The riddle of the sandbar

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The Riddle of the Sands (Original title: The Riddle of the Sands: A Record of Secret Service ) is a novel of the Irish writer Robert Erskine Childers , published in 1903 and one of the first spy novels applies.

action

In the late summer of 1902, the young Englishman Carruthers was invited by his former student colleague Davies to go duck hunting on a yacht in the German Baltic Sea . Instead of an expected luxury yacht with staff, however, the Dulcibella turns out to be a small boat that Davies can sail with one hand . Otherwise, Davies is obviously only superficially interested in duck hunting in the German fjords . Instead, he wants to create his own maps for the British Admiralty with Carruthers in the German Wadden Sea off the East Frisian Islands in the North Sea . And then there is the dubious businessman Dollmann, who is said to have tried to kill Davies. Davies suspects that Dollmann is an Englishman in German service who wants to counteract his exposure. Carruthers feels used; through his work in the Foreign Office he has skills that are probably why Davies chose him as a sailing comrade. When Dollmann's daughter comes into play, he is not sure whether he has just fallen into a love story. The story then turns into an espionage adventure when the two sailors discover an invasion plan by the German military.

Reception and Political Impact

Childers prophesies in the novel a war with the German Empire and a sea ​​invasion of troops on the British coast. He specifies the shallow waters off the coast of Essex between Foulness and Brightlingsea and the Wash , here specifically East Holland, as possible areas of invasion . The impact of the novel was so strong that, according to Winston Churchill, the British Admiralty had naval bases set up in Invergordon , Firth of Forth and Scapa Flow . When the novel became known in Germany, the defense arranged that the stones that were stored behind the dike at Norddeich for the construction of the dike defense path were removed so that the landing troops from England could not find any protection behind them for their attack on the Norddeich Radio coast radio station .

Robert Erskine Childers took a trip through the German Wadden Sea around the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries and mapped it. He sailed Wilhelm Niemeyer (water engineer and defense employee) several times. Wilhelm Niemeyer had been assigned to Childers as a member of the Abwehr, but could not arrest him. Childers managed to sail from Norderney to Wangerooge in a tide as he described it in the novel .

According to Leonard Piper, the novel inspired the two British naval officers Vivian Ronald Brandon and Bernard Fredric Trench to explore German fortifications on Borkum and Helgoland in August 1910 . They also visited the Kaiser Wilhelm Canal , Amrum and Wangerooge . For this they used a sailing yacht, as in the novel. They were arrested and in a sensational trial on 22 December 1910 by the Supreme Court in Leipzig to four years imprisonment convicted, but pardoned in May 1913 by the emperor. They returned to Britain and continued to serve in the Royal Navy.

literature

  • The Riddle of the Sandbank: A Report from the Secret Service (paperback) , Erskine Childers, paperback, Diogenes Verlag, 1975, ISBN 978-3257202113
  • Leonard Piper: Dangerous waters. The life and death of Erskine Childers , London a. a. (Hambledon and London) 2003, pp. 106f. ISBN 1-85285-392-1
  • Jürgen W. Schmidt: Against Russia and France. The German military secret service 1890-1914 , 2nd edition Ludwigsfelde (Ludwigsfelder Verlags-Haus) 2007, p. 380. ISBN 3-933022-35-5
  • The Borkum espionage affair before the Reichsgericht , in: Nachrichten für Stadt und Land , ( Oldenburg ) of December 22, 1910, p. 5f.
  • The end of the Borkum espionage trial before the Reichsgericht , in: Nachrichten für Stadt und Land of December 23, 1910, p. 1
  • Jürgen Elvert : Scared of hell. On the fear of a German invasion of Great Britain on the eve of the First World War , in: Jürgen Elvert / Lutz Adam / Heinrich Walle (eds.): The Imperial Navy at War: A Search for Traces , Stuttgart (Franz Steiner Verlag) 2017, p. 29 -42. ISBN 978-3515118248

reception

Sam Llewellyn's novel Tödliches Watt (1999) ties in with Robert Erskine Childer's The Riddle of the Sandbank from 1903 and offers new possibilities for interpretation from a modern point of view.

Film adaptations

Childer's novel was long considered impossible to film, especially due to the difficult outdoor shots on the open sea, which is why the material was only approached relatively late:

  • In 1978, the novel was filmed in the UK by director Tony Maylam with Michael York , Jenny Agutter and Simon MacCorkindale in the lead roles. The German sync title is Bei Nacht und Nebel . The film adaptation differs significantly from the novel in essential parts. For example, Kaiser Wilhelm II personally rams a yacht on which Dollmann is with a service boat and causes it to sink.
  • Better known in Germany, also under the name Das Rätsel der Sandbank , is a Radio Bremen series from 1984, which was broadcast in 1985 in 10 parts of 50 minutes each in the evening program of the ARD as a summer series. For the first time in a long time, Eins Festival showed the series again in the evening program. The end of the film, however, differs completely from the novel. While Dollmann in the novel commits suicide as a former British officer who defected to the Germans, in the film series he is an agent smuggled into German military circles by the British secret service and returns to London after completing his assignment.
  • A television movie was produced while the series was being set and aired on July 28, 1987. This is mostly a compilation of the series episodes, some scenes were re-shot for the film due to the otherwise wrong connections. While the film can be ordered from Radio Bremen's recording service on request, the series has been available in a box with four DVDs since September 24, 2008.

Trivia

In "Prof. van Dusen meets Kaiser Wilhelm", episode 41 of the radio play series Professor van Dusen , the journey of the Dulcibella is discussed. The author Michael Koser lets Messrs. Carruthers and Davies meet the professor. A comic was also published based on this radio play, with drawings by Gerd Pircher. In the editorial section of the comic, reference is made to Erskine Childers' novel.

Web links