Bayeux Tapestry piece stolen by Nazis will be returned to France
The missing piece of the 11th-century tapestry was taken from the collection of Karl Schlabow, a textile archaeologist who worked in league with the Nazi SS as they scoured Europe for Germanic artefacts.
Schlabow and his colleagues looted the piece after Heinrich Himmler, the SS leader, sent them to study it in occupied France in 1941.
According to German newspaper Stuttgarter Zeitung, a member of the team removed part of the fragment and took it back to Germany, where it was hidden for decades.
But this month, it emerged that the elusive fragment had finally been discovered in the state archives of Schleswig-Holstein, where the Schlabow collection is held.
A press conference is due to be held in late March where further details about the fragment, which was taken from the underside of the tapestry, will be revealed.
The Bayeux Tapestry, which depicts William the Conqueror's invasion of England in 1066 and his ascension to the throne, is an integral part of France's cultural heritage.
It is full of brutal depictions of combat, with the bodies of slain soldiers littering the bottom half of the tapestry.
Schlabow looted the fragment while working for Ahnenerbe, an occult-obsessed organisation created by Himmler to promote the idea that Germans descended from a superior Aryan race.
Research by Ahnenerbe was often used by the Nazi regime to justify its racist policies, though the group largely engaged in bizarre pseudoscience and conspiracy theories.
Himmler himself was fascinated by occult mysteries, keeping a rock crystal on display in his lair of Wewelsburg Castle that supposedly represented the Holy Grail.
The fragment is being returned to France just in time for major restoration work that will start this summer, when the tapestry will leave its public viewing gallery in Bayeux, Normandy for two years.
'In terms of economic and cultural influence, this is the most complex and ambitious project … ever undertaken by the Town of Bayeux,' said Bayeux mayor Patrick Gomont of the £30 million restoration efforts.
However, even after the Schlabow piece has been stitched back into the tapestry, it will not be complete.
Another section of up to 10ft of fabric, which is presumed to show the coronation of William I, is also missing - and its whereabouts are still unknown.
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