Halbmondlager

The was a prisoner-of-war camp in Wünsdorf (now part of Zossen), Germany, during the First World War. The name translates as ''Crescent Camp'' or ''Half-Moon Camp'' (sometimes also used as a name in English publications) and refers to the crescent, a symbol of Islam.

The camp housed approximately 30,000 Arab, Indian, and African prisoners of war from the British and French allied armies. The primary purpose of the camp was to persuade detainees to wage jihad against the United Kingdom and France, in line with the 1914 Ottoman jihad proclamation, serving as a showcase for Germany's war propaganda. To that end, "detainees lived in relative luxury and were given everything they needed to practise their faith". The camp was the site of the first mosque to be built in Germany, a large and ornate wooden structure completed in July 1915. The mosque, requested by the Grand Mufti of Constantinople (Ottoman Empire), was financed by the Prussian Army and modeled after the Dome of the Rock. It was demolished in 1925–1926 due to disrepair.

About 80 Sikh prisoners and Hindus from British India were also held in the camp, as well as around 50 Irishmen, and two Australian Aboriginal soldiers ( Roland Carter and Douglas Grant). A subcamp, known as (Camp of Indians), was established to house prisoners from India who were not openly pro-British; those who were pro-British had been sent to other camps instead.

The leader of the "jihad experiment" was Max von Oppenheim, a German diplomat and aristocrat. He established an office nearby to lead a propaganda campaign with the "show camp", "self-consciously styled as a theatre for the wider world", at its centre. Oppenheim was assisted by Shaykh Sâlih al-Sharîf, a Tunisian who had served in the Ottoman Empire's intelligence agency. He served as a spiritual leader for the detainees. Furthermore, Oppenheim cooperated with the Berlin Committee (later: Indian Independence Committee) in order to publish a propagandist Urdu- and Hindi-language newspaper, which was distributed in the camp.

Anthropologists, musicologists like Robert Lachmann and linguists used the 'favourable conditions' within the camp to conduct research. The Royal Prussian Phonographic Commission, under the auspices of the linguist Wilhelm Doegen, set out to record voice and language samples in the shape of stories, poems and songs of over 250 languages. The remaining recordings are held at the phonographic archive of the Humboldt Universität of Berlin. In 2014/15, an exhibition called ''Phonographed Sounds - Photographed Moments'' presented sound and image documents from WWI German prison camps.

Up to 3,000 of the detainees from the camp were recruited into the German Army to fight in North Africa and the Middle East. However, low morale and troop revolt plagued the resulting divisions, and few believed in the jihadist cause. In 1917 the remaining prisoners were forced to agricultural labour in Romania.

The story of the camp was largely omitted from English-language texts, until nearly a century after the war. It was discussed extensively in German history works.

See also

* Mosque of the Bois de Vincennes

References

Further reading

*Gerhard Höpp: ''Die Wünsdorfer Moschee. Eine Episode islamischen Lebens in Deutschland, 1915-1930''. In: ''Die Welt des Islams'', 1996, pages 204–218.
*Gerhard Höpp: ''Muslime in der Mark. Als Kriegsgefangene und Internierte in Wünsdorf und Zossen, 1914–1924.'' Verlag Das Arabische Buch, Berlin 1997,
*Martin Gussone: ''Die Moschee im Wünsdorfer „Halbmondlager“ zwischen Gihad-Propaganda und Orientalismus''. In: Markus Ritter, Lorenz Korn (Hrsg.): ''Beiträge zur Islamischen Kunst und Archäologie'', Reichert, Wiesbaden 2010, , pages 204–232.
*Hanno Kabel
''Gefangen unter der Moschee''.
In: '' Berliner Zeitung'', 6 April 1996
*''Gefangene Bilder. Wissenschaft und Propaganda im Ersten Weltkrieg''. Benedikt Burkard (ed.). Petersberg, Imhof Verlag, 2014. (Exhibition catalog Historisches Museum Frankfurt in Kooperation mit dem Frobenius-Institut an der Goethe-Universität Frankfurt und dem Institut français d'histoire en Allemagne / On occasion of an exhibition held at Historisches Museum Frankfurt, September 11, 2014 - February 15, 2015)
*Heike Liebau:
„Unternehmungen und Aufwiegelungen“: Das Berliner Indische Unabhängigkeitskomitee in den Akten des Politischen Archivs des Auswärtigen Amts (1914–1920)
" In:
MIDA Archival Reflexicon
' (2019), ISSN 2628-5029, 1–11.
*Jürgen-K. Mahrenholz:
Südasiatische Sprach- und Musikaufnahmen im Lautarchiv der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
" In:
MIDA Archival Reflexicon
' (2020), ISSN 2628-5029, 1–19.
*Andrew Tait Jarboe: "Propaganda and Empire in the Heart of Europe: Indian Soldiers in Hospital and Prison, 1914-1918" in: ''Empires in World War I: Shifting Frontiers and Imperial Dynamics in a Global Conflict'', (2020), 107-135.
*Richard S. Fogarty "Out of North Africa: Contested Visions of French Muslim Soldiers during World War I" in: ''Empires in World War I: Shifting Frontiers and Imperial Dynamics in a Global Conflict'', (2020), 136-158.

External links

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{{Coord, 52.1669, N, 13.4858, E, source:wikidata, display=title

Prisoner-of-war camps in Germany
World War I prisoner-of-war camps in Germany
Islam in Germany