Hearty Christmas: and New Year Greetings, 1915 From the Camp at Alexandra Palace

Christmas Card from Alexandra Palace designed by Tony Binder for Christmas 1915. It shows a scene of Alexandra Palace in the snow with barbed wire fencing. The text reads "Hearty Christmas and New Year Greetings 1915 From the Camp at Alexandra Palace, London.

Anton (Tony) Binder (1868-1944) was a famous Austrian Orientalist and Jewish painter. He travelled widely around the Mediterranean and the Near East before visiting London in 1911. Presumably he was in London when war was declared and was therefore classed as an enemy alien.

Alexandra Palace was initially used as a transit centre for refugees fleeing from occupied Belgium. Once the last refugees had been processed in March 1915, the Palace was turned into an internment camp for enemy aliens, non-naturalised civilian men over the age of 16 from the countries with which Britain was at war. Along with 3,000 other men Binder was interned at Alexandra Palace between 1915 and 1919. After his release from Alexandra Palace in 1919 he went to Germany, settling in Munich. He died in Nordlinger, Bavaria, in 1944.