Hahnöfersand prison island prepares to close after more than a century

Visiting Hahnöfersand is not easy. A road reaches the island in the Elbe, in front of the orchards of the Altes Land, but visitors must arrange an appointment, report to the gatehouse and exchange their identity card for a visitor pass before passing the fences and barriers.

Hahnöfersand is a prison island. For more than a century, it has housed Hamburg’s young and juvenile prisoners. Its setting has fed the imagination, as prison islands often do.

Alexandre Dumas placed the Château d’If, off Marseille, at the center of the imprisonment of the Count of Monte Cristo. Alcatraz, near San Francisco, held Al Capone, while Clint Eastwood appeared there only in the Hollywood film “Escape from Alcatraz.” Both prisons have since become museums.

The prison island is now an outdated model of corrections. New York’s Rikers Island is expected to close in the coming years, and Hahnöfersand is scheduled to shut next spring. The institution also inspired Siegfried Lenz’s novel “Deutschstunde,” adding a literary echo to the prison’s final chapter.