Devil Island (French Guiana)
| Devil Island (French Guiana) | ||
|---|---|---|
| Waters | Atlantic Ocean | |
| Archipelago | Îles du Salut | |
| Geographical location | 5 ° 17 '37 " N , 52 ° 34' 59" W | |
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||
| length | 940 m | |
| width | 320 m | |
| surface | 14 ha | |
| Highest elevation | 40 m | |
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The Devil's Island ( French Île du Diable ) is 13 km off the coast of French Guiana in South America.
geography
Like the other islands in the group, Devil's Island belongs to the municipality of Cayenne , the capital of French Guiana, and within it to the canton of Cayenne-1 Nord-Ouest . It is the smallest, northernmost and most famous of the three Îles du Salut . It extends over an area of 14 hectares and rises up to 40 meters in height.
On the island, a radar and radio station is to monitor missile launches from the spaceport Guiana Space Center of the European Space Agency in Kourou .
history
Its use as a penal colony for convicted serious and professional criminals between 1852 and 1946 made it the most famous of the Îles du Salut .
distributed by F. Hamel , Altona - Hamburg …; Stereoscopy from the Lachmund Collection
The most famous prisoner was the artillery captain Alfred Dreyfus , who was imprisoned here from 1895 to 1899.
In 1933 the Salvation Army opened its work on the island, one of the aims of which was to close the penal colony. Regular reports in the French media made it possible to inform the French public about the inhumane conditions and to cause a change of opinion in politics. This led to the closure of the penal colony and the return of most of the survivors to France.
The Dreyfus Tower on the coast bears the name of the famous prisoner.
Others
- The Dreyfus affair is reconstructed in Der Gefangene der Teufelsinsel ( Prisoner of Honor , Great Britain, 1991). In the film by director Ken Russell , Richard Dreyfuss played Colonel Picquart and Kenneth Colley played Captain Dreyfus.
- The plot of the autobiographical novel Papillon by Henri Charrière also takes place on Devil's Island. The novel was in 1973 with Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman in the lead roles filmed . However, the film was shot in Jamaica. A remake of the same name was made in 2017 .
- 1939 played Boris Karloff , known as Frankenstein's monster, an innocent condemned doctor in the film The Devil's Island ( Devil's Iceland ). The drastic portrayal of the inhumane prison conditions prompted the French government to complain to the USA about the film; However, nothing has changed in the conditions of detention.
- The Michael Curtiz comedy We Are Not Angels with Humphrey Bogart , Aldo Ray and Peter Ustinov also takes place on Devil's Island.
- The drama Flucht von der Teufelsinsel ( Condemned ) (1929) by Wesley Ruggles also takes place here.
- In episode 7 of the series Agentin mit Herz , the island is named as a place of exile for king widows. This topic is also dealt with in the American series Time Tunnel (episode 9).
- In the spring of 1971 the marine researcher Hans Hass visited the island. Hass made a film here about the fate of Dreyfus, who was held there for four years, and about the adventurous escape of Henri Charrière, who in his book Papillon claimed that he escaped from Devil's Island on a sack filled with coconuts. In order to check the truth of these statements, Hass jumped from the same rock into the sea as he, also drifted in a raft made of coconuts and sank into the mud on the mainland coast in the same area where, according to the stories, the one who fled with Charrière Fellow sufferer from the Bagno found death. Although the area around Cayenne was considered to be particularly “shark-contaminated”, there was absolutely no hatred. In fact, Hass turned up in the exact same spot where the prison authorities dumped their bodies for many years, and never saw a single shark. The prison authorities may have deliberately spread the shark threat to prevent convicts from escaping.
literature
- Paul Coelestin Ettighoffer : From Devil's Island to Life. The tragic fate of the Alsatian Alfons Paoli Schwartz . Gilde-Verlag, Cologne 1932.
Web links
- The devil island. Retrieved on July 23, 2012 (description of the film by Hans Hass).
Individual evidence
- ^ Alfred Dreyfus : Five years of my life. Memories 1894-1899. Comino, Berlin 2019, ISBN 978-3-945831-17-5 .
- ↑ Charles Péan: The Conquest of Devil's Island. Christian publishing house, Bern 1954.
- ↑ The Prisoner of Devil's Island. IMDb , accessed July 23, 2012 .
- ↑ Die Teufelsinsel (ARD, ORF, 1972, approx. 44 minutes, color). 2008 on DVD Hans Hass - Unterwasserreport published.