Jasmund National Park

Description

The Jasmund National Park is a nature reserve in the northeast of Rügen island in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Germany. It is famous for the largest chalk cliffs of Germany, the so called Königsstuhl (German = "king's chair"). These cliffs are up to 161 m high above the Baltic Sea. The undisturbed beech forests behind the cliffs are also part of the national park.

Consisting of only 30 km², this is the smallest national park of Germany. The park was founded in 1990 by the last government of the GDR prior to the German reunification.

The chalk cliffs face constant erosion. With every storm, parts of the cliffs fall down to the ground, including rocks and fossils of sponges, oysters and sea urchins.

The most majestic part of the cliffs is the 118-metre-high Königsstuhl (English: king's chair). One of the most scenic and best known of the chalk outcrops, the Wissower Klinken, collapsed into the Baltic Sea on February 24, 2005 in a landslide caused by spring-thaw weather conditions. The steep and sweeping vista was the subject of the well-known painting Chalk Cliffs on Rügen, by the 19th-century German Romantic artist Caspar David Friedrich.

Because of the special geological characteristics of the Jasmund National Park, it is home to many rare plants and animals.

There are many swamp-like ponds in the forest behind the cliffs. In the woods of the Stubnitz there are numerous water-filled, undrained dells and hollows, most of which came into existence as ice-age dead ice holes. This is the place to see many plants, e.g. Black Alder, Malus sylvestris, Wild Service Tree, Taxus and types of orchids, for instance Cypripedium calceolus.

Ornithologists can find a variety of birds, for example the White-tailed Eagle, Kingfisher, House Martin and the Peregrine Falcon.

Königsstuhl

view down the white cliffs

the chalk cliffs

visitors centre

Stubbenkammer

Wissower Klinken(April 2004)

Wissower Klinken(August 2005)

old forest

lake/swamp

Victoria-Sicht (Victoria's View)