Flandern-Kaserne

The former infantry barracks

Military use of the Burgholzhof ridge began in 1927 with an army training ground. The German army acquired the land in 1934 and Flandern-Kaserne was built from 1935, opening in 1936; a district history and the American garrison history differ by a year on these dates. The neighbouring Grenadier installation followed, with the first battalion of Infantry Regiment 119 moving in during 1939. Building 111 at Flandern housed headquarters, and some later repurposed buildings had originally been stables for horse-drawn military equipment.

During the war, the garrison became a replacement training centre and accommodated signals and other troops. After fighting ended in May 1945, military compounds in this part of Stuttgart were put to several temporary uses, including internment and accommodation for displaced people.

Relief accommodation

The U.S. Army’s command historian dates Flandern’s relief use from 10 December 1945 to 11 June 1948. The international agencies used existing military accommodation while residents’ longer-term futures were being resolved. The inventory identifies the facility as Assembly Centre 705 under UNRRA Team 52 at Stuttgart, with the later code WG 223, Area Teams 1003 Stuttgart and 1002 Ludwigsburg, and an entry that closes before 29 July 1948.

On 31 October 1947 its recorded capacity was 1,350. Polish, Polish-Ukrainian, Baltic and other groups appear in the inventory. This is a mixed camp, and the capacity must not be read as either a Ukrainian population total or an actual census of residents. The inventory carries a second entry for the same building, a repatriation camp numbered 705 A which ran from 25 April 1946 until some point between 20 September and 31 October 1947; the two functions therefore overlapped in the same barracks.

Stebelsky’s tabulation of Ukrainians in American-zone camps records 360 Ukrainians at Bad Cannstatt in the PCIRO return of 2 January 1948, with no figure for the three earlier returns. That row names the locality rather than a building, and Bad Cannstatt also contained the Funker-Kaserne, the Melbourne-Kaserne, a workers’ and students’ hotel and the Jewish camp at Stuttgart West, so it cannot be read as a count for Flandern.

The neighbouring Grenadier compound followed a different sequence. The garrison history gives it as an internment camp from September 1945 to January 1947 and then as a displaced-persons camp under International Refugee Organization control until late 1948, while the camp inventory records a capacity of 1,730 and a closing date in 1949 or 1950. Its dates and activities therefore belong to a separate institution, despite the close physical relationship between the two barracks.

The emigration centre for northern Württemberg

Flandern had one function that reached far beyond Stuttgart. Ulrich Müller, working from IRO papers in the Archives Nationales in Paris, records that the resettlement centre which prepared displaced people from the whole of northern Württemberg for emigration overseas, and which housed the missions of the receiving countries, was originally in the Flandern-Kaserne in Stuttgart and was moved on 24 August 1948 to the Flak-Kaserne at Ludwigsburg-Ossweil. That move falls within weeks of the date at which the garrison historian ends Flandern’s relief period and at which the inventory entry closes.

A French archival inventory of records on political refugees and displaced persons identifies a file for Flandernkaserne, Stuttgart, covering April 1947 to June 1948. That is a locator for unread reports rather than a transcription of them, and it has not been used for any statement of fact here.

From camp to Robinson Barracks

The U.S. Army took over both installations in 1949. Flandern received the name Robinson Barracks in 1950. Later military housing, schools and other facilities expanded across the area. A photograph of the Robinson entrance dated June 1965 records this subsequent military phase, rather than the displaced-person camp.

The original barracks buildings returned to German control by 1993. Parts of the area were subsequently redeveloped as Burgholzhof housing, while other sections continued to serve the American military community.