Erik von Witzleben

This article is about the large landowner and later expellee functionary. For the Prussian major general see Eric von Witzleben .

Gravestone of Erik von Witzleben and his family in Hamburg-Bahrenfeld

Job Wilhelm Karl Erik von Witzleben (born October 6, 1884 in Hanover ; † April 12, 1958 in Wilster ) was a large German landowner in the Prussian province of Posen , Knight of Honor of the Order of St. John , federal spokesman for the West Prussian Landsmannschaft and namesake of Erik-von-Witzleben. Foundation , renamed the West Prussia Cultural Foundation in 2005 .

It came from the Thuringian noble family von Witzleben and was the eldest son of Major Job von Witzleben (1845-1894) and his wife Elisabeth von Jagow (born January 23, 1857), a daughter of Karl von Jagow . His great-grandfather was the Prussian major general Heinrich Günther von Witzleben (1755-1825). After his father's death, he took over his Liszkowo estate, located in the Wirsitz district , with a size of 2,615 hectares. In 1919 the Wirsitz district and with it his estate came to the Second Polish Republic .

As one of the leaders of the self-protection , he was imprisoned in a Polish prison for three months for anti-Polish activities. In 1940 he joined the SS , in which he was promoted to SS-Sturmbannführer in 1942 . In post-war Germany in 1949 he took over the office of federal spokesman for the newly founded Landsmannschaft West Prussia , which he held until 1956. As such, he was a signatory to the Charter of German Expellees .

He became the namesake of the Erik von Witzleben Foundation .

Since 1905 he was a member of the Corps Saxo-Borussia Heidelberg .

literature

• Noble paperback, Gotha 1923, p. 709.
• Gothaisches genealogical pocket book of noble houses, 1904, p.926