In November 1914, the patriotic frenzy that had gripped the Bavarian population a few months earlier when the war broke out had long since vanished. The hoped-for quick victory turned out to be a fallacy. Belgium, where many Bavarian units were deployed at the time, was almost entirely in German hands, but the further advance met with fierce resistance from the British and French. The fighting froze into trench warfare. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers lost their lives in the first Battle of Flanders, including many young volunteers.
In one of the skirmishes, the Mesen monastery, which was located in the Ypres district in West Flanders and was founded in the 11th century, was destroyed by angry artillery fire. On the evening of November 11, 1914, the Bavarian officer Friedrich Karl Konstantin Freiherr Kress von Kressenstein, a member of the 12th Reserve Infantry Brigade, took a look around the ruins. In the rubble of the cellar he discovered two medieval documents. No wonder, the monastery was an archival treasure chest, it kept many documents, the oldest dating back to the 11th century. Kress von Kressenstein took the two papers from the 12th and 15th centuries with him.
Bavarian Main State Archives hand over old documents to Bruges.
(Photo: Bavarian Main State Archives)
Kress von Kressenstein was a man with a sense of art and culture. In his diary he often complains that so much cultural assets are destroyed during the war. Looking at a Renaissance cabinet, he noted: “It’s a shame that it will now perish.” The certificates were not only memorable for him, it was also important to him to save them. That he brought her home safe and sound in the chaos of war is also astonishing. He kept the pieces all his life. That they now found their way back to West Flanders marks the happy end of an almost unbelievable story.
This return was arranged by the historian Gerhard Immler, who works as the chief archive director at the Bavarian main state archive. Of course, chance played an important role in this. In the Kress von Kressenstein house, the well-preserved documents had been forgotten. Until a few months ago one of the officer’s great-grandsons came across her again in an old envelope. The ancestor also left a war diary that contained clues about the origins of the papers. The family therefore turned to the expert Immler to clarify who these documents actually belonged to.
The origin could be determined quickly in the main state archive, says Immler. The older document was issued in 1184 by Count Philip of Flanders, the younger one in 1474 by Duke Charles the Bold of Burgundy for the Mesen Monastery in West Flanders. Responsibility for the archives of the destroyed monastery lies today with the Imperial Archives in Bruges. The Belgian colleagues were able to identify the documents unequivocally.
Sometimes private individuals would ask for a lot of money to be returned
Coincidentally, a little later an employee of the Ludwig Maximilians University came across a document from 1181 in the local document collection for the Mesen Monastery. It too could now be returned to the rightful owner.
Hendrik Callewier, head of the Bruges Imperial Archives, says that an old inventory shows that the Mesen Monastery held at least 700 medieval documents. 150 of them have now been returned, which is very astonishing. Undoubtedly there were several culturally sensitive soldiers who took such documents with them from the rubble and thus saved them. A document has even returned from the USA, says Callewier, who is also very pleased that the war diary of officer Kress von Kressenstein now also reveals the circumstances surrounding the destruction of the archive in Mesen. Most likely, members of the Bavarian 12th Reserve Infantry Brigade had the opportunity to salvage Mesen archives from the ruins. The Reichsarchiv zu Bruges therefore hopes that further documents will be found in the legacies of soldiers in Bavaria. Even if it sometimes creates problems, as Callewier notes. Sometimes private individuals would ask for a lot of money to be returned. “But that’s illegal,” says Callewier. “The documents belong to the state.”
If the soldiers had not taken the documents with them in 1914, they would have been destroyed by the third Battle of Flanders in June 1917 at the latest. At that time the most violent detonations in world history occurred in this area. Almost nothing was left of the city of Mesen.