A Sinister Neighbour: Gestapo HQ Berlin

Martin Gropius Bau, venetian friezes,
Gestapo HQ, Berlin Wall death strip
(Clockwise from top left)

My new novel, Fables & Lies: A World War II Novel, arose from my fascination with the archaeologist, Heinrich Schliemann, who not only proved the ancient city of Troy existed but also discovered a fabulous cache of gold there known as Priam’s Treasure.  Schliemann smuggled the trove out of Turkey then ‘bequeathed’ it to the German people. During WWII, the treasure was kept in a Berlin museum. After the Soviets looted the city, Priam’s Treasure disappeared mysteriously for 50 years until the Russians admitted they had hidden it in Moscow’s Pushkin Museum where you can see it today.

My protagonist, Freyja Bremer, is a patriotic museum assistant raised on Nazi dogma. Through her love affair with Cambridge educated archaeologist, Darien Lessing, her eyes are opened to the rot beneath the Regime’s lies, as both strive to protect Priam’s Treasure and other antiquities from air raids. Intertwined is Freyja’s forced marriage to Kaspar Voigt, one of Himmler’s SS scholars, and her quest to discover what her husband’s twisted research entails. As such, Freyja’s safekeeping efforts and her journey to enlightenment form the spine of the novel. However, I also explore Himmler’s promulgation of the Aryan Myth to justify invasion, dispossession and murder.

My research revealed Priam’s Treasure was housed in the Pre and Early History Museum in the ‘Martin Gropius Bau’ building on Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse. It had the distinction of being located next to Gestapo Headquarters which intrigued me. What would it have been like for my characters to have worked next to such sinister neighbours?

A changing streetscape

Excited to visit Berlin to ‘walk the ground’, I hired a guide from Humboldt University to give me a tour of specific places I’d identified as relevant to my plot. I quickly learned many street names had altered over the years depending on which regime was in power. The East Germans changed Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse to Niederkirchnerstrasse in 1951, named after Käthe Niederkirchner, a communist resistance fighter against the Nazis.

In the late 1880’s, the short street boasted the elegant Prince Albrecht Palais at No. 9 and Martin Gropius Bau at No.7 which was purpose built in 1881 to house the Museum of Decorative Arts. Opposite these stood the Prussian Parliament House. In 1905, an extension to the Decorative Arts Museum was built at No.8. Later this annexe became the School of Industrial Arts.

After WWI, the Museum of Decorative Arts was moved elsewhere in Berlin. Martin Gropius Bau became known as ‘the Museum at Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse’ which housed three collections – Pre and Early History, East Asian and the Art History Library. The ‘Schliemann Salon’ displayed Priam’s Treasure and other Trojan exhibits. The ‘Gold Hall’ was filled with magnificent Merovingian Frankish jewellery and Bronze Age troves such as the Cottbus and Eberswalde Hoards. In all, there were over 100,000 exhibits in the Pre and Early History Museum to pack and protect.

Priam's Treasure in Berlin

An ominous address

The cultured atmosphere of Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse changed after 1933. No.8 was taken over as Gestapo HQ. The palace at No.9, since turned into a Grand Hotel, became SS House. The parliament building became The House of the Aviators. Goering also built his massive Aviation Ministry (which covered one city block) at the corner crossing at Wilhelmstrasse, an imposing eagle statue at the front. In fact, during the Third Reich, ‘Wilhelmstrasse’ became shorthand for the entire government quarter of ministries including Hitler’s New Reich Chancellery.

Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse was an ominous address. Being taken ‘to No.8’ was a terrifying prospect. Dungeons were built underground. A ‘House Prison’ was erected in its gardens. Thousands of people were interrogated and tortured within its walls.

Of course, Gestapo Headquarters and other Wilhelmstrasse ministries were targets for Allied bombers during the war. As a result, Martin Gropius Bau was under constant threat of becoming collateral damage. Despite this danger, curators persisted in packing their national treasures. During the Soviet assault, Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse was part of the ‘Zitadelle’- the innermost sector containing Wilhelmstrasse which was to be defended at all costs. Ultimately, the Soviets bombarded SS House and No.8 with artillery but, even in the downfall, SS soldiers defended Gestapo HQ to the last, their blood staining the cobblestones.

The quest to save national treasures

Zoo Flak Turm

On the eve of the war, the Nazis issued a directive to all cultural institutions to sort their exhibits into three categories: priceless, most valuable, and less precious. Over time, space was found in bank vaults for the first two groups, but with the advent of RAF saturation bombing and American ‘blockbusters’, many of the irreplaceable and most valuable objects were sent to salt mines in western Germany. However, the director of the Pre and Early History Museum, Wilhelm Unverzagt, chose to secure his Category One exhibits such as Priam’s Treasure in a monumental ‘Flak Tower’ near the zoo which resembled a medieval fortress with three-metre-thick concrete walls.

My protagonist, Freyja Bremer, is one of Unverzagt’s assistants. She risks her life packing the collections while watching the museum take hit after hit. Freyja lives in a world of oppression where trust is a fragile currency. Threats from the Gestapo loom large in her life as much as the HQ’s physical presence next to her workplace. As Himmler made it a prerequisite for SS cadets to pass an exam on pre-history she grows used to ‘Black Angels’ attending lectures in the museum. There is no escaping interaction with her odious neighbours.

Through Freyja, the reader is taken into the world of Germany’s safekeepers and the destruction of Berlin’s cultural landmarks. Freyja also weathers the Soviet assault in the Flak Tower and witnesses a Soviet Trophy Brigade plundering all the exhibits she’s strived so hard to protect. At the same time, she’s drawn into the chilling world of Himmler’s research institute, the SS Ahnenerbe. Forced into marriage with Kaspar Voigt to protect her father, she is horrified to learn how prehistorians and ethnologists are subverting history to serve power.

A walk through history

Niederkirchnerstrasse stands today as a time capsule for various eras in Berlin’s history. No.8 and No.9 have been razed with only the basement cells remaining. A museum known as ‘The Topography of Terrors’ has been established to serve as a reminder of the oppression of the Regime. The Berlin House of Representatives now occupies The House of the Aviators. Only Goering’s Aviation Ministry remains pretty much as original due to the Soviets and then GDR officials using it as offices.

Ornate bas reliefs and columns

The street also holds echoes of misery from the German Democratic Republic. The Berlin Wall ran down the middle of the road cutting off Mitte in the east from Kreuzberg in the west. Martin Gropius Bau ended up in the ‘American sector’ during the period of the Four Powers. Checkpoint Charlie, the infamous crossing point featured so often in spy thrillers, was located nearby. Pseudo US soldiers now pose with tourists for photos there. A section of the wall with its death strip remains as a memorial.

Next to this wasteland, Martin Gropius Bau rises in its splendour. The West Germans reconstructed it in 1978 with further renovations occurring after reunification. It certainly wasn’t what I expected to find on my tour - a delight to behold – one of the most beautiful historic buildings in Berlin. I describe it in my novel:

Majolica mosaics

‘Although Freyja had worked at the museum for some time, she’d never grown accustomed to such sinister neighbours. She was always relieved to reach the refuge of the Martin Gropius Bau at No. 7. Three storeys high, the faux Italian palazzo was a confection of red brick, terracotta and sandstone. A row of Venetian glass mosaic friezes adorned its top floor. The blue, red and gold majolica human characters in each panel embodied nine different epochs of art. She saw the gleaming figures as her guardians.’

In addition to these magnificent friezes, each storey is demarked by terracotta reliefs depicting industrious craftsmen such as masons, spinners and carpenters. Above each are stone lozenges engraved with the names of famous artisans such as Schinkel, Schiller and Buhl. The entrance columns are ornately adorned with frolicking children and fruit such as pineapples. There are coats of arms including one with masonic symbols. The art epochs are exemplified by figures such as an Egyptian pharaoh, Japanese geisha, Roman Caesar and Grecian noblewoman. 

Atrium skylight, foyer dome, acanthus balustrades

Inside, the museum is no less wondrous. The rococo décor is a celebration of the Baroque with green acanthus balustrades and stucco ceilings festooned with garlands. In the foyer is a beautiful leadlight dome. Three double doors lead to a huge atrium covered by a rectangular skylight. In its heyday, over thirty exhibition salons surrounded the hall on the ground and first floors. Now it is an art exhibition space which has featured artists such as Wei Wei, Anish Kapoor and Paul Klee.

I admit I’ve become entranced by this amazing building with all its layers of history. If you are ever in Berlin – I recommend you visit. You won’t be disappointed!

Elisabeth Storrs is the author of A Tale of Ancient Rome trilogy. Her latest release is Fables & Lies: A World War II Novel about stolen treasure and the Aryan Myth. She is also the founder of the Historical Novel Society Australasia and the ARA Historical Novel Prize.

Photos are my own or courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Being Curious about the Past, by Gillian Polack

 

I’m not at my desk. This is rare for me. I’ve been unwell for a number of years and one of the results is that I almost live at my desk. Except now. I am travelling. I’m meeting with other History Girls when we’re close enough to each other, and I’m so looking forward to this. It’s not the main reason for my voyages. I have research to do. I may or may not be well enough to do it with any sort of comfort, so this is a vast test. It will basically let me know what kind of life is ahead for me. I want to do extraordinarily well, and I want to be able to dance again when I get home. I’ve not been able to folkdance for over a decade, but I still have many friends who do, and … I miss it and them. This is also not why I’m travelling!

I’m researching a bunch of different things, but they all fit together and create one project. Some of it is fiction and some non-fiction. I’m also giving some workshops and seminars in worldbuilding using Medieval history, in Australian Gothic (the fiction, not the architecture) and even how to write fight scenes using the model of Old French epic legends. This later is an oldie but a goodie. I once was an expert on these battle scenes and soon I teach German translators how to write them. It’s mainly so that we can talk about translation. I will be working with MA students at Heinrich Heine University, and I’m very excited. I am addressing my own past in teaching students about Australian fiction and about Old French epics. My convict ancestry is not actually English. Lemon, my ancestor who was convicted in the Old Bailey (unjustly, I suspect, given what happened later) was born in Leipzig, not London. He married a Londoner, and having German ancestry is something I’ve been wanting to address for years, but never had the courage. Since I’m not a tourist, but a research fellow, I will not be alone, and that matters. It especially matters now, when I can’t take a break from exploring impossible pasts and take refuge in the present. In fact, now is the perfect time to confront Jewish history in Germany, and that’s one of the core things I’m doing while away.

The research side of my travels is all about things past, in fact. I’m trying to learn more about how we see our past and what layers our history with meaning. I will explore Reading (and have afternoon tea with Leslie Wilson while I’m there) to discover how a single town presents the Middle Ages for tourists. I will create a photo-essay for this, and could be persuaded to give it as a slide show (with added bad jokes) for anyone who is curious. I’m also exploring Cambridgeshire, and spending time with Rosemary Hayes. Every moment with a History Girl is a good moment and those few days would be worth travelling to the other side of the world for in and of themselves.

The rest of my research concerns German Jews. Not my ancestors, to be honest. Jews from a quite different part of Germany. I will be comparing the cultures of the German Middle Ages to those of the Early Modern. Jews in the various German states had interesting differences in culture and traditions and… I want to know what has been lost, but also, just as Reading presents its Middle Ages to visitors, some towns in Germany present their Jewish history to visitors. I will explore both sides of the coin: the memories of once-neighbours and how those once-neighbours lived.

Next year is the earliest I can finish my projects. I have other things that need to be done first. At the end of it, there will be a novel: set in our far future, in the same universe as Poison and Light (where, on a distant planet, a society takes refuge in the 18^th century, which for some is salons, for others is politics, and for yet others it’s revolution) though not at all on the same planet. There will also be a non-fiction book, discussing all of these curious pasts.

This is why I’ve been largely quiet. I’ve been trying to finish my current big project so that I can move to the next. Everything went awry and now I’m taking a pause in the current big project so that I can go to Europe and do some of the groundwork for the next. When I’m back and the doctor and I have worked out the effects of this trip, then I shall return to looking at writing techniques used to present culture in novels, especially in fairy tale retellings.

This post got away from me! I just wanted to tell you that I’m an historian again and working on a novel that uses much history. I don’t have time to tell you the fun stuff. I’m posting this twelve hours before I catch my first plane.

If you want my next post to be about some of the history I discovered, let me know! I may even have pictures...

Save the Children Centenary by Janie Hampton

Eglantyne Jebb (1876-1928)

This year is the 100th anniversary of the founding of Save the Children, one of Britain’s most notable charitable institutions. It was started by two indominatable sisters, Eglantyne and Dorothy Jebb. Their father was an English land-owning barrister and founder of a literary and debating society, while their mother started a charity for ‘Home Arts and Industries’. Both Anglican parents gave their daughters a keen sense of social justice, and a responsibility to challenge inequality; their French governess Heddie taught them about Prussian oppression; while their unconventional aunt Bun taught them carpentry, fishing and even how to make lead bullets.
As one of the first female students at the University of Oxford, Eglantyne attended meetings of the Christian Socialists and the Salvation Army. The established church did not appeal to her and she felt a close, personal relationship with the God who had chosen her to do His work. She had one complaint ‘which does for every­thing,’ she said, namely: ‘The world is wrong.’ As a young woman she investigated the working and living conditions of the poor, although she was sceptical about the effect of upper-class philanthropy, and her own poor health prevented her from doing much. At the age of 40 her health improved, and the injustices and suffering of the 1914-18 world war provided the motivation she needed. She became a passionate, dedicated and inspiring champion of children’s rights – though didn’t actually like individual children very much.

Dorothy Buxton (1881-1963)

Dorothy Jebb went to Cambridge University and in 1904 married Charles Roden Buxton whose family had been steeped in political campaigning since the 18th century. Both Charles and his brother Noel were radical Liberal, and later Labour, MPs who campaigned against the Macedonian massacres and together survived an assassination attempt in the Balkans. Their great grandfather was the slave liberator Thomas Fowell Buxton MP and their great great aunt was the prison reformer Elizabeth Fry. Dorothy, Charles and their children lived in unfashionable Kennington, London, among the people whose hardships they hoped to alleviate.
During the First World War, Dorothy and Eglantyne were distressed by the demonisation of the German people in the British press. To emphasize the common humanity of all Europeans, they published Notes from the Foreign Press. Dorothy was a member of the radical Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, and believed that all governments shared responsibility for the suffering caused by war, and were creating a humanitarian crisis across Europe that could not lead to lasting peace. In 1916 she and Charles both joined the Independent Labour Party and became Quakers.
After the Armistice in 1918, the British government continued to blockade German ports, which led to a devastating famine. In 1919 the sisters founded the Save the Children Fund to help humanitarian agencies already working on the ground. They understood that controversy would help to raise awareness, so Eglantyne distributed leaflets in Trafalgar Square showing starving Austrian children. She was arrested, taken to court and fined. However, as well as gaining valuable publicity, she managed to persuade the prosecuting counsel to make a donation.
When Eglantyne asked Randall Davidson, the Archbishop of Canter­bury, to make an appeal on behalf of the children starving in Europe, he showed no interest. So she wrote to Pope Benedict XV. Clare Mulley, a former History Girl and Eglantyne’s biographer, recounts: ‘Pope Benedict had already been impressed by Miss Jebb’s lobbying to end the British economic blockade of Europe after the Armistice. In December 1920, he took the unpre­cedented step of issuing an encycli­cal, Annus Iam Plenus (On Children of Central Europe), in which he asked Catholic churches around the world to collect for Save the Children. It was the first time that the Roman Catholic Church had sup­ported a non-denominational cause.
‘Just before the appeal, Miss Jebb and her colleague Dr Hector Munro, who had witnessed the famine in Vienna, were granted a papal audience. Because she had been brought up in the Church of England, Miss Jebb was nervous about jeopardising the meeting by some slip in etiquette. In the event, her anxiety was forgotten in the drama of the moment: the Pope had fallen behind schedule, and, as Miss Jebb’s appointed slot approached, “The man who was showing us the way turned to us with violent gesticulations,” Miss Jebb later recounted to her sister. “Then he turned round again, and, to my utter amazement, took to his heels and ran. He was wearing a purple flowing garment like a dressing gown, which blew out all around him as he ran, so that he had the odd appearance of a purple ball bounding along the corridor.
“There was nothing for it but to run, too. Grasping my mantilla to prevent it falling off, I ran after him, through one gorgeous antechamber after another, where groups of soldiers and gentlemen-in-waiting turned to look. At last, through an open door, he turned, apparently too breathless to speak, with a wild wave of his arms. Precipitating myself in his wake, I perceived a small lonely figure, like a ghost, standing stock-still in the vast room, and, recollecting that popes always dressed in white, dropped on one knee. To my relief, I found that Dr Munro had run, too, and was making the poorest attempt at a genuflexion that I ever saw.” ‘
Dr Munro was not im­pressed by Eglantyne’s “attempt to curtsey” either, but the Pope didn’t notice. After asking many questions, he donated £25,000 to launch the appeal, insisting that it should be allocated to all children, irrespective of their faith. This prompted Archbishop Davidson to change his mind, and soon many other faith groups, from the Jewish community to the Theosophists, followed. Save the Children became a global appeal on an unequalled scale.

Children starving in the 1921 Russian famine were helped by Save the Children

Although Dorothy had the initial idea for the charity, her radical political activities were well known, and vilified by the right-wing British press. When in 1921 they claimed that Save the Children was aiding the next generation of German militants and Russian Bolsheviks, she handed over the reins to Eglantyne.
Save the Children was soon working in 24 European and Asian countries, assisting children regardless of their nationality, religion or their parents’ politics. In 1924 Eglantyne’s Declaration on the Rights of the Child, was adopted by the League of Nations. It later evolved into the United Nations' Convention on the Rights of the Child, which remains the most universally accepted human- rights instrument in history. ‘Miss Jebb had launched an international aid operation, saved the lives of thousands of children, redefined how child welfare oper­ates, and had written social policy of permanent world significance, all in an era when women did not even have the vote,’ wrote Mulley. Yet like so many successful women, she still felt a failure. Only eight years later, at the age of 52, she died of heart failure.

SCF began working in Africa in the 1930s.

Exhausted by fundraising and campaigning, and haunted by dreams of child famine victims, in 1923 Dorothy had a nervous breakdown. After her recovery, she campaigned on behalf of refugees from Germany and against concentration camps, and in 1935 went there to challenge Hermann Goering. She knew it was probably futile, but felt doing nothing was worse. She died in 1963, aged 82.

SCF assisted children affected by war in Britain, 1939-45 .

Eglantyne and Dorothy rebelled against both class and gender restrictions, and their belief in the importance of humanitarian aid and internationalism remains as relevant today as ever. Save the Children today works with more than 10 million children in 120 countries.

The Woman Who Saved the Children by Clare Mulley won the 
Daily Mail Biographers’ Club Prize. All the author's 
royalties from this book go to Save the Children.

www.janiehampton.co.uk

Agnes Richter: The Seamstress Who Stitched Her Life Story Onto Her Jacket. By Anna Mazzola

Some months ago, the brilliant @WomensArt1 account tweeted an image of a small linen jacket embroidered all over with lettering. They explained it had been created by a woman forced into an  asylum in the 1800s, who had stitched her life story onto her clothing. It seemed an extraordinary item, so I determined to find out more about the jacket and the woman who created it.

A Victorian Seamstress

The woman was Agnes Emma Richter, born in March 1844 near Dresden, Germany, and who made her living as a seamstress. In 1893, police admitted Agnes to a local mental institution because of complaints from her neighbours. It seems she told them that people were plotting to steal her money and she ‘believed her life to be in danger’. This led to a diagnosis of paranoia. Increasingly angry and ‘non-compliant’ with her incarceration, she was transferred in 1895 to Hubertusberg Psychiatric Institution near Dresden.

The admitting physician described Agnes as a ‘poorly-nourished pale woman with very animated eyes and facial expression who looks old for her years.’ On admission, Agnes would have been stripped of her possessions, dressed in the uniform of the institution, and forced to submit to its rituals. It was perhaps in an attempt to retain her identity and her memories that she began to sew lines of writing into the linen jacket she was given.

‘I plunge headlong into disaster’

The lines of overlapping red, yellow, blue, orange and white threaded text are almost impossible to read. Many were sewn on the inside of the jacket and have worn away with use. In some places the thread has unravelled. However, several phrases have been deciphered, including ‘I am not big’, ‘I wish to read’, ‘my jacket’, ‘my brother,’ 'no cherries', ‘I am in Hubertusburg’ and ‘I plunge headlong into disaster’. Her hospital number, 583m, appears repeatedly. It is clear that Agnes wore the jacket, as it bears marks of use, including sweat stains. It also has a darted back, which may be an alteration for what her recovered files described as a deformity.

Rediscovery 

Agnes remained in the asylum for the rest of her life, dying there in July 1918. Her words, however, live on. Her jacket was rediscovered in 1980 during an exhibition of the Prinzhorn Collection in Germany. The jacket had been part of the collection of Hans Prinzhorn, an art historian with a particular interest in madness and creativity. Agnes’ jacket is now an iconic piece in the Prinzhorn Collection at Heidelberg, stored in a glass case, with a tag that reads simply, ‘Hand sewn jacket, Agnes Richter, circa 1895.’


Further reading: 

Gail A Hornstein, Agnes's Jacket: A Psychologist's Search for the Meanings of Madness. Rodale Press, Incorporated

__________________________________________________________

Anna Mazzola is a writer of historical crime fiction and Gothic fiction. Her first novel, The Unseeing, is about a Victorian seamstress convicted of aiding a murder. 

https://annamazzola.com
https://twitter.com/Anna_Mazz

Small boats in the English Channel by Janie Hampton

Refugees in small boats are much in the news, with governments determined to stop them coming, send them back, or keep them incarcerated in camps. In the summer of 1940, there were refugees in small boats in the English Channel. This is the story of one such refugee family.

Amsterdam, early 20th Century

The Kleins were a hard-working, bourgeois, Jewish family with a comfortable home in Amsterdam. When on 10 May, 1940, the German army invaded Holland, Simon and Maria Klein knew they had to leave everything behind.

Simon had already been a refugee twice. Born in the Austro-Hungarian Empire in about 1900, his parents sent him to Leipzig to escape conscription, and a few years later his relations told him to go to Holland. ‘The land of the free,’ they said. He found work in a firm of tailors’ accessories and married the owner’s niece, Maria. As the representative of “Double-weave underwear” Simon took Maria to Germany but after a few years they returned to The Netherlands with their two small children. ‘In Amsterdam nobody took any notice what religion you were,’ remembered their daughter Josephine. ‘Whether you were Jewish or gentile didn’t make any difference.’

In the late 1930s cousins from Germany stayed with the Kleins en route for America, travelling on through Belgium and France. But by May 1940, that route was blocked.

German soldiers in Amsterdam, May 1940. 

Josephine, 13, and her brother Eli, 15, were asleep on the night of 14 May 1940, when their mother told them to dress quickly and grab their gas masks. With their uncle Ralph, the Klein family took a taxi twenty miles west to the fishing town of Ijmuiden. In the dark harbour, crowds of people were trying to get away from the advancing German army. Mr Klein had struck a deal with a man who owned a small rowing boat, and then given extra money for water and food. The Kleins climbed on board, as more people swarmed down the steps and jumped in.

It was soon full but even so, there were more desperate people. ‘Take me…’ ‘For mercy’s sake, take my son!’ ‘Let my wife come with you!’

German invasion 1940, from The Second
World  War, W. Churchill, 1948.

As Mr Klein pushed off, tears were streaming down his face. The boat was about 15 foot long, and there was only just room to sit down. None of the dozen people on board were sailors, so Eli and another boy, both Boy Scouts, took the oars. As they rowed into the dark water they could see the flashes of guns behind the town of Ijmuiden. Mr Klein’s plan was to row out to sea, where they would be picked up by a passing ship.

Day came, and night again, and another day, with a rising wind at night and waves that crashed against the boat. They had been tricked and they had only one orange between them and a small tank of water, which they drank from a thimble. There were no passing ships.

On the third morning Josephine noticed the water rising in the boat, and quickly used her gas-mask box to bail out the sea water. The next day they sighted land. They believed they had rowed the hundred miles to the east coast of England. But they had simply drifted down the coast of Holland, towards another invaded port, possibly The Hague. Starving and parched with thirst, the Kleins and their passengers turned out towards the open sea again, and kept bailing.

Dunkirk in 1940

 As a Girl Guide, Josephine had learned to read the stars and she worked out North . But no-one had the energy to row, as they drifted in the English Channel. She tried to get the others to sing Guide songs but everyone was too thirsty. The days were hot for May, and the nights were pitch-dark. Twice they saw aeroplanes. One open plane dipped towards them and the pilot pointed with his arm towards England. They couldn’t lie down and sea water sloshed in the bottom of the boat. An  elderly couple sat up straight as if on a bus, and never spoke a word.

More than week after they left Holland, a British destroyer sighted the tiny boat. By then they were semi-conscious, and their feet were swollen from the sea water.  The British sailors carried them on board and they were taken to a hospital in Maidstone. The hospitals in Kent were all on stand-by for the imminent evacuation from Dunkirk: fully staffed but still empty.

The Kleins were soon recovering from ‘trench foot’ and when the evacuation  from Dunkirk began, they were sent to a refugee hostel in Chelsea filled with Belgian fishing families and run by English lady aristocrats.

Other refugees from The Netherlands in London, May 1940. Princess Juliana of the Netherlands pushing her daughter Princess Irene, with her heir Princess Beatrix beside her. Her friend Elizabeth Van Swinderen points out London barrage balloons.

The Kleins wanted to go to America, but they couldn’t get passports, so they settled in Chester. They were welcomed by neighbours with fresh vegetables, school uniforms and support. Josephine made friends through the local Girl Guides and then the Sea Rangers. European Girl Guides arriving in Britain were called not ‘Refugee Guides’, but ‘Golondrinas’, or ‘Swallows’.

Josephine Klein wrote Our Need for Others 

and Its Roots in Infancy, 1987,  and 

Doubts & Certainties in  the Practice 

of Psychotherapy, 1995. . 

After she left school, Josephine read French and Sociology at the University of London, became a social worker and then a psychotherapist and co-founder of the Refugee Therapy Centre in London. Eli joined the British army, and then went into business, married happily and had three children.

When refugees arrived in Britain in small boats 75 years ago, they were welcomed. Nobody described the men who sold the boats as ‘people traffickers’, nor the refugees as ‘illegal immigrants’. They too were escaping war and persecution, just as people from Syria and Mali are today. The 20^th Century refugees contributed to Britain, and helped make it the country it now is.

www.janiehampton.co.uk   @janieoxford

Circle of Shadows and Gengenbach by Imogen Robertson

Circle of Shadows is due out in paperback tomorrow, and as the novel is set in Germany that gives me a chance to talk about what a wonderful place Baden-Württemberg is to spend time. For those of you who don’t know it, please do put it on your ‘to visit’ list at once. The scenery is magnificent and the whole region is packed with enough castles, cathedrals and museums to satisfy the most committed of culture hounds. My partner Ned and I spent some blissful busy weeks there and can’t wait to go back.

Ned helping with the research

I spend a lot of time researching my novels in various libraries, for Circle the excellent library at the German Historical Institute of London was particularly useful, but nothing beats walking the ground. I like doing the walking research as soon as possible after I’ve started working on a book. That way I can fold in all those memories into my plans and be open to inspiration before I have a plot too fixed in my head. Wow, that sounds pretentious. It’s often also a good excuse for a holiday once the last novel is put to bed! 

So I went to Germany with Ned, a notebook and a rough idea of where my novel might take place and when, but that was about it. We went to Freiburg, and Karlsruhe to look at palaces and museums and out of Baden-Württemberg a little way to see Trier and Speyer, both ancient and beautiful cities. Going to Gengenbach was a chance to walk in the Black Forest and get a feel of a smaller town. When we arrived I had no idea how important it was going to be in the finished novel. 

Gengenbach Town Hall

Gengenbach was made a free city in the 14th century, almost completely destroyed at the end of the 17th during the Nine Years’ War, then rebuilt in the 18th century so it is to that period (luckily enough for me) that you feel you are returning to when you visit. The magnificent town hall was built in 1784, the year before Circle of Shadows takes place and is now made into a huge advent calendar every year to coincide with their Christmas Market.

When Ned and I visited we fell for it completely; me with the half-timbering and Ned with the beautiful blonde in traditional dress who brought us our beers. We walked in the woods and peered at the buildings, but it was finding in Gengenbach the Museum of Fools which made it so important to the finished book. The Shrovetide carnivals of misrule are a long standing tradition in this part of Germany and involve parades were inhabitants dress up in elaborate masks and costumes, often mocking their rulers or officials. You can see some of the photographs of the festival in Gengenbach here, including the wonderful and terrifying masks. 

I was fascinated by the masks, and standing in front of the town hall imagining that torch-lit pagan procession gave me the start of the book. A young Englishman, Daniel Clode, visiting the area in 1785 and watching the parade suddenly finds himself confused and afraid. For him the people in costumes are replaced with real demons and witches. He goes missing and is found some hours later by his friends in a locked room, his wrists cut and the murdered body of a young woman alongside him. She is a favourite of the ruling Duke and Daniel has no memory of what has happened or how he came to be there. Things looks very black for him indeed… So there between the beer, the walk and the museum of fools I found my novel. And if you’re curious to find out what happens to the young Englishman next, well, I did mention the paperback is due out tomorrow, didn’t I? 

Andreas Praefcke's shot of Hopfennarr Veranstaltung:
Narrensprung beim Narrentreffen in nearby Meßkirch