Georg Friedrich Scheibel

Georg Friedrich Scheibel (born March 13, 1858 in Friedberg, Hesse , † October 14, 1943 in Darmstadt ) was a German naval officer in the Imperial Navy .

Life

Family and education

Georg Friedrich Scheibel was a son of the merchant Martin Scheibel and Christine, nee Sieck. He attended the Friedberg secondary school and the Büdingen grammar school , where he graduated from high school in 1876. In 1901 he married the merchant's daughter Anna Loose, with whom he had three children.

A few weeks after his 18th birthday, Scheibel joined the new Imperial Navy. At the end of April 1876 he arrived in Kiel . After a short basic training, he came on board the sailing frigate Niobe . In the autumn of the same year he was transferred to the naval school. This was followed by various on-board commands on units of the then numerically very weak navy. In the spring of 1877 Scheibel completed a specialty course on the artillery training ship Renown, launched in Portsmouth. Then he was transferred to the armored frigate Friedrich Carl, later to the covered corvette Leipzig, and in November 1879 was appointed lieutenant at sea .

Military career

On-board commands alternated with land commands. Scheibel was a company officer in the 1st Sailor Division in Kiel at regular intervals.

The Friedberger now had a share in the rapid rise of a small coastal marine to the second largest fleet in the world. The units of the Imperial Navy grew bigger and stronger. Completely new types of ships, such as the torpedo boat , emerged.

At the time, the navy was not yet completely clear about the exact possible uses of the torpedo boats. The boats were grouped into smaller groups, so-called flotillas. Under the leadership of Kapitänleutnant Alfred von Tirpitz , who later became Grand Admiral, some of these boats took part in a training trip to Norway in the summer of 1885. This also included the V3 torpedo boat, which Lieutenant Georg Scheibel led to the sea.

In the further course of the exercise his boat collided with V8 and sank off the island of Langeland . There were no human losses, and a later lifting of the boat failed. Just six months later, Scheibel was in command of the new S12 torpedo boat. Subsequently, he became a member of the Technical Test Commission, later the Ship Testing Commission, whose task was tests in the mining sector.

In 1889, the 31-year-old Friedberger took part as a watch officer on the cruiser corvette Carola in the suppression of the uprising of the East African coastal population off Zanzibar . In July 1890 he returned to his German homeland with the Adler tender. Promoted to lieutenant captain shortly afterwards , he was navigation officer on the training ship Moltke in 1893/1894, and the next year he was first officer on the ironclad Baden.

Head of Department in the Reichsmarineamt and other commands

In 1896 Scheibel was assigned to the High Command of the Navy in Berlin, more precisely to the Reichsmarineamt . The Friedberger became head of the department for mobilization matters. As part of his responsibilities, he went on a trip to Cape Town in October 1899 to take part in the British disembarkation of troops in South Africa on the occasion of the Second Boer War. This task was particularly important for the Navy, so the now 41-year-old corvette captain was temporarily made available to the chief of the admiralty's staff.

On December 14, 1899 Scheibel became the commandant of the small cruiser Condor . The next few months required a great deal of diplomatic skills from him. On the one hand there were attacks by British warships against German merchant ships, on the other hand a German volunteer formation fought together with the Boers against the British. At the beginning of 1901 Condor started the journey home. In the North Sea, the cruiser was still providing emergency aid to a German steamer. After returning, Scheibel was promoted to command of the small cruiser Nymphe and a few months later to frigate captain.

In autumn 1901 he was reassigned to the Reichsmarineamt. In the construction department he became head of department for test drives and military construction matters. Here the officer worked closely with the State Secretary of the Reichsmarinamt, Admiral von Tirpitz. Captain Scheibel then influenced the design and construction of German warships until mid-September 1904.

After that he was in command of the almost 13,000-ton liner Wettin until September 1906 . At the end of his service, he was in command of the Second Sailors Division. On February 8, 1908 George Scheibel was awarded the character as a rear admiral called into question. Rear Admiral Georg Friedrich Scheibel died on October 14, 1943 at the old age of 85 in Darmstadt.

literature

• Hans H. Hildebrand, Ernest Henriot: Germany's Admirals 1849–1945. Volume 3, Biblio-Verlag, Osnabrück 1990, ISBN 3-7648-1499-3 , pp. 201-202.
• Hans H. Hildebrand, Albert Röhr, Hans-Otto Steinmetz: The German warships. Mundus Verlag, Ratingen without year.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Scheibel, Friedrich Georg In: Herrmann AL Degener (Ed.): Who is it? 4th edition, Degener, Leipzig 1909.