Hiddensee

For the museum ship in Massachusetts named after the island, see German corvette Hiddensee.

Hiddensee
Dornbusch Lighthouse on Hiddensee Island
Hiddensee
Location of Hiddensee within Vorpommern-Rügen district
Coordinates	54°32′24″N 13°5′34″E
Administration
Country	Germany
State	Mecklenburg-Vorpommern
District	Vorpommern-Rügen
Municipal assoc.	West-Rügen
Mayor	to be elected
Basic statistics
Area	19.02 km2 (7.34 sq mi)
Elevation	0-72 m
Population	1,034 (31 December 2010)
- Density	54 /km2 (141 /sq mi)
Other information
Time zone	CET/CEST (UTC+1/+2)
Licence plate	RÜG
Postal code	18565
Area code	038300
Website	Gemeinde website

Satellite image of Hiddensee

On a Hiddensee beach

Hiddensee [ˈhɪdənzeː] ( listen) is a car-free island in the Baltic Sea, located west of Rügen on the German coast.

The island, located 54°33' north longitude 13°07' east, has about 1,300 inhabitants. It was a popular holiday destination for East German tourists during German Democratic Republic (GDR) times and continues to attract tourists today with its natural beauty. It is the location of the University of Greifswald's ornithological station. Gerhart Hauptmann and Walter Felsenstein are buried there.

Geography

Hiddensee is about 16.8 kilometres long, about 250 metres wide at its narrowest point and about 3.7 kilometres wide at its broadest point. It is the largest island with the Western Pomerania Lagoon Area National Park and belongs to the district of Vorpommern-Rügen in the state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. It lies west of the island of Rügen and is divided into an undulating, over 70-metre-high northern part (Dornbusch, whose highest point is the Bakenberg at 72 m above sea level), a dune and heath landscape in the central area (Dünenheide) and a flat, only few-metres-high southern part, the Gellen. In the northease are the two three-kilometre-long spits of Alter Bessin and Neuer Bessin. The island is bounded by the Schaproder Bodden and Vitter Bodden to the east, the Gellenstrom (the shipping channel to Stralsund) to the south and the open Baltic Sea to the west and north.

History

Hiddensee is depicted in a painting of the same name by the German Expressionist, Walter Grammatté, which is currently on display in the Brücke Museum in Berlin. In the 1920s, Hiddensee was a artists' colony that included Erich Heckel, Käthe Kollwitz, Carl Zuckmayer, Lion Feuchtwanger, Georg Grosz among others. Some of the important artists today are Harald Metzkes, Torsten Schlüter and Helge Leiberg.

An urban legend during the GDR said that in order to escape the hardships of communist rule, the workers and farmers of Hiddensee wrote a letter to Joseph Stalin requesting to be annexed by Sweden (Hiddensee belonged to Swedish Pomerania 1648-1815). The legend reflects the humour typical of people in the GDR.

The island is also mentioned in Nina Hagen's song Du hast den Farbfilm vergessen.

See also

• List of islands of Germany.

External links

Media related to Hiddensee at Wikimedia Commons

• Overnight on Hiddensee Island - slideshow by The New York Times