The Westerheversand lighthouse on the Eiderstedt Peninsula, Nordfriesland, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany
Some background information:
When we visited the Westerheversand lighthouse, I took a number of photos of this red-white building. The sky was overcast and the atmosphere was rather gloomy. These were not the conditions, I would have preferred. But all of a sudden, I saw this flock of gray geese appearing behind the lighthouse and flying into our direction. Of course, I couldn’t let this rare opportunity slip and took another serious of pictures. These geese made me even forget the adverse weather conditions.
The Westerheversand lighthouse stands on an artificial mound (in German: "Warft") near the little village of Westerhever. It is the landmark of the Eiderstedt Peninsula in Schleswig-Holstein, a German cultural heritage and also a national historic monument. The lighthouse, which is still in operation, is a sea, sector, and guiding light. The height of the light is 40 meters, and the structure itself is 41 meters tall.
The range of the light is approximately 21 nautical miles (about 39 kilometers). The indirect visibility of the light extends over 55 kilometers. In clear weather, it can even be seen from Germany’s only populated deep sea island Helgoland. A belt lens is used for the optics, which revolves around two groups of three vertical shutters. The light characteristic is that every 15 seconds, there are three interruptions of the light—depending on the direction—white, red, or green, caused by brief dark phases.
The lighthouse was built in 1906 on Westerheversand, about 1,000 meters in front of the sea dike, on a four-meter-high artificial mound reinforced with 127 thick, long oak piles and a concrete base. The tower was assembled from 608 interconnected cast-iron plates, weighing a total of 130 tons, called tubbings, which were mounted on a brick base. The iron plates came from the Isselburg foundry in Münsterland, as did those for two nearly identical lighthouses on Pellworm and Hörnum in Issel. The tower contains nine floors. On either side of the tower, lighthouse keeper's houses were constructed. Since 1929, the Stockenstieg path has led to the lighthouse from the east-northeast, and in 1981, a concrete path from the west-northwest was added.
The light was first lit in May 1908. Until 1974, a carbon arc lamp was used as the light source, powered by a generator driven by two diesel engines with buffer batteries, which provided the necessary 70 volts of direct current. The burning duration of a carbon rod was about nine hours, after which it had to be replaced. In 1951, the generators were connected to the public power grid. In 1975, the carbon arc lamp was replaced by a modern 2000-watt xenon short-arc lamp with a light intensity of 183,000 candela.
After decades of lighthouse keepers serving at the tower, it is now monitored automatically from the little town of Tönning. The two former keeper’s houses now host a nature conservation station of the Wadden Sea National Park, managed by the Wattenmeer Conservation Society. Since 2001, the lighthouse has been open to visitors. In summer, the return path can also be taken through the salt marshes via the Stockenstieg, a restored historic pathway paved with bricks.
Eiderstedt, where the Westerheversand lighthouse is located, is a peninsula on the North Sea coast. It is about 30 kilometers long and 15 kilometers wide and was formed around 1200 through land reclamation with dike constructions and the consolidation of two islands and a peninsula. Those were the islands of Utholm and Westerheversand as well as the Everschop-Eiderstedt penisnsula. Today, about 22,000 people live in the 24 towns and municipalities of the peninsula. Eiderstedt is particularly flat and protected against the North Sea by grass-covered dikes. These dikes are grazed by numerous flocks of sheep, just like the salt meadows on the other side of the dikes, which blend into the Wadden Sea.
