Rehearsals: The German Army in Belgium, August 1914

Epilogue

Epilogue DEJA-VU At 3 a.m. on May 17, 1940, a monk in the Benedictine abbey of Keizersberg high above Leuven was startled to observe flames flickering from the roof of the University Library, rebuilt in the late 1920s. An hour later, a Minorite friar in town stepped outside and saw small pieces of burned paper flying up in the air. Like Emile Schmit, Lodewijk Grondijs, and hundreds of others in Leuven on August 26, 1914, he immediately suspected what was happening. Not long afterward a woman rushed up to the Minorite cloister to confirm that, indeed, the library was once again on fire.¹ With the fall of Eben Emael and the destruction of the Belgian air force on May 10th , the reoccupation of Leuven by the Germans was nearly inevitable. Not surprisingly, this time most residents fled. Only four to five hundred of Leuven’s 38,000 inhabitants remained on the 16th , but there were enough witnesses to reconstruct what is likely to have happened. The Germans were on the outskirts of Leuven within a week. Batteries were set up in Kessel-Lo and Lovenjoel on May 16. A farmer outside the latter town was asked to accompany an officer to a bluff overlooking Leuven. “What is that tower?” the officer asked. The farmer replied that it was the library. Some time later he observed two guns shelling the tower. A large column of smoke soon arose from the building, obscuring the view.² A surveyor living in Roosbeek, 13 kilometers east of Leuven, stated that on May 15th a German artillery unit parked a vehicle in his garden that appeared to regulate the fire of the company’s guns. Over dinner, one of the officers mentioned to him that “Furore Teutonico ” was inscribed on the library railing. The surveyor told him this was not the case, the Rector had vetoed the controversial epigraph, but the officer insisted that he was correct. Firing began the next day.³ A Belgian commission concluded that it was in fact the unflattering inscription intended for the balustrade that provoked the Germans. Whether or not this is true, the commission produced abundant evi- Déjà vu. May 1940: a German soldier stands in front of the monument to the martyrs of 1914 in Martelarenplein (formerly Stationsplein). Epilogue 671 dence that it was artillery shells that damaged the building and, for a second time, destroyed its contents.⁴ A dozen shells were discovered by the University’s Rector when he inspected the damage; several unexploded shells were located much later.⁵ The library may also have been bombed. A lawyer living in Kessel-Lo observed more than forty planes flying low over the city at 3:30 a.m. on the 17th . He saw bombs fall on the library, directly behind the tower, he testified.⁶ A woman on her way back from Paris to Leuven, anxious about her home in town, was told by a Luftwaffe officer at Le Bourget not to worry. Only the suburbs and library had been bombed, he assured her.⁷ As in 1914, the Germans provided their own account of the event. It was intentionally started by British soldiers in the early hours of the 17th , they claimed. They reported finding evidence of benzine in twelve places. In the cellar, two trunks of benzine were ignited by grenades. The star witness for the Germans was a Belgian soldier, Louis Leclercq. He heard four muffled explosions, probably mines, German newspapers reported, and then saw English soldiers leaving the arcade in front of the library and sheltering against the wall of a nearby building . But Leclercq later testified that he had said nothing of the sort. He did encounter English soldiers, who told him to put on his gas mask. He then heard an explosion, and saw the library illuminated briefly. But no soldiers were near the building or came from it. Several more explosions followed. Leclercq stated that he was interrogated for four days in Brussels and required to sign a statement he was not permitted to read.⁸ The university librarian was also questioned. The “benzine,” he pointed out to the Germans, was simply melted gum-resin and varnish. His testimony was not reported in the Völkischer Beobachter.⁹ One act of vandalism the Germans did take responsibility for. Half of a large plaque in Leuven’s Stadthuis was removed. It had listed the names of the civilians killed in 1914. The...