The Man who Risked his Life to Save Thousands of Works of Art in World War II

World War Two led to the destruction of too many monuments or artifacts of great historical interest; however, some people played important roles in keeping many such artifacts safe. Here, Charlotte Davies explains how Kurt Seeleke (1912-2000) helped to keep thousands of pieces of art safe in the north German city of Braunschweig in World War Two.

The devastation from World War Two: Braunschweig on May 12, 1945.

The other day I was sitting on a bench in a little square in Braunschweig, Germany, where I live, attempting to do a watercolor painting of a romantically ruined old building. A well-turned-out older lady walked past and I smiled at her, and then immediately thought better of it, since smiling at strangers isn’t really the done thing here. But the next thing I knew, she had stopped and said “Braunschweig hat schöne Ecken”, nodding towards the scene – Braunschweig has its nice little corners. I agreed and pointed out the ruined building. This prompted the lady to begin recounting her wartime memories: she told of how her family’s house in the city center had been destroyed by a bomb, an incident which she could remember despite being only three years old at the time. I was all ears, particularly because I had been doing the research for this article and had wartime Braunschweig on the brain. Now here was someone in front of me who had actually experienced those times. We chatted for about 15 minutes, and when I thanked her for sharing her memories with me, she said in rather heartfelt tones that no one had ever asked them, meaning her generation, about their experiences. I was glad to have been an interested audience for her story.

Wartime destruction and post-war rebuilding

Braunschweig was once the largest half-timbered town in Germany, but lost 90% of its city center to bombing raids in 1944. A list of the German cities that were bombed shows that destruction of this magnitude was fairly common, with many town centers being all but wiped out. This obviously had long-term consequences for the appearance of German townscapes. If I go down the hill into the town center from where I live, I come to a Bohlweg, where the unfortunate aesthetic choices of post-war architects are all too apparent – what used to be a street of timber-framed buildings is now lined with drab blocks, including some real eyesores. Thankfully, however, not all of the city center looks like this. There are several squares surrounded by pretty buildings that evoke times of yore, including the Burgplatz with its medieval-style castle, or the cobbled expanse of the Altstadtmarkt bordered by the atmospheric arches and turrets of the gothic town hall.

Whether or not they are aware of it, all Braunschweigers owe a debt of gratitude to the subject of this article, Kurt Seeleke, for the fact that their city contains these pockets of quaintness. In his position as Head of Conservation for the region and together with the architect Friedrich Wilhelm Kraemer, he developed a plan to preserve and restore buildings after the Second World War. The aim was to create five heritage areas, each centered around one of the city’s churches. He called these areas the Traditionsinsel. In some cases, buildings were moved from other locations to fill gaps and thus create a unified whole.

Seeleke’s vital influence on shaping the post-war cityscape was something I had been aware of for a while. But when I started looking into him a bit more, I discovered that, prior to this, he had achieved other great feats of preservation, getting into some dramatic situations in the process: whether that was watching bombing raids from the top of a church tower, or pleading with a Wehrmacht general who apparently threatened to have him shot. I soon realized I had to dedicate an article to this remarkable man.

Saving art and cultural heritage from the firestorms

Kurt Seeleke came from a Braunschweig family who ran a long-established business producing gingerbread and honey cake. The young Kurt showed an aptitude for cultural conservation work, possessing a combination of practical skill and an artistic sensibility, and went on to study art history in Berlin and Munich, before being put in charge of monument preservation in Braunschweig. However, he had only been in the role a short time when the Second World War broke out. By the end of 1939, the museums had been closed and the collections moved to the cellars for safety. These included the renowned collection of the Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum which included works by many big names including Cranach, Rembrandt, van Dyke, Rubens, and Vermeer.

Seeleke was called up in early summer 1940 and sent to France, only to be discharged due to illness in 1941 and sent to Italy to teach at German academies there. He was ordered to return to Braunschweig in August 1943 amidst growing concern for the safety of Germany’s cultural heritage following the bombing of Lübeck in March of that year. It was the first German city to be heavily bombed by the RAF, with the resulting firestorms wiping out large parts of the town’s historic center. Back in his home city, he returned to the task of getting as many movable art treasures as possible out of the city center and into underground storage, in case a similar fate awaited Braunschweig.

On February 10, 1944, heavy bombing raids did indeed reach Braunschweig. When Seeleke came out of the bunker he had been sheltering in, he discovered that one of the city’s historic buildings was burning to the ground. He decided that on future occasions, he could not wait around in an air-raid shelter whilst irreplaceable cultural heritage was destroyed. Instead, he would climb up to the top of the spire of the St. Martinikirche, which gave him the best vantage point to watch for fires. When he saw flames, he would race down to get in his car or on his bike so that he could reach the scene and support the small voluntary fire service in trying to put out the fire. In order to be better prepared for this role, he got himself trained up as a fireman. Poignantly, it was from his high vantage point that he saw the timber-frame headquarters of his family’s honey cake business be blown to pieces.

The moving of paintings and other works of art continued in this period when possible. But the bombs were falling more and more frequently. The worst night came on October 15, 1944. Seeleke wrote simply “destruction of Old Braunschweig at 2:30 by English planes” (1). The firestorm lasted two and a half days, and afterwards, the city was a wasteland, with church towers rising up out of the smoldering ruins.

Devastating as this must have been for him, Seeleke at least had the comfort of knowing that the city’s most valuable paintings were still safely in the bunker where they had been stowed at the start of the war. But then came the order from the local chief of police to remove these artworks in order to free up the space for civilians. Appalled at the thought of exposing the paintings to danger, he initially ignored the order, which was of course a dangerous business in Nazi Germany. Finally, he arranged to have the bunker emptied, and the paintings transported to the cellars of Blankenburg Palace in the Harz mountains – although due to the risky nature of these trips and a lack of transport vehicles, Seeleke secretly left the most valuable paintings in the bunker.

A visit to the Wehrmacht general

Shortly afterwards, it emerged that he could not have picked a worse place to move the artworks to. In early April 1945, Heinrich Himmler declared Blankenburg to be the center of the "Harz Fortress", which would be defended to the last man against advancing Allied forces. The artworks would surely not survive. Seeleke was almost in despair. But he wasn't prepared to give up yet. A delegation including Seeleke went to the local mayor to plead for a change of plan. Seeleke then proposed that they go directly to the general in charge to plead their case. But the others in the delegation were aware that any attempt to persuade a military commander to be “unfaithful to his duty” could be punishable by death. The next morning, Seeleke set off accompanied only by Prince Welf Heinrich, son of the former Duke of Braunschweig, apparently encouraged by the latter’s “youthful foolhardiness” (2). Both men took leave of their families in case the worst happened.

When the two men entered the general’s office, Seeleke was carrying a curious object. It was an onyx vase from the museum collections. Ingeniously, he had invented a history for it that was designed to target the pompous nationalistic pretensions of a Nazi general: he claimed that for a thousand years, it had held a balm used to anoint the German emperors. It is said that he challenged the general to “hold it, hurl it against the wall! If you’re certain of winning this war, then everything must be sacrificed. But if you aren’t…” (3), at which point he trailed off, and there was an oppressive silence. The general is supposed to have told them during this meeting that he “could have them shot on the spot” (4). But he didn’t carry out his threat. The men were told to leave, and that they would get an answer the following day.

Whether it was the onyx vase that tipped the balance, we will never know, but on April 13, 1945, the German troops did indeed move out of Blankenburg and form a new front deeper in the Harz mountains. The thousands of paintings and objets d’art were safe. Seeleke must have breathed an almighty sigh of relief. But that still wasn’t the end of the story. After the war was over, Blankenburg was made part of the Soviet occupation zone, and once again, the paintings had to be saved, this time from the clutches of the advancing Red Army; British troops provided assistance.

The Braunschweig lion. Source: Heribert Bechen/HerryB, available here.

The Braunschweig lion

There is another of Kurt Seeleke’s daring feats that should be mentioned, and that concerns the Braunschweig lion, symbol of the city since Henry the Lion’s time. In 1943, in the midst of the war, the bronze statue from 1166 was still standing unprotected at the center of the Burgplatz. Seeleke then received orders to have it sent away to safety. But there was no way he was allowing this iconic creature to be transported to far away Silesia, perhaps never to return. So he mounted a top-secret operation to have the original statue replaced by a copy that had been created a few years earlier. He successfully hoodwinked his Nazi superiors – the original lion was spirited away to a mine tunnel in the region.

Following the end of the war, Braunschweig became part of the British occupation zone and a British army captain was installed in the city to assist in the task of retrieving and restoring artworks. Robert „Rollo“ Lonsdale Charles was one of the “Monuments Men”, a group of volunteers (both men and women) who took on the mission of “saving cultural treasures from the destructiveness of war, and theft by Adolf Hitler and the Nazis” (4).  Rollo and Seeleke got on well and formed a close working relationship. In the diary he kept at the time, Rollo recorded the retrieval of the lion as follows (not his exact words as I only had access to a German translation):

Tuesday, 23. October 1945. Went to Goslar with Seeleke and Kump to get the lion… the workers in the fields uncovered their faces as we drove past, and I could see their lips moving as they pointed towards us, laughed and cried “Der Braunschweiger Löwe!”. Around five o’clock, we arrived in Braunschweig… a crowd of people gathered around him and stroked him, mothers held up their children so that they could see… it was all very touching … an excellent animal. One feels like he might wag his tale at any moment!” (5)

Seeleke had many successes, but there was one thing he didn’t manage to save, despite his best efforts, and that was the Braunschweiger Schloss. The former ducal palace was demolished in the summer of 1960, following which Seeleke left Braunschweig in disgust and took up a post in Berlin. He didn’t return until his retirement in 1990, and was awarded a Citizen’s Medal for his services to conservation and historical restoration. Kurt Seeleke lived to be a ripe old age, dying in 2000.

The next time I go into a museum and look at paintings, I will try to bear in mind that their survival over the centuries is by no means a given. It requires the knowledge and dedication of experts who conserve and restore, it requires societies that deem their cultural heritage to be important and worthy of preserving, and governments that allocate funding accordingly. And sometimes, in the worst times when war is raging and reeking destruction on all sides, it requires great ingenuity, resourcefulness and astounding acts of bravery.

Charlotte Davies writes the blog https://braunschweigportraits.blogspot.com/ which takes a light-hearted look at various characters from German history.

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1) Quoted in Friemuth, Cay, Die geraubte Kunst. Der dramatische Wettlauf um die Rettung der Kulturschätze nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg, 171

2) Quoted in ibid., 174

3) Quoted in ibid.

4) https://www.ndr.de/geschichte/chronologie/kriegsende/Kunstretter-mit-Loewenherz-trotzt-selbst-Bombenhagel,seeleke100.html

5) https://www.monumentsmenfoundation.org/

6) Quoted in Friemuth, Cay, Die geraubte Kunst. Der dramatische Wettlauf um die Rettung der Kulturschätze nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg, 279–281

Sources:

https://www.ndr.de/geschichte/chronologie/kriegsende/Kunstretter-mit-Loewenherz-trotzt-selbst-Bombenhagel,seeleke100.html

Friemuth, Cay. Die geraubte Kunst. Der dramatische Wettlauf um die Rettung der Kulturschätze nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg (Georg Westermann Verlag GmbH, 1989)

Desert Fox: The Military Career of World War Two Nazi German General Erwin Rommel

Erwin Rommel had been a military man for decades by the time that World War II broke out. Having fought in World War I for Germany, he was a key general for Nazi Germany by the time of World War II. During the war, Rommel was to play a major role in North Africa, and even tried to remove Hitler from power. Samuel Mitcham Jr., the author of a new book on Rommel (Amazon US| Amazon UK), explains.

Erwin Rommel in 1942. Source: Bundesarchiv, Bild 146-1985-013-07 / CC-BY-SA 3.0, available here.

The Desert Fox. The words conjure up an image of a dust-covered, sunburned military genius, making quick and incredibly brilliant decisions against overwhelming forces. He is seen as a Godlike and almost infallible figure, winning victory after astonishing victory over his numerically superior but less astute opponents, yet fighting a war without hate and even with a degree of chivalry. This myth is not entirely accurate, of course, but there is a great deal of truth in it.

EARLY LIFE

Erwin Rommel was born in Heidenheim, Wuerttemberg, in the southwestern region of Imperial Germany known as Swabia, on November 15, 1891. His father, Erwin Rommel, Sr., was the headmaster of a secondary school, and young Rommel grew up in a stable, comfortable middle-class German environment. In many ways, he was a typical Swabian: self-reliant, pragmatic, thrifty, with a strong work ethic and a streak of stubbornness. He was a simple, practical young man and would remain so until the day he died.

Despite the lack of military background in his family, he decided to become a soldier. With his father’s help, he gained an appointment as a Fahnenjunker(officer-cadet) in an infantry regiment in the isolated garrison town of Weingarten. Here, lonely and away from home for the first time, he had an affair with a woman who was a fruit seller. He was shocked when she turned up pregnant. In the class-conscious world of the Second Reich, however, she was not considered officer wife material. He decided to marry her anyway; then his father pointed out that he would have to resign his commission if he did so. It was 1913, and many could see what was to become World War I on the horizon. If he left the army now, Professor Rommel pointed out, everyone would think he was a coward. That settled the issue for Lieutenant Rommel. He broke up with his girlfriend, although he provided financial support for his daughter for the rest of his life.

Erwin Rommel learned his lesson. He married Lucie Mollin, the daughter of a West Prussian landowner, and they remained happily married the rest of his life. He apparently didn’t even think about being unfaithful.

1STLEUTENANT ROMMEL TO CAPTAIN ROMMEL

Rommel joined the army in 1910 and was commissioned in January 1912. His career was not out of the ordinary until World War I broke out. The battlefield changed him from an ordinary, if overly serious second lieutenant into a first-class warrior. As Desmond Young, who fought in the Indian Army against Rommel in Africa and went on to write the bestselling Rommel: The Desert Fox (Amazon US| Amazon UK), would explain, “From the moment that he first came under fire he stood out as the perfect fighting animal: cold, cunning, ruthless, untiring, quick of decision, incredibly brave.” He fought on the Western Front until the fall of 1915, when he was transferred to an elite battalion of mountain shock troops. He served with them in France, Romania, and Italy. In October 1917, during the Battle of Mount Matajur, Rommel (now a 1stlieutenant) took charge of four companies in addition to his own and captured two Italian brigades and several smaller units, totaling 9,000 men and 81 guns. His total strength never exceeded 800 men. A couple of days later, he captured the entire Italian 1stInfantry Division at Longarone: 10,000 men, 18 guns and 200 machine guns. For this feat, he was awarded the Pour le Merite, which was the equivalent of the Congressional Medal of Honor when granted to someone so young. He was promoted to captain shortly after that.

After the Armistice ended World War I in late 1918, Rommel was selected for the Reichsheer, as the peacetime army was called. Here, he was a content family man. He took to marriage enthusiastically. At home, he was good-tempered and an excellent fix-it man. His only flaw was attempting to play the violin—apparently without a great deal of success.

Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933. Rommel’s political convictions and his ambivalent relationship with the Nazis have been the subject of controversy in recent years. Like many Germans, he supported Hitler at first—at least to a degree. He was pleased with Hitler’s successful economic efforts to end the Depression in Germany, as well as his public works programs (including the building of the autobahnen), his renunciation of the odorous Treaty of Versailles, his rebuilding of the military, and his reoccupation of former German areas taken from the Reich after World War I. Only gradually did this change. Sacred vows were broken, and outlandish statements which Rommel and most Germans dismissed as wild rhetoric turned out to be uttered in deadly seriousness. But all that was in the future.

MILITARY CAREER TAKES OFF

Rommel was a lieutenant colonel in 1935, teaching at the War School in Dresden, when he wrote a book based on his lectures and World War I experiences. It became a best seller and Adolf Hitler read it. He determined to meet the author and had Rommel attached to his escort for the Nuremberg Party Rally of 1936. The Fuehrer liked the Swabian and named him commander of the Fuehrer Bodyguard Battalion during the occupations of Czechoslovakia and Memel, and during the invasion of Poland in 1939. He promoted Rommel to major general on August 23, 1939.

In Poland, Rommel saw the blitzkrieg at first hand. Although he had no armored experience, he saw the future lay in the armored branch. After the fall of Warsaw, he asked Hitler for the command of a panzer division, and the dictator gave it to him.

Erwin Rommel had a natural grasp for mobile warfare. As commander of the 7thPanzer Division during the French campaign (1940), he captured 97,468 men and captured or destroyed 458 tanks and armored cars, 277 guns, 64 anti-tank guns, 4,000 to 5,000 trucks, tons of supplies, five French admirals, and about 20 Allied generals. He had approximately 10,000 men and 218 tanks, mostly inferior Czech T-38s.

Rommel was on occupation duty in southwestern France in early 1941 when the Italian 10thArmy in Libya collapsed under British attack. Hitler ordered Rommel to North Africa as commander of the Afrika Korps (15thand 21stPanzer Divisions) to restore the situation. Here he won victory after victory and made himself a renowned military general. In his First Cyrenaican Campaign (1941), Rommel pushed on to the Egyptian frontier and overran all of Libya except Tobruk, smashing the British XIII Corps (the former Western Desert Force) in the process. With less than one full panzer division, he destroyed the British 2ndArmoured Division. Only four of its tanks escaped.

RESILIENT AND RESOURCEFUL AGAINST GREAT ODDS

Rommel was forced to lay siege to Tobruk. It lasted 242 days. The British made three attempts to liberate Tobruk: Operations Brevity, Battleaxe and Crusader. Rommel was severely handicapped, because the British sank 85% of its supplies, and he had only 15% of his needed petroleum and ammunition. Fighting an entire British army with only two divisions, Rommel destroyed 814 British tanks and armored cars, while losing only 167 himself. He had only about 80 tanks left when he was forced to retreat in December 1941.

“If Rommel had an outstanding quality, it was resilience,” British Brigadier Desmond Young wrote later. “He was like one of those weighted toy figures, no sooner was he knocked down than he was on his feet again.” In January 1942, when he received a shipment of 50 new panzers, he assumed the offensive again. This was the Second Cyrenaican Campaign. In five days, he destroyed or captured 299 tanks and armored cars, 147 guns, and 935 prisoners. He lost three tanks and 14 men. 

The British dug into the Gazala Line, which they enhanced with a million mines. Rommel outflanked it on May 26 and started a battle that lasted until June 21. He had 333 panzers and 228 mostly useless Italian tanks against 900 British tanks. The British 8thArmy had fewer than 100 “runners” when it retreated into Egypt. Rommel overran Tobruk and took 19,000 prisoners. Hitler was so pleased that he promoted the Desert Fox to field marshal.

After the fall of Tobruk, Rommel invaded Egypt, even though he had only about 55 runners. A heavily reinforced 8thArmy checked him at El Alamein, just 60 miles from the Nile. The British then launched a series of counterattacks against Panzer Army Afrika, aimed primarily at Rommel’s Italian units. Rommel checked them all.

The Desert Fox launched a last-chance offensive at Alam Halfa Ridge on August 30. He had 259 panzers. Montgomery had 713 tanks and absolute command of the air. Rommel lost almost 3,000 men and 49 tanks. Monty lost 1,750 men and 67 tanks. It was the turning point of the Desert War.

The decisive battle in North Africa began on October 23, 1942. When it started, Panzer Army Afrika had 104,000 men (half of them German) against Montgomery’s 195,000. The Germans were outnumbered 4 to 1 in men, 5 to 1 in tanks (excluding Italian tanks), 3 to 1 in anti-tank guns, and 3.6 to 1 in aircraft. Rommel’s forces were dangerously low on fuel, making a battle of maneuver impossible. Rommel had 293 tanks when the battle began. Only a dozen of them survived the battle. The British lost about 500 tanks.

In December 1943, Rommel’s Army Group B assumed command of the 7thArmy, 15thArmy, and Armed Forces Netherlands. They were part of Rundstedt’s OB West (Oberbefehlshaber West), the German Supreme Command in the West. OB West had 58 divisions. Hitler had 151 divisions fighting on the Eastern Front.

DEFEAT, CONSPIRACY, AND SUICIDE

Rommel significantly thickened the defenses of Fortress Europe. When the Allies landed in Normandy in June 1944, Rommel was able to check but not repulse the Great Invasion. Meanwhile, Rommel learned that Hitler and his cronies were committing mass murders in the East. He turned against the Nazis and joined the conspiracy to overthrow Hitler and his regime. 

Field Marshal Rommel was seriously wounded by an Allied fighter-bomber on July 17. Three days later, the conspirators detonated a bomb under Hitler’s table, severely injuring him. After the coup attempt failed, the Gestapo launched a full-scale investigation. They discovered Rommel’s part in the plot. On October 14, 1944, a pair of Nazi generals offered Rommel a choice: stand trial in front of the People’s Court or commit suicide. Under the doctrine of Sippenhaft—collective family responsibility—the Nazis would then arrest his family, and they would end up in a concentration camp, if they were lucky. However, if the field marshal committed suicide, they said, his family would be spared, and would even be allowed to draw his pension. Rommel declared that he would be dead in 15 minutes. He took a cyanide pill provided by the Nazis and was dead within half an hour. Thus ended the life of the military general.

On this occasion, the Nazis actually kept their word. They did not harm Rommel’s family. Lucie Mollin Rommel died of natural causes in 1971. Their only child, Manfred, died in 2013. Gertrude, Rommel’s illegitimate daughter, passed away in 2000.

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Dr. Samuel W. Mitcham Jr. is the author of newly-released Desert Fox: The Storied Military Career of Erwin Rommel (Regnery History; March 12, 2019 - Amazon US| Amazon UK), and more than forty other history books. He has appeared on the History Channel and the BBC, been a visiting professor at West Point, and served as an Army helicopter pilot during the Vietnam War.

The Wall Street Journal praised his previous title, Vicksburg: The Bloody Siege that Turned the Tide of the Civil War (Regnery History; June 4, 2018 – Amazon US| Amazon UK), as a work that “thoroughly recounts the series of battles leading to the gates of Vicksburg and illuminates some underappreciated aspects of the war.”

He lives with his family in Monroe, Louisiana, where he is now devoted to writing military history books.