9th January 1937 Kolonial Briefmarken Schau 9th January 1937 Kolonial Briefmarken Schau Berlin Pankow Commemorative postcard sent from Berlin, issued for the Colonial Postage Stamp Show, Berlin-Pankow (with 6 Pf Hindenburg medallion). Featuring cancellation JB:Berlin210/108 - 'Kolonial-Briefmarken-Schau/ 9.-10.1.11937'. Ref: 09.01.1937 Second commemorative postcard issued for the show Commemorative postcard issued for the Colonial Postage Stamp Show, Berlin-Pankow (with 5 Pf. Luftpost). Featuring cancellation JB:Berlin210/108 - 'Kolonial-Briefmarken-Schau/ 9.-10.1.11937'. Note: Reverse is blank. Ref: 10.01.1937 - 27/74, BV210 Ticket (#0408) issued for the Kolonial Briefmarken Schau, Berlin-Pankow (Ref: 09.01.1937 - found in envelope bearing se-tenant SK 30) Front Reverse Contact Brief History to inform us of additional information regarding this page

Postcard depicting Delag (Deutsche Luftschiffahrts-Aktiengesellschaft) Luftschiff 'Schwaben', designated LZ10. LZ = Luftschiffbau Zeppelin. Ref: 14.08.1936 - 25/9 14th August 1936 LZ10 Schwaben Postcard depicting Delag (Deutsche Luftschiffahrts-Aktiengesellschaft) Luftschiff 'Schwaben', designated LZ10. LZ = Luftschiffbau Zeppelin. Ref: 14.08.1936 - 25/9 Contact Brief History to inform us of additional information regarding this page

8th January 1937 Day of the Postage Stamp 8th January 1937 Day of the Postage Stamp 1937

3rd June 1937 Edward VIII 3rd June 1937 Edward VIII Commemorative cover celebrating the marriage of Edward, Duke of Windsor, to Wallis Simpson. Ref: 03.06.1937 - 25/40 Edward VIII - The Duke of Windsor Contact Brief History to inform us of additional information regarding this page

22nd March 1937 SCW - Vigo 22nd March 1937 SCW Vigo Spanish Civil War. Postcard sent from Vigo to Paris, depicting a street scene in Vigo. Featuring to the reverse a censor hand-stamp and propaganda cachet. Ref: 22.03.1937 Vigo Vigo is a city and municipality in the province of Pontevedra, within the autonomous community of Galicia, Spain. Located in the northwest of the Iberian Peninsula, it sits on the southern shore of an inlet of the Atlantic Ocean, the Ria de Vigo, the southernmost of the Rías Baixas. It is the capital of the comarca of Vigo. Source: Wikipedia In early September, in the shadow of a Romanesque church in Porriño, a tiny town west of Vigo, near the Spanish Atlantic coast, a team of forensic archaeologists, volunteers and psychologists worked diligently, brushing at the earth with their bare hands, with paintbrushes, with delicate instruments. A small crowd of locals gathered around them, fanning themselves in the heat, some standing a few feet away in the shade of the trees. In the near distance, the verdant hills of Galicia rose up; small children scampered between the gravestones of an ancient cemetery just a few yards away. The work crawled along meticulously; when a recognisable artifact emerged, the onlookers would gather, clucking and murmuring amongst themselves. A collective sigh went up as a skull emerged, shattered by a bullet hole; two bony feet still wore boots. The skull and the feet belonged to men who were executed here by the Falange, supporters of Francisco Franco in the early days of the Spanish civil war. They were thrown in this unmarked grave - one of hundreds like it still scattered across Spain - purposefully placed at the foot of the church, explained Javier Ortiz, the head forensic archaeologist, 'So everyone would walk on them, forever desecrating the'. Two elderly men stood looking over into the pit. One remembered hearing the screaming, the shots. The other was looking for his father. For 70 years, Spain has avoided such painful disinterment. Even though townspeople knew exactly where their neighbours were buried, it wasn't until 2000 when Emilio Silva, now the director of the non profit Association for the Recuperation of Historical Memory (ARHM), set out looking for his own grandfather that work on these graves began - and even then only with great controversy. Many opined that to unearth and rebury would awaken the wounds of the civil war and divide the country once again. The effort to recover the past gained momentum in the early part of this decade, with individual families seeking answers about their personal pasts. Ortiz and other forensic archaeologists like him go where they are invited by a family member and are supported by the ARMH. The week before I visited, he opened two graves a few miles north, near Ponteverde. Before that, his colleagues gathered on the other side of the country in Burgos to open another. Alongside the archaeologists, teams of oral history gatherers were hovered next to the grave sites as well. Working with ARMH, historians from the University of California San Diego and the University of California Los Angeles launched the Audiovisual Memory Archive Project this summer; it is the first major effort to record oral testimony from the victims of Francoist repression. The rest of the country, though, has been slow to follow. 'In Spain, reading history in school is like getting the Reader's Digest version of events,' says Francesc Torres, a Catalan photographer. At a later date in New York, I speak with Torres on the opening day of his exhibition, Dark is the Room Where We Sleep (Oscura es la habitacion donde dormimos), at the International Centre for Photography (ICP) in Manhattan. In a stark presentation of giant black and white prints, adhered to the wall with thumbtacks, Torres has done his part to retrace steps that have been obscured, culturally and politically for decades. A skeletal hand still wears a wedding ring, glasses, buried in the dirt, are otherwise unscratched; a skull's jaw is open, as if screaming. These are among the dozens of photographs Torres began taking in 2004. In the town of Villamayor de los Montes, in the province of Burgos, 46 men, supporters of the Spanish republic and civilians, were killed on 16th September1936. They were shot by Franco's troops and dumped into an open pit. Beer caps are littered among the shell casings. The dead were uncovered, recovered and reburied between 2004 and 2006. Torres captured it all. 'History is resilient,' he says. 'You can cover it, but it's not going away.' Running until January, the ICP exhibit is actually an interconnected set of four installations. One features Torres's work, two others show the more famous photographs of Robert Capa and Gerda Taro, two photographers whose work from Spain conveyed to the world the message that the civil war was the first battle of the second world war, a brutal conflict of democracy versus fascism and a chilling adumbration of the fascist atrocities to come. There is also a multimedia selection of photography and print culture produced during the war. The result is multidimensional and trans-historical - war as it happened, war in actuality, war in its aftermath and war in memory. It is a groundbreaking project 70 years in the making. While Capa's works in anti-fascist conflicts - including Loyalist Militiaman at the Moment of Death, 1936 - are often immediately recognisable - this is the first time Taro's work has been exhibited in her name (her work is often confused with Capa's). Taro was a German Jewish émigré and an idealistic anti-fascist. It was a romantic identity: she and Capa met in Paris and fell in love; they ran down to Spain, joining a cadre of literary expatriate idealists including Langston Hughes, Ernest Hemingway and George Orwell. Eventually, the pair began publishing photographs signed together "Capa-Taro". Taro was immensely brave; her battle photos rival for proximity those of Capa, and her series on orphans in Madrid and women in the morgue are particularly heartbreaking. She was killed in action - believed to be the first female photojournalist to die in the line of duty - in 1937. Capa's images are headlined, This is War!, a line taken from one of the photo-heavy magazines in which Capa was published during the civil war - Vu, Regards, Match, Picture Post and, of course, Life. On one wall, the photos are breathless work, removed yet present, running alongside the soldiers, feeling the impact of the shells. Then the mood changes, slows, and reveals the human impact of the war with Capa's series on refugees bound for the French border as Catalan cities fell to Franco's troops, dragging their possessions. Women and men bear improbably large packages, everything they can carry, everything they owned in the world. The displaced are crowded in thick groups, bunched in depressing packs at train stations - 500,000 refugees fled Spain when Barcelona fell. They walked across the Pyrenees and went into exile in France where most were put into internment camps. Capa captured the melancholy of children, of farmers forced off land they had inhabited for centuries. It is the human toll in This is War!, the displacement of peoples, the sorrow and devastation, that brings the exhibit back to Francesc Torres and the work of unearthing Spain's past, in the woods just yards away from where Capa's Leica camera captured his images. 'I wanted to see if it was possible to recuperate an episode of the Spanish Civil War,' Torres explained. 'Thirty five thousand to 50,000 are still buried in open fields across the country.' Spain is a country of mass graves. Off the battlefield, citizens and captured soldiers alike were marched into the woods. Political prisoners barely existed; they were killed before they could protest. In 2000, when Emile Silva, the grandson of a republican murdered by fascist troops, set out to exhume the remains of own his grandfather it was the beginning of a conversation many Spaniards were not sure they wanted to have - and one that others had been waiting their entire lives to hear. In the book accompanying the exhibition, Torres writes, 'When you see an open grave you know, if you did not before, that it is absolutely necessary to recover the victims, to take them out of the gutters, the dumps, the wells, and the mines, all anonymous holes they were thrown into like animals. Some of these common graves are now underneath new housing developments, sports centres or supermarkets where people live, play and shop ignorantly... an open grave is a book with pages of earth where words are written with the letters of bodies, bones, fractures, bullet holes, Mauser bullet shells, hand gun shells, buttons, buckles, clothes, shoes, pencils, glasses, watches, and rings.' In Spain, officially, conversations about the war, executions and Franco's concentration camps did not take place. Franco, of course, ruled until 1975. The myth of Spain's post-Franco transition, explained Torres, 'is that in 1975, Spaniards kissed each other on both cheeks and agreed to move on'. In fact, there was a legally institutionalised amnesty for those who battled Franco, and those who worked for him, and a quasi-legal pact of silence frustrated the conversation. 'The tendency in the country has been to associate a mild amnesia with political stability,' he added. But things have opened up further under Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, the socialist prime minister. Last summer, he introduced a ley de la memoria historica, the law of historical memory, which proposed government funding for the opening of mass graves, and for the first time, promised restitution and recognition for the victims. Fifteen months of debate found legislators divided along party lines over whether it provides enough, or too much, or shouldn't provide anything at all, toward recognising one side in the conflict. A breakthrough in October provided the first hope that the law will pass. 'There can be a good use of memory,' said Torres, 'a setting the record straight, and making sure things like this never happen again'. Source: www.theguardian.com (journalist Sarah Wildman) Contact Brief History to inform us of additional information regarding this page

29th November 1937 Heinrich Köhler 29th November 1937 Heinrich Kohler Return addressed cover sent by a book dealer in Munich to the philatelic auction house of Heinrich Kohler. Postage stamps featured include W123 from MHB 61. Ref: 29.11.1937 Heinrich Köhler Source : heinrich-koehler.de It was Wednesday 23 April 1913, at 2-30 pm: the festive hall of the House of Artists on the Bellevuestrasse in Berlin fills with people. Both the participants and the curious want to see the sensation of the day - the first general stamp auction in Germany. This first auction was an extraordinary success for Heinrich Koehler and the auction house that he founded. An important centre of world philately had come into being - and the company flourished in the years that followed. The most famous collectors of the time, Philippe la Renotière von Ferrary, Baron Rothschild and Fabergé, the celebrated court jeweller of the Russian Tsars, visit the firm in Berlin. Many other important collectors become Koehler's close personal friends: Gaston Nehrlich, Lichtenstein, Weinberger and Oberländer. King George V, and King Carol II of Romania are illustrious guests and customers of the Heinrich Koehler auction house. And not without reason - most of the large collections of the day were auctioned by Heinrich Koehler. Heinrich Koehler achieved worldwide recognition and was a member of important international organisations, also the Expert Committee of the Royal Philatelic Society London (RPSL). He was also invited to sign the Roll of Distinguished Philatelists in England - being the second German, after Munk, to achieve this honour. The seizure of power by National Socialism meant an enormous drop in the activities of Heinrich Koehler - from now on the international public largely stayed away. Nevertheless, he was able to hold important auctions before the outbreak of war and also in the early years of the world war - but it was no longer his time. His death on 22nd August 1945 was a huge loss for German and international philately. When he died, he and the philatelic world could look back on 116 auctions containing countless superb items. With the death of Heinrich Koehler an era of philately and philatelic auctions came to an end - though one would hardly like to mention this against the background of world events which overshadowed the evening of his life. Heinrich Koehler's widow Anna, supported a little later by her daughter Henriette Grosse-Heinrich Koehler, nevertheless took over the tasks - in some respects difficult tasks - associated with their inheritance and decided to continue the Heinrich Koehler auction house. Berlin was destroyed. In 1948 the principal building at Friedrichstrasse 166 was requisitioned. Anna Koehler moved the company's headquarters to Wiesbaden, where there were family connections. Eventually, on 19th May 1949 they were finally able to hold the 124th Heinrich Koehler auction, the first at the Nassauer Hof in Wiesbaden. In doing so they began a new era for the auction house, continuing of a tradition whereby Germany stood for values very different from those which the country had embodied from 1933 to 1945. Commercial cover sent from Heinrich Köhler. Featuring a block of 5 & 12 Pf stamps (Mi.468 and Mi.487) taken from booklet sheet MHB 30. The booklet sheet was produced for the Hindenburg 1933 booklet and the block shown on cover may well have been part of H-Pane 77. Ref: 23.04.1934 - 15/93 Further reference: As the son of the opera singer Bernhard Köhler and his wife Ida, he grew up first in Darmstadt and later in Leipzig from 1883 to 1892. He attended school in Leipzig and was a member of the Thomanerchor. He later attended a high school in Cologne until around 1896. In 1897 he began an apprenticeship with the Cologne stamp dealer August Wilhelm Drahn. After completing his apprenticeship, Köhler went on a trip to Nicaragua with his cousin Josef Rener. After returning in April 1901, he worked as a stamp dealer in Cologne for three years. With Gérard Gilbert he founded the company Gilbert & Köhler in Paris at the end of 1903. On 7th October 1904, Köhler married Anna Rener. They had two children together: daughter Renée, born on 26th November 1907, and another daughter named Henriette, born on 17th October 1909, both in Paris. In the 1920s, Köhler had a relationship with his secretary Lina Bereiter. This also resulted in a daughter. Gilbert & Köhler began auctions in 1908. They held 40 auctions until the beginning of 1913, then they separated. Heinrich Köhler started anew in Berlin and held his first auction there on 13th April 1913 and founded the Heinrich Köhler stamp auction house. By the end of the Second World War there would be a total of 116. Famous collectors of their time, such as Philipp von Ferrary , Baron Rothschild and House of Fabergé Agathon Fabergé, the court jeweler of the Russian Tsar, visited him in Berlin. Other well-known collectors became his friends, such as Gaston Nehrlich, Alfred Lichtenstein, Consul Weinberger and Oberländer. King George V, Carol II of Romania , and Simon Wiesenthal, were guests and customers of the Heinrich Köhler auction house. Köhler dealt intensively with counterfeits and counterfeiters. In 1925 he opened an official testing center after years of issuing reports on stamps purchased from his company. In 1925/1926 he managed to convict Rudolf Siegel, a well-known Berlin auctioneer, of distributing and producing counterfeits. In 1926 he developed a 'test stamp system'. In the 1930s he was a member of the associations' supervisory board. Köhler's company was the official auctioneer of IPOSTA Berlin in 1930. He had also worked as a sworn expert for the Berlin Courts (Regional Courts I, II and III) and as a publicly appointed expert for the IHK Berlin. Köhler owned a large collection of forgeries, in which the forgeries of Goegg-Mercier, Hirschburger, Fournier's predecessor and successor, and many 'Ferrarities', but also Fouré forgeries, were documented. The well-known inspector Fritz Starauschek, who later became head of the senior inspection office in the GDR, was among his employees. Heinrich Köhler had been a juror since the 1920s, adjudicating in Paris, Monaco 1928, Berlin – IPOSTA 1930, WIPA 1933, OSTROPA 1935). During the Third Reich he tried to stay out of politics. His daughter Renée had married a Jewish-Russian emigrant. The last time he saw her was at PEXIP in Paris. Köhler's business at Friedrichstrasse 166, which was badly damaged before the end of the war, was run by his wife Anna after his death, together with their younger daughter Henriette and their son-in-law Hans Schmidt, from 1948 onwards. Source: Wikipedia Contact Brief History to inform us of additional information regarding this page

18th August 1937 18th August 1937 Monte Sarmiento See luggage ticket ref: 27/55 Travel ticket for the M/S 'Monte Sarmiento' , 17th - 23rd July 1936. Ref: 17.07.1936 Contact Brief History to inform us of additional information regarding this page

Index page Index page Monuments, Memorials & Sculpture Postcard depicting the Ehrentempel (Honour Temples) located on Königsplatz in Munich. Ref: 05.10.1938 Monuments, Memorials, Artwork & Sculpture in Public Areas BAD KLEVE Ehrenfriedhof (Cemetery of Honour) BAD PYRMONT Krieger Ehrenmal BERLIN Kaiser Wilhelm Monument (demolished in 1950) Neue Wache (New Watchhouse) DANZIG Neptune Fountain - see 36/27 GRAZ Peter Rosegger Monument HOHENSTEIN (Olsztynek) Tannenberg Memorial - see 26.06.1934, 29/69 (1939) HORST (ESSEN) Ruhrkämpferhrenmal (Ruhr fighters memorial) - see 07.11.1934 KOLBERG Nettelbeck-Gneisenau Memorial - see 36/32 LEIPZIG Völkerschlachtdenkmal (Monument to the Battle of the Nations) MÖNCHENGLADBACH Kriegerdenkmal - see 29/70 MUNICH Bavaria statue at the Ruhmeshalle Ehrentempel - Honour Temples (mostly demolished in 1947) Feldherrnhalle - See 29/84 Kriegerdenkmal NEUBRANDENBURG Ehrenmal für die Gefallenen des Landes Stargard - see 33/24 SAARBRÜCKEN Bismarck Memorial (as Saarbrücken Castle) - see 13.01.1935 - 24/42 STUTTGART Bismarckturm - see 25.6.1937 WÜRZBURG Kriegerdenkmal Contact Brief History to inform us of additional information regarding this page

21st January 1937 JB: Rottach-Egern 21st January 1937 Bochmann Rottach Egern Cover sent from Rottach-Egern to an address in Berlin-Zehlendorf. Featuring a special cancellation for Rottach-Egern. Ref: 21.01.1937 ROTTACH-EGERN cancellations as featured in the Bochmann catalogues (1952) JB: Rottach-Egern1/650 - 'Wintersportkämpfe 1937/ der Gliederungen der N.S.D.A.P.' Ref: 21.01.1937 Contact Brief History to inform us of additional information regarding this page

21st July 1937 Krafft Simmross 21st July 1937 Krafft Simmross Condor Legion Spanish Civil War. Cover sent by Krafft Simmross, an Unteroffizier (Uffz. - junior NCO), based at Tablada Aerodrome in Sevilla. The cover features a couple of postage stamps, including a partially covered 5 c. 'Pro Sevilla' (Allepuz 7). Ref: 21.07.1937 - 16/53 Tablada Air Base, Sevilla link to Spanish Civil War directory At the beginning of the Civil War, during the morning of 18th July 1936, the Tablada air base was the only military installation in Seville in which there was war activity. During the night several bombers from Madrid had landed to load bombs and then attack the Moroccan rebels. Throughout the morning there were several acts of sabotage by military supporters of the uprising, so that only one plane took off and bombed Tetouan. After the coup occurred in the center of Seville, Captain Carrillo, one of the main conspirators, went to the base with orders to depose Commander Rafael Martínez Esteve and put his subordinate, Commander Azaola, in his place. Esteve refused and, with the help of one of his officers, arrested the two coup plotters. He then sent separate detachments to block the bridges of San Juan de Aznalfarache and Hierro. The latter was raised to prevent the rebels from crossing to the shore of Tablada. At the beginning of the coup attack on the civil government, Governor Varela asked Martínez Esteve by telephone to bomb the rebels in Plaza Nueva and the Division headquarters in Gavidia. Esteve refused, but agreed to send about 100 men to defend the civil government. However, later bad news from the city center dissuaded him from sending this troop. Throughout the afternoon, several planes took off to carry out missions over Morocco. Around midnight, with the civil government and the Assault Guard barracks surrendered, Martínez Esteve became demoralised and also decided to surrender, so he handed over command to Azaola. Esteve was sentenced to death on 20th September 1936, but his sentence was later commuted. Between the afternoon of the 19th and the morning of the 20th, a complete company of the Legion landed in Tablada, under the command of Commander Antonio Castejón Espinosa. A tabor and a company of Regulars also arrived by land. After the coup d'état and until the end of October 1936, the base was the destination of the air bridge that linked North Africa with the peninsula. Fokker F.VII aircraft, Junkers Ju 52 and a DC-2 transported more than 13,000 legionnaires and regulars of the Army of Africa. During the war, it was also the place where Italian aircraft were received and repaired. In the midst of the Spanish Civil War, Albacete was the base of the International Brigades , the foreign forces that fought to defend the Second Republic against the rebel side, located in an important communications hub. The German Condor Legion of Adolf Hitler's Third Reich, which was fighting with the rebel side, carried out an air attack against the city on the night of 19th February 1937, which lasted for six and a half hours of bombing, between 8.30pm in the afternoon and 1.20am the next morning. The Condor Legion aircraft made more than 20 passes at intervals of 10 to 20 minutes. The majority of aircraft used were Junkers 52 from the Tablada air base (Seville) . The bombs especially affected areas such as Feria, Tinte, Altozano and Diputación, as well as the streets Ancha, Paseo de la Libertad, Félix Arias, Hurtado Matamoros, Marzo and Sol, among others, as well as the Los Llanos airfield, killing some 150 people. Source: Wikipedia Notes on Krafft Simmross Krafft Friedrich Wilhelm Simmross , member of Abw I M, KO Spain Source: www.archives.gov SIMMROSS , alias LAGARTO alias GITANO (same alias as SCHULTZE’s). Agent I-M, KO Spanien, Cadiz (named in STUBBS and BUGGE’s report on I-M Spain). Source: gatopardoblog.wordpress.com/2021/04/20/s-the-factual-list-of-nazis-protected-by-spain/ Wilhem Simmross , interrogated by the Allies in 1946, expanded on this information about the importance of the delegations of the Northern Inspectorate. The Inspector Fähnrich Ohlenroth worked mainly from Bilbao and was responsible for Vigo, La Coruña, Gijón, Santander, Bilbao and San Sebastián, a city to which he paid special attention due to its proximity to the border and its connection with France. Simmross provides interesting data on the importance that the German secret service attached to these cities. Of Gijón, Simmross says that it was a port where British ships loaded timber and ore; and that there were large liners in the port of the Musel. Of Santander the data is limited to stating that there was a fishing fleet and merchandise traffic. Simmross states that the Bilbao and San Sebastián delegations worked closely together. For naval matters (Ab-I-Marine), Bilbao and Vigo were the most important, and San Sebastián was the most important for border traffic. In fact, the German secret services consider Bilbao to be the most important espionage centre in northern Spain, the second being Vigo. Map 1 [Not shown here]. The Abwehr in Spain. Reproduction extracted from the interrogation of the Allies with SIMMROSS . Krafft Friedrich Wilhelm SIMMROSS was interrogated between 25th January and 16th April 1946. The National Archives (Kew, London), KV 3. Structure of the Kriegsorganisationen. Figure 1 [Not shown here]. Structure of the Kriegsorganisationen (KO) Spanien. Reproduction from the Allied interrogation of the German spy SIMMROSS . Krafft Friedrich Wilhelm SIMMROSS was stationed in Cadiz and Seville during World War II. He was interrogated between 25th January and 16th April 1946. The National Archives (Kew, London), KV 3-272. Source: The secret services in northern Spain during World War II: the German Abwehr and the English SOE. Javier Rodríguez González Universidad de León Contact Brief History to inform us of additional information regarding this page

20th August 1937 'Flag Wars' 20th August 1937 Flag Wars Nadine Rossol SEE 27/79 'Flag Wars' An article by Nadine Rossol Royal Historical Society Blog and Online Resources, 16th September 2025 In mid-July, a journalist from a right-wing newspaper claimed that the local holiday resort was in ‘a state of war’ because two flags had gone missing.[1] This event does not relate to English communities in the summer of 2025, despite similar language, but to the German seaside 100 years ago. ‘Flag wars’, as they were dubbed even then, are serious business. They show individual agency, political mobilisation and national identity by visibly demonstrating the significance of political symbols. Flag conflicts touch the emotional core of politics, and this is why they matter. This was as true in 1920s-Germany as it is in England today. Displaying—or removing—flags is a conscious act carried out for an audience. There is nothing private about flags, they fly in public or semi-public spaces including city halls, village squares, and gardens. Politicians occasionally dismiss flag conflicts as superficial matters that divert attention from serious political issues. Writing in the immediate post-war period, the Social Democratic politician Otto Braun recalled how, during the 1920s and 1930s, ‘flag issues continued to have far greater significance in the political life of the republic and outweighed many topics that were materially more important.'[2] What Braun missed is that ‘flag wars’ were, and are, at the heart of citizens’ engagement with politics. Contemporaries in Weimar Germany understood this and so too, closer to home, do the people of Northern Ireland. History does not repeat itself, but the processes of public debate, political communication and emotional mobilisation around flags do. 1. Flags come with historical & political connotations: re-claiming is difficult Flags are not made for nuance. They manifest the symbolic power of a political regime and can serve to communicate inclusion and exclusion. Regime changes often mean new flags. The winter of 1918/19 saw a brief period of openness in Germany when, after the revolution and collapse of the monarchy, the country’s political symbols had to be re-thought. Left-wing artist Käthe Kollwitz placed the curious combination of an Imperial black-white-red flag together with red bunting and a green wreath in the window of her Berlin flat to greet returning soldiers. Politically, Kollwitz’s combination of symbols made no sense but it expressed her emotional state of mind. In the aftermath of the armistice Imperial flags quickly turned into the symbol of those fighting against democracy, while red flags returned to being the partisan symbol of the political left. Half a year later, in July 1919, the new National Assembly agreed on black-red-gold as national colours. This decision was a compromise among Weimar’s republican parties. Black-red-gold represented a clear break with the monarchy, did not stand for a single party, and linked the young republic to 1848. However, black-white-red was kept in several specific flags, for instance for the merchant navy and the Reichswehr. 2. Raising flags is never neutral: the political context always matters The early years of the Weimar Republic demonstrated that some supporters of black-white-red had more in mind than the glories of the past. That the assassinations of the democratic politicians Matthias Erzberger and Walther Rathenau—along with other acts of political violence—were carried out under the black-white-red banner showed the intent of those on the nationalist right. These attacks triggered a reaction on the republican side too. By the mid-1920s, the black-red-gold colours stood for the defence of the Weimar Republic. Election campaigns were fought in these two camps, mobilising for or against the republic, behind these respective colour combinations. The republican flag was now loaded with meaning: it linked 1848 to Weimar democracy, centred on defending the present republic and remembrance of republican sacrifices. In 1926 attempts were made to introduce a new, more unifying, design for the national flag, with examples including a combination of the republican colours with the Iron Cross. It was, however, too late. Both the flags had become symbols that stood for the existential division of the Weimar Republic: for or against democracy. 3. Flag conflicts are about emotions, agency and identity By the mid-1920s, flag conflicts had moved from debates in parliament to village greens, market squares and balconies. Republican parties and organisations mobilised around the black-red-gold colours and called upon the local population to display them on important occasions. Supporters of black-white-red did the same and questioned the legitimacy of republican flags on city halls, school buildings or at war memorials. Each side counted flags, as proof of local commitment, and claimed that their opponents were exaggerating their own numbers. For the republicans the black-red-gold flag, even when it was only in someone’s garden, was the key symbol to rally around for defending democracy. This explains the intensity of flag conflicts at local level. Anti-republicans engaged equally actively by stealing or destroying republican flags. The court files on these conflicts provide insight into local circumstances. One ‘Josef S.’ claimed that he had nothing against the republican flag of his neighbour but took it down because it disturbed his pigeons. Another person was accused of cutting up a black-red-gold flag and sewing it together as a swastika. Pupils attended school celebrations of the republic’s democratic constitution dressed in black-white-red to show their, and their parents, disapproval. 4. ‘Flag wars’ need a spark: newspaper coverage, citizens’ actions and politics The summers of 1927 and 1928 witnessed a ‘flag war on the beaches’ during which republicans escalated small-scale incidents to the highest political level. Holiday makers decorated their sandcastles, wicker chairs or beach huts with flags—a then common practice at German seaside resorts. However, republicans informed the press and police that their black-red-gold flags were frequently stolen or vandalised. A visitor on the island of Sylt asked the local mayor for help as his flags had gone missing, including ‘the big black-red-gold flag and the 10 small ones dotted around the sandcastle as well as the two republican flags fixed to the wicker chair.’ Accounts of the latest flag incidents became a regular feature in the press. In response, the republican minister Albert Grzesinski deployed more police to show that the republic protected its colours everywhere, even on beaches. Not everyone was impressed by this reaction. The national conservative paper Deutsche Tages Zeitung claimed that Germany’s criminals would celebrate as the police focused on arresting anyone who stumbled over a republican heap of sand.[3] 5. ‘Flag wars’ are not inherent to one specific political conviction The ‘flag wars’ of the 1920s engaged supporters of the Weimar Republic and their enemies to an equal degree. Towards the republic’s end, conflicts between the political extremes, the Communists and the National Socialists, heightened the existing battles over flags, public space and political power. When the Nazis took office in 1933, they quickly banned the republican colours and phased out Imperial flags. A combination of swastika and Imperial flags was initially tolerated to keep the national conservatives on side and to stress the Nazis’ connections to Germany’s Imperial past. As in the 1920s, the display of flags was seen as an expression of popular support. In the city of Stuttgart, in June 1933, a local Nazi leader complained that Imperial flags greatly outnumbered Nazi flags in the streets. He suggested denouncing businesses and house owners who refused to show the swastika.[4] To display the Imperial colours was clearly no longer a sufficient demonstration of loyalty. In 1937 all remaining flags except Nazi ones were forbidden. However, true supporters of the Third Reich knew well before this which banner they should raise. [1] See Nadine Rossol, ‘Flaggenkrieg am Badestrand. Lokale Möglichkeiten repräsentativer Mitgestaltung in der Weimarer Republik’, in Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft , 7/8, 2008, pp. 619-625. [2] Berliner Tageblatt, 351, 29/07/1933: Die Hakenkreuzflagge in Stuttgart. [3] Berliner Börsen Zeitung , 32 (17 July 1929): Auf Befehl des Landrates: Mobilmachung des Reichsbanners. [4] Otto Braun, Von Weimar zu Hitler (Hamburg, 1949) p. 97. Contact Brief History to inform us of additional information regarding this page

1st October 1937 1st October 1937 Princess Letter 26 1st October 1937 (estimated date as no postmark) Sarvar to 27 Queen Square, Bath Dear Madeleine! I send you the promised picture of Solzer now. It is not a very good one, but in our hurry of departure I couldn’t get a better one. We are at last in Sarvar now, and very sad to have left our dear Bavaria. I came in the car with Mami and Ludwig and we spent one night at the Grundlsee in the Salzkammergut at some friends. It is quite near the Wolfgangsee of the “Weissen Rossel”. It was beautiful there. I never saw such lovely mountains and valleys. The others had gone in one day from Leutstetten till here. Our house is full of guests now, quite unusual here. There are two friends of Ludwig, the two younger cousins of Leutstetten with their miss and a maid and for this evening we are awaiting Mary D’Arcy our Irish friend who will stay here till the end of November. We haven’t got time to arrange anything now and the house is in great disorder. I continue now after 3 hours running about and arranging our rooms. It is awful, we are arranging a living room for us girls and then my room and Deidi’s for Rasso, and to send Deidi’s things away, and then also the things of my governess who died in Leutstetten. She had lots of things here too. I am quite tired now. We have a second summer here. The last two days were terribly hot, but today it is better. We play tennis and other things, it is quite amusing now. I must finish as we are going to dinner now. Yours with love, Baby LETTER MISSING Contact Brief History to inform us of additional information regarding this page