showing new fortifications in 1919 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 artefacts. Moreover, prehistoric copper plates have been found under water 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, , 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 and denominated in
Hamburg schillings. From 1875 its postage stamps were denominated in both
sterling and
gold marks. 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. , 1843 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 bird 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
theory of quantum mechanics while on Heligoland in the 1920s. While a student of
Arnold Sommerfeld at Munich, Heisenberg first met the Danish physicist
Niels Bohr in 1922 at the
Bohr Festival,
Göttingen. 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,
coastal artillery, an air-raid shelter system with extensive bunker tunnels, and an airfield used by
air force – (April to October 1943).
Forced labour of, among others, citizens of the
Soviet Union were used in the construction of these military installations. 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. In three days in 1940, the
Royal Navy lost three
submarines near Heligoland: on 6 January, on 7 January and on 9 January. 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 defence against Allied bombing raids, was equipped with a rare variant of the
Messerschmitt Bf 109 fighter originally designed for use on
aircraft carriers. Not long before the war ended in 1945, Georg Braun and Erich Friedrichs succeeded in forming an
anti-Nazi resistance group on the island. Shortly before they were to execute their 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. 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 hid in air raid shelters. The German military suffered heavy casualties during the raids. 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. On 18 April 1947, the Royal Navy simultaneously detonated 6,700 metric tons of explosives ("
Operation Big Bang" or "British Bang"), successfully destroying the island's principal military installations (namely, the submarine pens, the coastal batteries at the north and south ends of the island and of main storage tunnels) while leaving the town, already damaged by Allied bombing during the Second World War, "looking little worse" (according to an observer quoted in
The Guardian newspaper). The destruction of the submarine pens resulted in the creation of the Mittelland crater. The British later used the island, from which the population had been evacuated, as a bombing range. The explosion was one of the
biggest single non-nuclear detonations in history. issued by to commemorate the 1952 restoration of Helgoland
Return of sovereignty to Germany On 20 December 1950, two students from
HeidelbergRené Leudesdorff and Georg von Hatzfeld, accompanied by journalistsspent two days and a night on the island, planting in various combinations the
flags of West Germany, the
European Movement International and
Heligoland. They returned with others on 27 December and on 29 December were joined by Heidelberg history professor and publicist
Hubertus zu Löwenstein. The occupation was ended by British authorities, with cooperation of West German police, on 3 January 1951. The event started a movement to restore the islands to Germany, which gained the support of the West German
parliament. On 1 March 1952, Heligoland was placed under West German control and the former inhabitants were allowed to return. The first of March is an official holiday on the island. The government of West Germany cleared a significant quantity of
unexploded ordnance and rebuilt the houses before allowing its citizens to resettle there.
21st century , control station of the and network tower 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 from the
EU VAT area and
customs union. Consequently, much of the economy is founded on sales of cigarettes, alcoholic beverages, and perfume to tourists who visit the islands. The ornithological heritage of Heligoland has also been re-established, with the
Heligoland Bird Observatory, now managed by the ("Ornithological Society of Heligoland") which was founded in 1991. This observatory gives its name to the
Heligoland trap, a bird trapping structure used for bird ringing. A
search and rescue (SAR) base of the
DGzRS, the (German Maritime Search and Rescue Service), is located on Heligoland.
Energy supply Before the island was connected to the mainland network by a submarine cable in 2009, electricity on Heligoland was generated by a local diesel plant. Heligoland was the site of a trial of GROWIAN, a large wind-turbine testing project. In 1990, a 1.2 MW turbine of the MAN type WKA 60 was installed. Besides technical problems, the turbine was not lightning-proof and insurance companies would not provide coverage. The wind energy project was viewed as a failure by the islanders and was stopped. The Heligoland Power Cable has a length of and is one of the longest
AC submarine power cables in the world and the longest of its kind in Germany. It was manufactured by the North German Seacable Works in a single piece and was laid by the
barge Nostag 10 in 2009. The cable is designed for an operational
voltage of 30 kV, and reaches the German mainland at
Sankt Peter-Ording.
Expansion plans and wind industry Plans to re-enlarge the land bridge between different parts of the island by means of
land reclamation came up between 2008 and 2010. However, the local community voted against the project. Since 2013, a new industrial site is being expanded on the southern harbour.
E.ON,
RWE and
WindMW plan to manage operation and services of large offshore windparks from Heligoland. The range had been cleared of leftover ammunition. ==Demographics==