Fritz Lüdecke

Frigate Captain Fritz Lüdecke 1914

Fritz Emil Lüdecke (born February 5, 1873 in Dirschau / West Prussia ; † February 22, 1931 in Raisdorf / Schleswig-Holstein ) was an officer in the Imperial Navy who became known as the commander of the small cruiser SMS Dresden during the First World War .

Career in the Imperial Navy

Nothing is known about the origin and youth of Lüdeck. He joined the Imperial Navy as a cadet on April 14, 1890 at the age of seventeen and completed his basic training on the training ship SMS Niobe by September 25 of that year . After a six-month course at the naval school, he served on the ironclad SMS Friedrich Carl until September 1892 , then on the ironclad SMS König Wilhelm for a year . On May 22, 1893, he was promoted to second lieutenant .

After another visit to the naval school in 1893/94, he was seconded as a company officer to the II. Sailor Division and promoted to lieutenant on April 13, 1896 . After two assignments as a watch officer on the Aviso SMS Wacht , he traveled with the steamer Sachsen to Wusung in June 1896 to serve as a watch officer on the great cruiser SMS Prinzess Wilhelm . During this time he took part in the German occupation of Kiautschou (November 1897) and the Manila incident in 1898. In November 1898 he started his journey home in Tsingtau .

In 1899/1900 Lüdecke was a company officer in the sailor artillery on the island of Helgoland . This was followed by assignments as a naval cadet officer on the training ships SMS Gneisenau and SMS Stein , where he survived the sinking of the Gneisenau on December 16, 1900 in the Spanish port of Málaga . From 1902 to 1904 he was seconded to the naval school, on March 15, 1902 he was promoted to lieutenant captain . From 1904 to 1906 he was employed as an artillery officer on the ship of the line SMS Wettin .

From 1906 to 1909 he was a staff officer in the 1st squadron, in 1908 he was promoted to corvette captain . From 1909 to 1912 he was assigned to the naval station of the North Sea , in May 1912 he was promoted to frigate captain. On September 30, 1912, he received his first own on-board command on the small cruiser SMS Dresden . In January 1914 he took over command of the small cruiser SMS Karlsruhe , which had just been put into service, and on July 27, 1914 he took over command of the Dresden again in Port-au-Prince / Haiti . On the occasion of the new assumption of command, Maria Teresa Parker de Bassi characterizes him as follows:

“The old DRESDEN drivers knew their 'old man' very well. They judged him to be a calm, very respectable man. He never spoke very much, but always made clear and precise decisions. Fritz Lüdecke made a firm, soldier-like impression, without being remotely a 'Kommisskopp' or paragraph rider. He was conciliatory in dealing with his subordinates. His assessments in the 'guide book' were extremely excellent. "

After the outbreak of World War I, the Dresden was attached to the cruiser squadron and took part in the naval battle at Coronel . On October 13, 1914, he was promoted to captain at sea . In the sea ​​battle near the Falkland Islands , the Dresden escaped the British pursuers due to its powerful machines. With the help of the pilot Albert Pagels , Lüdecke managed to keep the Royal Navy busy for a good three months off the Chilean coast in a cat-and-mouse game, which forced the British side to continue to station relatively high-quality naval forces on the west coast of South America.

On March 14, 1915 Lüdecke ordered the self-sinking of the ship in the face of a hopeless situation during the attack by British naval forces off Robinson Island , which spared its crew the fate of their comrades in the Falklands Battle. The crew including Lüdeckes was interned in Chile and did not return to Germany until the end of 1919 on board the steamer Frisia . Until March 1920, Lüdecke was still entrusted with the management of the execution office of the cruiser squadron with the chief of the naval station of the Baltic Sea in Kiel and was adopted on March 9 with the character of a rear admiral .

Nothing is known about Lüdecke's further life; apparently he was neither politically nor socially active, for example in veterans' associations. He died in Raisdorf at the age of 58 . As a Polish author noted in 2013, “completely forgotten”.

Private life

Lüdecke had already been married to Else Lüdecke before the outbreak of war, who published a book about Dresden in 1915 . Apparently the couple had no children. Nothing more is known about Else Lüdecke either.

literature

• Hans H. Hildebrand, Ernest Henriot: German Admirals 1849–1945. The military careers of naval, engineering, medical, weapons and administrative officers with admiral rank. Volume 2: H – O, Osnabrück 1989, ISBN 3-7648-1499-3 , p. 405 f.
• Maria Teresa Parker de Bassi: Cruiser Dresden. Odyssey of No Return. Koehlers Verlagsgesellschaft, Herford 1993, ISBN 3-7822-0591X .
• Else Lüdecke: Cruises and war experiences SMS "Dresden" 1914/1915 based on letters from the crew and official reports. Marinedank-Verlag, Berlin 1915.

Web links

• Fritz Emil Lüdecke - rycerski kapitan z Tczewa on tczewska.pl from July 13, 2013 (Polish)

Individual evidence

1. ^ Maria Teresa Parker de Bassi: Kreuzer Dresden. Odyssey of No Return. P. 43.
2. ↑ Fritz Emil Lüdecke - rycerski kapitan z Tczewa ( Memento of the original from September 26, 2015 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. on tczewska.pl (Polish)