The Kislauer Prisons: The buildings on the grounds of the former hunting and pleasure palace of the Speyer prince-bishops in Kislau have served since the attack of the right Rhine parts of the Speyer high monastery on Baden to accommodate various state institutions, some of which existed parallel to each other in different buildings on the palace grounds: as a prison (among other things for revolution participants 1848/49, branch of the Rastatt fortress), custody for women and men, workhouse for socially marginalized men, military hospital and prisoner of war camp in the First World War, branch for women of the Wiesloch sanatorium and nursing home, transit camp for former French foreign legionnaires, refugee camp after 1945 and branch of the Bruchsal penal institution until today. Above all, however, Kislau Castle is still associated with the role it played during the Third Reich, when a protective custody camp and a concentration camp for political prisoners were set up there. Famous political prisoners during the National Socialist era included Adam Remmele, Christian Stock, and Ludwig Marum, who was apparently the only prisoner murdered in Kislau. In the Kislau prison records from the time of National Socialism, Marum is documented as well as a few other, apparently "natural" deaths. During the Nazi era, Kislau was a transit station for many prisoners on their way to other camps, in particular to/from Hinzert (SS special camp), Dachau (concentration camp) and to the Emsland camps (mainly Wehrmacht members). During the Second World War, many prisoners came from abroad; they were Eastern European foreign workers or people from the territories occupied by Germany in Western Europe. Processing: Until 2015, the prison files preserved in fonds 521 formed part of fonds 521 Zugang 1982-48 and 521 Zugang 2003-57. The files were mainly created during the National Socialist era and concern the following Kislauer institutions: - Arbeitshaus- Schutzhaftlager/Konzentrationslager/Bewahrungslager- Straffängnis- Durchgangslager für Fremdenlegionäre. Until 2015, the only finding aid to the files in the 521 Access 1982-48 partial holdings was a typewritten list with names and dates of birth, supplemented by handwritten supplements. This list included - according to the claim - the existing files and a part of the index cards of the prisoner file. The reasons for imprisonment, places of origin, running times of files and, above all, the names of the institutions in which the persons concerned were accommodated were not recorded. Targeted and combined searches, e.g. for protective prisoners whose names were not known in advance, for criminal offences typical of the time, such as decomposition of military strength, refusal to work, forbidden contact with prisoners of war or for places of origin, etc., were not possible in this way. In addition, as the processing revealed, there were unlisted files not included in the list, which were between the others. At the beginning of the development work it was planned to structure the finished finding aid according to institutions, e.g. concentration camp Kislau, workhouse Kislau etc. and within these groups according to alphabet of names. This turned out to be impossible because many prisoners were re-quartered within the Kislau camp complex or because, especially in the case of very many prisoners who were detained for a short period of time (above all detainees under deportation), these details were missing, so that it was very often not possible to make any definite allocations. Another particular difficulty was that the Kislau prisons apparently did not have their own administrations, as can be seen from the stamps, letterheads and address details in the files. In which institution someone was is not always clearly recognizable from the files themselves and would have had to be thoroughly researched and verified on the basis of the parallel transmission in the concrete individual cases (e.g. Kislauer prisoner books, files of the courts and public prosecutor's offices, reparations files). The individual index cards of the prison index have been included in the individual index. These index cards were kept from 1933 to 1938 and contain important personal data: dates of birth, places of origin, reasons for detention, places of detention etc. Often these index cards are the only remaining proof of the imprisonment of a person for political reasons in Kislau. Cards for which files could be identified during the registration work were assigned to these files and were therefore not specifically listed in order to avoid duplication of work. The accounting file, which covers the years approx. 1935-1944, was excluded from the individual indexing. This accounting file contains overviews of deposits and withdrawals of the prisoners' personal funds. The old order numbers in the file list of partial stock 521 Access 1982-48 with about 8500 numbers were retained in order to be able to dispense as far as possible with a concordance. Accordingly, the few gaps found in the sequence of numbers and individual derivatives ("a-numbers") have been preserved. On the other hand, the index cards and the unsigned files from the partial stock 521 Access 2003-57 received new order numbers, which were formed by continued counting.Karlsruhe, in December 2015Dr. Martin Stingl Literature reference: Borgstedt, Angela: Das nordbadische Kislau - Konzentrationslager, Arbeitshaus und Durchgangslager für Fremdenlegionäre, in: Wolfgang Benz/Barbara Distel (ed.): Herrschaft und Gewalt. Early Concentration Camps 1933-1939, Berlin 2001, pp. 217-229.
