Alexander Lion

Alexander Franz Anton Lion (born December 15, 1870 in Berlin , † March 2, 1962 in Schwabmünchen ) was a German doctor and scout . Together with Maximilian Bayer, he founded the German scout movement. He coined the term "Boy Scout" as a German translation of the English Boy Scout .

Life

Youth and Early Scouting Movement

Lion was born the second of six children to a Jewish banking family. He was the son of the businessman and banker Max Lion (* May 5, 1829 in Neustadt OS ; † September 21, 1890 in Berlin) and his wife Cäcilie, née Loeser (1835-1919). Between 1876 and 1880 he received private tuition and then attended high school . Lion left the Jewish community at the age of 16, initially living without a denomination and later being baptized as a Catholic.

On August 9, 1888, he saved the life of a boy who had fallen into water in The Hague, the Netherlands . For this he was awarded the bronze medal of honor of the Order of Orange-Nassau on August 5, 1889 .

In high school he learned the French language and through private additional lessons the English. After attending high school he studied from 1891 to 1896 at the universities of Würzburg , Berlin and Kiel medicine .

At Easter 1893 he joined the Bavarian Army as a one-year volunteer . In 1904/06, Lion volunteered as a medical officer in German South West Africa during the Herero and Nama uprising . It was there that Lion first met his later comrade in the founding of the German scouting community, Captain Maximilian Bayer , without, however, establishing a friendly bond.

On March 17, 1908, while reading the English newspaper Times , Lion became aware of the founder of the world scout movement Robert Baden-Powell through the article "Scouting as a sport" . The beginning of the written contact with Baden-Powell can be proven for August of the same year. The oldest known letter from Baden-Powell is dated August 23, 1908. Shortly thereafter, Lion's first Scout pamphlet appeared under the heading "Colonial Youth Education." She dealt with scouting education.

During a month-long study trip through England, he visited London for three days in 1908, Baden-Powell, who accepted Lion into the scout movement by handing over a boy scout lily. In May 1909, Lion published the boy scout book together with Maximilian Bayer , which saw further editions from 1911 under the title Young Germany's scout book . With this book, a German translation of Scouting for Boys , Lion coined the term scout as a German translation of the English Boy Scout . To summarize the scout groups that arose in the German Empire , the German Scout Association was founded in 1911 , of which Lion was one of the founding members.

Between October and November 1912 there were massive accusations against Bayer, Lion and von Seckendorff by General von Jacobi . He accused the editors of the boy scout book, among other things, lack of patriotism, loyalty to the king and religious feelings. Von Jacobi even had a diatribe printed on the occasion that was anti-Semitic and alluded to Lions' Jewish birth. Jacobi, from the boy scout association, scoffed at "youth sports in the fields and woods" as "Jewish sports in the woods and fields" and called the scout sponsor Consul General Baschwitz a "vain", "Jewish" gentleman.

In February 1912 Bayer, Lion and von Seckendorff took part as authors of the "Boy Scout Book for Young Girls" published by Elise von Hopffgarten . Free of patriotic slogans, it wanted to promote a self-determined life for young women.

First World War

At the beginning of the First World War he became chief physician of the 12th field hospital in the II Army Corps and was always to be found in the front lines of the rescue of the wounded. In the autumn of the same year he received the Iron Cross 2nd class. From October 14, 1915 he was transferred to the 3rd Medical Company of the 2nd Infantry Division as chief physician . In the fighting area of Lens and La Bassée he also tried to rescue the astonished from the death zones. For this he received the Bavarian Cross of Merit, 2nd class, on December 21 of the same year.

At the end of 1915, Lion was requested by the German staff in the Ottoman Empire . There Colmar Freiherr von der Goltz , a major sponsor of the German scout movement and supporter of Lions and Bayer's, had taken command of the 6th Ottoman Army ( Mesopotamia ) a short time before . The Ottoman Empire sided with the Central Powers . This led to an escalation of the conflict over the Arabian Peninsula with Great Britain. Its troops operated primarily from Egypt. A landing at the Dardanelles failed, but a landing at Basra was successful. In cooperation with the German staff, the Turkish army command ordered a Turkish expedition against the Suez Canal , during which Lion took over the management of the German 212th field hospital as chief physician on January 14, 1916. From April he took part in the advance through the Sinai Peninsula to the Suez Canal as a corps doctor of the Ottoman 1st Expeditionary Corps under Colonel Kress von Kressenstein . In August, Lion fell ill with tropical dysentery. In October the Sultan awarded him the Iron Crescent for his medical commitment . Less than a month later he returned from the oriental theater of war to Munich, where his family now lived.

In 1917 he returned to the Turkish front as chief physician and received the Silver Liakat Medal with Sabers in June . Then Lion was deployed on the Transylvanian-Romanian front and took part in the positional battles with the association of the cavalry division lying in the Bukovina between September and November . After the armistice on the Romanian front, he was from December 16 as a division doctor again in France near Reims and on the Somme . As a division doctor, Lion received the Iron Cross First Class on May 27, 1918 for rescuing the wounded in great danger and the Order of Military Merit III in August . Class with swords. At the end of the war he was a division doctor of the 39th Reserve Rivision in trench warfare in the Vosges .

Weimar Republic

On January 21, 1919, Lion initially transferred to the Eastern Border Guard ( 45th Reserve Division , Insterburg), on February 23, he set up a volunteer company in Danzig-Langfuhr and between May 2 and June 21 took over as leader of the in Danzig recruited Freikorps-Kompagnie in the Freikorps Epp in the smashing of the second Munich Soviet Republic . With his corps of 200 infantry and 20 lancers, Lion entered the Karlstor in Munich on May 2nd .

After his discharge from the Reichswehr in 1920, Lion worked from 1921 as a general practitioner and spa doctor in the Oberhof health resort in Thuringia. He was also inspector of the German Red Cross in the Gotha district. From 1923 to 1926 he was an active member of the German Democratic Party .

From May 23 to 26, 1931, he took part in the 6th Federal Camp of the Federation of Scout Scouts on the Greene castle ruins near Kreiensen. At the subsequent labor camp, as senior physician with the support of the Kreiensen medical column, he led the scout exercises in the field of first aid. After an accident in the fire control tunnel near Oberhof, Lion performed rescue measures on August 1st of the same year at the risk of his life.

In National Socialism

In 1935 he was deprived of his civil rights due to the Nuremberg race laws , according to which he had been classified as a Jew .

Even during the Third Reich , Lion kept in touch with his foreign scout friends. In 1938, after the annexation of Austria, the Gestapo found letters from him to Emmerich Teuber in Vienna . Teuber had kept the incriminating documents despite Lion's request for immediate destruction, which warned against contact with the Reich Youth Leadership and the Hitler Youth . The find sparked a wave of arrests among Boy Scouts. Lion was picked up by the Gestapo in Schwarzlack / Brannenburg am Inn on November 2, 1938 and, after long interrogations, brought to the Gestapo headquarters in Berlin, Prinz-Albrechtstrasse, on November 19. From there he was transferred to the Berlin-Moabit remand prison in February 1939 and was brought back to the Neudeck remand prison near Munich in May. There he was tried before a special court together with Emmerich Teuber and his colleague H. Prohaska. Through skillful litigation, her defense attorney was sentenced to just ten months' imprisonment for treason . From 1939 Lion stayed in Kolbermoor (Gasthof Pullach), but was denounced in 1942 by a fellow citizen loyal to the party on the basis of a distorted statement, but was personally brought to safety by the Kolbermoor mayor. As a member of the NSDAP, the latter had found out that a lynch squad of the SA was on the march that "wanted to dig up a Jew".

On April 13, 1944, Lions brother Richard and on April 19, 1945 his wife Beatrice were murdered in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp .

After the Second World War

Immediately after the Second World War , from summer 1945 to October 15, 1949, Lion became head of the district youth welfare office in Bad Aibling . From there he was involved in the establishment of the Association of German Scouts (BDP) , which appointed him honorary president in October 1948.

It became the engine for the reconstruction of the scout movement, initially in Bavaria, but with effect for all of Germany. With his help, the first approved scout camp of the post-war period was able to take place in the Isar valley near Munich between June 8 and 10, 1946. In the same year, under the honorary presidency of Lions in Bavaria, the Association of German Scouts was founded. In July and August of the same year, a boy scout camp with groups from West Germany (Munich, Cologne, Hesse) took place at the Chiemsee. On October 16, 1946, a Lions talk about the scout movement was broadcast by Radio Munich. In the same year he was recognized as “persecuted by the National Socialist regime”. Between 1946 and 1948 he was a member of the Chamber for Denazification in Bad Aibling.

On April 18, 1947 he was made an honorary member of the newly founded Austrian Scout Association.

From August 3 to 13, 1951, he took part in the 7th World Jamboree on the grounds of the former Obersalzkammer golf club in Bad Ischl ( Austria ). In the same year, on December 15, the Federal Field Master of the BDP, Kajus Roller , awarded him the golden diamond lily .

In 1961, in numerous letters and discussions, he campaigned for the BDP to be united with the new German Scout Association .

Alexander Lion died on March 3, 1962 at Elmischwang Castle . He was buried in the Fischach cemetery.

Honor

Like other influential German scouts and youth leaders, Alexander Lion received a memorial stone on the grove of honor of the German youth movement near Waldeck Castle , which was initiated by the Nerother Wandering Bird .

See also

• Scout history in German-speaking countries

Publications

• Investigations into the germ content and the disinfection of used books. Inaugural dissertation, Stahelsche royal court. Book printing, Würzburg 1895.
• The cultural ability of the negro and the educational tasks of the cultural nations. Süsserott, Berlin 1908 ( Colonial Treatises 15)
• Tropical hygiene advice. Verlag der Aerztliche Rundschau, Otto Gmelin, Munich 1907. 2nd edition 1914.
• The Boy Scout Book. Reprint. Deutscher Spurbuchverlag, Baunach 1987, ISBN 3-88778-164-3 .
• How do I become a boy scout. German Sports Library Volume 8/9. Grethlein & Co., Leipzig and Zurich 1920.

literature

• Hartmut Bartmuß: Alexander Lion. Doctor, medical officer, boy scout. Hentrich & Hentrich, Berlin 2017, ISBN 978-3-95565-233-3 .
• Stephan Schrölkamp: Founding Fathers of the Boy Scout Movement. Volume 1. Spurbuch, Baunach 2005, ISBN 3-88778-226-7 .
• Stephan Schrölkamp (Ed.): Alexander Lion. Ups and downs of life. Spurbuch, Baunach 2014, ISBN 978-3-88778-414-0 .
• Karl Seidelmann: The Boy Scouts in German Youth History. Volume 1: Presentation. Schroedel, Hannover 1977, ISBN 3-507-38037-4 .
• Karl Seidelmann: The Boy Scouts in German Youth History. Part 2.1: Sources and documents from the period up to 1945. Schroedel, Hannover 1980, ISBN 3-507-38038-2 .
• The Jewish cemetery at Schönhauser Allee, Berlin. Edited by the Berlin Jewish Community, edited by Jörg Kuhn and Fiona Laudamus. Berlin 2011.

Web links

• Literature by and about Alexander Lion in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Baden-Powell's appointment calendar note of October 2, 1908
2. ↑ Our way. Federal Journal of the ÖPB, Volume 18 1937, No. 3, p. 39 ff.
3. ^ Secret State Archives Berlin, I, 89 (2.2.1), 15593 vol. 2).