Edith Cavell

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Edith Cavell

Edith Louisa Cavell [ 'kævl ] (* 4. December 1865 in Swardeston in Norwich , United Kingdom ; † 12. October 1915 in Brussels ) was operating in Belgium English nurse , during the German occupation of Belgium in World War I because of border crossing services for Allied Soldier was executed by shooting after a court martial. She is venerated as a martyr and heroine in England and Belgium .

Education and profession

Edith Cavell's father was a pastor in Swardeston, her mother's name was Louisa Sophia. Cavell had three younger siblings. She attended primary school in Swardeston and secondary schools in Norwich and Peterborough . There she trained as a teacher for lower classes, where she acquired a good knowledge of the French language. In 1890 she accepted a job with a family in Brussels as governess and teacher for their children. She stayed there for five years and learned French fluently.

When she returned to Great Britain, she trained as a nurse from 1896 to 1898 at the London Hospital. After that, she worked at various hospitals. In 1903 she became deputy superior. In 1907, the leading surgeon in Belgium, Antoine Depage, asked Cavell whether she wanted to become superior of the nursing school "L'École Belge d'Infirmières Diplômées" (The Berkendael surgical institute), which was being established. Depage intended to introduce a non-church professional nursing system with this school in Belgium, based on the ideas of Florence Nightingale . The school was supposed to be a teaching hospital where Depage and other doctors were supposed to operate. Cavell accepted and moved to Brussels in August 1907.

German occupation of Belgium and Cavell's work

When World War I broke out, Cavell was in Great Britain. On August 3, 1914, the day before Belgium was invaded by Germany, she returned to her hospital in Brussels. That evening the United Kingdom, which had a defensive alliance with Belgium, declared war on Germany. The hospital was placed under the Belgian Red Cross , of which Antoine Depage was director. It was supposed to take care of German and allied injured people. In the beginning, soldiers marching through German troops were also given medical care. Then the Germans built their own military hospitals by confiscating buildings for them. Cavell later loaned her staff to other hospitals; her own hospital remained largely unused.

The defensive measures of the Allies came too late for Belgium. The Allied troops were defeated in Belgium and had to withdraw. In the fall of 1914, Cavell was one of the few British people in town. Due to the defeat and withdrawal of the French and British troops , a number of British, French and Dutch soldiers failed to leave Belgium in time. Above all, these were the wounded who could not walk themselves and who had mostly lost their units. Many Belgians helped these people, even though the German military governor had declared such aid to be a serious crime on posters all over the city.

On November 1, 1914, the Belgian mining engineer Herman Capiau brought two wounded British soldiers disguised as Belgian workers to Cavell. He brought the request from Marie Depage , Antoine's wife, to take care of these wounded men. Cavell had both men treated in their hospital for 18 days and then organized their escape to the neutral Netherlands , from where they were to travel to England.

The inquiries and requests for help increased, so that Cavell expanded her aid and eventually became one of the main organizers for escape aid in Brussels. She had thus become part of a spontaneously formed network from all strata of the population that helped dispersed and wounded soldiers to flee the occupied country. Cavell participated in this aid from November 1914 to July 1915. She was closely associated with the noble diplomat Réginald de Croÿ and his sister Marie, as well as with Louise Thuliez and Philippe Baucq, a Brussels architect and distributor of the La Libre Belgique underground newspaper .

More than 200 men had already managed to escape across the border when Cavell and others from the group were arrested by Germans on August 5, 1915.

Trial and Execution

Cavell was together with 34 other people before the military governor of Brussels, General Traugott von Sauberzweig , used military court indicted. The indictment was “crimes to the detriment of the German armed forces”, in particular violation of section 90 (1) sentence 3 of the Reich Criminal Code (RStGB) “supplying men to the enemy”. Despite an excellent speech from her Brussels lawyer Sadi Kirschen, she was sentenced to death. The verdict was passed on October 11, 1915. It read on the death penalty and was immediately countersigned by Moritz von Bissing , the German governor general in Belgium .

This death sentence caused a sensation. The ambassadors of the neutral powers USA and Spain stood up for Cavell. They asked for a suspension of the sentence or a pardon. The military governor responsible for the court, Sauberzweig, rejected this. Even an intervention by the Pope did not change his mind. Instead, he scheduled the execution for the early morning of the day following the sentence.

On October 12, 1915, Edith Cavell was executed by shooting together with the Belgian Philippe Baucq . Gottfried Benn was present at the trial and, in his role as a doctor, also at the execution.

The night before the execution, Cavell had spoken to the Anglican clergyman Rev. Gahan, who had been allowed to visit her. Among other things, she said the following to him in her last hours:

"I am thankful to have had these ten weeks of quiet to get ready. Now I have had them and have been kindly treated here. I expected my sentence and I believe it was just. Standing as I do in view of God and Eternity, I realize that patriotism is not enough, I must have no hatred or bitterness towards anyone. "

- According to Rev. Phillip McFadyen and Rev. David Chamberlin: Edith Cavell 1865–1915 - A Norfolk Heroine . 1985, 1997-2015. [2] ) The much-quoted core sentence in German, for example:… pride in home is not enough - I must not hate and bear no bitterness against anyone in me.

These words are written on the memorial on St. Martin's Place, London, near Trafalgar Square .

Cavell's execution as a topic in the world press and propaganda

The execution caused a worldwide sensation and also made the world public against the Germans. Even in the early days of the war, world opinion was critical of the Germans due to the massacre of the Belgian civilian population and the destruction of places. The propaganda of the Allies had under the name of The Rape of Belgium made known. Edith Cavell was viewed as a martyr in Britain. The nurse "symbolized a woman's selflessness in times of war" and the British could identify with the "victims of the invasion." The execution of Cavell and the other atrocities of the Germans such as For example, the Dinant massacre was covered extensively in the international press. The Germans, who had not anticipated public outrage, did not succeed in effective journalistic countermeasures. General Sauberzweig was relieved of his post in connection with the execution. Nevertheless, the military leadership defended the execution.

In retrospect, the German side admitted that the execution was legal, but a serious political mistake. In 2008, the legal historian Andreas Toppe stated that the conviction was doubtful under the provisions of the Hague Land Warfare Regulations . Although Cavell's actions were certainly punishable, he was astonished that they "were found worthy of death without any provision of any provision of the criminal code". Section 90 (3) of the RStGB also provided for life imprisonment and no death penalty as the maximum penalty, so that in his view this death sentence against a civilian violated the “international legal principle Nulla poena sine lege ”. The American professor of German history at Cornell University Isabel V. Hull, however, considered the 2014 death sentence "stupid, but not illegal". Likewise, the Imperial War Museum describes the conviction as legal under international law. It is possible that international criticism also influenced Bissings' decision on April 5, 1916, to commute the death sentence against the French spy Louise de Bettignies into a life sentence with forced labor. In January 1916, Kaiser Wilhelm II ordered that in future the death penalty against women should not be carried out without his express confirmation. Even so, Gabrielle Petit was executed a few months later, while Hermione Vaneukem was pardoned almost at the same time after a death sentence.

In some recent British books on secret services and in newspaper articles, the thesis is put forward that Cavell's network of helpers were British spies . According to Stella Rimington , the former director of the British domestic secret service MI5 , the fled soldiers informed the British secret service about German trench positions , ammunition dumps and aircraft positions. Corresponding messages were sewn into clothing or hidden in shoes and transmitted to England. To what extent this happened to Cavell's knowledge was and is not known. In any case, the German military tribunal did not accuse Cavell of espionage.

Honors

In 1919 Cavell's body was exhumed and - among other things with the Cavell Van later named after her - transferred to London. A memorial service was held in Westminster Abbey in the presence of King George V before the body was transported by special train to Norwich and buried outside the cathedral . Even today there is an annual service at Cavell's grave.

  • London , Monument to Edith Cavell near Trafalgar Square
  • Gent , memorial plaque for Edith Cavell in the Koningin Elisabethlaan, on the house in which she hid in April 1915 (English inscription: "Miss Edith Cavell, the glorious victim of German barbarity was secretly harbored in this house in April 1915")

The following are named after Edith Cavell:

Film adaptations

Edith Cavell in literature

"If Miss Edith Cavell had been an ant, they would have had to write on her pedestal: Smell is not enough."

"If Miss Edith Cavell [...] had been an ant, one would have had to write on her memorial: smell alone is not enough."

See also

  • Andrée de Jongh , a leading woman in a rescue organization for killed soldiers in World War II, who relied on Cavell.

literature

Web links

Commons : Edith Cavell  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Diana Souhami: Edith Cavell. Quercus, London 2010, ISBN 978-1-84916-359-0 . P. 99ff.
  2. ↑ Diana Souhami: Edith Cavell. Quercus, London 2010, p. 182ff.
  3. ↑ Diana Souhami: Edith Cavell. Quercus, London 2010, p. 185.
  4. ^ Gerhard Hirschfeld (ed.): Encyclopedia First World War. Schöningh, Paderborn 2003, ISBN 3-506-73913-1 , p. 408f.
  5. ^ Antonius Lux (ed.): Great women of world history. A thousand biographies in words and pictures . Sebastian Lux Verlag, Munich 1963, p. 101.
  6. ^ A b Andreas Toppe: Military and international law of war. Legal norms, specialist discourse and war practice in Germany 1899–1940. Oldenbourg Verlag, Munich 2007, ISBN 3-486-58206-2 , p. 126f.
  7. ↑ Daniel-Marc Segesser: Law or Revenge through Law? The Punishment of War Crimes in the International Scientific Debate 1872–1945 . Schöningh Verlag, Paderborn 2010, ISBN 978-3-506-76399-0 , p. 184.
  8. ↑ John Horne, Alan Kramer: German war horrors 1914. The controversial truth . Hamburg 2004, ISBN 3-930908-94-8 , p. 458.
  9. ^ Cavell Case Causes Official's Removal , The New York Times, November 2, 1915 [1] en
  10. ^ Martin Schramm: The picture of Germany in the British press 1912-1919. Akademie Verlag, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-05-004422-4 , p. 392.
  11. ^ Isabel V. Hull : A Scrap of Paper: Breaking and Making of International Law during the Great War . Cornell University Press, Ithaca 2014, ISBN 978-0-8014-5273-4 , pp. 104f., Book partly online .
  12. ↑ Who was Edith Cavell , Imperial War Museum , accessed January 8, 2018
  13. ^ Yannick Ripa: Femmes d'exception - les raisons de l'oubli: Louise de Bettignies, "la Jeanne d'Arc du Nord" . Éditions Le Chevalier Bleu, Paris 2018, ISBN 979-1-03180273-2 , pp. 189-199 .
  14. ↑ Louise de Bettignies (French)
  15. ^ Isabel V. Hull: A Scrap of Paper: Breaking and Making of International Law during the Great War, pp. 108f .; Cornell University Press , Ithaca and London 2014, ISBN 978-0-8014-5273-4
  16. ^ Nicholas Rankin: A genius for deception. How cunning helped the British win two world wars. Oxford University Press, London 2009, ISBN 0-19-538704-X , Chapter 3
  17. ↑ Sherri Greene Ottis: Silent heroes. Downed airmen and the French underground. University Press of Kentucky, 2001, ISBN 0-8131-2186-8 , p. 6.
  18. ^ Anita Singh: Revealed: New evidence that executed wartime Nurse Edith Cavell's Network was spying . The Daily Telegraph, September 12, 2015.
    Richard Norton-Taylor: Edith Cavell, shot by Germans during WWI, celebrated 100 years on . The Guardian October 12, 2015.
  19. ↑ detailed film description, engl. , also about the memory of her until 2015
personal data
SURNAME Cavell, Edith
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Cavell, Edith Louisa (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British patriot and nurse
DATE OF BIRTH 4th December 1865
PLACE OF BIRTH Swardeston near Norwich , United Kingdom
DATE OF DEATH October 12, 1915
Place of death Brussels