Patronage charter of the district of the Duchy of Lauenburg for the Mecklenburg compatriot group

• 28.06.1953
• parchment
• width: 68.5 cm

There were compatriot groups of Mecklenburg residents (e.g. in Hamburg or Berlin) that existed as early as around 1900. The associations after 1945 in the western occupation zones and Federal Republic of Germany had a new quality. A Mecklenburg compatriot group was created in Neumünster in 1951 after the foundation of local associations of Mecklenburg residents throughout the entire federal territory. The 1st home meeting was organised in Ratzeburg in September 1951 and this became established as a tradition that lasted decades. The cathedral island of Ratzeburg belonged to Mecklenburg after the Thirty Years‘ War and until 1937. Under ecclesiastical law the cathedral parish also remained part of the evangelical Lutheran church of Mecklenburg after 1945.

Many people who had fled from Mecklenburg settled near Ratzeburg. In 1951 the former Mecklenburg ministerial officer, Gerhard Wandschneider, became District Administrator of the Duchy of Lauenburg. In this capacity he handed over, on the occasion of the 3rd meeting of the Mecklenburg citizens in 1953, the charter of the district of the Duchy of Lauenburg’s patronage charter for the compatriot group to its 1st federal chairman Baron von Langermann. Twenty years later Gerhard Wandschneider took over, until his death in 1981, the office of the Chairman of the Council of the Mecklenburg Foundation, founded in Ratzeburg.

After the compatriot group was dissolved, the charter came into the possession of the Mecklenburg Foundation in 2013.