I have been last week at the City of Leipzig and had the chance to visit the "Capa House" - the building Jahnallee 61 that was the place of one of the most touching WW2 photos by war photographer Robert Capa.
The photo with the title: "the last man to die" was published in the Life Magazine in May 1945 and shocked the readers around the globe, showing the US Soldier Raymond Bowman from New York lying dead on a balcony in a pool of his own blood. Shot on the 18th of April 1945 by a German sniper. He was only 21 years old...
The picture is still today well known, but the place of this drama was nearly forgotten. The house was abandoned for many years and a ruin: some of the balconies had been removed after the war, the floors of all bathrooms in the center of the building had collapsed because of a severe water damage and plans existed to break down the building because it seemed to be a risk for the public safety (a train station is directly in front of the building)...
...Until Juergen Moeller - an author specialized in local history - came up with the dramatic background of the building and the full story was published at the newspaper "Leipziger Volkszeitung - and then shown as a TV documentary as well - giving the first time the evidence that the victim on the photo was Raymond Bowman.
The echo in the media since that day was impressive and caused an avalanche: an association was after that founded to collect money to save the building and to put some pressure to the authorities to protect the building as well as to honour the victim and the war photographer.
The US Veteran Lehman Riggs - a witness of the drama on the 18th of April 1945 on the balcony of the building Jahnallee 61 - came 2012 to Germany and is supporting the plans to re-name a street with Bowman's name and to open a small Museum at the building after it's rebuilt.
A fire on new years evening 2012 nearly stopped the plans: out of unknown reasons the complete roof of the abandoned building was on fire. Again was the future of the building uncertain due to the heavy additional damages caused by the fire and the extra costs.
Today is the rebuilt on a good way and only about one year delayed. The collapsed center of the building with the bathrooms is all new and the roof complete new and nearly finished too. On the right of the photo below you can see the balcony section towards the Jahnallee that was used by the G.I.'s to secure the nearby bridge with a .30 cal. BMG. -The place of the dramatic Capa photo.
On the 18th of April 2015 - exactly 70 years after Bowman's death - the City of Leipzig is re-naming now in a first step a street to "Capa Street". This street is crossing the Jahnallee and is close to the Capa house.
The official ceremony is to be held at 10.15 h. at the "Revue-Theater am Palmengarten", Jahnallee 52 and organized by the "Bürgerinitiative zur Rettung des Capahauses" association. Major of the city Michael Faber will be in place.
Agenda of the ceremony see: https://scontent-ams.xx.fbcdn.net/hphot ... e=55984A14
Flyer front page see: https://fbcdn-sphotos-g-a.akamaihd.net/ ... 38f33b101b
Apendix:
The Capa house association is in addition adding more pressure to the City to full fill the plan from 2012 to re-name in addition an nearby street to "Bowman Street".
Bowman's grave can be found today at the Holy Sepulchre Cemetery, Rochester.
War photographer Robert Capa was killed only 11 years later on May 25, 1954 by a landmine.
He is buried in plot #169 at Amawalk Hill Cemetery (also called Friends Cemetery), Amawalk, Westchester County, New York
My pictures + some from the www giving the "full picture" can be found here:
http://www.steel-toys.com/CH15/
(Notice: click on "next picture" to open the next photo)
Background information's:
The video documentary about "the last man to die" at youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IaB6qA0oiAI
About Raymond Bowman (only to be found in the German Wikipedia!): http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_J._Bowman
About Robert Capa (English version): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Capa
The full story in the press - incl. pictures of Bowman and his grave: http://www.volker-kuelow.de/fileadmin/l ... funden.pdf
Witness Lehmann Riggs in the press: http://www.volker-kuelow.de/fileadmin/l ... 20Capa.pdf
About the plans for a new Bowman street: http://www.bild.de/regional/leipzig/str ... .bild.html
The third Army entering the city of Leipzig (Signal Corps material) at youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ljbKYX3dDk
"Fading" - a short movie made by young artists - is showing the last seconds of Bowman, running up the stairway to the balcony of Jahnallee 61.The trailer of this movie can be found here: http://fading.janfrederikvogt.de/der-film/
The full story from a witness - Lehmann Riggs:
http://www.tactical-life.com/firearms/h ... an-to-die/
Here as a copy:
HONORING THE LAST MAN TO DIE - by Jay Langston
During our visit with Lehman Riggs, the sole survivor from the Leipzig Balcony, he shared very intimate details.
In the closing days of fighting in Europe during WWII, Allied Forces were driving German troops before them like a bulldozer. On April 19, 1945, the U.S. Army’s 2nd Infantry Division, Company D, 23rd Infantry Regiment was battling for Leipzig, Germany. After taking half of the city, the American commanding officer ordered the heavy weapons squad to climb to the third floor of the Jahnallee apartment building and train their .30-caliber Browning M1919 machine gun on the entrenched Nazis.
What set this scene apart from many others in war-torn Europe was that photographer Robert Capa, dressed in unmarked Army fatigues, followed the squad up the stairs to capture the fight on film. Return fire from the Germans was so heavy that only one man at a time could run the MG. Shortly after switching gunners, a German sniper fired and killed a 21-year-old American soldier with a single shot between the eyes. The young soldier fell to the floor and his comrade had to climb over his sprawled body to continue firing at the Germans. Capa captured the tragedy on film.
Three weeks later, when Life magazine published their May 14, 1945 issue proclaiming victory in Europe, the photos of the MG squad were published with the faces of the men obscured. The identities of the American soldiers remained a mystery, but Capa’s photos entitled Death on a Leipzig Balcony and The Last Man to Die have become iconic images repeatedly seen in WWII history books.
The mystery was recently solved when the sole surviving member of the MG crew, Lehman Riggs of Cookeville, TN, shared his story of that day. “We had taken half of the city, and the city was divided by a man-made canal,” the now 92-year-old Riggs said. “We had to go across these bridges to get to the other side of the city. They had blocked the bridges with burned-out tanks and streetcars, anything that would obstruct us from going across. There was a park in front of this building, and they [German troops] were dug in and we couldn’t see them. We had orders to go up to the third floor of this apartment building and set up our guns to spray that area out there in the park to try to keep them pinned down until our troops could cross that bridge.”
Riggs related that he didn’t know that the famous Life photographer was not one of the Army’s routine combat photographers. “We only fired with one person at a time, and we alternated…one person being exposed all the time,” Riggs said. “I had just been firing the gun, and I just stepped back off the gun and he had taken over,” Riggs said as he pointed to a picture in the Life magazine photo spread. “In 30 seconds, I happened to look up and see the bullet pierce his nose. The bullet that hit him killed him, ricocheted around the room, and it’s a miracle that it didn’t hit me. As soon as he got hit, somebody had to take the gun. I had to jump over him and start firing the gun.”
Riggs revealed that the soldier killed that day was Raymond “Robert” Bowman. Riggs admitted that other American troops had died in the closing days of battle, but Robert Bowman became iconic as the last man to die while defeating Nazi Germany....
The interview with Lehman Riggs that was used for the story above can be found at youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCGYISiR0pI
Robert Capa about the 18th of April 1945
Capa about it in his only partially fictional autobiography, "Slightly Out of Focus":
“I was with a battalion of the 5th Infantry Division. We reached a bridge leading into the center of town. The first platoons were already crossing it, and we were very afraid it was going to be blown up any minute by the Germans. A fashionable four-story apartment building stood on the corner overlooking the bridge, and I climbed up to the fourth floor to see if the last picture of coruching advancing infantrymen could be the last picture of war for my camera. The bourgeois apartment on the fourth floor was open. Five GI’s belonging to a heavy-wapons company were putting up a machine gun to cover the advance over the bridge. It was hard to shoot from the window, sothe sergeant and one of his men moved the gun out onto the open, unprotected balcony. I watched them from the door. When the gun had been set up, the srgeant returned. The young corporal pulled the trigger and began to shoot.
The last man shooting the last gun was not much different from the first. By the time the picture got to New York, no one would want to publish the picture of a simlpe soldier sooting an ordinary gun. But te boy had a clean, open, very young face, and his gun was still killing fascists. I stepped out onto the balcony and, standing about two yards awe, focused my camera on his face. I clicked my shutter, my first picture in weeks – and the last one of the boy alive.
Slilently, the tense body of the gunner relaxed, and he slumped and fell back into the apartment. His face was not changed except for a tiny hole between his eyes. Te puddle of blood grew beside his fallen head, and his pulse had long stopped beating.
The sergeant felt his wrist, stepped over his body, and grabbed the machine gun. But he could ot shoot anymore, our men had arrived at the other side of the bridge.
I had the picture of the last man to die. The last day, some of the best ones die. But those alive will fast forget.”
Source: http://blog.volgyiattila.com/2015/04/18 ... -this-day/
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