L – R John and Christian two sons of Fritz and Maria Schumacher seen here with Geoff Mold who lived in 16 High Street.
The photo was taken on the drive to Eydon Hall near the South Lodge on the Culworth Road where the Schumacher family lived early in WW2 with the boys getting ready for an egg and spoon race. Fritz was a renowned economist in Germany in the 1930s but the rise of Nazism caused him to leave Germany and he brought his family to England and was employed by a company in London. His story is told in our publication Manors to Manitoba.
After the outbreak of WW2 as a German he lost his job but he was known to Robert Brand of Eydon Hall, an economist and banker in the City of London who offered him the use of the South Lodge at Eydon and a job on his estate.
However, in May 1940 Fritz was removed to an internment camp as the country became gripped by talk of infiltration by German spies. So, for a while Maria and her sons lived alone in the lodge until Fritz was released when the authorities realised he was an outspoken critic of the Nazis.
While working on the farm Fritz began to renew his thinking and writing on economics and wrote to leading economists and eventually visited Oxford and found an opening with the University Institute of Statistics. He went alone to Oxford to live, leaving Maria and the children at Eydon who he visited at weekends. He eventually found accommodation for the whole family to move to Oxford. See also KL052 & KL010
Photographer unknown.
Image lent by Mr David Kench