W. German Isle Noted for Nude Bathing Is Being Stripped of Its Beaches

The North Sea island of Sylt has plenty of things going for it: a splendid mix of sea, beach, dune and sky, a reputation for nude sunning and swimming, and a chic clientele that has made it West Germany’s most fashionable summer resort.

But Sylt has one thing going against it. The breakers are washing away the sand, eroding the beaches and dunes. And the erosion is aggravated by winter storms. The island is literally returning to the sea.

“We’re losing a yard and a half of beach a year,” Joachim Gaertner, an official in the conservation department, said the other day. “We’ve tried a lot of methods to save the coastline. Some have not succeeded; others have a chance. I think we can save the beaches if we get enough money.”

Getting the money to save Sylt has become a political issue. Local, state and federal officials are arguing over which of them should provide most of what is needed.

Time is a factor in the effort to save the island, a wild place of dune grass, purple heather, pines and centuries-old Frisian houses with traditional reed thatching. It is sort of a glorified sand spit, just offshore, 25 miles long and covering 36 square miles.

Fought Off Sea for Centuries

Actually, the hardy North Frisian islanders have been fighting off the sea for centuries. Long ago the island was almost circular; now it is long and thin, with an arm running east from near its center. The distinctive shape is defined on a bumper sticker seen on thousands of German cars.

The island was once a remote fishing community, but toward the end of the 19th Century it became popular as a resort. Summer houses were built and a sea wall was put up in front of Westerland, the island’s largest town, to protect the exposed western beaches.

Sylt became well known for its artist visitors, men like the novelist Thomas Mann and the Expressionist painter Emil Nolde.

In 1921, the German government undertook to build a railroad causeway from the mainland out to the island, seven miles offshore. This was done as an inducement for the people there to vote in a plebiscite to remain German rather than become Danish, as are people on some of the other North Frisian Islands. After a couple of washouts, the causeway was completed in 1927.

With completion of the causeway, which is called the Hindenburgdamm, came an influx of tourists. In the 1930s, Sylt was the haunt of celebrities like actress Marlene Dietrich, boxer Max Schmeling and Nazi leader Hermann Goering. During World War II, it was a German seaplane base, and there was a military hospital there. It was one of the earliest German targets for Allied bombers.

Famous Four-Color Poster

In 1952, as West Germany’s postwar “economic miracle” got under way, people started taking vacations again, and Sylt was popularized in a famous four-color poster showing a blonde young woman, nude and tanned, splashing in the surf. It established the tone of the resort and has become something of a collector’s item today.

But the winter storms began to take their toll. They pounded the sea wall and damaged it, and water swirled around it, eroding the cliff-like dunes that the wall had been built to protect.

Then a series of piers, or groins, were built, projecting seaward from the shore. They were intended to keep the sea from sweeping along the shore and carrying sand out to sea. They were only partly successful.

“The problem is,” the conservation department’s Gaertner said, “that in recent years, for reasons we don’t understand, the intensity of winter storms has become much greater. This means that the waves are higher as they wash over the beach, striking the cliffs, eroding them, and then taking the beach sands out to sea.”

On one disastrous night, a winter storm swept away 15 yards of beach.

Dredges Put to Work

Sylt officials decided to put dredges to work, drawing sand up from floor of the sea and carrying it ashore in pipes to restore the beach and the base of the cliffs. Millions of cubic feet of sand have been moved in, and engineers believe that in this way the sea can at last be kept at bay.

“Eventually,” Herman Czock, another conservation official, said, “we hope the intensity of the storms will abate, and the currents change.”

Sylt officials said they would like to see $3 million a year budgeted for the dredging operation. But applying for government money has worked against Sylt’s elegant image--”the playground for the rich and naked,” as the magazines like to put it. If Sylt is so well off, state and federal officials argue, then the islanders should bear their share of the expenses.

Officials on the island counter that other Frisian islands and coastal areas have been given government money to finance conservation projects.

In winter, about 20,000 people live on Sylt, half of them in Westerland, which has a couple of high-rise buildings that seem out of place on the low island. In summer, visitors flock in, up to 300,000 of them, competing for rooms and the distinctive woven beach chairs that provide shelter from the sun.

Gambling Casino in Town Hall

It is Westerland’s beach that has been hardest hit by erosion. Westerland has a spa, where people take the cure, often at national health service expense, and a gambling casino in the Town Hall, along with a variety of restaurants and discos.

The haunt of the well-to-do is Kampen, with its red cliff overlooking the beaches, carefully tended houses and discreet boutiques that bear the labels of better-known fashion houses. This is the vacation place for many of Germany’s well-known artists, actors, sportsmen and politicians.

On the eastern shore is the village of Keitum, characterized by tidal flats that extend to the mainland. More of a family place, it has an old church called St. Severin, which was built by Roman Catholics but was taken over by Protestants in the Reformation. It has a 200-year-old organ and the Friday night concerts are packed. The eastern shore is also a favored place for wind-surfing.

Campers head for the southern part of the island, which has areas set aside for them plus several bistros in the dunes.

The U.S. Coast Guard has a station here, providing navigational aids, and local people say the Americans have had some success in finding wives among the Frisian women.

Northernmost Community

At the northern tip of the island is List, the northernmost community in West Germany. The ferry for Denmark leaves from List. List has several seafood restaurants that are open the year around. One of them, a popular outdoor place called Gosch, serves tiny Frisian shrimp with a lobster sauce on fresh bread, as well as oysters, smoked salmon and smoked eel. When the winds are howling, Gosch offers its customers a warming drink of seawater, lemon and schnapps.

Much of the island has been set aside as a nature park, including the largest sea bird sanctuary in Germany. No building is permitted in the park, and visitors are instructed not to leave the paths in order to avoid trampling the dune grass and heather that keep the sand from blowing away.

Cars arrive on the island by railroad carrier and sea ferry, and Porsches, Mercedes-Benzes and Rolls-Royces can be seen along with Volkswagens. At the height of the season there are enormous traffic jams.

Nudity is not the attraction that it was 20 years ago. These days people tend to take it for granted.

A woman named Inger, who said she was 18 and from Duesseldorf, told a reporter that she visits Sylt in winter and summer, and added: “We take nudity or leave it. If I want a quiet day, I go to the nude beach for a sun and swim. But if I want a change, to meet new friends, I get dressed.

“It used to be that you attracted people by going nude. Now you do it by getting dressed.”