The small but strategic island that Britain gave away twice
Heligoland, is a tiny speck of land (a mere 0.67 sq mi) in the North Sea. The main island (Hauptinsel) is a formation of rock and stone cliffs frequently impacted by wind and storm – or as one observer described it, “an outcrop of sandstone and chalk” [Harry Campbell, Whatever Happened to Tanganyika? The place names that history left behind, (2007)]. It’s dominant geographical features are a 200-feet high Oberland (upper land) and a Unterland (lower land)✲. Just to the main island’s east is a second, smaller island known as the Düne or Sandy Island for its collection of small beaches❅. Heligoland is 40 miles from the town of Cuxhaven in the Lower Saxony region of Germany (also close to and coming under the provincial administrative jurisdiction of Schleswig-Holstein), and some 290 to 300 miles from the nearest point on the British Isles.
The remoteness and fairly nondescript appearance of Heligoland (in German and Danish: Helgoland, presumably from Heyligeland, “Holy Land”) belies a rather colourful history of fluctuating fortunes, especially over the last two centuries. Up until 1807 the island was the property of Denmark (interrupted by one or two brief periods when it fell under the control of Hamburg). ThIs “No-Man’s Land” has traditionally served as something of a haven for mainlanders – a refuge from the severe climatic conditions of the German Bight, and also occasionally from Danish taxation officials [George Drower, Heligoland: The True Story of German Bight and the Island that Britain Betrayed (2002)].
In 1807, as the Napoleonic Wars raged in Europe, the British Navy under orders from Whitehall seized it from the Danes. Heligoland was of value to the British in the war against Napoleon as a means of circumventing the economic blockade imposed on Great Britain by the French emperor (the Continental system). Having Heligoland provided the British with a handy base to carry on (illegal) trade with Europe in defiance of Napoleon…between 1809 and 1811 alone, some £86 million worth of goods passed through the island and into the hands of German merchants. Heligoland’s economic activity flourished with most of the smuggled merchandise comprising tea, coffee, tobacco, rum and sugar from GB’s commodity-rich colonies around the globe [‘Heligoland’, (The British Empire), www.britishempire,co.uk/].
“The Gibraltar of the North Sea”
A spa was introduced to the island in 1826, luring visitors and holidayers from the nearby German mainland. Some came in search of a haven of a different kind, liberal Germans were attracted because it offered them, they believed, “a political retreat from the nationalistic fervour of their homeland” [‘Heligoland: Germany’s hidden gem in the North Sea’, (James Waterson), The Guardian, 24-Apr-2011, www.theguardian.com]. The new German-British trade ran hand-in-hand with the traditional island vocation of fishing (mainly for lobsters). The permanent population of Heligoland, despite the boost, has over the years remained pretty stable, never rising above 3,000 at any point (predominately the locals have been of German stock, speaking a North Friesian dialect)〥.
A coloniser’s swap: Heligoland for Zanzibar
The status quo on Heligoland remained intact till the late part of the century. In 1890 the change occurred that was to have seismic repercussions in the 20th century. As part of “the scramble for Africa” at the time, the British traded Heligoland to Germany in return for Zanzibar and part of Tanganyika◘, adding to GB’s “patch-quilt pattern” of GB’s ‘pink’ colonies on the world map. But the British were to discover that the true cost was the loss of a significant strategic asset in it’s 20th century foreign policy. Heligoland’s location on a ‘corner’ of the North Sea guarded the entrance to the port of Hamburg and was approximate to the estuary of the Elbe, the Kiel Canal and three other great North European rivers (Drower).
▵ Aerial view of Heligoland, between 1890 and 1900
With the European powers preoccupied with war preparations by the early 1900s, Imperial Germany strengthened the fortifications on Heligoland. When war (WWI) did come, Heligoland did not escape the conflict. It was the site of one of the earliest engagements of the war, the Battle of Heligoland Bight⊕, and involved in one of the first seaplane attacks, the Cuxhaven Raid (Christmas Day 1914)(ibid.). Whatever the fortunes of the British and German forces in Heligoland, the biggest losers were the island’s inhabitants who were summarily ejected from their homes on the island, having been given no say in the matter❂. They were given only six hours to pack and take only what could be transported by hand. The house-holders’s bedding and furniture was left behind. They were ‘reassured’ that they would be able to return after the war was won – in a few weeks! (ibid.). After the war Germany in accordance with the Versailles Treaty was required to demilitarise Heligoland, it was however allowed to retain the island – despite entreaties to Britain from the islanders (returned from their five year-plus exile) that it take back its former colony (ibid.).
▵ An artist’s impression of the Cuxhaven Raid
Island spring-time
The interwar period heralded something of an economic renaissance and the introduction of large-scale tourism for Heligoland. In the 1930s it annually drew 30,000 visitors with enhanced spending power to patronise the new fashionable drinking establishments and expensive gift shops. Adolf Hitler’s Nazi consolidation of power saw a rebuilding of the island’s fortifications. Hitler harboured other grand plans for Heligoland (an anti-aircraft fortress and a gigantic new naval base intended to rival the Royal Navy’s one) but these never came to fruition.
During the Second World War, Heligoland was the site of another early aerial/sea battle between GB and Germany and the onset of the global conflict in 1939. After the Allies gained the upper hand over Germany and it’s Axis partners, the British RAF subjected the fortified island to great devastation (over a two-day period in April 1945 7,000 bombs were dropped on the island, resulting in the flattening of the middle section of Hauptinsel).
Allied victory in the war did not mean a respite from the British destruction for the island. GB having taken interim charge of Heligoland, once again cleared the island of the local population and used it as a bomb-testing range over the next seven years. This assault included a British “Big Bang” (6,700 tonnes of explosives on one single day), thought to be the single largest non-nuclear explosions ever!) [Jan Rüger, Heligoland: Britain, Germany and the Struggle for the North Sea, (2016)].
▵ German Federal Republic stamp commemorating the 1952 hand-back
Cold War sacrifice
After the war, the devastated state of the island proved good propaganda fodder for the new West German Federal government, allowing it to represent itself as “an emblem of German victimhood and nationalism“. In 1952, the Brits, preoccupied with the wider Western imperatives of the day (the Cold War), gave the tiny archipelago back to the West Germans as an inducement to bind them and their influential chancellor Adenauer firmly to the Western anti-Soviet camp [ibid.].
In peace, once more the rocky island reverted to a pleasant holiday destination for continental (mainly German) day-trippers. In the early 1960s Heligoland rebuilt it’s tourist industry and the island was transformed yet again into a modern holiday resort with attractive duty-free benefits and a new spa complex. The present ambience of the born-again island has been likened to “the understated charm of a classic British seaside resort, a miniature Scarborough transplanted into the middle of the German Bight”. Contemporary Heligoland and it’s harbour has also resumed its earlier role as a venue for yacht races. [Waterson, loc.cit.; Rüger, loc.cit.].
Germany’s only Hochseeinsel⊞
For all they have suffered materially and emotionally as a consequence of British misrule, in war and in peace—the betrayals, the dismissive lack of consultation, the physical devastation—the Heligolanders seem to have buried that sorry chapter in the past. The German tourist spiel for the island depicts it as Deutschlands einzige meersinsel (“Germany’s only sea island”), projecting images of quaint and colourful fishermen’s harbourside cottages. Phrases such as “offshore oasis of relaxation”, “a unique natural setting…(and)…mild maritime climate” litter the pages of published promos (www.germany.travel/).
Footnote: Promised resort lifestyle aside, contemporary Heligoland eschews many of the trappings of modernity for a more minimalist if not entirely back-to-basics existence—no autos, no bicycles (push-scooters and hiking the prevailing modes of transport), no high-rise, no internet, no invasive smells, noises or sounds of industry—a diet of peace and tranquility and migratory bird-watching, befitting Heligoland’s curative, get-away-from-it-all role over much of it’s history.
▵ Heligoland crest
︻︻︻︻︻︻︻︻︻︻︻︻︻︻︻︻︻︻︻︻︻︻︻︻︻︻︻︻︻︻︻︻︻︻︻︻︻︻︻︻︻
✲ these days the island also has a crater-shaped Mittelland (middle land), thanks to the British bomb-testing program of the Forties and early Fifties
❅ severe storm action has massively altered the geology of Heligoland over the centuries…until 1720 the two islands were connected [‘Heligoland’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org]
〥 today they number around 1,500-2,500
◘ Lord Salisbury, the architect of the exchange, had first had to overcome staunch internal opposition to the relinquishment of Heligoland, not least from Queen Victoria herself
⊕ three German light cruisers and one torpedo-boat was sunk
❂ this has been a recurring motif with Heligoland, GB’s disposal of the island in 1890 was likewise done without consulting the 2,000 inhabitants of Heligoland
⊞ offshore island
Canadian political philosopher John Ralston Saul is the secular high-priest of doubters and cynics, a non-believer in “the gospel” of the modern corporate state, constantly debunking the conventional wisdoms offered up as “absolute truths” in Western society
Although Saul calls his volume “a dictionary”, the term applies more to the book’s format (utilising the standard A-Z form of the dictionary) than to its content or purpose. The Companion goes on to define Dictionary as “Opinion presented as truth in alphabetical order”. And Answers are merely “a mechanism for avoiding questions”. Saul decries the trajectory of modern dictionaries and language (which have been captured by the forces of a rational orthodoxy), yearning instead for a return to the Humanist dictionaries of the 18th century (Voltaire, Diderot, Johnson, etc)². 
When I first delved into The Doubter’s Companion (around 1995), my mind took me to that other great cynic’s dictionary of the early 1900s, Ambrose Bierce’s The Devil’s Dictionary. Both works, albeit very different books, are idiosyncratically unconventional takes on language and meaning in their respective societies, and both proffer a contrarian view of the established wisdom of the day. Both Saul and Bierce are provocateurs, each with their own personal axe to grind⁌.
The Doubter’s Companion, by its polemical nature is unequivocally meant to shake up orthodox thinking (TDC was described by one reader as “an abecedarium of subversion”). The dictionary form of the book is a device Saul employs to launch into short philosophical essays on topics about modern post-industrial society that concern him—corporatism, individualism, leadership and managerialism, freedom of expression, communication, public relations, advertising and the way language is distorted to control communications (see his definition of ‘ideology’). In so doing, Saul skewers the accepted veracity of many of the words, phrases and terms you will find in today’s dictionaries.
Saul savages that that most universal institution of fast food, MacDonalds:
Happy Hour is “a depressing comment on the rest of the day”.
Saul includes in the alphabetical list a number of surprising and disparate entries for a reference book on philosophical common sense. These include Ants (Saul makes the unexpected and unverified statement that the members of the Formicidae family of eusocial insects “do nothing 71.5 per cent of the time”)
Museums: Safe storage for stolen objects.
Highly influential literary critic of the first half of the 20th century, HL Mencken, heaped lavish almost doting praise on The Devil’s Dictionary… “
⇑ First (1911) edition of the Dictionary
Cynicism and satire provide the backbones of Bierce’s provocative dictionary. So, an interesting place to start looking is how he handles these terms – the words ‘satire’, ‘cynic’ and ‘dictionary’ themselves. Despite being fully versed in the craft himself, Bierce views the practitioner of cynicism less than favourably.
Romance and true love falls by the wayside with Bierce’s cynic always hovering around ground level:
The Dictionary dishes up a smorgasbord of satirical, ironic and often bitter definitions of the world as seen by Ambrose Bierce (one of the acerbic writer’s nicknames was “Bitter Bierce”). But Bierce is of course a creature of his time with all the glaring faults and prejudices of the 19th century white man’s mindset. So, through the satire and cynicism we witness the less savoury traits and predisposition of the lexicographer. Casual assumptions of racism and misogyny run through the pages of The Devil’s Dictionary. 
Appian way, or if you prefer, the Appian Way, is a reminder of the more exalted social status that Burwood perhaps once commanded. In the midst of the “Strata-titleland” that is modern day Burwood is the Appian Way, you’ll find it perched between Burwood Road (South) and the seminal Liverpool Road. Appian Way is just a short, little street which charts a serpentine course, looping not far from its eastern end. Within this loop lies the street’s main interest…at least as far as this correspondent is concerned.
Hoskins, exhibiting a tendency which nowadays we might describe as that of a “control freak”, leased rather than sold the estate’s houses, which allowed the industrialist and developer to monopolise all aspects of the community (only one solitary house in the tree-lined street had been sold by the time of Hoskins’ death in 1926) [ibid.].
The houses
‘Erica’ – perhaps the Way’s standout ▲
What tennis courts? ▲
▲ Bush plants and agaves surround the ‘courts’