Latest news with #Schlabow
Telegraph
13-03-2025
- Telegraph
Bayeux Tapestry piece stolen by Nazis will be returned to France
A missing fragment from the Bayeux Tapestry that was looted by Nazi archaeologists will be returned to France, after it was discovered in northern Germany. The missing piece of the 11th-century tapestry was taken from the collection of Karl Schlabow, a textile archaeologist who worked in league with the Nazi SS as they scoured Europe for Germanic artefacts. Schlabow and his colleagues looted the piece after Heinrich Himmler, the SS leader, sent them to study it in occupied France in 1941. According to German newspaper Stuttgarter Zeitung, a member of the team removed part of the fragment and took it back to Germany, where it was hidden for decades. But this month, it emerged that the elusive fragment had finally been discovered in the state archives of Schleswig-Holstein, where the Schlabow collection is held. A press conference is due to be held in late March where further details about the fragment, which was taken from the underside of the tapestry, will be revealed. The Bayeux Tapestry, which depicts William the Conqueror's invasion of England in 1066 and his ascension to the throne, is an integral part of France's cultural heritage. It is full of brutal depictions of combat, with the bodies of slain soldiers littering the bottom half of the tapestry. Schlabow looted the fragment while working for Ahnenerbe, an occult-obsessed organisation created by Himmler to promote the idea that Germans descended from a superior Aryan race. Research by Ahnenerbe was often used by the Nazi regime to justify its racist policies, though the group largely engaged in bizarre pseudoscience and conspiracy theories. Himmler himself was fascinated by occult mysteries, keeping a rock crystal on display in his lair of Wewelsburg Castle that supposedly represented the Holy Grail. The fragment is being returned to France just in time for major restoration work that will start this summer, when the tapestry will leave its public viewing gallery in Bayeux, Normandy for two years. 'In terms of economic and cultural influence, this is the most complex and ambitious project … ever undertaken by the Town of Bayeux,' said Bayeux mayor Patrick Gomont of the £30 million restoration efforts. However, even after the Schlabow piece has been stitched back into the tapestry, it will not be complete. Another section of up to 10ft of fabric, which is presumed to show the coronation of William I, is also missing - and its whereabouts are still unknown.
New European
12-03-2025
- New European
A lost piece of the Bayeux Tapestry
Embroidered by French nuns as one of the world's first war reports, the Bayeux Tapestry is rightly regarded as a French national treasure. The tapestry shows Norman soldiers invading England and defeating the Saxon King Harald at the Battle of Hastings in 1066. And now it turns out that a section of the tapestry was looted by Nazis and ended up in the basement of a German museum 1,200km away. The thief was Karl Schlabow, an archaeologist who wanted to measure the heads and facial features of warriors depicted in the tapestry as part of research ordered and funded by Adolf Hitler's henchman, Heinrich Himmler. The project was called Deutsches Ahnenerbe (German ancestors' heritage). Himmler recruited archaeologists like Schlabow to rob museums and art galleries of their ancient exhibits, and designed pseudo-scientific experiments in a bid to prove that the Aryan race was physically and mentally superior to other ethnic groups. Many of these fake scientists were indicted for war crimes at the Nuremberg trials after the allies defeated Hitler's Nazis and liberated the occupied territories in 1945-46. Schlabow was interned for two years, but was freed in 1947. He continued his work as a genuine archaeologist and founded the Textile Museum at Neumünster. When he died in 1984, his estate – including the fragment of the Bayeux Tapestry – was left to the regional state archive of Schleswig Holstein. The scrap of linen fabric is only 10cm wide and 14cm long. But France wants it back. To see the tapestry, displayed in a huge single crescent-shaped glass cabinet, is an extraordinary experience, especially if you get the audio guide. One tourist I met there told me it reminded her of a graphic novel. Restoring the small strip of cloth stolen by Schlabow for his sinister research is in keeping with the zeitgeist here in Germany. Museums and art galleries are trying to atone for colonialism, slavery and exploitation by returning the artefacts associated with those times. Here in Leipzig, my home town, a team is employed full-time to organise the return of cultural icons and human remains that were collected by explorers. Some of these explorers were also keen to measure the skulls and weigh the brains of different peoples who were conquered, enslaved and sometimes exhibited alive in a human zoo. These barbarous practices did not start with the Nazis. Last month, I attended an event at the Grassi Museum for Ethnology where Dr Birgit Scheps-Bretschneider explained how she has invited tribal leaders from the New Zealand Maori, and indigenous peoples of Colombia, Brazil and Gambia to collect the bones of their ancestors and stolen treasures. A grey-haired academic, Scheps-Brettschneider explained matter-of-factly to the audience of more than 100 people that she had to get special permission from the fire brigade to switch off the museum's sprinklers so that the visitors could hold a traditional fire ceremony to release the ancient tribal leaders' souls. The ritual was very emotional, which is not surprising, considering the amount of time people have campaigned to bury the remains of their ancestors in the proper way. Afterwards, the celebrants went into an ante-room where the atmosphere became more relaxed, and their German hosts offered them a cup of coffee and a piece of cake. They had made a long journey. And like the section of the Bayeux Tapestry, there was a feeling that things were now in their rightful place. Jane Whyatt has worked as a journalist, newsreader and independent TV producer
