War Damage in Western Europe: The Destruction of Historic Monuments During the Second World War 9780585441665

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War Damage in Western Europe The Destruction of Historic Monuments During the Second World War

Nicola Lambourne

Edinburgh University Press

© Nicola Lambourne, 2001 Transferred to digital print 2013 Edinburgh University Press Ltd 22 George Square, Edinburgh Typeset in Melior by Pioneer Associates, Perthshire, and Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CRO 4YY A CIP Record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 0 7486 1285 8 (paperback)

The right of Nicola Lambourne to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Contents

List of illustrations

vi

Acknowledgements

viii

Note on the map, place names and translations

ix

Map

x

Introduction

1

1. Precedents and Laws - War Damage to Historic Monuments 1870-1939

12

2. A Short Second World War History of Architecture

40

3. Propaganda on Damaged Monuments Morale and Guilt

89

4.

Calculated Frightfulness

137

5. European Ruins and Reconstruction

168

Conclusion

204

Bibliography

213

Index

225

List of illustrations

F ig ure

1.1

F igure

1.2

F igure

1.3

F ig ure F ig ure

1.4 1.5

F ig ure

2.1

F ig ure

2.2

F igure F igure F igure F igure F igure F igure

2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 2.7 2.8

F igure F igure F ig ure F ig ure F igure

2.9 2.10 2.11 2.12 2.13

F igure

2.14

Strasbourg Cathedral under bombardment on the night of 24 August 1870. The Prussian position in the Parc de Saint-Cloud. Shells exploding on Reims Cathedral in April 1917. Aerial view of the damaged Reims Cathedral. Leuven (Louvain), Belgium: reading room of the University Library. Damage to Buckingham Palace, London, being inspected by Winston Churchill and the King and Queen. Coventry Cathedral: the ruined church with only the tower and outer walls still standing. Exeter in 1942 after the Baedeker raids. York in 1942 after the Baedeker raid. Canterbury in 1942 after the Baedeker raid. Cologne, St Gereon with damaged Dekagon. Berlin, the postwar state of the Reichstag. Berlin, the ruined Kaiser-WilhelmGedachtnis-Kirche. Rome, San Lorenzo fuori le Mura. The bombarded monastery of Montecassino. Munich, aerial view of the ruined Residenz. Rouen, view of the cathedral from the south. Caen, the damaged St Pierre and surrounding ruins. Saint-Lo, the ruined town centre, with Notre-Dame. vi

15 16 20 21 25

46 48 54 55 56 57 63

64 66 67 68 69 71 72

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

F igure F igure F igure

2.15 2.16 2.17

F igure

2.18

F ig ure

2.19

F ig ure

2.20

F ig ure

2.21

F ig ure

2.22

F igure 3.1 F igure 3.2 F igure 3.3 F ig ure

3.4

F igure 3.5 F igure 3.6 F ig ure 3.7 F ig ure

3.8

F ig ure

5.1

F igure F igure

5.2 5.3

F igure

5.4

Paris, Notre-Dame intact after the liberation. Padua, the damaged Eremitani church. Trier, the damaged west front portal of the Liebfrauenkirche. Nuremberg, the devastated historic city centre. Dresden, the Frauenkirche intact with the Neumarkt. Dresden, the Frauenkirche and Neumarkt after bombing. Cologne, the cathedral and surrounding Altstadt before area bombing. Cologne, the cathedral and surrounding Altstadt after the Second World War. ‘Back Them Up’ poster. ‘Wer sprach von Hunnen’, cartoon. ‘Le Dieu Thor, la plus barbare d’entre les barbares divinites de la Vieille Germanie’. John Piper, ‘Christ Church, Newgate Street after its Destruction in 1940’. John Piper, ‘The Ruined House of Commons’. John Piper, ‘All Saints Chapel, Bath’. Graham Sutherland, ‘Devastation 1941. An East End street’. John Piper, ‘Coventry Cathedral, November 15th, 1940’. Post-liberation Allied Forces photograph of the bombed church of St Malo in Valognes. St Paul’s Cathedral, London, after the war. St Andrew’s Church, Plymouth as ‘garden ruin’. Berlin, the war-damaged Kaiser-WilhelmGedachtnis-Kirche partly preserved beside the new church.

v ii

74 76 78 81 82 83 84 85 92 104

105 109 110 Ill

112 113

177 179 180

181

Acknowledgements

For their help in the researching and illustrating of this book I would like to thank in particular Janice Day of the Courtauld Institute Book Library, the staff of the Conway Library at the Courtauld Institute of Art, staff in the Department of Printed Books, Art Department and Photograph Archive at the Imperial War Museum, the staff of the National Monuments Record, and Jens Boel and Mahmoud Ghander of the Unesco Archives in Paris. For help in funding the research, many thanks to the Arts Faculty of the Open University and thank you also to Cheryl Beasley and Richard Tuffs of the Open University Study Centre in Brussels for ‘technical assistance’ and general encouragement. I would like to dedicate this book to Christopher Todd, who is indirectly responsible for it being written at all.

vm

Note on the map, place names and translations

Many historic monuments and cities across western Europe are referred to in this book and to orientate the reader I have included a map of the main countries featured: Great Britain, Germany, France, Italy, The Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg. The towns marked on the map are those mentioned in the text, that is, the principal locations of cultural war damage during the Second World War plus some other important sites. Sites of First World War damage to historic monuments are also marked. As place names in different languages make a regular appearance throughout the text, I have adopted the following system: if there is a common anglicised version of the place name, I have used that - Munich instead of Miinchen, for example - but have otherwise used the ‘local’ spelling. In the case of Belgian towns, which fall either north or south of the current Dutch/French ‘language line’ in that country, place names are given first in the geographically cor­ rect language, with the alternative following in brackets, for instance Mechelen (Malines). I have made an exception for Louvain, which should be Leuven, but the notorious war damage that occurred there is associated historically with the French name for the town. Translations from French and German sources are my own unless otherwise stated.

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