The Bayeux Tapestry: Another Thread

 

Just as I had published my blog on the Bayeux Tapestry, I happened to come across some more Bayeux information unknown to me previously. Honestly, this eleventh century ‘embroidered epic’ is a gift that goes on giving! Its long history contains so many plots and counter narratives to keep a person engaged for a long time!

I certainly had missed the news, released in March 2025, that a fragment of the Bayeux had been discovered in the Schleswig-Holstein archives. Of course, as one might surmise, it is there because of Nazi activity during WW2, when one arm of the German S.S. boasted a heritage research group named the Ahnenerbe which initiated the Sonderauftrag Bayeux [Special Operation Bayeux], under the ultimate authority of Heinrich Himmler. In fact, the Ahnenerbe’s sole purpose was to discover, develop and disseminate narratives in support of the mythology central to the Nazi regime, the supremacy of the Aryan race. Art in all its forms was of disproportionate interest to the Nazis because it permitted the manipulation of any material towards the goal of achieving the grand Nazi aim of global domination.

Heinrich Himmler who cast a covetous eye
on the Tapestry, to adorn his private castle
at Wewelsburg.

Not unexpectedly, these projects deliberately manipulated historical evidence to construct fabricated evidence to support the Nazi racist ideologies. Under the umbrella of the Ahnenerbe, numerous research projects were conducted with scholars travelling world-wide to find possibilities for the further mythologising of Aryan supremacy. Sonderauftrag Bayeux presented a perfect opportunity.

Although important in both British and French history as a grand record of a singularly significant period in their shared past, i.e. the Norman Conquest in 1066, the fact that German history was not involved in the undertaking did not deter the Nazis. Given the fame and extraordinary age of the Bayeux Tapestry, the Ahnenerbe saw in it a global opportunity to advance the Nazi political agenda. Sonderauftrag Bayreux decided to produce a multi-volume study of the tapestry that would assert its inherently Scandinavian character. The objective was to present the tapestry as proof of the supremacy of the early mediaeval Norman people whom the Ahnenerbe claimed as the ancestors of modern German Aryans and the descendants of the northern Europeans, the Vikings.

Herbert Jeschke (left) sketching the team recording the Bayeux Tapestry

Bayeux Cathedral

Fragment of the backing cloth
removed by Schlabow.
Recovered in March 2025 still in
the Schleswigh-Holstein archives

By June 1941, work had begun. Among the team sent to occupied Normandy to study the tapestry first-hand was Karl Schlabow, a textile expert and Head of the Germanic Costume Institute at Neumunster in Germany. He and his team from Sonderauftrag Bayeux spent a fortnight in Bayeux during which period, Schlabow removed a fragment of the tapestry’s backing fabric and took it back to Neumunster to study it. Herbert Jeschke, the artist commissioned to create a painted reproduction of the tapestry, also sketched himself with Schlabow and Herbert Jankhun, Director of the Project, entitled "Die Tapisserie!” which expressed their delight at their privileged viewing of this mediaeval masterpiece. To be inducted into the group, the Ahnenerbe, prospective members could not have Jewish friends and must express sympathy for communist views. Schlabow first had to join the *S.S. which meant he had to appear at least sympathetic to Nazism He held the lowly rank of  

Group of Nazi officers with Himmler next to Hitler. 1944

S.S.Unterscharfuhrer,

(sergeant) but, together with many other members, denied all knowledge of Ahnenerbe at the war’s end. En route to the Bayeux seizure, Himmler sent a coded signal to SS Chiefs in Paris in August 1944 ordering that the masterpiece be taken to Berlin before Paris was reduced to rubble in a huge onslaught planned by Hitler. Fortunately, Bletchley Park intercepted the signal from the Gestapo and ensured that the French Resistance rescued it in time.

The grand project managed only to produce an illustrated study, and to dispatch researchers to study the original textile, but this was considered sufficient to claim the Bayeux Tapestry as a monument to Aryan supremacy. WW2 ended in May 1945, too early for the entire Scandinavian influence to be outlined but in time to destroy claims to Germanic power. After the war, in 1946, Schlabow returned to research, working at the Schleswig-Holstein State Museum where the fragment he had cut out, re-appeared in March of this year, eighty years after it had been first removed. It continues to be on display in Schleswig-Holstein but will reappear at the re-furbished Musee de la Tapisserie de Bayeux in Normandy in time for that museum’s re-opening in 2027.

  *S.S. = Schutzstaffel. A paramilitary organisation founded for personal protection by Adolf Hitler on 4 April 1925 and disbanded on 8 May 1945. Became almost a virtual state within the Third Reich and operated with murderous impunity in Europe during WW2.