Friedrich Christiansen

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Captain Friedrich Christiansen, 1933
Friedrich Christiansen (2nd from right) in 1937

Friedrich Christiansen (born December 12, 1879 in Wyk auf Föhr ; † December 3, 1972 in Aukrug ) was a German officer , most recently General der Flieger and Wehrmacht commander in the occupied Netherlands . After the end of the war he was sentenced to twelve years in prison by a Dutch special court as a war criminal .

Life

Christiansen came from an old seafaring family and was initially a merchant ship captain. He had the nautical license as a captain for a long voyage. Among other things, he was a second officer on the Prussia . On October 1, 1901, he joined the Imperial Navy , from which he was discharged as a reservist on September 30, 1902 after a year of service . On 27 March 1914 he completed the exam for pilots in the Hanseatic flight school by Karl Caspar and then worked as a flight instructor. He is one of the so-called Old Eagles , ie the pilots who got their pilot's license before the First World War .

At the beginning of the First World War Christiansen was drafted into the Navy and initially served as an instructor at the Holtenau sea ​​flight station . On January 5, 1915 offset Christiansen Seeflieger to the Belgian coast and promoted him on February 18, 1916 lieutenant of the reserve of the sailors Artillery and on June 25, 1917 lieutenant of the reserve. From September 16, 1917, Christiansen acted as a squadron leader within the Flanders I Seaplane Base in Zeebrugge . He succeeded in shooting down the British airship C 27 on December 11, 1917 . Thereupon, after a total of 440 enemy flights, Kaiser Wilhelm II awarded him the Pour le Mérite on December 11, 1917 , which Christiansen then received from the emperor's hand at the main headquarters. He was thus the first reserve officer in the navy to receive the highest Prussian valor award. On September 27, 1918 he was promoted to lieutenant captain of the reserve of the sailor artillery. He ended the war with 21 confirmed aerial victories.

After the November Revolution of 1918 he belonged to the 3rd Marine Brigade under Wilfried von Loewenfeld and retired from military service on March 6, 1919.

From 1922 Christiansen worked again in the merchant shipping until he was employed by Claude Dornier in 1929 . As the commander of the Do X large flying boat , he soon became known abroad, including during the 1931 American tour .

His awards finally led to his being appointed as Ministerialrat in the Reich Aviation Ministry from 1933 to 1937 and promoted to major general in 1936 . In the same year he was appointed commander or inspector of all flying schools. In 1937 Christiansen, who was a member of the NSDAP (membership number 800.471), was promoted to corps leader of the NS aviation corps and promoted to lieutenant general. On January 1, 1939 - at the height of his military career - he was appointed General of the Airmen .

During the Second World War after the campaign in the West , Christiansen was from May 29, 1940 to April 7, 1945 Wehrmacht Commander in Chief in the German- occupied Netherlands and from November 10, 1944 to January 28, 1945, Commander in Chief of the 25th Army deployed there .

After the war Christiansen was arrested and sentenced to twelve years imprisonment by the special court in Arnhem in the Netherlands in the Putten criminal case on August 12, 1948: after attacks on the Wehrmacht on October 2, 1944, he ordered the Dutch village of Putten to be burned down and all men of the village of military age in the Amersfoort camp and from there to the Neuengamme concentration camp to deport . As a result, 661 men from Putten were interned in the concentration camp on October 18, 1944 and many of them were transported to various satellite camps in the weeks that followed. Only 49 of them survived. The largest group of men from Putten suffered and died in the Husum-Schwesing and Ladelund satellite camps in North Friesland . 111 men from Putten died in the Ladelund concentration camp alone. In December 1951 Christiansen was released early and deported to Germany.

The city ​​council of his hometown Wyk took his release in 1951 as an opportunity to renew the honorary citizenship granted to him in 1932 and to rename a street after him that had already borne his name. This was received with outrage in the Netherlands and Denmark. In May 1980 the “Friedrich-Christiansen-Straße” got its old name “Große Straße” back after several months of controversial discussion in the city of Wyk. He was not deprived of his honorary citizenship as it had expired with his death. In March 2016, the municipal council of Aukrug decided to symbolically revoke Christiansen's honorary citizenship, which was granted in 1933, for his participation in war crimes with a recorded resolution.

Awards

See also

literature

Web links

Commons : Friedrich Christiansen  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Friedrich Christiansen - Officials of National Socialist Reich Ministries . In: Officials of National Socialist Reich Ministries . February 20, 2018 ( ns-reichsministerien.de [accessed March 29, 2018]).
  2. ↑ Summary of the verdict on justice and Nazi crimes ( Memento from August 27, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
  3. ↑ [1] and [2]
  4. ↑ Die Zeit March 28, 1980: "The Wyker and their General"
  5. ^ A. Bantelmann, A. Panten, R. Kuschert, T. Steensen: History of North Friesland. Edited by Nordfriisk Instituut und Stiftung Nordfriesland, Verlag Boyens & Co., Heide 1995, ISBN 3-8042-0759-6 , p. 391.
  6. ↑ Der Inselbote: “The brutal face of the dictatorship” , from November 26, 2012.
  7. ↑ a b c d e Ranking list of the Imperial German Navy for the year 1918 , Ed .: Marine-Kabinett , Mittler & Sohn Verlag , Berlin 1918, p. 200
  8. ↑ Klaus D. Patzwall : The Golden Party Badge and its Honorary Awards 1934-1944, Studies of the History of Awards Volume 4 , Verlag Klaus D. Patzwall, Norderstedt 2004, ISBN 3-931533-50-6 , p. 66
  9. ↑ Klaus D. Patzwall and Veit Scherzer : Das Deutsche Kreuz 1941–1945, History and Proprietor Volume II , Verlag Klaus D. Patzwall, Norderstedt 2001, ISBN 3-931533-45-X , p. 538
personal data
SURNAME Christiansen, Friedrich
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German officer, most recently General der Flieger and Commander of the Wehrmacht in the Netherlands
DATE OF BIRTH December 12, 1879
PLACE OF BIRTH Wyk on Föhr
DATE OF DEATH 3rd December 1972
Place of death Aukrug