VOLUME 16 NO.2 FEBRUARY 2016 journal The Association of Jewish Refugees Sigmaringen’s secret story arl Marx’s famous dictum, victory at Sedan (1 September 1870). in his essay The Eighteenth Napoleon III was taken prisoner and Brumaire of Louis Napoleon abdicated. On 18 February 1871, K(1852) – that history repeats itself, the in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles, first time as tragedy, the second time King Wilhelm of Prussia was declared as farce – can appositely be applied to German Emperor, and the unification the two occasions on which the small of Germany was complete. No prince German town of Sigmaringen made of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen ever sat an appearance on the stage of modern on the Spanish throne. European history. Sigmaringen is an In September 1944, Sigmaringen attractive small town of just under became the setting for an extraordinary 20,000 inhabitants, situated on the episode in the Second World War, upper reaches of the River Danube when it witnessed the final days of in the south-western Land of Baden- the Vichy government that had ruled Württemberg, south of Tübingen that part of France not occupied by and about 25 miles north of Lake Sigmaringen Castle the Germans in 1940, until it fled in Constance. face of the Allied invasion of France The town is dominated by Sigmaringen stunning Prussian victory over Austria and in 1944. Marshal Philippe Pétain, the head of Castle, which was built on the Schlossberg the emergence across the Rhine of a powerful the collaborationist Vichy state, Pierre Laval, his (castle hill) high above the Danube and Prussia ruling over the greater part of Germany; prime minister from April 1942 until August was until 1850 the seat of the house of they now faced the prospect of a relative of the 1944, along with a number of their political Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen. The house of King of Prussia, Wilhelm of Hohenzollern, associates, were evacuated from France by Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen was a cadet branch taking the throne of Spain across their southern Hitler and sent to Sigmaringen, where their of the Hohenzollern dynasty that ruled first border. government-in-exile lived out its final months. Brandenburg, then Prussia and finally, after Leopold accepted the Spanish throne, and The farcical spectacle of a government with 1871, the German Empire. The house of France and Prussia prepared for war. But when no country to govern and ministers with Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen was Catholic, in Count Benedetti, the French ambassador no ministerial powers to exercise combined sharp contrast to the imperial Hohenzollerns, to Prussia, approached King Wilhelm of bizarrely with the poisonous cocktail of fascism, who were closely associated with the Protestant Prussia on 11 July 1870 at the spa of Ems and collaborationist adulation of the Nazis and state of Prussia. That Catholic faith briefly asked him to refuse his consent to Leopold’s virulent anti-Semitism that constituted the propelled the house of Hohenzollern- candidature to the throne of Spain, Wilhelm politics of the Vichy elite. This band of vipers Sigmaringen into the limelight, when it played consented, agreeing to order Leopold to was housed in the castle at Sigmaringen, where a small but significant role in the events leading withdraw. This appeared to be a triumph for Pétain, sulking in his tent, refused to take any up to the Franco-Prussian War (1870-71) and France and Emperor Napoleon III. But the part in politics or to have any contact with the unification of Germany under the Prussian French ministers overplayed their hand, by Laval, with whom he was by then united in crown in 1871; that historic development was instructing Benedetti to seek another audience mutual loathing. engineered – brilliantly if ruthlessly – by Otto with the Prussian king and to secure from him The story of Vichy’s last months in von Bismarck, Prime Minister of Prussia from further guarantees and an undertaking that Sigmaringen, from September 1944 until 1862 and Chancellor of the German Empire Leopold would never be allowed to assume April 1945, is the subject of Pierre Assouline’s from 1871 to 1890. the Spanish throne, assurances that on 13 July novel Sigmaringen, published by Gallimard Under Bismarck, Prussia had in 1866 Wilhelm refused to give. in Paris in 2014. The novel, which is perhaps defeated Austria, its longstanding rival for When Bismarck, in despair at Prussia’s of greater historical than literary merit, is primacy among the German states, and had apparent climb-down in face of French narrated by Julius Stein, butler to the Prince of established its dominance over the North pressure, received a dispatch from Ems to Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen and in charge of German Confederation, comprising all the Berlin reporting on this second meeting, the castle’s household arrangements. So wedded states of northern Germany. Bismarck now he seized his chance. He issued a cunningly to his function is he that he seems, like his prepared for war with France and for the doctored version of the dispatch to the press, model, the butler Stevens in Kazuo Ishiguro’s incorporation of the southern states into a making it appear to the German public that The Remains of the Day, to have little character united Germany. The pretext for hostilities the French ambassador had approached the beyond it. Through Stein’s eyes, we observe arose when Queen Isabella of Spain was forced Prussian king in a high-handed fashion and to the daily life of the Vichy politicians and their to abdicate in 1868 and the Spanish throne the French public that the Prussian king had hangers-on, their intrigues, their self-deluding became vacant. It was proposed that Prince abruptly rebuffed the French ambassador. With hopes of a triumphant return to France on Leopold of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, a public opinion in both countries inflamed, the coat-tails of a German victory, and their Catholic, should take the throne. This alarmed war became unavoidable. The Prussian armies gradual descent into desperation as the Allied the French, who were already dismayed by the advanced into France and won a decisive continued on page 2 journal FEBRUARY 2016 Sigmaringen’s secret story continued AJR unveils plaque to honour Rabbi Dr Leo Baeck he AJR has unveiled a armies approach. plaque in memory of With Pétain maintaining that he was being held prisoner in Sigmaringen and with Laval also TRabbi Dr Leo Baeck. refusing to exercise his functions, the leadership The plaque was unveiled of the Vichy government-in-exile, officially at Colmore Court, 283 called the French Governmental Commission, Watford Way, London fell to a second-rank figure, Fernand de NW4 4TQ. Rabbi Baeck Brinon, previously Vichy’s representative to lived in a house on this the German High Command in Paris, who site from 1945 until his became President of the Commission. He death in 1956. was condemned to death after the war and executed. Among those vying for influence and Rabbi Baeck was position was Jacques Doriot, an ex-Communist President of the who had founded the far-right Parti Populaire umbrella organisation Français in 1936. Doriot was an activist; he of German Jewry, the had fought on the Eastern Front with a unit of Reich Representation of French volunteers in German uniform and after German Jews, from 1933 September 1944 sought to secure a leading role to his deportation to for his party in the government-in-exile. Doriot Theriesenstadt in 1943. was not based in Sigmaringen; on 22 February 1945 he was killed on his way there, when his He refused various offers car was attacked by Allied aircraft. from the US to escape A rival to Doriot was Marcel Déat, who had Nazi oppression and was been appointed Minister of Labour and National quoted as saying ‘I will Solidarity when Laval formed his government go when I am the last Jew in 1942. Déat, an ex-Socialist, had created a alive in Germany.’ After political party, the Rassemblement National (photo from left) Rabbi Jonathan the war he moved to London, Wittenberg; Joanna Millan, AJR Populaire, in 1941; it was collaborationist, anti- where he became Chairman of Trustee; Vivienne Kaye, great-niece Semitic and fascist in its ideology, though less the World Union for Progressive of Leo Baeck; Rabbi Colin Eimer; extreme than Doriot’s PPF. Déat maintained Judaism. Jim Dreyfuss, great-grandson of Leo close relations with Otto Abetz, formerly the Baeck; Michael Newman, CEO, AJR; German Ambassador in Paris, who remained AJR Trustee Frank Harding said Ellen Dreyfuss, wife of Jim Dreyfuss; an influential figure in Sigmaringen. Déat was ‘It is an enormous honour for us Rabbi Harry Jacobi; (behind) Emma sentenced to death after the war but fled to Italy, to commemorate the life of Rabbi Watts, Notting Hill Housing (NHH); where he was hidden by a religious order, the Baeck, one of the principal Jewish Rabbi Deborah Kahn-Harris; Ellie Desborough, NHH; Leonie Bartlett, Institution Jeanne-d’Arc in Turin; he lived there, thinkers of the 20th Century surrounded by nuns, until his death in 1955. NHH; Councillor Alison Cornelius, whose work has helped shape the Deputy Mayor, Barnet; Frank Harding, The head of the RNP’s youth wing, Roland British-Jewish community.’ AJR Trustee Gaucher, was also in Sigmaringen. Sentenced to five years in prison after the war, Gaucher was later one of the co-founders of the Front the far right in the 1930s. Darnand founded National, with Jean-Marie Le Pen, in October the collaborationist militia known as the Holocaust survivors 1972. He soon fell out with Le Pen, whom he Milice (see Louis Malle’s 1974 film Lacombe recognised in New Year’s considered too moderate; ironically, the recent Lucien), which conducted operations against honours list electoral successes of the Front National owe the French Resistance.