Norderney also had several famous Jewish bathing guests, including the painter Felix Nussbaum (1904–1944), who immortalized his Memories of Norderney in an oil painting from 1929, as well as in an ink drawing from 1932. Both depict the “Villa Nordsee,” a boarding house built in 1896.
In 1901, a young man spent his summer vacation on the North Sea island after graduating from high school. Initially, the name “Krasta” was noted in the list of foreigners, which was then changed to “Kafken.” In fact, it was the later writer Franz Kafka. Seventy-five years earlier, Heinrich Heine had visited Norderney. In the third part of his cycle The North Sea, he expressed himself extremely disrespectfully about the residents of Norderney and especially about the women: “The virtue of the island women is protected by their ugliness, and by a smell of fish which to me was abominable.” Although he was threatened with beating, Heine ventured a third trip to the island.
Timeline Norderney
- ↑ Jewish life on Norderney and the increasing spa anti-Semitism – January 30, 1933
- ↓ Construction of the children’s recreation home of the Zion Lodge I.O.B.B. – October 1, 1910