the destruction of Leuven
The presumed culprit arrested
A telegram from Paris stated that Major von Manteuffel, the German officer responsible for the destruction of Louvain, had been captured by the French. He was recognised by the Russian attaché to the French staff, who had known him when he was Germany’s military attaché in Petrograd.
There are several Von Manteuffel in the POW red cross files but none with a high rank so that was a dead end.
Lieutenant Colonel a. D. v. Manteuffel testified quite openly in Kassel on 15. 1. 1921 that he had no evidence of the participation of the population in combat operations against German troops in Louvain! A negative statement by an officer who himself had to defend himself and his co-defendants in the “investigation for atrocities in Leuven”
Now this was found in https://www.ifz-muenchen.de/heftarchiv/1961_3_2_petri.pdfonly still no first name
Gunrer Spraul writes the following in his book about Walter Friederich Karl Erdmann von Mannteuffel
: At the mobilisation, Manteuffel was appointed commander of the 15 mobile detachments; he was not intended for a troop command. He ended the war as a lieutenant colonel and died in Kassel on 10 December 1934. His activities in the alleged Leuven stage brought him a dubious reputation: in January 1920, according to a report in the French press, “General von Manteuffel was on the list of war criminals whose extradition was demanded by the victors because of the burning of Leuven”.
At last the clue I needed, now finding more about and finding an image
On 23 August, Major Walter von Manteuffel succeeded Von Kluck as military commander in Leuven. Occupied territory was divided into so-called ‘Etappen-Kommandanturen’, areas over which a ‘Etappen-Kommandant’ had the (military) authority. For the Leuven-Tienen-Tervuren region this was Walther von Manteuffel. Under his authority, military terror broke out on 25 August. 3 days of burning down houses and looting , the mayor of Leuven has fled to Holland, only one alderman stayed behind : Emile Schmitt, his house is burned down and his wife and children are missing, so despaired to find his family he decides to hand over all the powers of the mayor and the aldermen to Professor Alfred Nerincx, a professor at the university’s law faculty and one of the leading figures behind the St Thomas Hospital. He speaks fluent German and is prepared to temporarily take on the administration of the city and to act as the city’s representative to the German army command. The next day, Alfred goes in search of Von Manteuffel and proposes a deal to him: the committee he set up is prepared to take on the administration of the town on condition that the German stop burning down the town.
At the end of September 1914, von Manteuffel was replaced by the strict cavalry colonel von Thiel. In 1919, as a result of measures taken under the Treaty of Versailles, Walter appeared on a list of wanted persons who had to be extradited to the Allies. Belgium actually had 265 German names on that list. So one small article in an old newspaper but still no evidence that he was captured by the French. To find an image I had to look in the French arhives.
Sources :Gazet van Antwerpen 7 October 1914
Gunter Spraul der franktireurkrieg 1914
F Petri Zu Berinigungs des Franktireurproblems vom August 1914
Liste des personnes désignées par les Puissances alliées pour être livrées par l’allemagne en éxcecution des articles 228 et 230 du traité de Versailles et du protocol du 28 Juin 1919
Newpaper I have in my own liberary