Mühlberg-Kaserne

Before the displaced persons camp

Construction began in 1914 and finished in 1916, according to Ellwangen’s municipal conversion history. Originally a military preparatory school, the complex later housed police and, from 1923 to 1934, an orphanage. Military use resumed under the Nazi regime, with army and SS units occupying the expanded site. An American military hospital operated there briefly after the war.

A garrison history gives the same phases in more detail. Building of the school for the Württemberg non-commissioned officers’ preparatory institute began on 2 January 1914 and was completed on 1 October 1916. Cadet training continued until 1920, when the Versailles treaty closed it. State police and a police school section followed, and the Württemberg Protestant provincial orphanage then used the buildings until about 1933. The political readiness formation of the SS moved in from August 1933 and became a battalion of the 1st SS-Standarte Munich in October 1934; extensive additional buildings went up immediately beside the barracks in 1935 and 1936. During the war the barracks could not hold the units sent there, so further buildings in the town were requisitioned and huts were put up at the Goldrain.

The memorial list of Dachau subcamps and external work details records an Ellwangen external detail at the SS barracks in 1941, with about 35 prisoners employed on construction work. Local research dates a Dachau satellite on the barracks site from July 1941 to October 1942 and describes its prisoners as mainly political and protective-custody detainees, almost all German nationals.

Waffen-SS troops left on 23 April 1945 and American forces occupied the barracks until the spring of 1946, setting up a military hospital there. The same account places a camp for Polish displaced people not in the barracks but in the Buchenberg school, and that distinction matters: the Ukrainian community described below was the barracks’ first displaced-persons population.

Arriving from Mannheim

About 30 organisers left Mannheim on 26 February 1946 to prepare the new camp. Their chronicle recalls hot food and field beds for the first night’s arrivals. Further transports followed; by 10 March it reports 2,440 people. American soldiers initially still occupied the second block.

The camp in the administrative record

The Arolsen Archives camp inventory records the Mühlberg-Kaserne at Ellwangen-Jagst in the district of Aalen as a Ukrainian camp with a capacity of 2,800 at the reporting date of 31 October 1947. It carried assembly centre number 709, later WG 222, and was served by UNRRA Team 524 Ellwangen. Its opening field reads 20 August 1946 and its closing is given as an interval between 30 September 1950 and 31 March 1951.

The inventory’s opening date is almost six months later than the chronicle’s first arrivals of 26 February 1946, and the two are left standing side by side rather than reconciled. The assembly-centre number can now be matched: the United Ukrainian American Relief Committee’s report of 30 June 1948 lists Elwangen (Jaget) DP Camp No. 709 among the main Ukrainian camps in the American zone, which ties number 709 to this town in a contemporary Ukrainian source.

Rooms, families and neighbours

The almanac identifies the premises explicitly as Mühlbergkaserne. Most residents occupied two main blocks. Families also shared rooms and kitchens in ten houses along Hohenstaufenstraße. Smaller buildings accommodated the administration, hospital, school and kindergarten; pressure on space brought former workshops into residential use.

The community in numbers

The almanac’s age table, dated 1 January 1947, records 3,257 people. It includes adults, school-age children and 378 children under six. This is a snapshot of the community before the screening decisions described later in the anniversary chronicle.

Three separate returns compiled by Ihor Stebelsky count Ukrainians rather than residents: 2,330 from questionnaires collected during 1946 and 1947, 2,329 in the UNRRA summary of 31 May 1947 and 2,177 in the PCIRO summary of 2 January 1948. They sit below the almanac’s own total and below the registered capacity of 2,800, and they are a different measure taken by different bodies on different dates.

A school day in the barracks

Primary-school teaching began on 9 April 1946. The 1946–47 report records 126 primary pupils. The gymnasium moved from a difficult wooden hut to heated rooms, sharing its building with primary classes, a nursing course and adult literacy teaching at different times of day.

Medical care and support

Ukrainian clinicians ran the camp hospital and outpatient services. Child health received particular attention through a children’s kitchen and mother-and-child consultations. Women needing maternity facilities were referred to a German hospital. The women’s organisation also arranged a shared Christmas supper for more than 500 people living alone.

Making and repairing

Workshops supplied the practical things a crowded community needed. Tailors made hospital clothing, school and workshop coats, scout uniforms and theatre costumes. The photographed sewing workshop employed 30 women. Knitting and embroidery workshops served residents and outside orders, while a display presented Ukrainian handiwork to visitors.

Churches, performance and sport

Catholic and Orthodox churches, a theatre, commercial and music schools, and youth organisations formed part of Ellwangen’s Ukrainian community. The Sokil sports society developed its own ground, opened on 25 August 1946. Its football team appears in the almanac, alongside school and workshop photographs.

Screening and later use

On 26 February 1947 the camp chronicle reports an initial screening decision depriving 435 residents of DP status and the right to remain. This was a profound disruption to a community marking its first anniversary. Ukrainian accommodation continued beyond that event: the municipal history places it in 1946–1951, followed by renewed American military use. The Bundeswehr entered the barracks on 23 July 1956.

The garrison history fills in the sequence after the camp. American engineer and medical units moved back into the barracks in 1951 and double housing blocks were built on the grounds. The Americans handed the barracks to the federal property office at Aalen in September 1955, and when the Bundeswehr moved in on 23 July 1956 Ellwangen became the first Bundeswehr garrison town in Baden-Württemberg. The site was later consolidated under the name Reinhardt-Kaserne, the last uniformed units were disbanded on 30 June 2014 with the federal language centre remaining as a civilian establishment, and since 2015 the enlarged grounds on the Hungerberg have housed the state initial reception centre for refugees in Baden-Württemberg.

Two cautions follow the name. Hungerberg is a later extension area of the same barracks and not a separate camp. Lager Mühlberg, a prisoner-of-war camp and later a Soviet special camp on the Elbe in Brandenburg and Saxony, is an entirely different place and has no connection with this site.