Hiddensee is a German island in the Baltic Sea. It is located
immediately west of Rügen. The area of the island, together with
some uninhabited neighboring islands, forms the municipality of
Insel Hiddensee and belongs to the district of Vorpommern-Rügen in
Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.
The island name appears as "Heðinsey"
in the Prose Edda and as "Hithinsö" in the Gesta Danorum of the Saxo
Grammaticus. Both mean something like "Island of Hedin" or "Hedin's
Island". The legendary Norwegian king Hedin is said to have fought
for a wife or even for gold. Under Danish rule, "Hedins-Oe" was
officially in use. Until 1880 the island was still called
"Hiddensjö" in German maps, and in 1929 "Hiddensöe" in German travel
guides. The complete Germanization and reinterpretation to
"Hiddensee" is relatively new.
Hiddensee, off the island of Rügen to the west, is the largest island within the Vorpommersche Boddenlandschaft National Park. Its main axis is in a north-south direction. It is about 16.8 kilometers long, at the narrowest point about 250 meters and at the widest about 3.7 kilometers wide. The island is divided into a hilly north part over 70 meters high (Dornbusch, the highest point is the Bakenberg at 72.7 m above sea level), a dune and heather landscape in the central section (dune heather) and a flat, only a few meters high Southern part, the Gellen. In the northeast are the two three-kilometer-long sand hooks Altbessin and Neubessin. The island is bounded by the Schaproder Bodden and Vitter Bodden in the east, the Gellenstrom (the fairway to Stralsund) in the south and the open Baltic Sea to the west and north.
From the Stone Age to the end of the 17th century
The island
was first settled in the Middle and Early Stone Age. After the
Germanic population had left the southern Baltic region in the 6th
century AD, the Ranen (Slavs), who had been defeated by King
Waldemar I of Denmark in 1168 by conquering the Jaromarsburg
fortress on the Arkona on Rügen, Christianized and took them under
Danish Fiefdom had been brought to possession of the island.
Hiddensee was thus under Danish sovereignty. On April 13, 1296, the
Rügen prince Wizlaw II gave the island of Hiddensee "as it flowed
around the salt seas" to the Neuenkamp monastery. A Cistercian abbey
called Nikolaikamp was built there, named after Saint Nicholas as
the patron saint of seafarers. In fact, the monastery was called
Kloster Hiddensee throughout its existence. In autumn 2008
archaeologists discovered ten burials during excavations under the
direction of medieval archaeologist Felix Biermann on the site of
the former Cistercian monastery. Nine graves were found north of the
monastery church and one in the cloister east of the west wing of
the enclosure. Bettina Jungklaus anthropologically examined the
skeletons of the seven male and two female adults as well as one
young girl. A 20 to 30-year-old man had a healed blow injury to his
right frontal bone. There was a joint burial of a 50–60 year old man
with a 14–15 year old girl, in which the man held the youth's left
arm with his right hand. The disease burden was remarkably low.
Tartar and periodontal disease were the most common. Tooth decay was
only found in one set of teeth, which was unusually small for
medieval populations.
Simultaneously with the construction of
the monastery, the Gellenkirche, a small beacon called Luchte, and
the first port were built on the Gellen in the south of the island
between 1302 and 1306. The foundations of these structures are
(today) west of the Gellens in the Baltic Sea.
In 1332, the
island church was consecrated, intended for the island's farmers and
fishermen, in what is now the Kloster district outside the monastery
walls. With the transfer of the baptismal font from the Gellenkirche
to the new church, pastoral tasks have been carried out from there
since then. The barrel vault, which was built in around 1781, was
painted with rose decorations in 1922 by the Berlin painter Nikolaus
Niemeier.
In the course of the Reformation, the monastery was
dissolved in 1536. During the Thirty Years' War from 1618 to 1648
soldiers burned down the mixed oak forest on the Dornbusch on the
orders of Wallenstein in 1628, which wanted to deprive the Danes of
the island as a possibility for timber production. Even in the 21st
century, the layer of ash from that time can still be seen on the
roadsides near the lighthouse a few centimeters below the sward. In
the years from 1648 to 1815, Hiddensee was, like all of Western
Pomerania, under Swedish administration. Joachim Ulrich Giese was
the owner of the island from 1754 to 1780 and began mining clay for
the Stralsund faience factory he founded.
From the 19th
century to the end of World War II
From 1800 to 1836 was a
particularly sad time for the Hiddenseer, when the island belonged
to captain and knight Wilhelm Friedrich Ludwig von Bagewitz
(1777-1835) on Ralow. He increased the taxes to the point of
unbearable, drove the Hiddenseer to 104 days of forced labor on his
property every year and prevented a school for the children. Under
him the free peasants in greaves became serfs. Even when the
abolition of serfdom by King Gustav II Adolf of Sweden was enacted
in 1806, nothing changed on Hiddensee.
From 1815 Hiddensee
and Western Pomerania belonged to Prussia until the end of World War
II and was assigned to the Rügen district (Rügen district until
1939). In 1836 the Stralsund monastery of the Holy Spirit acquired
the island, and in 1837 and 1840 the first schools were built on the
island in Plogshagen and Kloster. In the years between 1854 and 1864
there was a reorganization of the property conditions on Hiddensee
as part of the replacement of the real burdens (farmers exemption).
Until 1861, Hiddensee was practically treeless for decades, with
the exception of the barren willow avenue between Kloster and
Grieben and a few local pines that were planted around 1770, as well
as a few trees on Schwedenhagen and Rübenberg. The dense oak tree
population on Hiddensee that still existed in the 13th century was
almost completely decimated for firewood, house and ship building by
the beginning of the 17th century. It is unlikely that the clearing
of fire by Wallenstein in 1628 would have destroyed the forest, as
the legend would have it, because already on the Rügen map by
Eilhard Lubin from 1602 there is no longer a tree symbol on
Hiddensee and the thorn bush is depicted as bare hill country. First
the Dornbusch between Bakenberg and Hucke was planted with pines in
1861, around 1900 also the Dornbusch north of the Bakenberg, the
coastal section from the Hucke to the local history museum and from
there along the coast to the Gellen (Karkensee). The stretch of
coast in front of Vitte was excluded from this, because the Vitter
rejected the government's offer of afforestation on the grounds that
it would then make access to the beach more difficult for tourists.
In the years 1864 and 1872, the island was hit by severe storm
floods. During the first flood, Hiddensee broke into two parts due
to a complete flooding at the narrowest point on the island, south
of Neuendorf, which could only be reversed six years later through
extensive reconstruction measures. After the second storm flood, the
Hiddenseer gold jewelry, a Viking work from the 10th century, is
said to have been found. A replica of it can be viewed in the
Hiddensee Local History Museum, the original is kept in the
Stralsund Cultural History Museum.
In 1874 the Hiddensee
district was formed in the German Empire. In 1875 the painter Gustav
Schönleber “discovered” the hard-to-reach Hiddensee. In 1888 the
lighthouse on the Dornbusch, the harbor and the sea rescue station
were completed in Kloster. In 1887 the bulwark was built in Kloster,
in 1905 and 1907 the steamboat landing stages in Vitte and
Neuendorf. From this point on, larger ships could dock directly on
Hiddensee and the adventurous embarkation or disembarkation at the
level of the ferry island was no longer necessary. Starting in 1892,
steamers ran regularly between Stralsund and the monastery for the
first time. From 1905, with the establishment of the Medical
Association, the first doctor on Hiddensee received his license.
With the almost simultaneous construction of five large hotels
in Kloster, Haus Hitthim in 1909, Zum Klausner in 1911, Wieseneck
and Haus am Meer (the later bird observatory) both in 1913 and in
the same year Dornbusch, which was expanded from an inn to a hotel,
the number of tourists soared and the monastery became the main
tourist town on the island.
When the Hiddensee Nature
Conservation Union was founded, the Fährinsel was declared a nature
reserve by the Prussian government in 1910 and the Gellen and
Gänsewerder in 1922. The Dornbusch, Schwedenhagener Ufer and
Altbessin were given the status of a nature reserve in 1937.
From 1916 to 1921 the photographer Elfriede Reichelt visited the
island several times. Between 1922 and 1925 Max Taut built a house
on Hiddensee every year. The most famous is the Karusel in Vitte,
built in 1922, which the silent film actress Asta Nielsen bought as
a residence in 1928 and for which Bruno Taut designed the color
scheme for the house. Right near the Karusel is another house by Max
Taut, Haus Weidermann built in 1923 for the Berlin merchant Karl
Weidermann. In Kloster are the Pingel house, built for the interior
designer Walter Pingel in 1924 (structurally altered considerably in
the 1960s), and right next to it the house built in 1925 for the
Berlin publisher Max Gehlen, which has been on the site of the
Hiddensee Biological Station since 1930 is used as a doctoral house.
In 1927 a police ordinance was issued that prohibited the use of
motor vehicles on the island. Only the island doctor and the local
police were allowed to use a motorcycle. In the same year, the
island was connected to the power grid and three years later the
Biological Research Station was founded by Erich Leick from the
University of Greifswald, from which the Biological Research
Institute Hiddensee (now Biological Station Hiddensee) emerged in
1936 together with an ornithological station.
In 1937, work began on the large stone wall with stone groynes in
front of the Hucke. It was planned to protect the entire
four-kilometer-long bank of the Dornbusch with a wall. In addition
to protecting the island, the aim was to limit the sand drift in
order to save the costs of constant dredging on the Gellen channel
and in the Stralsund fairway. The outbreak of the Second World War
ended the construction work, only four hundred meters were completed
and remain so to this day. After the pig wall was erected, the beach
at Kloster und Vitte deteriorated and suffered from a lack of sand.
Between 1937 and 1939 the three municipalities on the island
merged to form the municipality of Hiddensee.
At the end of
the thirties, bunkers and flak positions for air defense during
World War II were built on the Enddorn, as well as a pier on
Schwedenhagen for the transport of materials. The bunkers were blown
up in 1945 by the Soviet Army (the remains of the rubble were only
removed in the 2000s) and the pier was expanded by VEB Erdöl-Erdgas
Grimmen for the oil test wells in the 1960s. The pier was then used
from 1974 by a push convoy for island supply and demolished in 2010.
1945 to 1989
On May 4th and 5th in 1945, Soviet troops
occupied the island. In the same year as the following year, as part
of the land reform, the Hiddensee estate was divided into 18 new
farmer positions.
On July 28, 1946, Gerhart Hauptmann was
buried in the cemetery in Kloster (Hiddensee Island). The memorial
stone was unveiled exactly five years later, on July 28, 1951.
In 1952 the second ferry connection between Seehof on Rügen and
the ferry island had to be closed.
Between 1958 and 1959 the
VEB vehicle and hunting weapons factory "Ernst Thälmann" built a
holiday village for its employees in the Dünenheide. Right next to
it, in 1980/81, the construction and assembly combine for industrial
and port construction in Stralsund built another holiday resort for
its employees.
From 1952 to 1955, Hiddensee belonged
administratively to the Bergen district. In 1953, some hoteliers
fled to the West during Aktion Rose, while others were arrested.
After this action, all hotels on the island were expropriated and
handed over to the FDGB. The Heimatmuseum and the
Gerhart-Hauptmann-Haus opened in the 1950s; the LPG Dornbusch was
founded.
In 1962, the construction of the dike began between
Kloster and Vitte. The biggest redesign of Hiddensee began with the
dike in the meadows and pastures along the Bodden coast. In Vitte
the Boddenwasser went up to the streets Wiesenweg, Norderende and
Zum Seglerhafen. Large parts of today's port of Vitte as well as the
entire area with today's sports field, the helicopter landing pad
and the sailing port of Lange Ort were artificially washed up or
drained. In monasteries, too, parts of the Bodden were drained,
which before the dyke had been built from the harbor to far beyond
the height of Postweg.
The White Fleet Stralsund took over
the cooperative shipping company and the fishermen founded FPG'n De
Süder in Neuendorf and Swantevit in Vitte.
As a result of
seismic investigations in the north of the island of Hiddensee, oil
exploration began on April 10, 1967 with the research well E Rügen
2/67. This 4,602 m deep well, like wells E Hiddensee 3/67, 4/68 and
5/68 that followed until December 1968, did not produce any usable
oil deposits. The already prepared 5th well was canceled and all
wells were filled in the summer of 1971. The oil that had been
extracted up to that point was shipped by tanker from a provisional
port near the monastery to the Soviet Union for analysis and
processing.
By 1971 the location of the 5th technical
observation company Dornbusch of the NVA was built between the
Pension Zum Klausner and the Dornbusch lighthouse. Behind a double
fence, with a dog running in between, was an ammunition bunker and
other buildings. The facility was dismantled in 1993 and the bunker
was covered with earth. Since then, the former access road, the slab
path from Kloster, which forks just before Klausner, has turned
right into "nowhere".
In 1972/73 the connecting roads between
the towns were paved with concrete slabs, except for a gap of around
500 m between Vitte and Kloster, which had existed for years, due to
the onset of a lack of building material, and which is still
recognizable today as the only paved road section. In 1974, the
household waste dumps on the edge of all local locations were
covered and a central waste dump was created near the Swantiberges.
This was exhausted in the early 1990s. Since 1993 all garbage has
been collected in the port of Vitte and transported to Rügen.
On May 7, 1989 there were 4.7 percent against in the GDR local
elections on Hiddensee. Hiddensee was considered a niche for those
who think differently and dropouts who often worked in hotels,
restaurants or as lifeguards in the summer. They were easy to
control on the small island, and despite some open Stasi
observation, some incidents and meetings were accepted. There was an
intellectual climate on Hiddensee, and artists, writers, actors,
musicians and scientists retired there, such as Jo Harbort,
Christine Harbort, Günter Kunert, Kurt Böwe, Harry Kupfer, Inge
Keller, Günther Fischer, Armin Mueller-Stahl, Christoph Hein, Robert
Rompe or members of the punk band Feeling B.
The corpses of
people who were shot while attempting to escape across the Baltic
Sea, mostly in a folding boat, or who perished without outside
interference, were also found again and again on the beaches of
Hiddensee, such as those of 18-year-old Friedrich Klein and Ernst
August Utpaddel (both in February 1962) and the 21 year old Uwe
Richter (in August 1987). But one of the most spectacular escapes
from the GDR and the only one with a surfboard succeeded from
Hiddensee in November 1986, by the 30-year-old Karsten Klündner and
the 22-year-old Dirk Deckert a day later. In the early mornings,
both of them drove with self-made surfboards and sail from Gellen to
the Danish island of Møn, 70 kilometers away, in a good four hours.
From 1989
After the fall of the Wall, a new pier for the
cargo ferry was completed in Vitte. Some sailors then used the old
concrete pier of the push boat in Kloster as a sailing port. From
the 2010s onwards, a real sailing harbor with sanitary facilities
was built in the largest port renewal project in Kloster.
In
1992 the research facilities Versuchsstelle Schwedenhagen of the
Berlin Central Institute for Electron Physics and the Fährinsel
research facility of the Jena Central Institute for Microbiology and
Experimental Therapy were given up.
The large-scale electric
vehicle test started in 1992 by the Federal Ministry of Research and
the automotive industry was also carried out at Hiddensee. In the
course of the test, a large solar system was installed at the port
of Vitte on a building roof, which still exists today.
In May
2010 the tent cinema in Vitte had to be closed after 46 years. After
a transition period at different locations, a new tent cinema opened
at the port of Vitte in 2012.
Between 2010 and 2014, some
streets were newly paved or paved at all, and the connecting streets
were widened by a good 50 percent (Vitte-Neuendorf 2010 and
Kloster-Vitte 2014). In 2012, a helipad for emergency patients and
for a disaster went into operation in Vitte.
In October 2019,
a new island bus with an electric drive went into operation. The
predecessor drove with diesel and was thus still one of the few
combustion vehicles on the island after the police also switched to
an electric car in September 2015.
Due to the COVID-19
pandemic, Hiddensee was closed to tourists from March 16, 2020.
Tourists who were on the island had to leave the island by March 19.
The day before, an emergency schedule from the Hiddensee shipping
company started, in which only the Vitte ferry operates between
Schaprode and Vitte until further notice. Since May 18th, tourists
from Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania have been allowed to visit
Hiddensee again, and from May 25th from all over Germany.