Georg-Sigismund von Oppen

Georg-Sigismund von Oppen (called: Brummel Oppen ; * January 27, 1923 in Potsdam ; † February 22, 2008 in Gualeguaychú , Argentina ) was a German officer ( lieutenant ) and resistance fighter against National Socialism .

Life

Georg-Sigismund von Oppen was born in 1923 as the son of Rudolf von Oppen , at that time adjutant of the German Crown Prince Wilhelm of Prussia in the Potsdam 1st Guards Regiment as well as later director of the Siemens-Schuckert-Werke and major general of the reserve, and his wife Emily Henriette , née von Arnim - Gerswalde . His mother was the daughter of the Prussian chamberlain and landowner Felix von Arnim -Gerswalde and his wife Emily nee Schalk, who came from a German-American brewery owner family.

He grew up in Potsdam's Nauen suburb; his parents had Otto von Estorff build an elegant country house there on Höhenstrasse in 1929 . Oppenheimer resigned after the High School in 1941 as a cadet in the Infantry Regiment 9 in Potsdam, which continued the tradition of the 1st Foot Guards, and had in which his father served. He served on the Western and Eastern Fronts and was promoted to lieutenant in 1943 . In December he suffered severe wounds on the Eastern Front and had to be taken to a hospital in Riga .

In early 1944 he returned to his regiment; In the same year he was available for an attempted coup, which he wanted to carry out with his regimental comrades Ewald-Heinrich von Kleist-Schmenzin , Paul Widany and Ludwig Freiherr von Hammerstein-Equord , for which they agreed between July 11 and 15, 1944 kept ready. On July 20, 1944 , Oppen was deployed in Berlin as an orderly officer on the staff of the commander of the replacement army ; on the day of the overthrow in the Bendlerblock he acted as a guard and. a. towards the generals Friedrich Fromm and Joachim von Kortzfleisch . While he was chauffeuring Hans Bernd Gisevius to the police headquarters, the attempted coup failed. On his return he was disarmed, but managed to leave the complex. He was then detained in the Lehrter Strasse cell prison in Berlin on August 12, 1944 for a few months , but since he was not on any list, he was released again.

Lieutenant Colonel i. G. Victor von Schweinitz , Third General Staff Officer (Ic - Enemy) of Army Group C (Southwest) in Northern Italy and also once a member of Infantry Regiment 9, placed Oppen (and von Kleist, a resistance fighter who was also expelled from the Wehrmacht) in the Personnel department of the Army Group made forged papers. The last time he was near Genoa with the fortress brigade 135 , he was taken prisoner by the US in May 1945 , from which he was released in summer 1945.

He then studied law - like von Kleist - at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich . In 1948 he emigrated to Argentina via Switzerland . From 1952 to 1971 von Oppen (called Brummel) worked for Ferromar Argentina in Argentina and from 1972 to 1988 for Intergrafica in Munich . Georg-Sigismund von Oppen died at the age of 85 in Gualeguaychú in Argentina.

His first marriage was to Christa Freiin von Mentzingen and had five children. In his second marriage he was married to Diana Countess von und zu Eltz , with her he had two children.

literature

• Ines Reich: Potsdam and July 20, 1944. On the trail of the resistance against National Socialism. Accompanying document to the exhibition of the Military History Research Office and the Potsdam Museum . Rombach, Freiburg im Breisgau 1994, ISBN 3-7930-0697-2 , p. 85 ff.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Johannes Tuchel : "... and the rope was waiting for all of them". The cell prison Lehrter Straße 3 after July 20, 1944 (= writings of the German Resistance Memorial Center . Series A: Analyzes and Representations . Vol. 7). Lukas Verlag, Berlin 2014, ISBN 978-3-86732-178-5 , p. 63.
2. ↑ Reinhild Countess von Hardenberg: Always on new paths. Memories of Neuhardenberg and the resistance against National Socialism . Lukas Verlag, Berlin 2003, ISBN 3-936872-02-3 , p. 130.