And No Birds Sing

For two generations the cliff-guarded, North Sea island of Helgoland led a strained double life as a famous European bird sanctuary and as a key naval base for Imperial and later Nazi Germany. World War II scared away the birds; at war's end, the British also sent away Helgoland's human population of 1,400, turned Germany's backyard Gibraltar into a target range for Royal Air Force and U.S. Air Force bombers. Every five days or so, bombers out on target practice pounded the island's remains to smithereens.

A lot of Germans brooded over this indignity. Last month two Heidelberg students, 21-year-old Georg von Hatzfeld and 22-year-old Rene Leudesdorff, had an idea. Said Leudesdorff, an ardent United Europe supporter: "We suddenly saw that Helgoland was a symbol of injustice.* We decided to make an issue of Helgoland in order to clear everyone's conscience."

Nothing But the Rats. The students hired a fishing boat in the port of Cuxhaven, sailed off to occupy the island until the British stopped the bombings and returned it to its former inhabitants. Equipped with the flags of West Germany, Helgoland and the United Europe movement, they landed on the rubbled shore. "It looked to us," said one of the invaders later, "like the world on the morning after the next war." The island's vegetation had been wiped out; except for rats, few living things had survived. The two students huddled in a flak tower, the only building left standing. They hoisted the European flag on top of the tower, wrapped the other two around themselves to keep warm. After three days they announced a "voluntary withdrawal" to Cuxhaven.

But they returned a few days later, with two genuine Helgolanders and supplies. Within a week two dozen students, newspapermen and banished Helgolanders were on the island. The most prominent new arrival was Historian Prince Hubertus zu Lowenstein, a wartime anti-Nazi refugee and postwar German nationalist. "A Gandhian gesture," explained the prince.

All German political factions, including the Communists, cheered the news of the invasion. Fresh from Helgoland, where a century ago Poet Hoffmann, von Fallers-leben had written Deutschland, Deutschland ueber Alles, Invader Leudesdorff exulted: "This is the first time since the war that all Germans are united."

Actually, the invaders were far from united. Returned Helgolanders, intent on making the island livable, scrounged among the rubble for furniture and firewood. They growled at Prince Hubertus and other intellectuals, who were too busy pecking out manifestoes and newspaper reports on their portable typewriter to lend" a hand. One invader, dubbed the Totengraeber (gravedigger) by his disapproving companions, kept completely to himself, spent all his time rearranging skulls and bones in the island's ruined cemetery.

What, No Handcuffs? The British hastily passed an edict banning any visits to Helgoland, then told German authorities to enforce it. A British revenue cutter ordered to the scene was damaged by ice floes and forced back to base for repairs. A Royal Navy patrol boat met the same fate. The ex-German navy captain of a minesweeper flotilla, now operating under British orders, refused to send his ships.

Last week the British revenue cutter, repaired and loaded with German police, again headed for Helgoland. When the invaders refused to budge, the diplomatic German police chief complimented them on their courage, saluted "the courageous and bold occupiers of Helgoland." Mollified, the invaders marched peaceably aboard the cutter. At Cuxhaven the invaders politely asked the police chief to put handcuffs on them; it would look so much more dramatic for the photographers who were waiting on the pier. Regretfully, he shook his head, and the culprits walked ashore unbound.

In London, the R.A.F. announced that the bombings would be suspended for two months while Helgoland was "surveyed."

* An especially unfortunate role for Helgoland, which, because of the severity of its winds and waves, in ancient times was dedicated to Forseti, the stern Teuton god of justice.

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