Remembering Ruhleben: The other RHS

A forthcoming event by the Garden Museum and the Royal Horticultural Society to commemorate some of the British and British Empire prisoners who were interned at the Ruhleben POW camp near Berlin during the First World War:

Garden Museum in collaboration with the RHS presents 

REMEMBERING RUHLEBEN: The other RHS

An evening of readings, music & song to celebrate the forgotten story of a horticultural society that sprung up in the midst of war

WEDNESDAY 12 November 2014

7.00pm - 8.30pm

'A story of British ingenuity and gumption, which had horticulture at its heart'
The Daily Telegraph

November, 1914. War has been declared. An order is given for British men in Germany to be arrested and sent to Ruhleben Internment Camp - a bleak and abandoned racetrack near Berlin. Faced with no facilities, limited supplies and winter fast approaching, the prisoners did the only thing they could: 'maintain the British ideal of patriotism, patience, courage and usefulness through four long years.'

As Ruhleben was transformed through the prisoner's efforts, a very British Horticultural Society was set up, and - just like any Horticultural Society back home - they turned to the RHS for help.

Largely forgotten today, this remarkable story will be retold by actors, using diary extracts, live music, poems, and various musings from the Ruhleben Camp Magazine.

Programme
6.30pm
Doors open

7.00pm
Performance

8.00pm
Q&A with Fiona Davison, Head of the RHS Lindley Library

This event celebrates the Gardens and War Exhibition, on at the Garden Museum until 5 January 2015

Tickets
£20 Standard
£15 Garden Museum and RHS Members

To book, please visit www.gardenmuseum.org.uk or call 020 7401 8865

The RHS is searching for stories about the Ruhleben gardeners from their friends and descendants. Anyone with information can contact the RHS at libraryenquirieslondon@rhs.org.uk

COMMENT: Thanks to organiser Dudley Hinton for sending this through. I'm unfortunately not going to be able to attend, but for those who had relatives interned at Ruhleben, check out my The Ruhleben Story web project at http://ruhleben.tripod.com, where details of some 2000 of the 5500 or so POWs who were there have been recorded (my great uncle was one of them, which sparkled off my interest in the camp).

Chris

Now available for UK research is the new second edition of the best selling Tracing Your Family History on the Internet: A Guide for Family Historians, whilst my new book British and Irish Newspapers is also now out. And please consider purchasing the great new version of Caledonia by The Libations at 79p via www.caledonia2014.com - all profits go to help fund Scottish foodbanks

Red Cross First World War POW cards to go online August

Peter Calver's latest Lost Cousins newsletter at www.lostcousins.com/newsletters/jun14news.htm carries news that the index cards currently being digitised by the International Prisoners-of-War Agency, set up by the Red Cross, will be available online in August of this year.

The agency's website notes that some 500,000 pages of lists and six million index cards index cards for both military POWs and civilian internees will be included. Looking forward to seeing if they might have anything on my civilian great uncle John Paton, who was interned at Ruhleben in Germany from 1916-1918.

The agency has not been accepting research requests for some time (five years) because of this project, so this should hopefully help when it makes an appearance.

The full story is available at http://www.icrc.org/eng/resources/documents/article/other/archives-first-world-war-2011-07-27.htm

UPDATE 13 SEP - above link now broken, but see http://grandeguerre.icrc.org/ for the database.

(With thanks to Peter)

Chris

Now available for UK research is the new second edition of the best selling Tracing Your Family History on the Internet: A Guide for Family Historians, whilst my new book British and Irish Newspapers is also now out. And FindmyPast - please reinstate the original Scottish census citations on your new site.

WW1 Holzminden & Ruhleben POWs

Yesterday I posted a short story on my other blog about a young British boy who was arrested in Berlin at the outset of the First World War for having defamed Germany, and British Foreign Office attempts to have him freed with the help of the American Embassy in Berlin. The story emerged from some Foreign Office documents that I am currently working through for my Ruhleben Project website (http://ruhleben.tripod.com), in which I am trying to produce short biographical extracts for some 5500 British civilian and merchant seamen POWs who were interned at the camp on the outskirts of Berlin - it can be read at http://walkingineternity.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/youthful-indiscretion-in-first-world-war_27.html.

On the back of this post, I have just had another useful site pointed out to me by reader Brenda Merriman, concerning the POWs who were interned in another camp at Holzminden. Mostly military prisoners, some merchant seamen were also included. The site is at www.facesofholzminden.com and includes a downloadable PDF document with the names of some 500 or so individuals known to have been interned there.

Elsewhere on the Ruhleben front, Marcus Bateman has also been in touch to let me know that his current website on British Merchant Seamen interned at Ruhleben (and elsewhere) is soon to be deleted, and instead replaced by a new site at www.spw-surrey.com/mt9/. Amongst new content recently added he has a new page with names extracted from a National Archives document reference MT 9/1094, for surnames beginning A and B in September 1916. Well worth a look.

Meanwhile I am ploughing on with extracting names from a few other sources, including the Ruhleben Football Association Handbook from 1915 and files from TNA FO 369/710. I've added 70 short biographical extracts over the last 2 days, with plenty more to get on the site. With the anniversary of the war set to happen next year it's an ambition of mine to try to get the name of Ruhleben and its many stories as well known again as it once was throughout the conflict, as a tribute to my civilian great uncle who was interned there, and my civilian great grandfather who died after hiding for 16 months in Brussels to avoid arrest. Many people have been in touch in recent weeks and months with new material for the site - thanks for this, and I'll try to get through it as quickly as I can!

(With thanks to Brenda Merriman, Marcus Bateman and Simon Fowler)

Chris

Pre-order my new book, Tracing Your Irish Family History on the Internet, through Pen and Sword (30 April 2013), or purchase early at Who Do You Think You Are Live 2013 in London. For my other genealogy books, please visit  http://britishgenes.blogspot.co.uk/p/my-books.html; whilst for my online Scottish based genealogy courses please visit the Pharos Teaching and Tutoring Ltd site.

New Ruhleben diary emerges

Long term readers will know I run a website about the First World War based Ruhleben internment camp near Spandau, Berlin, where some 5500 British and British Empire based civilians were interned for the duration of the hostilities. The site has been a bit neglected of late with other projects, although I do hope to give it a huge update in time for the centenary anniversary of the war's outbreak next year.

I received an email this morning about a gentleman called Hugo Norton Dixon who was born in Ormskirk, England, in Q4 1892, and later interned in the camp after his arrest in Bremen, where he had been working for an American cotton company. It turns out that Dixon recorded his experiences prior to the war and at Ruhleben from 1914-1916 in three diaries in order to practice the French he learned in the camp. These were later deposited at Shelby County Archives in Tennessee, with Dixon having relocated to the United States after the war, where he became something of a highly regarded philanthropist. The diaries, partially translated, are now available online, with an introduction, at http://register.shelby.tn.us/dixon/.

For more on the Ruhleben POWs visit my site at http://ruhleben.tripod.com where there is information on about 2000 of those who were interned - and I will get my finger out asap to update it again, as I have lots of new material to add!

(With thanks to Lee H)

Chris

Pre-order my new book, Tracing Your Irish Family History on the Internet, through Pen and Sword (30 April 2013), or purchase early at Who Do You Think You Are Live 2013 in London. For my other genealogy books, please visit  http://britishgenes.blogspot.co.uk/p/my-books.html; whilst for online Scottish based genealogy courses please visit the Pharos Teaching and Tutoring Ltd site.

Book review: Tracing Your Prisoner of War Ancestors - The First World War

It's with a great deal of delight that I received a copy of the latest Pen and Sword family history book in the post yesterday - not only because I was able to make a very small contribution to the author's research, but because the author has given me enough back in return to look at for another decade! Tracing Your Prisoner of War Ancestors - The First World War by the Imperial War Museum's Sarah Paterson is an excellent handbook to help locate POW records for both civilians and the military who were imprisoned in the conflict, within the British Isles, Europe and beyond.

This is an area I have some interest in, in that I run an online project at http://ruhleben.tripod.com about the Ruhleben internment camp in Germany, which housed thousands of British civilian males of fighting age throughout the conflict - including my grandfather's brother John Paton. Ruhleben is an environment that I find absolutely fascinating the more I learn about it, but a question I am often asked about is what exists for other camps. The short answer is that I really haven't much of a clue, as my real interest is simply with Ruhleben for family history based reasons. For this reason Sarah's new book is going to prove to be an absolute Godsend!

There are ten chapters which comprise just over half of the book, with an impressive collection of eight appendices to fill out the rest. Following a general introduction the author starts with a detailed look at the work of the International Committee of the Red Cross, the British Red Cross and the Central Prisoners of War Committee, as well as the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. She then takes us to Germany to first look at the plight and experience of British military POWs, and then British civilians who found themselves caught up in the wrong place at the wrong time. An interesting chapter then takes us to Turkey to look into the story of British prisoners there, before the final three chapters look at the issues of prisoners exchanged in neutral countries and the plight of Germans interned in the UK, both military and civilian.

The appendices then include a general 'quick guide' for resources that can help with POW research and some interesting sections on POW camps in Bulgaria, Turkey, Germany, Austria and East Africa, as well as a detailed list of camps in the UK. These are accompanied by an excellent bibliography and glossary.

Going back to Ruhleben alone, there are many useful resources I am not familiar with which I will now need to pursue, and some details that I was previously unaware of - for example, although there were several sets of magazines and periodicals actually published in the camp, two titles listed here are new to me, being Italian language publications called L'Eco: Foglio Istruttivo Settimanale and Messagero: Foglio Istruttivo Settimanale.

The Pen and Sword family history books range rarely produces anything poor, but I have a feeling this is going to be one of the titles that I will most readily have to hand with my own research. It's given me some new leads to follow, some much needed context on a few fronts - and it is a simply brilliant effort from the author. Thoroughly recommended.

Tracing Your Prisoner of War Ancestors - The First World War is available from www.pen-and-sword.co.uk/Tracing-Your-Prisoner-of-War-Ancestors-The-First-World-War/p/3530/ - the price is currently £11.99 from the publisher (RRP £14.99)

Chris

Check out my Scotland's Greatest Story research service www.ScotlandsGreatestStory.co.uk
New book: It's Perthshire 1866 - there's been a murder... www.thehistorypress.co.uk/products/The-Mount-Stewart-Murder.aspx (from June 12th 2012)

FindmyPast publishes POW records

FindmyPast (www.findmypast.co.uk) has published records concerning British prisoners of war in the two world wars.

For the First World War:

• 7,703 British Army Officers who were Prisoners of War between 1914 and 1918

For the Second World War:

• British Navy & Air Force Officers: 19,229 records
• Officers of Empire serving in British Army: 39,808 records
• British Army held in German territories: 107,000 records

Further information is available at www.findmypast.co.uk/content/news/wwi-wwii-pow

Don't forget that information on over 2000 British civilian prisoners of war interned in Germany during the First World War is freely available on my The Ruhleben Story project page at http://ruhleben.tripod.com

Chris

Check out my Scotland's Greatest Story research service www.ScotlandsGreatestStory.co.uk
New book: It's Perthshire 1866 - there's been a murder... www.thehistorypress.co.uk/products/The-Mount-Stewart-Murder.aspx (from June 12th 2012)

Christmas in Ruhleben - the POWs story

The following post was made a year ago on my Walking in Eternity blog, but is reproduced here for those who may be interested!


On Friday 6th November 1914, the mass internment of British civilians living in Germany began. For the next four years, some 5500 British and Commonwealth citizens were imprisoned at the camp, a converted racecourse just a few miles from Berlin, with many not seeing release until the end of the war. Whilst the common belief was "it will all be over by Christmas", few would have realised just how many Christmases would pass until that statement would finally ring true.

My own great uncle, John Paton, was interned at Ruhleben in late 1916, and not released until the end of 1918. I have spent several years trying to find out more about the prisoners at the camp, with so far the stories of some 2000 identified at my site, The Ruhleben Story, at http://ruhleben.tripod.com/. Along the way I have accumulated some interesting cards concerning the camp, portrayed below.




And there's a bit more about the camp in the following film!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2d82DmA5mFw

Chris