Bexhill Museum’s curator Julian Porter explained that Bexhill-on-Sea had German associations going back to 1804, when infantry from the King’s German Legion was based in the East Sussex barracks. And since the late C19th, many independent schools have operated in this seaside resort-town, including German language schools. Thank you to the Times of Israel.
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NB the Bexhill school that was open from 1932-9: Victoria Augusta College/AVC, named for the last German empress, Victoria Augusta of Schleswig-Holstein. This Nazi finishing school for girls aged 16-21 was located on UK’s south coast. Bexhill was perfect since it had been long considered a healthy, safe place for British and foreign aristocrats, diplomats and wealthy parents to place their children while they worked abroad. The school’s stated goal was to cultivate international friendship between Germany and Britain.
AVC took in the daughter of high-ranking Nazi officials and moulded them into respectable wives for the British ruling class. Students included SS chief Heinrich Himmler’s goddaughter, Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop’ daughter, Hitler’s ambassador at the Vatican Diego von Bergen’s daughter, and Countess Haldenberg, niece of German ambassador to Britain Herbert von Dirksen.
Did any documentation survive? Bexhill Museum’s Julian Porter displayed local newspaper clippings and a 2014 interview with Mollie Willing Hickie who worked in the late 1930s as a young school au-pair. There was also a school badge worn on the girls’ blazers, the logo including the German lion, imperial German flag, Union Jack and Nazi swastika flag. Plus there was a school brochure from c1935, coinciding with the arrival of principal Frau Helene Rocholl who had close ties to the Nazi regime. And the school was mentioned in Paris Fashion And World War Two: Global Diffusion and Nazi Control.
1935 was the year when Earl De La Warr commissioned architects Erich Mendelsohn, a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany and Serge Chermayeff, a Russian Jew, to design Bexhill’s De La Warr Pavilion. It was the first International Modernist-style public building in the UK and the first time Bexhill ?knew about the risks Jews were exposed to. A clash between the British Union of Fascists and hundreds of locals led to disorder one Friday night. The situation might have become serious had not the police intervened, said Bexhill Observer, July 1936.
Didn’t the locals think it was bizarre that young women were wearing the Nazi swastika on the British seaside pre-WW2? No! Locals didn’t consider the young AVC students a threat, because as long as the girls were present, German-British hostilities were unthinkable. And the students thought it perfectly normal since they listened to Hitler’s speeches on the radio and celebrated Hitler’s birthday. The Times showed AVC students greeting German war minister Field Marshall von Blomberg, Hitler’s Minister of War at King George VI's coronation in May 1937; note the Nazi salute.
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The Third Reich was telling Britain that it would support its continued rule over its empire, so long as it didn’t stand in Germany’s way of conquering all of Europe. By the end of the 1930s, AVC’s goal was ?about the Nazis trying to keep Britain out of the upcoming war by seeking an alliance with British aristocracy.
Remember AVC was designed as a finishing school where daughters of Germany's aristocratic and diplomatic families completed their education. The curriculum comprised domestic studies, Baroness von Korff’s cookery classes, regular reviews of German newspapers and English language instruction. Au pair Hickie reported that all the girls did attain the Cambridge Certificate of Proficiency in English.
The girls were of marriageable age, they could speak good English and would be in high society finding husbands who were decision-makers, so they could infiltrate British society. Whether the girls actually had any success marrying English men was uncertain.
It didn’t matter. The girls were evacuated back to Germany in the Munich Crisis in Sept 1938, but returned to Bexhill after a fortnight. As Bexhill locals readied for war with gas masks and sandbags in April 1939, The People newspaper reported that principal Frau Helene Rocholl was confident there would not be a war. WRONG! The girls left for Germany in late Aug 1939 for good!
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Bexhill Museum
NB the Bexhill school that was open from 1932-9: Victoria Augusta College/AVC, named for the last German empress, Victoria Augusta of Schleswig-Holstein. This Nazi finishing school for girls aged 16-21 was located on UK’s south coast. Bexhill was perfect since it had been long considered a healthy, safe place for British and foreign aristocrats, diplomats and wealthy parents to place their children while they worked abroad. The school’s stated goal was to cultivate international friendship between Germany and Britain.
AVC took in the daughter of high-ranking Nazi officials and moulded them into respectable wives for the British ruling class. Students included SS chief Heinrich Himmler’s goddaughter, Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop’ daughter, Hitler’s ambassador at the Vatican Diego von Bergen’s daughter, and Countess Haldenberg, niece of German ambassador to Britain Herbert von Dirksen.
Did any documentation survive? Bexhill Museum’s Julian Porter displayed local newspaper clippings and a 2014 interview with Mollie Willing Hickie who worked in the late 1930s as a young school au-pair. There was also a school badge worn on the girls’ blazers, the logo including the German lion, imperial German flag, Union Jack and Nazi swastika flag. Plus there was a school brochure from c1935, coinciding with the arrival of principal Frau Helene Rocholl who had close ties to the Nazi regime. And the school was mentioned in Paris Fashion And World War Two: Global Diffusion and Nazi Control.
1935 was the year when Earl De La Warr commissioned architects Erich Mendelsohn, a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany and Serge Chermayeff, a Russian Jew, to design Bexhill’s De La Warr Pavilion. It was the first International Modernist-style public building in the UK and the first time Bexhill ?knew about the risks Jews were exposed to. A clash between the British Union of Fascists and hundreds of locals led to disorder one Friday night. The situation might have become serious had not the police intervened, said Bexhill Observer, July 1936.
Didn’t the locals think it was bizarre that young women were wearing the Nazi swastika on the British seaside pre-WW2? No! Locals didn’t consider the young AVC students a threat, because as long as the girls were present, German-British hostilities were unthinkable. And the students thought it perfectly normal since they listened to Hitler’s speeches on the radio and celebrated Hitler’s birthday. The Times showed AVC students greeting German war minister Field Marshall von Blomberg, Hitler’s Minister of War at King George VI's coronation in May 1937; note the Nazi salute.
Field Marshall von Blomberg, Hitler’s Minister of War
Welcomed by AVC students in May 1937
Remember AVC was designed as a finishing school where daughters of Germany's aristocratic and diplomatic families completed their education. The curriculum comprised domestic studies, Baroness von Korff’s cookery classes, regular reviews of German newspapers and English language instruction. Au pair Hickie reported that all the girls did attain the Cambridge Certificate of Proficiency in English.
The girls were of marriageable age, they could speak good English and would be in high society finding husbands who were decision-makers, so they could infiltrate British society. Whether the girls actually had any success marrying English men was uncertain.
It didn’t matter. The girls were evacuated back to Germany in the Munich Crisis in Sept 1938, but returned to Bexhill after a fortnight. As Bexhill locals readied for war with gas masks and sandbags in April 1939, The People newspaper reported that principal Frau Helene Rocholl was confident there would not be a war. WRONG! The girls left for Germany in late Aug 1939 for good!
AVC students on the beach at Bexhill-on Sea,
1935 prospectus.
Students relaxing at AVC,
1935 prospectus.
Students reading newspapers at AVC,
1935 prospectus.
The film
This largely forgotten 1930s Nazi girls school in Bexhill provided the historical basis for the spy thriller, Six Minutes to Midnight. It opened in Britain in March, starring Dame Judi Dench, Carla Juri, Celyn Jones & Eddie Izzard, who also wrote the screenplay, and director Andy Goddard. As in real life, the daughters of Hitler’s officers intended to use their fine English to marry high up in British society.
New teacher Thomas Miller's predecessor was found dead on the beach. In an interview with Frau Rocholl, she asked what Englishman would accept a post teaching Hitler's League of German Girls? Miller responded in German that his father was German! Frau Rocholl apparently had no alternative, so Miller got the job and was immediately teaching. The issues of individual, cultural and national loyalty, and how to respond to aggressive actions by other nations, were open to analysis. As were the spying possibilities. See the film, which opened in Australia in late April 2021.
All photo credits: Bexhill Museum
This largely forgotten 1930s Nazi girls school in Bexhill provided the historical basis for the spy thriller, Six Minutes to Midnight. It opened in Britain in March, starring Dame Judi Dench, Carla Juri, Celyn Jones & Eddie Izzard, who also wrote the screenplay, and director Andy Goddard. As in real life, the daughters of Hitler’s officers intended to use their fine English to marry high up in British society.
New teacher Thomas Miller's predecessor was found dead on the beach. In an interview with Frau Rocholl, she asked what Englishman would accept a post teaching Hitler's League of German Girls? Miller responded in German that his father was German! Frau Rocholl apparently had no alternative, so Miller got the job and was immediately teaching. The issues of individual, cultural and national loyalty, and how to respond to aggressive actions by other nations, were open to analysis. As were the spying possibilities. See the film, which opened in Australia in late April 2021.
All photo credits: Bexhill Museum