Günter Kießling

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General a. D. Dr. Günter Kießling (2007)

Günter Kießling (born October 20, 1925 in Frankfurt (Oder) , † August 28, 2009 in Rendsburg ) was a German general in the Bundeswehr .

Life

Kießling was born the son of a foreman (and sergeant in the Reichswehr until 1925 ) and grew up in Berlin. After attending primary school, he was admitted to the non-commissioned preschool in Dresden on May 5, 1940, at the age of 14 . During the Second World War he came to the Eastern Front as a soldier in the hunter troop and later as a lieutenant in the infantry . After his release from prisoner-of-war he made his way to his mother in Berlin and worked temporarily as a construction worker and at the British-controlled YMCA . On the side, he attended evening school in Berlin to get a second educationcatch up with the Abitur (1947). He then studied economics in Hamburg and Bonn . He completed his studies in 1954 and then joined the Federal Border Police . In his off-duty time he studied economics, law and philosophy at the University of Bonn and the University of Hamburg. In 1957, in Bonn promotion to Dr. rer. pole. There he also belonged to the Bonn fraternity Sugambria, which later merged into the Bonn fraternity Germania . He joined the newly established Bundeswehr in 1956 as a captain and completed the 4th General Staff Course (Army) at the Bundeswehr Command Academy in the early 1960s . He described his replacement from the General Staff Course in January 1963 in his memoir. The reason for this was the relationship with a then 20-year-old officer's daughter whose father was against this relationship. After an interim post in the staff of the 1st Panzer Grenadier Division in Hanover, Kießling came to the Staff College in Camberley , where he completed the British General Staff course. This was followed by a position as a general staff officer in the G3 division of the Northern Army Group .

His first troop command was transferred to Kießling in 1967 when he became commander of the  62nd Panzergrenadier Battalion in Neustadt (Hesse) . In 1969 he became chief of staff of the 2nd Panzer Grenadier Division in Marburg and in 1970 commander of the 15 Panzer Brigade in Koblenz . In accordance with his command, Kießling was promoted to brigadier general in 1971 at the age of 45 and was thus one of the youngest officers in the Bundeswehr's general rank. In October 1971 he was appointed General for officers' and NCO training in the army, Dienstsitz Army Office appointed in Cologne. His third troop command followed in 1976 with the takeover of the 10th Panzer Division in Sigmaringen . Associated with it was the promotion to major general . In September 1977 he moved to the Federal Ministry of Defense in Bonn , where he became Deputy Head of the Personnel Department. In 1979 he took over the post of commander of the Allied Land Forces Schleswig-Holstein and Jutland (LANDJUT) in Rendsburg and was promoted to Lieutenant General. Finally he moved to appointment as General 1982 NATO where until his dismissal commander of NATO ground forces and Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Europe (Deputy he Supreme Allied Commander Europe , DSACEUR), General Bernard W. Rogers was.

Affair over alleged homosexuality

In 1983 the Office for Security of the Bundeswehr (ASBw) investigated a rumor expressed by Ministerialrat Werner Karrasch to Government Director Artur Waldmann of the MAD that Kießling should be homosexual and therefore a security risk according to the regulations. Vague investigations by the Cologne criminal police seemed to confirm this suspicion. Therefore, on December 23, 1983, Kießling was given early retirement. The allegations proved to be unfounded in the processing of the affair and were withdrawn. Kießling was hired again on February 1, 1984 and retired on March 26, 1984 with the big tattoo . For the 30th anniversary of the Bundeswehr in 1985, he was the only general not invited.

Civil life

with Horst Hennig in Halle (2009)

From 1984 to 2000, Kießling was Deputy Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Hunzinger Information AG, today's Action Press (Holding) . He was then appointed honorary chairman of the supervisory board of Hunzinger Information AG. In addition, the Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg gave him a teaching position in the subject of "Armed Forces Business Administration". In 1997 he again received public attention with his funeral speech for Colonel Joseph W. Rettemeier . In 2008 he founded the General Kießling Foundation for the maintenance of the national defense tradition, based at the Army Officers School in Dresden. Kießling appointed Major General a. D. Christian Trull to look after the fortunes of his foundation.

Kießling lived in Rendsburg until his death and died after a long, serious illness. At the funeral with military ceremony, the Inspector General of the Bundeswehr Wolfgang Schneiderhan gave the funeral speech. Many high-ranking active and former soldiers were among the mourners, including a. Wolfgang Altenburg , inspector general of the Bundeswehr at the time of the Kießling affair, and Carl-Hubertus von Butler , commander of the Army Command . The funeral took place in close quarters in Berlin.

Honors

Works

  • Neutrality is not betrayal: a draft European peace order . Straube, Erlangen 1989, ISBN 3-927491-04-7 .
  • NATO, Oder, Elbe: Model for a European security system. 1990.
  • Missed objection . Hase & Koehler, Mainz 1993, ISBN 3-7758-1294-6 . Autobiography.
  • Specialist articles for magazines on personnel problems in the armed forces, but also on topics such as the Christian as a soldier and understanding and maintaining tradition from the perspective of a troop leader .

literature

  • Helge Dvorak: Biographical Lexicon of the German Burschenschaft. Volume I: Politicians , Part 7: Supplement A – K. Winter, Heidelberg 2013, ISBN 978-3-8253-6050-4 . Pp. 539-541.
  • Wörner - "exposed to ridicule" . In: Der Spiegel . No. 5 , 1984, pp. 18-26 ( online ).
  • Ortwin Buchbender (Ed.): Citizen and General . Blazek and Bergmann, Frankfurt am Main 2000, ISBN 3-9806536-7-6 .
  • Heiner Möllers: The Kießling Affair 1984 On the role of the media in the scandal surrounding the dismissal of General Dr. Günter Kießling. In: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte , 64, 2016, pp. 517–550.
  • Heiner Möllers: The Kießling Affair. The Bundeswehr's biggest scandal . Ch.Links, Berlin 2019.
  • A man wants to go up . In: Die Zeit , No. 3/1984, zeit.de ( Memento from January 17, 2010 in the Internet Archive )

Web links

Commons : Günter Kießling  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ "Ex-General Günter Kießling died" op-online.de of the Offenbach-Post , August 28, 2009.
  2. ↑ Dissertation: The reorganization of the federal financial system in Switzerland
  3. ^ Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, March 26, 2000, p. 3.
  4. ↑ Günter Kießling is dead: the general who thought of suicide and won. In: welt.de . August 28, 2009. Retrieved October 7, 2018 .
  5. ↑ Wolfgang Wiedemeyer: From the morass to the abyssal swamp. Deutschlandfunk , January 3, 2009, accessed September 30, 2017 .
  6. ^ Greeting from Dr. Kießling on the award of the Federal Cross of Merit to Moritz Hunzinger (Word document; 52 kB).
  7. ↑ "Who pays for the war?" Guest commentary by Kießlings in: DIE WELT from April 15, 1999.
  8. ↑ Günter Kießling: Obituary for Colonel Rettemeier ( memento from November 7, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) (archived on the private pages of Uwe Schifbenger).
  9. ↑ Mainhardt Graf von Nayhauß : Soldier through and through. Cicero , August 28, 2009; archived from the original on November 23, 2011 ; Retrieved November 5, 2009 .
personal data
SURNAME Kießling, Günter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German General of the Bundeswehr
DATE OF BIRTH October 20, 1925
PLACE OF BIRTH Frankfurt (Oder)
DATE OF DEATH August 28, 2009
Place of death Rendsburg