Internment in Britain in 1940: Life and Art Behind the Wire by Ines Newman, Charmian Brinson, and Rachel Dickson

Abstract

Reviewed by: Internment in Britain in 1940: Life and Art Behind the Wire by Ines Newman, Charmian Brinson, and Rachel Dickson Sarah Painitz Ines Newman, Charmian Brinson, and Rachel Dickson, Internment in Britain in 1940: Life and Art Behind the Wire. London and Chicago: Vallentine Mitchell, 2021. 145 pp. At the center of Internment in Britain in 1940: Life and Art Behind the Wire are the creative works of two Austrians: the diary of Wilhelm Hollitscher and the paintings of Hugo Dachinger, both of which were produced in Camp Huyton, where the men were interned as enemy aliens in the summer of 1940. Their documents are accompanied by three essays: Charmian Brinson provides historical contextualization about the internment of enemy aliens in Britain during the Second World War, Rachel Dickson elucidates the work Dachinger produced in the camp, and Ines Newman, Hollitscher's granddaughter, gives biographical information about her grandfather. What makes this publication a compelling contribution to our understanding of the experience of internment are the specific intersections between Hollitscher and Dachinger as well as the astonishing sequence of coincidences that led to the publication of their work. Not only were Hollitscher and Dachinger at Camp Huyton during the same time, but they met there and became friends. Dachinger painted a portrait of Hollitscher; Hollitscher recorded their interactions and his sittings for the portrait in his diary. Newman, who never met her grandfather, knew about the portrait from the diary and from later letters her grandfather wrote to her mother. After unsuccessful attempts to track down the portrait, Newman saw it on a local TV news program about a Ben Uri Gallery exhibition while she was sitting in her living room recovering from a back injury. Thus, unlikely circumstances led to the publication of this book, which documents the experiences and meetings of two men, who also met under unlikely circumstances. Internment in Britain aids our understanding of the experience of Austrians in British exile in two specific ways. First, it provides a unique insight into the intersection of visual art and the written word. This fruitful combination of painting and text allows each to illuminate the other, and together they bring to light the difficult circumstances of their production. Dachinger's paintings and Hollitscher's diary illustrate a specific moment and place in time. They show that internment meant months of deprivation, fear, and despair, yet, perhaps surprisingly, they also attest to the vivid cultural, educational, and intellectual life in the camp. Even though internment was undoubtedly a traumatic experience, Hollitscher's diary also provides fascinating insights [End Page 126] into daily camp life, such as the internees' system of self-government and the wide array of events they organized, including musical performances, football games, art exhibits, and academic lectures. Hollitscher was not a writer, yet his diary is eminently readable and a number of similarities to another internment diary are especially striking. Like Hollitscher, the Austrian writer Robert Neumann was also interned at Huyton in the summer of 1940, but after only a few days he was transferred to Camp Mooragh on the Isle of Man. Thus, the second way in which Internment in Britain deepens our understanding is in comparison with other documents chronicling life in the camps. Despite the horrific physical conditions, by far the greatest concern expressed in both Neumann's and Hollitscher's diaries was the perpetual lack of knowledge, information, and communication. Hollitscher frequently writes about the slowness and unreliability of the mails, the difficulty of getting news from "outside," and his worries about the safety of his family members, especially his adult son and daughter. In this, he confirms Neumann's experiences. Yet the points about which Neumann and Hollitscher differ are instructive, too. Upon Neumann's release at the end of August 1940, his descriptions of the despair of internment—which he had called "Konzentrationslager" and "Hölle" earlier in his diary—are replaced seamlessly by accounts of the horrors of the air raids and bombings of the London Blitz. Hollitscher, who was released at virtually the same time, describes a warm homecoming surrounded by friends, concluding: "I have benefitted from these last two months which for me have been...