There are thousands of forgotten stories of German civilian internees in the United Kingdom. Even 100 years after the beginning of World War One, this part of its history is largely unknown to the general public. This included the internment of German civilians whose permanent residence, often for many years, was in the UK. Many were detained for years, for example in the Knockaloe camp on the Isle of Man, and from there they were repatriated to Germany via Rotterdam. Very often they arrived in a country that was foreign to them. Many of those civilian internees never returned to their British spouses and children.

On 5 August 1914, the Aliens’ Restriction Act was enacted, which restricted the freedom of movement of those Germans and Austrians residing in the UK. The ‘enemy aliens’ were arrested (without notice) and placed in internment camps. From 1914 to 1919 the German community in Britain shrank drastically. In World War One, Germanophobia played such a large role that the fate of German civilian prisoners was hardly given any attention. The propaganda of the time played its part in stoking up this attitude, which led to attacks against the Germans and their shops by the British public.

At the beginning of the war, men under 45 liable for military service were interned; later this age rose. The scenario was always the same. The police appeared without warning at the Germans’ home and took them to the nearest police station, where their personal details were taken down. Then they were handed over to the military authorities for internment. First they were sent to so-called transit camps and from there they went to the actual internment camp. Their British wives, who also became German subjects when they married, had to report daily to the local police station.

Heartbreaking scenes took place in these families. But what the families often did not know at their parting was that it was a farewell forever. Many thousands of the fates of German civilian internees are unknown to this day.

A century after the war, many descendants in the United Kingdom of those German men are starting to research what happened to them. One of the first contact points in Great Britain is the Anglo-German Family History Society which can help with many contact addresses (institutions, archives, etc). Helpful in finding the birth places of those internees, if this is not known, is the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Geneva, which published lists of Prisoners of War in August 2014 – see here .

In order to protect the children of German fathers from hostilities, the British mothers often shrouded all details in secrecy; they anglicised the surname if this had not already happened, documents were destroyed and German inscriptions on family pictures were removed.

There are stories like that of William Unverzagt (1868-?). A hairdresser who was born in Peine (40km east of Hanover), he emigrated to Scotland in 1890. Shortly after his arrival he changed his name to William Hardy and moved to Buxton (Derbyshire) where he married Miriam Florence Turner in 1895. The couple had five children, including Wilhelmina (1899-1994). The family happiness was short-lived. In 1916, at the age of 47, William Hardy was repatriated to Germany after his internment in Knockaloe. He did not return.

When William’s daughter Wilhelmina Hardy moved out of her house in the 1980s, her children discovered a photograph of William and the silence was broken. After more than 60 years, Wilhelmina spoke for the first time about her German father and his fate. Apart from his name and birth year the family only knew vaguely that he came from the Hanover area.

In 2014 Irene Vincent, on behalf of the family, got in touch with a professional genealogist who started research in Hanover. The yield was very sparse. Except for some entries in a directory of Hanover in the 1930s, nothing was found.

Thanks to the ICRC lists, the story took a positive turn. His birthplace was listed as Peine, and a visit to the City Archives in Peine answered many questions. But after 1945, William’s fate was unknown. However, a newspaper article was published in the local press, and William’s descendants in England were put in touch with their long-lost German family.

Like Irene Vincent and her family, Ian Mercer made contact with his German relatives in 2014: his German grandfather had disappeared in the Great War. At long last, many questions were answered. Ian’s grandfather Erich Jacobs (1892-1973) was born in Magdeburg. There, his father Gustav Jacobs was the owner of the elegant Königin-Luise-Bad (Queen Luise spa) in Beaumont-strasse 2. The very impressive building was a target of the bombing during World War Two.

Around 1911/12, Erich went to London as part of his training, where he met Agnes Wilkins. Their two children Queenie Elizabeth and Barnack Erich were born in London and Oakham in 1913 and 1914. At the beginning of WW1, Erich was interned and Agnes later told their children that Erich had died during the flu epidemic in 1918.

Among Agnes’ bequests the family found several advertisements for the Queen Luise spa, a letter written by Erich in 1938 and a large sum of Reichsmarks. But there was no picture and no hints about his background.

Because of his age and his liability for military service, Erich was probably among the Germans who were interned in 1914 and only released from internment in 1919. Only in the spring of 2014, when the first contact with his German relatives was established, did Ian Mercer learn about that.

Erich’s sister Käte Wanner lived with her family in Berlin. Through Berlin registration cards, the current address of Käte’s daughter-in-law was found and contact was made with Käte’s grandson, Dr Bernd Wanner. Erich’s private belongings were in his possession, including photo albums and family correspondence from the time of his internment in Knockaloe. Erich’s photos and letters from Knockaloe give a good impression of what life in the camp was like.

There are official reports from the International Committee of the Red Cross and the US Government which were written shortly after inspection visits to the camps. Quoting the ICRC report of January 1915:

The civilian prisoners exceed the number of prisoners of war. Still about 20,000 of the former are currently in the camps, yet every week a certain number of them are repatriated so that now really only men of conscription age are retained … At the moment there are neither women nor children in the British concentration camps … In what state the concentration camps were before our visit, we cannot judge … The women of married prisoners are supported. The German women receive about 5 shillings weekly, while former British women who married a German and their husbands are prisoners receive 12 shillings… (Federal Archives RM3 5402 pp21-22, translated by Corinna Meiß)

The American Ambassador John B Jackson wrote after a visit to 13 prisoner camps and 9 prison ships in England on 27 February, 1915:

When I visited the camp in Knockaloe, there were about 2,000 people interned in two departments, each of which comprised 10 barracks. Three other departments are being created, so that after the extension 500 people will have room. The camp is on loamy soil and slag, which was used filling up the ways, which immediately sank into it. The ways should therefore be outlayed with wooden beams… (ibid, p34)

‘Barbed wire disease’ quickly took hold in these conditions, because these civilians, who came from all classes and professions, were condemned in the camp to inactivity. Most importantly, they had no privacy. Suicide and escape attempts were often a consequence.

In 1916 there were 32,000 civilian prisoners on the Isle of Man. To create variety, they exercised, learned foreign languages, played musical instruments and put on theatre productions.

In London, the wealthy German-English chemist Karl Emil Markel (1860-1932), founded Prisoner Aid to supply the German civilian prisoners with books, musical instruments, sports equipment, chess sets, etc. Thanks to Markel, the library in Knockaloe comprised about 22,000 volumes. Markel spared no expense to help the civilian prisoners. He was quickly labelled as pro-German and was banned by and from his upper class circles in London. But he was not deterred from helping the internees. From Markel’s private home in Hyde Park, his work extended far and wide beyond the borders of Great Britain.

A century on, there is still no adequate memorial to these innocent civilian internees and their families who had undergone such a tragedy and no place where their descendants can commemorate them.

Further reading:
Prisoners of Britain – German civilian and combatant internees during the First World War, Prof Panikos Panayi, Manchester University Press, 2012

Migranten und Internierte – Deutsche in Glasgow, 1864-1918, Dr Stefan Manz, Franz Steiner Verlag, 2003