Skagerrak — The Battle of Jutland, written in stone
Visiting Denmark’s North Sea coast earlier this summer, I’ve been so deeply impressed (my travel companions may prefer: obsessed) by Thyborøn’s “Mindepark”, a memorial for the Battle of Jutland which had taken place in 1916 at these same shores, that I couldn’t leave it with just one visit. Many returns to those dunes and the nearby Sea War Museum should follow in these two weeks of July. This illustrated reportage is the account of what made this site so particularly fascinating, at least to me.
These additional notes here, however, are meant to offer a little bit more context. Once academic, always academic — but footnotes in a comic format felt a bit much, even for me. So, here we are.
Casualty figures of people and ships lost in the Battle of Jutland, as mentioned in this story, seem to vary depending on the source material which is consulted. I mostly followed the numbers available through Sea War Museum Jutland (founded by Gert Normann Andersen) and the Jutland Memorial Park in Thyborøn (an initiative by Andersen as well), Denmark. Other sources however may produce slightly different numbers, still based upon ship logs and war diaries of course. But it can easily be imagined how chaos and confusion of the battlefield only made all of this more complicated. Shipwrecked sailors, rescued in the heat of fighting, found shelter on other ships after losing their own vessels. Only to find themselves in distress shortly after, again. Who made it out, who didn’t? How many people were on which ship in the end? In the details numbers may vary. The result remains the same.
And then there’s Kinau. The writer Johann Wilhelm Kinau. The name “Gorch Fock”, at least in Germany, certainly rings a bell with most people. The most common answer probably would be naming a sailing ship. Not just any ship, but the German Navy’s training windjammer for naval cadets — the current one built in 1958 (and coming with its own scandals) to replace the original three-mast barque from 1933 going by the same name (but which was taken as war reparation by the Soviet Union after World War II). Both ships were actually named after the pseudonym Kinau published many of his Low German dialect writings under, among which “Seefahrt ist Not!” (Seafaring is Hardship), released in 1913, remains his probably best known and most successful book: The account of the lives of Northern German deep sea fishermen sets a tone of heroism and nationalism found throughout his work. In particular nationalism. The identity of his body, washed ashore in Sweden after the Battle of Jutland, allegedly was recognized due to a poem, carried with him. This “Last Wish” absolutely breathes the nationalism of his (war) times. And while he of course could hardly be blamed for any later appropriation, it should not be veiled that his heroic narratives of homeland, struggle, and devotion not surprisingly became particularly popular in Nazi Germany. Kinau’s perceived ‘Heldentod’ (heroic death) in battle and a glorification encouraged and actively pushed by his representatives certainly added to later myth-making.
Both, the United Kingdom’s Grand Fleet and the German Empire’s High Seas Fleet claimed victory in the Battle of Jutland. So, who won? Or, knowing that from an individual, human, perspective in war everybody loses, was there a victor at all? With about 6,094 fallen soldiers and 14 combat ships (113,300 tons) sunk, the British Navy certainly suffered significantly larger losses than the German fleet, which lost 2,551 sailors and 11 ships (62,300 tons). Yet the Royal Navy forced the Imperial High Seas Fleet back into harbor, where it largely stayed for the rest of the war without noteworthy missions out to sea again. German command thus was not successful in its original attempt to cut off the British Isles with its fleet. The following shift to unrestricted submarine warfare, attacking any vessel in these waters, finally also let the United States enter World War I. With known consequences. The Armistice of Compiègne, which came into force 11 November 1918, eventually marked the Allied Forces victory over their last remaining opponent in this war. The German Empire was defeated.
A large part of the ongoing fascination with these events unfolding off the North Sea coast of Denmark that day and night in 1916 has to do with the aftermath of this Battle of Jutland. Its longer resonating impact on history. Jutland not only was (one of) the last sea battles fought primarily by battle ships, it also was a particular stressful experience for those barely making it out alive. Following the battle in 1916, and with the new German strategy focusing on submarines and lighter vessels, most of the Imperial Navy’s capital ships remained in harbor — crews morale and discipline suffering as much as their lowered rations. When in October 1918 (the war, kept in perspective, too long and forlorn already for quite some time), Imperial Naval command in Kiel ordered the fleet’s dispatch for a final battle against the Royal Navy in the English Channel, those memories and images certainly were still fresh enough to revoke its horrors. The order triggered a mutiny, a sailors’ revolt (“Kieler Matrosenaufstand”) soon turning into a general revolution. Soldiers and workers brought military and public institutions under control, electing councils (modeled after the Russian Revolution just a year before), spreading the spark of revolution into all of Germany.
A revolution ultimately overthrowing the German federal constitutional monarchy, ending the German Empire and establishing a democratic parliamentary republic … which became known as: the Weimar Republic.
References and further reading:
Website for the “Memorial Park for the Battle of Jutland” in Thyborøn, with a detailed description of the monument, its planning and development, and further historical background on the battle itself: www.jutlandbattlememorial.com
Website of the “Sea War Museum Jutland”: www.seawarmuseum.dk
Short biography of Johann Wilhelm Kinau / Gorch Fock (in German): https://www.deutsche-biographie.de/sfz69789.html
Additional biographic dates about the live of Johann Wilhelm Kinau / Gorch Fock (in German): https://www.dhm.de/lemo/biografie/gorch-fock
Short summary of the events in the course of the Kiel Mutiny (in German): http://www.vimu.info/general_04.jsp?id=mod_9_2&lang=de&u=teacher&flash=true&s=B8B5D1B3E1E1D1AFCA490ABC13B1F982
