Minderheide

Minderheide City of Minden Coordinates: 52 ° 18 ′ 48 ″  N , 8 ° 52 ′ 53 ″  E
Height :	55 m above sea level NN
Area :	5.08 km²
Residents :	3920  (Dec. 31, 2013)
Population density :	772 inhabitants / km²
Postal code :	32425
Area code :	0571
Location of Minderheide in Minden

Minderheide is a part of Minden , North Rhine-Westphalia, and is located northwest of the city center. Minderheide is characterized by large agricultural areas. The municipal building yard is also located here.

history

The battle of Minden was fought on August 1, 1759 on the Mindener Heide . From 1889 the Minden garrison used the Minderheide as a parade ground, where imperial maneuvers took place. In 1910 hangars were built and newly developed aircraft were tested. In 1912 the airship LZ 13 "Hansa" landed . Today's district was formed on January 1, 1973 from parts of the previously independent communities of Hahlen and Stemmer and from part of the former, until then smaller, city of Minden.

The prisoner of war camp in the First World War

The camp was established in August 1914 and, with an occupancy of 20,000 to 25,000 prisoners of war, was one of the more important camps in the German Reich. However, one was not prepared for the masses of prisoners, since the war was planned as a blitzkrieg .

On September 15, 1914, the first British and French marched through Minden to the Minderheide, where a fenced-in area was available. There they had to dig caves with spades or build shelters with plumes of grass . It was not until the turn of the year 1914/15 that private construction companies built poorly insulated and hardly heated wooden barracks with the prisoners. A warehouse was built with workshops, a post office, a hospital, accommodation for 2000 guards, a large kitchen, latrines and sewerage. 3300 prisoners were to be accommodated in each of the six barrack blocks. In fact, up to 25,000 prisoners had to live here in less than 2.5 square meters per man. On arrival, each prisoner received a straw mattress, pillowcase and sheet, food bowl, fork, spoon and a knife with a broken tip and was taken into a room with 180 others. In addition to the British and French, Russians, Armenians, Poles, Serbs, Croats, Moroccans, Senegalese were instructed, and later Italians joined them. The British were allowed to have more money than prisoners of other nationalities, and the Russians were particularly badly off because they rarely received " love gifts " - mostly food parcels - from their homeland. Due to great tension between the ethnic groups, some of the English prisoners were relocated to Döberitz in 1915.

Over 130 work details, mostly with 60 to 80 prisoners, worked in production facilities that were important to the war effort. Prisoners of war from Minderheide worked z. B. in Düsseldorf , Krefeld , Witten and Hamm . The Hamm I work detail with 80 prisoners worked 70 hours a week in the port and lived in a barrack of 35 × 11 square meters with showers once a week, which was better than in the main camp at Minderheide. The prisoners remaining in the Minderheide camp completed the Mittelland Canal in the western section to Minden, cultivated heather in Seelenfeld , Uchte , Nordhemmern and the Mindener Wald and drained moors. In the case of smaller deployments, employers had to take care of guarding the prisoners. In agriculture, the farmers also had to feed and house the prisoners. The prisoners received around 10% of the wages of German workers as wages, of which around 3/4 was kept for room and board and the rest was mostly paid out in kind, especially since there was only camp money . The exploitation led to falling labor performance and sabotage. In the winter of 1915/16, a strike by Russian prisoners in the gas works led to a one-day complete blackout in the city of Minden.

In accordance with the Hague Land Warfare Regulations , embassies from neutral states also regularly checked the Minderheide camp. As part of the peace initiative of Pope Benedict XV. visited the apostolic nuncio Pacelli, later Pope Pius XII. , the Minderheide camp.

After the armistice on November 11, 1918 , all prisoners were ordered back from the satellite camps. The French, British and Italian prisoners were released and transported to their homeland by 1000 men each. The barracks that had become vacant served as fuel in winter. The last Russians who were then treated as internees could not be repatriated until December 1922, after the establishment of the Soviet Union , if they had not been able to refuse to stay in Germany. The remaining barracks were demolished and burned. The area was then used for large horse and motorcycle races.

In 1936 an aircraft hangar was built on the site, and an airfield with an aircraft test station was established. After the Second World War , barracks were built on the site in 1952 for the soldiers of the British Rhine Army , who stayed there until the early 1990s.

Attractions

The so-called French cemetery, which reminds of the prisoner-of-war camp in World War I, which housed the French, Belgians, British, Italians, Serbs and soldiers from the colonies, is well worth seeing .

Personalities

• Erwin Heuer (born February 16, 1940 in Minderheide) handball player.

Web links

• Minderheide in the Westphalian Cultural Atlas

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Population statistics of the city of Minden ( Memento from April 28, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) accessed October 13, 2014.
2. ↑ Martin Beutelspacher and Kenan Holger Irmak: The Prisoner of War Camp Minderheide. A contribution to the military history of Minden. in: Communications of the Minden History Society. Volume 62 (1990), pp. 111-130.