The Evacuated German and Austrian Students and Staff of University College London in Aberystwyth during the Second World War
Part Two - Interned U.C.L. Students and Staff on the Isle Of Man
Part two of this blogpost series, will explore the individual stories of the one University College London (U.C.L.) students and four members of staff who faced internment on the Isle of Man after they had been evacuated to Aberystwyth. Exploring their life stories and experiences will continue to consider the main questions which were set out at the beginning of part one in this series of blog posts. Mainly, who were these German and Austrian nationals and importantly how and why did they themselves end up in the seaside town of Aberystwyth, miles from their homelands, and subject to potential internment? What was their fate? Were they subjected to internment or were they found exempt to such a fate? If it is possible to ascertain, what were their individual experiences of the tribunals and judgements they faced? Alongside considering the impact of internment on these individuals as well as those around them.
The Isle of Man was again used as it had been during World War One as a place to intern people. Klaus Albrecht Mayer was the only U.C.L. student to be interned on the Isle of Man who is explored in this blog. Klaus, pictured below, was born in Mainz, Germany on the 17th of November 1918 and was evacuated alongside his fellow U.C.L. students to Aberystwyth in 1939. Klaus lived at 18 Marine Terrace in Aberystwyth until he was interned in June 1940. After Klaus was released in November 1940, he returned to Aberystwyth and lived at 43 Cambrian Street. It is unclear where and what direction his life took him after this.
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| Klaus Albrecht Mayer (b.1918), photo in Police Memorandum Book inscribed ‘Aliens’ Photographs’, H.W.?Owen, MUS/204, Archifdy Ceredigion Archives |
Internment however it is important to note was not simply only the fate of evacuated U.C.L. students but also a very small number of staff were also interned on the Isle of Man. Karl-Werner Paul Maurer, who was born on the 24th of June 1905 in Esslingen, Germany had been a lecturer in German at U.C.L. since 1931. Karl-Werner had previously taught at the University of Dijon and Bonn before being appointed there. He was evacuated along with the rest of his department at the beginning of the 1939 academic year. Karl-Werner and his wife Sheila due to this evacuation, moved from Taviston Street in Euston, Camden into Jasper House on Great Darkgate Street in Aberystwyth. However, in June 1940 alongside his colleague Robert Pick, an Austrian lecturer in the department who was later the editor at Alfred A. Knopf publishing house in New York in the 1950s, he was interned on the Isle of Man. This was met by his fellow colleagues in the department with much protest.
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| Karl-Werner Paul Maurer, photo in Police Memorandum Book inscribed ‘Aliens’ Photographs’, H.W.?Owen, MUS/204, Archifdy Ceredigion Archives |
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| Sheila Maurer, photo in Police Memorandum Book inscribed ‘Aliens’ Photographs’, H.W.?Owen, MUS/204, Archifdy Ceredigion Archives |
Much like Karl-Werner, Hermann Hans Anton Von Zeissl, a U.C.L. research assistant, was also interned on the Isle of Man. Hermann was born on the 2nd of December 1888 into a Jewish family in Vienna, Austria and later went on to become a civil servant in the Austrian government. On the 15th of March 1938, after the Anschluss, annexation, of Austria by Nazi Germany, all Jewish and half-Jewish civil servants were removed from their posts. Hermann therefore who had rose to the position of Assistant head of the University section in the Austrian Ministry of Education, would have lost his job. In this environment of increasing hostility to Jewish Austrians, Hermann fled to England in 1939. Hermann, it appears went onto work as a research assistant at U.C.L. and was living at 150 Sinclair Road, West Holland Park in Kensington and Chelsea by September 1939. In late 1939, both he and his daughter, Annelise, who had also come to England and was a languages student at U.C.L., were evacuated to Aberystwyth from London and Surrey respectively and lived at Pantyderi on Llanbadarn Road.
On the 21st of June 1940, Hermann was interned and was moved to the Isle of Man. Annelise remained in Aberystwyth at this time and continued her studies. It is unclear if they were reunited in Aberystwyth, as it is hard to establish if both their university departments were still evacuated there when he was released from internment on the 16th of October 1940. By the summer of 1945, Hermann was able to return to his position in the Austrian government and by 1949 he had become the President of the Austrian UNESCO Delegation. Anneliese, on the other hand it appears did not join her father when he returned to Austria and instead remained in Britain, where she married Brian Dee in Cuckfield, Sussex in 1951. Hermann passed away in 1967 in Austria and Anneliese in November 2013 in Oxford.
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| Anneliese ‘Anna Elizabeth’ Von Zeissl (1916-2013), photo in Police Memorandum Book inscribed ‘Aliens’ Photographs’, H.W.?Owen, MUS/204, Archifdy Ceredigion Archives |
The final evacuated U.C.L. staff member whose life and subsequent internment on the Isle of Man will be explored is Georg Schwarzenberger, who was born on the 20th of May 1908 in Heilbronn, Germany. Georg grew up in a middle-class Jewish family and attended Heidelberg University in Germany where he met his future wife, Susanne. Georg and Susanne became actively involved in Germany with the Social Democratic Party (SPD), the political party itself was banned by the Nazis on the 21st of June 1933 and many of the leading representatives of the party were imprisoned and removed from office, or both. Under these circumstances and the rise of the Nazi party, he fled to London in 1934 and was later joined by Susanne. Georg eventually undertook a PhD at the University of London, completing this in 1936. In 1938, Georg and Susanne consciously became stateless in response to the Munich Settlement and its consequences. By 1939, Georg had a post in the Faculty of Law at U.C.L. and was the Secretary of the New Commonwealth Institute for Justice and Peace, which later became the London Institute of World Affairs. Georg alongside his colleagues in the Law department was evacuated to Aberystwyth in 1939 and took up residence at 5A, Oxford House on Marine Terrace in Aberystwyth. However, two days into the beginning of WW2, Georg faced the first of many sudden changes and imprisonments in one form or another. As on the 3rd of September 1939, he was arrested by the Cardiganshire Constabulary and imprisoned briefly between the 4th and 7th of September at H.M.P Swansea as an Alien Suspect. He was released due to an intervention via telegram by the then newly appointed Home Secretary, John Anderson.
During the 1939-1940 academic year, Georg was incredibly busy, as alongside his own teaching responsibilities, he undertook a leading role in covering the lecture courses for the International Politics department of the U.C.W, Aberystwyth, due to the permanent staff of the department, such as E.H. Carr, being absent and away on government service. The department was in safe hands however, as Georg played an important role in the second consensus in International Relations on realism, alongside E.H. Carr in fact. Furthermore, Georg and his U.C.L. colleague, George Keaton had to move and establish the New Commonwealth Institute in Aberystwyth. All this hard work was to be disrupted when he was interned in June 1940, and this was seen as a ‘serious blow’ to the Institute according to the Directors Report written in October 1940 by Keaton.
At his tribunal which decided his fate, where his category was changed from ‘C’ to ‘B’, he was asked by the Chairman if he wanted his wife treated the same as him and as Georg believed he’d be reclassified as C, he agreed. Not only was Georg judged an “enemy alien” by the British authorities at this tribunal, but he was also viewed as such by the Nazis too. As, in 1940, Georg unbeknown to himself, also ended up on the secret Gestapo Invasion Arrest List, which would have meant he’d have faced imprisonment if the Nazis successfully invaded Britain. The decision of the tribunal in Aberystwyth however against all the Schwarzenberger family had widespread ramifications, with unlike Karl-Werner and Hermann, not only was Georg interned but his wife and son faced the same fate too.
Whilst Georg was interned in Douglas on the Isle of Man, he continued to be involved in education, as he recalls a Camp University being set up and that he was put in charge of teaching Law. Susanne and Georg were separated and for 7 weeks she was also separated from her son, as she was kept in Holloway Prison whilst a place was being established for women internees on the Isle of Man. When the Rushen Internment Camp was established for women internees and their children, Georg and Susanne were able to keep in contact via post between the two camps and on one occasion were allowed to see each other.
Georg, along with his family, however missed very little of his academic teaching as he was released by November of the same year, as U.C.L. arranged for his release under the University Release Order. Instead of moving back to Aberystwyth, which he only briefly reported back to, Georg went back to the family home at Edgeware. This however did not last long, as that night his home was bombed. The department and the Institute not long after had both moved to Cambridge and until he could find suitable accommodation there, Susanne and their son remained in Aberystwyth with friends until around 1941 to 1942. Georg remained a member of the U.C.L. Law department until 1975, becoming a professor in 1963. Georg passed away in Hertfordshire in 1991 and Susanne in 1994 respectively. Georg’s legacy continues with the Georg Schwarzenberger Prize in International Law, which is awarded annually by the University of London to a student in the Faculty of Laws, who is considered outstanding in the field of Public International Law.
Internment on the Isle of Man clearly breached across the student and staff divide, with well-known and established academics alongside new students facing the same internment policy, indicating the wide-ranging reality and blunt implementation of the policy of interning all German and Austrian men. The evacuated safe haven of Aberystwyth was destroyed for most of these men and their families. However, for some, like Klaus, Karl-Werner, Robert, Susanne and her son, it continued to offer that safe haven for them after they were released from their short periods of internment on the Isle of Man and returned to live, learn and teach there. Internment on the Isle of Man however was not the only fate which awaited German and Austrian men who were swept up in the British government’s change towards mass internment, as some faced internment much further away in Australia and Canada. The fate and life stories of these evacuated U.C.L. students who faced internment there will be the focus of the next blog in this series.
Conor Brockbank
With thanks to Aberystwyth University research project Refugees from National Socialism in Wales
Photos used with the permission of Archifdy Ceredigion Archives, Aberystwyth.
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