Inside - Loveday Camp

Depicts two men sitting inside their living quarters at Loveday Camp in South Australia. This work was completed by the German internee in the camp Carl Georg von Brandenstein who was known to his friends as Oslo. When the Second World War broke out Carl became a corporal in the army and was apprehended by the British in Tehran in 1941. He was not released until the end of the war in 1946. The woodcut was given to Edward Kissner who along with his brother Edmund was interned from 1941 through to 1945. Kissner was from Persia but held German citizenship which was the reason for his internment. After release he settled in Australia and became an Australian citizen. Loveday Internmnet Camp was located near Barmera on the Murray River. The camp accommodated German, Italian and Japanese internees from various states in Australia and internees and POWs from the Netherlands East Indies, the Pacific Islands, New Zealand, Britain and the Middle East. The camp comprised six compounds and the maximum number of internees (3,951) was reached in March 1942. Carl Brandenstein (1909- 1995) was born in Hannover, Germany and was interned as a prisoner of war in Australia, first at the Loveday camp in South Australia and then, in 1945, at the Tatura camp in Victoria. Dr Carl Georg von Brandenstein was a Count and the son of a Premier of the State of Thuringia, in Germany. Von Brandenstein studied philosophy, history of religion and ancient Oriental languages at Berlin University before completing his PhD at Leipzig University in 1939 . He was captured by the British in Teheran in 1941 and interned as a prisoner of war first at Loveday Camp, South Australia, and then, in 1945, at Tatura camp in Victoria. His first wife Ellen and daughter Bettina were returned to what was to become East Germany. Between 1964 and 1968, as a linguist and anthropologist with the Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies, Brandenstein and his field assistant/second wife, Carola collected Aboriginal songs from the Pilbara. His Aboriginal name was Mandakambana (the name means 'burning stone', that is, 'Brandenstein'). Several of the languages that he recorded are now extinct, preserved only on his recordings.