Jan Rüger. Heligoland: Britain, Germany, and the Struggle for the North Sea. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017. Illustrations. 370 pp. $34.95, cloth, ISBN 978-0-19-967246-2.
Reviewed by Douglas Peifer (Air War College)
Published on H-War (March, 2020)
Commissioned by Margaret Sankey (Air University)
Heligoland—or Helgoland to the Germans—is German visitors, officials, and statesmen attached not simply a geographic reality but a “product of to the island. Inhabited since prehistoric times, the the imagination,” according to Jan Rüger, a schol‐ island was home to inhabitants who spoke a ar of Anglo-German relations and professor at Bir‐ Frisian dialect, stubbornly defending their historic beck, University of London (p. 6). The small archi‐ rights and identity, as ownership of the island shift‐ pelago is located in the heart of the German Bight, ed from the Kingdom of Denmark to the British some forty-three miles from Cuxhaven at the Elbe Empire to imperial Germany. Heligoland provides River’s outlet and five hours by sea from Ham‐ a prism for assessing Anglo-German relations as burg. The archipelago consists of two small islands Germany evolved from a confederation of states once connected to each other, a low-level uninhab‐ following the Napoleonic Wars to an empire domi‐ ited sand dune and a slightly larger inhabited is‐ nated by Prussia during the final decades of the land famous for its towering, scenic red sandstone long nineteenth century to a republic following the cliffs. The Royal Navy seized Heligoland from the First World War, then becoming the Third Reich, Danes during the Napoleonic Wars, with Britain re‐ then two Germanies anchored in opposing Cold taining the island for much of the nineteenth cen‐ War alliances, and finally a united, democratic tury until exchanging it with the German Empire Germany after 1990. Consciously shifting the focus in 1890 in return for German concessions in East of analysis away from politicians, diplomats, and Africa. Rüger’s micro-study is more than a study of admirals, Rüger uses Heligoland to paint a nu‐ a small island located in the strategic southeastern anced, differentiated picture of Anglo-German co‐ corner of the North Sea. It is a beautifully written operation, confrontation, and interaction over examination of Anglo-German relations over the two centuries. course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, The book is organized chronologically, with using the real and imagined Heligoland to analyze nine chapters framed by a prologue and epilogue the local and global interplay of British and Ger‐ taking the reader from the early nineteenth centu‐ man Romanticism, nationalism, imperialism, ry to the post-World War II period. The opening navalism, culture, and tourism. chapter does a superb job explaining how and why Rüger draws on art, poetry, film, music, maps, Great Britain acquired Heligoland, taking the read‐ and popular culture alongside diplomatic and mili‐ er back to the life and death struggle between tary records to examine the meaning British and Britain and Napoleonic France. Following Trafal‐ H-Net Reviews gar, Austerlitz, and Jena-Auerstedt, France could tions that criticized their conservative, Restora‐ no longer directly threaten the British Isles with in‐ tionist agendas. German liberals, radicals, and na‐ vasion while Britain faced the grim reality of a Eu‐ tionalists could express themselves relatively rope dominated by France. Faced with economic freely on Heligoland, transforming it into a haven warfare and fearful that Denmark with its power‐ for the poets, painters, and professors of the Vor‐ ful fleet might align with France, in 1807 the British märz (pre-1848) period. Heinrich Heine wrote of government decided to preemptively sink the Dan‐ freedom and revolution in his Helgoländer Briefe ish fleet while seizing Heligoland as an outpost to (1830), and August Heinrich Hoffman (using the northern Germany. The little island became a hub pseudonym Hoffmann von Fallersleben) penned for anti-French activities, allowing Britain to in‐ the Lied der Deutschen while visiting the island in sert spies, support sympathizers, and undermine 1841. The lines of this poem conveyed the national‐ Napoleon’s Continental system. Britain courted ist sentiment of a Germany still divided into multi‐ the cooperation of Heligolanders by assuring them ple kingdoms and principalities and would later be that the British Crown would recognize the rights adopted as the lyrics of the German national an‐ they had enjoyed under Danish rule. By 1810, hun‐ them. By 1844, the island had become “so notorious dreds of vessels moved back and forth between the as a safe haven for national liberals and political island and the German coast, with the Royal Navy radicals” that Klemens von Metternich himself protecting the smuggler’s haven. Rüger estimates warned British authorities that it was becoming a the value of goods shipped through the island over hotbed for troublemakers (p. 40). the three-year period, 1809-1811, as roughly 86.3 Metternich had reason to fear German na‐ million pounds, which, to put things in perspective, tionalism, as the German Confederation experi‐ was equivalent to Britain’s annual budget at that enced revolution, war, and then unification ex‐ time (p. 25). The outpost also served as a recruiting cluding Austria. Chapters 3 through 5 use He‐ station for the king’s German Legion, epitomizing ligoland as a prism for illustrating the cooperative the bonds that developed between Britain and Ger‐ and conflictual elements of the Anglo-German re‐ mans eager to throw of the French yoke. lationship in the second half of the nineteenth cen‐ With the tides of war running against tury. The British governor of Heligoland was a Ger‐ Napoleon by the fall of 1813, Denmark abandoned manophile and a realist, an admirer of German its alliance with France and made a separate culture but one distrustful of Otto von Bismarck’s peace with the United Kingdom and Sweden. One Continental ambitions. British and German influ‐ of the conditions of the Treaty of Kiel signed in ence overlapped on the little outpost of the British January 1814 was that Denmark officially re‐ Empire, with Heligolanders welcoming the increas‐ nounce its claim to Heligoland, ceding the island ing number of German tourists and investors to Britain. Following Napoleon’s final defeat the while retaining the “ancient privileges” the British next year, Heligoland lost its wartime utility as a Crown had promised them (p. 67). The steamship smuggler’s haven, recruiting post, and conduit for made mass tourism to the island possible, with spies and agents. It reverted to what it had been mainland Germans fascinated by the island’s ro‐ before the war—an isolated island community mantic terrain and its association with nationalist subsisting on fishing, local trade, and the occasion‐ poets and painters. The Royal Navy, well aware al visitor. One important distinction, however, set that sentiment on the island was becoming in‐ it apart from the Frisian islands closer to Ger‐ creasingly German, believed that new technolo‐ many: as an outpost of the British Empire, it lay be‐ gies (steam-powered battleships, torpedoes, mines) yond the jurisdiction of Austrian and Prussian offi‐ and strategies (distant vice close blockade) were cials intent on suppressing opinions and publica‐ making the island both more difficult to defend
2 H-Net Reviews and less important geopolitically. In 1890, the military/diplomatic spheres to the cultural and British and German governments negotiated an economic realms. exchange of territories and claims that seemed The second half of the book takes the reader mutually beneficially. In exchange for German through the First World War, the Weimar Republic, claims in East Africa, the British government gave the Third Reich, and the Second World War, con‐ Wilhelmine Germany Heligoland. When some cluding with a chapter about how the Federal Re‐ British officials wondered whether the Heligolan‐ public was able to convince Britain to return the ders should be consulted regarding their prefer‐ island to Germany as the Cold War transformed ences about who should rule them, the Colonial Of‐ enemies into allies. Military historians looking for fice reminded them that putting the matter to a detailed discussion of what units were stationed plebiscite might be unwise as other British territo‐ on the island, of its effectiveness as a screen for ries might point to this as a precedent that should minelayers/sweepers, or of the importance in the apply to them as well. Second World War of the island’s radars and air‐ The Anglo-German Treaty of 1890 was based base for the air war over Germany will be disap‐ on British hopes for a continued, cooperative rela‐ pointed at the level of detail. Rüger likewise touch‐ tionship with the new German Empire. Rüger ana‐ es only lightly on the experience/memories of the lyzes how these hopes withered over the next six thousand strong garrison stationed on the is‐ decade, as Wilhelm II made the fateful decision to land, though one might surmise that the massive build a battleship navy designed to coerce Great Allied air attacks on the island must have made Britain. Heligoland again serves a microcosm for life a terrifying experience. Yet Rüger’s purpose is understanding the changing relationship between not to write a military history but rather to use He‐ Germany and Britain. Heligolanders had been giv‐ ligoland as a mirror for the broader dynamics re‐ en the option of choosing British or German citi‐ flecting Anglo-German relations. His discussion of zenship, and one could find islanders serving on how and why Britain returned the island to Ger‐ both British and German merchant ships well after man control after both world wars is superb, illus‐ the transfer of the territory. Some Heligolanders, at trating the unequal dialogue between victor and sea when the treaty was signed, left Heligoland as vanquished, between occupier and occupied. subjects of the British Crown only to discover upon Britain reluctantly returned Heligoland to Ger‐ their return that they were now Germans. Yet if co‐ many after the First World War on the condition it operation was ascendant in 1890, by the close of be thoroughly demilitarized. Fifteen years later, the decade suspicion had replaced it. The German Adolf Hitler’s Germany set out to make the island government, entranced by Alfred von Tirpitz’s as‐ a fortress of unparalleled strength, with grandiose surances that a German fleet could force Britain to visions of transforming it into a first-rate naval support its global ambitions, transformed the is‐ strongpoint by dredging additional land, building land into a mighty fortress with heavy guns and piers that stretched far into the North Sea, and searchlights. The story of Heligoland, in short, is constructing an airfield. After World War II, British more than a micro-study of a small island. Instead, military authorities planned to retain the island Rüger elegantly uses the small to illustrate the long into the future as a bombing range. Operation large, embedding his account of the changing char‐ Big Bang, conducted in 1947, was the largest deto‐ acter of the island into an analysis of Anglo-Ger‐ nation of conventional ammunitions to date, de‐ man relations. The Tirpitz Plan, the Crowe Memo‐ stroying what was left of its already devastated randum, and the Moroccan crises all find their fortifications. In fascinating detail, Rüger unpacks place in Rüger’s account, as the author deftly how pacifist and environmentalist West German moves from the local to the global and from the student groups protesting British devastation of
3 H-Net Reviews the island were spurred on by East German agents intent on creating fissures between Konrad Ade‐ nauer’s Germany and Great Britain. Britain re‐ turned the island to West German control in 1952, as the Anglo-German relationship entered its next phase, one of cooperation between the UK and West Germany as partners in a Western military alliance confronting the Soviet Union, its Ger‐ many (the Democratic Republic of Germany), and the satellite states of the Warsaw Pact. Rüger’s Heligoland: Britain, Germany, and the Struggle for the North Sea succeeds brilliantly in exposing how Britons and Germans moved from admiration to antagonism, from cooperation to conflict, intermingling elements of both during the long nineteenth century, between the world wars, and after the Second World War. Focusing on the specific, it illustrates the shifting dynamics of the general relationship. The micro-study references higher level diplomacy and the military dimen‐ sions of the Anglo-German relationship but focus‐ es on how art, poetry, music, and the everyday in‐ teractions of islanders, visitors, and representa‐ tives of the state made Heligoland into something more than two small islands buffeted by the waves of the North Sea.
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Citation: Douglas Peifer. Review of Rüger, Jan. Heligoland: Britain, Germany, and the Struggle for the North Sea. H-War, H-Net Reviews. March, 2020.
URL: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=54739
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