American Passage_ The History of Ellis I - Vincent J. Cannato [163]
Another detainee at Ellis Island was thirty-seven-year-old William Hausdorffer, the acting captain of the steamship Bohemia. Hausdorffer, his wife, and two small children lived in nearby Bayonne. The Hausdorffer children were born in the United States and therefore citizens, but their parents had not yet become naturalized. Hausdorffer had lived in America since 1906, and his wife since 1899, and the family considered themselves American. Hausdorffer’s crew had even derisively nicknamed him “the American” because he sympathized with the United States over the land of his birth. His wife told officials that her husband was even willing to enlist in the U.S. Army. Nevertheless, Hausdorffer was not a naturalized citizen, and his position with a German company was enough to make him an alien enemy.
Not everyone felt the same way as Hausdorffer. William Koerner, who served as a machinist on the Vaterland, was also taken to Ellis Island. When questioned as to which country he sympathized with in the war, his answer was Germany. Koerner, like many of the steamship company workers, also served in the German naval reserve. Though not officially in the military, the status of Koerner and his comrades was enough to convince American officials to hold them as alien enemies.
Over 1,500 German detainees would spend some time at Ellis Island. For some, their detention would be short. Albert Meyer, who worked as a cook on the steamship Vaterland, had been caught up in the dragnet of April 6. He was detained at Ellis Island for two weeks before he could prove to authorities that he was a citizen of Switzerland and therefore not an alien enemy.
Most were not so lucky. In early June, government officials began transferring the German detainees to an internment camp at Hot Springs, North Carolina. First went 470 officers, the captains, engineers, and chief warrant officers. The rest, 1,100 or so crew members and sailors, would follow their officers to North Carolina later. One could have easily mistaken the place for a summer camp, with tidy cabins in a rustic setting, but it was a militarized facility where detainees were not allowed to leave unless given permission. In total, some 2,300 Germans taken into custody throughout the country would be interned at Hot Springs during the war. Thirty-six Germans accused of being spies remained at Ellis Island and would later be removed to Fort Oglethorpe in Georgia.
Some wives of the detainees, not considered alien enemies because of their gender, petitioned the government for the freedom of their husbands. William Koerner’s wife, Paula, was five months pregnant when her husband was taken to Ellis Island. Not only did she lose her husband, but she also had to give up her job making handbags. To help with their situation, Paula and the other wives of steamship crew members received a monthly stipend from their husbands’ employers. Thanks to his wife’s pleadings, Koerner received a three-week parole in August 1917 to be with his wife as she gave birth.
Other cases were more tragic. Herman Byersdorff, the chief engineer of the Kaiser Wilhelm II, had been caught in the first roundup of Germans on April 6 and taken to Ellis Island. War had already touched the Byersdorff family. His only son had been killed in battle in France while serving in the German army in 1914, driving Herman’s wife to a nervous breakdown. She was then brought to America to join her husband, which seemed to calm her nerves.
Byersdorff ’s detention once again sent his wife down an emotional spiral. A doctor in Hoboken diagnosed her with severe mental depression bordering on melancholia. From his internment camp in North Carolina, Byersdorff asked to be paroled to be with his distraught wife. As the