“All here greater than a short time are more or less crazy — officially”
“The type is big, beefy and blonde, generally with thick croppy hair, and often with a sharply pointed head…robust and musclar…the great majority have square faces and round heads. They form a type of Germans…so pronounced that at a glance one knows they are German…the difference between them and an American born is striking.“ — Asheville Citizen Times, August, 12, 1917
After reportedly refusing to play the “Star-Spangled Banner” at an October 1917 concert in Providence, R.I., the Boston Symphony Orchestra conductor was eventually arrested as a spy and imprisoned at a prisoner of war (POW) camp at Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia from March 1918 until August 1919. Technically Karl Muck was a Swiss citizen, but he was also a native of Bavaria. So in the wake of a formal U.S. declaration of war against Germany on April 6, 1917, Karl became an “enemy alien.” One year later, he was a POW at a camp where “prisoners printed their own German newspaper, the Orgelsdorfer Eulenspiegel, and a degree of irreverence ran through it” according to the Times Free Press (Chattanooga, 2015).
But the irreverence pictured above, of German POWs in suits fighting off an attack by a fake alligator, comes to us from my own home state — North Carolina. In addition to being home to a major World War I boot camp, the Tar Heel state was also home to an internment camp for some Germans caught in the “wrong place at the wrong time.” However, this diverse group of “enemy aliens” who were temporarily detained here tried to make the best of it by “creating a chapel, opening several shops and businesses, building fences around the cottages, and (somehow) constructing a carousel, with music playing as it spun. They even put together a full brass band and orchestra for nightly entertainment!” (NC Museum of History).
Below is the story of the WWI German internment at Hot Springs (near Asheville, N.C.), as pieced together from various local and contemporary news reports available via DigitalNC.org. You can read more information about their internment at Hot Springs, or view additional photos of the camp and its inhabitants, here, here, and here. For more information about Fort Oglethorpe and other untold stories of World War I German internment in the U.S., check out Jacob Wasserman’s 2016 senior essay for his B.A. in History at Yale.
“From an extensive count of thousands of never-before-analyzed Department of Justice records, I estimate internment swept up over ten thousand aliens from 1917 to 1920, saboteurs and bystanders alike.” — Jacob Wasserman (Yale, 2016)
The World War I German internment at Hot Springs, N.C. through local, contemporary news reports…
On May 31, 1917, The Courier in Asheboro reports that the Mountain Park Hotel in Hot Springs, N.C. will be receiving the first Germans to be interned there in the next ten days. The Gaston Gazette notes on June 25, via the Hickory Daily Record, that ten car loads of German saliors bound from Atlantic ports to Hot Springs passed through Hickory and “were given the once-over by many Hickory people, including a number of members of Company A and Troop A, Lincoln Calvary.” By July 2, The Charlotte News claims that 554 “Men of a High Order of Intelligence” are having a splendid time at the resort. And on August 3, The Enterprise in Williamston explains that things are going so well in Hot Springs that fifty carpenters and assistants are being sent from Asheville to erect houses for six hundred additional prisoners who will be joining the 554 already there. They are described as officers and seamen “of a high type of manhood” who “appear to enjoy their enforced vacation.” And on August 9, The Alamance Gleaner in Graham reports (via the Statesville Landmark) that the prisoners at Hot Springs are being well treated and have not made demands or been given luxuries at taxpayers expense. Quoting one prisoner who wrote to Washington about their treatment:
“I beg to be allowed to express my heartfelt thanks for your unlimited benevolence toward me and my family and for the troublesome efforts you undergo in my behalf. I also wish to state that all — without exception — are exceedingly satisfied with the conditions the United States arranged for us at Hot Springs, and that this humane, kind treatment is also appreciated. The United States authorities are treating us better than could be expected of any country except the United States. All arrangements prove that this country not only takes, but also acts according to the principles of humanity and the words of President Wilson when he declared that the war will not be carried against the German people as individuals.”
With local interest in the situation at Hot Springs growing, The Asheville Citizen-Times published a feature piece about life in the camp on August 12, 1917: “The fence and guards are not so much to keep in the Germans as to keep out curious Americans. Why should these Germans wish to escape. While their compatriots are dying in misery or living in torture in France they are living at ease in a fine hotel where other guests have been paying $4 a day and ‘up,’ enjoying its golf courses, tennis courts, natural hot baths, delightful climate and superb scenery.” The Times details how the prisoners received German newspapers and had organized classes in mathematics, navigation, and language and that some were working for the U.S. government to build additional barracks for more Germans.
On November 22, 1917 The Elkin Tribune in Elkin reports that local citizens are still hot about the display of a German flag in the internment camp, but The Asheville Times had called this rumor a myth the day prior with a headline that read “HOT SPRINGS FOLKS LAUGH AND SNEER AT FALSE REPORTS.” The Times assured its readers on the 21st that “Citizens Have Not Least Bit of Feeling Against Interned Germans” and that “Investigation Proves That Food Conservation Is Practiced At Camp.” On December 06, The Alamance Gleaner in Graham reports that the Secretary of War says “German prisoners held at Hot Springs, N.C., and about whom there has been so much said recently, are under the jurisdiction of the department of labor and that the war department has no jurisdiction or official knowledge concerning them.”
On November 23, 1917 the Wilmington Morning-Star published a consolidation of rebuttals about the numerous reports of luxurious treatment at the camp. Quoting the Asheville Times, they noted that a typical meal might include rice and curry along with apples (stewed and baked), rye and wheat bread, butter, tea and coffee. The cost to feed the Germans, who slept three to five per room, was 45 cents per man. Quoting Herbert Hoover from an AP article: “It should be pointed out in the first place that the aliens detained at the particular station are not prisoners of war. They compromise officers and crews from a number of vessels that were interned in United States ports and subsequently were taken over by the government upon the declaration of hostilities…The men at Hot Springs are not prisoners of war, and are not treated as such.”
During November and December (1917), The Asheville Times and the Greensboro Daily News got into a page one spat over the various rumors and allegations by Ben S. Allen, an assistant to Herbert Hoover in the Food Administration, of food being wasted at the camp. Supposedly some local women had complained that “meatless and wheatless” days were not being observed there in response to general rationing due to foot shortages during the war. In addition, Parker R. Anderson (Washington correspondent for the Greensboro News) published a rumor about alleged plans to arm the prisoners. As the lead in the Asheville Times on December 2 noted, “Denying Rumors In News Is Giving More Trouble Than Anything Else.”
By February 15, 1918 the The Enterprise in Williamston informs us that 420 additional Germans prisoners arrived from the Philippine Islands, via Charleston, and that the “wives and children of some of the Germans were sent to Ellis Island, N.Y.” On the same day, the Polk County News and The Tryon Bee reports on a rumor going around that “if the Kaiser should, like the Czar, finally have to step down and out; he’d rather be interned in Tryon than in Hot Springs. Perhaps Hot Springs are not as hot as he deserves, by a thousand percent.” Meanwhile, on May 10, a poem by Kenneth Graham Duffield (the author of patriotic songs and children's books) appeared in the Polk County News and The Tryon Bee ending with these ominous verses:
I am a German…I rape and ravish, rend and tear; With hideous noises fill the air. The loudest screams of pain and fear, Are sweetest music to my ear. I am a German.
There is no law of God or man, But I will break it if I can. I only live to maim and kill, And while I live I always will. I am a German.
The Franklin Times in Louisburg reports on May 17 that the 2,200 interned Germans in Hot Springs will be transferred to Fort Oglethorpe or McPherson before July 1, and that Hot Springs will remain under the control of the immigration service and be abandoned. And on May 24, the Polk County News and the Tryon Bee reports that a mutiny almost broke out among the interned Germans when they learned about this plan to treat them as prisoners of war and force them to abandon what they had built in Hot Springs.
The Asheville Citizen-Times notes on June 30, 1918 that many of the leading citizens of Hot Springs sent telegrams to Washington and offered the government 100 acres of land to keep the Germans in Hot Springs and put them to work building roads. The federal government did not take them up on the offer. By August 31, The Asheville Citizen-Times reported that 2000 Germans had been moved. And on September 12, 1918, The Alamance Gleaner in Graham reported eighteen deaths from 117 typhoid cases among the “enemy aliens” interned at Hot Springs. All remaining patients are being moved to the general hospital in Baltimore, Maryland, and all remaining prisoners will be taken to Orgelsdorfer Eulenspiegel. 👅
“Secondary to the influenza more or less than 50 people died — unofficially. All here greater than a short time are more or less crazy — officially.” — Orgelsdorfer Eulenspiege, Dec. 15, 1919 (as quoted in the Times Free Press, 2015)
“Newspaper publishers, federal spokesmen, and local officials nationwide polemicized against or outright banned the music of German composers. But within the barbed wire and spotlights of Fort Oglethorpe — the place that most epitomized the government’s centralized anti-German policies — the crescendos of Beethoven reverberated off barracks and guard posts.” — Wasserman, Jacob L., “Internal Affairs: Untold Case Studies of World War I German Internment” (2016). MSSA Kaplan Prize for Use of MSSA Collections. Paper 8.
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