Manifesto

Wattenmeer

Wattenmeer

The Wadden Sea (Wattenmeer) is the largest unbroken tidal mud flats system in the world and consists of an unusual and highly dynamic sedimentary coast that ebbs and flows as sand, debris, mud, soil, and marine materials are distributed and redistributed over and over by the waves, tides, and currents. It is one of the world’s most important areas for migratory birds, millions of which feed off the Wadden Sea’s bountiful ecosystem. The Wadden Sea´s biomass is one of the densest in the world – second to only the Brazilian Amazon – and is in danger of being permanently flooded due to climate-change induced sea-level rise. In 2009, the Wadden Sea, stretching along the coasts of Germany, Denmark, and the Netherlands, was placed on UNESCO´s World Heritage List.

Wattermeer representation

Andrea Muehlebach, Professor of Maritime Anthropology and Cultures of Water at the University of Bremen, first worked on the Wadden Sea with students from the Department of Anthropology and Cultural Research. Together, they visited the so-called Halligen – ten low-lying patches of regularly flooded land in the Wadden Sea. Nestled along the northwestern part of the North Sea just off the Northern German coast, these patches are not islands, which are often protected by dykes, but Halligen – land that is regularly flooded by seawater. All of the flora, fauna, and people there live with the water as it ebbs, flows, and floods. When storm tides come, the water often covers everything except the small, human-built mounds called Warften. All life here is built amphibiously around and in negotiation with water.

Spending almost a week on these “floating dreams,” as German poet Theodor Storm once called the Halligen, the group wanted to track what it means to live with water and to see what kinds of messages the waters and people held. They read a text by trader and traveler Julius Konietzko, who lived from 1921-1924 on the Halligen and documented what he perceived to be a vanishing form of traditional life on and with water. Some of the objects he collected – fog horns, painted white and blue tiles, a wooden wind vane – were presented in an exhibition dedicated entirely to water at the Museum am Rothenbaum in Hamburg in 2023. In collaboration with the MARKK, the group produced several written, filmic, and oral contributions, all of which can be found here.