The strange story of the Nazi obsession with this legendary artefact still isn't over

But what was the root of this obsession? It all linked back to the intersection between Nazi ideology and the study of the history of the Germanic people.

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Why the Nazis were obsessed with the Bayeux Tapestry

Before the Second World War, Himmler had co-founded Das Ahnenerbe, the Society for the Study of Ancestral Heritage, the aim of which was to promote archaeological investigation of sites associated with early Germanic settlement. One of the targets of Das Ahnenerbe was the Bayeux Tapestry.

As Professor Shirley Ann Brown notes in this HistoryExtra article on the subject, “In July 1939, a memo written by Franz Altheim, professor of classical philology at Frankfurt University, arrived on the desk of Wolfram Sievers, Ahnenerbe’s general manager. It proposed that a detailed examination of the Bayeux Tapestry would prove that the Normans who conquered England were, in reality, Vikings – and, by extension, Germanic.”

By Himmler’s time, the Bayeux Tapestry had been stored in the town of Bayeux in Normandy for centuries. We know that from at least 1476, it was held in Bayeux Cathedral, and occasionally displayed. Its location before that is supposition, but some experts argue that it was initially created for the consecration of Bayeux Cathedral in the late 11th century, and thus would have been there ever since it was stitched together – probably shortly after the conquest itself.

• Read more | The making of the Bayeux Tapestry

The Tapestry briefly left Bayeux in the early 19th century, when Napoleon had it moved to Paris as a propaganda tool to support his intended invasion of Britain. But the invasion never happened, and after being displayed in 1804, the Tapestry was returned to Bayeux, where it stayed until the Second World War.

After the fall of France in June 1940, the Nazis were able to step up their interest in the Tapestry. Dr Herbert Jankuhn, professor of Viking archaeology at Rostock University, was sent to Bayeux with a team of experts to carry out a detailed study.

The French did as much as they could to obstruct the Nazi investigation, but eventually the Tapestry was moved to a monastery outside Bayeux, where it could be unrolled and photographed. The team worked non-stop through the summer of 1941, and the Tapestry was then moved to the Château de Sourches, some 100 miles south of Bayeux, where it joined treasures from the Louvre.

Why were sections of the Tapestry removed?

Herbert Jeschke, an artist from Berlin – and the only member of the research team who wasn’t a paid-up member of the Nazi party or SS – was commissioned to create full-size drawings and watercolours of the Tapestry. In 2019 Jeschke’s archive was gifted to the city of Bayeux. Jeschke removed some fragments and threads from the Tapestry in the course of his work.

Another member of the team was Dr Karl Schlabow, textile expert and head of the Germanic Costume Museum in Neumünster, whose job it was to scrutinise the fabric and take careful measurements. While he was doing this, it seems that he removed a small piece of the Tapestry, and appropriated it for his own personal research. The fragment, mounted in a small glass case, has been rediscovered in the Schleswig-Holstein State Archives during the cataloging of Schlabow's documents. It will shortly be returning to Bayeux.

According to the head of the Schleswig-Holstein State Archives, Prof Dr Rainer Hering, "This glass plate containing the fabric remnants of the Bayeux Tapestry is Nazi-looted artefacts, which will of course be returned to the rightful owner. After numerous discussions and emails with German and French authorities, the way is now clear for its return to the Bayeux Museum."

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Jeschke and Schlabow aren’t the only people to have removed bits of the Tapestry, however. Draughtsman Charles Stothard was sent to Bayeux in 1816 to create a copy of the tapestry for the Society of Antiquaries, and it seems that he took a small fragment for himself too. The fragment came up for auction in the 1860s and was bought by the South Kensington Museum (later the V&A), which then sent it back to Bayeux – partly to sweeten a deal to allow the museum to photograph the Tapestry.

The Nazi investigation of the Tapestry also included a photographic survey, and in 1942 Himmler was presented with a bound volume of photographs and drawings derived from the 1941 work in the Château de Sourches. The Tapestry stayed in the Château until June 1944.

Following the D-Day landings, the Gestapo moved the Bayeux Tapestry to the Louvre in Paris for safekeeping. In August 1944, just days before the liberation of the city, Himmler ordered its transfer to Germany, believing it to be a significant piece of Aryan heritage. However, British codebreakers at Bletchley Park intercepted this directive and alerted the French Resistance.

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The exact details of how the Resistance intervened are unclear, though it’s possible that they had the assistance of General Dietrich von Choltitz. The military governor of Paris, known for defying Hitler’s command to destroy Paris, may have taken measures to delay or prevent the SS from carrying out their orders, ensuring the tapestry remained in the Louvre.

Happily, that means that the Tapestry was eventually restored to Bayeux, where it can be visited today. In September 2025, the Tapestry Museum will be closing for a major renovation project, and the Tapestry will be moved off display and put in a special storage area, before the museum reopens in 2027.