Gustav Petri

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Memorial plaque to Gustav Petri in Gustav-Petri-Straße in Wernigerode

Gustav Petri (born June 3, 1888 in Gießen ; † April 12, 1945 presumably with Drei Annen Hohne ) was a colonel in the Wehrmacht who, towards the end of the Second World War, refused to include the city of Wernigerode against the Allies in the combat zone and against the to defend advancing US Army. As a result, Wernigerode could be handed over on April 11, 1945 without a fight. For this, Peter was by officers of the High Command of the 11th Army with the participation of the SS because of insubordination shot . Today he is called the “Savior of Wernigerode”.

Life

Gustav Petri's parents were the tobacco dealer Carl Petri (1854–1912) and his wife Johanna (1861–1923), née Scheffler. He had a brother and two sisters.

On April 30, 1919, Petri married Henriette "Henny" Hettler (1892–1972). He had three sons with her, two of whom died in World War II . The youngest son died in March 2014.

Petri attended the preschool of a grammar school from 1894 to 1897 , then the grammar school, which he left with the completion of the secondary school leaving certificate . He then completed an apprenticeship as a businessman in Herford . When he had completed his apprenticeship, he was employed as a branch manager of his training company in Hanover until March 1908 .

He then served as a one-year volunteer in the infantry regiment "Kaiser Wilhelm" (2nd Grand Ducal Hessian) No. 116 in Giessen, where he was released as a non-commissioned officer and officer candidate in reserve . From 1909 to 1910 he worked in Koblenz . Since his father became seriously ill, he took over his parents' tobacco wholesale business at the age of 22. From 1911 to 1913 he took part in various several weeks of exercises in his infantry regiment.

First World War

When the First World War broke out in 1914, he fought as a platoon leader in France and was promoted to lieutenant in the reserve in October 1914 . On August 22nd, he was seriously injured in the mouth area by a gunshot and had to wear artificial teeth after he had recovered. Towards the end of 1914 he received the Iron Cross, 2nd class. From February 1915 he took part in the fighting on the Eastern Front . He was badly injured in the arm during a battle and was only fit for military use again after five months. Petri was awarded the Hessian Medal for Bravery . In Romania he received two headshots, but stayed with the fighting force. During this time he was awarded the Iron Cross 1st Class and the Warrior Medal of Honor in Iron . Before he was appointed battalion commander, he received the Knight's Cross of the Royal House Order of Hohenzollern with Swords. In 1918 he was deployed again on the Western Front and received the gold wound badge for five wounds. After the war defeat, Petris was discharged on December 31, 1918 with the rank of lieutenant and he took over his father's tobacco wholesale business again.

Between the world wars

Petri found the defeat "humiliating", but he - like many others - wanted to continue to be a soldier. He worked for the United Patriotic Associations of Germany (VVVD) and founded the Stahlhelm - Bund der Frontsoldaten in Gießen in 1925 . When SA reserves were formed from the steel helmet in 1931 , Petri carried a standard . In May 1934 he was taken over as Obersturmbannführer, which corresponds to the rank of lieutenant colonel , and leader of a reserve stormman in the SA. During this time he took part in Reichsheer exercises and a battalion leader course. He ruled out membership in the National Socialist movement . When the Stahlhelm was collectively transferred to NSDAP membership, he resigned from the leadership of his unit and left the SA. In 1936 he sold the tobacco wholesalers and joined the Wehrmacht as a captain on July 1 , initially at the military office in Kassel and then on the staff of the Landwehr commander in Darmstadt. In 1937 the entire family moved to Darmstadt.

Second World War

At the beginning of the Second World War, Petri was deployed to the staff of the Army Reserve of the 1st Army near Herxheim near Landau / Pfalz , 25 kilometers from the French border. On October 1, 1939, he was promoted to major . On June 30, 1940, he received the Iron Cross II class clasp. After the Armistice of Compiègne , the 246th Infantry Division , of which Petri was a member, was given leave of absence and was not reorganized until the beginning of 1941. With this division he was deployed as battalion commander of regiment 404 for a year as an occupying soldier in southwest France. On September 1, 1941, Petri was officially transferred to the active force of officers. After the Christmas vacation, the 246th Infantry Division was relocated to the Eastern Front just outside Moscow . Petri was replaced as battalion commander on February 11, 1942 and transferred to the staff of his division. On March 1, 1942, he was promoted to lieutenant colonel . He was slightly wounded in a kettle battle. An injury to the left buttock on April 16, 1942 was more serious, so that he had to be treated in the hospital in his home country, where he stayed until the end of June. After returning to the Eastern Front, he worked for a short time as a commander in Bely and was finally transferred to the Führerreserve . At the end of September 1942 he was trained in France for seven weeks in the duties of field commander and held this position for a short time with the X Army Corps on the Eastern Front. At the turn of the year 1942/1943, Gustav Petri was placed under the command of the French military and appointed as field commander of field command 638 in Beauvais for the administration of the Oise department. After the Western Allies landed in Normandy on June 6, 1944 , the Wehrmacht and the military administration began to withdraw. Petri was promoted to colonel on July 1, 1944 . On August 30, 1944, he dissolved the field command. He reduced his team from around 100 officers, men and employees to around 25 and made himself available to the retreating fighting armies. Petri's assignment now took place as commander of the rear army area (Korück) . His unit was thinned out more and more in terms of personnel in the course of the withdrawal. He came to the Lower Rhine via Belgium and Luxembourg . At the turn of the year 1944/45 he took part in the Ardennes offensive . After their failure, Petri worked in the rear service in the Eifel and finally came to Hesse via the Rhine. Since his unit was not trapped in the Ruhr basin by the Allies, he escaped to the Harz Mountains and was subordinated to the high command of the newly established 11th Army as Korück. He reached Wernigerode on the evening of April 8, 1945.

Insubordination

In April 1945, Wernigerode was a city in which "with around 24,000 inhabitants, a further 21,000 refugees, resettlers and wounded people [lived] in the 28 hospitals, as well as foreign workers and prisoners". He moved into his quarters with a small staff in "Haus Sonneneck" in Mühlental and his other employees in "Stadtgarten", the seat of the local combat commandant. Its main task was to secure the rear area of ​​the 11th Army in the Harz Mountains. So he first contacted the local authorities. The mayor of Wernigerode Ulrich von Fresenius spoke with Petri to ensure that the city was kept out of the main battle line. But that was the task of the combat commanders, who changed daily during this time. When Colonel Petri was appointed combat commander by telephone from his superior in the Army High Command, Colonel Hans Linemann, to defend Wernigerode against the attacking US Army, he refused to give the order. For this he was shot the next day at Drei Annen Hohne near Elbingerode . The 11th Army High Command kept Petri's shooting a secret from his unit; the place of his burial also remained anonymous.

By refusing to give orders on April 11, 1945, he prevented the destruction of the city and the death of numerous people shortly before the end of the war. The 9th US Army was able to occupy Wernigerode "almost without a fight".

personality

In the opinion of the author Peter Lehmann, who presented an extensive study of the life of Gustav Petri in 2013, the Prussian military had a strong influence on him. Petri found the military defeat in World War I humiliating. The “front community” brought him to the Stahlhelm-Bund during the Weimar Republic because, as Lehmann sees, he was “close to a disciplined leader's thinking”, but did not allow himself to be “caught by the National Socialist ideology [...]”. Gustav Petri was not a resistance fighter in the Third Reich , but was critical of the Nazi party leadership. In assessments of his political behavior as an officer with regard to National Socialism by his superiors, he was described as the embodiment of the "ideas of National Socialism". Peter Lehmann rates these statements as “certificates of courtesy”, given so as not to endanger an “unadjusted officer”. Officers from his staff counted Petri "among the fiercest opponents of National Socialism". Lehmann concludes: Petri had always moved between “distance from the National Socialist party ideology and the fulfillment of military obedience”. In Petri's diaries from his time as field commander in the French department of Oise there is not a word about the situation of the prisoner-of-war, internment and prison camps there or the deportations of political opponents and Jews that have taken place. The conflict between maintaining and breaking the oath on the Führer was clearly expressed after the unsuccessful assassination attempt on July 20, 1944 , when he criticized the behavior of the National Socialist government and the People's Court , but did not say a word about the officers involved. In the last phase of the war, Petri considered the deployment of 18-year-olds or younger and the Volkssturm to be obsolete, since their combat value was of no practical relevance. What would have been necessary for him would have been the deployment of frontline soldiers with combat experience from the First World War. According to Lehmann, relationships with friends and family were extremely important and formative for Petri. For a resistance fighter "he was far too hesitant, not consistent enough" - said Lehmann. After the Allied invasion in June 1944 at the latest, it was clear to Petri that the war would be lost. In the case of a defense of the city of Wernigerode, he thought as an officer and acted as a person. But that makes him neither a hero nor a martyr, neither a fascist member of the Wehrmacht nor an anti-fascist .

Aftermath

Plaque on the "benefactor fountain"
Memorial stone in Drei Annen Hohne

Colonel Gustav Petri's refusal to obey, which prevented the destruction of Wernigerode but cost him his life, remained known to only a few after the war. The army high command kept his shooting secret and the GDR authorities prevented a memory. Only the then pastor of Schierke , Ernst Teichmann , supported the widow Henny Petri in the search for the grave. When Teichmann had a small military cemetery built at Drei Annen Hohne train station in 1947 to bury six remains of Wehrmacht soldiers, he also set up two additional memorial crosses. On one of the memorial crosses “Colonel Gustav Petri” with his life data and the words “He gave his life to save the city of Wernigerode” was sunk in the wood. This was the first time his name was mentioned publicly in connection with the surrender of the city without a fight.

In 1961 GDR television broadcast the five-part miniseries Conscience in Turmoil , in which the DEFA filmed the story of Colonel Rudolf Petershagen (1901–1969) . Petershagen had saved the city of Greifswald from military destruction through his refusal to obey - similar to Petri. Shortly after the series was broadcast, the Wernigerode City Council received a letter from Potsdam suggesting that Petri be honored in Wernigerode. The letter contained suggestions for a memorial stone, a street name and other honors. This was discussed in various committees in the city. However, none of the projects was implemented; the act of an officer of the “fascist Wehrmacht” did not fit into the then cultivated GDR history. However, since the newspaper Wochenpost took up the case and the local researcher Ernst Pörner wrote an article on Petri's refusal to obey in 1962 in the local magazine Unterm Brocken , the public in the GDR and the Federal Republic of Germany became aware of Gustav Petri.

On October 12, 1961, the public prosecutor of the Frankfurt am Main regional court received a complaint to prosecute a war crime for the killing of Gustav Petri, which the public prosecutor rejected on December 12, 1961. This meant that the shooting of Petri could not be pursued as a National Socialist injustice. Neither living persons nor perpetrators could be interrogated. Lehmann assumes that in the Federal Republic of Germany's judiciary at that time, “the awareness of National Socialist injustice was really not yet developed”. In 1958, the Federal Ministry of the Interior had decided on a reparation procedure for the widow Petri in a year-long process.

In 1963, war veterans from Gießen placed a plaque on the grave of the Petri family with the words "You gave your life to save the city of Wernigerode".

In 1976 the remains of the small military cemetery at Drei Annen Hohne were moved to Blankenburg . During the exhumation of those buried here, the bones of another six people were discovered. Since a dental prosthesis was also found, it was initially assumed that it was Gustav Petri's artificial dentition. This could not be confirmed because the prosthesis was not assigned to any of the 12 bones. The memorial cross that had been maintained until then was removed.

Only after the "Peaceful Revolution" was a plaque attached to the "Wohltäterbrunnen" in Wernigerode in 1991 to commemorate his actions, and since 1995 a street in Wernigerode has been named after Petri.

At Drei Annen Hohne a memorial stone has been commemorating him since 1995.

On the occasion of Gustav Petri's 125th birthday in 2013, the Wernigerode City Archives showed a documentation about his life and the changing historical treatment of politics with his refusal to command.

literature

  • Ursula Höntsch: Colonel Petri says "no". In: Zero hour. Berlin 1966, p. 17.
  • Ernst Pörner : In memory - Colonel Gustav Petri , 1962 (manuscript in the Wernigerode city archive)
  • Peter Lehmann: respected - denied - honored. Colonel Gustav Petri, savior of Wernigerode . (= Harz research . Volume 29). Edited by Harz Association for History and Archeology eV Lukas-Verlag, Berlin / Wernigerode 2013, ISBN 978-3-86732-173-0 .

Web links

Commons : Gustav Petri  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Announcements of the Upper Hessian History Association 2013, Volume 98 ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . accessed on June 1, 2014. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.ohg-giessen.de
  2. ^ Gustav-Petri-Strasse. at: hausgeschichte-wernigerode.de , accessed on May 30th. 2014.
  3. ↑ a b Peter Lehmann: respected - denied - honored. Colonel Gustav Petri, savior of Wernigerode. (= Harz research. Volume 29). ed. v. Harz-Verein für Geschichte und Altertumskunde eV Lukas-Verlag, Berlin / Wernigerode 2013, ISBN 978-3-86732-173-0 , pp. 15-22.
  4. ↑ Peter Lehmann: respected - denied - honored. Colonel Gustav Petri, savior of Wernigerode. 2013, p. 24.
  5. ↑ Peter Lehmann: respected - denied - honored. Colonel Gustav Petri, savior of Wernigerode. 2013, pp. 23-25.
  6. ↑ Peter Lehmann: respected - denied - honored. Colonel Gustav Petri, savior of Wernigerode. 2013, pp. 25–60.
  7. ↑ a b Documentation on Colonel Gustav Petri : Wernigerode City Archives, 2013. Retrieved on May 31, 2014.
  8. ↑ Werner Weber: Report on the last days of the war in the mill valley of Wernigerode. on Collective Memory, 2003.
  9. ↑ Peter Lehmann: respected - denied - honored. Colonel Gustav Petri, savior of Wernigerode. 2013, p. 135.
  10. ↑ www.wernigerode-in-jahreszahlen.de
  11. ↑ Peter Lehmann: respected - denied - honored. Colonel Gustav Petri, savior of Wernigerode. 2013, p. 41.
  12. ↑ Peter Lehmann: respected - denied - honored. Colonel Gustav Petri, savior of Wernigerode. 2013, pp. 31–32, 42–44.
  13. ↑ a b Peter Lehmann: respected - denied - honored. Colonel Gustav Petri, savior of Wernigerode. 2013, p. 40, p. 40.
  14. ↑ Peter Lehmann: respected - denied - honored. Colonel Gustav Petri, savior of Wernigerode. 2013, pp. 44, 42-44.
  15. ↑ Peter Lehmann: respected - denied - honored. Colonel Gustav Petri, savior of Wernigerode. 2013, p. 45.
  16. ↑ Peter Lehmann: respected - denied - honored. Colonel Gustav Petri, savior of Wernigerode. 2013, p. 46.
  17. ↑ Peter Lehmann: respected - denied - honored. Colonel Gustav Petri, savior of Wernigerode. 2013, pp. 224–225.
  18. ↑ Peter Lehmann: respected - denied - honored. Colonel Gustav Petri, savior of Wernigerode. 2013, pp. 180-187
  19. ↑ Peter Lehmann: respected - denied - honored. Colonel Gustav Petri, savior of Wernigerode. 2013, pp. 165–174
  20. ↑ Peter Lehmann: respected - denied - honored. Colonel Gustav Petri, savior of Wernigerode. 2013, p. 164
  21. ↑ Peter Lehmann: respected - denied - honored. Colonel Gustav Petri, savior of Wernigerode. 2013, pp. 160-164
  22. ↑ Peter Lehmann: respected - denied - honored. Colonel Gustav Petri, savior of Wernigerode. 2013, 201-202.
  23. ↑ Peter Lehmann: respected - denied - honored. Colonel Gustav Petri, savior of Wernigerode. 2013, p. 214
  24. ↑ Peter Lehmann: respected - denied - honored. Colonel Gustav Petri, savior of Wernigerode. 2013, p. 216
  25. ^ Documentation about Gustav Petri , on wernigerode.de. Retrieved June 21, 2014
personal data
SURNAME Petri, Gustav
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German colonel in the Wehrmacht
DATE OF BIRTH June 3, 1888
PLACE OF BIRTH to water
DATE OF DEATH April 12, 1945
Place of death Three Anne Hohne