'the Land', Mooring Frisian: Hålilönj, Danish: Helgoland) is a small archipelago in the North Sea.

During a visit to the islands, August Heinrich Hoffmann von Fallersleben wrote the lyrics to the "Deutschlandlied", which became the national anthem of Germany.

It was often referred to by variants of the High German Heiligland ('holy land') and once even as the island of the Holy Virgin Ursula.

[4] The variant Helgoland, which has appeared since the 16th century, is said to have been created by scholars who Latinized a North Frisian form Helgeland, using it to refer to a legendary hero, Helgi.

On the Oberland, prehistoric burial mounds were visible until the late 19th century, and excavations showed skeletons and artefacts.

[8] In 697, Radbod, the last Frisian king, retreated to the then-single island after his defeat by the Franks – or so it is written in the Life of Willebrord by Alcuin.

[10] In the course of the centuries several alternative theories have been proposed to explain the name, from a Danish king Heligo to a Frisian word, hallig, meaning "salt marsh island".

[12] On 11 September 1807, during the Napoleonic Wars, HMS Carrier brought to the Admiralty the despatches from Admiral Thomas MacNamara Russell announcing Heligoland's capitulation to the British.

The British annexation of Heligoland was ratified by the Treaty of Paris signed on 30 May 1814, as part of a number of territorial reallocations following the abdication of Napoleon as Emperor of the French.

The prime reason at the time for Britain's retention of a small and seemingly worthless acquisition was to restrict any future French naval aggression against the Scandinavian or German states.

[14] In the event, no effort was made during the period of British administration to make use of the islands for military purposes, partly for financial reasons but principally because the Royal Navy considered Heligoland to be too exposed as a forward base.

As related in The Leisure Hour, it was "a land where there are no bankers, no lawyers, and no crime; where all gratuities are strictly forbidden, the landladies are all honest and the boatmen take no tips",[16] while The English Illustrated Magazine provided a description in the most glowing terms: "No one should go there who cannot be content with the charms of brilliant light, of ever-changing atmospheric effects, of a land free from the countless discomforts of a large and busy population, and of an air that tastes like draughts of life itself.

The newly unified Germany was concerned about a foreign power controlling land from which it could command the western entrance to the militarily-important Kiel Canal, then under construction along with other naval installations in the area and thus traded for it.

[19] Under the German Empire, the islands became a major naval base, and during the First World War the civilian population was evacuated to the mainland.

[21] He and Bohr went for long hikes in the mountains and discussed the failure of existing theories to account for the new experimental results on the quantum structure of matter.

Following these discussions, Heisenberg plunged into several months of intensive theoretical research but met with continual frustration.

Finally, suffering from a severe attack of hay fever that his aspirin and cocaine treatment was failing to alleviate,[22] he retreated to the treeless (and pollenless) island of Heligoland in the summer of 1925.

The attack, by twenty four Wellington bombers of 38, 115, and 149 squadrons of the Royal Air Force, failed to destroy the German warships at anchor.

The Jagdstaffel Helgoland, temporarily used for defense against Allied bombing raids, was equipped with a rare variant of the Messerschmitt Bf 109 fighter originally designed for use on aircraft carriers.

Not long before the war ended in 1945, Georg Braun and Erich Friedrichs succeeded in forming a resistance group on the island.

Their names are Erich P. J. Friedrichs, Georg E. Braun, Karl Fnouka, Kurt A. Pester, Martin O. Wachtel, and Heinrich Prüß.

On 18 April 1947, the Royal Navy simultaneously detonated 6,700 metric tons of explosives ("Operation Big Bang" or "British Bang"), successfully destroying the island's principal military installations (namely, the submarine pens, the coastal batteries at the north and south ends of the island and 8½ miles of main storage tunnels) while leaving the town, already damaged by Allied bombing during the Second World War, "looking little worse" (according to an observer quoted in The Guardian newspaper).

[38][39] On 20 December 1950, two students from Heidelberg—René Leudesdorff and Georg von Hatzfeld, accompanied by journalists—spent two days and a night on the island, planting in various combinations the flags of West Germany, the European Movement International and Heligoland.

The event started a movement to restore the islands to Germany, which gained the support of the West German parliament.

The government of West Germany cleared a significant quantity of unexploded ordnance and rebuilt the houses before allowing its citizens to resettle there.

Before the island was connected to the mainland network by a submarine cable in 2009, electricity on Heligoland was generated by a local diesel plant.

At times, winter temperatures can be higher than in Hamburg by up to 10 °C (18 °F) because cold air from the east is warmed up over the North Sea.

While spring tends to be comparatively cool, autumn on Heligoland is often longer and warmer than on the mainland, and statistically, the climate is generally sunnier.

A small chalk rock close to Heligoland, called witt Kliff (white cliff),[62] is known to have existed within sight of the island to the west until the early 18th century, when storm floods finally eroded it to below sea level.

Volunteer firefighters are deployed on Düne in the summer, who report for 14 days and go on holiday with their families on the island and go into action in an emergency.