A Brief History of Wilton Park

Part 1: Wilton Park 1946 -1951
What's the difference between Wilton Park and Wiston House?" That's the question we are most frequently asked.

The answer is that Wilton Park is name of the institution and Wiston House is the base. Click here for the history of Wiston House.

Wilton Park began its work on 12 January 1946 as part of an initiative inspired by Sir Winston Churchill, the wartime Prime Minister, who had called in 1944 for Britain to help establish a successful democracy in Germany after the Second War. Wilton Park's role as a beacon for democracy in Europe was enthusiastically supported by Ernest Bevin, the Foreign Secretary in the post-war Labour Government (pictured left).

The subjects debated at Wilton Park in its early days are still topical today. "The Labour Government's Task in Europe" was the theme discussed by the first visiting speaker, Richard Crossman, later a Labour Minister, on February 2 1946. European policy and democracy building remain at the heart of Wilton Park's mission.

Wilton Park as a POW camp

Wilton Park's name comes from its original home at a prisoner of war (POW) camp in the grounds of a white-plastered eighteenth country house called Wilton Park, near Beaconsfield, west of London. The house, also known as the White House, no longer exists.

The first participants included some of the most outstanding German POWs in the UK. Many went on to become leading figures in the rebuilding of post-war Germany. Helmut Schmidt, the former German Chancellor, a participant later hailed Wilton Park's role for post-war Germany:"many ideas became a political reality." One German participant has said of his time here in 1946: "I was a Nazi; I came to Wilton Park and it changed my life."

From 1946-8, more than 4,000 German POWs discussed democratic processes with visiting British intellectuals and political figures such as the philosopher Bertrand Russell, the social reformer Lord William Beveridge, and Lady Astor, the first female Member of Parliament.

Founding father

From the outset, Wilton Park's founder and Warden, Heinz, later Sir Heinz, Koeppler, a German Jewish émigré, promoted open and frank discussion. (pictured below at an early Wilton Park Conference) This style of open debate has remained the abiding principle. The atmosphere was more that of an English residential university college than a prison. Prisoners, all volunteers, were free to travel outside the perimeters. "Any prisoner could escape if he wished, but none do so, or wish to do so" wrote the Editor of the New Statesman magazine, Kingsley Martin, in an article in April 1946 on what he called the "Prisoners' University." He concluded: "Wilton Park is discovering the nucleus of what may become a new democratic Germany."

One of the first German POW participants, Willi Brundert, who went on to become the Mayor of Frankfurt, later acknowledged "the encouragement Heinz Koeppler and his colleagues gave to us German POWs by having Ministers of the British Crown, leading opposition figures, economic figures like Lord Beveridge come and talk to and discuss with us".

Encouraged by the spirit of free expression, Willi Brundert himself ran a satirical puppet show gently mocking Heinz Koeppler and his staff. Cartoons in the Wilton Park newspaper used pointed humour, as shown here.

From early 1947, civilians; men, and within months women too, began to participate from Germany, and later from Switzerland, Finland, France and other European countries, replacing the POWs, who had all left by the summer of 1948.

A centre of academic independence

With the departure of the PoWs, in June 1948 Wilton Park became an academically independent centre under the Foreign Office, and its future was secured after a lengthy debate about its role in the emerging Cold War. Wilton Park's new civilian status involved a move from Beaconsfield in late 1950. It took its already well-established name of Wilton Park with it, re-opening in January 1951 with the 32nd session in the beautiful setting of Wiston House in West Sussex, where it has been ever since.

Part 2: Wilton Park: 1951 - to the present day