A HISTORIAN who has spent over two decades helping to connect Jersey and the German town of Bad Wurzach through remembrance and reconciliation has been awarded a prestigious accolade by the Bailiff.
Gisela Rothenhäusler, a former English and history teacher and chair of the Bad Wurzach–St Helier twinning committee, received the award from Bailiff Sir Timothy Le Cocq during a reception at the Pomme d’Or Hotel on 8 May.
The ceremony took place as part of a visit by a delegation from Bad Wurzach, led by Mayor Alexandra Scherer, to mark the 80th anniversary of Jersey’s Liberation.
The Silver Seal is awarded to individuals who have made a significant contribution to the Island or to their field.
In Ms Rothenhäusler’s case, the accolade recognises her role in preserving the shared history between the two communities – a connection rooted in the forced deportation of hundreds of Islanders during the German occupation.
The link between Jersey and Bad Wurzach began when nearly 600 Islanders were held in an internment camp for almost three years at Wurzach Castle.
The historical memory of that period has since become the foundation for a relationship that, decades later, would be formalised through the twinning of St Helier and Bad Wurzach in 2002.
Ms Rothenhäusler became involved with the partnership around the time of the twinning and has since been involved in organising exhibitions, exchanges, and visits aimed at deepening understanding between the two communities.
Among her contributions was the curation of Life Behind Barbed Wire, an exhibition featuring watercolors and drawings created by Jersey internees during their captivity at the internment camp first staged in Germany and later brought to the Jersey Arts Centre.
She has also documented the story of the internment in her book Reaching Across the Barbed Wire – a detailed account of life in Wurzach Castle between 1942 and 1945 based on personal testimony and archival research.
The book describes how internees tried to maintain a sense of normality by staging sports days with makeshift trophies, attending a visiting circus, and celebrating Guy Fawkes Night without fireworks.
It also includes accounts of day-to-day challenges, such as arguments in shared dormitories and shortages of food. One chapter describes how the internees set up a commission to investigate the disappearance of 122 loaves of bread over eight weeks.
The book also includes the story of Adelina Bowden, a 50-year-old woman from Jersey who died just days after arriving at the camp. Believing her two sons had been killed in action, she suffered a breakdown and died of heart failure. Her husband later discovered that both sons had survived years of captivity in Japanese prisoner-of-war camps.
Speaking to the JEP in 2023, Ms Rothenhäusler said her interest in the camp’s history began when a student asked her about it and she discovered that local archives held little material on the topic.
“It was impossible for that student to do a presentation because, as I found out, I had to go to international archives for information – the local archive was no help at all,” she said.
She has also spoken openly about the slow development of remembrance culture in post-war Germany.
“People preferred to forget,” she said. “I feel in Germany that it’s maybe only in the last 30 or 35 years that the need for remembrance has spread among ordinary people. Before that, remembrance was all those official events with politicians laying wreaths and that was it.”
In contrast, she praised Jersey’s annual Liberation Day commemorations as a meaningful way of remembering.
Reflecting on her first experience of the event in 2005, she recalled sitting next to the wife of a Force 135 soldier who had helped liberate the Island.
“She touched my hand, and she cried and said: ‘How good it is that we can now sit here next to each other as friends.’”
Over the years, Ms Rothenhäusler has worked to ensure that official twinning visits provide opportunities for genuine connection.
“We made sure there was always someone there to translate, so they really would get in touch. This was a really big important encounter and we had the impression that these are friends,” she recalled.
Ms Rothenhäusler believes the future of the partnership now depends on younger generations. “With all the people vanishing who have actually experienced it, how do we manage to remember history when there is no personal contact anymore?
“The challenge is to build something new – new contacts between our communities so that we will be able to carry on into the future,” she said.
“In order to keep the twinning going, we need people who are interested in such international contacts, and are willing to get involved and active in the organisation, doing the everyday work which is needed to keep such a friendship alive.”
