HELIGOLAND - HOLY ISLAND?
The 'Fair Lady' sails from Bremerhaven to Heligoland
A street on Heligoland
The cliffs
The
novelist Hilary Mantel writing about the pleasures of browsing in second-hand
bookshops described how a chance discovery can lead you into a fascinating new
world. Something similar happened to me but in this case in Ludlow Library. I
was looking for something on an aspect of local history when a book caught my
eye. HELIGOLAND was printed in striking type down the spine together with the
name of the author George Drower. On the
front cover in addition to the title it says “The True Story of German Bight
and the Island that Britain Betrayed”
and there is also a sketch of a notice saying “For Sale, British
Subjects…….”
This sparked my interest and eventually
led to my visit to the island on Wednesday May 14th 2014. Much of what follows has been learned from
this book.
I stayed in Bremen and took an early morning
train to Bremerhaven and a taxi to the port. I had no idea if the boat would be
fully booked. I bought my ticket, 40
euros return, and to my astonishment the good ship Fair Lady turned out to be a
large ferry. A member of the crew told
me that she is licensed to carry 799 passengers and he estimated that there
would be 17 of us travelling that day!
It was a 52 mile, 3.5 hour journey and the sea was seriously rough. At one stage I assumed that Heligoland would
be visible but to see ahead I had to move along the cabin. It was very difficult to remain upright even
when grasping a pillar with both hands. Even the crew moved around very
cautiously leaning against the walls. It
was generally the motion of riding huge waves but every so often, instead of
breasting the next wave the ship hit it full on with an almighty, spine jarring
crack, the phrase ‘shiver my timbers’ came
to life. The return journey in the
afternoon was much smoother. There are
flights also in small aircraft. These
land on the smaller of the two islands and you have to take a ferry to the main
island.
The name ‘Heligoland’ may mean Holy Land, a name it may derive from
an English missionary, St Willibrod who
himself came from Lindisfarne on Northumberland’s Holy Island. (Cf.
German ‘heilige’- = ‘holy’.) In
German the island is known as Helgoland.
Others say that the ‘holiness’ may refer to earlier Norse times.
Those
of a certain age, like me, may remember when the BBC Shipping Forecast included
the name “Heligoland”. It used to go
“Forties, Dogger, Fisher, Heligoland……”
Since 1956 however “Heligoland” has been replaced by “German Bight.” 1
They both refer to the sea area off the north German coast. There are a number of islands, namely the
Friesian islands, which are just off the coasts of Holland, German and South
Denmark, inshore islands. Heligoland is
a small island further out, about 30 miles from the nearest German
Mainland. There are no other offshore islands in the North Sea until you reach the Orkneys.
Heligoland was one island until New Year’s eve
1720 when a great storm separated the main island from Sandy Island. Geologically Heligoland is very special, in
Mediaeval times it was far larger than it is now, the effect of buffeting by
the storms and surges of the North Sea.
It is estimated that in the year 800 it covered about 24 square miles! So now it is sometimes referred to as The
Heligoland Archipelago although there are only two tiny islands. The total
acreage of this ex-colony is about 325, the size of a small farm. This is approximately 0.5 square miles,
compare Gibraltar 2.3 square miles.
( In 2002 the shipping area
“Finisterre” was, after 53 years, renamed “Fitzroy”. Fitzroy was the captain of Darwin’s ship, The
Beagle and Fitzroy’s shipping charts were still in use until the 1940s.)
Heligoland came partly within English
jurisdiction when Canute became King of England. In 1714 it became a Danish possession because
the Kings of Denmark were also Dukes of Schleswig-Holstein. For most of the
time until 1807 it was loosely connected with Denmark but in practice the
island was mostly left to its own devices, mariners sheltered there from storms
and the inhabitants made a living from fishing and privateering. No doubt a certain amount of illegal commerce
went on, avoiding taxes. The language of the inhabitants is a version of Friesian
which is the closest language to English.
Heligoland came to assume importance
for Britain as a result of the Napoleonic wars, in particular its strategic
importance for the Royal Navy guarding the approaches to the Elbe. And so it was that in 1807 the island was
surrendered by the Danish Governor, Major von Zeske to Admiral Russell. It was
agreed that the islanders could continue to govern themselves as they had
previously done, indeed it is clear that the islanders welcomed the British and
relations were excellent both then and subsequently.
Thus it came about that Britain
acquired it smallest colony, some would call it the Gibraltar of the North
Sea. The postal service was arranged via
Hamburg but in Hamburg they printed Heligoland postage stamps with the portrait
of Queen Victoria. The Heligoland flag had a small Union Jack in the corner. I
still find this astonishing, a tiny island in the North Sea that was a British
colony.
Heligoland remained a British colony
until 1890 when it was ceded to Germany in exchange for Zanzibar, then part of
German East Africa. The Kaiser was building up the German Navy and there were
plans to construct a 61 mile long canal, the Kiel canal, linking the North Sea
with the Baltic and shortening travel by 400 miles, the distance around
Denmark. Britain did not want to go to the
expense of further fortifying the island and it was deemed of little importance
- something I simply do not understand. Nothing was said about the islanders who only found
out at the last minute and were very
upset at the idea, they were loyal imperial subjects!
Queen Victoria was also not amused. She
sent a telegram to Prime Minister Lord Salisbury in June 1990 expressing her
disquiet on two counts - 1. “The people have always been very loyal….and
it is a shame to hand them over to an unscrupulous despotic Government like the
German without first consulting them”, and 2.
“It is a very bad precedent. The
next thing will be to propose to give up Gibraltar; and soon nothing will be
secure.” (This is printed on the back
of Drower’s book). Kaiser Wilhelm II
came to the throne in 1888. He soon
sacked Chancellor Otto von Bismarck who expressed no interest in acquiring
territory, being more concerned with the unification of Germany itself.
The Kaiser was the eldest grandson of
Queen Victoria, son of her eldest child Princess Victoria and Kaiser Wilhelm
I. In 2013 we passed a law making royal
primogeniture gender-blind although it has not yet been implemented because the
British monarch is also Head of State in
many other countries. Had this been in place when Queen Victoria died her
eldest child, her daughter Princess Victoria, would have succeeded to the
throne. Victoria died only a few months after her mother and the British crown
would have then passed to her son, Kaiser Wilhelm II. At this time of WW1
commemorations imagine what this might have meant.
In August 1890 Britain left the
island and the Germans lost no time in taking possession. The Kaiser then arrived with a number of
ships and 3000 marines. There were also many visitors so that the islanders
were overwhelmed. Instead of being given
the option to remain British citizens they had actively to seek British
citizenship and do so in front of a German magistrate, an off-putting
experience. Eventually most of them became German citizens although in WW1 they
were evacuated to the mainland and treated almost as suspicious aliens. I imagine that with naval engagements such as
the Battle of Jutland we came to regret having lost Heligoland.
A person who knew these islands well
was Erskine Childers. He was a keen
yachtsman and wrote the novel “The Riddle of the Sands” based on his
experiences in area. Because of this
connection I read the book which is said to be among the first spy novels and I
found it a cracking read. It is
concerned with German and British naval spying. In 1914 Childers, a member of
the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve was sent on the Cuxhaven Raid to bomb Zeppelin
hangars, when seven seaplanes headed towards Heligoland and on to the German
coast. Childers could clearly see the
“grim cliffs” of the island. The seaplanes took off alongside HMS Riviera about
12 miles from the island and by 11 am Childers was back on board the ship
refreshing himself with Bovril and Sherry.
It was a very daring raid and three seaplanes did not return.
Childers was a well-connected Upper
Class British officer born in Mayfair. He married an American lady from Boston
who was an enthusiastic supporter of Irish independence. Despite his pedigree Childers, like others such as Sir Roger Casement , came to
support the Irish independence cause.
Drower refers to the disgrace of Erskine Childers (pp253
and 197) and says that Childers was executed by the British for
treasonable activities. This was not the case. He found himself on the wrong
side in the Irish Civil War and was executed by an Irish firing squad for the possession of a pistol
which had been given to him by Michael Collins. He made his 16 year old son
also called Erskine, promise to seek out everyone who had signed his death
warrant and shake their hands. In one of the ironies of history this London
born and English educated Protestant son later became President of ‘Catholic’
Ireland. His daughter Nessa Childers is currently an Irish MEP. (The first President of Ireland, Douglas Hyde
was also a Protestant.)
Little notice was then taken of
Heligoland in Britain but it was in
Germany. Between the wars it became a popular tourist resort and a duty free
area, a status which it still maintains.
August Heinrich Hoffman von Fallersleben was a German academic whose
political writings brought him into conflict with the Prussian
authorities. He became a political exile
in Heligoland and in 1841 wrote the song “Deutschland, Deutschland, über Alles”
which later became the German National Anthem.
Some have thought the words refer to some kind of German imperialistic
hegemony but that is not so, it is an appeal for the fragmented German world to
be united. At one stage the German world was split into almost 1000 political
entities, dukedoms, principalities and even kingdoms such as Bavaria. (Our
Royal family goes back to George I who was Duke of Brunswick (Braunschweig) and
Elector of Hanover.)
Writers who visited Heligoland
include Franz Kafka, August Strindberg and the travel writer Reinhardt.
In 1925 Werner Heisenberg visited the island to relax
and recover from flu. While on a walk around the island he developed the theory
that became known as the Principle of Uncertainty which eventually won him the
Nobel Prize for Physics. After Einstein
he is one of the greatest names in Quantum Mechanics, so relevant today with all
the excitement about the Higgs Boson particle and the idea of particles travelling faster than light.
The Versailles Treaty after WW1
prohibited German rearmament but Hitler repudiated this in 1935. Heligoland
began to rearm and in 1938 Hitler visited the island. In the grand streets of major cities such as
London, Paris and Berlin you can imagine seeing important visitors, probably at
a distance. However walking in the
single main street of Heligoland it was easy to envisage being only a few yards
from Hitler. Unlike during WW1 the Heligolanders remained on their island home
and were able to shelter in deep caverns during bombing raids. As far as I know there were no civilian
casualties. They were only evacuated to
the mainland in April 1945.
After WW2 the Heligolanders, some 2000
of them scattered all over north Germany (unlike during WW1 when they were
concentrated in Hamburg) petitioned to be taken back as a British Crown Colony.
Failing that they asked to be annexed to Denmark. There were still around 250 of them who had
been born British citizens. This came to
nothing.
After the war Britain used the
islands for bombing practice and on April 18th 1947 detonated the
“big bang”, the single largest non-nuclear explosion in history. Nearly 7000
tons of explosives created an enormous crater and changed the shape of the
island. Some say they wanted to render the island uninhabitable. In 1952 the islands were returned to German
sovereignty and a vast amount of
clearance and landscaping had to take place before houses could be rebuilt and
the islanders return.
Heligoland
may be known only vaguely or not at all by many but there is one group to which
the name will be familiar in many countries.
Keen birdwatchers will know that much knowledge of the bird world has
been obtained using the Heligoland trap. A Professor Heinrich Gätke had set up
a bird Observatory in the 1860s and used this kind of trap. The island makes a
welcome stopover for migrating birds and as the island is so small it is easy
to observe them. The trap is a building
sized series of funnels which let the birds
in easily but from which it is less easy to escape. There is one at the Slimbridge Wildfowl Trust
Reserve. Swans, ducks and geese are
driven into the trap to be measured, weighed and ringed which has added
enormously to our knowledge of many species.
I only had three and half hours on
the island but that was more than enough to walk all the way round and do some
shopping. The cliffs are home to vast
numbers of breeding birds such as guillemots and gannets and you can get really close to the gannets, magnificent
and elegant birds. The big bang mentioned earlier was postponed in order to try
to scare away birds but it must have had serious consequences. April would be
just the time for returning migrant birds.
During my visit I noted birders at work.
Arriving at the harbour we had to be
transferred by launch to the jetty where we were hauled onto land by two burly
seamen. I can´t imagine what it must be like if 799 passengers arrive! And there are other ferries also. The immediate appearance of the town is that
of a seaside resort with shops selling all the usual holiday
paraphernalia. It is also a duty free
area and they were selling enormous 5.5 litre bottles of spirits for around £50. I did not indulge as this could have been
difficult with Ryanair. Further up the
town there are steps or lifts to the upper level where there are streets of
well kept houses and gardens. The rebuilt Protestant Church still has the
plaque outside dedicated to Queen Victoria.
There are well marked paths around the island and no vehicles except a
small minibus, I think for disabled people. There are even a few cattle
grazing. There is a tall, and it has to be said, ugly communications structure
near the island centre.
It was only a day trip but I have had
few more memorable ones.
TO SEE A LUCKY ESCAPE google 'dangerous landing on Heligoland.' The plane nearly hit
a sunbather on the beach.
a sunbather on the beach.
