This exhibit in the museum belonged to Friedrich Louis Pabsch and he, along with 73 others, died in an air raid on 4 December 1943 whilst sheltering at Nostitzstraße (Reichpietschstraße) 19 and 21. His pocket watch stopped at the time of the air raid, at 03:44.
The air raid on the city that night was one of their worst of the war, when over 500 RAF bombers dropped around 1,800 tons of explosives in a massive attack aimed at crippling industry and transport but which instead ravaged residential areas. Fires tore through the city, merging into a firestorm that destroyed large parts of the centre, killing around 1,800 people and leaving tens of thousands homeless. Historic buildings, factories, and railway yards were obliterated, with survivors later recalled fleeing through smoke-filled streets as shelters collapsed.
The museum notes that there are traces in basements to this day throughout the city when residents wrote “Luftangriff 04/12/1943”, meaning air raid, given the ferocity of the night’s bombings.
This share certificate in the museum is from Leipzig, dated 13 July 1938, and looks like a neatly printed piece of paper declaring ownership of 1,000 Reichsmark in the Gebrüder Heine Tuchhandels-Aktiengesellschaft, a textile trading company. But as with so many relics from the late 1930s, this is much more sinister. It’s the story of a business which was forcibly taken from its Jewish owners, absorbed into the machinery of the Nazi economy, and stripped of its name, its history and its identity.
Gebrüder Heine had been a respected textile firm in Leipzig, a city that before 1933 was one of Europe’s great trading hubs. Jewish businesses like Heine’s were central to Leipzig’s commercial life, especially in textiles and fur. But by the late 1930s, the Nazis had made it increasingly impossible for Jewish entrepreneurs to survive. Laws, boycotts and systematic harassment had already driven many to ruin. For those still operating, the so-called “Aryanisation” policies brought the final blow which were forced sales at a fraction of true value, under threat and coercion.
In July 1938, Gebrüder Heine’s owners were compelled to sell and it was likely at a hugely underflated price. The buyer was TUAG (Tuchhandels-Union AG), a non-Jewish firm which took over the assets, premises and business operations. The company was rebranded under new management, its Jewish founders expelled from both their livelihood and their rights as shareholders.
This share certificate, issued in the final days of the firm’s existence, reflects that transition. It proclaims ownership in Gebrüder Heine Tuchhandels-AG, but the red overprint at the top marks the shift of power. The paper itself is meticulously designed, printed by Giesecke & Devrient, and stamped with seals and signatures that convey legitimacy and stability.
This must have been a bitter moment for the former owners, forced effectively to sell their business by the state. There was still a bureaucratic process, but it offered Jewish businesses nearly no protection or rights.
However, this story does have a rather more positive ending as Walter Heine was able to escape to Australia where he joined the military and promptly started what became a global commodity company called Heine Brothers after the end of the war. Here’s an interesting article about the family’s fortunes after they were forced out of Germany.
I’d never noticed that there was a memorial here near the Lady Julian Bridge, although, to be fair, it perhaps isn’t immediately obvious. It’s in the centre off the photo, just to the right of the bench.
This is the area that he was born, with the photo taken on what is marked as Staithe Lane on the map.
Sidney James Day was born in the city on 3 July 1891 and he served with the 11th Battalion, Suffolk Regiment during the First World War. one of the countless young men sent to the Western Front. By the summer of 1917, the war had become a grinding, muddy nightmare and the Battle of Passchendaele raging in all its futility. It was here, on 26 August 1917, near Malakoff Farm in Belgium, that Day’s actions would be considered as really quite brave.
After already being involved with capturing a German trench, during a German counterattack, a shell with grenades exploded in the trench, killing and wounding several men. In that chaos, Day stayed calm and he picked up one of the grenades and threw it clear just before it detonated, saving the lives of those around him. Then, with the trench partly destroyed and the enemy advancing, he rallied his men, reorganised the position, and led a counterattack that drove the Germans back and captured prisoners.
Sidney was severely wounded in the process, but his rather brave leadership ensured the trench held. His actions on that day meant that he was awarded the Victoria Cross and he was awarded his medal by King George V himself in January 1918.
I rather liked this image from the burnt records (British war records from the First World War which were heavily damaged by bombing in the Second World War) which is an inventory check of what items were in Sidney’s possession. I note that he proudly writes VC after his name, although I absolutely would in the rather unlikely event that I were to be awarded it. After the war he worked as a porter, moving to Fraser Road in Portsmouth and he died in 1959, with this memorial being a rather lovely tribute to him.
I posted about a photo displayed at the museum which was taken by Robert Capa, but this is perhaps his most well known image. A number of his photos appeared in Life Magazine in 1945 and they have become widely shared around the world.
The photograph shows Private Raymond J. Bowman, a 21-year-old American soldier, lying dead on a balcony after being struck by a sniper’s bullet while reloading his weapon. He had taken up position to support advancing infantry near Leipzig’s Zeppelin Bridge when he fell. Capa climbed through the balcony window and documented the scene with this photo.
The name of this photo, which I’ve used in the title of this blog post, isn’t accurate as there were a couple more weeks until the end of the Second World War in Europe, let alone in other theatres around the world. I didn’t realise when I visited the city, otherwise I would have visited, that the house that this photo was taken in has been saved from demolition and is now known as Capa House.
One element that is really poignant is that Lehman Riggs visited Capa House in 2019 as part of a ceremony to commemorate those who died in the conflict. Riggs was an American veteran who saw the killing of Bowman on that balcony and he said:
“I was 3ft from him when it happened. I could have reached out and touched him, but I knew he was dead. I had to carry on in his place, as I’d been trained to do.”
Riggs died in 2021 at the age of 101, surviving over 75 years longer than Bowman. The owners of the flat struggled to get Bowman’s blood out of their carpet, it was “a permanent reminder of the horrors that happened” a family member said. There’s a Guardian article about the flat, the killing and the photo which I found interesting.
Unfortunately, I hadn’t realised about the flat when I visited Leipzig, although looking at photos I was very close to it when walking into the city centre from the hotel. I’ll put it on my seemingly never ending places to visit list….
This is one of a few photos in the museum by Robert Capa (1913-1954) who recorded the liberation of numerous cities. This is a US soldier who is herding German soldiers following the Battle of Leipzig in April 1945. As a series of photos, they’re thought provoking and interesting.
The city was in ruins with over half the buildings destroyed and the infrastructure shattered from air raids. The German soldiers still alive might have been afraid of the US soldiers depending on what stories they had been told, but there must have been so much relief that this war seemed to be coming to an end.
There’s another photo in this series, which was likely taken by Capa shortly afterwards.
This is a basement door from the building located at Schlegelstraße 5 which lists all of the air raids which took place in Leipzig during the Second World War. It’s scuffed, damaged and at the time it proved something of a barrier between safety and danger.
There’s nothing particularly decorative or ornate about the door, but the human touch of carefully writing these times down during moments of boredom likely interspersed with terror is rather intriguing. I rather like that the artist (or whatever the best word is here) would likely not have known when their final line noting the time and date was and I suspect it wouldn’t have occurred to them that the door would end up in the city’s museum. As for why I thought the need to write about it, I think it’s because of the logic that it holds more humanity than perhaps monuments could achieve.
This war poster uses a combination of guilt and nationalism to get citizens to go to the air raid shelter. It translates something like:
“It depends on you too!
Anyone who, out of curiosity or laziness, fails to go to the air raid shelter during an air raid alarm shows not courage, but reckless irresponsibility.
Anyone who disregards blackout regulations at home or at work endangers their fellow citizens and puts lives and property at risk.
Anyone who, during an Air Raid Alarm, lacks the required discipline, consideration, and willingness to help, shows that the fate of others means nothing to them.
Everyone must follow the command of the hour: maintain calm and order! Only in this way can the valuable assets of the German people be protected.
Every act of negligence endangers the community!
I know only one good German, and that is a disciplined German!
Every violation of air raid regulations is a betrayal of the community.
It depends on you too!”
The large black text at the top bellows “Auch auf Dich kommt es an!”, which translates to “It depends on you too!” which is a phrase that sounds almost encouraging until you realise it’s really saying “If something goes wrong, we’ll be blaming you.” The message beneath is something of a masterclass in guilt-laden discipline as if you don’t go to the air raid shelter, it’s not bravery but some sort of sub-optimal “irresponsible recklessness”. Forgetting to close your blackout curtains? That’s not carelessness, it’s practically sabotage. In the world of wartime Leipzig, leaving a lamp on made you not just a bad neighbour but a potential traitor to the Nazi regime.
I’m not suggesting that British posters were always cuddly and friendly on this matter, but this one (Image: Imperial War Museum Art.IWM PST 13891) seems typical of a rather softer style than the German shouty style.
This exhibit relates to Hedwig Burgheim, an educationalist who, in the 1930s, founded a Jewish school in Leipzig focusing on home economics and training kindergarten teachers. Her work was likely as an act of hope and purpose in a time when the future for Germany’s Jewish population was rapidly being stripped away by the Nazis. There’s a lot more information about her on the German Wikipedia page, but one tragedy is that her attempts to move to the United States were thwarted.
By 1943, Hedwig was forced to move into one of Leipzig’s so-called “Judenhäuser”, the designated houses where Jewish families were crowded together before deportation. Aware of the horrors that were coming, she entrusted a suitcase which was filled with her personal belongings to a family she had befriended, a small act of faith that some part of her life might survive this horrendous war.
She was deported to Auschwitz and murdered on 27 February 1943. Her nephew Ralf Kralowitz returned to Leipzig from Buchenwald concentration camp, but it was returned to him empty. The contents had vanished, the museum doesn’t note whether they were likely stolen, lost or simply scattered.
The Nazis took away everything that Hedwig had built, whether that be her school, the Jewish community she was a part of, her possessions and ultimately her life. It’s a powerful exhibit sitting here in the museum and at least this exists to tell her story. Her memory certainly hasn’t been forgotten, there are numerous memorials to her and there’s also the Hedwig-Burgheim-Straße road in the city which has been named after her.
Back to Leipzig and this is a badge from the Theresienstadt Ghetto (a town in the Czech Republic, now known as Terezín), where I went a couple of years ago but that’s something else I’ve just realised that I haven’t written up.
Between 1942 and 1945, seven deportation trains departed from Leipzig, carrying hundreds of Jewish residents who had been stripped of their rights, property and dignity. The final transport, which left in early 1945, reached Theresienstadt just weeks before the camp was liberated by Soviet forces in May.
Not much more is known about this little piece of cloth, but the fragment remaining deserves at least some attention for what it now commemorates.
I wasn’t going to blog this, but I think Nathan thought that I needed more exciting content and since he asked if I would be, I decided that I would…. Nathan, who was celebrating his 32nd birthday (despite his claims he’s more like 52), thought footgolf would be a marvellous idea. Although I’m a natural athlete (mostly at things that don’t involve much movement) I was a little concerned about what could possibly go wrong.
I’m not sure whether Adam and Robbie want me writing about this exciting day, but they won’t see the post, so that sorts out that concern. Here’s the football I was using for the day. Note Nathan is in shorts, he had changed nearby like some rogue PE teacher as he wanted to be in sportswear for this to allow for maximum movement. Robbie, Adam and I were in jeans as we hadn’t realised we were supposed to dress in sportswear as that wasn’t mentioned in the invite.
Here’s our young Fernando Torres who has just booted his first shot into the grass. He showed all the finesse of someone destined for ending up mid-table, but he supports Norwich City and so that’s in keeping.
Very athletic. He then promptly stood in something that a dog had left behind. This annoyed him, I don’t think that he’s used to that in the stadiums he usually plays in.
I’m not saying that Nathan is competitive, but I did wonder whether he had been out playing footgolf all week in preparation. He denied, in an annoyed voice, this suggestion. Incidentally, I thought that the pitch and putt course had separate times for footgolf and actual golf, but they just have people go around at the same time.
If I’m being honest, I took photos in the hope that Nathan fell over. I was mildly annoyed that he didn’t as that would have made for a more fun photo.
Nathan had a great idea that to help Robbie he’d put himself in harm’s way. I thought this made perfect sense, but the readers of this blog (all two of them) can probably guess from Robbie’s positioning here that it didn’t work very well. Robbie, who is nicer than me as a person, was worried about kicking Nathan. That wouldn’t have crossed my mind.
Nathan pretended not to be keeping score, promising to “just add it up at the end”, but we all knew he had a mental spreadsheet running by the second hole. I’d also add that I’m about the least competitive person ever. Unless it involves Nathan as he just makes me competitive, that’s another one of his talents.
Adam wasn’t very competitive at all, witnessed by how he spent a lot of time in the shrubbery. I didn’t say anything, I thought that was for the best.
I was partly surprised that Nathan wasn’t in full football kit rather than casual sportswear. Note that Robbie and Adam took great care of their jackets, that’s proper informal wear.
Perhaps sub-optimal for Adam. It was quite busy at the course so it took us a couple of hours to get around the 18 hours, but there was no rush and the weather was agreeable.
Nathan realised that although shorts showed off his hairy legs to the ladies, they also meant that he got stung whilst walking about in the nettles.
This was the final hole and it transpired that Robbie and Adam were playing for the third and fourth places. And there were spectators so I noticed that Nathan was prancing around like Sky Sports were filming. Once again, I didn’t say anything.
And the final results. Nathan won with 67, I was second with 70, Robbie was third with 81 and Adam was fourth with 82. Nathan pretended that he wasn’t really excited about this. But we all knew that this score card would be getting framed and put on his wall.
Anyway, a marvellous day and thank you to Nathan to the invite for his big day (although when he reads this I’m unlikely to get an invite next year) which was a lot of fun. And it was great company, with Nathan’s amusing commentary adding positively to the whole experience for everyone.
