Destruction of Lion in the First World War

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The Destroyed City (1915)
The destroyed university library (1915)

The destruction of Löwen by German troops in World War I lasted from August 25 to 28, 1914. According to German information at the time, it occurred as a result of fighting Belgian snipers. Around a sixth of all buildings were destroyed, including the Leuven University Library with its large and irreplaceable inventory of books and manuscripts. 248 civilians were killed.

prehistory

The German troops marched into Leuven on August 19, 1914 , from which all soldiers of the Belgian army had withdrawn that morning. The Belgian authorities had expressly warned the civilian population beforehand not to protest against the Germans or to shoot at the invaders. Civilians had to surrender weapons. The Garde Civique had been disbanded and their weapons had been taken to Antwerp .

After the occupation of the city, the Germans warned the population that anyone who was found with a weapon could expect to be shot immediately. The Germans took hostages every day to ensure that the city's residents kept quiet. From August 19th to 22nd, Löwen served as the headquarters of the 1st Army . More and more German troop contingents were brought in, so that finally around 15,000 German soldiers were in Leuven.

Destruction of lion

On August 25, 1914, the main body of the German 1st Army was already 70 to 80 kilometers further west according to the Schlieffen Plan . The northern flank was only weakly manned, which the largely intact Belgian army used to attack from Antwerp , 45 kilometers away . The Belgians reached Tildonk , only 8 kilometers from Löwen, and German troops flooded back to Löwen. At the same time, the 17th Reserve Division reached Leuven to march through to the western front, which further contributed to the confusing situation in the city.

According to German information, around 40 German soldiers were shot dead in ambush and 190 injured. The German soldiers then broke into the houses, killed civilians and set buildings on fire. These actions continued for a few days until, on August 29, the population had to leave Leuven and the whole city was set on fire. Large parts of the city center were completely destroyed. A total of 1,081 houses burned down and 248 citizens died in the flames or were fusilized . Another 1,500 citizens, including women and children, were interned in a camp near Munster until 1915. The Sint Pieter church was also damaged .

After the German troops had started fires in numerous parts of the city, they also started fires in the basement of the university library on August 25 at eleven thirty. The building burned down on the night of August 25th to 26th. 1000 medieval manuscripts, 800 incunabula and 300,000 books were lost. Only the Gothic town hall of Leuven was spared, it served as headquarters and accommodation for German officers.

Causes and consequences

The fear of franchisees is an important cause of the massive riots . Already in the first weeks of the war, these fears had led to panic when German troops under unexpected attack, often under friendly fire came. The German troops reacted to alleged attacks by rioters with massive retaliatory measures.

For decades it was considered unlikely that irregular activities would trigger the destruction of Lion. Much more important were the fears about the franc tireurs and the worries that were triggered by an imminent Belgian counterattack on the German flank near Löwens. In the 2010s, the historian Ulrich Keller (University of California, Santa Barbara) reassessed and maintained the testimony of German soldiers (and other archived testimony), which were compiled in a German white paper in 1915 and spoke of an attack by Belgian franc tyrants on the occupation troops such an attack was proven credible. According to Keller, the response from the German occupation forces was excessive, but provoked. According to Keller, accidental bombardment by own units would also be out of the question because troops newly arriving from Germany were bombarded in the southeast of the city that did not come from the direction of the front.

The destruction of Lion and the mass shooting of civilians are considered to be one of the worst German war crimes of the First World War. Even if more people were killed in the Dinant massacre , the Leuven case, as a “cultural horror”, sparked a great response abroad. The British tabloid Daily Mail wrote of the "Holocaust of Louvain". The Times wrote that it was A Ruthless Holocaust . For the French, Löwen confirmed the idea of ​​the Germans as the new Huns . For the German occupation of Belgium the term " Rape of Belgium " (desecration of Belgium) became common. Even in states that were not at war with Germany, the destruction of Löwen contributed to the fact that public opinion turned against Germany. Intellectuals in Germany reacted to this with the Manifesto of 93 , in which they tried to justify the events. In the Versailles Peace Treaty (Article 247) Germany was obliged to replace the library holdings which had been destroyed, which Germany did. However, the majority still held on to the thesis of an attack by rioters. According to the official opinion, the admission of German guilt would also have stood in the way of a desired revision of the Versailles Treaty.

The reopening of the Löwen University Library in 1928 was particularly successful with American funds. The American architect Warren originally wanted to add the inscription Furore teutonico diruta, dono americano restituta (Destroyed by German rage, rebuilt with American help), but the rector of the university decided against it, considering the reconciliation with Germany. The dispute about it made waves, however, and press releases and rumors are also said to have been a reason why the library went up in flames a second time with almost a million books in May 1940 during the German occupation of Löwen during the Western campaign . On May 16, 1940, the newly built library in Löwen was fired at and hit by the Wehrmacht with artillery. The Nazi propaganda spread, the library had been set on fire by the British; Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels visited the ruins.

See also

literature

  • Ulrich Keller: Belgian underground war and German retaliation in August 1914 . With a foreword by Gerd Krumeich, Schöningh: Paderborn 2017.
  • Alan Kramer : Lions. In: Encyclopedia First World War. Paderborn, 2009 p. 682f.
  • Alan Kramer: Dynamic of destruction. Culture and mass killing in the first world war , Oxford University Press 2007 (Chapter 1 on Lions)
  • Wolfgang Schivelbusch : The library of Löwen , Hanser 1988, Spiegel article on it, Furore Teutonico , 12/1988
  • John N. Horne , Alan Kramer: German war atrocities 1914. The controversial truth. From the English by Udo Rennert , Hamburger Edition, Hamburg 2004, ISBN 3-930908-94-8 .
  • Larry Zuckerman: The Rape of Belgium: The Untold Story of World War I , New York University Press 2004
  • Peter Schöller: The Löwen Case and the White Paper. A critical examination of the German documentation about the events in Leuven from August 25 to 28, 1914 . Böhlau Verlag, Cologne 1958. With a declaration by German and Belgian historians on the problem and an introduction by Franz Petri , see Spiegel Der acquittal , 25/1958, on Schöller's book and a commission of German-Belgian historians
  • Klaus-Jürgen Bremm: A grim gray horde ..., Der Fall Löwen August 25, 2014 , Military History, 2005, Issue 4, pp. 10-13.

Web links

Commons : Destruction of Lion in World War I  - Album with pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Horne / Kramer: German war horrors 1914. The controversial truth , Hamburg 2004, pp. 65–67.
  2. ^ Ulrich Keller: Belgian underground war and German retaliation in August 1914 . With a foreword by Gerd Krumeich, Schöningh: Paderborn 2017, pp. 43–99.
  3. ^ Alan Kramer, Dynamic of Destruction, Oxford UP 2007, p. 8.
  4. ↑ Horne / Kramer: Deutsche Kriegsgreuel 1914. The controversial truth , Hamburg 2004, pp. 67–72.
  5. ↑ Peter Schöller : The lion case and the white book. A critical examination of the German documentation about the events in Löwen from August 25 to 28, 1914. Böhlau, Vienna / Cologne / Graz 1958; Horne / Kramer: German war atrocities 1914. Hamburg 2004, pp. 65–72.
  6. ↑ Ulrich Keller, Belgian underground war and German retaliation in August 1914. With a foreword by Gerd Krumeich , Schöningh: Paderborn 2017.
  7. ↑ Sven Kellerhoff, Were Belgian Franktireurs in Leuven in 1914 ?, Die Welt , August 21, 2014. Interview with Ulrich Keller
  8. ^ Alan Kramer: Lions. In: Encyclopedia First World War. Paderborn 2009, p. 683.
  9. ↑ Casper Erichsen, David Olusoga (2010): The Kaiser's Holocaust: Germany's Forgotten Genocide and the Colonial Roots of Nazism , p. 273 ( online )
  10. ↑ Times September 3, 1914, quoted from Martin Schramm (2007): Das Deutschlandbild in the British press 1912–1919 , p. 383 ( online )
  11. ↑ See Lothar Wieland (1984): Belgium 1914. The question of the Belgian 'Franktireurkrieges' and German public opinion from 1914 to 1936 . Verlag Peter Lang, ISBN 978-3820476620 (dissertation), page VII f. ( online )
  12. ↑ Mark Derez: The flames of Louvain , in: What do we lose When We lose a library ?, Conference KU Leuven, September 2015; Leuven University Library 2016
  13. ↑ Wolfgang Schivelbusch (1988): The library of Löwen , chapter "The repetition"
  14. ^ Review of the book by Schivelbusch in Spiegel 12/1988, p. 261 ( online )