Virtual Branch Film

Professor Jan Rüger joined the Virtual Branch on 9th February 2023 to talk about his book Heligoland: Britain, Germany, and the Struggle for the North Sea, tracing a rich history of contact and conflict from the Napoleonic Wars to the Cold War.

For generations this North Sea island expressed a German will to bully Britain; and it mirrored a British determination to prevent Germany from establishing hegemony on the Continent. Caught in between were the Heligolanders and those involved with them: spies and smugglers, poets and revolutionaries, sailors and soldiers. Drawing on a wide range of material, Rüger explores what this sea-bound microcosm tells us about the Anglo-German relationship.

Jan Rüger is Professor of History at Birkbeck, University of London.