Ludwig-Kaserne

The barracks and its neighbours

Built between 1839 and 1844, the Ludwigskaserne belonged to Dillingen’s long military history. The city escaped wartime bombing, and American troops entered on 22 April 1945. Former military accommodation subsequently sheltered displaced people. On 5 July 1945, some residents of the nearby Lauingen camp were transferred into the Ludwigskaserne.

Dillingen also contained the Luitpold-Kaserne, a separate camp with its own Polish camp currency. The similar barracks names and shared UNRRA administration can obscure that distinction. The surviving Ludwig notes explicitly identify the Lithuanian centre.

The Haus der Bayerischen Geschichte records that on 22 April 1945 the German soldiers who had remained in the Ludwig-Kaserne were taken prisoner as Dillingen was captured. On 6 May 1945 the town’s barracks — named there as the Luitpold-, Ludwigs- and Alte Kaserne — were handed over to UNRRA and converted into a collective camp for displaced persons, and at the end of May 1945 the figure recorded for Dillingen was 6,318 displaced persons. That figure is for the town, and the source gives no breakdown by barracks.

The two Dillingen camps in the record

The inventory records this camp as the Lithuanian DP-Camp, Ludwig-Kaserne, Assembly Centre 94-273, later S 513, opened on 24 January 1946 under UNRRA Team 308 Dillingen and Team 165 Leipheim, with a capacity of 1,100 on 31 October 1947 and closure between 30 March and 30 September 1951. The nationalities listed are Lithuanian, Estonian and Polish-Ukrainian.

The neighbouring Luitpold camp in the same town is a separate entry: the Polish DP-Camp, Assembly Centre 94-272, later S 514, with a capacity of 1,900 and closure between 30 September 1950 and 31 March 1951, listing Polish-Ukrainian and stateless residents. The two share a town, a UNRRA team and an opening date, so the numbers, capacities and closing intervals have to be kept apart deliberately.

Education and connections

A June 1947 directory of Lithuanian student organisations listed a Dillingen student board with 44 students and an address at Ludwig DP Camp. This identifies an organised student network associated with the camp; the directory does not describe all 44 as pupils of a camp school.

Another contemporary notice offered Lithuanian books, journals and newspapers published in Germany through a contact at Ludwig. Such notices show how camp addresses supported cultural exchange and connected displaced readers to a wider publishing network.

Training as well as schooling was organised here. The Lithuanian community in Germany records a school for nurses at Dillingen operating in 1947 and 1948. Taken with the student board and the book distribution, it shows a town where the camps supported institutions serving Lithuanians well beyond Dillingen itself.

A newspaper for the whole emigration

Dillingen was a publishing centre for the Lithuanian emigration. The UNRRA files in the United Nations Archives hold two Team 308 folders for 1946 of newspapers issued at Dillingen, Mūsų kelias and Latviešu Vēstnesis. In its issue of 31 October 1946 Mūsų kelias gave its address simply as the Litauisches Lager, the Lithuanian camp, at Dillingen, and was printed by Manz in the town.

The paper grew into an institution. By October 1947 it was working from Kapuzinerstraße 16 in the town, and the issue of 28 July 1948 carries the line that its readership to be served numbered 20,000. The issue of 30 April 1949 describes it as a Lithuanian newspaper appearing twice weekly, authorised by EUCOM headquarters, civil affairs division, under authorisation number UNDP 205, with a circulation of 4,000.

One private notice in that April 1949 issue gives its sender’s address as Dillingen, Ludwigskaserne, DP Camp. It is a small thing, but it is direct evidence that the Ludwig barracks were still a working camp with a working postal address at the end of April 1949, two years before the closing interval recorded in the inventory.

How camp money worked

Ludwig issued notes in 1, 2, 5, 10 and 50 units. White and light-violet versions circulated; the numismatic study describes white notes paid to men and violet notes to women. Their design combined floral ornament, the UNRRA emblem and the camp’s name.

Team 308 reports from May and June 1946 explain the wider Dillingen rationing system: residents received basic points, with additional allowances for work and for people with particular needs, including sick and older residents, students and nursing mothers. The points purchased scarce amenities through the camp supply system.

Ukrainians in the Dillingen records

The inventory’s national category for this camp, Polish-Ukrainian, is an administrative label covering people from the interwar Polish state, and it records a presence rather than a count. No Ukrainian figure for the Ludwig camp exists in the published tables: Table 7 of Stebelsky’s survey has a Dillingen Luitpold Camp row, with 1,656 in the 1946–47 questionnaire series, 300 in August 1946, 1,655 in May 1947 and 1,362 in the column headed December 1947, taken from the PCIRO return of 2 January 1948, and a Dillingen DP Hospital row, but no row for a Ludwig camp. Those Luitpold figures belong to the other camp in the town and must not be carried across.

There was nonetheless Ukrainian publishing in the town. A bibliography of Ukrainian displaced-persons publications records the periodical Ukrainka na Chuzhyni as issued at Dillingen in 1948. The entry names the town and not a camp, so it cannot be assigned to either set of barracks.

The later camp

The inventory records a capacity of 1,100 in 1947 and a closing interval between 30 March and 30 September 1951. These figures describe the mixed camp as an institution. They do not supply a separate Ukrainian population total or establish where each group went after departure.