princes to tradesmen, and most came from Hamburg and the other towns on the neighbouring coast. The paddle-steamer trip from Hamburg, down the winding Elbe, across the estuary and thence into the Bight, was in distance remarkably similar to the trip Londoners might regularly make to Margate on the Kent coast. Significantly, few of the summertime visitors to Heligoland were British; they were virtually all German.
Because the British Empire embraced dozens of small island colonies – many of them tropical – across the world, Heligoland was naturally perceived by most British people in benignly matter-of-fact terms as being relatively unexceptional, but to the Germans it was a vivid novelty. Not only was it a unique offshore (rather than inshore) North Sea island, it was physically totally unlike anywhere else in Lower Saxony. In contrast to the mile upon mile of deserted fields that made up the drably featureless Frisian coastline, ‘perhaps covered in snow, bathed in a murky light’, 7 the Germans regarded Heligoland as geographically unique, with its towering red cliffs, rocky shore and capricious sands. These beguiling attractions were enhanced by the oscillating tides and the presence of countless gulls and migratory seabirds which seasonally flocked to the island from distant lands. The mesmerising, magical sense of a charmed island which had somehow survived the rigours of fierce storms yet remained beautiful all added to the sense of the place as a whimsical paradise.
In contrast to their British counterparts, German writers, artists and musicians were heavily influenced by the North Sea island. Composers who went there for spiritual fieldwork included Anton Bruckner (who in 1893 even wrote a work aptly entitled Helgoland ), Franz Liszt, Hans von Bülow, and even the Austrian Gustav Mahler. Among the Germanic artists drawn to the island were the painter Gustav Schönleber. Sturmläuken auf Helgoland , a dramatic oil painting depicting Rubensesque Heligolanders hurrying along a street in a violent storm, was created by Rudolf Jordan. Famous writers also came: men of such stature as Franz Kafka, August Strindberg, and also Friedrich Hebbel. A particularly enthusiastic visitor was the influential German travel writer Reinhardt – the originator of the hymn ‘Watch of the German Fatherland’ – who published a glowing account of his trip.
To the bemusement of the independently minded islanders, creative Prussian intellectuals presumptuously depicted Heligoland as the exemplification of German virtues and the ‘Germanic spirit’. None did it more preposterously than the German lyricist August Heinrich Hoffmann. But few Heligolanders could have predicted his achievement back in 1841 when he first arrived on the island, virtually unnoticed. Born in Fallersleben near Wolfsburg in 1798, he had been employed as a professor of the history of language at the University of Breslau. In 1840 he published a political critique expressing National-Liberal views, as a consequence of which he was forced to leave Prussia, and he decided to travel abroad for a few years. On 28 August 1841, while sheltering as a political exile in Heligoland, he wrote the song ‘Deutschland, Deutschland über Alles’ (‘Germany, Germany over all’), under the pen-name Hoffmann von Fallersleben. It was an emotive work that pleaded for a single unified Germany to take precedence over all the numerous states into which the country was fragmented at the time. In due course, a number of years later, the song became Germany’s national anthem. This had the effect of bolstering the growing but absurd myth that Heligoland was, by association, something to do with Germany.
Ironically, one unexpected consequence of adhering to Sir Edward Thornton’s well-meant entreaty that the colony be administered more or less as it had been in Danish times was that in two symbolic respects its sovereignty could be misconstrued as having German elements. Shortly
Because the British Empire embraced dozens of small island colonies – many of them tropical – across the world, Heligoland was naturally perceived by most British people in benignly matter-of-fact terms as being relatively unexceptional, but to the Germans it was a vivid novelty. Not only was it a unique offshore (rather than inshore) North Sea island, it was physically totally unlike anywhere else in Lower Saxony. In contrast to the mile upon mile of deserted fields that made up the drably featureless Frisian coastline, ‘perhaps covered in snow, bathed in a murky light’, 7 the Germans regarded Heligoland as geographically unique, with its towering red cliffs, rocky shore and capricious sands. These beguiling attractions were enhanced by the oscillating tides and the presence of countless gulls and migratory seabirds which seasonally flocked to the island from distant lands. The mesmerising, magical sense of a charmed island which had somehow survived the rigours of fierce storms yet remained beautiful all added to the sense of the place as a whimsical paradise.
In contrast to their British counterparts, German writers, artists and musicians were heavily influenced by the North Sea island. Composers who went there for spiritual fieldwork included Anton Bruckner (who in 1893 even wrote a work aptly entitled Helgoland ), Franz Liszt, Hans von Bülow, and even the Austrian Gustav Mahler. Among the Germanic artists drawn to the island were the painter Gustav Schönleber. Sturmläuken auf Helgoland , a dramatic oil painting depicting Rubensesque Heligolanders hurrying along a street in a violent storm, was created by Rudolf Jordan. Famous writers also came: men of such stature as Franz Kafka, August Strindberg, and also Friedrich Hebbel. A particularly enthusiastic visitor was the influential German travel writer Reinhardt – the originator of the hymn ‘Watch of the German Fatherland’ – who published a glowing account of his trip.
To the bemusement of the independently minded islanders, creative Prussian intellectuals presumptuously depicted Heligoland as the exemplification of German virtues and the ‘Germanic spirit’. None did it more preposterously than the German lyricist August Heinrich Hoffmann. But few Heligolanders could have predicted his achievement back in 1841 when he first arrived on the island, virtually unnoticed. Born in Fallersleben near Wolfsburg in 1798, he had been employed as a professor of the history of language at the University of Breslau. In 1840 he published a political critique expressing National-Liberal views, as a consequence of which he was forced to leave Prussia, and he decided to travel abroad for a few years. On 28 August 1841, while sheltering as a political exile in Heligoland, he wrote the song ‘Deutschland, Deutschland über Alles’ (‘Germany, Germany over all’), under the pen-name Hoffmann von Fallersleben. It was an emotive work that pleaded for a single unified Germany to take precedence over all the numerous states into which the country was fragmented at the time. In due course, a number of years later, the song became Germany’s national anthem. This had the effect of bolstering the growing but absurd myth that Heligoland was, by association, something to do with Germany.
Ironically, one unexpected consequence of adhering to Sir Edward Thornton’s well-meant entreaty that the colony be administered more or less as it had been in Danish times was that in two symbolic respects its sovereignty could be misconstrued as having German elements. Shortly
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