Crescent camp

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Prisoners of War in Crescent Camp (April 1915)
Postcard from the wooden mosque of the half moon camp

The so-called half - moon camp was built at the beginning of the First World War in Wünsdorf near Zossen in today's Teltow-Fläming district ( Brandenburg ) as a camp for prisoners of war Muslim Arabs , Indians and Africans from the British and French armies. About 30,000 prisoners of war were interned here.

In the mosque at the service

During the First World War, the Ottoman Empire was an ally of the German Empire . On November 15, 1914, the Sultan Caliph of the Ottoman Empire called on the Muslims who fought as soldiers from the colonies on the side of England and France to jihad , to the holy war, against their colonial masters and urged them to desert and on the to switch islamic side. Germany participated in this experiment with the news office for the Orient by setting up the half-moon camp and a comparable camp (the vineyard camp ) in the nearby town of Zossen. Here the prisoners were supposed to be moved to overflow and fight against their colonial masters. The most important instrument to convince the Islamic prisoners was the promotion of the practice of Islamic practices in these camps. For example, Ramadan was respected by the fact that at this time the food rations were not distributed until after sunset. On July 13, 1915, at the request of the Mufti of Istanbul, the first mosque on German soil actually intended for religious practice was inaugurated in the half-moon camp . The wooden mosque had to be closed in 1924 due to dilapidation and was demolished in 1925/26. Hindus and Sikhs were also housed in the half-moon camp. The news agency also cooperated with the Berlin Indian Independence Committee, including in the publication of the propaganda camp newspaper "Hindostan". The success of this strategy is controversial as it is not clear how many defectors it actually led to.

For the 206 Indian prisoners of war who died in captivity, the Zehrensdorf Indian Cemetery was inaugurated in 2005 in the deserted area of ​​the former Zehrensdorf near Wünsdorf after extensive renovations.

Cemetery crescent camp

reception

Various German ethnologists , musicologists and linguists used the "practical opportunity" and researched the cultures and languages ​​of the people held in the crescent camp. As far as is known, this was done on a voluntary basis.

In the summer of 1916, several prisoners from North Africa sat as models for the Berlin painter Hans Looschen .

The sound archive of the Humboldt University in Berlin contains 193 sound recordings with 282 titles that go back to prisoners of war from South Asia interned in the half-moon camp.

Movie

In 1918 the camp served as the backdrop for the anti-French film Der Gefangene von Dahomey by Deutsche Kolonial-Film GmbH (director: Hubert Moest ). Prisoners of war took on the role of French colonial soldiers; In the film, the German protagonist was mistreated with a hippopotamus whip provided by the Berlin Ethnographic Museum .

2007 came the film The Halfmoon Files by Philip Scheffner in the cinema, video and audio recordings from the Halfmoon Camp that have been made in these studies at the time of World War I, has the foundation.

literature

Web links

Commons : Halbmondlager Wünsdorf  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ spiegel.de
  2. ↑ Margot Kahleyss: Muslim prisoners of war in Germany during World War I - views and intentions . (PDF; 1.6 MB) In: Gerhard Höpp, Brigitte Reinwald (Hrsg.): Fremdeinsätze. Africans and Asians in European Wars, 1914–1945 . Studies 13, Zentrum Moderner Orient / Verlag Das Arabische Buch, 2000
  3. ^ Gerhard Hopp: The Wünsdorfer Mosque: An episode of Islamic life in Germany, 1915-1930 . In: Die Welt des Islams , New Ser., Vol. 36, No. 2, Jul., 1996, pp. 204-218.
  4. ↑ Christoph Richter: Not Mecca, but Zehrensdorf. Muslim death rest in Brandenburg . Deutschlandradio Kultur - Country Report, Nov. 24, 2006
  5. ↑ Thomas Lemmen: Islamic Religious Practice in Germany . In: Thomas Lemmen, Melanie Miehl (eds.): Islamic everyday life in Germany . Bonn 2001, ISBN 3-86077-886-2 , p. 17 of the print edition
  6. ↑ Chalid-Albert Seiler-Chan: Islam in Berlin and elsewhere in the German Empire . (PDF; 1.9 MB) In: Muslim Review , October 1934
  7. ^ Heike Liebau: "Enterprises and Aufwiegelungen": The Berlin Indian Independence Committee in the files of the Political Archive of the Foreign Office (1914–1920) . In: MIDA Archival Reflexicon . 2019, p. 4–5 ( projekt-mida.de ).
  8. ↑ Prisoner of War Onis Gem Mahmud. In: LeMO - Living Museum Online. Retrieved March 17, 2018 .
  9. ↑ Research: The Crescent Camp. Digging Deep, Crossing Far, accessed March 11, 2018 .
  10. ↑ Looking for Mall Singh. In: Märkische Allgemeine Zeitung. The Halfmoon Files, February 17, 2007, accessed March 17, 2018 .

Coordinates: 52 ° 10 ′ 1 ″  N , 13 ° 29 ′ 9 ″  E