In the facades around you, here and there, sits a small stone with an eagle rising out of flames and the year 1940 below it. The eagle comes from the coat of arms of Middelburg, and the flames belong to the fire of 17 May that year, when most of the old town burned out. As a bird that rises from its own ashes it became the phoenix, and the city gave that image to every building it rebuilt. A few steps away, in the Lange Delft, there is one at number 57.
The strange part is the timing. The first rebuilding plans were drawn up in May 1940, within weeks of the fire, and on New Year's Day 1941 the Stichting Herbouw Middelburg, the foundation charged with rebuilding the city, began its work. So a city that had just been destroyed was being rebuilt in the middle of , with a bird in every new facade promising that things would come good, while the war still had five years to run.
The people of Middelburg themselves had little say in those plans, since consultation and appeal simply did not exist in those years. The first completed building stands in the Sint Janstraat, carrying a stone that records it as the first to rise again after the fire of 17 May 1940. By the end of 1945 more than a hundred buildings were finished and nearly two hundred were under scaffolding, and the last of them were only completed in the nineteen fifties.
From here we head east along the Koorkerkhof, and the Nieuwe Kerkgang brings us to the final stop of this walk.
Sources. Story: Zeeuws Archief, files on the reconstruction of Middelburg, Oorlogsdocumentatie Zeeland on the progress of the rebuilding, and the inventory of Middelburg gable stones at gevelstenen.net. Photos: Sint Janstraat plaque: gemeente Middelburg via the Nationaal Comité 4 en 5 mei, CC BY 3.0. The Markt after the fire: Gemeente Middelburg / Uit in Middelburg.
