From wooden toy to catamaran
[Text and photos by: Oliver Schlicht]
It's a long way from a wooden toy to a catamaran. In Havelberg, it took around twelve years. The Lewerken couple have not only built up a medium-sized company empire there, they have also saved Havelberg's 300-year tradition as a shipbuilding town. The first ship was launched in April.
Havelberg. It is 15 meters long, can accommodate up to 20 people and is powered by a 40 hp engine. The „Antonia“, a catamaran for water excursions in Brandenburg, is named after the four-year-old daughter of the ship's owner, Peter Twelkmeyer. The catamaran for the Marina Lanke shipyard in Berlin-Spandau made its maiden voyage in Berlin a few days ago. The ship is rented out. „We are very satisfied. The „Antonia“ is almost fully booked until the end of October,“ says a delighted Hannelore Funke-Neumann, charter officer at the Berlin shipyard. This catamaran is the first floating offspring of a Havelberg couple who had nothing to do with shipbuilding in the first place. Andreas and Renate Lewerken, the carpenter from Thuringia and the pastor's daughter from Havelberg, met and fell in love at a church party in the 1980s. „We then looked for a farmstead where I wanted to open a joinery for the production of therapeutic-didactic wooden toys and wooden jewelry. The galleries in the GDR were really keen on that at the time,“ recalls Andreas Lewerken. Even as a child, the Thuringian made wooden jewelry for his mother. The young couple found what they were looking for in Kuhlhausen, a village ten kilometers from Havelberg. A farm was purchased on a plot of land with the beautiful name of Kiebitzberg
„Kiebitzberg“ - three companies, one name
The name was to become the program. Today, „Kiebitzberg“ is the name of a group of three companies - a furniture workshop, a solid surface production line and the shipyard, the youngest member. After the fall of communism, wooden toys were just as unlikely to win a flower pot as the machines that were purchased for the new joinery in Kuhlhausen between 1985 and the fall of communism. Lewerken, who in the meantime had completed a master craftsman's apprenticeship: „The last machines came in 1989 and then it was all over. That was really bad. Some of the machines had been specially made in Thuringia according to my plans. We could only give a lot of things away.“
The Lewerken family abandoned their old plans. The toy joinery became a furniture workshop. In 1995, the couple then took a huge step and invested in a small furniture factory, which was newly built in Havelberg's northern industrial estate. Their specialty was and still is furnishing financial institutions and doctors„ surgeries. This furniture production was then expanded to include a solid surface processing line. “Here we manufacture worktops, shower trays and bathtubs, as well as all kinds of special shapes made from various plastics," says the company boss.
You would think that these two mainstays in an economically underdeveloped region like the Altmark would be task enough for a married couple, but the real challenge came to the Lewerken family in 1998 - the purchase of the Havelberg shipyard. „The privatization of this shipyard didn't go so well after reunification. A Dutchman and then a Hamburg owner filed for bankruptcy,“ says Andreas Lewerken
And when Havelberg's mayor Bern Poloski approached the furniture entrepreneur in 1998 about the idyllic shipyard site at the foot of Havelberg Cathedral, he was unable to resist for long: The Lewerken family also became shipyard owners. „Initially, we planned to focus exclusively on the interior fitting of inland waterway vessels. But then it quickly turned into something more,“ says Lewerken. Initially, the old shipbuilders were brought back because repair and mending work was also requested. Lewerken: „And then at some point the question arose as to why we shouldn't also venture into new construction.
„Antonia“ - a special boat
From this perspective, the construction of the „Antonia“ is not only an outstanding event for the Berlin ship owner. It is also a special boat for the Havelberg shipbuilding tradition, as it bears the construction number 1 of the Havelberg shipyard, which now also bears the name „Kiebitzberg“. The Havelberg shipyard site thus appears to be somewhat more secure again. After all, the Havel town can look back on 300 years of shipbuilding tradition. Even the Russian Tsar Peter I is said to have swung his axe as a shipbuilder in Havelberg
From this perspective, the construction of the „Antonia“ is not only an outstanding event for the Berlin ship owner. It is also a special boat for the Havelberg shipbuilding tradition, as it bears the construction number 1 of the Havelberg shipyard, which now also bears the name „Kiebitzberg“. The Havelberg shipyard site thus appears to be somewhat more secure again. After all, the Havel town can look back on 300 years of shipbuilding tradition. Even the Russian Tsar Peter I is said to have swung his axe as a shipbuilder in Havelberg.