Fritz stepfather

Fritz Stiefvatter (born September 25, 1887 in Müllheim (Baden) ; † March 12, 1916 in an aerial battle over Keyem near Ostend ) was a German engineer and pilot.

education

Fritz Stiefvatter, son of the wine merchant Friedrich S., attended the Müllheim elementary and secondary school and the Rotteck school in Freiburg im Breisgau . He then studied in Karlsruhe , Munich and Braunschweig and passed the state examination as a graduate engineer. In Karlsruhe he became a member of the Teutonia fraternity . After completing his studies, he began to work on his doctoral thesis “The Baroque Buildings of Basel ”, but was unable to finish it because the war broke out.

First World War

When the war broke out in 1914, Stiefvatter was a government builder on the Kaiser Wilhelm Canal in Rendsburg . Because of a heart defect, he was free from the military, but volunteered. So he became a naval aviator on the Western Front . He followed in the footsteps of his brother Otto (1890-1914), who later also died in a plane crash.

Fritz Stiefvatter survived a crash in Ostend during an air raid on November 11, 1915 on the Yser Front . On March 12, 1916, stepfather was shot in the temple while flying over Mariakerke near Ostend . Despite the fatal shot, he still manages to steer the plane behind the German lines. He was buried on March 19, 1916 in Müllheim.

Fritz Stiefvatter was the owner of the Iron Cross II. Class (EK II) .

literature

• Martin Keller: Die Flieger Otto and Fritz Stiefvatter , in: Das Markgräflerland , 1989, Volume 2, pp. 29-48.
• Peter Supf , Georg Brütting: The book of German flight history: pre-war, wartime, post-war until 1932 , 1958.
• Fritz Stiefvatter in the state bibliography of Baden-Württemberg
• Over the Front , 1989, Volume 4.