English Calamity

During their Easter break, students from Strand School, a grammar school in the south of London, were on a ten-day long trip to the Black Forest, which included a five-day hiking trip. The head, and the only adult person in charge, was 27-year-old teacher Kenneth Keast,[1] who taught English, German and Sports. His travel group consisted of 27 boys between the ages of 12 to 17, with 17-year old Douglas Mortifee, the oldest student on the trip, assisting as prefect. The trip wasn’t a school organised event and instead was privately organised by Keast, through the Londoner travel agency School Travel Service. The group arrived in Freiburg early in the morning of April 16th. On the 17th of April, they started the first part of their hike which was supposed to lead them over Schauinsland to a hostel in Todtnauberg called Radschert.

The planned route from Freiburg to Todtnauberg was considerably longer than 20 kilometres (12 mi) and went along 1,000 metres (3,300 ft) of ascent up to the Schauinsland. It is a challenging mountain tour, even under favourable conditions. Reportedly, the group was not equipped for the venture: despite wintry conditions, some of them wore summer clothing, light shoes, shorts and no head coverings.[1] Instead of using the detailed hiking maps by the Schwarzwaldverein, Keast only had a map from the School Travel Service with a scale of 1:100,000, which did show all marked hiking trails, but did not reveal any terrain details.

On the 17th of April in 1936, a group of 27 English students had started a hiking trip from Freiburg im Breisgau, onto Schauinsland. At the crest of the mountain, the group lost orientation in fog and a blizzard. Despite an unfavorable weather forecast, they still had hiked the mountain under the guidance of their teacher. Thanks to the courage and help of the nearby village population of Hofsgrund, most of the students were rescued, although five died from exposure.

Afterwards, the Nazis praised the behaviour of the group's rescuers as a heroic deed, which they celebrated in their foreign politics with major impact. In 1938, a sculpture by architect Hermann Alker titled the Engländerdenkmal ("Monument to Englishmen") was erected by the Hitler Youth in commemoration.[2]

The day prior to the group setting out Keast was warned about an approaching storm in the area, and reportedly stated; "The English are used to sudden changes in the weather." Keast and the boys on the trip were not adequately prepared for the hike, with some of the boys dressed in only shorts, mackintoshes and sandals.[1]

Blizzard

The group's route.

• S: Meeting postman Otto Steiert, then ascent up the Kappler Wand
• 1: Arrival on ridge, drawn eastward by the storm
• 2: Probably first overhearing of bells, might explain for the change of direction
• 3: place where Jack Eaton was found with two survivors
• 4: place where Francis Bourdillon and Roy Witham were found, together with Keast and another survivor
• 5: place where Peter Ellercamp was found, with one survivor
• 6: place where Stanley Lyons was found, just above Dobelhof
• D: Dobelhof farmhouse
• B: Mountain station of cable car (where nearest shelter could have been found)

The snow was getting deeper above Kappel valley and the group was struggling to move forward. The Schauinsland summit, they had planned to reach, still lay ahead but moving in the waist-deep snow required arduous tracking. Now, it was all about getting the group to a safe place. Nevertheless, Keast did not return to Zechenheim, but chose to head for the Schauinsland summit or Hofsgrund, the next village. Keast lost their way several times and made time-consuming detours.

Travelling in a direct line, it is about 1 kilometre (0.62 mi) from the upper Kappler valley to the summit, and 2 kilometres to Hofsgrund. However, Keast had not taken the terrain into account: the summit was still about 300 metres (980 ft) above them. Directly on the way to the summit, the steepest flank of the mountain had to be mastered first, which is the Kappler wall, which has a slope of up to 70%. The difficult, cross-country ascent through deep snow at temperatures around freezing point, drifting snow and strong wind soon caused some of the students to collapse. Jack Alexander Eaton, the school's 14-year-old boxing champion, was the first to collapse. He was given an orange and a piece of cake and told to "buck up".[3] Keast, still convinced that the further march to Hofsgrund was the safest option, continued the ascent and let the boys sing cheerful songs to keep them happy. Those who could no longer stand on their feet were carried around in turns.

When the group finally reached the east crest of Schauinsland, they lost the lee of the mountain and were completely exposed to the snowstorm at sub-zero temperatures. If they would have gone westwards from here, they could have reached the top station of the Schauinsland cable car without any other difficulties, and thus reached safety. Because nothing could be seen in the fog and storm, Keast preferred to maintain the rough direction to Hofsgrund, probably unaware that this meant another 250 metres (820 ft) of descent over sloping and deeply snow-covered terrain.[4] Soon after, the group lost their orientation on the southeastern mountain flank, especially since the daylight was fading. They ran, yielding to the storm, in an eastern direction, even though Hofsgrund, their destination, was south.

Four members of the group could not be revived in Hofsgrund, and declared dead. Roy Witham and another pupil were transported by the ambulances to the Freiburg University Hospital, Witham died there ten minutes after arrival, and the other recovered quickly. The deceased students are;[1]

Three students, including Eaton, were found last and conspicuously far up, just below the ridge. Since it seems unlikely that they could have got there on their own in their condition, it is reasonable to assume that they were left there when the group disbanded.

During the investigation in England, Keast stated that the planned route was usually considered a short day-trip, and that German authorities were discussing the worst snowstorm in forty years. The school management investigated why a group of this size going abroad was accompanied by only one adult. Nevertheless, Keast was reproached for not having realised in time that the sporting challenge had turned into an emergency situation for some of his pupils, and that later he had not kept the group together and had not paid sufficient attention to the care of the exhausted - not to mention the generally inadequate preparation and execution of the undertaking.

In Germany, the National Socialists quickly recognised the opportunity to take political advantage of the situation. The Olympic Games in Berlin were approaching and the German Reich wanted to present itself to the world as a strong but friendly and benevolent state. Thus, the official account adopted Keast's thesis of an unforeseeable disaster that had befallen the group and the heroic rescue of their teacher. The rescue operation from Hofsgrund as well as all indications that suggested misconduct on the part of the teacher fell by the wayside. Keast's willing release was politically motivated: accusations against the English side could have further strained diplomatic relations, which had been strained since Hitler's seizure of power, and this was not intended by either side. In this way Germany was able to present itself as a generous helper in times of need. Keast found this development very convenient, and the British government was also pleased that the Germans did not blame the English teacher.

From the outset, Keast described the event to the press and authorities as an unforeseeable natural catastrophe. He had expected the best spring weather, which had still existed the day before, and the onset of winter was not to be expected. As soon as the weather deteriorated, he did his utmost to bring the group to safety. As a consequence of the incident, a school trip to Austria, which was planned shortly afterwards, was cancelled under Keast's leadership, but in the end all accusations against him were dropped. He remained active in the teaching profession and died in 1971.

One of the rescued boys, Stanley C. Few, later joined the British Army, but told his superiors that he could not be expected to fight Germans because he owed his life to Germans. He was deployed in Asia.

Jack Eaton, the father of the deceased Jack Alexander Eaton, did not believe the official account. He travelled to Freiburg several times after the accident, traced the route, interviewed witnesses, reconstructed the events and found confirmation of his suspicions. In a written statement, which he distributed publicly as an appeal to bring Keast to justice, he summarised his investigations and accused Keast of having put the group of students in a hopeless situation out of ambition and recklessness and of having ignored any advice out of arrogance towards the Germans while there was still time. His statements were politically undesirable and found little attention, especially since they also blamed the tour operators and school management. Eaton publicly stated that Keast was his son's murderer and pursued him incessantly. The parents of the other victims did not join Eaton's protests.

Outside the Schauinsland region, history fell into oblivion until the Freiburg teacher and hobby historian Bernd Hainmüller came across it at the beginning of the 21st century while studying records of the Freiburg Hitler Youth. Since the depiction there was obviously politically constructed, he set about reconstructing the events from individual records and oral traditions, and presented his findings on April 17, 2016, in Hofsgrund, according to which the interpretation handed down as a tragic accident through no fault of his own is no longer tenable and instead Jack Eaton's unheard accusations of dilettantish preparation and irresponsible execution of the hike are confirmed. The astonishment that such an inadequately equipped group of schoolchildren had made it to the Schauinsland at all under the circumstances is still remembered in Hofsgrund.

It is unclear what exactly happened on the "last mile", between the sound of the bells and the Dobelhof, as Hainmüller repeatedly mentioned. According to witnesses, small groups of collapsed people were found, each with an older student as guard. But since there is little point in leaving exhausted students lying in the snow with a guard instead of dragging them in the group to the rescuing house, according to Hainmüller, there is much to suggest that Keast had completely lost control of the group by then, and that the group broke up into separate squads, each of which took their own way to safety, leaving the exhausted behind. One of the 21 questions in the Eaton paper also refers to which of the students proved to be "true Englishmen" and would have helped weaker ones in need. What is certain is that there was secret collusion between Keast, the school management and the survivors. Even after Keast's death nothing has been revealed about the content of these meetings.

Two daughters of the surviving, diary-keeping student Kenneth Osborne were present at Hainmüller's talk and reported that although their father had not often spoken about the tour, the kindness and helpfulness of the farmers had remained in his memory throughout his life. At the age of 12, Osborne potentially only survived because he had a borrowed rain cape with him to protect against the wind. All his life, he had cherished a small cast model of a church, which his daughters only identified as an image of the Freiburg Cathedral when they visited it. In the following period, Osborne created an extensive archive of all British newspaper reports about the accident that were available to him, a copy of which was given to Bernd Hainmüller.

The British correspondent Kate Connolly published a detailed article reflecting Hainmüller's findings in the British newspaper The Guardian on 6 July 2016.

On 30 September 2017, information boards were attached to the two monuments on the slope, giving a brief outline of the event and the respective historical significance of the site.

Kleines Engländerdenkmal

English text on the Kleines Engländerdenkmal

The Kleines Engländerdenkmal ("Small Englishmen Monument") or Eaton Cross is the name given to the stone memorial cross, about 1 metre (3 ft 3 in) high, that Jack Alexander Eaton's father had erected in May 1937 near the spot where his son was found dead. It bears a German inscription on the slope side and an English inscription on the valley side with the same content. Eaton's intention in erecting it was to express his protest against the official account of the event, which exonerated the teacher from any complicity. He wanted the English text to conclude with the line "Their teacher failed them in the hour of trial", but this was denied him, as it contradicted the official version of the events.[1] The free space on the cross below the English text is clearly visible.