Remembering Ruhleben prisoner of war camp, Berlin 1914-8

Of course prisoners of war and interned civilians are going to try to keep themselves busy and productive, throughout the years of their captivity. Otherwise they would go insane from mind­-numbing boredom, even before they had the chance to die from starvation or disease.

In 1940 the British government rounded up 75,000 German, Aust­rian and Italian aliens across the UK. Within 6 months, war time tribunals across the country had individually summoned and examined 64,000 aliens, including c1,000 teenage lads. Some of these men were in the armed forces and arrested while on parade. They were taken first to police cells, and then to prison, usually on the Isle of Man.

The German-speakers of Onchan camp (Isle of Man)  were a scholarly lot. There were 121 artists & writers, 113 scientists & teach­ers, 68 lawyers, 67 engineers, 38 physicians, 22 post-grad­uate scientists, 19 clerics & 12 dentists. Theor­etical physicist Walter Kohn, who later won the Nobel Prize in Chem­istry, and expressionist artist Kurt Schwitters, were interned guests of His Maj­es­ty’s govern­ment. As were Sir Nikolaus Pevsner, Lord Weidenfeld, Sir Ch­arles Forte, Prof Geoffrey Elton and RW Tiny Rowland. At the other end of the social scale, but just as important to the British economy, were 103 agricultural work­ers. This was not your usual police round up of uneducated, unemployed louts.

Detainees were subject to dehumanising treatment from guards, but discussions between the prisoners was tolerated and the opportunity for education and entertain­ment emerged. Each Isle of Man camp had its own youth group, organising its own debating society and music sessions. A camp university was led by refug­ee academics who arr­anged lectures and English classes. Every evening hundreds of internees, each carrying his chair to one of the lectures, pursued knowledge and kept depression at bay. Eventually the internees could take part in local farm work, run their own camp newspapers, and set up internal businesses and run an inter-camp football league. Life in the Isle of Man camps took on a productive and quite scholarly air.

But I had not heard of a similar story in WW1!! .In Nov 1914, an order was issued for all British civilian men in Germany to be arrested and taken to an old racetrack in Berlin. 5,000 men, tourists and workers from Britain and the Empire, ended up in what became known as the Ruhleben  internment camp.

In Ruhleben prison camp near Berlin, internees built a Little Britain

1914-1918
photo credit: BBC News Magazine

The internees slept in the old racing stables, often on straw, with no blankets and barbaric latrines. The first winter was miserable, and internees did die of disease or starvation. But since there were 26,000 German nationals interned in Britain in WW1, the Germans HAD to improve conditions for their British prisoners who were civilians, not prisoners of war. There were still 200 German guards but they stayed on the perimeter, allowing the prisoners a measure of home rule. New barracks were built and rations increased. And a proper community had to develop.

Each barracks established a committee because, to stave off boredom, the interned men needed to be useful. Chess clubs and debating societies were formed, then an orchestra and a theatre. Plays by Ibsen, Shakespeare, Shaw, Sheridan and Wilde were performed and Gilbert and Sullivan operettas were enjoyed. There were also workshops that taught bookbinding, watch-­making and engraving, a lending library established. There were organised sports, including boxing, cricket and league football teams.

A gift of seeds from the Crown Prince of Sweden in mid 1915 seems to have suggested the idea of gardening. Then in late 1916, a letter was posted to the Royal Horticultural Soc­iety’s offices in London. It announced the creation of the “Ruhleben Horticultural Society”, and asked for bulbs and seeds to be sent to Berlin.

But it was not until 1917 that the British internees asked to expand the central part of the racecourse as a large vegetable garden. That year, with help from London's Royal Horticultural Soc­iety, there was also a series of hortic­ultural lectures and exhibitions, with “prizes” awarded for vegetab­les and gardens. Pests were a big problem at first, manure was not available and the soil was quickly transformed into mud. But the men built frames and greenhouse. Eventually the camp was almost self-sufficient in fruit and vegetables. By 1918, there was almost no food left in Germany so the quality of diet inside the prison fence was probably higher than outside.

organised sport at Ruhleben prison camp 

1914-1918
photo credit: Harvard Law Library

The British class system reasserted itself inside Ruhleben!! Public schoolboys quickly set up exclusive clubs, and even paid other internees to act as formally dressed drink waiters. Hanging around with merchant seamen for four years meant that the habit of swearing spread to the middle-class internees, so they needed a period of “quarantine” before returning home post-war.

During and after WW1, the Ruhleben camp was famous in both Britain and Germany. After the Armistice a number of books were published about the internees’ experience at Ruhleben. But as the full horror of the trenches became clearer, the camp was quickly forgotten. Ruhleben might have been beset by bestial conditions, but it was an idyll compared to what was happening at Ypres or the Somme.

Running until Jan 2015, The Gardens and War exhibition is presenting the Ruhleben story in London. The goal of the show is to display the British at their most resourceful, despite horrible war time conditions. This was story of British ingenuity and practical­ity, via pumpkins and onions. 

The story is also told in A History of Ruhleben, written by Joseph Powell and Francis Henry Gribble (published by Nabu Press, 2010). And in “The Other RHS” by Mark Griffiths, published in Country Life 6th August 2014.