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Rosemary Collins finds out more about a Derby project researching photographs of German POWs during the First World War
Photographs from a WW1 German POW camp in Derby
The Derby-based WW Winter ( wwwinter. co.uk) is one of the oldest photography firms in Britain, having been in operation since 1852. To mark the centenary of the First World War, the WW Winter Heritage Trust launched a project to discover the story behind one of the treasures in its archive – a box of photographic negatives of German military officers held at two local prisoner of war camps, Donington Hall and Kegworth. With the help of a £10,000 grant from the National Lottery Heritage Fund and a group of local volunteers, the trust launched the project Behind the Barbed Wire.
Archivist and project coordinator Jane Middleton-Smith says that the trust discovered that the photographs were used in postcards that the prisoners sent home to their families in Germany and Austria.
“Clearly it’s very important for prisoners to communicate with the outside world, and for them to feel a link with their family and friends,” she says. “It was also easier for the censor. A photograph tells a thousand words. The family could see that they were well, and that they’re not in tattered uniforms. In fact, Donington Hall in particular was heavily criticised in the British press as being a sort of luxury camp for haughty German officers, because there were only officers in the camp with their orderlies.”
The volunteers also worked with Dr Brian K Feltman, associate professor of history at Georgia Southern University and an expert in the psychology of First World War prisoners, to understand what the men went through.
“The POWs were aristocrats who were expected to die a heroic death in battle,” Jane says. “They suffered all sorts of shame and emasculation at being captured instead.”
The next step for the project was trying to track down some of the original postcards.
“We found one that had the name Otto Berger on it on the website of a specialist dealer, while a German contributor had shared another postcard on the Great War Forum ( greatwarforum.org),” Jane says. “The postcards had WW Winter on them, and provided definitive proof that that’s why the photographs had been taken.”
Both postcards carry intriguing messages to their recipients. Otto Berger wrote “With friendly memories of nice days but also … days”, while Karl Wiedemann, the author of the second postcard, wrote: “In grateful remembrance of the water journey.” The message puzzled the researchers until they realised that The Water Journey is the name of a composition by Felix Mendelssohn.
Behind the Barbed Wire has now ended. The volunteers presented their findings in a symposium at the University of Nottingham, an exhibition and a paperback book.
Jane emphasises how much she has enjoyed the project. “It’s been lovely,” she says. “I’m very grateful to the players of the National Lottery for supporting it.”
However, the trust is already planning a follow-up project that will research the postcards further.
“Now we have some clues, we hope to track some of the postcards down in Germany and Austria, and then we have half a chance of identifying some of the prisoners in the photographs,” she adds.
‘The POWs suffered all sorts of shame and emasculation’