Alexander Stahlberg

Alexander Stahlberg (born September 12, 1912 in Stettin ; † January 9, 1995 at Bloemersheim Castle ) was a member of the military resistance around Colonel i. G. Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg and his cousin Major General Henning von Tresckow .

family

Stahlberg was one of two sons of the couple Walter Stahlberg (* 1873 in Stettin; † 1953) and Spes Stahlberg, born von Kleist-Retzow (* 1888 in Belgard ; † 1973 in Isernhagen near Hanover). His godfather was Herbert Rudolf von Bismarck , who later became a member of the Reichstag and State Secretary . His mother came from the noble Pomeranian von Kleist family , on whose estate he grew up. She was a daughter of Jürgen von Kleist-Retzow and his wife Ruth, née Countess von Zedlitz-Trützschler and aunt of Maria von Wedemeyer , Dietrich Bonhoeffer's fiancé . The father was the owner of an oil factory in Szczecin. Other relatives included the politician Ewald von Kleist-Schmenzin , who was one of the resistance fighters murdered on July 20, 1944 .

Life

Stahlberg attended the Grunewald High School in Berlin. After graduating from high school, in April 1932 he began studying the humanities at the Friedrich Wilhelms University .

In January 1933, through the mediation of his uncle Hans von Wedemeyer , Stahlberg was hired as an unpaid employee in the political secretariat of Reich Chancellor Franz von Papen, who had resigned a month earlier . In the following three months he was the politician's personal adjutant. In this capacity, it was his responsibility, among other things, to assist Papen by compiling a daily press review and to be at his side as a companion at political meetings, to take notes and fulfill special assignments. In this capacity Stahlberg experienced, among other things, some of the political encounters in Papen's private apartment at close range, which culminated in the formation of the Hitler government on January 30, 1933, in which Papen took over the office of Vice Chancellor. At the end of March, at the insistence of his father, Stahlberg resigned from the Papens group of employees. Fritz Günther von Tschirschky became the new adjutant at this time .

Instead, Stahlberg went to Hamburg, where he began a commercial apprenticeship in April 1933, which he completed in the summer of 1935. At the instigation of his parents, he temporarily continued his apprenticeship in London in 1934 after the events of the Röhm Putsch in the summer of 1934, in the course of which some von Papens employees were murdered by the SS , as his parents feared that he might be a former employee of Papens could be on a blacklist of the SS.

Stahlberg voluntarily joined the 6th Cavalry Regiment (Prussian) as a flag junior , which he left with the rank of sergeant of the reserve and candidate for reserve officer. In July 1938, after being promoted to lieutenant in the reserve, he was called up again and served in the army until the end of the war. He switched from cavalry to infantry and began as a reserve officer in the anti-tank department 2 of the 2nd infantry division (motorized) in Stettin and participated in the occupation of Czechoslovakia (1938), the invasion of Poland (1939), Campaign in the West (1940) and the war against the Soviet Union (1941). In October 1940 Stahlberg 's division was reclassified as the 12th Panzer Division , and Stahlberg succeeded Heinrich Graf Yorck von Wartenburg, who had been assigned to train as a general staff officer, as the adjutant of his department.

On November 18, 1942 Stahlberg became an orderly officer of Field Marshal von Manstein , at that time still Commander in Chief of the 11th Army . Henning von Tresckow , who was a cousin and close friend of Stahlberg's, had recommended this Manstein. Tresckow intended to place a person of trust close to Manstein so that he would be on the side of the resistance in the event of the intended overthrow of Hitler. As an orderly officer, Stahlberg was at Manstein's side in almost all military discussions and accompanied him a day later on the way to take over Army Group Don with the task of rescuing the 6th Army , which was trapped in the Battle of Stalingrad . In the next few months Stahlberg witnessed how Count Claus Schenk von Stauffenberg and Henning von Tresckow tried in vain to win Manstein over to the military resistance. After Manstein was dismissed by Hitler in April 1944, Stahlberg became the Field Marshal's adjutant . In this function, he took care of his personal concerns and was with him in Schleswig-Holstein at the end of the war. On May 6, 1945 he delivered a personal letter from Manstein to the British Field Marshal Montgomery . Stahlberg's last rank was captain .

After the end of the Second World War , Stahlberg worked in commercial professions. In 1987 he published his memories of the years 1932 to 1945 under the title The Damned Duty . In the last years of his life he lived in Gartow from 1989 .

Fonts

• Damn Duty - Memories 1932-1945. Ullstein, Berlin 1994, ISBN 3-550-07288-0 .
• When Prussia was still Prussia - Ullstein memories , Berlin 1992, ISBN 3-550-07516-2 .

Web links

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

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Wendland-Lexikon , Volume 2, Lüchow 2008, pp. 441f.