Reinsehlen Camp facts for kids
Reinsehlen Camp (called Camp Reinsehlen in German) is a large, mostly treeless area of about 100 hectares (that's like 250 football fields!). It's near the village of Reinsehlen and the town of Schneverdingen in Lower Saxony, Germany. This special place is famous for its unique calcareous grassland, which is a type of dry, chalky meadow. Most of Reinsehlen Camp is now a protected nature reserve. In the past, it had many different uses: it was a military airfield, a camp for people who had lost their homes after the war, and a military training area. From 1950 to 1994, the Canadian and British armies used it as a base camp for big tank exercises in the Lüneburg Heath – that's why it's called "Camp"!
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Nature's Wonders at Reinsehlen Camp
The soil here is sandy, dry, and doesn't have many nutrients. But this is perfect for many rare and endangered plants! You can find plants like the sea thrift, childing pink, and wild thyme. The most common grass is sheep fescue. Other special plants include filago and a type of hairgrass called Corynephorus canescens.
This open grassland is also a great home for many birds to build their nests. Some of these birds are the woodlark, the skylark, and the titlark. To protect these birds during their nesting season (from April to July), visitors must stay on the paths. If you bring a dog, it needs to be on a short leash. To keep the grass at the right height, a herd of special Heidschnucken sheep helps by eating it!
In 1995, experts in Lower Saxony said this area needed special protection. It's the biggest calcareous grassland in all of Lower Saxony, and maybe even in northern Germany! This open grassland is considered one of the "natural wonders" of the Lüneburg Heath Nature Reserve.
Some parts of the old camp are now private land, and some are used for farming. Since the military left in the mid-1990s, more trees have grown in the area.
A Look Back: History of Reinsehlen Camp
Military Airfield (1938-1945)
Building the Airfield
After the Nazis came to power in Germany in 1933, they quickly started to build up their military. The Lüneburg Heath area was a good spot for new military bases because not many people lived there, and the land wasn't great for farming. So, the German army (called the Wehrmacht) built many new bases or made existing ones bigger. Some of these places later became prisoner-of-war camps during the war, and one even became the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. In 1938, the German air force (called the Luftwaffe) took over a large area near Reinsehlen to build a military airfield.
The airfield was huge, about 250 hectares. Farmers who owned this land had to give it up without being paid for it. However, farmers with Heidschnucken sheep were allowed to let their sheep graze on the airfield's grasslands. The area used to have small hills and sandy spots, with some heath plants and oak and birch trees. There was even a small stream starting in the middle. To build the airfield, workers flattened the land and dug deep into the soil. The sandy soil wasn't good enough for the grass they wanted, so they added a lot of peat and animal waste to make it fertile.
The airfield was connected to main roads, like the Reichsstrasse 3 (which is now the B3). A concrete road went all around the area. Wooden huts were built for air traffic control, sleeping quarters for the crew, a dining hall, and a military hospital. To hide these buildings from enemy planes, they were covered with special peaked roofs made of reeds. There was even a fake church steeple! The idea was that enemy air reconnaissance would think it was just a simple village. They also built bunkers for ammunition, hangars for planes, repair shops, and fuel tanks underground. The biggest building was the KdF-Hall, which was about 840 square meters and used as a cinema and for other events. Building materials arrived by train at a special loading station connected to the nearby Heidebahn. There was even a train track extension just for the ammunition bunkers.
Airfield Operations
The airfield was used for both training pilots and for real military operations. Its secret radio name was Posemuckel. The first plane landed there on September 13, 1939, shortly after World War II began with Germany invading Poland. During the war, the Luftwaffe set up anti-aircraft guns and searchlights around the airfield to protect it.
Different Luftwaffe units used the Reinsehlen airfield to train and test new equipment. Planes like the Heinkel He 111 bomber, Ju 52 transport planes (which pulled Gotha gliders), and Focke-Wulf Fw 190 fighter planes flew from Reinsehlen. Later in the war, when air battles moved closer to Germany, Messerschmitt Bf 110 planes were also stationed there. Training included practice bombing runs, where concrete bombs were dropped on the heath east of the railway line.
People forced to work for Germany during World War II, including forced laborers from Eastern Europe and Soviet and Polish POWs, were housed at the airfield. They were made to work on expanding the facilities, including building roads in and around the military area. Eventually, the military area grew very large, stretching towards a hill called Höpen in the southwest and beyond the main road in the east.
The War Ends
In 1945, as the war was ending, new jet planes like the first jet-powered bomber, the Arado 234, were stationed at the airfield. The runway was made longer by several hundred meters. Many Ju 88 bombers were "parked" at Reinsehlen, probably because there wasn't enough fuel or pilots. The airfield was never heavily attacked or bombed, even though British air scouts knew about it.
On April 7, 1945, a huge fleet of over 1,000 US bombers flew into Germany to destroy remaining military targets. Reinsehlen airfield was on their list, but thick clouds prevented them from finding it. In a last attempt to stop the advancing Allied forces, Germans started digging an anti-tank trench and ordered local farmers to plow deep lines into the airfield's main area to make it unusable. However, when British troops arrived on April 17, 1945, there was no fight because the Germans had no weapons or soldiers left. The Germans handed over the airfield to the British without resistance. A few hours before, German soldiers had burned the remaining planes. The British quickly repaired the damage. The airfield became known as Advanced Landing Ground B-154 Reinsehlen. Before the war officially ended on May 8 (VE Day), Royal Canadian Air Force planes, including Spitfires, operated from Reinsehlen.
Post-War Military Use (1945-1950)
Right after the fighting stopped in the area, members of the Royal Canadian Air Force took over Reinsehlen airfield. In late April 1945, they made families living in five nearby farms leave their homes. German ammunition was destroyed, which sometimes put nearby civilians in danger. Some concrete roads, a runway, and other buildings in the northwest were blown up.
In 1945, people who flew gliders started using the remaining airfield. These were reportedly British officers stationed in the Lüneburg area. The Canadians stayed in the barracks through the winter of 1945/46. Relations between the soldiers and the displaced people (DPs) were not good. Glider ropes often crashed into crops, and some fields farmed by the DPs were taken by the Allied forces' gliding club in 1947. The club also claimed the old ammunition bunkers for storage, making some refugees leave.
In the early post-war years, British and Canadian ground forces did training exercises in the Lüneburg Heath over a huge area, including parts of a nature reserve. Until 1949, they trained right up to the foot of Wilseder Berg, which is now the center of the Lüneburg Heath Nature Reserve.
Displaced Persons Camp (1946-1950)
Setting Up the Camp
In February 1946, the British military government in Allied-occupied Germany told the local authorities in Soltau to expect many refugees. Because Allied bombing raids had destroyed so many homes in major cities, there was a huge shortage of housing. To help these refugees, the military authorities offered the old airfield buildings at Reinsehlen. There were about 60 buildings in total, including many large huts called Protektoratsbaracken. These huts were 42 meters long and 12.5 meters wide.
Importantly, Reinsehlen had a water system and basic sewage pipes. However, the buildings had been completely stripped of everything inside (like windows, doors, and wires) by Canadian and British troops, and by German civilians. Local authorities provided basic items like ovens, beds, and other furniture.
Life in the Camp
There wasn't much time to prepare. The first 200 refugees arrived on March 10, 1946. To help feed them, parts of the airfield were turned into farmland and vegetable gardens. By May, the camp had 420 people. Then, a train arrived with over 1,500 more refugees, mostly older people, women, and children from Silesia. They came from a camp in Poland where there wasn't enough food. This huge arrival made the camp very crowded. There weren't enough jobs nearby, so most people in the camp depended on help from others. Paratyphoid fever became a problem.
From 1946 to 1950, the DP camp usually housed about 1,500 people, making it one of the largest in Northern Germany. About 20 to 50 new people arrived each month, including soldiers returning from being prisoners and Germans moving from Denmark and Schleswig-Holstein. About 60% of the refugees were from Silesia, and others came from places like Eastern Prussia, the Baltic states, Volhynia, Galicia, or the Sudetenland. At first, there were only about 100 able-bodied men, who mostly worked in agriculture or the timber industry. By 1947, businesses started in the camp employed over 300 people. The camp's administration and hospital employed more than 70 people. A school and kindergarten were set up for 350 children. Church services were held in the old KdF-Hall. The local government of Soltau managed the camp, but the people living there elected their own camp council and an administrator.
The Camp Hospital
When the DP camp opened, a hospital with 150 beds was set up in the former officers' quarters of the airfield. Because many arriving DPs were malnourished and had infectious diseases, medical care was very important. In 1946, about 95 patients were in the hospital every day. Due to the crowded conditions, diseases like typhoid fever, TBC, and jaundice remained problems in the camp. Until 1950, about 15 Sisters of Saint Elizabeth (nuns), most of whom had been forced to leave Silesia, mainly ran the hospital. After the camp closed in November 1950, the hospital continued to operate on its own. It eventually became part of the Kreiskrankenhaus Soltau (Soltau District Hospital). When that hospital moved to a new building in 1968, the Reinsehlen facility finally closed.
Closing the Camp
The British forces had taken the old airfield from the German army in 1945. They then gave most of it to the German authorities to use as the DP camp, except for areas used by the gliding club. However, by 1949, the British became more interested in using the area for ground forces training. In August, the old Kdf-Hall, which the refugees used for church services, school, and cinema, had to be emptied in just three days. The British wanted it for a cinema for their training troops. In late September, the British ordered the German authorities to empty the entire DP camp within eight weeks.
The alternative housing offered in Munster was considered even worse than Reinsehlen and was refused. After Heinrich Albertz, the Lower Saxony Minister for Refugee Affairs, stepped in, the camp's closure was delayed until the end of 1950. This gave time to build new and proper housing using money from the regional government of Lower Saxony.
Most of the refugees eventually moved to Hambühren, where old ammunition bunkers from a former German army base were turned into homes with the help of the camp residents themselves. About 200 people moved to Emmelndorf, which is now part of Seevetal, where new homes were built for them. Another 200 DPs moved to Schneverdingen.
Military Training Area (1950-1994)
Once the DP camp closed in 1950, British and Canadian armed forces used the area, calling it Reinsehlen Camp. It became a starting point and base camp for tank military exercises on the Soltau-Lüneburg Training Area. Although the Canadians soon left, the British forces stayed for over 40 years. Army units from different bases of the British Army of the Rhine and even from the UK came here to train. Armored vehicles were mostly brought by train to the camp's own loading ramps or nearby railway stations. They moved to and from the training areas using the Bundesstraße 3, which was connected to the camp by a road. Soldiers lived in tents and later in Nissen huts, with dozens of these huts spread across the open grassland. By the early 1950s, the Canadians mostly stopped using the training area. However, from 1952 onwards, the British used the camp permanently.
The camp was part of "SLTA," or the Soltau-Lüneburg-Training-Area, in British military terms. This name came from an agreement between the governments of Germany, Canada, and the United Kingdom. This agreement, called the Soltau-Lüneburg Agreement (or SLA), was signed in 1959 and became law in 1963. The agreement reduced the training area from 48,100 hectares to 34,500 hectares. Still, this 345 square kilometers was the only military training area in the Western world where civilians lived! About 6,500 people lived in the actual training area, with another 15,000 in nearby Schneverdingen. Since the German army (Bundeswehr) also used the Lüneburg Heath for exercises, and German, Dutch, and American forces held war games twice a year, the local people faced many difficulties.
Sometimes, there were huge dust clouds over the Osterheide, rising up to 300 feet, and the loud noise from tank engines went on all day and night. Crops were destroyed, woodlands were damaged, paths became unusable, and ammunition, oil, and other trash were left behind by training troops. Rules that banned mock combat near farms and villages were often ignored. Also, many serious and even deadly accidents happened involving tanks and other military vehicles, which were often left on the road at night without lights. Local people formed groups to protest but couldn't make much progress because support from the German government was needed to deal with the Allied forces, but it wasn't given. Environmentalists also protested that even after some core areas were excluded, about 1,600 hectares of nature reserve were still "doomed by the agreement to be devastated."
In July 1967, Queen Elizabeth II visited Reinsehlen Camp for the 50th anniversary of the Royal Tank Regiment, which was stationed in Soltau at the time. The Queen is the regiment's Colonel-in-Chief (a special honorary leader). A military parade was held on the old airfield, with 270 armored vehicles and 800 soldiers.
In 1980, the sewage pits in the camp were no longer used when the camp was connected to Schneverdingen's sewer system. Two years later, in 1982, Reinsehlen Camp also started getting its water from the town. There was some disagreement when the British suddenly closed a civilian road that went through the northern end of the camp, following terrorist attacks in Northern Ireland. However, huge protests from local people quickly led to that decision being reversed. In the 1980s, British forces built a large facility for cleaning tanks after exercises and a concrete road connecting it to the loading station. This cost 1.5 million DM.
Reinsehlen Camp was part of 4,600 hectares of "red areas" (named after the color used on maps in the SLA), where military training was allowed all year. Only after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1990 did the British start to avoid training during the region's busiest tourist season, when the heather blooms. On October 17, 1991, German Minister of Defense Gerhard Stoltenberg and British Secretary of Defense Tom King signed an agreement to gradually end training in the Soltau-Lüneburg area by 1994. The SLA finally ended on July 1, 1994, and the British forces left Reinsehlen.
The 256th Mobile Civilian Plant Group, stationed at Reinsehlen, had about 100 German civilian employees. They were responsible for cleaning up damage from the exercises and helping to repair some of the environmental harm in the camp area after the British left. This unit was closed in 1997.
Reinsehlen Camp Today
After the British troops left, work began to return the area to its natural state, as well as in the nearby Osterheide (not the same as Osterheide further south), where the actual tank exercises had taken place. Over many years, these training activities had caused a lot of damage to the environment. The camp was checked for polluted areas, and two spots showed high levels of chemical pollution. In total, the British government spent about 10.2 million DM until 2001 to restore the "red areas."
In 1997, the town of Schneverdingen bought most of the camp area from the Federal government of Germany, which had taken it back after the British left. After that, most of the military buildings were torn down. The last of the approximately 100 Nissen huts (a type of military shelter) is now in the open-air museum at Kiekeberg.
The Alfred Toepfer Akademie für Naturschutz (Alfred Toepfer Academy for Nature Conservation or NNA) now uses the camp's former officers' mess for offices and seminars. A new hotel was built, mostly from wood, with low structures designed to blend into the landscape and look like military camps. Two of the old tank repair shops are now used as conference rooms and sometimes host cultural events like movie screenings. The former British army headquarters is now the Gästehaus, which is like a hostel offering cheaper rooms next to the hotel.
To the west of the L171 road, an old military hangar is still used by glider pilots from the LSV Schneverdingen gliding club. This local airport is known today as Höpen Airfield.
In late October 1998, the Dalai Lama came to Reinsehlen Camp for a week to teach about the basic ideas of Buddhism to over 10,000 people every day. A tent city covering 25,000 square meters was set up for this event.
More recently, a high rope course opened in the building that was previously used to clean the tanks.
The camp area also has many installation art works. The artist Jörg-Werner Schmidt moved into the camp's old stables and turned them into a studio. In 2005, his first work was Zwischenräume (meaning "In-between Spaces"), a painting on the back wall of the transformer station in the middle of the open field. In 2007, he designed the Bent Pyramid. Other works by Schmidt at Reinsehlen Camp include Slat Humans and the Lavender Laybyrinth. Schmidt passed away in 2010, and his studio has now been turned into more conference space for the hotel. Spread across the open grasslands are works by Jeppe Hein, called Parcours, which are different types of benches.
See also
- Bent Pyramid
- Stalag XI-B
- Stalag XI-C
- Bergen-Hohne Training Area
- Munster Training Area
- Occupation Statute
