Carl Degelow

Carl ("Charly") Degelow (born January 5, 1891 in Münsterdorf , † November 9, 1970 in Hamburg ) was a German officer and fighter pilot .

Study and training

Degelow attended high school in Itzehoe ; then he studied engineering at the University of Darmstadt . His original professional goal was to take on a managerial position at Alsen's Portland cement factories in Itzehoe. For this reason he also attended lectures in psychology . After completing his studies, he spent a year and a half in the USA , where he worked in various cement factories. Back in Germany, he moved to Altona because his family now lived there.

First World War

Since Degelow had graduated in Hesse during his studies his military service, he enlisted at the outbreak of World War I as a volunteer and entered the second Nassau Infantry Regiment. 88 of the Prussian army one. With the regiment he first fought on the Eastern Front, including in the winter battle in Masuria . Here he was wounded and transferred to the Weißer Hirsch sanatorium near Dresden to recover . Due to his achievements at the front, he was then commanded from May 1 to July 31, 1915 to the officer aspirant course in Munster and then promoted to lieutenant in the reserve . As such, Degelow was then deployed on the Western Front .

Degelow later chose a white deer as an emblem, which he had affixed to his Fokker D.VII fighter aircraft, which, like all pilots in his squadron, was black. In 1916 he reported to the air force . The training took place at the Deutsche Flugzeug-Werke in Lindenthal near Leipzig , and later at the hunting relay school in Valenciennes .

From September 1, 1916, Degelow served as a fighter pilot, flew in Jagdstaffel 7 under Josef Jacobs and then in Jagdstaffel 40, which was later joined by Willy Rosenstein , a Jew, who joined after an anti-Semitic statement by his former superior Hermann Göring had moved. Degelow managed to shoot down a total of 30 enemy aircraft. He was the last German pilot of the First World War to be awarded the Order Pour le Mérite , two days before the end of the war. He had already received the Iron Cross II. And I. Class and the Knight's Cross of the Royal House Order of Hohenzollern with Swords.

After the war, he was discharged from military service on 11 December 1918 but still received on 7 July 1921 character as Lieutenant awarded the reserve.

Post-war years and the time of National Socialism

As early as 1919, Degelow had resumed activity in the cement industry. He stayed in contact with his old comrades through the steel helmet , the aviator's ring and the "knighthood of the order Pour le Merité". In addition to his professional activity, he was also Oberlandesführer of the SA Reserve Pomerania.

After the German Air Force was established in March 1935, Degelow was reactivated as an officer in August 1936, but no longer used as an aviator. On April 1, 1937, he was promoted to captain and August 1, 1939 to major in the reserve. Degelow was briefly imprisoned once for inadvertently failing to deliver the Hitler salute, but otherwise he was a political follower of the Nazi era.

He had a special friendship with his temporary superior, the Inspector General of the Air Force , Erhard Milch , who held a protective hand over him. Degelow intervened twice for Jewish friends, including Willy Rosenstein, with Reichsminister Göring, but was then told to turn to his direct superiors with any future concerns of this kind. In 1940 he was assigned to Ernst Udet's staff . When there were differences between Udet and Göring, Milch had Degelow transferred again as a precaution to remove him from Udet's surroundings. On August 2, 1941 Degelow was released from his military duties, given leave and placed in the UK . He became a board member of the Pomeranian Industry Association on shares in Szczecin .

In the last days of the war Degelow had to flee from Wolin to Hamburg with his family, wife and son . When he was denazified , he benefited from his discharge from the military in 1941 and from the testimonies of Jewish friends whom he had helped.

Works

• With the white stag through thick and thin. Altona-Ottensen 1920.

literature

• Peter Kilduff: Black Fokker Leader: Carl Degelow. The First World War's Last Airfighter Knight. London 2009.
• Karl-Friedrich Hildebrand, Christian Zweng: The knights of the order Pour le Mérite of the First World War. Volume 1: A-G. Biblio Verlag, Osnabrück 1999, ISBN 3-7648-2505-7 , pp. 289-290.
• Hanns Möller: History of the knights of the order pour le mérite in the world war. Volume I: A-L. Verlag Bernard & Graefe, Berlin 1935, pp. 216–217.

Web links

• Photo by Carl Degelow on frontflieger.de

Individual evidence

1. ↑ pourlemerite.org ( Memento of the original dated December 12, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 

See also

• List of German fighter pilots in the First World War