A wandering sandbank of almost endless width that is constantly changing: the kilometer-wide Kniepsand in front of the North Sea island of Amrum is worth a trip in itself. But it also offers other attractions: there are half a dozen so-called beach castles here – these are not dug sand walls, but eye-catching mini houses, built by holidaymakers over the past decades.
They are built from driftwood, pallets, discarded fish containers. And decorated as artfully as it is surreal, with salt-eaten buoys, orange work gloves like those worn by fishermen on their trawlers, with red and green nets and everything else the sea has to offer.
You can’t get into this enchanted realm just like that. Even getting to Amrum is a little adventure. The island is about 18 nautical miles from the mainland and can only be reached by boat or plane. You can’t rush over a railway embankment like you can on Sylt. And it’s still an hour’s ferry ride further than to Föhr.
The Kniepsand with its original huts can only be reached by walking a few kilometers off the road. The North Sea breaks wildly here on the beach, which merges into the North Frisian dune landscape. Small hills gather from fine grains that float, beach grass settles, baby dunes slowly grow out of the kilometer-wide beach.
The area is under nature protection. You can still enter it in many places. It may not officially be built on, but the peculiar constructions are at least tolerated to this day.
Stones weigh down the roof of the two beach castles that have been hiding in the dunes north of Nebel for years. Washed up ropes hold the surrounding driftwood fences together. “Hartelk welkimen” is written in Frisian at the hut closest to the water – “Welcome”.
There’s a stiff breeze outside, but it’s cozy inside once you’ve shoveled the door open. The wall, made windproof with tarpaulins, lets a lot of light through between the slats. Soft sand covers the ground. A faded tree stump serves as a table. Corks and shells pierced with nails adorn the walls.
Many guests have signed the hut book. “The children called out from afar: ‘There’s a ship lying there’,” note Georg, Ida, Elisabeth and Doris, “with best regards from Bavaria”. Karin and Ulli from Friedrichshafen made a “Päusle” here at the beginning of May. “The work has paid off. The cabin is cool,” writes Henri, seven years old, on April 22nd.
The second of the two huts on Nebel Beach has a name: “Achims Strandburg” is emblazoned in colorful letters under a helmet with plastic button eyes and red fishing net hair. A meter-long colorful railway relief, made out of plastic flotsam, adorns the outer wall. Next to a surrealistic structure with a washed up knee-high plastic toadstool as the central object is a handwritten sign: “Mushroom soup only against prepayment”.
This corresponds to the artistic tradition of the beach castles. Around 20 years ago, one of them even made it to the Altonaer Museum in Hamburg: the building by the recently deceased painter Otfried “Panscho” Schwarz was six by four meters in size and was presented there in the inner courtyard for a long time.
Panscho soon built a new beach castle at the original location on Amrum, this time with a disco ball in the roof reflecting far over the dunes. In 2015 it was stolen by the winter flood, remnants can still be found in the Amrum party location “54°Nord”.
However, there is nothing left of the numerous huts that once existed in the very south of Amrum. Unlike those in front of Nebel, the beach castles in front of Wittdün were only ever built seasonally, mainly by island guests.
And this according to a method adopted by the North Frisian hosts: for decades, the temporary house builders met every early summer for a drink and shoveled planks and other materials from the ground, which was often flooded by winter storms, in order to reassemble them. The material was then sunk again in the autumn. All that can still be found in this area today are smaller, less decorated beach castles.
It seems as if the huts on the Kniepsand stand for lived North Frisian freedom, as if they are something like an unofficial Amrum cultural asset. However, their number has declined significantly over the past ten years.
However, this has little to do with legal aspects or even pressure from the authorities – after all, they were built without a building permit, and plastic parts do not belong in nature. Rather, it means that the majority of hut builders are simply getting on in years.
“The beach castle building is unique, it enjoys cult status,” says Amrum’s head of tourism, Frank Timpe. The buildings made of flotsam have always been tolerated. At the peak of the tradition, as he knows “from hearsay”, there were probably more than 50 of them on the island. “Today it’s still six, seven.”
This is also decisive for the official handling of the huts, says Timpe: “The downward trend is entirely in the interests of the responsible nature conservation authorities, which is why there was no reason to take any further action”, i.e. tear down the huts. However, if the boom picks up again, this could become problematic: “New construction activities would be viewed critically today.”
So it is to be hoped that at least the existing beach castles will be preserved. And with them a decades-old tradition that so artfully shows the Frisian-free spirit of the small neighboring island of Sylt.
Information: amrum.de
Rising fuel prices, overcrowded trains, forest fires and overworked airport staff put many Germans off summer vacations abroad. So why not vacation nearby? Germany as a holiday destination is enjoying increasing popularity.
Source: WORLD
