The Tent, Huyton

Nessler was living in Germany when the Nazi government came to power. He was not Jewish, although he was part of a radical group of artists whose work was denounced as degenerate by the Nazi government and he found life in Germany unbearable. When Nessler and his wife visited Britain in 1937, they were officially on a two week holiday, although they had no intention of returning to Germany. At the outbreak of World War II, 74,000 men, women and children of German or Austrian origin were living in Britain. Most were refugees but some were long-term residents, businessmen, or domestic servants. The British Government was unsure how to treat them and feared some may have been spies and therefore a threat to national security. The British Government hastily constructed Internment Camps to arrest and confine them, a procedure that had been followed during World War I when 29,000 people had been detained. Initially only a small selection of people, considered to be of 'high risk' were interned, however by the summer of 1940 the numbers had quickly increased to 27,000. Nessler was arrested by the police in May 1940. He was held for a few nights in Sevenoaks and then in Tunbridge Wells before being transferred to Liverpool via Lime Street station. The people of Liverpool were told they were Germans and Nazis, and Nessler along with the other internees were shouted and spat at while they were marched through the streets. They were housed in a disused photographic factory before being transferred to the Huyton Internment Camp. Huyton was one of three internment camps in the north west. It was constructed on the recently built Liverpool Corporation Woolfall Heath Housing Estate, which was left unfinished due the outbreak of War. Huyton was a transit camp, a place where prisoners temporarily stayed pending their transfer to more permanent camps on the Isle of Man or deportation overseas to Canada and Australia. Nessler was detained at Huyton until September 1940 , when he was permitted to join the Pioneer Corps, which until the general release of internees began was the only way of escaping the camps. Nessler continued to assist with the war efforts and after 1944 was stationed in France. In 1999, the Walker Art Gallery purchased a group of watercolours and drawings made by Nessler and Austrian artist Hugo Dachinger (1908 - 1995) who was also imprisoned at Huyton in 1940. During their internment, they spent much of their time painting and drawing. Their work records the forbidding physical appearance of the camp and, more importantly, the dreariness of camp life and the suffering of the internees. Most of the works are sketchy and unfinished.