English Calamity
The English Calamity was a hiking accident on the Schauinsland mountain in 1936, in which five students died when caught in a blizzard.
On the 17th of April in 1936, a group of 27 English students had started a hiking trip from Freiburg im Breisgau, onto Schauinsland. At the crest of the mountain, the group lost orientation in fog and a blizzard. Despite an unfavorable weather forecast, they still had hiked the mountain under the guidance of their teacher. Thanks to the courage and help of the nearby village population of Hofsgrund, most of the students were rescued, although five died from exhaustion.
Afterwards, the Nazis reframed the behavior of the group as an heroic deed, which they then celebrated in their foreign politics with major impact. In 1938, a sculpture by architect Hermann Alker titled the Engländerdenkmal was erected by the Hitler Youth in commemoration.
Course of Events
Background
During their Easter break, the students from Strand School, a grammar school in the south of London, had been on a ten-day long trip to the Black Forest, which included a five-day hiking trip. The group arrived in Freiburg early in the morning of April 16th. A lot of the students had caught little to no sleep on the train ride and were, therefore, tired. On the 17th of April, they started the first part of their hike which was supposed to lead them over Schauinsland to a hostel in Todtnauberg called Radschert.The head, and the only adult person in charge, was the young, and among his students very popular, 27-year-old teacher Kenneth Keast, who taught English, German and Sports. His travel group consisted of 27 boys between the ages of 12 to 17, in which 17-year old Douglas Mortifee, the oldest student on the trip, had an assisting role as prefect. The trip itself wasn’t a school organized event and instead was privately organized by Keast himself, through the Londoner travel agency School Travel Service. Back then, the Black Forest had already been one of the best developed hiking areas in Germany and was an internationally popular destination.
The planned route from Freiburg to Todtnauberg was considerably longer than and went along of ascent up to the Schauinsland. It still is a challenging mountain tour, even under favourable conditions. Reportedly, the group were not equipped well enough for the venture: despite wintery conditions, some of them wore summer clothing, light shoes, shorts and no head coverings. Instead of using the detailed hiking maps by the Schwarzwaldverein, Keast only had a map from the School Travel Service with a scale of 1:100,000. The map did show all marked hiking trails, but it did not reveal any terrain details.
Everyone packed just enough food for the day. When they left the hostel at 9am it was snowing, as one of the boys, Ken Osborne, noted in his journal. At first the children were delighted, having snowball fights.
Blizzard
The snow was getting deeper above Kappel valley and the group was struggling to move forward. It should be added that some of the students had already been tired from the start and reached their limits after more than six hours of hiking. Keast now had to admit that they could not stick to the schedule. The Schauinsland summit, he had planned to reach four hours ago, still lay ahead, but moving in the waist-deep snow required arduous tracking. Now, it was all about getting the group to a safe place. Nevertheless, he did not return to Zechenheim, but chose to head for the Schauinsland summit or Hofsgrund, the next village. Keast lost their way several times and made time-consuming detours.As the crow flies, it is about from the upper Kappler valley to the summit, and 2 kilometres to Hofsgrund. However, Keast had not taken the terrain into account: the summit was still about above them. Directly on the way to the summit, the steepest flank of the mountain had to be mastered first, which is the Kappler wall, which has a slope of up to 70%. The difficult, cross-country ascent through deep snow at temperatures around freezing point, drifting snow and strong wind soon caused some of the students to collapse. Jack Alexander Eaton, the school's 14-year-old boxing champion, was the first to collapse. He was given an orange and a piece of cake and told to "buck up". Keast, still convinced that the further march to Hofsgrund was the safest option, continued the ascent and let the boys sing cheerful songs to keep them happy. Those who could no longer stand on their feet were carried around in turns.
When the group finally reached the east crest of Schauinsland, they lost the lee of the mountain and were completely exposed to the snowstorm at sub-zero temperatures. If they would have gone westwards from here, they could have reached the top station of the Schauinsland cable car without any other difficulties, and thus reached safety. Because nothing could be seen in the fog and storm, Keast preferred to maintain the rough direction to Hofsgrund, probably unaware that this meant another of descent over sloping and deeply snow-covered terrain. Soon after, the group lost their orientation on the southeastern mountain flank, especially since the daylight was fading. They ran, yielding to the storm, in an eastern direction, even though Hofsgrund, their destination, was south.
Rescue
Around 6:30 pm the evening ringing of the Hofsgrund church penetrated the storm and indicated the direction to Hofsgrund. Below an altitude of 1100 meters there was no longer any fog and the lights of Hofsgrund could be seen.On the way there, the first ones arrived at the Dobelhof at about 8 pm. When they were told that there were others outside, the alarm was sounded and all the men available at Hofsgrund set out on skis to search for them, since no clear information could be obtained about the location of the rest of the group. It was completely dark, and the snowstorm continued. It proved impossible to carry the found students in the fresh deep snow, so a horn sledge was used. Gradually 15 of the pupils reached the bottom of the yard under their own power, others kept watch over the collapsed and called for help, Keast himself held out for two unconscious pupils.
A doctor, who was on holiday near Hofsgrund, took care of the emergencies. The boys were carefully warmed up and looked after by helpers. Shortly after 10 p.m., the police in Kirchzarten were informed by telephone and in turn requested ambulances from Freiburg. By 11:30 p.m., all persons had been recovered. Police and ambulances, together with another doctor, search staff and a dog, did not arrive in Hofsgrund until after 1 a.m. because of the winter road conditions.
Casualties
- Francis Bourdillon
- Peter Ellercamp
- Stanley Lyons
- Jack Alexander Eaton
- Roy Witham
Three students, including Eaton, were found last and conspicuously far up, just below the ridge. Since it seems unlikely that they could have got there on their own in their condition, it is reasonable to assume that they were left there when the group disbanded.
Aftermath
From the outset, Keast described the event to the press and authorities as an unforeseeable natural catastrophe. He had expected the best spring weather, which had still existed the day before, and the onset of winter was not to be expected. As soon as the weather deteriorated, he did his utmost to bring the group to safety. During the investigation in England, he stated that the planned route was usually considered a short day trip, and that German authorities were talking about the worst snowstorm in 40 years. The latter is correct, but the claim that the storm came unexpectedly is wrong - in fact, the weather development was in line with the given forecasts.Germany
In Germany, the National Socialists quickly recognized the opportunity to make political capital out of the situation. The Olympic Games in Berlin were just around the corner and the German Reich wanted to show itself to the world as a strong but friendly and benevolent state. Thus the official account adopted Keast's thesis of an unforeseeable disaster that had befallen the group and the heroic rescue of their teacher. The rescue operation from Hofsgrund as well as all indications that suggested misconduct on the part of the teacher fell by the wayside. Keast's willing release was politically motivated: Accusations against the English side could have further strained diplomatic relations, which had been strained since Hitler's seizure of power, and this was not intended by either side. In this way Germany was able to present itself as a generous helper in times of need. Keast found this development very convenient, and the British government was also pleased that the Germans did not blame the English teacher.The rescued pupils were taken to Freiburg on Saturday, where the Hitler Youth organised a distracting leisure programme for them. It was not until Sunday that most of them learned of the death of some of their fellow pupils, The German Reich also took over the return journey of the survivors to England and the transfer of the dead with downright military honours and a personal wreath of Adolf Hitler.
Before that, a true cult of the dead was staged in the media from the fate of the fatally injured. Thus a press photograph, in which members of the Hitler Youth hold "honour guard" at the coffins of the "fallen heroes and mountain comrades", was also printed in several English daily newspapers. In the following years the Hitler Youth revered the students who died in the accident as "fallen mountain comrades" who had given their lives in the fight for peace and international understanding.
England
In England the events were initially viewed quite critically internally. The school management had to ask itself why a group of this size abroad was accompanied by only one adult. When assessing Keast's behaviour, it must be remembered that school sport at that time pursued different ideals than today, and in order to achieve the desired hardening and toughening of the body, it was quite generally accepted and common practice to challenge young people to the point of exhaustion. Nevertheless, Keast would be reproached for not having realised in time that the sporting challenge had turned into an emergency situation for some of his pupils, and that later he had not kept the group together and had not paid sufficient attention to the care of the exhausted - not to mention the generally inadequate preparation and execution of the undertaking.As a consequence of the incident, a school trip to Austria, which was planned shortly afterwards, was cancelled under Keast's leadership, but in the end all accusations against him were dropped. He remained active in the teaching profession and died in 1971.
Jack Eaton, the father of the deceased Jack Alexander Eaton, did not believe the official account. He traveled to Freiburg several times after the accident, traced the route, interviewed witnesses, reconstructed the events and found confirmation of his suspicions. In a written protocol, which he distributed publicly as an appeal to bring Keast to justice, he summarized his investigations and accused Keast of having put the group of students in a hopeless situation out of ambition and recklessness and of having ignored any advice out of arrogance towards the Germans while there was still time. But his statements were politically undesirable and found little attention, especially since they also burdened the tour operators and school management. Disappointed by this, Eaton finally overstepped the bounds of what was permissible by publicly branding Keast as his son's murderer and pursuing him incessantly. He died in the early 1960s. The parents of the other victims did not join Eaton's protests.
One of the rescued boys, Stanley C. Few, later joined the British Army, but told his superiors that he could not be expected to fight Germans because he owed his life to Germans. He was deployed in Asia.
Rediscovery
Outside the Schauinsland region, history fell into oblivion until the Freiburg teacher and hobby historian Bernd Hainmüller came across it at the beginning of the 21st century while studying records of the Freiburg Hitler Youth. Since the depiction there was obviously politically constructed, he set about reconstructing the events from individual records and oral traditions, and presented his findings on April 17, 2016, in Hofsgrund, according to which the interpretation handed down as a tragic accident through no fault of his own is no longer tenable and instead Jack Eaton's unheard accusations of dilettantish preparation and irresponsible execution of the hike are confirmed. The astonishment that such an inadequately equipped group of schoolchildren had made it to the Schauinsland at all under the circumstances is still remembered in Hofsgrund.It is unclear what exactly happened on the "last mile", between the sound of the bells and the Dobelhof, as Hainmüller repeatedly mentioned. According to witnesses, small groups of collapsed people were found, each with an older student as guard. But since there is little point in leaving exhausted students lying in the snow with a guard instead of dragging them in the group to the rescuing house, according to Hainmüller, there is much to suggest that Keast had completely lost control of the group by then, and that the group broke up into separate squads, each of which took their own way to safety, leaving the exhausted behind. One of the 21 questions in the Eaton paper also refers to which of the students proved to be "true Englishmen" and would have helped weaker ones in need. What is certain is that there was secret collusion between Keast, the school management and the survivors. Even after Keast's death nothing has been revealed about the content of these meetings.
Two daughters of the surviving, diary-keeping student Kenneth Osborne were also present at Hainmüller's talk and reported that although their father had not often spoken about the tour, the kindness and helpfulness of the farm founders had remained in his memory throughout his life. At the age of 12, one of the youngest at the time, he probably only survived because he had a borrowed rain cape with him to protect him from the wind. All his life, he had cherished a small cast model of a church, which his daughters only identified as an image of the Freiburg Cathedral when they visited it. In the following period, Osborne created an extensive archive of all British newspaper reports about the accident that were available to him, a copy of which was given to Bernd Hainmüller.
The British correspondent Kate Connolly published a detailed article reflecting Hainmüller's findings in the British newspaper The Guardian on 6 July 2016.