natural models, also delight visitors to the new Museum of the Future in Dubai.
In the Anklam church, on the other hand, historical items are on display, such as the partially reconstructed Hüttig muscle power winged plane. Holger Steinle, the former head of the aerospace department at the German Museum of Technology in Berlin, only discovered this object in an attic in Thuringia in 2014.
In addition to the church, the second building block in the overall project is a new building, the Regional Information and Tourism Center (RITZ), which will house functional rooms such as the museum shop, archive, administration and sanitary facilities. Because the Hanseatic city is relying on increasing tourism with the Ikareum lighthouse project. Also attractive is climbing the tower, a 360-degree vantage point over the Peenetal river landscape, one of the most pristine moor and bird sanctuaries in northern Germany. Together with the visitor information center of the nature park in Stolpe, Anklam is establishing itself as a destination for holiday guests from the neighboring Baltic Sea island of Usedom.
The historical monument is already a positive example of how a church space that is no longer used can be transformed: into a place that successfully builds a bridge between the past, pioneering spirit and future technology. Visitors already have the opportunity to visit the Lilienthal Lab and climb the hull church tower. The new exhibition is expected to open in September 2025.
Otto Lilienthal gave humanity wings in a transcendent sense. Thanks to his scientific work and later flight tests, he also created the prerequisites for powered flight. But the researcher, engineer and humanist was not just concerned with the physics of flight; he also took the social dimension into account. Aviation has developed enormously technologically in the 20th century. But we are further removed from one aspect of his vision of flight today than ever before.
Almost 130 years ago he wrote: “The free, unrestricted flight of man would have a profound impact on all our conditions. The borders of countries would lose their meaning,” said Otto Lilienthal in a letter to Moritz von Egidy in January 1894. “National defense would cease to devour the best forces of the states, and the compelling need to settle the disputes of nations in ways other than bloody fighting over imaginary borders would bring us eternal peace.”
Sources: Ikareum, Lilienthal Museum, Nikolaikirche Anklam, Anklam Tourismus, Festo
