The German troops occupying Schiermonnikoog during WWII totalled some 600 men. They built bunkers in the dunes along the beach as part of the Atlantic Wall to defend against allied forces. There was even a whole village at the end of the Prins Bernhardweg, consisting of bunkers, radar installations, anti-aircraft batteries and camouflaged barracks.
The village’s codename was ‘Schlei’ which is the word for tench in German.
A little further (along the cycle path to the south west of the Marlijn) lays a type Seeburg bunker, which was used as a communications post. Radar information and intercepted radio transmissions were passed on from here to the Luftwaffe, whose fighter planes were subsequently able to target the discovered allied aircraft. The Germans used a so-called ‘Seeburgtisch’ to process this information – a glass table on which the positions of all aircraft in the area were plotted using lamps. Shards of this table were retrieved from the sand on the floor of the bunker.
The Seeburg bunker is set up as a museum and is, as such, suitably accessible for wheelchairs and disabled visitors.
