Ruhleben internment camp

The camp was developed on the site of a harness racing track laid out in 1908 north of the Berlin-Hamburg Railway line.

The camp detainees included male citizens of the Allied Powers who were living, studying, working or on holiday in Germany at the outbreak of World War I.

There were numerous fishermen captured from trawlers which had been sunk in the North Sea in the first days of the war: they were mainly men from Hull, Yorkshire; and Grimsby and Boston, Lincolnshire.

[3] The German authorities adhered to the Geneva Convention and allowed the camp detainees to administer their own internal affairs.

Letters, books, sports equipment and a printing press were all allowed into the camp, and the detainees organised their own police force, magazine, library and postal service.

[6][7] MacMillan was a prominent member of the Ruhleben Musical Society, formed in 1915, and directed performances of The Mikado (with orchestra and costumes) and a pantomime version of Cinderella.

[10] MacMillan was also a member of the Ruhleben Drama Society and acted in productions of Othello, Twelfth Night, Lady Windermere's Fan and The Importance of Being Earnest.

His detention was contested, because he worked for the French Red Cross, and had been visiting his sister in Germany with permission of the military authorities there.

A wooden hall erected by the YMCA, which housed the library of about 5000 volumes sent over from Britain, served as a place for reading.

Among the lecturers were the physicists James Chadwick, Charles D. Ellis and Henry Brose, and the historian and author John Cecil Masterman.