Chequered history takes another twist as tourism plan rejected

HELGOLAND LETTER:German interest in its only high-sea island has been rekindled by the keen debate among residents about a plan to increase its land mass

ASIDE FROM lung-cleansing gusts of wind, Helgoland doesn’t give much away to day-trippers. Relief at being back on firm ground soon turns to disappointment at what Germany’s only high-sea island appears to offer.

A row of shacks selling duty-free alcohol and cigarettes leads into a small town of 1960s buildings that are functional, shabby or both.

Just one square kilometre in area, a stroll around the island takes just a few minutes. The island’s most famous resident is “Long Anna”, a 50-metre free-standing red rock column.

Within an hour the German day-trippers – mostly pensioners with Nordic walking sticks – wonder aloud how they will kill the hours until the two-hour trip back to the mainland.

The island was headline news yesterday when 54 per cent of the 1,300 Helgolanders rejected a plan to reunite with Düne, an adjacent island separated in a storm nearly three centuries ago.

Reclaiming the land between the islands would have increased their surface area by a quarter, offering space for a new marina, new homes, hotels, a conference centre and even an amusement park.

The plan’s supporters said it would bring Helgoland back to its historical roots as a health spa, where visitors one enjoyed the fresh, pollen-free air.

It was here in 1925 that German physicist Werner Heisenberg, relieved from the plague of hay fever, developed quantum theory.

But those opposed to the plan were victorious, arguing it would bring mass tourism and destroy the islands’ unique character.

Passing back and forth between London and Berlin over the centuries, Helgoland has been in German hands since a final swap in 1890 saw the British gain Zanzibar in exchange.

What Helgoland lacks in size it makes up for in strategic importance. In the second World War, the Nazis built a vast underground base here, including a hospital.

Under heavy British bombing, the island was evacuated in April 1945.

Of the original, Nazi-era tunnel network through the rocky island, originally estimated to have run over 40km, some 13km survives and can be visited today: clammy first-aid rooms and dank dormitories are a claustrophobic and chilling memorial to the madness of war.

The Royal Air Force held on to the island for target practice and bomb tests and it was returned to Germany in ruins some 40 years ago.

Tourism brought life back to the island and the postwar decades made Helgoland a favourite among west German tourists.

But since German unification, and the rise of low-cost airlines, week-long stays have given way to day-trippers who spend little except on duty free. The money earned by islanders over the decades was not invested back into the infrastructure and, these days, the falling number of overnight guests are treated to a uniquely 1980s atmosphere in tired, threadbare hotels.

What few visitors realise is that Helgoland is a treasure island, too. Its treasure trove is not gold or silver but numbers: the island has one of world’s oldest and richest marine data sets, going back to 1873.

“The British were great for going to the end of pier and measuring things – they must have been bored out of their brains here,” laughs Prof Karen Wiltshire, the Rathfarnham-born custodian of the marine data set.

As head of the island’s Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research, she employs 120 people on the island in marine biology research.

“Helgoland is an oasis of mud and sand in a desert of water and attracts all sorts of animals and plants,” says Prof Wiltshire, who is married to a Dutchman and lives on Helgoland with their two sons, Oisín and Malte.

“You have to be resilient to live here,” she says. “Winter is really like living on the Skelligs. Everyone on the mainland thinks we’re kind of barmy to be here at all.” The island offers an ideal vantage point to compare current and historical marine data. In recent years the pattern is clear, she says: a “dramatic warming trend” of the North Sea.

Today Prof Wiltshire is spearheading a fundraising effort for the “Bluehouse” project to transform the island’s aquarium into an open-to-all research centre. She is optimistic that her Helgoland neighbours – and mainlanders, too – can look beyond tourism to make more of the riches nature has given them.

After leaving Ireland in the dark recessionary days of the 1980s, Prof Wiltshire hopes to build links and create opportunities for young Irish academics. For them, she says, moving abroad for research is a real alternative to the unappealing choice at home between short-term work contracts and the dole queue.

“For me, Helgoland is a science island,” says Prof Wiltshire. “That’s something we need to get across better.”