The Queen's College in Oxford is seeking permission from Oxford City Council to update its World War One memorial, aiming to include the names of all its fallen members—regardless of which
side they fought on.
The college’s current memorial lists 121 individuals who died in the war, but it only includes those who served with British forces. Now, in an effort to recognize the full breadth of its community's loss, the college has proposed adding five additional names, including three German soldiers.
This move follows precedents set by other Oxford colleges: New College made a similar gesture as early as 1930, with Merton and Magdalen Colleges doing so in 1994, and University College in 2018.
In a statement, The Queen's College described the update as an “appropriate and unobtrusive response” that reflects “the need to remember all members of the college community who died.”
The five names proposed for addition are:
- Carl Heinrich Hertz, born in Hamburg, Germany, in 1893, who died in France in 1918.
- Erich Joachim Peucer, born in Colmar in 1888 (then part of the German Empire, now France), who died in Italy in 1917.
- Paul Nicholas Esterházy, a Hungarian who matriculated in 1901 and died in Poland in 1915.
- Gustav Adolf Jacobi, born in Weimar, Germany, in 1885, believed to have died in combat in 1914. He is already commemorated at Rhodes House in Oxford.
- Emile Jacot, who served with the Royal Warwickshire Regiment, was wounded and later died of his injuries in 1928. His place of birth remains unknown.
Among those currently listed on the memorial is George Tyrrell, an Oxford native and former chorister at the college, who died in France in December 1915 at age 20.
The council is expected to approve the proposed changes in the coming weeks. Photo by simononly, Wikimedia commons.