Bastion Bruges

Occupied

Bastion: Bruges in the First World War

Sophie De Schaepdrijver Hannibal

Preface

6

7

| 1917 The Underseas War

121 121

Acknowledgements

9

Violence from the Air

About this book

11

Alienation

132

Using Up the Last Card

134

Misery, Crime, Profiteering

136

(1917–1918)

Introduction

13

125

An Adulterated Economy

145

'Quertreiberei'

153

1

| Before the War

19

2

| From Menace to Invasion 28 June – 14 October 1914

29

The Very Last Chance:

3

| The Taking of Bruges

41

The Zeebrugge Raid

162

‘Poor Little Children’

166

4

| New Rulers: the ‘Marinekorps’

8

| 1918 The Spring Offensive

5

| 1914–1915

Meanwhile: Flemish Policies 49 59

Construction: November 1914 – June 1915

6

62

A Lasting Bastion

66

Orderly Exploitation

68

Living in a Bastion

70

The Enemy inside the Bastion

80

Naval Claims

171

Expectations

174

Exploitation and Exhaustion

182

Retreat

184

Liberation

186

Epilogue

192

Notes

195

Bibliography

207

93 93

(Counter-)Espionage

96

The Regime Hardens

102

Blond Idyll

115

Wonder Weapon

118

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159

59

Base or Bastion?

| 1916

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INTRODUCTION

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1

Before the War In 1914, Bruges was a slowly growing, medium-sized city with 54,000 inhabitants intra muros, plus another 23,500 in the surrounding boroughs. Intra muros, of course, was a mere expression by then: the walls had become boulevards planted with English-style gardens, and the territory of Bruges proper (excluding the surrounding boroughs, which were separate municipalities) had expanded from 430 to 2,900 hectares. From 1899 onwards, it encompassed the entire port structure of Zeebrugge, as well as the linkage canal and its shores.4 The nineteenth century had not been an era of growth. The ‘hungry forties’ had hit the city very hard, and the crisis of the 1870s had further stifled development. Most industry was small-scale; the labour market was often slack. Bruges was the only Flemish city where thousands of women – an estimated four thousand in 1914 – still earned a living making lace: elsewhere in Flanders, this low-paid trade had retreated to the countryside. Bruges lace, it is true, was a prestige product in tune with the city’s international fame as a centre of traditional arts and crafts – gold embroidery, elaborate furniture – set in a cityscape that seemed timeless. In 1902, a spectacularly successful exhibition of paintings by the late-medieval Flemish Primitives – Van Eyck, Van der Goes, Memling – further enhanced this aura.

7

6 Three young women of the Bruges bourgeoisie, 1905.

Beeldbank Brugge.

7 Lace-workers at Koolkerke, 1900. Beeldbank Brugge.

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CHAPTER 5

B AS E O R B AS T I O N ?

To what end was this position created? The answer to this question depended on what material the Fleet was willing to grant the Marinekorps. Although Von Schröder had no actual superiors, he had to ask the Fleet for equipment – sometimes in vain, as the historian Mark Karau has demonstrated. This reluctance was inspired by a certain fetishism. The Hochseeflotte had become a kind of Holy Grail, and the commanders in the bases of Heligoland were horrified at the thought of putting their ships in harm’s way – not just the warships but also the lighter cruisers and destroyers requested by Von Schröder.82 (It is perhaps instructive that no one, meanwhile, thought twice about placing hundreds of thousands of young bodies in the line of fire unarmoured. The German troops at that time were equipped with leather pin-helmets only; on the Yser front, a friend of Rudolf Schröder’s was shot through the head beside him.)

38 Destroyer in Bruges harbour. Beeldbank Brugge.

39 Two UC-I-type submarines on Klein Handelsdok in Bruges harbour. Collection Tomas Termote, Bredene.

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CHAPTER 5

58 Anna De Beir, posing in Bruges prison after the war; from her war memoirs In the Eagle’s Claws.

67

58

only a stay of execution. But the time thus gained gave German diplomacy free rein. While De Beir was detained in Bruges prison, unsure of her fate, in Berlin Minister of Foreign Affairs Gottlieb von Jagow explained to the Emperor, on 17 December 1915, that a repeat of the Cavell scandal had to be avoided at all costs. (Since the Cavell case, all capital condemnations of women required the Emperor’s explicit approval.) De Beir was eventually pardoned. On 24 February 1916, she was transported to Germany, there to be detained under very harsh conditions until the end of the war. But she survived and returned to Bruges, where she opened a hotel on Sint-Annarei; its guests could purchase her memoir, which was written in English. Anna De Beir died in Bruges in 1971 at age 97.119 De Beir was an exceptional figure, as were other spies and resistance agents. At the same time, the choices made by these people indicate a mindset among civilians. As Luc Schepens has observed, that

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1916

74 Four requisitioned workers from Sint-Kruis, 1917.

Beeldbank Brugge.

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1917

83 ‘The “German Barbarians” Guarding the Treasures of the Great Library of Bruges’, 1914 or 1915. Beeldbank Brugge.

84 Emperor Wilhelm II visiting Our Lady’s Church in Bruges, 24 April 1918. Beeldbank Brugge.

V I O L E N C E F R O M T H E A I R , 1 9 1 7–1 9 1 8 As the base for intensified attacks on British shipping, the Marinegebiet now became a target of attacks from the Royal Naval Air Service (and, for Zeebrugge and Ostend, bombings from sea). The inhabitants of the ‘Flemish triangle’ thus found themselves between a rock and a hard place: their home which the conquerors had built into a bastion was now besieged.

At the start of the war, the idea that Bruges of all cities could become a target had struck neutral observers as incongruous. According to the American journalist Granville Fortescue, who reported on the German march into Belgium, ‘it was the German hope that they would be able to fortify this part of the coast without being molested’.196 As the Dutch newspaper NRC wrote in January 1915, people who knew the situation well were convinced that the Germans had chosen Bruges as a base – and were now embedding themselves there and on

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108 Marinekorps troops taking position behind machine guns, Driekoningenstraat, Sint-Kruis.

Beeldbank Brugge.

109 Siegfrieden (victorious peace): detail from ‘Bilder zu Goethes “Faust” dargestellt auf dem Kriegstheater in Flandern’, An Flanderns Küste 42 (1 December 1917), 332–33.

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HOOFDSTUK 8

130 25 October 1918: King Albert and Queen Elisabeth leaving the Provincial Court on the Markt.

Beeldbank Brugge.

131 25 October 1918: Albert, Elisabeth and Crown Prince Leopold on the Markt. Beeldbank Brugge.

132 Inauguration of the 1914–18 War Monument at Assebroek, 27 July 1919. Photo Watteyne, Beeldbank Brugge.

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