Alfred von Wurzian

Alfred von Wurzian (born September 24, 1916 in Vienna ; † January 21, 1985 there ) is considered to be the founder of the German combat swimmers in World War II .

Alfred von Wurzian was a great-grandson of the military doctor Josef von Wurzian (1806-1858), who was ennobled in 1850 , and among his relatives by marriage was Hedwig von Wurzian (1889-1960), the daughter of the lawyer Marcell Frydmann von Prawy and aunt of the opera critic Marcel Prawy . 1919 lost Wurzian by the nobility repeal Act at the age of three years the right to use the title of nobility "of", but that he during the time of National Socialism led back to the 1945th

Life

In 1936, Alfred Wurzian signed up as a one-year volunteer for the Austrian military. However, he was not dismissed as a finished officer ( lieutenant of the reserve ) , as is usually the case, but only as a reserve officer candidate ( non-commissioned officer ).

In the autumn of 1937, Wurzian met the later marine researcher Hans Hass at the University of Vienna . Wurzian studied law there, and Hass, too, initially enrolled in this subject at his father's request. Both quickly became friends and members of the Academic Sports Club of the University of Vienna, a student union . Wurzian broke off his studies prematurely without a degree and volunteered for the armed forces.

Wurzian accompanied Hass on two of his expeditions (1939/40 to the Caribbean and 1942 to Greece), for which he was released from the Wehrmacht, and can be seen in the two expedition films. From January to March 1943, Wurzian conducted a lecture tour on the Greece expedition with great success throughout Germany as part of the Kraft durch Freude organization .

During the expeditions, Wurzian recognized how useful the new diving device could be for military operations and began to promote his idea of ​​a German combat swimmer unit. In the spring of 1943 he was drafted into the Brandenburg division of the military secret service. There he was supposed to set up a new force of sabotage swimmers , the so-called sea ​​hunter division . This was followed by several months of training with the Italian combat swimmers, who were leaders in this field.

In early 1944, the German combat swimmer unit was founded under the aegis of the military secret service in Valdagno , Italy. Wurzian became head of training there. In the spring of 1944, the unit was subordinated to the Navy and moved to new quarters on the island of Alga near Venice . In November the unit was stationed in List , where it stayed until the end of the war.

On April 1, 1944, Wurzian was promoted to lieutenant in the sea of the reserve (MA). Despite this rank of the Navy, Wurzian remained assigned to the secret service, namely the Elector Regiment , until the end of the war .

The equipment of the combat swimmers essentially consisted of flippers, a thin suit and an oxygen rebreather, the handling of which was very risky. Many former combat swimmers emphasize again and again that there were hardly any accidents, largely due to Alfred von Wurzian's good training. Wurzian never took part in missions himself because as a specialist he was strictly forbidden.

After the war, Wurzian lived in Hamburg for a few years, where he worked, among other things, as a professional diver in the port. The idea of ​​the book Der Mann im Strom by Siegfried Lenz and its later film adaptation with Hans Albers in the leading role should be based on the story of Wurzians in these post-war years.

In the mid-1950s, Wurzian was in India as a representative of the Essen company Krupp in Rourkela , where a large iron and steel plant was built. At the beginning of the 1960s he moved back to Vienna, where he became general manager for Austria for VARTA . In 1966, Wurzian lost almost all of his speech skills due to a stroke. Until the end of his life he could only partially restore it. He was buried at the Vienna Central Cemetery .

Awards

• Iron Cross (1939) 2nd class in 1943
• War Merit Cross (1939) 2nd class with swords in 1945

literature

• Siegfried Breyer and Gerhard Koop: The German Navy 1935–1945 . Volume 3. Naval Small Combat Associations a. a., Friedberg, 1987.
• Michael Jung: Sabotage under water . Hamburg, 2004. ISBN 3-8132-0818-4 .
• Dietrich F. Witzel: Command units of the Abwehr II in the Second World War . In: Military History Research Office (Hrsg.): Military history supplement to European military history. Issue 5, October 1990.
• Cajus Bekker: ... and yet loved life. The exciting adventures of German torpedo riders, frogmen and explosive device pilots, Sponholtz-Verlag, Hanover, 236 p. 1956

Individual evidence

1. ^ Alfred Wurzian grave site , Vienna, Zentralfriedhof, Group 54, No. 38.