Heiligendamm has seen best and worst of Germany

By Erik Kirschbaum

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) industrialised 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.