Memmert
| Memmert | |
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| Waters | North Sea |
| Archipelago | East Frisian Islands |
| Geographical location | 53 ° 38 '17 " N , 6 ° 53' 3" E |
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| length | 3 km |
| width | 2 km |
| surface | 5.17 km² |
| Highest elevation | Cross dune 8 m above sea level NN |
| Residents | (uninhabited) |
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The Memmert is an East Frisian island southwest of Juist and east of Borkum on the Osterems in East Frisia ( Lower Saxony ). The island has an area of 5.17 square kilometers and is only inhabited by a bird warden.
Surname
The meaning of the name "Memmert" is uncertain. On old maps, the island is called "de Meem". It is possible that "Memmert" was derived from the ice saint Mamertus , after whom a ship was supposedly named that was stranded on the island.
history
Memmert was mentioned for the first time in 1650 as a sand bank , "which no longer undermines in a common flood and in places carries vegetation" ( high sand ). Until the 1950s, the island was colloquially called "Memmertsand", which meant that it was a sandbank for centuries.
Memmert is now part of the Aurich district in Lower Saxony. The island is a so-called community - free area (key: 03 4 52 501) and a district .
The time until 1973
The teacher Otto Leege (1862–1951), who came from the neighboring island of Juist, is considered to be the “father” of Memmert. The native Uelser took over a teaching position at Juist in 1882. In 1888 he entered Memmert for the first time.
At that time, birds were hunted on Memmert from Juist. Egg collectors from the neighboring islands pillaged almost all the herring gulls , oystercatchers and various species of tern every year . After such a hunt, Leege could hardly find any intact birds on Memmert when visiting the island in 1906. Many carcasses of adult birds and starving young birds lay between cartridge cases, shot birds ran around in the dunes.
Through the initiative of the “German Association for the Protection of the Bird World”, Memmert was declared a bird colony by a decree of the Prussian Minister for Agriculture, Domains and Forests in Berlin on July 31, 1907. Otto Leege was appointed authorized representative by the association. Because of his numerous studies in botany and plant sociology, zoology and ornithology , history and geology , he received an honorary doctorate in philosophy from the University of Göttingen . The Natural Research Society in Emden made him an honorary member in 1932, as did the Society for Fine Arts and Patriotic Antiquities in Emden . In 1942 he was awarded the Goethe Medal for Art and Science .
The first hut was built on the island in 1908. A first bird keeper from Juist guarded the island. Due to the demolition of the dunes, new houses had to be built in different places in 1924, 1957 and 1971 before the respective predecessors were washed away by the beach erosion. The foundation of the house from 1957, built on a concrete platform on steel and concrete stands for a coastal battery in World War I , stood on the beach or in the mudflats of Memmert until around 2017 and could be seen from Juist, Borkum and from the mainland with binoculars . The concrete structure once stood in the middle of the dunes, but in the end it was 250 meters from the dunes in the mudflats.
The island was sporadically inhabited from 1908 and continuously from 1921 by a bird keeper. The first permanent bird keeper was Otto Leege's son, Otto Leege jr. He stayed on the island with his family until his untimely death in 1946. A mighty wooden cross (→ ▼ ) on the so-called “cross dune”, which is eight meters above sea level, is the highest point on the island, reminds of him . The work on the island was initially continued by his wife Therese Leege until 1956.
Her son-in-law Gerhard Pundt continued the work of an island bailiff and bird warden from 1956. He lived on the island with his wife Klara (née Leege, daughter of Otto Leege Jr. and Therese) and their three children until 1973. He actively carried out work on island and dune protection, although this was limited to sand trap fences and helmet planting in view of the nature reserve character of the island. However, these could not stop the massive inroads of the North Sea from the end of the 1960s. The demolitions can be measured today if you look at the foundation slab still standing on the west beach (looking towards Borkum), which stands far in front of the small edge dunes that still exist. The Pundt family's house was located here until 1970 - today the foundation plate stands on several pillars around 200 m in the sea. She was formerly a mound surrounded her was preceded by the older house Leeges, further west stood a shed, this was preceded by high, protection bidding dunes and a relatively wide beach . The beach has become much narrower due to the shifting of currents in the Osterems and accordingly does not bring any supplies for new dunes . As a result, the western dune chain was completely destroyed by the sea in the course of the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, with the exception of the relatively small northern part that remained. The new residential building on the island of Memmert was built in 1971 in the north dunes, which are still considered safe. Today these are the only remaining high dunes on the island, the rest of the island is exposed to flooding when the tides rise higher.
The time from 1973
Pundt's successor was Reiner Schopf in 1973, he began his service at what was then the “Building Department for Coastal Protection” in the north as island bailiff of the island of Memmert. Schopf lived there for 30 years and six months, only interrupted by occasional vacations, until August 2003 and left the island for reasons of age. Schopf played a significant role in effectively protecting the island from disturbances by hunters, egg collectors, fish traps, tourists and water sports enthusiasts. He also publicly quarreled with the supposedly “authorized persons” and the national park administration, which in his opinion did not do enough against reported disturbances and impairments of breeding or resting birds. On the neighboring island of Juist, Schopf regularly gave lectures on coastal bird protection and the conflicts of use in the Wadden Sea during the tourist season.
Schopf's successor was Enno Janssen in 2003, an employee of the Lower Saxony State Office for Water Management, Coastal and Nature Conservation (NLWKN) in the north . He lives on the island for about nine months, from March to November. The bird keeper's house on the Kreuzdüne was completely renovated in 2003 and equipped with a photovoltaic system. The NLWKN maintains the thatched roof house from 1971 for the respective island bailiff, whose tasks include the annual breeding bird registration, the prevention of disturbances and the collection of rubbish.
natural reserve
The island has been a state nature reserve since 1924. Memmert has been part of Protection Zone I in the Lower Saxony Wadden Sea National Park since 1986 . The island may not be entered without the written approval of the national park administration in Wilhelmshaven . Only after the breeding season will trips from Juist with a guided tour of the island for a limited number of people by the national park warden be offered from August.
fauna
Along with Norderoog , Trischen , Süderoog , Nigehörn , Scharhörn , Mellum and Minsener Oog in the German Wadden Sea and the West Frisian islands of Rottumerplaat , Rottumeroog and Griend, Memmert is one of the few uninhabited islands (apart from the guards). Here even very shy birds can breed and rest largely undisturbed by humans. Here is one of the few breeding sites for the spoonbill in Germany , which successfully brooded here for the first time in 1996. Memmert has a large breeding colony of the black-backed gull ( Larus fuscus ).
On the Billdüne breeding cormorants as ground-nesting birds. All species of tern have hatched on the island at different frequencies. The island is also a breeding ground for the shoveler , the eider , the hen harrier and various species of waders . However, the breeding place is only limited:
The island is around 620 hectares in size (area above mean tidal high water, mTHw), of which around 200 hectares consist of grassland, of which only 150 hectares are not affected by spring tidal floods, i.e. only these 150 hectares can be used as breeding grounds without the risk of flooding become.
Sea mark
A beacon was erected on August 31, 1900, but it was destroyed by a storm surge the following year . New beacons were installed in 1901, 1910 and 1931. The last one fell victim to a storm surge in the winter of 1936/1937. The old, 14 meter high, oil-powered Ostmolenfeuer von Emden has been in use since 1932 .
In 1939 a new lighthouse was built in the dunes and a now defective power line was laid to Memmert for the first time. The lighthouse has not been in operation since 1986. Due to dune erosion, it stood in the water in 1986; its optics were dismantled in 1990. Since 1992 the lantern of the Memmert beacon has been in a specially built tower in the Juister port area, without having any function for shipping. In 2002, the Emden Waterways and Shipping Authority also tore off the base of the lighthouse before Memmert, which had long been cleared by the surf.
Others
On the night of September 21-22, 1931, a shipwreck occurred in Haaks-Gat near Memmert when the motorboat Annemarie , also written as Annamarie , ran aground with 19 people on board. The emergency missiles were soaked and therefore not functional. The ship was gradually smashed by the surf. Finally one of the inmates managed to swim to Memmert. From there, the Juist sea rescuers were alerted and they were able to retrieve one person alive from the wreck. Two other survivors were rescued from the sea by fishermen, the other 15 inmates drowned. To commemorate the victims of the disaster, a wooden cross was erected on Memmert, which now has its place on Borkum by the old lighthouse .
literature
- Gerhard Pundt: Memmert - portrait of a sea bird island. Detlev Kurth, Hamburg 1969.
- Hans Nitzschke (Ed.): Otto Leege: the father of Memmert, explorer of East Friesland and its islands - The Otto Leege book. Verlag Ostfriesische Landschaft, Aurich 1971.
- Michael Schulte: Island love - Humanly happy: a portrait. Books on Demand, ISBN 3-8334-3244-6 . The portrait describes the longtime bird warden Reiner Schopf.
- Robert Erskine Childers : The Riddle of the Sands (The Riddle of the Sands). Fictional spy novel about the uncovering of preparations for the invasion of the British Isles by the German Empire in 1902. The setting is the East Frisian Wadden Sea and also Memmert as a training island for the invasion, called Memmert Sand in the novel. The novel was filmed several times.
Web links
- The bird island of Memmert . Lower Saxony State Agency for Water Management, Coastal Protection and Nature Conservation (NLWKN). Retrieved June 25, 2013.
- Reiner Schopf: Memmert, the eighth island
- The bird island Memmert, the last adventure in Germany
- Measurement table sheet Juist-West 1891
- Measuring table sheet Juist-West 1939
Individual evidence
- ^ Rolf Niedringhaus: The flora and fauna of the East Frisian Islands, Memmert . Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg, Faculty V, Institute for Biology and Environmental Sciences. March 10, 2011. Retrieved December 18, 2012.
- ↑ Dates of trips to the Vogelinsel Memmert 2019 , accessed on May 9, 2019.
- ↑ Annemarie's misfortune. ( Memento from December 31, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
Borkum | Bant | Lütje Hörn | Brauerplate | Tile plate | Memmert | Juist | Norderney | Baltrum | Langeoog | Spiekeroog | Wangerooge | Minsener Oog | Mellum
Aurich | Baltrum | Berumbur | Dornum | Großefehn | Großheide | Hage | Hagermarsch | Half moon | Rear | Ihlow | Juist | Krummhörn | Leezdorf | Lütetsburg | Marienhafe | North | Norderney | Osteel | Rechtsupweg | South Brookmerland | Upgant bulkhead | Wiesmoor | Willum
Non- parish area in the Aurich
Memmert district
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The next island to the west: Kachelotplate |
East Frisian Islands |
The next island to the east: Juist |