Week No 27.09

Tendring Topics……..on Line

Zittau’s Lenten Veils......the story so far

I have been invited to Zittau in Germany for the tenth anniversary celebration, on 4th July, of the restoration and display in its own museum/church of the Zittau Great Lenten Veil or ‘Fastentuch’. This is a unique textile artifact that attracts visitors from all over the world and in the history of which I am believed to have played a tiny part. With the help of Grandson Nick I am hoping to be present for this celebration. I thought that I would use this blog, to be posted a day early, to tell ‘the story so far’ of my involvement Next week’s blog? Well, that remains to be seen. I won’t be back in Clacton before the 6th or 7th July and the blog may be a day or two – or possibly a week – late.

On the left of the picture is the great Fastentuch or Lenten Veil. You can get an idea of its size from the group of people looking at it. The Smaller Fastentuch (presumably used to screen off a Lady Chapel) is next to it. the descriptions are difficult to read. White on gold is not a very good idea!

This is how it all happened:

It was once the practice in parts of Austria and Germany to screen off the sanctuaries of their churches during the season of Lent. The reason for this, so I have been told, was to impose a spiritual, as well as a physical, fast on the faithful during that period. This screen, called a Fastentuch (or Lenten Veil), was originally a plain piece of linen but it later became the practice to decorate it in various ways. The great Lenten Veil of Zittau, the small East German town in which I spent the last eighteen months of World War II as part of a working party (Arbeitskommando) of thirty ‘other rank’ British prisoners of war, was unique in Germany. It was 8.2 metres high by 6.8 metres wide. It was seven centuries old and had painted on it 90 Biblical pictures. 45 from the Old Testament and 45 from the New. It was the town’s pride and joy.

At the end of World War II it was found to be missing from its home in the Zittau Town Museum and was eventually found on the slopes of Mount Oybin (a spectacular peak several miles from the town). It was in four pieces and was being used by some Russian soldiers to line the walls of a sauna! It was recovered and, after German reunification, was lovingly restored and put on permanent display in the redundant Church of the Holy Cross that has been adapted and provided with controlled lighting and a controlled atmosphere to ensure its preservation.

Mount Oybin, where the Great Fastentuch was found, and to the summit of which I had helped transport heavy cases from Zittau Museum in February 1945

No-one knew quite how this enormous textile artifact had found its way from the museum to Mount Oybin. This mystery was solved quite accidentally during the course of correspondence between myself and an email pen-friend (Ingrid Zeibig) in Zittau when I mentioned, quite casually, one of the odder jobs that I had had while doing ‘hard labour’ in her town between September 1943 and May 1945. It had been towards the end of February 1945, after the terrible British and American fire-bomb raids of the 13th and 14th of that month on the city of Dresden (about 60 miles from Zittau). The thunder of artillery from the eastern front was becoming daily louder. The end of the war was clearly in sight. I had been one of a party of half a dozen or so POWs who helped transport for safety some very heavy cases of ‘treasures’ from the town museum to what I thought was a ruined ‘Dracula type’ castle (I discovered later that it was actually a ruined monastery) on the summit of Mount Oybin.

Ingrid immediately thought of the Fastentuch and took it up with the scholarly Dr Volker Dudeck, Direktor (we would call him the curator, I think) of the Zittau Museum, who agreed with her. Thus, I became unwittingly one of the ‘rescuers’ of one of the town’s most valued possessions. This ensured for me a little local celebrity when in March 2007, my son and grandson (I certainly couldn’t have done it on my own!) accompanied me on my revisit to Zittau as a free man after over 60 years. We were able to meet and be welcomed by my correspondent and her family – and by Dr, Dudeck, who speaks perfect English.

We were given a free VIP showing of the Fastentuch displayed in all its glory together with a commentary in English on each of its 90 pictures. I found myself astonished by its immense size and by the comprehensive nature of the pictures on it. I couldn’t think of a single familiar bible story that wasn’t illustrated. Afterwards we were interviewed by a friendly, and fortunately bilingual local newspaper reporter (my German is of the tv ‘ ‘Allo, Allo’’ variety) and a photo of my son, grandson and myself appeared, together with a very friendly article, on the front page of the following issue of Zittauer Zeitung (Zittau Times).

That was not the end of my involvement with Zittau and its Fastentuch. I continued my correspondence with Ingrid Zeibig. Dr Dudeck and I became friends and we too corresponded by email. During my visit Ingrid, knowing that I was an author and journalist, asked me if when I returned to England, I would write an article about my impressions on returning to Zittau as a free man after over sixty years. She would translate it into German primarily for her own family but perhaps also for a wider readership.

I sat down at my lap-top intending to write about 1,000, perhaps 1,500 words. However, once I had written the first few sentences I became carried away. I explained why I had wanted to return to Zittau and how, when I was in my eighties, this had become possible. It finished as a considerable piece of autobiography of nearly 8,000 words. It was certainly much too long for any publication in this country. Nevertheless I duly dispatched copies by email to Volker Dudeck (we were on Quakerly first-name terms by this time) and to Ingrid.

Both were enthusiastic about it but Ingrid must surely have been daunted by the thought of translating it as well as holding down a full-time job and caring for a teenage daughter! Fortunately, she didn’t have to. Volker, having read it, passed it on to Frau Schubert, a colleague whose knowledge of English was even better than his own, to translate. He sent me a copy of the result – ‘Rückkehr nach Zittau’ and also told me that it would be published in full in a future issue of the Zittauer Geschicktsblätter , a glossy regional cultural publication.

This led to yet another development. Three Christian traditions in Zittau (Roman Catholic, Lutheran and Methodist) united in 2008 to hold ‘Meditations’ on the Fastentuch once a month on Wednesday evenings. These mediations were accompanied by readings, pictures (from a projector onto a screen) and music. The readings for the September session were to be from the German translation of ‘Return to Zittau’ and I was cordially invited at attend. I was asked if I had any pictures of myself that could be used and I told them that they were very welcome to help themselves to anything useful on my Flickr site on the internet www.flickr.com/ernestbythesea/photos which holds over 350 pictures mostly of myself and my family and friends, including a few wartime and immediately postwar pictures. I didn’t really think that I would be able to accept the invitation but my elder son Pete and daughter-in-law Arlene made it possible and we all attended this event.

The museum/church of the Holy Cross, where the Fastentuch is displayed was almost full and to my astonishment they read practically the whole of the German version of Return to Zittau. I was so pleased to hear laughter at appropriate places and no less pleased when afterwards a lady told me that bits of it had moved her to tears. During the reading there was first martial and then funereal music while on the screen they showed pictures from both the German and British archives of the fighting in and around Tobruk (where I had been captured in 1942). They then showed pictures of my life, taken from the Flickr web site, and recent photographs of places in and around Zittau that I had mentioned in my article!

The very first picture in the ‘picture show’. Myself, as I was in 1945, superimposed on part of the Great Fastentuch

Afterwards I was presented with a bouquet of flowers and was invited to say a few words. I said just a few in German and then spoke a greater length through an interpreter. I said that I had been in their town as POW and was so happy to have now been welcomed as a friend. I was happy and proud to have played a tiny part in the history of their precious Fastentuch. There was a very enthusiastic response and I felt that I had made a tiny contribution to Anglo-German friendship.


We were also invited to the Town Hall where the Oberburgomeister (Mayor) presented me with a silver cross and ring, symbols of the Great and Little Fastentuch.

And that is the story so far. After 4th July I may be able to add a few more paragraphs.

Week 7 09

Tendring Topics……..on Line

Candlemas…and after!

Last year at this time (yes, I have been writing Tendring Topics….on Line for over a
Year!) I quoted an old rhyme about Candlemas which I have found usually provides a pretty reliable long-range weather forecast:

If Candlemas be clear and bright, winter will have another flight.
If Candlemas be dull with rain, winter has gone and will not come again!

Neither forecast fits this year’s Candlemas (Monday 2nd February) which, you’ll recall, was overcast all day and gave us the heaviest and most severe snowstorms that we had experienced for decades. As usually happens, our Essex coast escaped much more lightly than most. I doubt if Clacton had more than about half an inch of snow. Elsewhere though, the country was brought to a standstill, with closed schools, no bus services whatsoever in London and not much better elsewhere, and rail and air services either cancelled altogether or severely disrupted.

Perhaps there needs to be a third line of folklore verse. How about?

If Candlemas be snowy day, winter is here……and here to stay!

The photograph on the left shows my back garden early on 2nd February this year with snow lying, but not very deeply. The one on the right is of the road in which my younger son lives in Enfield, taken on the same day and at about the same time……and there were many places that had much more snow than Enfield.

Darwin’s Other Legacy

I am very sorry that Sir David Attenborough should have received hate mail in connection with his exposition of Darwin’s theory of evolution and the agnosticism that he believes follows naturally from that theory. I am particularly sorry that this hate mail should appear to have come from those who ‘profess and call themselves Christian’.

Surely we who hold the Christian faith should attempt, however imperfectly, to live in the imitation of Christ. Since none of us is perfect we shall certainly fail in this attempt. I hope though that very few would fail so sadly as to imagine that Jesus would or could ever send a message of hate to any of his fellow men or women; certainly not to someone who, whether or not he realizes it, has devoted much of his adult life to revealing the wonder of God’s creation. Whatever are his personal beliefs, few can have done more than Sir David to invoke among the rest of us ‘the fear (or awe) of the Lord that is the beginning of wisdom’.

I’m certainly not one of those ‘creationists’ who believe that a ‘ready for instant use’ world was created by God during the course of six days in the late summer of 4004 BC. Does anyone really still believe that? On the other hand, neither do I believe that the universe came into being by blind chance as a result of the accidental juxtaposition of just the right atoms billions of years ago, that life arose as a result of a similarly accidental combination of atoms and natural forces, and that evolutionary theory explains everything that has happened since. That would demand from me an act of faith far greater than that required for acceptance of, for instance, the Nicene Creed.

I am sure that many people believe, as I do, that God is fulfilling his purpose through evolution, as part of a creative process that began in the infinitely distant past, is taking place today, and will continue into the infinitely distant future. As a Quaker Christian I believe that something of God’s essential nature, his ‘inward light’, is the heritage of every single human, whatever his or her race, colour or creed, and that that ‘inward light’ was personified in Jesus Christ some 2,000 years ago. It is this instinct within ourselves that urges us towards truth, love, compassion, forgiveness and reconciliation; all the things that we know instinctively are good. We may stifle it, ignore it or deny its existence but we cannot utterly destroy it. ‘The Light shines in the darkness and the darkness cannot overwhelm it’.

Godless interpretations of Darwinism assume that human life has no spiritual dimension whatsoever. The material world that we can see and touch is, it proclaims, all that there is. What we call ‘love’ is just a bio-chemical reaction in the brain that has evolved to ensure the reproduction of the species and encourage its survival. This is the sole purpose of life, including our own. The hope of eternal life is a delusion that has evolved to prevent our being diverted from our evolutionary purpose by the fear of personal extinction.

Acts that we would describe as being of heroism and self-sacrifice are simply those of individuals whose instinct for the survival of the species has evolved more strongly than the instinct for self-preservation. The work of Shakespeare and Milton, of Michaelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci, of Archimedes, Galileo, Isaac Newton and Einstein are just the result of evolution having induced fortuitous electro-chemical reactions in their brains.

This kind of Darwinism, reduced to its lowest common denominator of ‘Survival of the Fittest’, justifies the subjugation and genocide of ‘inferior’ humans by those who consider themselves to be ‘superior’. It provided a justification for the Nazi death camps. The Nazis believed that they were fulfilling their evolutionary destiny as a master-race by enslaving and eliminating what they considered to be inferior human stock. Fundamentalist Darwinism has no time for those of us who clearly have no evolutionary purpose …… octogenarians (like myself!) for instance, the mentally or physically disabled, the weak, the drop-outs and the miss-fits. As for the preservation of endangered species and threatened human ethnic groups, extinction is their evolutionary destiny. It would be wrong to interfere.

Would you wish to live in the ‘brave new world’ to which unfettered natural selection points us? I wouldn’t. Fortunately we don’t have to. We have been given (or have evolved) free will. We accept, welcome in fact, the idea of evolution but we do not have to become its helpless puppets. We are free to follow what our Quaker Advices and Queries refer to as ‘the promptings of love and truth in our hearts, and to trust them as the leadings of God’. They will ultimately I believe, bring us toward the fulfilment of part of the universal Christian prayer, ‘Thy will be done on Earth, as it is in Heaven.

Friday the Thirteenth

This coming Friday has a deep, and sad, significance for me. Not because it is the allegedly unlucky ‘Friday the thirteenth’ but because it marks the 64th anniversary of an event that, for the first time in my life, made me feel ashamed to be British.

It was February 1945. I was twenty-three years old and had been taken prisoner at Tobruk in North Africa on 21st June 1942. Since September 1943 I had been a member of a small Arbeitskommando (work camp) of British prisoners of war in Zittau, a small town in eastern Germany. Our main work was loading and unloading railway wagons but we also undertook any other manual task for which we might be needed.

The winter of 1944/’45 was a bitterly cold one in eastern Europe. There was deep snow and for weeks we endured subzero temperatures, day and night. However, any discomfort that this may have caused us was tempered by the conviction that our time of captivity was coming to an end.

Allied armies, after a temporary set-back with ‘the Battle of the Bulge’ at Christmas, were making steady progress on the western and southern fronts.

Meanwhile in Zittau, what had begun as a barely audible murmur from the east had grown louder and louder, and by February, had become a continuous rumble of gunfire as the Soviet Armies advanced through Poland and into Germany. Throughout that bitter winter a steadily swelling stream of refugees from the rapidly approaching Eastern Front had made its way westward through the town. There were old men (all the young ones had been called up), women and children……a few in broken down motor vehicles powered by Holzgas, a fuel produced from smouldering wood chippings, some with all their worldly goods loaded onto ox wagons (the army had seized all the horses). Many trudging through the snow pulling small and heavily laden hand-carts. They were not all German. Among them were allied prisoners of war from Stalags in Poland, Russian and Ukrainian ‘slave workers, and defeated fragments of the armies of Nazi Germany’s allies, Bulgarians, Romanians, volunteers from neutral but Fascist Spain and renegade Cossacks. People from Zittau, people we had known and worked with, had begun to join that westward flow.

Before and during World War II this building was the Zittau headquarters of Kurt Kramer, wholesale grocer. For several weeks, early in 1945, another POW and I worked here, pulling a large hand-cart and, with an elderly German civilian, delivering goods to retail grocers in the town. One day we returned after a delivery to find that one of the refugees, a young woman, had decided that her life was no longer worth living. She had climbed to the top-most storey and thrown herself down onto the cobbles below.


Neither they, nor we, nor our guards, nor the Germans with whom we worked had any doubt that the war would end within months, if not weeks. Few thought any longer of ‘victory’ or ‘defeat’. We all just wanted an end to the misery and carnage.

The refugees were heading for Dresden, some sixty miles west of Zittau, where they would be sorted out and distributed to those parts of Germany that were still considered to be relatively safe. By 13th February Dresden was crowded with refugees, as well as with its own population of German civilians, allied POWs and slave workers from allied countries.

That was the night on which the RAF struck. The American Air Force continued the attack on the following day. We British prisoners in Zittau, only some 60 miles from the target, spent the night in the cellar of the building in which we were housed. In Dresden itself 13 square miles of the beautiful and historic city were destroyed. Estimates of the, mostly civilian, dead vary widely but the true figure is generally accepted as being somewhere between 25,000 and 40,000, the majority burnt alive in the fire-storms produced by the raids. Bad news travels fast and we in Zittau learnt of the destruction and loss of life on the following morning, as the second onslaught by the American Air Force was in progress. It was the only time that I personally experienced hostility from German civilians

These raids, carried out just twelve weeks before the German surrender, were not, of course, comparable with the mass slaughter of the Holocaust. They do however put outrages like ‘nine-eleven’ and for instance, the shelling of Sarajevo by the Serbs during the Yugoslav civil war (reckoned to be a war crime) into perspective.

They changed my attitude to modern warfare and, just two or three years later, were a major factor in my wife Heather and I deciding to join the peaceful, and peace-making Quakers.
Within a few days of the bombing of Dresden it was decided to move 'treasures' from Zittau Town Museum to a place of safety. A party of us POWs had the task of loading a lorry with heavy cases, going with it to Mount Oybin, the spectacular mountain above, a few miles from the town, and unloading them into a ruined monastery at its summit. It is only during the last few years that I have learned that among these treasures was the seven centuries old Zittauer Fastentuch, an enormous piece of linen having painted on it 90 pictures illustrating events recorded in the Old and New Testaments. This ensured me a little local celebrity on recent visits to Zittau.