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
