HELIGOLAND

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 14^th 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 18^th 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.