Erwin Böhme

Erwin Böhme on a postcard from around 1917

Erwin Böhme (born July 29, 1879 in Holzminden ; † November 29, 1917 via Zonnebeke , Belgium ) was a German engineer and fighter pilot in the First World War .

Life

engineer

After graduating from high school in Holzminden , he attended the technical college in Dortmund and took his state examination in 1902. He then worked as an engineer for various companies in Elberfeld and from 1904 to 1909 in Zurich and Biel. From 1909 he took over construction management for Adolf Bleichert & Co. on the 116 km long Usambara aerial cableway for the transport of wood from Tanga to Rate in what was then the colony of German East Africa, which was by then largely completed . This cable car was commissioned by Erwin Wilkins from Hornow-Wadelsdorf, who, as an entrepreneur, bought land from the German-East African Railway Company in the Usambara Mountains at the foot of Kilimanjaro in 1889, founded the town of Neu-Hornow and, from 1901, an important sawmill for the sale of cedar wood business.

Fighter pilot

At the beginning of the First World War in 1914, Böhme went on vacation in the Swiss Alps and shortly afterwards entered the war in Germany. In autumn he was posted to Lindenthal for pilot training and, after completing his exam, was employed as a flight instructor. In December 1915, he switched to Kampfstaffel 10, which was commanded by Captain Wilhelm Boelcke (brother of the most famous German fighter pilot at the time, Oswald Boelcke ). In August 1916, Böhme, together with Manfred von Richthofen , was selected by Oswald Boelcke for the newly established Jagdstaffel 2 . Boelcke trained the less experienced pilots in the following months. In May 1916 Böhme was appointed lieutenant in the reserve. On October 28, 1916, his aircraft collided with Oswald Boelcke's aircraft during a dogfight. While Böhme survived the collision, Boelcke crashed with his damaged machine and died on impact.

In the war year 1917 Böhme suffered a gunshot wound and after his recovery on February 11, 1917, he was employed as a flight instructor at the hunting relay school in Valenciennes in northern France. On July 2, 1917, he took over the leadership of Jagdstaffel 29 and from August 18, 1917, Jagdstaffel 2 "Boelcke" in the 4th Army in Flanders . Between August 1916 and November 1917, Böhme achieved a total of 24 aerial victories during the war.

Böhme himself was shot down on November 29, 1917 in a dogfight over Zonnebeke in West Flanders by an Armstrong Whitworth FK8 , piloted by Captain John Pattern (No. 10 Squadron), and killed in the process. British soldiers buried him at the Keerselaarshoek war cemetery north of Eeklo . After this grave site was closed in the 1950s, according to unconfirmed reports, it was reburied at the German military cemetery in Langemark . For his military successes, he was awarded the highest Prussian award, the Order Pour le Mérite , on the day of his death . In his hometown of Holzminden, in his honor on December 28, 1934, by a council resolution, a section of the former street Jugendgarten was renamed Erwin-Böhme-Straße .

literature

• Dieter Lent: Böhme, Erwin . In: Horst-Rüdiger Jarck, Günter Scheel (ed.): Braunschweigisches Biographisches Lexikon: 19th and 20th centuries . Hahnsche Buchhandlung, Hannover 1996, ISBN 3-7752-5838-8 , p. 77 .
• Johannes Werner (Ed.): Letters from a German fighter pilot to a young girl . v. Hase & Koehler, Leipzig 1930 (correspondence between Erwin Böhmes and his fiancée Annamarie B. 1916/1917).

Web links

• www.flieger-album.de
• Short biography and list of aerial victories , www.theaerodrome.com (English)
• Lieutenant d. R. Erwin Böhme

Individual evidence

1. ↑ http://www.flieger-album.de/geschichte/portraits/boehmeerwin.php
2. ↑ http://www.lr-online.de/regionen/spremberg/Das-neue-Hornow-am-Kilimandscharo;art1050,1931707
3. ↑ http://www.jastaboelcke.de/php/include.php?file=content/html/flieger/erwin_boehme/boehme_bio_ger.html