British Administration of Heligoland

Heligoland (; german: Helgoland, ; Heligolandic Frisian: , , Mooring Frisian: , da, Helgoland) is a small archipelago in the North Sea. A part of the German state of Schleswig-Holstein since 1890, the islands were historically possessions of Denmark, then became the possessions of the United Kingdom from 1807 to 1890, and briefly managed as a war prize from 1945 to 1952.

The islands are located in the Heligoland Bight (part of the German Bight) in the southeastern corner of the North Sea and had a population of 1,127 at the end of 2016. They are the only German islands not in the vicinity of the mainland. They lie approximately by sea from Cuxhaven at the mouth of the River Elbe. During a visit to the islands, August Heinrich Hoffmann von Fallersleben wrote the lyrics to "", which became the national anthem of Germany.

In addition to German, the local population, who are ethnic Frisians, speak the Heligolandic dialect of the North Frisian language called .

Name

The island had no distinct name before the 19th century. It was often referred to by variants of the High German ''Heiligland'' ('holy land') and once even as the island of the Holy Virgin Ursula. Theodor Siebs summarized the critical discussion of the name in the 19th century in 1909 with the thesis that, based on the Frisian self-designation of the Heligolanders as ''Halunder'', the island name meant 'high land' ( similar to Hallig). In the following discussion by Jürgen Spanuth, Wolfgang Laur again proposed the original name of ''Heiligland''. The variant ''Helgoland'', which has appeared since the 16th century, is said to have been created by scholars who Latinized a North Frisian form ''Helgeland'', using it to refer to a legendary hero, Helgi.
''Reallexikon der germanischen Altertumskunde,'' Vol. 14, Artikel ''Helgoland.'' Berlin 1999.

For example, in Heike Grahn-Hoek
Online ''Heiliges Land – Helgoland und seine früheren Namen''.
In: Uwe Ludwig, Thomas Schilp (eds.): ''Nomen et fraternitas. Festschrift für Dieter Geuenich zum 65. Geburtstag'' (Supplementary volumes to the ''Reallexikon des Germanischen Altertums''). De Gruyter, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-11-020238-0, p. 480.
The discussion is complicated by a disagreement as to which of the listed names really refers to the island of Helgoland, and by a desire for the island to still been seen as holy today.

Geography

Heligoland is located off the German coastline and consists of two islands: the populated triangular main island () to the west, and the ('dune', Heligolandic: ) to the east. ''Heligoland'' generally refers to the former island. is somewhat smaller at , lower, and surrounded by sand beaches. It is not permanently inhabited, but is today the location of Heligoland's airfield.

The main island is commonly divided into the ('Lower Land', Heligolandic: ) at sea level (to the right on the photograph, where the harbour is located), the ('Upper Land', Heligolandic: ) consisting of the plateau visible in the photographs, and the ('Middle Land') between them on one side of the island. The came into being in 1947 as a result of explosions detonated by the British Royal Navy (the so-called "Big Bang"; see below).

The main island also features small beaches in the north and the south and drops to the sea high in the north, west and southwest. In the latter, the ground continues to drop underwater to a depth of below sea level. Heligoland's most famous landmark is the ('Long Anna' or 'Tall Anna'), a free-standing rock column (or stack), high, found northwest of the island proper.

The two islands were connected until 1720 when the natural connection was destroyed by a storm flood. The highest point is on the main island, reaching above sea level.

Although culturally and geographically closer to North Frisia in the German district of , the two islands are part of the district of Pinneberg in the state of Schleswig-Holstein. The main island has a good harbour and is frequented mostly by sailing yachts.

History

The German Bight and the area around the island are known to have been inhabited since prehistoric times. Flint tools have been recovered from the bottom of the sea surrounding Heligoland. On the ''Oberland'', prehistoric burial mounds were visible until the late 19th century, and excavations showed skeletons and artifacts. Moreover, prehistoric copper plates have been found underwater near the island; those plates were almost certainly made on the ''Oberland''.

In 697, Radbod, the last Frisian king, retreated to the then-single island after his defeat by the Franks—or so it is written in the ''Life of Willebrord'' by Alcuin. By 1231, the island was listed as the property of the Danish king Valdemar II. Archaeological findings from the 12th to 14th centuries suggest that copper ore was processed on the island.

There is a general understanding that the name "Heligoland" means "Holy Land" (compare modern Dutch and German ''heilig'', "holy"). In the course of the centuries several alternative theories have been proposed to explain the name, from a Danish king Heligo to a Frisian word, ''hallig'', meaning "salt marsh island". The 1911 ''Encyclopædia Britannica'' suggests ''Hallaglun'', or ''Halligland'', i.e. "land of banks, which cover and uncover".

Traditional economic activities included fishing, hunting birds and seals, wrecking and—very important for many overseas powers—piloting overseas ships into the harbours of Hanseatic League cities such as Bremen and Hamburg. In some periods Heligoland was an excellent base point for huge herring catches. Until 1714 ownership switched several times between Denmark-Norway and the Duchy of Schleswig, with one period of control by Hamburg. In August 1714, it was conquered by Denmark-Norway, and it remained Danish until 1807.

19th century

On 11 September 1807, during the Napoleonic Wars, brought to the Admiralty the despatches from Admiral Thomas Macnamara Russell announcing Heligoland's capitulation to the British. Heligoland became a centre of resistance and intrigue against Napoleon. Denmark then ceded Heligoland to George III of the United Kingdom by the Treaty of Kiel (14 January 1814). Thousands of Germans came to Britain and joined the King's German Legion via Heligoland.

The British annexation of Heligoland was ratified by the Treaty of Paris signed on 30 May 1814, as part of a number of territorial reallocations following the abdication of Napoleon as Emperor of the French.

The prime reason at the time for Britain's retention of a small and seemingly worthless acquisition was to restrict any future French naval aggression against the Scandinavian or German states. In the event, no effort was made during the period of British administration to make use of the islands for military purposes, partly for financial reasons but principally because the Royal Navy considered Heligoland to be too exposed as a forward base.

In 1826, Heligoland became a seaside spa and soon turned into a popular tourist resort for the European upper class. The island attracted artists and writers, especially from Germany and Austria who apparently enjoyed the comparatively liberal atmosphere, including Heinrich Heine and August Heinrich Hoffmann von Fallersleben. More vitally it was a refuge for revolutionaries of the 1830s and the 1848 German revolution.

As related in ''The Leisure Hour'', it was "a land where there are no bankers, no lawyers, and no crime; where all gratuities are strictly forbidden, the landladies are all honest and the boatmen take no tips", while ''The English Illustrated Magazine'' provided a description in the most glowing terms: "No one should go there who cannot be content with the charms of brilliant light, of ever-changing atmospheric effects, of a land free from the countless discomforts of a large and busy population, and of an air that tastes like draughts of life itself."

Britain ceded the islands to Germany in 1890 in the Heligoland–Zanzibar Treaty. The newly unified Germany was concerned about a foreign power controlling land from which it could command the western entrance to the militarily-important Kiel Canal, then under construction along with other naval installations in the area and thus traded for it. A "grandfathering"/ optant approach prevented the inhabitants of the islands from forfeiting advantages because of this imposed change of status.

Heligoland has an important place in the history of the study of ornithology, and especially the understanding of migration. The book ''Heligoland, an Ornithological Observatory'' by Heinrich Gätke, published in German in 1890 and in English in 1895, described an astonishing array of migrant birds on the island and was a major influence on future studies of bird migration.

In 1892, the Biological Station of Helgoland was founded by phycologist Paul Kuckuck, a student of Johannes Reinke (leading marine phycologist).

20th century

Under the German Empire, the islands became a major naval base, and during the First World War the civilian population was evacuated to the mainland. The island was fortified with concrete gun emplacements along its cliffs similar to the Rock of Gibraltar. Island defences included 364 mounted guns including 142 disappearing guns overlooking shipping channels defended with ten rows of naval mines. The first naval engagement of the war, the Battle of Heligoland Bight, was fought nearby in the first month of the war. The islanders returned in 1918, but during the Nazi era the naval base was reactivated.

Werner Heisenberg (1901–1976) first formulated the equation underlying his picture of quantum mechanics while on Heligoland in the 1920s. While a student of Arnold Sommerfeld at Munich in the early 1920s, Heisenberg first met the Danish physicist Niels Bohr. He and Bohr went for long hikes in the mountains and discussed the failure of existing theories to account for the new experimental results on the quantum structure of matter. Following these discussions, Heisenberg plunged into several months of intensive theoretical research but met with continual frustration. Finally, suffering from a severe attack of hay fever that his aspirin and cocaine treatment was failing to alleviate, he retreated to the treeless (and pollenless) island of Heligoland in the summer of 1925. There he conceived the basis of the quantum theory.

In 1937, construction began on a major reclamation project () intended to expand existing naval facilities and restore the island to its pre-1629 dimensions, restoring large areas which had been eroded by the sea. The project was largely abandoned after the start of World War II and was never completed.

World War II

The area was the setting of the aerial Battle of the Heligoland Bight in 1939, a result of Royal Air Force bombing raids on Kriegsmarine warships in the area. The waters surrounding the island were frequently mined by Allied aircraft.

Heligoland also had a military function as a sea fortress in the Second World War. Completed and ready for use were the submarine bunker North Sea III, the coastal artillery, an air-raid shelter system with extensive bunker tunnels and the airfield with the air force – (April to October 1943). Forced labour of, among others, citizens of the Soviet Union were used during the construction of military installations during World War II.''Lager russischer Offiziere und Soldaten, Helgoland Nordost''
auf spurensuche-kreis-pinneberg.de

On 3 December 1939, Heligoland was directly bombed by the Allies for the first time. The attack, by twenty four Wellington bombers of 38, 115 and 149 squadrons of the Royal Air Force failed to destroy the German warships at anchor.Seekrieg
''1939 Dezember''
(Württemberg State Library, Stuttgart). Retrieved 4 July 2015.

In three days in 1940, the Royal Navy lost three submarines in Heligoland: on 6 January, on 7 January and on 9 January.bremerhaven.de
''Unter den Wellen Teil 3 – Britische U-Boote vor Helgoland''
. February 2013.

Early in the war, the island was generally unaffected by bombing raids. Through the development of the Luftwaffe, the island had largely lost its strategic importance. The , temporarily used for defense against Allied bombing raids, was equipped with a rare variant of the Messerschmitt Bf 109 fighter originally designed for use on aircraft carriers.

Shortly before the war ended in 1945, Georg Braun and Erich Friedrichs succeeded in forming a resistance group. Shortly before they were to execute the plans, however, they were betrayed by two members of the group. About twenty men were arrested on 18 April 1945; fourteen of them were transported to Cuxhaven. After a short trial, five resisters were executed by firing squad at Cuxhaven-Sahlenburg on 21 April 1945 by the German authorities.Wolfgang Stelljes. ''Verräter kam aus den eigenen Reihen.'' In: ''Journal'' (weekend edition of ''Nordwest Zeitung''), Volume 70, No. 84 (1112 April 2015), s. 1.

To honour them, in April 2010 the Helgoland Museum installed six stumbling blocks on the roads of Heligoland. Their names are Erich P. J. Friedrichs, Georg E. Braun, Karl Fnouka, Kurt A. Pester, Martin O. Wachtel, and Heinrich Prüß.

With two waves of bombing raids on 18 and 19 April 1945, 1,000 Allied aircraft dropped about 7,000 bombs on the islands. The populace took shelter in air raid shelters. The German military suffered heavy casualties during the raids.Imke Zimmermann
''Im Schutz der roten Felsen – Bunker auf Helgoland''
vom 19. April 2005, auf fr-online.de The bomb attacks rendered the island unsafe, and it was totally evacuated.

Explosion

From 1945 to 1952 the uninhabited islands fell within the British Occupation zone and were used as a bombing range. On 18 April 1947, the Royal Navy detonated 6,700 tonnes of explosives ("Operation Big Bang" or "British Bang") in an attempt to destroy the island entirely and remove it as a fleet base location for Germany. This resulted in one of the biggest single non-nuclear detonations in history. The blow shook the main island several miles down to its base, changing its shape (the was created).

Return of sovereignty to Germany

On 20 December 1950, two students and a professor from Heidelberg – René Leudesdorff, Georg von Hatzfeld and Hubertus zu Löwenstein – occupied the off-limits island and raised various German, European and local flags. The students were arrested by the soldiers present and brought back to Germany. The event started a movement to restore the islands to West Germany, which gained the support of the West German parliament. On 1 March 1952, Heligoland was returned to German control, and the former inhabitants were allowed to return. The first of March is an official holiday on the island. The German authorities cleared a significant quantity of unexploded ordnance and rebuilt the houses before allowing its citizens to resettle there.

21st century

Heligoland, like the small exclave Büsingen am Hochrhein, is now a holiday resort and enjoys a tax-exempt status, being part of Germany and the EU but excluded