Names
Australian Placenames of German Background
Lubeck, Victoria
Lubeck is a rural village in the Wimmera region, approximately 245km north-west of Melbourne.
The extension of the railway line westwards to Horsham was completed in 1879, and a railway station for Lubeck was opened on 23rd February 1879. It is not clear whether the village of Lubeck was already growing before the opening of the railway station, but the railway line certainly helped the growth of the Lubeck area. A German settler named H.W. Lutze who was from the city of Lübeck in the north of Germany selected land (allotment 106) in the Parish of Marma. However, some of his land was compulsorily acquired either for the village or for the railway station or perhaps for both, and Mr Lutze had the honour of naming the new place (he named it Lubeck, and the ‘u’ was written without the Umlaut of the German city’s name).[1]
Placename sign: Lubeck, Victoria
Someone who is familiar with the spelling of the name of the city of Lübeck in Germany has added the two Umlaut dots above the letter U on this sign.
The German city of Lübeck lies in the Holstein region, northeast of Hamburg, on the mouth of the River Trave. The city's best-known landmark is the Holsten Gate, and the city centre is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. A picture of the Holsten Gate was on the 50 DM bank notes produced from 1960 to 1991 and the Gate was also shown on the German two-euro coin issued in 2006.
The Holsten Gate in Lübeck, Germany
Photo source: Christian Wolf (www.c-w-design.de), CC BY-SA 3.0 DE, via Wikimedia Commons
♦ Notes:
1. Nelson, Allan. & Loeliger, Carl. & Loeliger, Leslie. (1983). Lubeck school centenary 1983. Lubeck (VIC) : Lubeck Primary School Committee. p.13.
♦ References:
Blake, Les. (1976). Place names of Victoria. Adelaide: Rigby. p.162