Coburg, Germany Before, During, and After the War

As Black History Month has recently passed its halfway mark, I’m returning to a theme I’ve written about before: Black Americans and Germany.

Which, believe it or not, brings us to the northern Bavarian city of Coburg, population 41,842 (2022). Coburg has a long and interesting history. Part of that history involves the British Queen Victoria. The monumental statue seen in the center of the 1945 photo below is still standing in Coburg’s Market Square today. It was placed there in 1865, as a gift from the queen to honor her German husband, Prince Albert, a member of the royal house of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha.

In late April 1945 American tank crews belonging to Company D of the all-Black 761st Tank Battalion entered the city of Coburg, Germany. Previously they had fought valiantly in the Battle of the Bulge. They were now tasked with cleaning out any remaining Nazi machine-gun nests in the area. Like the famed Tuskegee airmen who had escorted US bombers in Europe, they operated in the segregated American armed forces of the time. (See a more recent photo of this location below.) PHOTO: U.S. Army, public domain (Wikipedia)

A lot has changed since the British royal family changed their dynastic name in 1917 from “Saxe-Coburg and Gotha” to “Windsor”. In addition to the United Kingdom, members of the Saxe-Coburg and Gotha dynasty, dating back to 1826, have sat on the thrones of Belgium, Bulgaria, and Portugal. That name change came about because of the First World War and a desire to distance the British royals from their German royal ancestors and the Prussian Empire that was now waging war against the British Empire.

But in the lead-up to the globe’s second worldwide war in the early 1930s, Coburg itself also underwent a radical change, as it gained the dubious distinction of becoming the first city in Germany to display the Nazi swastika flag on a public building (the Rathaus, city hall) on 18 January 1931. On 26 February 1932, Coburg achieved another first when it bestowed upon Adolf Hitler the title of Ehrenbürger (honorary citizen of Coburg). Knowing this, you could be forgiven for thinking Coburg has little to do with Black history. That is until you see the city’s centuries old coat of arms, the African-looking Coburger Mohr, or the “Coburg Moor”.

This more recent view of Coburg shows the same Stadthaus (Town Building, not the city hall) on Market Square, with the same statue of Prince Albert, but in August 2011 rather than April 1945. PHOTO: Guido Radig, CC-BY-3.0 via Wikipedia

Segregation in the US Armed Forces
But before we discuss the Coburg story in more detail, let’s consider the situation of African American soldiers during World War II. The black-and-white photograph at the top of this page shows all-Black crews in their M5 Stuart light tanks arriving in Coburg. They were fighting and dying in the same war against the Nazis as white troops, but Southern Jim Crow policies and prejudices had followed them from the US to wartime Europe. They could serve their country and fight the Nazis, who considered Blacks an inferior race, as long as they remained in separate all-Black units.

There was a high degree of hypocrisy as African American soldiers fought racist Nazis in Europe. The US armed forces did not officially integrate until President Harry Truman signed Executive Order 9981 on 26 July 1948, about three years after the end of the Second World War. But the US military did not fully desegregate until 1954, when the army dropped its last segregated unit. Even after that, some racial disparities continued during the Korean War and the Vietnam War.

Now, in the year 2024, we have made a lot of progress in the matter of race. Blacks currently have leadership roles in the US military, including Lloyd Austin, the US Secretary of Defense since 22 January 2021. In 1989, President George H.W. Bush appointed Army General Colin Powell to the position of Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, making Powell the highest-ranking officer in the US military. General Powell became the first, and so far the only African American to hold that position.

Neo-Nazis in the USA and Germany
And yet, as I write this, during Black History Month in the US, there is news of neo-Nazis marching in the streets of Nashville, Tennessee on 17 February carrying swastika flags. On a Saturday afternoon about two dozen marchers paraded in downtown Nashville chanting white supremacist slogans. That is, unfortunately, not a first in recent times. (Remember Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017?)

But Germany, too, has its own racial, xenophobic problems. Today, Monday, 19 February, happens to be the fourth anniversary of a hateful attack against immigrants in Hanau, a small town not far from Frankfurt am Main. After attending a memorial for the nine people killed in Hanau, German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said it was more important than ever to combat far-right extremism. That was a reference to the neo-Nazi Alternative for Germany (AfD) party that has been leading opinion polls in three eastern states ahead of state elections in September. I’ll have more to say about the AfD below.

But for now, let’s return to Coburg and the city’s unusual patron saint.

Coburg and Saint Mauritius (Sankt Moritz)
As mentioned earlier, Coburg was a hotbed of Nazi support, before and during WWII. That makes it interesting to look at Coburg in current times, when immigration and other far right issues have become a hot topic in both Germany and the US. But first, let’s examine Coburg’s “black moor” coat of arms and the city’s patron saint.

Coburg’s coat of arms (Wappen) as it looks now. It portrays an African profile of St. Mauritius with a black and yellow/gold color scheme. This specific design has been in use since 1974, but St. Mauritius has been the symbol and patron saint of Coburg since the 16th century. PHOTO: Stadt Coburg

Any visitor to Coburg will soon notice the city’s unusual coat of arms, a stylized black African (Nubian) face. The figure appears on buildings and official stationery. It can even be seen on Coburg’s manhole covers. So why is a black African face a symbol of a city that was once a bastion of Nazi support?

Saint Mauritius or Maurice (also Sankt Moritz in German, and the name of a famous Swiss town) has been the city’s patron saint since 1323. The connection comes through a Protestant church in Coburg that was once a Catholic Romanesque basilica. The Protestant Reformation came early to Coburg. Martin Luther gave several sermons there in 1530. Today the Morizkirche (with a local variant spelling of “Moritz”), as the city’s oldest church, is a Coburg landmark.

Although long portrayed as a dark-skinned Nubian man from Thebes (Luxor) in upper Egypt, no one knows what St. Mauritius/Moritz really looked like. He lived in the third century CE, when Christianity was already widespread. Egypt was then part of the vast Roman Empire. Mauritius became a soldier in the Roman army, and rose through the ranks until he became the commander of the Theban Legion. Beginning in the 11th century his image became African looking. Around 1500, his African image was already being used on Coburg’s municipal seal and coat of arms. The cathedral in Magdeburg, Germany also has a sculpted stone likeness of St. Mauritius with an African face. Besides Coburg, at least 17 other towns or cities in France, Germany, and Switzerland have coats of arms depicting Mauritius, but not always as a Black person.

When the Nazis came to power in Germany, they found the black African image of the “Coburger Mohr” objectionable for racist and religious reasons. In 1934 the Coburg coat of arms was changed to a broadsword with a hilt bearing a Nazi swastika, using the same black and yellow/gold color scheme used for the former the head profile. The African/moorish image returned after 1945. The current design has been in use since 1974, when the city council unanimously voted to continue using the African image, regardless of the saint’s ancestry or how he may have actually appeared.

Coburg and the AfD
Considering Coburg’s Nazi history, it’s appropriate to look at the city’s current politics. How does a city that elected one of Germany’s first Nazi mayors in 1932 vote 91 years later?

Well, as usual, it’s a good news/bad new situation. Let’s start with the good news.

Currently the Coburg city council is headed by Head Mayor (Oberbürgermeister) Dominik Sauerteig of the Social Democratic Party (SPD), the same party of German chancellor Olaf Scholz. Sauerteig (whose surname translates as “sourdough”), along with the 40-member Stadtrat (city council), was elected to a six-year term in March 2020. Only one council seat is held by an AfD member. The council reflects almost a dozen different German political parties, with the SPD, CSU, and Green parties in the majority.

But, looking at the most recent election results for the Coburg region and the Coburger Stimmkreis (Coburg voting district), the results are less sanguine. In the October 2023 election, the CSU, Bavaria’s dominant party, got 41% of the vote, but the AfD came in second with a 17.5% share. The SPD ranked third, with 13.3%. The FW (Freie Wähler, Free Voters) won 11.1% of the vote. No other party got more than 10% of the vote, although the Greens came close with 9.9%. A Coburg AfD member, Martin Böhm, currently has a seat in the Bavarian legislature (Landtag).

But the political situation in general seems positive, considering the recent Coburg protests against the AfD.

Coburg Protests the AfD: “Gemeinsam gegen Rechts”
As I was doing research for this article, I learned of a rather disturbing political event that took place in Potsdam, Germany, not far from Berlin, on 25 November 2023. Although the organizers of the event tried to keep it secret, Correctiv, a German pro-democracy, pro-open-government group that keeps an eye out for political activities that people try to conceal, discovered a meeting of extreme-right activists from two of Germany’s political parties: the Alternative for Germany (AfD) and the Christian Social Union (CSU). The AfD is officially recognized as “anti-constitutional” and anti-immigrant. The CSU is the Bavarian sister party of Germany’s mainstream, conservative CDU (Christian Democratic Union).

In November, together with a far-right extremist politician from Austria, extremists from both German parties had gathered in Potsdam to discuss what is known euphemistically as “remigration”, a policy they want to introduce in Germany. Basically it means deporting all “foreigners” back to their native countries. In this case, some propose a drastic Nazi-like program that would send all “non-Germans” to Africa, whether they are African or not.

In protest, on Sunday, 21 January 2024 about 4,000 people from Coburg gathered on the same Marktplatz (market square) that is pictured in two photos above. With the theme “Together Against the Right”, they wanted to strongly protest against the deportation proposal, and the AfD in particular. Similar protests took place in other Upper Bavarian communities. Coburg’s head mayor, Dominik Sauerteig (SPD), spoke to the gathering in support of the protest.

US Black Troops in Occupied Germany
In closing, here are two more photos showing all-Black units in occupied Germany in the late 1940s, in his case in Berlin’s American sector.

Occupied West Berlin in 1948: The 7800th Infantry Platoon, a segregated Black unit, seen here in formation at Tempelhof airfield. The soldiers were handpicked — “handsome men, all over six-feet,” wrote the American military governor of Berlin, Brig. Gen. Frank L. Howley. PHOTO: U.S. Army, National Archives, public domain (Wikipedia)

The 7800th Infantry Platoon, seen here greeting dignitaries in Berlin in 1949 during the Allied occupation of Germany. PHOTO: U.S. Army, National Archives, public domain (Wikipedia)

For more about the achievements of African Americans in the US armed forces, and the racial discrimination they faced, see the recommended books below, and this Wikipedia page: Military History of African Americans.

– HF

Suggested Reading
Amazon.com affiliate links.

A Breath of Freedom: The Civil Rights Struggle, African American GIs, and Germany
by Maria Höhn and Martin Klimke (2010) – Paperback, hardcover

Amazon.com: “This moving and beautifully illustrated book, developed from an award-winning research project, examines the experience of African-American GIs in Germany since 1945 and the unique insights they provide into the civil rights struggle at home and abroad.”

GIs in Germany: The Social, Economic, Cultural, and Political History of the American Military Presence
(Publications of the German Historical Institute) – 2015 Reprint Edition
by Thomas W. Maulucci Jr (Editor), Detlef Junker (Editor) – Kindle, paperback, hardcover

Amazon.com: “The fifteen essays in this volume offer a comprehensive look at the role of American military forces in Germany. The American military forces in the Federal Republic of Germany after WWII played an important role not just in the NATO military alliance but also in German-American relations as a whole. Around twenty-two-million U.S. servicemen and their dependents have been stationed in Germany since WWII, and their presence has contributed to one of the few successful American attempts at democratic nation building in the twentieth century.”