The Queen’s College has submitted planning applications to add the names of five soldiers to its World War I memorial – including one Polish and three German soldiers. The memorial, carved into the outer wall of the college’s library, currently only recognises the college members who fought for the British side.
Planning documents show that the five names will be carved into the panels upon which the 121 names are currently engraved: four on the left panel, preceded by the word ‘Also’; one on the right panel. The memorial was originally designed by the renowned architect Sir Reginal Blomfield in 1921.
Queen’s would not be the first college to recognise all old members who died in WWI. New College honoured non-Allied soldiers in a 1930 memorial, Merton and Magdalen in 1984, and most recently University College in 2018. The “appropriate and unobtrusive” additions, Queen’s stated in planning applications, are “justified by the need to remember all members of the College community who died in the First World War irrespective of nationality”
Image Credit: The Queen’s College, via Oxford City Council website
However, the plans have recently been opposed by the Oxfordshire Architectural and Historical society, who suggest that the German names should be added on a separate memorial plaque, as was done by New College in 1930.
In a letter to Oxford City Council the society stated: “To add the memorial in the way proposed would be to re-write this history and diminish the impact of the sacrifice that so many men made for this cause.
“A separate plaque would avoid the need to make an irreversible change to Sir Reginald Blomfield’s carefully crafted panels of 1921.”
The names which the College have proposed to add are Carl Heinrich Hertz, Erich Joachim Peucer, Paul Nicholas Esterházy, Emile Jacot, and Gustav Adolf Jacobi. The latter’s name is already present on an existing war memorial in Oxford at Rhodes House.
Amongst the wider public, the Council has received strong statements both for and against the plans. The Council is expected to announce its decision in the coming weeks.
