Friedrich Wend zu Eulenburg
Friedrich-Wend Graf zu Eulenburg and Hertefeld , known as Prince of Eulenburg and Hertefeld, Graf von Sandels (born September 19, 1881 in Starnberg ; † August 1, 1963 at Hertefeld House in Weeze ) was a German nobleman, farmer and landowner on Liebenberg and Häsen ( Brandenburg Province ) and Hertefeld and Kolk ( Lower Rhine ).
Life
origin
Friedrich-Wend ("Büdi") came from the noble family of Eulenburg and was the oldest surviving descendant of the eight children of Philipp zu Eulenburg (* February 12, 1847 in Königsberg ; † September 17, 1921 in Liebenberg , today Löwenberger Land ) and his Wife Augusta, nee Freiin von Sandels (born May 12, 1853 in Stockholm , † December 14, 1941 in Liebenberg), a daughter of Samuel, the last Count of Sandels, and Augusta von Tersmeden.
Childhood and Education (1881 to 1903)
Due to his father's diplomatic activities, he spent his childhood and school days in Starnberg , Oldenburg , Stuttgart and Vienna . After graduating from high school, Friedrich-Wend joined the 1st Guards Regiment on foot in 1902 and then attended the Engers War School from 1903 . 1904. Lieutenant promoted, he took his 1906 farewell from active military as a lieutenant of the reserve.
He had already met his future wife, the Austrian Marie von Mayr-Melnhof (1884–1960), in Vienna. Marie came from the family of Barons Mayr von Melnhof, who had only experienced a rapid social rise a few decades earlier: Originally the farmers Mayr von Melnhof, the family, pioneering the industrialization of Styria , succeeded in attaining great wealth. At the height of the economic development of heavy industry, Marie's grandfather, Franz Mayr Melnhof, who was ennobled in 1859, sold all of the related investments and invested the capital in huge forestry areas, which, together with a large cardboard factory, are still owned by the Mayr-Melnhof family today .
Marriage and further career (1904 to 1930)
Friedrich Wend's wedding with Marie took place on May 21, 1904 in Liebenberg in the presence of the German Emperor Wilhelm II . The impending marriage was initially highly problematic because the bride was of Catholic faith. However, Kaiser Wilhelm II had only elevated his friend Philipp zu Eulenburg to the rank of prince on January 1, 1900 in order to create a balance between Catholic and Protestant princes in the empire. This now appeared to be in jeopardy with the planned marriage, whereupon Wilhelm II - formally commander in chief of Friedrich-Wend - initially rejected the planned marriage. The solution finally offered the Emperor himself by an exemption with Pope Pius X procured. So the wedding ritual was performed in both denominations and all children of this marriage were baptized in the Protestant faith. Immediately after the marriage, the so-called Seehaus was rebuilt from 1904 to 1906, a castle-like property that was built for the young couple on the east bank of the Großer Lankesees , a few kilometers from their father's castle. The construction costs of more than 250,000 gold marks were paid for from the bride's dowry.
After the wedding, Friedrich-Wend went to study agriculture at the university in Halle , which he was unable to complete. As a result of the dramatic events surrounding his father during the Harden-Eulenburg affair from 1907 to 1909, the waves during the scandal trials were so high that Friedrich-Wend's permanent presence in the family was urgently required. The two older Eulenburg sons had to physically protect their father Philipp from the rush of the "paparazzi". In his memoirs, the doctor Wilhelm zur Linden later reported that he was still treating the late effects of Friedrich-Wend's shocks in 1937.
In 1907, at the age of 26, Friedrich-Wend took full responsibility for his father's large estate. In the following year he built a steam brick and began to mechanize the company.
As part of the general mobilization , Friedrich-Wend was drafted as a reservist in August 1914. His regiment arrived during the advance through Belgium to Ghent , where Friedrich Wend the Iron Cross was awarded First Class. Shortly afterwards he was poisoned by locals. As not fit for treatment, he was ordered back to Germany and discharged from the army. For months he only fed himself on liquid food and was only able to restore his health after years. In June 1915, his younger brother Botho Sigwart died in Galicia as a result of a lung wound.
After the end of the First World War , the framework conditions also changed fundamentally in Liebenberg, so that the estate was no longer competitive from the mid-1920s. Thereupon Friedrich-Wend (since the death of his father in 1921 senior of the family) hired an external advisor, Rudolf Baron von Engelhardt-Schönheyden, whom he endowed with far-reaching powers. Under his aegis, the company was successfully renovated by 1928. In 1926 Engelhardt married the daughter of his employer, Ingeborg Countess zu Eulenburg, and moved with her into a wing of the lake house.
Entanglement and Family Resistance (1931 to 1945)
As a monarchist, Eulenburg was close to the conservative DNVP . However, he recognized early on that the political influence of the large landowners could only be maintained in the long term if he could rely on the approval of broad sections of the population. In the NSDAP , which outstripped the DNVP in the 1930 elections, he saw a party that could receive this broad approval. In March 1931 he met Adolf Hitler to discuss the prospects for large estates with him: In order to clarify this question, I decided to visit Adolf Hitler personally so that I could hear directly from his mouth what we could expect from him to have. After this conversation, Friedrich-Wend believed that he had found the right man in Hitler to secure his ideas. He then sent a circular to other large landowners to persuade them to join the NSDAP: If we do not want Bolshevism, we have no choice but to join the party, which despite some socialist ideas is the antithesis of Marxism and Bolshevism is. He himself joined the party, and later most of Liebenberg's villagers followed his example. His son-in-law, Baron von Engelhardt, had founded a Liebenberg department of the NSKK (National Socialist Motor Vehicle Corps) a few years earlier and organized field games and combat exercises.
The Eulenburgs' neighbor was Hermann Göring , who had built the Carinhall Hunting Lodge in Schorfheide . From 1934 onwards, through his personal hunter Willi Schade, the son of the Liebenberg forester , he was invited to hunt the famous Liebenberg fallow deer several times . During one of Göring's stays in Liebenberg, he was approached by Eulenburg's niece, Libertas Haas-Heye , who had spent the most important years of her childhood in Liebenberg. She stood up for her fiancé Harro Schulze-Boysen , who had previously worked in Goering's Reich Aviation Ministry in a subordinate position, and shortly afterwards Schulze-Boysen was promoted. The couple married in Liebenberg in 1936. Six years later, Harro and Libertas Schulze-Boysen were exposed as the heads of the resistance group known by the Gestapo Rote Kapelle (now known as the Schulze-Boysen / Harnack group) and executed in Plötzensee in December 1942 .
The only son Friedrich Wends, Wend Graf zu Eulenburg (1908-1986), subsequently received to date uK ( indispensable ) found an immediate call-up and was in a penal battalion offset to the partisan warfare on the Eastern Front, suffered the unusually high losses. His father continually advocated his immediate transfer in every conceivable position, and Wend eventually ended up in a regular tank battalion that was completely wiped out by the invasion of Allied troops in Salerno . He survived the war and was captured by American forces near Como in April 1945 .
Escape, Reconstruction and Death (1945 to 1963)
Friedrich-Wend and his wife were the last family members to flee Liebenberg in April 1945, just before the advance of the Soviet army marched in . As a stopover for several years, they first reached the Holstein estate of Kaden , while the Liebenberg and Häsen properties were expropriated by the Soviet Military Administration in Germany (SMAD) in 1947 . The family property on the Lower Rhine, Hertefeld and Kolk, as well as the forest and hunting property of his wife Marie in Austria were destroyed or occupied with refugees.
By 1947, the Hertefeld headquarters was rebuilt by Friedrich-Wend, while his son Wend restored the farms. After the last refugees had left the property, the property in Hinterstoder / Upper Austria could also be taken back by the family in 1952 . In the last years of his life, Friedrich-Wend devoted himself to his family and hunting until he died on August 1, 1963 in Hertefeld in Weeze . Friedrich-Wend zu Eulenburg was buried next to his wife, who died in 1961, in the family cemetery in Hertefeld.
Offspring and relatives
Friedrich-Wend had two children and eight grandchildren. His great uncle was the Prussian Interior Minister Friedrich zu Eulenburg , his second uncles the Prussian Prime Minister (1892-1894) and Interior Minister Botho zu Eulenburg and the Royal Prussian High Court Marshal and House Minister August zu Eulenburg . The composer Botho Sigwart Graf zu Eulenburg was his brother. The resistance fighter Libertas Schulze-Boysen , who grew up temporarily at Liebenberg Castle, was his niece.
See also
literature
- Stephan Malinowski : From King to Leader. German nobility and National Socialism . Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 2010, pp. 447, 477-479, 519.
- Andrea Geffers, Jörn Lehmann: Castle and Gut Lovers in the past and present . Ed. Board of Trustees of the DKB Foundation for Social Commitment, Liebenberg 2006, pp. 21–37.
- Stefan Müller: Liebenberg - a sold village . Im Selbstverlag BoD, 2003, pp. 25–74.
- Genealogical Handbook of the Nobility , Princely Houses XVI. Volume 124.Strong, 2001.
- Wend Graf zu Eulenburg-Hertefeld: A castle in the Mark Brandenburg . DVA / Engelhorn Verlag, Stuttgart 1990.
- Wilhelm zur Linden: View through the prism - life report of a doctor . Vittorio Klostermann, Frankfurt 1963, pp. 47-51.
- Friedrich-Wend Graf zu Eulenburg-Hertefeld: Memories of the 1914 campaign . oA August 1915.
- Kurt Gossweiler, Alfred Schlicht: The Junkers and the NSDAP 1931/32 . In: ZfG , 15, 1967, issue 4, pp. 644-662.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Archive for Stamm- und Wappenkunde (1905) - Internet Archive - Announcement of the elevation of his father to the Prussian princehood
- ↑ Socially, such as B. his obituary also shows whether this name was officially sanctioned after 1921 (death of the father), is an open question: Institute for German Aristocracy Research: Prussian acts of grace through name change 1919 to 1932
- ^ A b Stefan Müller: Liebenberg - A sold village . Self-published by BoD, 2003, p. 61.
- ^ Peter Steinbach, Johannes Tuchel: Lexicon of Resistance 1933-1945 . CH Beck; 2. revised u. exp. Edition, 1998, p. 178 f.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Eulenburg, Friedrich Wend too |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Eulenburg and Hertefeld, Friedrich Wend Fürst too |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German nobleman, farmer and large landowner |
| DATE OF BIRTH | September 19, 1881 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Starnberg |
| DATE OF DEATH | August 1, 1963 |
| Place of death | Weeze |