Fritz Lindemann

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Fritz Lindemann (born April 11, 1894 in Charlottenburg , † September 22, 1944 in Berlin-Plötzensee ) was a German officer (most recently general of the artillery ) and resistance fighter against National Socialism .

Life

Training and First World War

Fritz Lindemann was the son of Gertrud Lindemann, née Reinecke, and Friedrich Lindemann, an artillery officer. In 1912 Fritz passed his Abitur as the best of his class . Attending the grammar school was seen as formative for his ethical way of thinking and acting. Immediately after graduating from high school, he joined the 4th Guards Field Artillery Regiment , which was stationed in Potsdam . Appointed lieutenant in 1913 , Lindemann was deployed on the Western Front after the start of the First World War . In November 1914 he was awarded the Iron Cross 2nd class. In 1916 he was promoted to first lieutenant . In the following year he received the Iron Cross 1st class. In 1918 he was transferred to the General Staff of the 35th Infantry Division Border Guard East to West Prussia .

Interwar period

During the November Revolution itself Lindemann participated as a member of a volunteer corps actively participated in the destruction of the Councils rule in Dusseldorf.

In the period from April 30 to June 3, 1919, Lindemann and five other officers were assigned to protect the German delegation at the Paris Peace Conference . During this time he came to the conviction that military personnel should never limit themselves to military thinking, but also have to take political aspects into account.

In 1919, Lindemann was accepted into the Reichswehr , where he rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel . He was a supporter of the Weimar Republic and, as a consequence, rejected the right-wing Lüttwitz-Kapp putsch of 1920.

On October 2, 1922, Lindemann married Lina von Friedeburg. The marriage had three children. Lini was arrested in 1944 and deported to South Tyrol as an SS hostage in April 1945 and freed there at Lake Braies .

Since 1923, Lindemann completed general staff training, after which he was assigned to the Army Statistical Department (T3) of the Troop Office in the Reichswehr Ministry (Berlin) in 1926 . There he was directly subordinate to Kurt von Schleicher and worked with Friedrich Olbricht , a later companion in the resistance against the Nazi state. After being transferred to Sprottau as an artillery chief (1929), Lindemann took a course to further educate particularly qualified general staff officers and began studying economics at the Berlin University .

After the " seizure of power " by the National Socialists (1933), Lindemann was skeptical of the regime's totalitarian claims, but approved of Germany's rearmament policy. Between 1933 and 1936 he taught as a trainer for general staff officers at the War Academy in Berlin .

After a transfer to Hamburg (1936) and his promotion to colonel (1937), Lindemann left the Wehrmacht on July 31, 1938 . The following day he joined the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP).

In October of the same year he began journalistic work as a commentator for the Kieler Latest News , specializing in military policy.

Second World War

Shortly before the start of the Second World War , Lindemann was reactivated as part of the mobilization and took part in the attack on Poland as artillery commander 138 (Arko 138) . As the war continued, he took part in the occupation of France (1940) and the attack on the Soviet Union (1941). His rejection of the German wars of aggression made Lindemann a staunch opponent of Nazi rule. In January 1942 he took command of the 132nd Infantry Division . With this he was involved in the conquest of the Sevastopol fortress and in the defensive battles on the Volkhov Front from summer . The course of the war fed his doubts about the possibility of a German victory.

From October 1943, Lindemann led the artillery staff at the Army High Command (OKH) . In this position he was able to establish first connections to the military resistance around Henning von Tresckow and Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg . In December Lindemann was promoted to general of the artillery.

Since 1944 at the latest, Lindemann took an active part in the preparations for the assassination attempt on Hitler and must therefore be counted among the closest circle of conspirators. For the time after the planned overthrow, he was planned as spokesman for a new government. On behalf of Colonel General Ludwig Beck , Lindemann was to read out the first appeal to the German population on the radio. After the attack failed, Lindemann first went into hiding in Dresden. With the help of Hans Ludwig Sierks and Carl Adolf Marks , he was smuggled to Berlin to Erich Gloeden , in whose house he lived hidden with his wife Elisabeth Charlotte Gloeden and her mother Elisabeth Kuznitzky .

On August 4, 1944, Lindemann was dishonorably expelled from the Wehrmacht because of his involvement in the failed assassination attempt on Hitler by the court of honor that had been formed two days earlier , so that the Reich Court Martial was no longer responsible for the judgment. An intensive manhunt for him was started, the authorities offered a reward of 500,000 marks for his capture. Soon afterwards, Lindemann was betrayed and tracked down by the Secret State Police on September 3rd in the Gloeden house. He was seriously injured by gunfire in the stomach and lower leg while trying to throw himself out the window. As a result of these injuries, Fritz Lindemann died after several operations - and constant interrogations - in the Berlin police hospital. Carl Marks, Hans Ludwig Sierks, Erich Gloeden, Elisabeth Charlotte Gloeden and Elisabeth Kuznitzky were arrested and sentenced to death after trials before the People's Court . Carl Marks and Hans Ludwig Sierks were shot in April 1945, Erich Gloeden, Elisabeth Charlotte Gloeden and Elisabeth Kuznitzky were beheaded on November 30, 1944 in Plötzensee .

Awards

Stumbling block for Fritz Lindemann in Maria-Louisen-Strasse 57 in Hamburg-Winterhude

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Contemporary history archive Pragser Wildsee
  2. ↑ a b Veit Scherzer : Knight's Cross bearer 1939–1945. The holders of the Iron Cross of the Army, Air Force, Navy, Waffen-SS, Volkssturm and armed forces allied with Germany according to the documents of the Federal Archives. 2nd Edition. Scherzers Militaer-Verlag, Ranis / Jena 2007, ISBN 978-3-938845-17-2 , p. 155.
personal data
SURNAME Lindemann, Fritz
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German officer and member of the resistance against the Third Reich
DATE OF BIRTH April 11, 1894
PLACE OF BIRTH Charlottenburg
DATE OF DEATH September 22, 1944
Place of death Berlin-Plötzensee