Rommel's scarf and some more.

[TabsTabs1964]

A storm called Domingos has hit the place where I live since yesterday. A strong wind is blowing and it's raining hard. It's one of those fall weekends where you don't have to step outside the house, so I looked here and there among the collection of photos and a little story I wrote a few years ago and thought maybe other members of the Forum are at home this weekend and a good story maybe it will be good for them.



On days like today I remember my mother telling me as a child to dress warmly and take my scarf so as not to catch a cold. It's true, a scarf, a neckerchief, or flannel shirt helps keep you warm.

If you are a soldier also of course.....

[TabsTabs1964]

[TabsTabs1964]

Of course, a thick shirt tight around the neck also helps to keep from getting cold....

[TabsTabs1964]

We all know that some men of the Afrika Korps also wore scarves and neckerchiefs....




tabstabs collection

But we all know it from the most famous member of the Afrika Korps. Its charismatic and immortal leader Erwin Rommel.
Today I want to tell you the story I discovered under his scarf. Under Rommel's scarf...



I hope you enjoy

[TabsTabs1964]

Many of us have heard about the British origin of the famous glasses that Rommel usually wore in the African campaign.

Today we are going to explain the origin of his other most characteristic piece of clothing. His scarf and the personal story behind it.

The best-known images of Rommel with the scarf around his neck were taken between the spring of 1941 and 1943, during his time in command of the Afrika Korps, when the general protected his throat with it from the cold of dawns and nights in the desert.


Wiener Neustadt, 1941. Well-Known image of Manfred, Erwin and Lucie Rommel

We could think that it was made by Lucie, his wife and mother of his son Manfred. But we would be wrong.

To tell this story we will have to go back quite a bit in time. Until 1910, when Rommel was a promising 19-year-old young man.


A very young Rommel in a Cadet uniform with his mother and brothers

At that time, the main Military Academy (Kriegsschule) of the Empire was located in Danzig, the former port of West Prussia on the shores of the Baltic, just on the other side of the Reich from Rommel's native Swabia

In order to enter that Academy, young Erwin would first have to enlist in the Army of his Kingdom, Württemberg.
Without a place in either the Artillery or the Engineers, he had to settle for joining in July 1910, as a Cadet in the 124th Württemberg Infantry Regiment, quartered in the small town of Weingarten, where he served until March 1911.



It was there when he first met and then fell in love with the 18-year-old girl Walburga Stemmer, with whom he had a passionate romance to which more than a hundred letters testify.

Finally, the young Rommel approved his entry into the Danzig Officers' Academy, where he would remain for eight months, after which he would return in January 1912 to the barracks of his old 124th Regiment in Weingarten, converted into a handsome Second Lieutenant.


Erwin and Walburga Steimmer (1913)7

[TabsTabs1964]

During all that time he continued his romance with Walburga, the result of which was the birth of a girl on December 8, 1913, whom they would call Gertrud.

But Erwin and his lover did not marry. Rommel's parents were always opposed to this unsuitable relationship for a young officer.

Lieutenant Rommel maintained contact with his illegitimate daughter Gertrud, but in Danzig he had met another woman, Lucie Mollin, socially acceptable as the daughter of a Prussian landowner, whom he would marry in 1916 (during a leave) and who She would be the companion of his life.


Lucie and Erwin's wedding photography (1916)

Rommel never hid from Lucie his previous relationship and the existence of her illegitimate daughter Gertrud. What's more, when the war began in 1914, Rommel, still single, arranged that the beneficiary of compensation in the event of death in combat be his little daughter.


Rommel with the commander of the Württemberg mountain battalion, Major Theodor Sproesser. with the Order Pour le Mèrite, which they both received for storming Mount Matajur in the Julian Alps


Erwin and Lucie Marie Mollin (1918)

Walburga always trusted that Rommel would return to her and their daughter, Gertrud. The war ended, the years passed and Rommel had no children with his wife, which fueled the hopes of his first lover.

But Walburga committed suicide two months before the Rommels had their son Manfred on Christmas Eve 1928.

Gertrud was 15 years old at the time, and although she had always enjoyed Rommel's love and financial support, from then on, she strengthened her ties with her father, his wife, Lucie, and her half-brother Manfred, who would accept her fully (as his mother already did) for him she was always his cousin Gertrud...

[TabsTabs1964]

Rommel sleeps flying towards occupied Warsaw in 1939. In that first campaign of World War II, he already played a prominent role.

Although his first great moment would be in France in 1940, as Division Commander...



Commander of the 7th Panzer Division



When in May 1940 the 7th Panzer commanded by Rommel flew from the banks of the Meuse to the Channel coast in Cherbourg, in twenty-eight days, Gertrud was already a 27-year-old woman and her half-brother Manfred was an 11-year-old boy.


Manfred and Gertrud, circa 1932/33

Two images of Manfred's childhood with his father.




The island of Borkum, in the North Sea, in 1934


Manfred in 1940. A 12-year-old boy

And nine months later, in February 1941, Rommel was sent to Africa to command the Afrika Korps.

[TabsTabs1964]

The German propaganda, which exhaustively covered the new campaign of the Reich armies in a setting as exotic as the sands of the desert, was responsible for explaining in its newsreels the intense cold of the nights in the Sahara, so Gertrud knitted a scarf that was sent to his father....

It's the scarf in the photos.

[TabsTabs1964]

Profound and rapid advances and setbacks marked the African campaign that has left us with so many images of the general wearing the gift from his daughter Gertrud.

[Pauls1970]

Your research is absolutely fascinating Santi, thank you
Paul