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Citizenship and Politics: The Legacy of Wilton Park for Post-War Reconstruction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 September 2008

David Welch
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Extract

Writing in 1965 in Britain Looks to Germany, Donald Cameron Watt concluded:

Perhaps the biggest successes scored by the Education Branch lay in the programme of exchange visits at all levels, in the discovery and encouragement of a new generation of teachers in Germany.…and most imaginatively of all in the opening up of the Wilton Park Centre to which leaders of opinion in Germany came for short residential courses on British democratic practice. Politicians, journalists, teachers, academics, trades unionists mingle together in these courses, and so valuable did the centre appear to German opinion that it was German initiative and German financial contribution which helped to preserve it in its present form when a niggardly Treasury and a disastrously unimaginative Foreign Secretary threatened to abolish it. Its impact on German life and on the political elites of West Germany has been incalculable.

Type
Articles
Information
Contemporary European History , Volume 6 , Issue 2 , July 1997 , pp. 209 - 218
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1997

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References

1 Watt, D. C., Britain Looks to Germany. British Opinion and Policy towards Germany since 1945 (London: Oswald Wolff, 1965), 81–2.Google Scholar

2 See, for example, Welch, D. ‘Priming the Pump of German Democracy. British “Reeducation” Policy in Germany after the Second World War’, in Turner, I. (ed.), Reconstruction in Post-war Germany. British Occupation Policy and the Western Zones, 1945–55 (Oxford: Berg, 1989), 215–38.Google Scholar See also idem, ‘British Political Re-education and its Impact on German Political Culture’, in Rohl K., Schmidt G., Pogge von Strandmann H. (eds), Deutschland – Grossbritannien – Europe. Politische Traditionen Partnerschaft und Rivalität (Bochum: Universitätsverlag Dr. N. Brockmeyer, 1992), 239–52.

3 Typical of the attitude of much of British officialdom at this time was recounted by Stephen Spender: ‘At the end of the war I offered my services to a Selection Board for considering candidates to work in Germany. The particular job for which I was applying was to propagate our policy in the German universities, and through the press and media … I suggested that we should study to strengthen the German need in the universities and the arts to have contact with other nations. One of my interviewers said: “We can assure you, Mr Spender, that after this war there will be no culture in Germany”. And with those words I was dismissed.’ Spender, S., World Within a World (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1951), 304.Google Scholar

4 For a detailed discussion of these categories as they were outlined by the War Cabinet before the end of hostilities see Public Record Office (PRO)/Foreign Office (FO) 371/39095/74445, 3 July 1944, especially Appendix A. See also Faulk, H., Die deutschen Kriegsgefangenen in Grossbritannien: Re-education (Munich/Bielefeld: Gieseking, 1970).Google Scholar

5 PRO/FO371/64594/C6072, April 1947.

6 I am reliably informed by Erhard Domberg that this is the phrase that Koeppler used in discussion with staff and students at Wilton Park whenever he was forced to refer to ‘re-education’.

7 PRO/FO1050/1249/111404. This is an anonymous undated 5-page memorandum in defence of Wilton Park in the face of Treasury criticisms. It was written in 1949, possibly by Koeppler but more likely by either Herbert Walker or W. R. Iley of the Foreign Office, German Section: ‘People who are against “re-education” [sic] think of it, not without justification, as the work of enthusiasts who, with little understanding of their own history and institutions and none of Germany's, tried to preach to the pagan barbarians who were expected to listen because they were beaten. But “re-education” in this sense is not and never has been the practice at Wilton Park’.

8 ‘The Curriculum at Wilton Park and its Development’, PRO/FO371/64594/110800, 4 Nov. 1947.

9 ibid., Koeppler was also keen to mention Wilton Park's magazine, Die Brücke, which was published each term and devoted special editions to themes such as the ‘united states of Europe’.

10 ibid., Koeppler would frequently quote from favourable intelligence officers' reports in the British Zone which supported the methods employed at Wilton Park. See also a three-page report on courses at Wilton Park followed by the schedule of evening lectures, PRO/FO371/64594/14564.

11 ‘Selection of Students for Wilton Park’, PRO/FO371/64594/110800, 6 Nov. 1947.

12 PRO/FO371/70104E. The analysis forms part of a longer report on Wilton Park by H. Walker, Deputy Director of Education Branch, see below, n. 15.

13 Staff at Wilton Park were conscious of this shift. In an undated (1949) and unsigned memorandum to Education Branch, it is noted: ‘The Treasury view is symptomatic of the changes in the British view of German politics that have taken place since the end of hostilities. The pendulum has swung from the view that the Germans are beyond all redemption to other extremes that the Germans act and think very much like the British people’. PRO/1050/11404.

14 ‘Report on the Second Course for German Civilians, February–March, 1947’, PRO/FO371/64594/110800, 12 April 1947. Koeppler quoted from a note received from the Regional Intelligence Officer, Hamburg: ‘The candidates we have sent from Hamburg have been enthusiastic about the Wilton Park Course. … Our visitors seem to have understood the aims and objects of the Course fairly well; they enjoyed the syllabus of lectures and discussions, and regarded the method of instruction as an excellent object lesson in practical democracy’.

15 ‘Selection of Students for Wilton Park’, PRO/FO371/64594/110800, 6 Nov. 1947.

16 From July 1948, Wilton Park had been established by the Foreign Office (German Section) and for administrative purposes was regarded as a detached unit of the Foreign Office. The teaching staff consisted of a warden (Koeppler) and five tutors (all male). With the exception of one tutor who joined in early 1947, the staff had been at Wilton Park since it opened.

17 Very little work has been undertaken on GER. It was officially founded in 1943 under the presidency of Eleanor Rathbone and was dissolved in 1948. For one of the few analyses of its ethos and work see Anderson, J., ‘“GER”: A Voluntary Anglo-German Contribution’, in Hearnden, (ed.), The British in Germany. Educational Reconstruction after 1945 (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1978), 253–67.Google Scholar

18 Kurt Jürgensen has controversially suggested that ‘a certain number of German participants were not prepared to recognise the moral authority of Dr Heinz Koeppler’. I have found no evidence to substantiate such a generalised claim. Jürgensen, , ‘British Occupation Policy after 1945 and the Problem of “Re-education” Germany’, History (June 1984), 238.Google Scholar

19 ‘Memorandum on the Future of Wilton Park’, PRO/FO1050/1248/111404. The report is signed by Brigadier R. V. Hume but undated, although clearly written towards the middle of 1948.

20 ‘Report on a Visit to Wilton Park by H. Walker’, PRO/FO371/70704E/95909, 25 Oct. 1948.

21 PRO/FO/1050/1248/111404, 29 Oct. 1948. Koeppler claimed that the training at Wilton Park represented excellent value for the British taxpayer. All funding came out of the public purse and Koeppler calculated the cost per student per course to be £56.19.2d. He did suggest, however, that, as the German currency become ‘convertible’, German organisations should be invited to make a financial contribution to Wilton Park.

22 ibid.

23 These German civilians were joined by participants from Holland, Norway, France and Switzerland.

24 I am grateful to all the ‘Old Wiltonians’ who have provided me with their personal recollections of their stay at Wilton Park. In 1971, at the twenty-fifth Anniversary Conference of Wilton Park, Helmut Schmidt (then Minister of Defence), representing the Federal Republic of Germany, stated that ‘for a generation of German politicians the image of Britain had been shaped in Wilton Park’. Quoted in E. Dornberg (who attended the anniversary conference) and who subsequently wrote an unpublished paper to mark the fortieth anniversary in 1985 entitled: ‘Wilton Park: Anfänge und Tradition’.

25 See Hearnden, A., Red Robert: A Life of Robert Birley (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1984).Google Scholar

26 To this day Germans continue to form the largest group, closely followed by Americans, French and Scandinavians.

27 Guardian, 3 April 1979.