Oberst-Drausnick-Kaserne

The former infantry barracks

The complex was built between 1890 and 1893 for the 19th Bavarian Infantry Regiment, with later additions in 1912 and 1935 to 1936. Barracks buildings stretched around the present Drausnickstraße, Wilhelmstraße and adjoining streets. Erlangen surrendered to American troops on 16 April 1945, and after military use ended, former soldiers’ quarters accommodated displaced people and other refugees.

The camp in the register

The inventory carries the site as Baltic-DP-Camp / Oberst-Brausnick-Kaserne at Erlangen in the American zone, opened on 24 January 1946 and closed on 15 September 1949. Its assembly-centre number was AC 92-252, later OMF 325, and supervision came from UNRRA Team 549 at Erlangen. Capacity was 1,950 on 31 October 1947, one of the larger figures in Middle Franconia. The record’s own archive reference is to monthly returns for Erlangen among the papers of the International Tracing Service, Dok-ID 81977317 to 81977465; a separate Arolsen catalogue entry covers Erlangen DP camp records for 21 August 1945 to 6 August 1946.

The same record names the officers. Schoier was the team director and Bramorel the field supervisor, and the camp is entered against three successive area teams — AT 1042 at Nürnberg, AT 1042 at Lauf and AT 1041 at Ansbach — within Area A 3, Würzburg. Team 549 was responsible for more than the barracks: the inventory also carries it against a centre at Forchheim in the journeymen’s house of the paper mill, closed in the late summer of 1947, and one at Streitberg in the Ebermannstadt district, closed in the autumn of 1946.

Community life in the camp

The Lithuanian encyclopedia’s account of Erlangen describes the institutions that grew inside a camp of this kind. A district of the Lithuanian exiles’ community was founded in 1946, under A. Geležėlė and then J. Visbaras. There was a Lithuanian parish served in turn by the priests V. Martinkus, V. Šalaviejus and S. Lisauskas, a branch of the Lithuanian Red Cross under S. Šalkauskas and Dr J. Varnas, and a primary school taught by E. Kvintufelytė and E. Vegnerienė.

About 200 Lithuanians were living in the camp in 1947. In the same year 97 Lithuanian students were enrolled at the Friedrich-Alexander University in the town, with J. Kedys as chairman of their association; correspondence courses in radio engineering were organised in 1948. A scout troop and a branch of the ateitininkai were active. After 1949 most of the Lithuanians left Erlangen, chiefly for the United States.

The 200 Lithuanians of 1947 are a small share of a camp registered for 1,950 people, and the published Ukrainian figures for the locality are larger still. The camp held several national communities at once, each with its own organisations, and no one of these counts describes the whole.

A publishing address beyond the camp

The July 1949 masthead of Latvija gave its publisher’s address as DP Camp Erlangen, Oberst-Drausnick-Straße 1. The newspaper appeared twice weekly and declared a circulation of 14,000. Its editorial office was in Esslingen and its printer in Ludwigsburg: Erlangen was part of a dispersed publishing network, not the sole place where the paper was produced. The circulation figure measures newspaper copies, not camp residents.

That masthead is dated seven weeks before the inventory’s closing date, which shows that the camp was still functioning as an institutional address in its final summer.

Residents and accommodation

The inventory records a camp capacity of 1,950 in October 1947. Stebelsky’s published table gives figures for Erlangen as a locality: 810 Ukrainians in the questionnaire returns collected in 1946 and 1947, no figure in the UNRRA return of 24 August 1946, 537 in the return of 31 May 1947 and 776 in the return compiled for December 1947. These show a substantial Ukrainian presence in the town, but the table has one Erlangen row and does not allocate every person to the Drausnick barracks.

For scale, the town’s reconstruction record counts 4,500 German outsiders and refugees in Erlangen in 1945 and 8,239 expellees among 50,011 inhabitants on 13 September 1950. Those are German categories and a different population from the displaced persons in the barracks.

The contested transition to civilian use

The inventory records the camp’s closure on 15 September 1949. In November, the Bavarian parliament debated proposals to use recently released barracks space for new Czech refugees while other displaced groups and students faced a severe housing shortage. These debates concerned what should happen next; they do not establish that the former Baltic camp continued unchanged, and they do not say where its residents went.

What survived

The state archives’ housing history dates the American release of the barracks for housing and commercial conversion to March 1950. A former gatehouse canteen became a licensed public tavern that August. Surviving accommodation blocks and the former officers’ building remain identifiable in the heritage register, with later residential, office and educational uses.