On good days, Sylt is a lithesome figure that dances on the edge of the North Sea. A sort of nymph that guards access to Jutland behind. On dull days, Sylt just lies sullen, shrouded by charcoal cloud, and the lazy waves leave their murky flotsam on the beach. But it is on wild days that Sylt really comes alive in its watery solitude. The winter storms often bring a taste of sorrow. Last night the body of a man was washed up on the beach at Westerland. Shrivelled, battered, worn and unknown, the man lay on the ribbed sands just below the promenade, where once, one summer long ago, Scheherazade weaved delicate stories for a great flock of spellbound children.
There are two sides to Sylt. The east has soggy edges as tidal flats and salt marshes keep Sylt apart from the mainland. It is a sea that comes and goes. Far away in the distance, Danish wind farms harvest invisible energy. The other side of Sylt, the west, presents quite another demeanour. Real sea pounds at the ponderous dunes. Catch the dunes at summer sunset, and they shine in fierce red-gold. Thousands flock to Westerland for holidays. Buckets, spades and prosecco on the beach.
In winter, affluent couples who prefer pedigree dogs to children brave the shrapnel spray and walk the promenade, and spellbound by their self-importance they might catch echoes in the wind of Scheherazade's stories - talesof make believe, of elves and nymphs, that always have a happy ending. Not all Sylt endings are happy though. The corpse on the beach last night was not the first victim of the sea.
Westerland goes against the grain. It has none of the thatched charm of Kampen, Keitum and other cosy villages on the island. No, Westerland is something different. It is a town that somehow took a wrong turn and collided with a posse of urban planners intent on creating a monument to bad taste. Schickimicki style with lots of concrete. Of course, even in Westerland, you can cut loose from the fur coats and poodles with manicures and find the odd redemptive corner. On Elizabethstraße there is a gravely beautiful Catholic church. Located behind the promenade, on wild days even within earshot of the sea, this modern temple is full of nautical notes. No surprise that it is dedicated to Christopher, the patron-saint of travellers. And just opposite the church is Sylt’s most bewitching cemetery. It has no ornate headstones. Just simple crosses. It is a graveyard for people lost at sea whose bodies have been washed up on Sylt’s beaches. Saint Christopher sometimes drops his guard.
It was one hundred and twenty years ago this summer that Queen Elizabeth of Romania entranced Sylt with her stories. Each morning, she left her lodgings on the road in Westerland that is now named after her, and walked down past the cemetery for unknown seamen. On the beach, a hundred or more children would already be awaiting her. Reports of the Scheherazade of Sylt appeared in newspapers across the continent. In London, the Daily Telegraph reported:
The children build up a huge fort of sand, probably a full yard high, and defiantly plant their small toy flags — captured at the point of a fork from the sugar bastions and mamelons of many cakes — as a warning to the Great Powers not to interfere. Then they sit in a circle and listen to the ‘Märchentante’ — the Fairy Tale Aunt — as she weaves them legends of elves, gnomes, pixies, sprites, waterbabies and ‘good people’ generally.
The newspaper went on to reveal the identity of the artist-Queen of the Syltian sands, the modern Scheherazade who like her legendary Persian forbear was the mistress of a thousand fables. Queen Elizabeth of Romania really did holiday in Westerland, but she was no ordinary monarch. For she was one of the most prolific writers of the late nineteeth century, penning prose and poems for adults and children. Using the pen-name Carmen Sylva, Queen Elizabeth of Romania wrote in German, English, Romanian and French with equal ease, and few writers of her period matched her capacity for excelling in so many genres. She wrote children’s stories, novellas, opera libretti and stage plays. Much of her work is still in print. Adored in Romania, revered in France (where one collection of her essays in French was awarded the coveted Prix Botta by the Académie française) and watched with bemusement in Westerland, Carmen Sylva always had a moment for those who came from less privileged backgrounds than herself. In Romania she pioneered access to universities for women. During the Russian-Turkish war, she looked after wounded soldiers and during one long Sylt summer Carmen Sylva brought smiles day after day to the faces of children who attended every word of their Scheherazade as she held court in the sand fortress on the beach at Westerland.
Not a single body was washed up on the strand that summer. Every day, Carmen Sylva walked past the cemetery for those unknown souls who died at sea, and before she left Sylt she gave funds for the upkeep of the cemetery. A plaque was erected at her request. It makes no mention of the donor, but merely cites a stanza from the work of the Berlin theologian and poet, Rudolf Kögel, that ends with the words “Ein Heimat für Heimatlose” — a place where those who have no home might finally find a home. But few are the visitors who ever find the cemetery for lost seaman. And few are those who remember that Elizabethstraße is named after a Queen from far away.
The sea was rough last night. Shrapnel spray pounded the promenade. At dawn we walked the beach in watery winter sunshine. Clouds scuttled across the sky. Just at the spot where Scheherazade once presided over her juvenile court, there were fleeting shadows. A body on the beach perhaps? Or just the shadows of the elves and nymphs who, for one long summer, danced here on the sands.
