The Enemy At Home: German Internees In World War One Australia by Nadine Helmi and Gerhard Fischer was published by UNSW Press for a partnership between the Historic Houses Trust of NSW and NSW Migration Heritage Centre. It has been shortlisted for the 2012 NSW Premier’s Literary Award in the Community Relations Commission for a Multicultural NSW Award category. The winner will be announced at the State Library of NSW on 30 November 2012.
More information on the shortlisted works is at:
http://www.sl.nsw.gov.au/about/awards/premiers_awards/2012_shortlist.html
The Enemy At Home documents the experiences of nearly 7,000 people of German and Austrian descent who were detained in Australian during World War One. These unlikely prisoners-of-war came from all walks of life and many, like beer baron Edmund Resch and acclaimed orthopaedic surgeon Dr Max Herz, had lived in Australia for decades. Included in the book are the recently rediscovered photographs of the talented Bavarian photographer Paul Dubotzki that provide a rare and surprising snapshot of life inside the Holsworthy, Berrima and Trial Bay internment camps.
Order a copy of the publication through University of NSW Press. https://www.unswpress.com.au/isbn/9781742232645.htm
The Enemy At Home was an Historic Houses Trust of NSW and NSW Migration Heritage Centre partnership exhibition, publication and online exhibition to tell the story of artistry, ingenuity and resilience that revealed a little-known part of Australia’s wartime history.
The Enemy At Home exhibition was at the Museum of Sydney from 7 May 2011 to 11 September 2011. The partnership drew from State-wide internment collections research and documentation by Stephen Thompson for the Centre’s online Objects Through Time exhibition and our commissioned history partnerships since 2005 in the former NSW internment camp districts and one significant former German community region. The Enemy At Home drew from the Trial Bay Gaol thematic study, commissioned by the Centre and the NSW National Parks And Wildlife Service, which was written by Gerhard Fischer and Nadine Helmi in 2005 and edited by Stephen Thompson in 2006. The exhibition also drew from the Centre’s partnership with the Berrima District Museum assisted by Bob Williams, Annette Brown’s research into local German farming communities in the late 19th century and early 20th century for the Centre’s 2007 Germantowns, Germanstories thematic study with the Museum of the Riverina (in Holbrook, Ganmain, Lockhart, Temora, Walla Walla and Wagga Wagga) and the Casula Powerhouse and NSW Heritage Branch partnership with the Centre in 2008 which included a commissioned history by Virginia Macleod for the Liverpool Migration Heritage Project with assistance from Daniela Ristevski of the Liverpool Regional Museum and Phil Hurren, Australian Army Museum of Military Engineering, Holsworthy Army Barracks.
