In Memoriam: Lodewijk Johannes Timmermans and the German military cemetery in Ysselsteyn/Netherlands (Published on 05/05/2023)
This blog also seeks to commemorate those who, much like Julius Erasmus, were committed to the recovery, identification and burial of fallen soldiers and endeavored to restore the names of the dead in the interests of their relatives. Gerda Dreiser from Bitburg, Toni Latschrauner from Merano/Italy and and Nikolai Orlov from Novgorod/Russia have already been reported on.
A similarly remarkable story is that of the former Dutch resistance fighter Lodewijk Johannes Timmermans, later administrator of the German military cemetery in Ysselsteyn/Netherlands. The only German military cemetery in the Netherlands today is the resting place of almost 32,000 dead. It was established by the Dutch Graves Service (Nederlandse gravendienst) starting in 1946, and all graves of German soldiers in the Netherlands were transferred to there.
From 1948 to 1976 the cemetery was administered by Captain Lodewijk Johannes Timmermans. Initially a voluntary conscript and after the Dutch surrender a member of the resistance against the German occupiers, he re-entered military service after the liberation, where he was employed in mine and munitions clearance. The explosion of a German wooden mine temporarily blinded him in both eyes in March 1945. In a Canadian military hospital in Turnhout, Belgium, he came into contact with a wounded German soldier who did his best to care for the blind Timmermans after his on wounds had healed. In the same way, Lodewijk Johannes Timmermans later devoted himself to the recovery and identification of dead German soldiers and the care of their relatives after his health had improved.
An article in the magazine „Kriegsgräberfürsorge“ of Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge, form the year 1976 describes the extraordinary story of Lodewijk Timmermans as follows (Article „Ein Mann ohne Beispiel“ by Horst Morgenbrod, magazine „Kriegsgräberfürsorge“ of Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge, issue 4/1976, translation from German language):
“’I hated the Germans!’ He admits that in no uncertain terms. The bombs on Rotterdam were a key experience for him. And when he recounts how he smuggled persecuted Jews across the Belgian border (‘To see the fear in their eyes, that was terrible’), when it wrings a sigh from his heart: ‘What the Germans did to the Jews back then, I’ll never forget’, a hush pervades the room. Nevertheless, the signs of this room, the pictures on the walls, the file boxes, the folders with letters of thanks, signal that the ‘back then’ is over for him. A piece of history, also of one’s own life, has been mastered, made fruitful for the future.
We are talking about a man without precedent. He is a figure of integration between the Netherlands and Germany, unrepeatable in this way and unique in the task he has chosen for himself. We are talking about Captain Ludwig Johann Timmermans, who retired in April 1976 at the age of 60, the former resistance fighter against the Germans, who for 28 years laid out German war graves at Ysselsteyn military cemetery, took care of them, identified unknown dead, led groups of visitors, notified relatives and often sent them a last sign of their dead son or father.
The Ysselsteyn military cemetery is the last German burial ground in a western foreign country that has not yet been directly taken care of by the Volksbund. After several discussions in the Dutch Foreign Ministry in The Hague, a note verbale was formulated in 1975, which laid down the procedure for the final takeover of the German military cemetery Ysselsteyn by the Federal Republic of Germany and thus into the care of the War Graves Commission.
(…)
Almost 32,000 German fallen rest in Dutch soil. At that time, 1944/45, they were buried where they fell, without much fuss, and those who buried them had other concerns than to pay special attention to the identification or burial of the enemy ‘with military honors’. So it happened that in the first post-war years the War Graves Commission had to state: sixty percent of these dead are not identified. This high figure can be explained by the fact that the majority of those 20,000 Germans who fell in Holland after the invasion could not be buried by their own comrades.
But how did a Dutch captain come to establish and care for a cemetery for the enemy’s dead? Here, too, there is a key experience. Timmermans had joined a resistance group during the German occupation. By a hair’s breadth the Germans would have caught him, or better said, they actually already had him. Let the captain himself tell the story:
Once again, when I had brought a persecuted man across the border, I ran into the arms of a German sergeant. Out, I thought to myself; but when the German began to talk, I noticed that he spoke Lower Rhine dialect, and, like me, Kevelaer dialect. So I talked to him cheekily, proudly and God-fearingly in the same dialect, asked him where he came from. After his answer: ‘Kevelaer’, I replied: ‘There I also have an uncle named Spiska.’ ‘Man’, said the German, ‘I know him well!’ And then the German looked at me thoughtfully, grinned, looked around with assurance and called out to me, ‘Man, just get out of here.’ Timmermans said with a smile, ‘You can believe me, I didn’t need to be told twice.’
But in 1945 he still got it, albeit in a different way. He was part of a Dutch minesweeping squad, stepped on a German wooden mine (taken over by the Russians) – and got the charge full in the face. Timmermans: ‘I was blind.’ Fortunately, his eye condition has improved enough today that he has almost fully regained his sight.
The months in a Canadian war hospital changed Captain Timmermans’ view of the world. Dutch, Canadians, Belgians, Americans and also Germans lay in the hospital with him. Timmermans was the only one who spoke (or wanted to speak) German. Next to him lay a wounded German farmer’s son from the Lake Constance area; he has forgotten his name, and all efforts to trace this man after the war failed.
This German farmer’s son nursed the severely wounded Dutchman Timmermans, who was living ‘in the dark’, with such naturalness and devotion that the latter was deeply touched by it. Timmermans admits that there was ‘a break’ in his personal hatred of the Germans in the military hospital.
But the unknown German from Lake Constance was not the cause of Timmerman’s transformation; at most, he was a tool for the impetus. ‘I have been educated at home with a great emphasis on social conduct’, he said with his characteristic modesty; he probably rather means ‘humane conduct.’ In addition, there were family ties across the border, so that Timmermans accepted without reservation the request of the responsible office of his country to take over a temporary representation in Ysselsteyn for 14 days (the year was 1948). Today he smiles: ‘That turned into 28 years.’ The Dutch have transformed the barren, inhospitable ground of the military cemetery into a dignified place.
By plowing under lupines, the soil was improved to support turf cover; by 1950, the Dutch had already planted the wasteland with more than 68,000 trees and shrubs.
The current occupancy status looks like this: 74 German war dead from the 1914/18 war, including eight unknown. 31,502 German war dead from the Second World War, of which 31,213 are in individual graves in 116 cemetery fields. Of these, 26,216 are known by name. Each individual grave is marked with a concrete cross to which is affixed a plastic plaque with the name and life data of the deceased. The lifespan of these concrete crosses is short, however; after ten years they are weathered and have to be renewed – along with the plaques. Captain Timmermans had to renew about 3,500 of these grave markers every year. After the Volksbund has taken over the cemetery, it is planned to replace the concrete crosses with natural stone crosses. This costs money – a lot of money, in fact.
Even after his retirement and the handover of the war grave site to the Germans, he will remain associated with the War Graves Commission. In retrospect, the question arises as to whether his conscious advocacy of ‘the Germans and their dead’ in all the post-war years did not incur hostility from his compatriots. But he can answer this question with a clear no.
We called Ludwig Johann Timmermans a German-Dutch integration figure. That he performs this function not only schematically, but also in critical recognition of the different ‘national characteristics’ of the two peoples, becomes clear when we hear his answer to our question what, in his opinion, were the essential differences between the two peoples. First response: ‘We Dutch are somewhat more critical of the authorities than the Germans.’ There are also different behaviors in relation to children. The Dutchman sees the German ‘talent for organization’ in a positive light. But the words that play such a significant historical and current role not only in the German educational system are scary words for the Dutch: ‘Zucht und Ordnung’ (discipline and order).
Do these national characteristics also have an effect on the many hundreds of thousands of visitors from the Federal Republic who have visited the military cemetery in Ysselsteyn? Timmermans estimates that there are about 50,000 a year who lay down their silent greeting at the German military cemetery – be it with flowers, be it with a short prayer, be it with a donation, be it simply in that silent remembrance that is binding upon itself. One would think that the number of visitors would have to gradually decrease – ‘logically’, the more the memory of what terrible things happened then fades. But Captain Timmermans notes a constant in the flow of visitors, indeed he thinks that judging by what goes into the donation box, one could rather conclude a reverse trend.
When we visited him some time ago to have this conversation with him, there was a field prayer book from the last war on the table. Worn, with a touching picture of children, of a woman between the leaves and an address from the Bergisches Land. We leafed through this late testimony of a soldier’s fate, because it belongs to the estate of a dead man from the military cemetery Ysselsteyn, which has only now been rediscovered. Captain Timmermans has surprised countless relatives of German soldiers in recent decades with such personal legacies of a dear relative. Suddenly, memories leap back at us from this prayer booklet: War, cruelty, fear, despair, misery and ruin. The question grips our hearts: have we really overcome this? Men like Captain Timmermans are living testimonies to this hope. And many idealists inside and outside the Volksbund are ‘Timmermans’ Legion of Peace’.”
Mr Timmermans was awarded the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1958 for his services to the military cemetery in Ysselsteyn, to the dead there and to their relatives.
Lodewijk Johannes Timmermans, born on 4 April 1916, died on 28 February 1995, at the age of 78. As he wished, his body was cremated and the ashes scattered over the Ysselsteyn cemetery; the road to the cemetery now bears his name. There he is commemorated by a simple memorial stone without further information about his person and his actions.
(Head picture: Memorial stone for Lodewijk Johannes Timmermans
at the German military cemetery Ysselsteyn, May 2023)
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