The 1936 Black Forest Hiking Disaster

A hike sounds harmless until the weather stops cooperating and the person in charge refuses to admit they’re wrong. We’re telling the true story of the 1936 Black Forest Tragedy, when English teacher Kenneth Keist leads 27 schoolboys into Germany’s mountains during a building snowstorm and turns a spring break trek into a deadly historical disaster.

We walk step by step through the decisions that matter in any hiking safety story: ignoring local warnings, trusting a bad tourist map, pushing on past safe turnaround points, and climbing steep terrain in near blizzard conditions with no real equipment. When the group gets lost and the youngest boys begin to collapse from cold and exhaustion, it’s the sound of church bells and the courage of villagers on skis that finally brings help. Even with the rescue, five boys die, and survivors only grasp the full loss days later.

Then the story shifts from survival to narrative control. Nazi officials and the Hitler Youth seize the moment, staging public mourning and “peace” messaging that spreads through British and German newspapers, while officials quietly downplay hard questions about accountability and negligence. A memorial rises, diplomacy overrides scrutiny, and one grieving father’s pursuit of blame becomes its own tragedy.

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Transcript

iking Basics And A Dark Tease

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Hiking is currently the most popular outdoor activity today, with more and more people hopping on the hiking trail since the pandemic, which makes a certain kind of sense. Pretty easy to keep six feet away from someone hiking in the woods. Plus, it has a pretty low bar for entry. All you need is a good pair of shoes, some water, and maybe a nice healthy snack for the trail. And you're all ready to go on a short hike through the woods. Now, the key to a good hike though is being prepared with proper equipment and knowing just where you're going. And I highly recommend to stick with well-established trails. Much easier to not get lost in the woods that way. Following the trail, you'll eventually well, you'll eventually come out somewhere. Whether it's where you're going or not, well, you're somewhere. Or you can just wing it, head out totally unprepared, without proper clothes, or a detailed map. Surely everything will be fine. Like when an English teacher led a group of 27 schoolboys into Germany's Black Forest, and only 22 would live through the hike. So, what happened? I'm Andrew, and this is History's a Disaster. Tonight we're trekking through the woods of the English Calamity, a hike through the woods that ended in disaster for a group of schoolboys and a propaganda win for the fledgling Nazi regime. And tonight's episode is brought to you by Free the Ugly Cuckoos. For hundreds of years, evil German woodworkers have enslaved and imprisoned the ugliest and smallest of the cuckoo birds in tiny wood boxes for their own amusement, forcing them to do hourly tricks for food and selling them off to foreigners as souvenirs. And the enslavery of the ugly cuckoo needs to stop. And you can thank Fuck for taking up the fight and they need your help. With your generous donation of 837 Reichparks, you can help fuck free enslaved cuckoos. During the spring break of 1936, Kenneth Keist, the English, German, and PE teacher from the Strand School in Brixton, arranged a 10-day hiking excursion through part of Germany's Black Forest. Going on the trip were 27 boys from the school ranging in age from 12 to 17, with the oldest helping out with the chaperoning. This was not an official school event, but something offered to Keese privately through a London travel agency, the School Travel Service. They arrived in Freeburg, Germany, early on the 16th, anxiously awaiting the following day. The next morning they were up early, excited to set off for the village of Tutnaburg, over 15 miles away, across the summit of the Schunsland Mountains. When they left the youth hostel, Keist had been warned that the snow would make the planned hike pretty damn rough. Even without snow, the path he planned would be a challenge. The weather map in the hostel made it perfectly clear that conditions were going to turn to shit. The previous day, the tourist office had also warned Keist about the approaching storm, but Keist just blew the warnings off and went on his merry way. He had a shitty little tourist map and they were ready to go. A little bit of snow wasn't going to turn them back now. Three hours into the hike, they were coming out of some woods and the snow was falling pretty steadily. And boys being boys broke into an impromptu snowball fight. But with the snow coming down heavier, Keyst got them rounded up and heading down the trail. As the snowfall got heavier, they lost the trail and got turned around in the snow, quickly falling behind schedule. They eventually made it to the St. Valentine Inn and asked for directions. The owner tried to warn him off and told him that the paths and signposts will be buried in snow. But Keist just shrugged and said they'd just brush it off. It's fine, everything's fine. The snowfall had kicked up significantly and they were forced to kick their way through the falling snow. On the way, they met two woodcutters heading home. They had to call it a day because of the snow and the fog making work difficult. They told Keist to take a path to the left of the valley. At around 3.15 they passed the local postman, Otto Steert, who tried to warn Keist about continuing on. He offered to help them return to Freeburg, or at least to bring them to the shelter of the miners' hostel, where they would have found beds and food. But Keist was being a stubborn ass and declined. He had not yet started to panic. But he at least did stop and question each boy as to how they felt, and obviously they complained about being fucking cold. But Keist decided that to go back would be worse than continuing towards the nearby village of Hofsgrand, where he hoped to find shelter in a hotel or someone's house. Which, according to his shitty little map he got from the school travel service in London, was just over the next little ridge. However, the shitty little map, not very detailed. It was 1-1000 scale, meaning it didn't show much information outside of major paths. It left out a few insignificant details, like that the little ridge they had to make it over was the steepest ridge of the Shonsland Mountains. As a result, the boys who were cold and wet had to go up the Copcore Wall, a 2,000-foot 70-degree gradient base. And for reference, 90 degrees would mean it was straight up and down. And remember, they had no equipment, no ropes, no nothing. And the kids were all dressed for a hike through the English countryside in springtime, not scaling mountains in Germany in near blizzard conditions. The first to fall on the way up was Jack Alexander Eaton, the school's 14-year-old boxing champion. But he was given an orange and a piece of cake and told to suck it up and get moving. When they made it to the top and left the protection of the rocks and came out onto the ridge, the group was exposed to the freezing wind and snow. Here they had a choice. They could move eastward into the wind where they would have arrived at the summit station within less than a mile. But instead, they pushed westwards and quickly got lost. By now, Eden and two of the youngest boys had to be carried, with three more struggling to keep up in the knee deep snow. They were getting close to Hofstrand, which was a Black Forest village of just 300 villagers, consisting of one inn, a church, and a few scattered farmhouses. At 7 p.m. the chimes of the church bells were carried on the wind. Keith sent two of the older boys to follow the directions of the bells down the hill, leaving most of the others on the slopes trying desperately to help those who had collapsed. It would take the two boys an hour to reach a farmhouse on the outskirts of the village. Like most villagers, Eugene Slizer had spent the day at home and was trying to psych himself up to go out to get the weekly bread delivery when the two boys knocked at his door and tried to ask for help in broken German. Slizer, taking the hint that bad shit was going on, went about gathering up a rescue party, hammering on the window of the village inn where he knew people were playing cards. They put on their skis and headed out towards the road. But by now the hiking group was spread across the wide stretch of ground. Some of those who had collapsed were buried in the snow. Some of the boys were making their way down the hill. Splizer stumbled across two lying motionless in the snow. Herman Lorenz, the grocer, brought one unconscious boy into his shop while a farmer, Reinhold Gutmann, carried the other on his back to a nearby farmhouse. The men had planned to use their skis like stretchers and lie the exhausted boys on them, but the snow was too deep and powdery. Instead, they had to use a sled to drag the boys back down. Stanley Lyons, who had collapsed 10 yards from the inn, was already dead, but the villagers tried to save him anyways. Splizer, along with four other local farmers, headed further up the mountain, carrying one lamp between them. They found Keist next to two other unconscious boys. In German, Keist was able to tell them the size of the group, and after climbing alone up the mountain for 45 minutes, Hubert Whistler, one of the first to have answered the cries for help, found the last three boys. A doctor on vacation nearby was called to attend to the most serious cases. The rest of the boys were beaten with brooms to shake off the snow and get their circulation going. Which seems like a pretty weird thing to do. Ah, he's froze. Let's beat the shit out of him before allowing them anywhere near the huge stove. They were then wrapped in blankets and given food and coffee before being put to bed. Which, another weird choice. Let's get him hopped up on coffee and send him to bed. In spite of this though, by the end of the evening, four of the boys were dead. Francis Bordelon, 12, Peter Ellercamp, 13, Stanley Lyons, 14, and Jack Eaton, who was just too much shy of his 15th birthday. Arthur Roberts and Roy Witham, both 14, were sick and in serious danger. They would be taken to the University Hospital in Freeburg the following day, but Whitham died without ever regaining consciousness. The bodies of the dead were placed in a cellar of the Hofsgren Village Hall and later moved to Freeburg and laid in the chapel at the main cemetery. The survivors were taken by sled to a nearby village where the road was clear enough for them to travel by bus to Freeburg, where they would have follow-up medical checks. The survivors were so dazed that none of them had taken in what exactly had happened to them. They were unable to understand until two days later that five of their friends were dead and one was fighting for his life. Most of England learned of the deaths from the lunchtime edition of the next day's papers. The press called it the Black Forest Tragedy, and over the following days the papers were full of stories of the boys fighting through the blizzard and being saved by church bells, and of the heroic rescue on the slopes. And of course, the Nazis thought they could cash in on the tragedy and turn it into some great propaganda. Baldur von Schirach, the leader of the Schittler Youth Movement, telegraphed Britain's ambassador to Germany, informing him that a wreath from the German youth would be placed on each of the boys' coffins to signal their heartfelt and deep sympathy, and that a group of Schittler youth from the region would stand guard over them until transport to their homeland could be arranged. Newspapers in Germany and Britain featured pictures on their front pages of uniformed Freebird Schittler youth members keeping a watch over the coffins at the city cemetery against the backdrop of swastikas alongside Union Jacks. Thousands of Freeburgers came to pay their respects in the presence of Keist, seven of the older boys, and British diplomats. Friedhelm Kemper, the local Schittler youth leader, gave a speech in which he talked of the will of understanding and peace between the German and English comrades. Fifteen of the younger boys had meanwhile been left in the care of older Schittler youth members who kept them occupied with a game of football and a ride on the local bus. That Monday, being Schittler's birthday, offered another opportunity for a parade. Local dignitaries paraded to the main railway station. An honor guard, hundred strong, was formed by the various units of the Schittler Youth, along with its female equivalent, because obviously there's a girls' equivalent. Brainwashing isn't just for boys, you know. The Union of German girls, as well as hundreds of Freebird school children, who lined the route and watched as the coffins were loaded onto a train. The surviving boys who climbed aboard two separate trains were accompanied by 20 members of the Schittler Youth as it made its way through Germany and up to the border. And by now, the Schittler Youth were being credited with helping in the rescue. Despite, you know, not being in any way involved, Dai Volksjogend, the Baden branch of the Schittler Youth's newspaper, praised them for their part in the rescue. A press release issued by the Reichs Youth Press Service stated the dead had fallen in battles so as to further the open, honest friendship between nations. The Lord Mayor of Freeburg, Franz Kerber, went so far as to write to the father of one of the deceased that the boys had been sacrificed so as to become standard bearers for the important aspects of understanding between our two great nations. Freeburg, despite not being a hotspot of Nazi activity, played along for its own benefit. Local officials felt that the disaster could harm the tourism industry in the Black Forest region, which was extremely popular with British tourists and in particular school parties. The campaign also caught the attention of many Germans, thousands of whom lined the 330-mile stretch from Frankfurt to the Belgian border to pay their respects. Many of them came out to see the English boys and throw candy at them as they drove by in the train. Several of their parents wrote personal letters to Schittler, thanking him for the grand send-off and for the German state railway's waiving of the 60-pound fee each family would have been charged for the shipping of their son's coffins. The families waiting in London were informed by telegram on April 21st that their boys would arrive at Victoria Station at 4.20 that afternoon. The day after they arrived home, a special railway car that had been adapted to resemble a small chapel and attached to the mail train from Harwich arrived in London at 8 o'clock in the morning. It contained the bodies of the dead boys and coffins of Black Forest timber from the very woods in which they perished, as one reporter put it. They were met by relatives and friends as well as officials from the education department, all standing with their hats in hand on the platform of the Liverpool Street Station. When the car door was opened, the boys' parents stepped inside to see the coffins of their sons draped with Union Jacks, each bearing a white slip of paper with their names on it. The platform was carpeted with floral tributes, including huge evergreen and pine cone wreaths from the Black Forest, tied with scarlet and white ribbons and bearing the swastika with the inscription to our English comrades, along with Reese from Adolf Schittler and the British ambassador. Keist remained in Germany for several more days as a guest of the Schindler Youth, and he was definitely not trying to hide in Germany a few more days for the heat to die down. A daily paper ran a picture of him in an open-top car dressed in a cloth cap and scarf, out for a drive in Freeburg, with the local leader of the Schindler Youth and a representative of the Gestapo. He addressed his thanks to the Hofstrunder in a letter published in a German newspaper stating, We can never forget the superhuman efforts of the people of Hofsgrund who did everything to bring us to safety. All this has brought nearer to us the country which previously had been estranged. Once he finally did return to London, Keyst escaped reporters outside his parents' home, because obviously this loser still lived at home, by heading to Bournemouth, where he met up with another teacher and love interest, Mary Beaumont Med. Over the following days, the dead were buried in various London cemeteries in Streetham, Woking, and Eastham. Jack Alexander Eaton's funeral on the afternoon of Friday, May 1st, in Streetham was attended by a thousand mourners. The hearse was drawn by six horses with boys from the school, including some of the survivors forming an honor guard. Floral tributes from the Schittler youth and Adolf Schittler were on prominent display. The idea of putting up a memorial was first brought up publicly a month later in the Nazi newspaper The Alemann, as well as in the British press. The people of Hofskran had pushed for the idea early on. They wanted an inscription carved into the rock which would have recalled the incident and acknowledged that without the locals' help, many more would have died. After some back and forth, the Schittler Youth took over management of the project. Von Schirarok, head of the local Schittler Youth, was fully behind the idea. But he had a much better idea and commissioned renowned artist Hermann Aker to come up with a design. Shriracha stressed it was something in which the Fuhrer himself was taking a personal interest. He came up with the Anglender Kammel, or however you say it, a tower and gateway made up of two huge upright stones of black forest granite inscribed with the names of the boys, and a third stone leaking them on top and decked with the Nazi Eagle and a swastika, was completed in the summer of 1938 and stood on the mountainside above the village of Hofstron. The memorial was supposed to be inaugurated October 12th in the presence of a member of the British royal family, the head of the scout movement, Sir Robert Baden Powell, and the British ambassador in a ceremony which once again was supposed to affirm the German-British friendship. The inscription concluded: the youth of Adolf Schittler honors the memory of these English sporting comrades with this memorial. But the Munich Agreement of September 1938, which gave Schittler control of the Sudenten land, kind of shot that idea down. After Britain declared war on Germany in 1939, there were repeated initiatives to tear it down, which would never end up happening. By the first anniversary of his son's death, Jack Eaton had commissioned a free bird sculptor to make a separate memorial to his son. He had long since given up on getting along with the other parents in the school. He firmly believed Keist was to blame for the deaths, but unfortunately at the time, he was the only one that felt that way. Keist was being praised as a hero in both Germany and England. That just didn't sit right with Jack. The memorial, a simple grey black forest granite cross resembling a gravestone and paid for by the villagers, was unveiled by Eden on Wit Sunday 1937 in the presence of the locals. It sits on the hillside on the spot where Jack, Ellerkamp, and Lyons died. The sculpture is around 1,500 feet away from the main monument and just a fraction of its size. Eden had wanted the inscription to conclude with the line, Their teacher failed them in the hour of trial. But the German authorities said nope, you can't have that. So a blank spot shows where it would have been inserted. In the entrance to the village church, the parents also erected their own memorial, the only one in which the villagers are thanked for coming to the boys' aid. The Foreign Office in London and authorities and prosecutors in Germany in the days after the incident showed they had no desire to look too deeply into the incident and potentially damage the strained political relationship. So Eaton and local prosecutors were shit out of luck when it came to even investigating what exactly happened. Keist had been questioned on April 20th by Dr. Weiss, Freebird State Prosecutor, in an interview that he would later say had been inadequate. Although Keist admitted the weather had been poor when the party set out and told of how he had stopped to ask people the way, he made no mention whatsoever of the several warnings that he had been given. And I can't imagine why he would leave that little detail out. Ten days after the incident on April 27th, Robert Smallbones, the British Consulate General in Frankfurt, wrote to the Foreign Office to say that he had certain doubts and misgivings about Keist's conduct on the hike and that they deserved to be raised. The disaster, he said, probably would have been avoided had Keist only gotten in touch in advance with the Schittler youth, who obviously would have been more than happy to accompany the group and help lead them safely out of the blizzard. He recommended that any future British school trips to the Black Forest should reach out to the movement. Smallbones also condemned the inadequate clothes the boys had been wearing. Yet all of his misgivings didn't get any traction with the Foreign Office. A letter from Sir Jeffrey Alchin outlined the extreme German sensitivities over the case. A French radio station had already accused the German. German authorities of being to blame. And the German government, he said, was pretty dead set on no official or citizen was to be held in any way culpable. In a decision that effectively put an end to any further investigation, he added that Anthony Eden, the foreign minister, had already written to the citizens of Hausgren and Freeburg to express the gratitude of the people of London, and was of the opinion that in these circumstances, no great importance, if any, should be attached to the present allegations against Mr. Keist. And with that, for the Foreign Office at least, apart from a brief exchange over the cost and details of the memorial, the whole thing was over and done with. Not that anyone was really thrilled with the idea of an investigation other than Jack Eden. The Strand School and the London County Council definitely didn't want anyone poking around and asking them awkward questions. So they threw in and publicly supported Keist in his version of events. At a special two-day meeting held by the Education Committee at County Hall in May 1936, Eden had fought with Keist and the Strand School's headmaster, Leonard Daw, as well as the older boys, who he accused of failing to help the younger ones. But the committee concluded that any charges of any improprieties against Keist were withdrawn. It gave vague recommendations that the arrangements for future tours should be most carefully and exhaustively reviewed, and the hopes of rendering it possible, so far as lies in human power, any recurrence of such a tragedy. But Keist's life would continue to be haunted for years to come by Jack Eden. And the education authorities didn't quite let him off the hook so lightly. He would later write letters to Mary Boomont Med, relaying details of his subsequent dispute with the LCC's education officer, which would suggest that behind closed doors, his actions were viewed far more critically than anyone ever admitted, either to the parents or to the public. Keist wrote of how he had been summoned and quite bluntly told that he should not attempt to go ahead with a school skiing trip to Austria. This decision came about following threats made to the school by Eaton, who had confronted Keist at the school gates and told him he would not allow the Austria trip to go ahead. Keist was forced to write to all the parents and tell them that the trip was off. The defeat left him feeling utterly finished and aimless. It makes me wonder how I shall stand up to the next war if it does come, Keist confided in Med. I feel that I and the school and the LCC are completely governed by the band, just as the national government seemed under the thralledom of Mussolini's gangster dumb a year ago. Guy's a bit melodramatic. In addition to stalking Keist at the school, Eaton had begun pestering him at his parents' house. It became so bad that Keist was close to filing a criminal complaint. He was quoted as saying, If I should be accosted by Eaton this weekend, I shall almost certainly assault him. And I believe if I murdered him, it really would be the best end to this miserable business. Yeah, okay, buddy. Eaton's rage was pushing him a bit off the deep end. Peter Tiraman, a student of the Strand School, was approached by him on a street near the school and asked, How dare he wear the uniform of the school which killed his son? Eaton also wrote a postcard in red to his local MP, stating as one Army War veteran to another, I implore you to see that justice is done. Keist is a criminal and should be tried as such. Outside of his business, Eden also put up a plaque stating, I charge Keist with my son's death. On what would have been his son's 16th birthday, Eaton, wearing a black armband, appeared at the Southwestern Police Court where he was bound over for abusive words and behavior, including leaving wreaths on Keith's doorstep and standing outside and shouting, My son has been murdered. The courts heard how the Eatons had moved from their Clapham Park house after their son's death because it was too full of memories. They also wanted to be closer to Streetham Park Cemetery where the boy was buried. Their new home and Crown Laden Gardens was turned into a shrine to their son, full of his trophies and pictures of him in his cricket gear and boxing gear. Two years after Jack's death, they would have a daughter named Jacqueline, but Eden's hope of seeing a public inquiry into the incident were never fulfilled, and his pledge that he would die fighting this destroyed his sanity. He would later die in a psychiatric hospital. Keist eventually switched schools, moving to Badales in 1939 and later to Friendsham Heights, where he served as headmaster. All of his former schools say they have no record of him beyond his name and length of service. He would go on to die in 1971. One of the boys, Stanley Few, went on to serve in the army. Although he told his superiors as soon as he joined up that he could not be expected to fight the Germans as they had saved his life. So, they sent him to fight in Asia instead. And that was the Black Forest hiking disaster. Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, please consider leaving a rating or review on your Apple Choice. You can reach out to the show at history as a disaster at gmail.com with questions, comments, or suggestions. As well as following the show on social media like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, whatever. And share the episode. Your friends will love it. And go for a hike. Take a penguin, they like hikes. Chase that dream. Live for today. Because tomorrow is never guaranteed. Thanks and goodbye.