Last word their only crime was their nationality

Damian McCarney

Lining the streets, the fascination of the Oldcastle residents must have been equalled by the bewilderment experienced by the German and Austrian prisoners trudging through the town under guard, and down Oliver Plunkett Street, to the imposing workhouse.
In the edition of December 12, 1914, an article in The Anglo-Celt announces the arrival of “68 alien prisoners to be interned in the workhouse premises until after the war”.
It wouldn’t quite work out like that.
A full year before the Treaty of Versailles would finally bring the so-called Great War to a close and sew the seeds for its bloody sequel, the workhouse-cum-prisoner of war camp would be closed.
The Celt’s report noted that there was “no demonstration of any kind” conducted by the townsfolk and the prisoners “seemed to be in excellent health”. Two days later a further 26 prisoners were escorted along the same mile-long route to the workhouse and over successive months hundreds more followed in their compatriots’ footsteps.
“What had been going on in these guys’ heads?” This is the question that Gerry Boylan of Moylagh Historical Society ponders as he sits with fellow local historian Malachy Hand in the kitchen of Oldcastle Library. “They had been lifted in the middle of the night. These guys hadn’t done anything - they were working men. The police come to the door, armed, two or three o’clock in the morning, drag the fella off. The wife doesn’t know what’s going on, the kids don’t know what’s going on. He’s disappeared.
“Maybe a week or so later they get a telegram or a letter saying he’s in Oldcastle. Where the hell is Oldcastle? Send on blankets and shaving goods etc etc. They were allowed two 15-minute visits a month. We know some people came up from Cork, so it took them maybe two days for a 15 minute visit, so what do you say in those 15 minutes? You can imagine the mental stress.
“Financially, of course, they are in trouble because the bread-winner is in the camp. There is a small payment for families of the men who have been picked up, but it’s totally inadequate. These guys are in this place, they don’t know where they are, looking at the barbed wire - you can imagine why some of them lost the head.”

Sabotage
A fascinating article published by John Smith on RTÉ’s History Show website explains that the men were arrested as prisoners of war to prevent them from returning home and joining the German ranks. The authorities were also “concerned about the potential for civilians of enemy nations to engage in spying, sabotage and generally act as threat to British war interests,” according to Mr Smith.
Gerry adds another factor:
“The people at the time wouldn’t have accepted this, but it was for their own safety. You have to remember Britain and Ireland was at war with Germany. There are anti-German riots in Dublin,” he says, accepting that the anti-German sentiment was worse across the Irish Sea. “It wasn’t safe for them to walk on the streets because Irish men were getting killed every day of the week on the Front.”
Built in 1842, in the grim run up to the Great Hunger, the workhouse reluctantly took in the impoverished from three counties - Cavan, Meath, and Westmeath. Over the decades, the numbers admitted to the workhouse dwindled, and by 1914 it was used primarily as an infirmary. In October the same year, the military authorities took command of the four-acre site and its few dozen patients were moved to Bailieborough, or Kells, to free up room for the prisoners.
Oldcastle Workhouse no longer stands; the IRA set it ablaze during the War of Independence, when rumours spread that British soldiers would be billeted there. What survived of the main building was demolished years later. However, Malachy brings the Celt up to see the impressive dispensary house, where the officers resided during the workhouse complex’s four-year spell as a prison camp. Much of the eight-foot stone perimeter walls remain. It would be tough enough to scale this wall but the British weren’t in the mood to take chances.
“There are nine sentry boxes around the workhouse grounds,” The Anglo-Celt article reads, “while several galvanized houses have been erected... The grounds are surrounded by barbed wire entanglements about 5 feet high and 14 feet wide.”
This is what those first prisoners would have encountered upon walking down Oliver Plunkett Street.
“The guys who arrived here in 1914 are very unfortunate because some of their countrymen were still free two years later. So you are looking at probably the working class Germans who hadn’t connections. If you had connections in the military, in the clergy, somebody to sign for you, that ‘this guy’s alright’ you could have stayed free for another couple of years.”
The prisoners came from all walks of life - about 10 of those lifted were staff from the Shelbourne Hotel - and their opinions would have spanned the political spectrum.
“You had men who were interned who had sons fighting in the British Army,” explains Gerry, “and they would also have had relatives fighting in the German army. You had this paradox - it’s not black and white. A lot of the Germans would have been staunchly pro-British. We have [details of] one fella who wrote requesting not to be picked up, that he was a loyal British subject, that he was even a member of a Loyal Orange Order in Dublin.”
What became of his pleas?
“They brought him in - it’s as simple as that.”
This German Orangeman was just one of over 700 internees - including many captured German merchant seamen - were held captive in the prison over the four years of its operation, with the number of inmates at any one time peaking at 583.
Amongst this number was a hugely respected musician, Aloys Fleischmann. Originally from Dachau, outside Munich, Aloys had moved to Cork to take up a position as organist and choirmaster in the Catholic Cathedral. Aloys’ connections were both his saving grace and downfall. A good word in the right ear from his friends in the military, political and religious establishment ensured he wasn’t amongst the first wave of so-called “enemy aliens” interned. However, Aloys also had friends deemed more toxic by the authorities. John Smith’s article explains that Aloys’ “closeness to some republican friends” caused him to be interned in Oldcastle in January 1916.
“He was personal friends with Terence MacSwiney,” explains Gerry. This was before MacSwiney was elected in 1918, but already he had founded the Cork Brigade of the Irish Volunteers, was president of the Cork branch of Sinn Féin, and he had founded a banned newspaper.
While prison life was far from a holiday camp, the Oldcastle internees had some privileges, especially for the more affluent.
“British society at the time was class conscious,” observes Gerry, “and if you had money you could buy your way to a better camp. And you could actually buy your own room, you could have your own servant - if you could pay him.”
Were there prison servants in Oldcastle?
“It’s quite possible, the servant of course would have been another prisoner.
“The British actually put it out that people should be interned as much as possible with people of their own class. So even though you were a German, it didn’t matter - you didn’t put a docker with a doctor.”

Camp life
Malachy gives another surprising insight into camp life. If they could muster 100 prisoners, they would go on exercise marches four miles out to a pub in Dromone, now McEvoy’s.
“They used to take them in and let them have a drink there,” says Malachy. “And I think if they bought a drink for the British Army boys they could get to stay there a bit longer - this went on.”
However, these men were arrested for no crime other than the happenstance of their nationality. Aloys loathed his confinement and complained of it in his biography. “He describes the conditions here and they didn’t sound great,” says Malachy.
Aloys reflecting on his time as a prisoner later wrote to his son:
“It is of no significance whether an individual is healthy or ill, dies a natural death, opens his veins or hangs himself where thousands are oppressed and worn down by their fate, robbed of their livelihoods, torn from their families in all corners of the globe, all vegetating like packs of different animals behind barbed wire.”
Aloys mitigated this vegetative state by running one of the prison’s two orchestras; in addition there were also bands playing more contemporary tunes. Others wiled away the long days painting, and some of their depictions of the prison remain.
For some prisoners, nothing could distract them from the injustice of being locked up and parted from their loved ones. Four men were committed to psychiatric wards. Gerry leafs through his folder to find the sparse details of one; Erwin Bernard Schatz, a Jew who was born in Germany, who was arrested in Belfast, where he worked as a picture-framer.
“Committed from Oldcastle to Mullingar Asylum Died 23 January 1918 aged 41,” reads Gerry.
“That’s a fella that didn’t make it, and many of the men who went in there never got back to their families.”
For many, marriages ended in divorce.
It’s therefore understandable that some prisoners tried to escape - seven or eight in total.
“When people escaped, the civilians wandered the country, they didn’t have a clue where they were. The ones who escaped, who got any distance, were the naval personnel because they had help from outside. One man escaped from Oldcastle and made it right across the country to Limerick port, but he got caught trying to board a Norwegian ship to get away.”
In the same year as that escape attempt, a prisoner, August Bockmeyer, was killed by a guard.
“He probably had what they called barbed wire fever - just to hell with this - made a dash for the wall. Didn’t make it. He died of his wounds shortly afterwards and he was buried in the workhouse graveyard.”
The graveyard in Bully’s Acre is the resting place of all of those, who, over eight decades, sadly passed away in the wretched confines of the workhouse. In the centre of the hoof-pocked field where horses now graze stands the sole marker of its significance: a Celtic cross believed to have been erected by the Germans prisoners.
The second camp death occurred in January 1917; a 31-year-old man, Franz Xaver Seemeier. According to John Smith’s article Seemeier’s death was reported at the time as a result of serious internal bleeding caused by a collision during a game of football in the camp. However, Aloys Fleischmann later contradicted this report claiming that Seemeier was bayonetted to death near the barbed wire fence.
“We don’t know why or what happened,” says Gerry. “He was buried in the Catholic cemetery in the town - a huge headstone was erected by his comrades in the camp.”

Escapes
Two Germans, Carl Morlang and Alphonsus Grein, somehow, did make good their escape on foot, across the drumlins passing through Ballyjamesduff and Kilnaleck on their way to Cavan Town.
“At the village of Denn a few miles from Cavan, Grein entered a public house and treated all hands in lavish style,” the Chronicle colourfully reports.
Meanwhile Morlang had been dressed in clerical attire, posing as a Rev Whyte. The pair were tracked down in the Farnham Hotel days later, reportedly with money and road maps, and a plan to head for Belfast. Upon return to Oldcastle they were punished with solitary confinement.
“We definitely know that they had help because when they were caught they had a letter in their pocket to send to a guy in Oldcastle, thanking him.”
That guy in Oldcastle was Charlie Fox.
“Charlie Fox was the biggest businessman in the town at the time. Flour, general merchant, draper - if you walked into his store you could buy anything basically. He was very republican. He had been involved in Irish language, but he was also an ex-British Army officer - decorated.”
Of the Germans’ decision to pen a letter of thanks, Gerry says, “This wasn’t very clever”.
“Charlie was arrested and charged with treason, which meant he’s looking at a rope - this is wartime.”
Apparently as an elderly lady, Charlie’s daughter could recall accompanying her mother to Phoenix Park to appeal for clemency from the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland.
“She must have told them that he’s a decorated soldier and got mixed up with the wrong crowd, but Charlie got released and he arrived back on the train into Oldastle and was greeted as a hero. The band came out to meet him, and there were torches. This was before 1916 - it goes to show the mood of the people even then. 1916 changed everything of course.
“In 1916 the camp goes into lock-down. The mood is changing, slowly but surely, even though this town paid an awful price during the First World War - 33 men from this area were killed during the first world war, but Oldcastle has always been a fairly nationalist town and after 1916 things started to turn against the British in this area.”

Rally
The defining moment in this story came in April 1918 with an anti-conscription rally in Oldcastle’s market square. Organised by Sinn Féin, the guest speaker was Arthur Griffith; just months later he would be elected MP for East Cavan.
“There were thousands and thousands,” says Gerry, “the place was black with people. The speeches went on and on and of course the prisoners were only down the road a few hundred metres.”
Several of the prisoners made their way onto the roof to watch the rally, which caught the eye of many in the crowd. Once the speeches ended the crowd moved down to the prison.
“Hundreds of people making their way down to the front of the camp - you can imagine the soldiers and sentries went ape. They thought: ‘this is it, they are coming in’. But eventually they got order restored but that was the end of it, within a month the camp was closed.
“They [the British military] had hostile people on the inside and hostile people on the outside. Oldcastle had been described as a serious security risk before that - Ireland was tipping.”
Gerry notes that Oldcastle “was one of the better camps”, so its closure wasn’t good news for the prisoners.
“After they left Oldcastle they were sent to Knockaloe Camp in the Isle of Mann, which was a massive camp and had a reputation for being the worst camp in the British Isles.
It housed 25,000 in “horrific” conditions, according to Gerry.
“When they arrived at the Isle of Man they had 30-40 tonnes of personal possessions, including a grand piano! The British press picked up on this: ‘Our guys are on the Front with nothing, and these Huns...’”
“Even after the war they were kept in there [Knockaloe] for another year, and this led to great depression and suicide. After that, most of them weren’t allowed back to their families, they were deported back to Germany or Austria. Many of the men never made it back.
“Fleischmann was one of the lucky ones - it took him two years after he left Oldcastle to get back home. He arrived back in Cork in 1920 at the height of the War of Independence and one of the first jobs he had was to organise the music in the cathedral for the funeral of his friend, Terence MacSwiney.” The republican, then Mayor of Cork had died in prison after 74 days on hunger strike.
The majority of the internees didn’t share in Fleischmann’s fortune.
“A lot of the men lost everything - their families, their livelihoods. Some of them lost their lives. There wasn’t a happy ending for many of them.”
This is why a century later, on Sunday December 14, Moylagh Historical Society and Meath County Council Library Services, will commemorate the prisoner of war camp with a re-enactment of the arrival of the first batch of prisoners to Oldcastle. There will also be a reading of letters relating to the camp in Oldcastle Library, while Navan Male Voice Choir will sing a selection of German carols.
“People from all over the world are in contact at the moment,” enthuses Gerry. Amongst those who have been in contact is Ruth Fleischmann, Aloys’ granddaughter. “It’s incredible the interest these people have for their grandparents or great grandparents who were interned here and they all tell the same story - they were never the same again. They were quiet or moody - it left some mark on seemingly everybody who was in the camp.”