His Majesty's loyal internee : Fred Uhlman in captivity / Charmian Brinson, Anna Müller-Härlin, Julia Winckler.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Brinson, Charmian.

Contributor:

Müller-Härlin, Anna.

Winckler, Julia.

Uhlman, Fred.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Uhlman, Fred--Imprisonment.

Uhlman, Fred.

Uhlman, Fred--Diaries.

Prisoners of war--Isle of Man--Biography.

Prisoners of war.

Jewish refugees--Great Britain--Biography.

Jewish refugees.

Imprisonment.

Great Britain.

Germans--Great Britain--Forced removal and internment, 1940-1945.

Germans.

World War, 1939-1945--Prisoners and prisons, British.

World War, 1939-1945.

Genre:

Biographies.

Diaries.

Physical Description:

xvi, 166 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations, map ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

London ; Portland, OR : Vallentine Mitchell, 2009.

Summary:

In May and June 1940, when the war seemed to be going badly for Britain, thousands of German and Austrian refugees from Nazi oppression were rounded up and put into internment camps on the Isle of Man and elsewhere. Fred Uhlman, a Jewish refuges from Stuttgart, was one of these. Uhlman was a lawyer and an artist, and is probably best known today for his novella Reunion. Cut off from his wife, who was about to give birth to their first child, Uhlman found internment a harrowing yet also a highly memorable experience which he attempted to capture both in word and image. This volume contains Uhlman's previously unpublished internment diary in its original 1940 version as well as a later reworked version in which he looks back at the same experience, though from the perspective of 1979. It also contains corespondence to and from the internment camp between Uhlman and his wife Diana, and between Uhlman and his disapproving aristocratic father-in-law. Lord Croft. These written testimonles are complemented by some of the stark and haunting drawings that Uhlman completed while interned. Chapters on Uhlman's biography and on his artistic and his literary output set his writings and drawings with in the wilder context of his life and work. In addition, a chapter on life in Hutchinson Camp, described by one former Innate as 'a camp full of once and future Very Important persons', sets out to recreate something of the extraordinary artistic and intellectual life so vigorously pursued there by the internees.

This book not only makes a number of hitherto unpublished sources on alien internment during the Second World War available for the first time, it also illuminates the life and work of artists in internment and highlights the unique role art played for them behind the barbed wire.

The authors all work in the field of German and Austrian Exile Studies, from three different but complementary perspectives. Charmian Brinson, who is a Germanist, has published extensively on the internment of German-speaking exiles during the Second World War, Anna Müller-Härlin, an art historian, is an expert on Fred Uhlman's life and work; and Julia Winckler, an artist and photographer, has portraved the internment experience through her own photography and has also published on émigré artists.

Contents:

Part I

1 Introduction (Charmian Brinson, Anna Müller-Härlin and Julia Winckler) 3

2 Exile, Internment - and a Camp 'full of once and future Very Important Persons' (Charmian Brinson) 13

3 Fred Uhlman and the Croft Connection (Anna Müller-Härlin) 34

Part II

4 'HM Loyal Internee': Fred Uhlman's Internment Diary, 1940 49

5 'The Story of Captivity': Fred Uhlman's Internment Memoir, 1979 78

6 Letters to and from Internment 112

Part III

7 Internment and Autobiography (Charmian Brinson and Anna Müller-Härlin) 123

8 'Should the artist portray his age?' Reflections on Fred Uhlman's Internment Art Works (Julia Winckler) 135

9 Epilogue (Anna Müller-Härlin) 157.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [161]-163) and index.

ISBN:

9780853039303

0853039305

0853039208

9780853039204

OCLC:

243821812