German Soldiers' Yearbook

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The German Soldier's Yearbook , until 1963 with the title German Soldier's Calendar , was an annual periodical . At the end of 1952 the first copy "The German Soldier Calendar 1953" was published, the last copy was published belatedly in spring 2006 as the "German Soldier Yearbook 2003/2004" with the subtitle "51./52. The editor was the former district administrator and NSDAP district leader Helmut Damerau , later Wolfgang Hausen . The soldiers' yearbook was published by Schild-Verlag . From 1997 to 2004 it was published with the additional publisher Hausen.

Reception (critical)

In a review of the 1961 edition, the Allgemeine Schweizer Militärzeitung noted: "It does not always avoid relapsing into reflections based on resentment, which are uncomfortably reminiscent of the language regulations of the Third Reich."

The time - editor Uwe Nettelbeck 1963 describes the contents of the contemporary issue like this:

“Inside there is 1. a scandalous calendar that illuminates the hard-to-remember life of former warriors through unambiguous days of remembrance ( Göring born, discovery of Soviet mass murders , battles won, Allied air raids on the Reich); 2. a few dozen apologetic essays, tirades about lost tank battles or tank battles or about the history and meaning of close combat clasps and perseverance medals; 3. Pictures (portraits, tanks, battle pictures, also historical, lovingly painted hero decorations, orders with Nazi emblems); 4. Advertisements that are supposed to keep the club dairy of military style alive (where you can still get medals or relevant literature, published by Schild-Verlag) and other advertisements […] Damerau's product celebrates the war. The tone that Dönitz takes while drunk is sustained and surpassed. The whole wealth of words and ideas of military absurdity unfolds there. The army is the "school of the nation", and only in the field and on the enemy (whom one can 'literally smell', as one is grateful) is the man still a man and all that. History becomes - since tradition is everything - diligently ransacked for glorious events and falsified wherever it blocks. There are many harmless examples of this, and several dangerous ones can be found in this publication. Completeness is not important to me, so two may suffice: The calendar offers May 16, 1943 as a souvenir. What happened that day? The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was 'fought down'! A particularly insane one of the numerous hymns to warlike warriors, which was written on Werner Mölders ' aviator , reads as follows:' This fresh, enthusiastic German was drawn to the soldier profession early on. The hour in action and probation struck unexpectedly quickly: The German Wehrmacht intervened in the Spanish people's struggle for freedom against the surging communism ... as the most successful winner of the Condor Legion, he returned to Germany with 14 recognized kills ... It was a stunningly steepest flight to Sun. The German people adored him. Over the years the cheerful young man had turned into a serious pilot who was convinced of the need to fight against communism (who, by the way, also flew against France and England, which - as everyone knows - are teeming with communists). It came to a bad end for him, but even in a crash, the one who had never been defeated by the enemy remained the victor. "

- Uwe Nettelbeck

The article about Mölders criticized by Nettelbeck came from Fritz von Forell , a personal friend of Mölders' who belonged to the SA and NSDAP and who had already written propaganda-oriented writings on Mölders during the Nazi era. Forell played a central role in the formulation and dissemination of the Mölders image, as the Military History Research Office stated: "[...] before 1945 in the character of Nazi war-glorifying, after 1945 ultimately jumbled history and unproven myth-forming".

Regarding the calendar of 1965, the Allgemeine Schweizer Militärzeitung again notes: “The book is displeasing because it often sounds a tone that hurts our ears. We do not like to hear about the historical mandate to restore the unity of people and empire and the energetic defense against all attempts at renunciation and advance theories hostile to the empire (p. 34) The praising of a book by E. Kern , Verbrechen am deutscher Volk with the words The proof that the Allies incurred far more war crimes in the Second World War and afterwards than one can blame Germany (publisher's advertisement, p. 260) is probably out of place. "

Reception (positive)

Paul Brock , who has been a freelancer since 1953 and has been a permanent employee of the Ostpreußenblatt since 1976, frequently reviewed the German soldiers' calendar by name . Two excerpts:

“A poem by Gerhard Schumann also resembles a fiery appeal , the last stanza of which may serve as an introduction to reading: 'Remain in your hearts, people! / Blood stream will blow up the dike! / Like lightning from the cloud / Again come the kingdom! ' There are titles to which the searching glance involuntarily sticks when leafing through for the first time, such as the story from the time of the Reichswehr in East Prussia. 'The old knight'. Author: Hans Henning v. Ramin . An easy, funny thing, very suitable as an introduction to the labyrinth of the diversity of the material. Another eye-catcher: ' RAD security train for partisan defense in southern Carinthia.' The report on the Reich Labor Service, as a fighting force, so to speak, contains a lot of interesting details. Likewise, Chapter V, by Hubert Lamey : German soldiers in America. Among the biographical contributions, the report by Heinrich Hartmann stands out: General of the Parachute Troop Ramcke , on the 10th anniversary of his death. "

- Paul Brock (1978)

“Actually, I just wanted to take a quick look at the book that the ten o'clock post had brought to my house; It was only when I was called to lunch that I realized how much and persistently I had been fascinated by the contents. It is the 'German Soldier Yearbook 1980'. What had fascinated me so much was actually apart from the basic topic, far away from anything soldier, but without what one might assume falling out of the ordinary - a look back at life, especially at the work of a man whose birthday is on 100th anniversary: Oswald Spengler . Involuntarily, when you hear the sound of this name, you think of the time of the first twenties. At that time his book ' The Downfall of the West ' had an alarming effect in the spiritually oriented world, but also in the political arena. 'A volcanic work in German history', Herbert Cysarz calls the book in his commemorative article. In it Spengler started from the undeniable statement that every ethnic and human cultural epoch has gone through a beginning, a climax and a gradual decline. […] Count Anton Bossi Fedrigotti puts Merano in the spotlight:… born in the sun, chosen to be beautiful and lovely…! ' Otherwise, the yearbook is provided with everything that has made it popular with its readership for years: good style, balanced content, the usual calendar, provided with historical data for each day, flanked by short biographies, including Paul Fechter , but also Otto Skorzeny are. "

- Paul Brock (1980)

In an obituary for Damerau for the Ostpreußenblatt and the Landsmannschaft Ostpreußen eV Wilhelm von Gottberg described the German Soldiers ' Yearbook as "Helmut Damerau's very own and personal life's work".

“For almost five decades now, it has contributed to strengthening the understanding among our people that without serious readiness to defend the freedom of the whole, the freedom of the individual is also endangered. It is also noteworthy that in each volume East and all German topics are given priority. With the German Soldiers' Book, he also set a literary monument to the Reichswehr and the Wehrmacht and their relatives. "

- Wilhelm von Gottberg

Authors (selection, example year)

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ DNB 01266037X Entry at the German National Library
  2. ↑ GERMAN NATIONAL ZEITUNG. Voice of the people In: Der Spiegel from March 13, 1963.
  3. ↑ GND 11601993X Personal details on Helmut Damerau at the German National Library
  4. ^ Soldiers' Yearbooks 1978-2004 - Schild-Verlag. In: schild-verlag.jimdo.com. Retrieved November 15, 2016 .
  5. ↑ Allgemeine Schweizerische Militärzeitschrift: Online Heft 4 1961, p. 175, accessed on February 12, 2013.
  6. ↑ DIE ZEIT, June 14, 1963 No. 24
  7. ↑ Military History Research Office (2004): Compilation of documents on the person of Werner Mölders ( Memento of the original from November 30, 2012 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. Quotation p. 9, otherwise a few more text passages including Forells biography. Publications of Forells on Mölder are also mentioned: Mölders und seine Männer, Graz 1941; Mölders - Mensch und Flieger , Salzburg 1951; Colonel Werner Mölders , in: German Soldier Yearbook 11 (1963), p. 13; Werner Mölders. Flight to the sun. The story of the great fighter pilot , Leoni 1976; Werner Mölders. The story of the great fighter pilot , Leoni 1982. The latter two publications are the right-wing Druffel-Verlag published @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.bundjuedischersoldaten-online.com
  8. ↑ Allgemeine Schweizerische Militärzeitschrift: Online Heft 5 1965, p. 300, accessed on February 12, 2013.
  9. ↑ further examples February 6, 1982, p. 11; February 19, 1977 p. 11
  10. ↑ The article comes from Wolfram Mallebrein who published in several right-wing extremist publishers: Albert Leo Schlageter: Ein deutscher Freiheitkäufer. 1990, at KW Schütz-Verlag ; The ReichsArbeitsDienst: Men and Maiden: Life and work in the labor service of the German Reich and in other European countries in words… . 1998 by Nation Europa Verlag . Franz W. Seidler counts Mallebrein's publications on the RAD as 'memoirs and justification literature', see Seidler: The National Socialist Motor Corps and the Organization Todt in the Second World War. In: VfZ 1984, p. 630. (PDF; 660 kB)
  11. ^ Ostpreußenblatt of March 11, 1978, p. 11
  12. ^ Ostpreußenblatt of March 22, 1980, p. 11
  13. ^ Obituary for the Ostpreußenblatt and Landsmannschaft Ostpreußen eV dated March 11, 2000
  14. ↑ Major General v. Grumbkov Pasha. In: German Soldier Yearbook 1974. Schild Verlag, Munich 1974. Viktor von Grumbkow
  15. ↑ General of Infantry Dr.phl.hc Julius v. Verdy du Vernois, in: German Soldier Yearbook 1982, p. 71 ff. Julius von Verdy du Vernois