In the Wrong Place at the Wrong Time

Civilian Internment in the Engländerlager Ruhleben and Lofthouse Park Camp, 1914-1918

A research and public engagement project funded by the WWI Centre for Hidden Histories/AHRC Connected Communities

In this project, we bring together academics, community, local and family historians (including descendants), performers, teachers, university students and pupils from Britain and Germany to explore the little known history of civilian internment during the First World War.

The comparative and bilateral approach of the project is motivated by the nature of internment itself and by the twinning of two sites, archives, community teams, schools and universities in Leeds/Wakefield (UK) and Berlin/Spandau (Germany).

Collaborators in Berlin are the Youth History Workshop Spandau (Jugendgeschichtswerkstatt Spandau), the Carl-Friedrich-von-Siemens-Gymnasium (secondary school), the Spandau City Museum and Archive as well as colleagues at Humboldt University’s History Department. Stakeholders in the UK are descendants of Ruhlebenites, local residents of Lofthouse and Outwood in Wakefield, community-based historians, Legacies of War at the University of Leeds, academic colleagues in Leeds and Sheffield, Heritage Corner, Wakefield Libraries and the West Yorkshire Archive Service.

Web: www.ruhlebenlofthouse.com
Twitter: @InternierungWWI