Ernst von Althaus

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Ernst von Althaus in hussar uniform (1916/17)

Ernst Freiherr von Althaus (born March 19, 1890 in Ketschendorf ; † November 29, 1946 in Berlin ) was a Saxon officer and fighter pilot in World War I and a knight of the order Pour le Mérite . Later he was President of the Berlin Regional Court .

Life

Althaus' father, Prince Georg zu Bentheim and Steinfurt, was adjutant to Duke Carl Eduard of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha . In 1909 he joined the 1st Hussar Regiment "King Albert" No. 18 of the Saxon Army in Grossenhain and was promoted to lieutenant on March 24, 1909 . In February 1914 he was released to the reserve .

First World War

When the First World War broke out, Althaus was called up to his old regiment at the beginning of August 1914 and transferred to 13th Infantry Regiment No. 178 in November 1914 , where he was subsequently employed as a company commander. In February 1915 he was transferred to the 12th Infantry Regiment No. 177 and was able to take twenty-two prisoners in a raid operation with a group of fifteen men in northern France. For this he was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Military Order of St. Henry on January 27, 1915 . In addition, during the war he received the Knight's Cross of the Duke of Saxony-Ernestine House Order with Swords, the Braunschweig War Merit Cross II. Class and the Hessian Medal of Bravery .

Fighter pilot

On April 4, 1915, he joined the Air Force and was flier replacement department no. 6 (FEA 6) on the airfield Großenhain for pilots trained. He survived an accident in which his machine went up in flames.

The pilots of Jagdstaffel 4; 1916, in front of the Chateaux Vaux; in front second from right old house, in his hussar tunic
Jasta 4, 1916, Chateau Vaux, with five Pour-le-Mérite planes, old house in front left

On August 6, 1915, he was promoted to first lieutenant in the reserve and then on September 20, he was assigned to Aviation Department 23 (FA 23). There he carried out reconnaissance flights with a Fokker monoplane . Because of his military past, and as he continues his hussars - tunic wore, he soon became the nickname is "Husar Althaus," which he accepted with pride. In December 1915 he became the Kampfeinsitzerkommando seater command offset Vaux (KEK Vaux), where he west of 3 December 1915 Roye scored his first launch, a British Royal Aircraft Factory BE.2c . In his sixth victory in the air, on May 3, 1916, he was shot in the leg; During the hospital stay, he met a nurse whom he later married. After his recovery he flew again at KEK Vaux, where he scored his seventh and eighth kill in July 1916 and was then awarded the Pour le Mérite in the same month. Shortly before, he had already received the Iron Cross 1st Class and the Knight's Cross of the Royal House Order of Hohenzollern with Swords. The KEK Vaux was transformed into Jagdstaffel 4 (Jasta 4) on August 25, 1916 and was then, due to the necessity of relocating to changing focal points on the front, in Roupy, in Xivry-Circourt ( Lorraine ), in Le Catelet ( Picardy ) and stationed in Douai . Althaus continued to fly with this unit until he was wounded again on March 4, 1917.

When he was restored, he was assigned to Jasta 14 , but a little later, at Manfred von Richthofen's personal request, on July 6, 1917, he was appointed leader of the Jasta 10 stationed in Marckebeeke near Kortrijk in Belgium . The squadron was combined in June with the Jastas 4, 6 and 11 to form Jagdgeschwader 1 under Richthofen's command. There he flew an Albatros DV (No. 1119/17), on whose chrome-yellow fuselage he had five white dots and a black horizontal line, the letters H (for hussar) and A (for old house) in Morse code , painted; the wings and elevator were blue. He achieved his last aerial victory on July 24, 1917, southeast of Moorslede in Flanders over a British Sopwith Camel , but had to hand over command of the squadron to Werner Voss on July 30, by Richthofen's order due to incipient blindness . It is not known to what extent his preference to fly alone and his notorious passion for gaming prompted Richthofen to replace Althaus as the squadron leader.

He achieved nine officially confirmed aerial victories, but is said to have won eight more which (since he mostly flew alone and often behind the opposing lines) could not be officially confirmed.

Infantry officer

He was transferred to the Jastaschule II established on August 8, 1917 in Valenciennes as a trainer , but he had to give up this position because of his diminishing eyesight. He then received infantry training in the replacement battalion of the 12th Royal Saxon Infantry Regiment No. 177 and after a few weeks took over as chief of a company near Verdun . In the course of a heavy battle on October 15, 1918, in which his company had been reduced to only 15 men, he and the few survivors were taken prisoner by US troops . He did not return from captivity until September 1919 .

Post-war years

After his return home, he initially worked as a board member of the Badische Luftverkehrs-Gesellschaft (BALUG) founded in 1919 , which wanted to set up an air mail route from Frankfurt to Switzerland in 1920 . Since flying over the Swiss border was not allowed for contractual reasons, a location near Tumringen , today a district of Lörrach , was chosen as the southern end of the line , where the Lörrach airfield was set up on a meadow leased by the community . The former fighter pilot Hermann Frommherz became the airfield manager. The first test flight took place on July 10, 1920. After the line had been officially approved, the Frankfurt- Karlsruhe- Loerrach airmail line was opened on November 14, 1920. In addition to the mail flights, the BALUG also advertised with passenger flights over the Black Forest and the Rhine Valley . However, due to a lack of demand and a ban by the victorious powers, the mail flights had to be abandoned on January 3, 1921, so that only the passenger flights, with Althaus and Frommherz as pilots, continued to operate. When the victorious powers then ordered the closure of the airfield and the destruction of the aircraft on the basis of the Versailles Treaty in July 1921, this too had to be given up.

Althaus then studied law at the universities in Königsberg, Berlin and Rostock and became a lawyer, later a judge. Although he was completely blind in 1937, he was appointed President of the Berlin Regional Court during World War II .

After the end of the war he was employed by the Allies as an interpreter for a short time. He fell ill in 1946 and died on November 29, 1946.

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. 11-12.
  • Hanns Möller: History of the knights of the order pour le mérite in the world war. Volume I: A-L. Bernard & Graefe Verlag, Berlin 1935, pp. 18-19.
  • Norman Franks, Frank Bailey, Russell Guest: Above the Lines: A Complete Record of the Fighter Aces of the German Air Service, Naval Air Service and Flanders Marine Corps, 1914–1918 . Grub Street, London 1993, ISBN 0-948817-73-9 , p. 61.
  • Greg van Wyngarden: Early German Aces of World War I . Osprey Publishing, Oxford, England 2006, ISBN 1-84176-997-5 , p. 19.
  • Terry C. Treadwell, Alan C. Wood: German Knights of the Air 1914-1918: The Holders of the Orden Pour le Mérite. Barnes & Noble, New York 1998, ISBN 0-7607-0790-1 .
  • Johan Ryheul: KEK's and Fokkerstaffels: The Early German Fighter Units in 1915-1916. Fonthill Media, Stroud, Gloucestershire, England 2014, ISBN 978-1-78155-223-0 .

Web links

Notes and individual references

  1. ↑ a b c d e f Franks et al: Above the Lines: A Complete Record of the Fighter Aces of the German Air Service. 1993, p. 61.
  2. ↑ The KEK Vaux was so named because it was quartered in the castle near the village of Vaux-en-Vermandois , around 4 km west-north-west of Roupy . The grounds of the castle served as an airfield. The castle was destroyed on February 16, 1917 when the German army withdrew to the Siegfried line . Today only a few stones can be found there.
  3. ↑ a b Ernst von Althaus. on: theaerodrome.com
  4. ↑ Model of the Albatros DV with Morse code painting
  5. ↑ Jagdstaffelschule II. On: frontflieger.de (accessed on March 31, 2013)
  6. ↑ Luftsportgemeinschaft Hotzenwald eV ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2016 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. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.lg-hotzenwald.de
  7. ↑ See the entry of Ernst von Althaus' matriculation in the Rostock matriculation portal
personal data
SURNAME Althaus, Ernst von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Althaus, Ernst Freiherr von (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German fighter pilot in World War I, president of the district court
DATE OF BIRTH March 19, 1890
PLACE OF BIRTH Ketschendorf near Coburg
DATE OF DEATH November 29, 1946
Place of death Berlin