Julius Erasmus: The Dürener Zeitung – Who is “falsifying history”? (Published on am 15/02/2022)
I. The article “Das ist Geschichtsverfälschung” (“This is a falsification of history“) in the Dürener Zeitung of 28/01/2021
Under the title “Das ist Geschichtsverfälschung“ (“This is a falsification of history”) (online version in German behind Paywall), the newspaper Dürener Zeitung published an article on 28/01/2021 which deals with Julius Erasmus and a so-called “Hörstelle“ (“listening point”) erected with regard to the latter in the municipality of Hürtgenwald. In it, the “representative of the district of Düren for the care of the war grave sites Vossenack and Hürtgen as places of a democratic culture of remembrance and commemoration” (“Beauftragter des Kreises Düren für die Betreuung der Kriegsgräberstätten Vossenack und Hürtgen als Orten einer demokratischen Erinnerungs- und Gedenkkultur”), Frank Möller, criticizes the established narrative on Julius Erasmus.
In the article, the author of Dürener Zeitung, Sarah Maria Berners, introduces the story of Julius Erasmus as follows (article loc. cit., left colum; translation from German):
“The protagonist of the audio passage (audible at www.liberationroute-nrw.de) is Julius Erasmus, a man known as ‘the undertaker of Vossenack’. There, but also on the website of Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge [the German War Graves Commission] and on an information board at the war gravesite in Vossenack, the story of Julius Erasmus is told in the same manner: In this story, Erasmus is a post-war hero who selflessly recovered the dead from the mined Hürtgen Forest, registered them and gave them a proper burial. It is said that he alone recovered more than 1,500 dead.”
Subsequently, she comes to the probably actual purpose of the article (op. cit., l. col., translation from German):
“Sources that Möller has reviewed, for example in the City and District Archives, paint a picture of Erasmus that clearly differs from the known one. It is the image of a solitary man, presumably traumatized by the war, who was ‘obviously very concerned about his reputation and also his posthumous fame’. ‘Little is known about Julius Erasmus, at least little is certain,’ Möller says. His research shows, however, that Erasmus should be evaluated differently than has been done so far, also in our newspaper.“
It is stated (op. cit., end l. col., translation from German):
“’Certainly Erasmus rendered outstanding services to the war gravesite in Vossenack. It is not fundamentally wrong to remember him,’ Möller clarifies. However, this should be done in a substantively sound and balanced manner. The written sources significantly reduced the figures disseminated by Erasmus himself. Thus Josef Knuppertz from Vossenack testified in 1960 in a letter that the statements made by Erasmus were not true.”
Subsequently, passages from the statement of Mr Knuppertz are quoted as follows (translation from German):
“’He liked to avoid mine-contaminated terrain’, it says. Knuppertz also puts the work of the other men – in the story they are Erasmus’ helpers – in the foreground: ‘There was great bitterness in our ranks over the fact that when he was paid by the municipality he always participated with the highest number of hours, although at times he did not show up at work at all.’“
In the “interview” that follows, Mr Möller states (op. cit., third col., translation from German)
“In texts about historical persons, one should check all sources. And if there are different evaluations, they should be compared with each other and not pass on unverified legends.”
also providing what he considers to be the correct evaluation of Julius Erasmus (loc. cit., translation from German):
“Erasmus was not a hero, he was a pitiful, battered man with a pronounced ego who craved attention, recognition, and approval – even at the expense of others.”
II. A critique of the article
The content and methodology of this article are remarkable in several respects and raise very fundamental questions of journalistic craft and ethics.
1. Dealing with sources
A trustworthy reporting, given the serious allegations made about someone who has been dead for many years, would first require that the said “sources Möller has consulted, for example, in the City and District Archives” be named in detail. The City and District Archives of Düren alone contain around 50 relevant files with several thousand pages. Have these been sifted through completely? It can hardly be assumed. If not: Is it not possible that there is information in the unseen documents that refutes the theses put forward in the article? Wouldn’t serious journalism require that these questions be clarified before it is announced “that Erasmus should be evaluated differently than has been done so far”? Or is the aim of the article perhaps to provide an “evaluation” that is desired from the outset, beyond all the facts?
2. The “Knuppertz declaration” and its backgrounds
The core statement of the article, according to which “Erasmus should be evaluated differently than has been done so far” is mainly based on the said written statement of Mr Knuppertz of 08/12/1960 – sufficiently known here –, which can be found in a file of the City and District Archives of Düren. Although a “substantively sound and balanced ” approach and a “review of all sources” are urged, this is exactly what is not done. The statement in question is adopted without reflection and its content is assumed to be correct, while the context in which it was made at the time remains unmentioned.
It is readily apparent from the relevant file that the Knuppertz declaration is an attachment to a lengthy letter sent in December 1960 by Mr Josef Brugger, successor to Mr Erasmus as the warden of the military cemetery in Vossenack after the latter’s retirement in February 1960, to the then responsible administration of the district of Monschau. There were apparently considerable personal animosities between Erasmus and Brugger, the latter having worked at the facility under Mr Erasmus before he took over as warden, which are said to have gone as far as physical confrontations. After Mr Erasmus retired, his successor accused him of several “lies”, whereby especially the positive image that Mr Erasmus still enjoyed in public after his retirement as a cemetery warden seems to have been a lasting thorn in his side.
As one of these “lies” Mr Brugger had identified the number of fallen soldiers buried by Erasmus alone in the municipal cemetery of Vossenack before the existence of the military cemetery. The peculiar question of how many fallen soldiers Julius Erasmus alone recovered and buried, which is still considered central by many even today, was already blossoming at that time. Josef Brugger now tried to prove that the number of 783 dead soldiers buried by Erasmus alone in the municipal cemetery, which was apparently circulating at the time, was inflated. He questioned several men on this issue and presented the results in a letter to the administration of the district of Monschau in the competence of which the matter fell at that time. The first, municipal worker Heinrich Leisten, who had worked with Mr Erasmus on numerous fallen recoveries, confirmed the figure of 783. The second, the aforementioned Mr Knuppertz, whose background and relation to Julius Erasmus remain unclear, reduced it to “at most” 200.
A trustworthy approach to sources would require that, in addition to the aforementioned context of the “Knuppertz declaration”, the divergent testimonies should at least be mentioned. In the said file of the City and District Archives of Düren, the “Knuppertz declaration” can be found right next to the letter of Mr Brugger to which it had been attached. Why are this letter and the context in which Mr Knuppertz’ statement was made concealed in the article, as well as Mr Leisten’s statement contradicting Knuppertz?
3. The contents of the “Knuppertz declaration”
Also telling is the very selective citation of contents of Mr Knuppertz’ statement in the article. The statement reads in full as follows (source: City and District Archives of Düren, translation from German):
“Apart from Mr Erasmus, 6 men were employed in the recovery of the war dead, who were buried in the honorary part of the municipal cemetery, until Nov. 47, then 4 workers of the municipality of Vossenack until the currency reform in 48.
From these 6 men in the period 47-48 about 700 fallen were embedded.
At most, Mr Erasmus recovered only 200 of them alone.
This number is still flattering for him.
There was great bitterness in our ranks over the fact that when he was paid by the municipality he always participated with the highest number of hours, although at times he did not show up at work at all. He liked to avoid mine-contaminated terrain.
I testify that the statement made by Mr Erasmus that he alone had recovered the approximately 780 war dead buried in the honorary section of the Vossenack municipal cemetery does not correspond to the truth.”
Accordingly, it should be noted: The “Knuppertz declaration” only deals with the question of how many fallen Julius Erasmus alone buried in the years 1947 and 1948, and thus before the founding of the military cemetery in Vossenack, in the municipal cemetery of Vossenack. From the outset, it does not allow any statement about his activities at the later military cemetery in Vossenack, inaugurated in October 1952, where Mr Erasmus was officially active until February 1960. But this is exactly the impression given in the article when it says that Mr Möller’s “research” showed “that Erasmus should be evaluated differently than has been done so far.” It is pretended as if it is proven by the said “sources, which Möller has reviewed for example in the City and District Archives”, unknown in detail regarding their extent and content, that Julius Erasmus had recovered considerably fewer fallen than it is commonly claimed. This conclusion, however, cannot be drawn from the only concrete source cited as evidence, the aforementioned “Knuppertz declaration”, already due to its limited subject matter.
In addition, the statements quoted in the article “He liked to avoid mine-contaminated terrain” and “There was great bitterness in our ranks over the fact that he was always involved with the highest number of hours when he was paid by the municipality, although at times he did not even let himself be seen at work” are included in the statement, but make up only a small part of it, whereby the remaining contents clearly show the limited temporal and factual relevance of the declaration. So why were just these two passages from the statement quoted in the article while the rest was concealed? Why were these two selectively chosen passages generalized in the article and, as it were, inflated as proof for the apparently desired statement “that Erasmus should be evaluated differently than has been done so far, also by our newspaper”?
III. Conclusion
Undoubtedly, the traditional narrative of Julius Erasmus needs a critical review, which some of the currently disseminated theses about him will probably not withstand. However, the yardstick for such a review must be factual independence and impartiality as well as a strict orientation towards provable facts, so that the traditional, often questionable assertions do not experience equally questionable substitution of a merely different coinage.
The article “Das ist Geschichtsverfälschung“ (“This is a falsification of history”) in the Dürener Zeitung of 28/01/2021 vividly shows the results to be expected in the absence of independence, impartiality and fact orientation.
Instead of a balanced, fact-oriented presentation, the article elevates to proof a statement made by an individual with an unclear motivation, which is not suitable for generalization already due to the special circumstances on which it is based, that Julius Erasmus as a historical person should now be “evaluated differently than has been done so far”. Making this statement seems to be the real motive of the article from the outset, pretending to act “substantively sound and balanced” and to “examine all sources”, while in fact basing the conclusions on few very selectively chosen sources and statements stripped of their context and omitting everything that does not fit into the newly defined narrative of the “war-battered egomaniac”. As a result, this is an obvious, methodologically and technically doubtful attempt to reinterpret the existing narrative on Julius Erasmus according to the worldview of the author and the interviewed “representative of the district of Düren for the care of the war grave sites Vossenack and Hürtgen as places of a democratic culture of remembrance and commemoration”.
After all, the question arises: Who is it really that is trying to “falsify history”?
(Picture: Autumn at the Military Cemetery in Vossenack, October 2019)
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