Our America experience just behind us, the next experience in front of us, we wanted to loose our heads into something that had nothing to do with  neither. Arriving in Hamburg after having being at sea for ten days we also had the desire to be someplace without confinement. What better place to choose than Northern Germany, and here the northernmost part of the northernmost state of Schleswig-Holstein close to the Danish border. A landscape of solitude and peacefulness, flat fields and marshes, the heaving reed and wheat fields reminiscent of the slight swell at sea - after all we still needed a little nautic touch.

This must have been something which also attracted the painter Emil Nolde who was born and brought up in the Danish-German borderland. Even after becoming a renowned art celebrity he decided to stay in the province, close to his ideal peace and quiet, the brusque nature influenced by the rough winds of the North Sea, and the eden-like garden of his custom-designed home in Seebüll. Flowers and wide landscapes were a recurring theme of his paintings. He decreed that after his death the property and paintings go into the Emil Nolde Foundation and should be open and available to the public. 

Emil Noldes private home functions as the museum for his paintings. The architectural originality

was designed by Nolde himself using only local and traditional materials.

A view of his beloved garden. Together with his wife he proved other locals wrong who claimed

that flowers were impossible to grow in the harsh North Sea climate.

The other part of the foundation harbors the administrative and educational

part of the museum and an excellent restaurant.

The painting school offers workshops (and a breathtaking view)

for children and grown-ups.

Harsh and lovely, the beautiful and wide Schleswig-Holstein landscape.

A close-by former farmhouse offers overnight stays. Nolde lived here

while his dream home was being built.