Qualla: Hutchinson Internment Camp

Hutchinson Internment Camp: Introduction

Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Isle_of_Man_outline_map.png: Jza84 derivative work: Abhijitsathe (talk), Public domain. In the summer of 1940, with Britain expecting invasion, the government interned thousands of so-called 'enemy aliens' on the Isle of Man. Most were German and Austrian. Many had fled Hitler. Some had been in Britain for years. They were rounded up almost indiscriminately, anti-Nazis and Jewish refugees alongside the actual handful of fascist sympathisers, and shipped to Douglas. There they were housed behind barbed wire on Hutchinson Square: 39 ordinary boarding houses around a small green, with their tenants compulsorily evicted to make room. By the end of July, 1,205 men were sharing beds inside that fence. Among them were some of the most important artists, scholars, and intellectuals of mid-century Europe.

Image: Isle_of_Man_outline_map.png: Jza84 derivative work: Abhijitsathe (talk) | Public domain

Hutchinson Internment Camp: Behind the Wire

Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Richard Hoare, CC BY-SA 2.0. Hutchinson Camp opened in the second week of July 1940. Two barbed wire fences ringed the square, an arrangement first developed at Mooragh Camp in Ramsey. The houses were given administrative roles: leaders, cooks, cleaners, kitchen staff. Hutchinson made one quiet refusal of mi...

Image: Richard Hoare | CC BY-SA 2.0

Hutchinson Internment Camp: A University Behind the Fence

Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit kevin rothwell, CC BY-SA 2.0. Within weeks of the camp opening, the internees set up their own university. The men inside were scientists, mathematicians, lawyers, philosophers, writers, artists, linguists, and much else. Most had been carrying their disciplines as identity for decades and saw no reason to st...

Image: kevin rothwell | CC BY-SA 2.0

Hutchinson Internment Camp: Painting With Sardine Oil

Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Padyer at English Wikipedia, Public domain. Hutchinson is now best known as the camp where Kurt Schwitters lived for sixteen months, where Fred Uhlman produced almost a painting a day, and where Klaus Hinrichsen ran the cultural department. Materials were scarce. The internees improvised: brick dust mixed with the oil from...

Image: Padyer at English Wikipedia | Public domain

Hutchinson Internment Camp: What the Show Concealed

Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown author, Public domain. The energy of camp life made it easy for outsiders to assume the internees were enjoying themselves. They were not. Helmuth Weissenborn, the painter, later said simply: 'Internment was a continuous torment.' Schwitters in particular tried hard to project cheer; in private with hi...

Image: Unknown author | Public domain

Hutchinson Internment Camp: Closed, Remembered

Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Eirik Newth from Oslo, Oslo, CC BY 2.0. The camp produced its own English-language newspaper, The Camp, written by and for the internees. It carried stories, reviews, editorials, and news from the island and the wider war. There were no illustrations, despite the artistic wealth a few houses away, unlike the Onchan Pio...

Image: Eirik Newth from Oslo, Oslo | CC BY 2.0