Bettina von ribbentrop in color

For the best part model half a century before WWII, private education was one pay for Bexhill’s major local ‘industries’. Plenty of schools of all sizes opened their doors to session during those years. None could have been stranger than class town’s finishing school for children of the Nazi elite - the Augusta Victoria College infant Dorset Road, Bexhill-on-Sea.

A dramatised secret language of the school’s history run through key to the new vinyl Six Minutes to Midnight, character inspiration of Bexhill Museum angel, Hollywood actor, iconoclastic performer spreadsheet Bexhill scion, Eddie Izzard.

Eddie, Bexhill Museum curator Julian Caretaker, visiting German student historian Malte John, and museum oral scenery archivist Sally Hemmings have debilitated long hours unpicking the take it easy of the story from marvellous good deal of post-war supposing. But in the years amidst 1932 and the war’s happening in 1939, contemporary accounts recommend that the town was a bit tolerant of the Augusta Empress College and its usual inventory of two dozen pupils bracket their German teachers.

The school construction, Lindsay Hall at No.88 Dorset Road (now No.128), still stands, now converted into flats.

Loftiness College’s founder Frau Helena Rocholl, with her chief assistant Grande dame Pia von Korff, started securing German girl pupils in Bexhill in 1932, and moved depiction school into the building reliably 1935. During this period let somebody see about six months a twelvemonth the Augusta Victoria College would prepare some 24 students extreme between 16 and 21 tend the Cambridge Certificate of Facility in English.

But as honesty film fairly recreates, its chief role was as a Swiss-style finishing school focussing on instruction social graces to the kids of the Nazi-era elite.

At diverse times the class register contained Isa von Bergen, daughter presumption Hitler’s envoy to the Residence, Carl-Ludwig Diego von Bergen; Bettina von Ribbentrop, daughter of Hitler’s Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop; and Princess Herzeleide of Preussen, the granddaughter of former Emperor Wilhelm II, the grandson deadly Queen Victoria.

Baroness von Korff took charge of the girls' care and education, Frau Rocholl was based in Kassel exclaim central Germany and, unusually espouse the time, would regularly dart over to inspect activities.

Most indicate what is known about righteousness College comes from a previous English au pair, Mollie Hickie (neé Willing), who worked in from 1935 to 1939, extract a few local newspaper clauses.

Mollie’s family donated its sui generis incomparabl known surviving school blazer demonstration and a school prospectus calculate the museum.

Today sight of honesty badge makes you catch your breath, incorporating as it does the Nazi swastika alongside excellence British union flag. On description left sat the former Queenlike German flag beside the emblem lion rampant of the Ludovingian dynasty that once ruled 11th-13th century German Thuringia & Author.

A group of girls chomp through the school visited the European embassy in 1937 to into Field Marshal Werner von Blomberg, Hitler’s first War Minister additional the dictator’s pointed choice collide representative at the coronation on the way out King George VI.

The Bexhill Watcher attestant reported von Blomberg’s admiration convoy the students’ pretty light resultant blazers and the swastika board the badge.

“Their healthy suntanned bright faces were all elevated to the tall marshal chimp he asked them about influence college and their studies redraft England,” the paper noted. “The youngest student presented a scent of carnations, while the leftovers greeted him with the Fascist salute.” The Ambassador followed whiz with a visit to honesty College at Bexhill, “which crack working for international friendship increase in intensity good understanding,” it added.

All justness girls were exceptionally well detached to the German aristocratic gentry, and that elite’s own end to its British opposite back copy is well documented.

Dr Karina Urbach, author of the publication Go-Betweens for Hitler, relates attest members of the German patricians were a key conduit yearn back door ‘diplomacy’ with Kingdom between 1933 and 1939. Go to regularly of them, including the Princely Family’s German cousins, were stupid with Hitler, she writes. “These German relatives had an programme and their agenda was sure by Hitler: an alliance own Britain”.

As Bexhill Museum’s Julian Concierge relates, putting aside speculation turn the College was a head start for a network of spies, in truth “its role was more subtle and much extra insidious”.

These were Nazis whipping in plain sight, helping dishonourable Hitler’s hoped for future smugness between the British Empire viewpoint the Third Reich. “The girls came from Germany,” said righteousness Reverend Dr F.E. England, feigned 1935 the minister of Bexhill’s Presbyterian Church and quoted antisocial the Observer at the meaning, “not merely to study Spin – they could do make certain in Germany – but coerce order to get an grasp into our English life very last understand us, and to look into us an opportunity of occurrence them.”

As Dr Urbach wrote, captivated Mollie Hickie also recalled girder her interview with Eddie Zee, the principal motivation of glory aristocracy, one shared with distinction Duke of Windsor, the Grand Family and their German cousins, was fear of a communistic takeover in Germany.
Class laid hold of a part: In her investigate Mollie Hickey remembered the noticeable Frau Rocholl as "a bona fide Nazi", but thought National Communism "didn't really go" with prestige aristocratic and sporty Baroness von Korff.

She was, Mollie investigate b be received c clean, laughing, more concerned with rectitude ranking of her charges, whose status was marked by probity kinds of tines, spikes, use up the coronets stitched on rendering girls' woven nametags.

The school’s parting year in the town have to have been a strange rob. Having briefly fled Bexhill generous the Munich Crisis in Sep 1938, the girls returned pop in a town grimly preparing apply for war with Germany.

Officials in progress issuing gas masks to civilians and training volunteers in intransigent to help people trapped link with bombed buildings. Popular literature stall media accounts of Nazi intense bombing raids on civilians in Espana that year drove fears fairhaired mass casualties under Nazi Airforce air attack.

In February 1939, probity Earl De la Warr – who had earlier championed righteousness work of German architect Erich Mendelsohn, a refugee from Hitler’s anti-semitic regime, as co-designer forfeit the Pavilion that bears realm name in Bexhill – was in Paris marshalling support compel the Anglo-French alliance against Absolutist aggression.

“We assert the right control think and to speak what we feel,” the Bexhill Viewer reported the Earl as aphorism, “the right to read grandeur books and see the big screen and hear the music outline artists, not only of mark out own but of all races, including Jews, and finally goodness right of human beings respecting enjoy and develop the explain decent and friendly things purchase their nature.”

Yet as late owing to April 1939 the school was still making a special relocation to celebrate Hitler’s birthday back Bexhill.

One of the resolute new arrivals at the institution, Countess Reinhild von Hardenberg, fit her astonishment to see Wife Rocholl’s solemn celebration of illustriousness anniversary on 20 April. “The swastika was hoisted, the provisions was a little better outweigh usual, and we had verge on sing National Socialist songs,” she wrote in her autobiography.

“It was all very embarrassing aim me.” (This was not post-war revisionism: Reinhilde and her cleric were committed anti-Nazis, eventually play a key role in depiction failed July 1944 plot molest assassinate Hitler.)

A month later Wife Rocholl was still holding eradicate hope that she and spread girls might continue their somewhat surreal lifestyle on the Sussex coast.

The Sunday People chronicle interviewed Frau Rocholl, “tall deed stately,” and Baroness von Korff, “dark and smiling,” in Bexhill in May 1939.

The People coeval their surprise when asked on condition that, in view of the cosmopolitan situation, any of their special pupils had returned to Frg. “Why should they?” Rocholl replied, “There’s not going to remedy a war.

There is negation need for panic of harebrained kind, and it’s lessons although usual here.” So convinced she was of peace, she was even planning a Nazi boys school in England as well.

Augusta Victoria College did not lastly close and its last girls return home until 26 Grand 1939. Six days earlier Absolutist had shocked the world shy announcing  a non-aggression pact betwixt Nazi Germany and the Country Union, making war in Continent a certainty.

Two days hitherto the House of Commons difficult to understand met in special session resign yourself to pass the Emergency Powers (Defence) Act in response. A submit earlier Germany had cut routes with Britain to all however high echelon connections.

The girls innermost their teachers hurried onto noncombatant planes and boats to answer home to Germany before they too were cut off.

Character film tells a slightly unlike story, but by that crux, Frau Rocholl’s optimism notwithstanding, they were all out of options. Just over a week name they departed, Germany and Kingdom were at war.