Heligoland

by George Drower

  The proceedings were hauntingly redolent, in some respects, of the handover in August 1890. Grand speeches were made by important German statesmen about Heligoland – which to its people was simply their home. No longer was there a Kaiser Wilhelm to raspingly decree the island to be ‘a strong place in the German Ocean against all enemies who care to show themselves upon it’. Now leading Germans took care to describe it in ambitiously idealistic terms as some sort of model for international conflict resolution. With a certain degree of selective amnesia, Premier Lubke denied that the island had ever been intended to be the ‘Gibraltar of the North Sea’! It should now, he said, ‘be a symbol of new hope, understanding and peace for Germany and Europe’. Chancellor Adenauer, using words which might have been spoken by the Kaiser himself, described the island as a magnanimous symbol of reconciliation: ‘Set in the seas between Britain and Germany, Heligoland will be a token of peace and friendship between the two countries.’ President Theodor Heuss, in a radio broadcast, pledged the island would be ‘returned to peaceful purposes’.

  The British government’s failure to send anyone at all to this handover ceremony was all the more dishonourable given that it had been the cause of Heligoland’s desolate condition. The extent of destruction was now more extensive than in 1945, seemingly worse than after the ‘Big Bang’ in 1947. Debris from the once-massive armaments was scattered everywhere. The island’s rugged treeless plateau was pitted with craters. Even the rubble in the towns remained blackened from the RAF’s phosphorus bomb experiments. The island was so littered with explosives that German government officials calculated it would be a further five years before they were cleared and the island made safe to be fully habitable.

  Appropriately on an island whose function and origin was maritime, the first object constructed as a matter of priority was a temporary lighthouse. Ingeniously adapted for that purpose was the Red Tower, the only structure still standing. There being no other shelter on the island, for a while bomb disposal experts and construction workers had to live on board a ship berthed in the wrecked harbour. As soon as the handover ceremony had finished, bulldozers set to work clearing the piles of rubble. The entire Unterland was raised in height by one metre. Hitherto it had been so close to the high water mark that floodwaters had been known to reach 300 metres along the street to Heligoland’s only post office. In the preceding months much effort had been expended by the government of Schleswig-Holstein in consulting with architects and representatives of the islanders as to what form the island’s new houses should take. It was agreed that the narrow street plan, and most of the historic street names, should be as before; the houses would remain nestled at the foot of the cliff across the harbour, and also clustered on its southern ridge. However, such was the islanders’ understandable disenchantment with the British that they decided to start anew in terms of the style of their houses. Psychologically wrong-footed, they took a decision some would later regret, to rebuild their homes in an uncompromisingly modern style rather than in the traditional form.

  The envisaged cost of making the island inhabitable and reconstructing its civil buildings, hotels and harbours was estimated at between £11 million and £20 million – an immense amount at the time. Heavy shipping charges meant the cost of rebuilding houses on the island was so horrendously high it was equivalent to constructing homes for 20,000 people on the mainland. Nevertheless, such was the sentimental power of the place, in Bonn the coalition and opposition parties were agreed that the reconstruction of Heligoland was an all-German obligation. President Heuss and Chancellor Adenauer, having become patrons of a special Heligoland appeal fund, publicly called upon the already financially shattered German people for contributions in cost or kind. The Federal Government considered issuing a special series of Heligoland stamps, while Heuss and Adenauer endorsed an ingenious scheme whereby fragments of RAF bombs were mounted on wooden shields and sold as ‘Helgoland Plaques’ for the equivalent of 4 shillings each to raise funds.

  The sale of these plaques throughout Germany, and presumably in East Germany as well, caused consternation. There was a possibility that some of the shrapnel could contain fragments of blue steel molybdenum, from the tail-fin and nose-cone sections of the experimental bombs the RAF had been dropping on Heligoland. Clumsily trying to deter the spread of these valuable fragments, in February 1954 the British authorities declared that they would be liable for customs duty on the mainland.

  For all the German authorities’ declared good intentions, the rebuilding was faltering. In early 1958 Sir Douglas Savory received via Franz Siemens a report by the Frisian Bureau of Michigan showing that, six years after the bombing had stopped, 65 per cent of the Heligolanders were still having to live on the mainland. Few houses had been constructed as practically all the rebuilding had been of maritime installations. Such lack of progress was being worsened by Britain’s unwillingness to provide compensation. Savory was in a quandary: he was no longer at Westminster (having left Parliament in 1955); nor, since Lord Douglas-Hamilton had also stood down, was there any parliamentarian with a detailed knowledge of Heligoland; and besides Savory knew from experience that the Clerk of the House of Commons would deliberately refuse to accept any questions for which the Foreign Secretary could not be held responsible. Therefore, on 18 July 1958, Savory wrote to the Federal Chancellor, informing Adenauer of the concerns of Franz Siemens and all the other Heligolanders.

  That helped accelerate the rebuilding programme. The recladding of damaged patches on the walls of the Red Tower in 1962, which was by then a permanent lighthouse, marked the end of the other planned phase of reconstruction. Domestic houses having been rebuilt, the new priority was to re-create public buildings which had formerly been part of the island’s allure for tourists. In due course there appeared a seaside and health resort, an aquarium and a sanctuary for migratory birds. By 1961 a tourist office was established. The rebuilding which had taken place was of such quality that Heligoland had become one of the most modern holiday resorts in northern Europe, and a complete example in miniature of Germany’s miraculous economic regrowth. In sporting terms the island returned to normality, participating in the Inter-island Games – a relatively unknown mini-Olympic competition between various European islands. In yacht racing it became the starting point for a biennial 550-mile race to Kiel. The island also won some renown for hosting the annual ‘North Sea Week’ regatta, which included feeder races from Cuxhaven and Bremerhaven. Being inescapably linked to Germany’s submarine history, appropriately enough Heligoland was used for filming several scenes for the celebrated 1981 television film Das Boot. Twenty years earlier crucial footage of the ‘Big Bang’ had been used in the credits of the film, The Guns of Navarone, albeit only fleetingly.

  Thus it was that Heligoland remained totally forgotten by Britain. To the islanders’ astonishment the British government eventually issued a celebrated expression of sorrow for its gratuitous wartime bombing of Dresden, at the far end of the Elbe – yet the gratuitous postwar bombing of the former British colony of Heligoland was not apologised for, either at the time of the March 1952 handover to Germany or subsequently. But by chance the German correspondent of The Times happened to make a visit to the island where he interviewed its Bürgermeister, the former leader of the Heligoland Society, Henry Rickmers. Now aged eighty-one, Rickmers recalls in broken English that in spite of his own bitterness after the war, he had long cherished a hope that it would be possible to re-establish the friendly relations with Britain which existed at the time when the island was under British rule. The 25th and 50th anniversaries of the historic 1890 cession had both fallen during a world war, and 1965 was going to be the first opportunity to celebrate such a jubilee in peacetime. That occasion was, Rickmers knew, being planned as an all-German celebration, so he was not hopeful that consideration would be given to any thoughts of Britain. Nevertheless the journalist was impressed and worked it into his article ‘Heligoland Arises from the Ashes’, which was printed
on 14 May 1964. It ended with a recommendation, prompted by Rickmers: ‘Perhaps the seventy-fifth anniversary of its transfer to Germany, when “God Save the Queen” last rang out over the island, could be a worthy occasion.’

  The celebration on 10 August 1965 was certainly a great occasion, with a cavalcade of important visitors to the island, of whom the most prominent were the Federal Chancellor, Dr Ludwig Erhard; the Defence Minister; and even the President of Schleswig-Holstein; plus a host of officials and representatives of the German press. Chancellor Erhard had interrupted his election tour of north Germany to sail across from Wilhelmshaven in a corvette, making his first ever sea trip. Arriving just as the Kaiser had done in 1890 to take possession for Germany, he was warmly greeted in fine weather by the island’s inhabitants and many holidaymakers. In spite of some competition, provided by Bremen’s thousand-year celebrations on the same day, the total number of guests on the island on that day was over twelve thousand – or, to put it another way, six guests for every native of the tiny island. From the very outset Erhard used the visit to emphasise the importance of reconciliation, and at the foot of the main landing stage he laid a wreath on the memorial to Hoffmann von Fallersleben, the German poet who wrote the words of the national anthem in August 1841. The Chancellor explained that the words of Deutschland über Alles were intended to encourage people to put Germany above the then existing collection of small quarrelling states, and that in the Wilhelmine period a wrong and dangerous interpretation had been put upon the words – that Germany must come above everything else in the world. The important phrase now, he said, in the new national anthem was ‘unity, justice and freedom’.

  The climax of the ceremonials was an open-air church service and a ‘Festakt’ at the highest point of the island beside the lighthouse. It seemed only appropriate that the day’s jollifications should end on a solemn and impressive note as the crowd sat in darkness on the spot where Kaiser Wilhelm II had officially taken over the island. The religious service was simple, solemn and moving. The same hymns were played as in 1890 and the same music also accompanied the Festakt, which concluded with the mass singing of Fallersleben’s 1841 national anthem. In an interview broadcast on Deutsche Welle radio, which was afterwards printed in the official government bulletin, the Chancellor emphasised that Heligoland, once the symbol of unhealthy opposition to England, was now no longer a ‘bulwark’ – the Kaiser’s description – against a traditional enemy. It was, on the contrary, a symbol of peace and of peaceful accomplishments.

  Soon after The Times article appeared in May 1964 the British Consul-General in Hamburg, K.R. Oakeshott, hastened to the island to discuss details of the 1890 commemoration. The intended ceremony was a purely German affair, with many notables from the mainland. Bürgermeister Rickmers – for all his enthusiasm – was pessimistic about his ambition to have some British participation, although he hoped for some gesture from the British. Oakeshott reported this to the British ambassador in Bonn at the time, Sir Frank Roberts. This was the same Frank Roberts who, as a junior Foreign Office bureaucrat in the late 1930s, had drafted letters for Anthony Eden deflecting suggestions that Britain should recolonise Heligoland. Sir Frank ought to have got some inkling of just how much the island still meant to Germans in August 1964 when, as ambassador, he had attended an Anglo-German ceremony in Cologne marking the 50th anniversary of the Battle of Heligoland (the first naval battle between Britain and Germany during the First World War). The battle was still so relatively recent that present was a former naval stoker, Adolf Neumann, who was the sole survivor of the flagship Köln, which had been sunk with all hands. Despite this, when the 75th anniversary of the cession was about to take place, British officials were hopelessly ill-prepared for it. A flustered Roberts later wrote to the Foreign Secretary, Michael Stewart: ‘Although I had looked forward to this occasion as likely to prove useful for Anglo-German relations, I must confess that I had never expected that the result would be so strikingly favourable.’4

  On 9 August 1965, the day before Chancellor Erhard’s re-enactment of the Kaiser’s arrival, a ‘British evening’ reception had been given by Bürgermeister Rickmers. It took place at the same hour as one held exactly seventy-five years earlier by Arthur Barkly. In the absence of a British consular presence on the island the Foreign Office had never bothered to keep track of the views of the islanders. Thus it had no means of knowing that, as memories of the bombings gradually faded, there was a resurgence of the traditional warmth towards the British, derived from memories handed down of benevolent British rule. A declassified report by Oakeshott about the commemorations reveals that a German admiral had confided that many Heligolanders believed the friendly atmosphere of the ‘British evening’ was the high point of the celebrations. Typical of the spirit of the Heligolanders was the fact that the island’s own flag normally flew proudly at the top of a display of flags. Significantly, although the German Federal flag and the Union Jack tended to come next, the British flag – Oakeshott reported – ‘sometimes had pride of place’. He went on:

  Everywhere I heard comments from the islanders about the tradition of the benevolence of the British Governors. An example of the regard in which we were subsequently held, in spite of war-time experience, was made to me by one of the two students who had squatted on the island thirteen years ago, that he would not have done so had he not been convinced of the fairness and generosity of the British.5

  Yet although the Royal Navy had helped to improve relations by sending to the island the modern conventional submarine HMS Opossum, which some several hundred people eagerly clambered over, the best the Foreign Office could manage, somewhat belatedly, was the presentation by Sir Frank to the islanders of two bound volumes of copies of official documents covering the eighty-three years of British administration. From Heligoland, goodwill towards the British spread to the seafaring northern parts of Germany with which British connections had always been closest. All this took place in the aftermath of the Queen’s successful state visit to Germany that summer. As Roberts himself saw on an official visit to the island via Cuxhaven, Bremerhaven and Bremen, the Heligoland celebrations were having a beneficial impact.

  In the wider context of the 1890 settlement, Germany was willing to accommodate the ghosts of the past. During his fleeting visit to Heligoland on 10 August 1965 Chancellor Erhard went out of his way to explain in the context of Zanzibar that the ‘colonial conception of the Wilhelmine period had completely disappeared in a Germany which now only wants to cooperate in development projects and through association with the EEC with overseas countries and more especially with the independent nations in Africa’. In contrast, British officialdom preferred to forget, tending to believe that Britain had no place in celebrations regarding a possession that was now another country’s. In 1964, in a distant continent, Zanzibar was decolonised and became part of Tanzania. The next year official celebrations were held in Zanzibar to celebrate the end of the Second World War. Even so, the Foreign Office reprimanded Britain’s Deputy High Commissioner there who dared to politely attend.6

  11

  Forgotten Island

  Even in summertime now, when the seas in the Bight are too rough for ferries to disembark their passengers in the roadstead, the only means by which Heligoland can be reached is by light aircraft. Yet the difficulties involved in finding such a plane well illustrate why it is that the island has become almost entirely unknown to non-Germans. For today’s British traveller the first stage is a scheduled Lufthansa flight from London to Hamburg’s busy high-tech Fuhisbüttel airport. With just two propeller-driven planes, Helgoland Airlines is among the world’s smallest regional airlines, so much so that enquiries at Fuhisbüttel’s information services and two or three speculative shuttle-bus trips to other terminals reveal nothing. Eventually it transpires that they might be flying from the executive aircraft hangars on the air freight side of the airport, but there is no such airline nameplate outside the flying club-style building. All is
deserted. Only after several minutes’ searching is a clue found – an old Helgoland Airlines poster showing times of departure. So this is the place. Eventually a pilot arrives and announces that the scheduled flight will be leaving for the island an hour early, so it can stop off and collect passengers from another airfield en route.

  Appropriately enough, a sturdy and immaculately kept Channel Isles-built Britten-Norman Islander is the workhorse of Helgoland Airlines. Its jaunty Jolly Roger fluttering piratically at the cockpit window is removed and securely furled, and the twin engines thunder into life. Within minutes the rugged aluminium plane is airborne, en route to a military maritime reconnaissance airfield to collect a cargo of excitedly chattering German holidaymakers. Soon resuming its 150-km journey to the island, the plane heads north-west along the wide serpentine Elbe, passing first Brunsbüttel at the mouth of the Kiel Canal and then the resort of Cuxhaven. The ebbing tide exposes vast tracts of muddy saltflats, green with algae and criss-crossed with impromptu rivulets. This is all now a national wildlife park. The sight of those historic islets, the Scharhorn, Neuwerk and the Grosser Knechtsand, inevitably reminds the traveller that this was the sight Erskine Childers would have been seen from his seaplane on the Cuxhaven raid in 1914. Perhaps it was the last land the doomed Hampden bomber crews ever saw before they were all shot down in flames in 1939. At 120 knots the Britten-Norman continues at 2,000ft, blown around like a leaf in turbulence; while in the wild Bight below coastal merchant ships and sailing yachts, pitching heavily in the swell, claw through a white-horsed sea along the Lower Saxony coast.