It is believed that Helgoland was a holy place to the ancient Frisians where they paid homage to Fosetes, the God of justice. In 697 A.D., when Radbod, the last Frisian king, was defeated by the Franks, he withdrew to the island and Christianity was introduced. In 1231, Helgoland belonged to Danish king Waldemar II, and sovereignty of the island changed several times between Denmark and the Duchy of Schleswig with a short marriage to Hanseatic Hamburg (famous pirate Claus Stoertebecker once used the island for a base camp) until 1714, when it remained with Denmark until the English took it by force in 1807 during the Napoleonic war. In 1890, England ceded it to Germany in return for rights to Wituland and Sansibar in Africa.

In 1425, companies from Denmark, the Low Countries, and Hamburg and Bremen operated on Helgoland for the large quantities of herring, but the fish swam away in the early 1500s and the island faced an era of epidemics around 1550. The people faced starvation for some time, and beginning then, ‘Witte Cliff’ (white cliff) was broken down bit by bit and sold as chalk. The entire white rock disappeared, as did the connecting strip while a violent storm pounded the island in 1721. By then fishing was again the main occupation.

In 1807, the British captured Helgoland for the English crown. Cut off from normal trade by Napoleon’s blockade, Britain used the island’s resources to feed the British public. Once the war was over, the markets for fish was lost and so was the island’s economy, until a boat builder named Jacob Siemens established a sea-side resort on the island for tourists, providing a new source of income. After England ceded the island to Germany in July 1890, a naval base was created on the island. In 1914, when World War I broke out, the new fortress and a large harbor were completed, and it provided extra prosperity to the natives. During the war the entire population was moved to the mainland, but returned in 1918. The fortress Helgoland was demolished per dictates of Versailles.

During World War Two, the British set their sights on the island early on, as the 1936 wire service photo (below right) indicates. On September 29, 1939, six British planes attacked a German naval squadron near Heligoland.

The very first bomb the British dropped on German soil was on Helgoland on December 3, 1939, the British claiming to the public it was by mistake. A few days later, on December 14, 1939, twelve RAF bombers attacked German ships in Helgoland, now claiming it was a heavily fortified fortress. Note the 1936 and 1939 wire service photos below and how the vague rationale behind the destruction escalated from a rumor in 1936 to a justification (after the fact) in 1939.

After the British bombing, almost nothing was left standing, neither home nor farm, nor treasured lighthouse, nor the 1686 church which was built with the support of the Danish King Christian V. (its altar had been lighted by two candelabras, inscribed with: “Present of his majesty the King Gustav Adolph IV of Sweden”). The place where young Hoffmann V. Fallersleben stayed and wrote Germany’s present national anthem in 1841 was no more the same. The entire population of Helgoland had become refugees and were spread over 60 different villages and towns, waiting for a return to their island home.

But it was not this event that managed to destroy a myriad of sea life, birds and insects unique to the island and precious prehistoric artifacts. In fact, it was not even in wartime, but after war’s end, from 1945 to 1952, while Germany was frantically trying to rebuild from the war’s bombing devastation, the British decided to use the islands as a bombing range.

On April 18, 1947 they senselessly tried to destroy the entire island. Using 9,000 depth charges, 4,000 torpedo heads and over 91,000 shells, 6,800 tons of explosives in all, they created the biggest non-nuclear single detonation in history. The explosives were stacked in the tunnel of the old submarine shelter and at 1:00 PM were released. The enormous explosion was followed by a large, volcanic-type eruption of fire, soil and rock which shot into the sky creating a mushroom cloud over nine kilometers high.

The violent blows shook the main island several miles down to its base and changed its shape permanently. To their surprise, they failed to utterly destroy the island, and it remained a military restricted area for the British Air Force who used the area as a training ground. In 1948, the devastated and displaced islanders who once called the island their home begged for help from the United Nations, the Pope, and the British House of Commons, where Professor Savory, a member of the British Parliament, spoke repeatedly about ‘what was happening out there in the sea’ bringing the attention of his fellow members to ‘the horrifying picture of senseless desolation’ as he called it in a speech of July 26, 1950. It seemed hopeless.

Then, on December 20, 1950, two Heidelberg students occupied the island and hoisted the German flag and the flag of Helgoland, resulting in news coverage which elicited support for saving the island from further ecological disaster and irrational destruction. Finally, in 1951, the German Bundestag demanded the release of the island which was given in March, 1952. Helgoland was Germany’s again. But the German authorities faced the immense task of clearing vast amounts of undetonated ammunition and rebuilding the homes and landscape before it could be resettled. The natives were finally allowed to go home to what remained of their island.