Cordt from Brandis

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Cordt von Brandis (born October 4, 1888 in Eimbeckhausen , † June 11, 1972 in Barendorf ) was a German officer and free corps leader .

Life

Brandis came after visiting the cadet schools Naumburg and large light field on June 19, 1908 as a lieutenant in the Infantry Regiment "Grand Duke Friedrich Franz II. Of Mecklenburg-Schwerin" (4th Brandenburg) no. 24 of the Prussian army in Neuruppin one. With the outbreak of World War I , he was initially deployed on the Western Front and took over the command of the 1st Company on September 4, 1914  . In the following years Brandis was wounded several times and after his recovery and promotion to lieutenant on February 25, 1915, he took over the 8th Company. After being transferred to Serbia in the meantime , the regiment returned to the western front in front of Verdun in early 1916 .

Captain Hans-Joachim Haupt , Lieutenant Colonel Georg von Oven, Captain Cordt von Brandis (right)

Brandis was best known for having received the Order of Pour le Mérite for the storming of Fort Douaumont on March 14, 1916 with Hans-Joachim Haupt and was considered the conqueror of the fort. Later, in the commemorative literature about the Battle of Verdun in the 1920s and 1930s, a bitter dispute arose among various participants and authors about whether the honor of Brandis' was justified or whether other soldiers were being defrauded.

On July 1, 1917, he was transferred to the staff of the German Crown Prince Army Group and on August 18, 1917, he was promoted to captain . Shortly afterwards he was appointed commander of the 2nd battalion of his regular regiment, which he led until the end of the war. After his return to his home country and demobilization , he formed the Brandis Freikorps named after him at Neuruppin at the beginning of 1919 , which initially belonged to the 1st Guard Reserve Division that was newly established in Berlin at the end of January and initially consisted of a reinforced battalion with three rifle companies, a machine gun company and a battery 10.5 cm howitzers . It was in use in the Baltic States from March and was later topped up by other units such as the Hamburg Freikorps Merck and Baltic German fighters. Brandis Freikorps belonged to the " Iron Division " under Josef Bischoff and the Freikorps Franz Pfeffer von Salomons , Walter von Medems and Count Eulenburg to the most important German volunteer formations in the Baltic War . Brandis later wrote a highly regarded memory book about these fights. After the return of the Baltics to Germany and the failed Kapp Putsch , Brandis resigned from military service on March 31, 1920.

In the 1920s he ran an estate in Rhinluch near Ruppin. In 1934 he was involved in setting up the Reich Labor Service . Despite his ideological roots in the nationalist-militant spectrum, he did not join the NSDAP . From 1936 he got involved with German settlers in East Africa , where his brother ran a farm. There he was arrested by the English in 1940. He spent the period of World War II in various British internment camps in South Africa until 1947 .

On 27 August 1939 the so-called Tannenbergtag , Brandis received the character as Major awarded.

Fonts

Cover sheet of the Luchhof - "... with 25 line drawings by Erich R. Döbrich "
  • The Douaumont strikers. Traditions-Verlag, Berlin 1934; Scherl, Berlin 1917.
  • The assault. War experiences of a front officer. Chief of the General Staff of the Field Army, September 15, 1917.
  • The ones from Douaumont. The Ruppiner Regiment 24 in World War I Berlin. Verlag Tradition W. Kolk, 1930.
  • About lice, cabbage and stage stallions. Traditions-Verlag Kolk, Berlin 1932.
  • The warrior. Serious and cheerful things from war and peace. Verlag Tradition Wilhelm Kolk, Berlin 1932.
  • The Luchhof. Kolk & Co., Berlin 1934.
  • Baltic people. Fate of a volunteer corps. Traditional publishing house Kolk & Co, Berlin (1939).
  • Africa ... today! Seen through the eyes of settlers and soldiers. Traditional publishing house Kolk & Co., Berlin 1939.
  • Before us the Douaumont. Druffel 1966.

literature

  • 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. 184-185.
  • Hanns Möller: History of the knights of the order "pour le mérite" in the world war. Volume 1: A-L. Bernard & Graefe publishing house, Berlin 1935, pp. 141–143.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Bernhard Sauer: From the "Myth of an Eternal Soldierhood". The German Freikorps campaign in the Baltic States in 1919. In: ZfG 43 (1995), pp. 869–902 (here: p. 876).
  2. ↑ Harold J. Gordon Jr .: The Reichswehr and the Weimar Republic. Verlag für Wehrwesen Bernard & Graefe, Frankfurt am Main 1959, p. 33.
  3. ^ Bernhard Sauer: Freikorps and anti-Semitism in the early days of the Weimar Republic. In: ZfG 56 (2008), issue 1, pp. 5–29 (here: p. 20, note 72).
personal data
SURNAME Brandis, Cordt of
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German officer, author of several books with autobiographical content
DATE OF BIRTH October 4, 1888
PLACE OF BIRTH Eimbeckhausen
DATE OF DEATH June 11, 1972
Place of death Barendorf