Last week, I had the opportunity to meet our local Camp King historian, Manfred Kopp, at the neighborhood church café. At the moment, the café’s basement houses all the Camp King documents he has been collecting over the years.

In 2005, I have been told, the City of Oberursel decided to gather all documents related to Camp King with the intent to make the collection available to the public at some point in the future.

The former Mountain Lodge on Camp King has been chosen as the designated location where the archives shall be kept. This project is supposed to be completed sometime this year.

Camp King historian and archivist, Manfred Kopp

Again, most locals do not realize the overall importance of Camp King in its history making. Initially a Siedlungshof (settlement teaching farms), then a camp for the German Air Force to interrogate American and British prisoners of war, until American Intelligence took over.

We are fortunate to have the historian, Manfred Kopp, to have taken such a big interest in Camp King’s history. Without him, more and more information would be lost within the next few years. Not many Zeitzeugen (contemporary witnesses) are left to tell us their stories.

For his efforts in restoring and archiving local history, he had been awarded the Saalburgpreis (Saalburg Award) 2008. He closed his acceptance speech with this quotation: „Nicht die Asche wollen wir bewahren, sondern die Glut weitergeben.“ (We are here not to conserve the ashes, but to pass on the embers).

Thanks, Mr. Kopp.

Edit: Initially, I had mistakenly written that Nazis interrogated the POWs. The interrogators were not Nazis. My apologies.

Tags: archives, Camp King, Community House, historian, Manfred Kopp, Mountain Lodge, Oberursel

Some other posts on this topic that you might like to read:

• Guided Tour of Camp King Oberursel
• Italian Eatery in Oberursel
• Guesthouse Zur Sonne in Oberursel

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010 at 12:17 pm and is filed under Places of interest in and around Oberursel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.