Qualla: Spiekeroog

Spiekeroog: Introduction

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit User:Huebi, CC BY 2.5. Inside the small wooden Alte Inselkirche on Spiekeroog hangs a portrait of the Virgin Mary that, by long island tradition, washed ashore from a wreck of the Spanish Armada in 1588. The church itself was built in 1696, the oldest on the East Frisian Islands. A Catholic relic in a Protestant church on a sandy German island, salvaged from a Spanish naval catastrophe four hundred years ago, is the kind of detail that ought to be apocryphal but probably is not. Spiekeroog has a habit of holding on to things the sea brings in.

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Image: User:Huebi | CC BY 2.5

Spiekeroog: Storage Island

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown author, Public domain. The name Spiekeroog is disputed but the locals tend to accept that it means storage island, an old reference either to grain kept here or to the island's tendency to accumulate things. It first appears in records in 1398, then named Spiekeroch, and was at the time a hiding place ...

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Image: Unknown author | Public domain

Spiekeroog: No Cars, No Bikes

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Molgreen, CC BY-SA 4.0. Spiekeroog is one of the most stringently low-traffic islands in Germany. Visitors leave cars in Neuharlingersiel and ride the ferry across the Harle gat. On the island itself there are no private vehicles. Even bicycles are discouraged - the village is small, the distances are s...

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Image: Molgreen | CC BY-SA 4.0

Spiekeroog: The Cemetery of the Homeless

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Christiane S, CC BY-SA 4.0. On a remote part of the island sits a small graveyard with the bleak name Drinkeldodenkarkhof - the cemetery of the drowned. It is also called the cemetery of the homeless, because in earlier centuries any unidentified body washed ashore was considered to have no home. Eighty-fou...

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Image: Christiane S | CC BY-SA 4.0

Spiekeroog: Quiet by Policy

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ralf Roletschek, CC BY-SA 3.0. Spiekeroog has long been a hideout for German politicians and intellectuals. Three former Federal Presidents - Gustav Heinemann, Richard von Weizsaecker, and Johannes Rau - spent holidays here. Rau got married on the island. The reasons are obvious if you arrive in the off-season...

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Image: Ralf Roletschek | CC BY-SA 3.0