Hans-Georg von Friedeburg

Major Wilhelm Oxenius , Colonel General Jodl and General Admiral Hans-Georg von Friedeburg (from left to right) at the signing of the unconditional surrender of the Wehrmacht in Reims on May 7, 1945

Hans-Georg Friedrich Ludwig Robert von Friedeburg (born July 15, 1895 in Strasbourg , † May 23, 1945 in Flensburg - Mürwik ) was a German naval officer . From 1943 he was commanding admiral of the submarines in World War II and in May 1945 as general admiral and successor to Karl Dönitz, he was commander-in-chief of the navy for a few days . In this capacity von Friedeburg was the only co-signer of both documents of surrender of the Wehrmacht . Shortly after the surrender , he committed suicide on the day of his arrest by British military police .

Life

He came from the Baden officer family von Friedeburg and was the son of the later Prussian major general Ludwig von Friedeburg (1862-1924) and his wife Elisabeth Adelheid Agnes Hedwig, born von Kayser (1872-1947).

Imperial Navy

Friedeburg joined the Imperial Navy on April 1, 1914 as a midshipman . During the First World War he took part in the Battle of the Skagerrak against the British fleet , promoted to ensign at sea in December 1914 and transferred to the large liner SMS Kronprinz . Shortly afterwards, on July 13, 1916, he was promoted to lieutenant at sea . In December 1917 von Friedeburg came to the U-Boot -Waffe, where after six months of training he was an officer on watch on the U 114 from June 1918 until the end of the war . For his achievements, von Friedeburg was awarded both classes of the Iron Cross and the Knight's Cross II. Class of the Order of the Zähringer Lion with Swords.

Imperial Navy

From December 1918 to October 1919 he served as a watch officer on the small cruiser Regensburg . It was taken over into the Imperial Navy and then used on the small cruiser Königsberg until the end of May 1920 . From June to September 1920 he was an adjutant in the ship's trunk division of the North Sea, then he was promoted to lieutenant at sea and was transferred as an adjutant to the small cruiser Hamburg , the flagship of the commander in charge of securing the North Sea . From February to September 1922 von Friedeburg served as platoon leader with Coast Guard Battalion II, then until June 1924 as an adjutant of the battalion . After various courses, he was a watch and torpedo officer from December 1924 to June 30, 1927 on the cruiser Hamburg , which now functions as a training ship , interrupted by a two-month assignment in April and May 1925 as an instructor at the torpedo school in Mürwik . He was promoted to lieutenant captain on July 1, 1925.

After brief Come Andie Implications Marine Station of the North Sea (July-August 1927) and the Naval Academy Mürwik (September 1927), he held on 6 October 1927 to 22 April 1929, the Admiral Staff Officer sausbildung and was then a naval link officer for Wehrkreiskommando I and the first Division moved to Königsberg . On June 16, 1932 he became a consultant in the Wehrmacht Office of the Reichswehr Ministry (under Minister Kurt von Schleicher , who had been in office since June 1, 1932 ). On February 1, 1933, he was appointed naval adjutant in the Reichswehr Ministry (under the new Minister Werner von Blomberg ) and promoted to captain of the corvette on April 1, 1933 .

Navy

On September 30, 1936, von Friedeburg was transferred as first officer to the light cruiser Karlsruhe . There he was promoted to frigate captain on January 1, 1937 . From March 17 to November 1, 1938 he served as a staff officer with the commander of the German naval forces, which were deployed in the Spanish Civil War at the international naval blockade to enforce an arms embargo against Spain , then until February 5, 1939 as a staff officer with the security commander the North Sea . On January 1, 1939 he was promoted to sea captain.

On February 6, 1939, von Friedeburg made the submarine leader available. There he took over command of the submarine U 27 for a few weeks (June 6 - July 8, 1939) and then became a staff officer for special tasks in the organization department of the commander of the submarines, Commodore Karl Dönitz . On September 25, 1939 he became head of this department.

Two years later, on September 12, 1941, he became 2nd Admiral of the U-Boats. On September 1, 1942, von Friedeburg to Rear Admiral appointed, and on February 1, 1943, he was appointed Commanding Admiral of Submarines. On September 1, 1943, he became Vice Admiral . Two months later, on November 1, 1943, Admiral . After Hitler's suicide and Dönitz's successor as Reich President on May 1, 1945, von Friedeburg was promoted to General Admiral (with seniority from February 1, 1944) and appointed Commander in Chief of the Navy .

In January 1945, due to the advance of the Red Army , von Friedeburg ordered the Hannibal company , which started the transport of wounded and refugees by the Navy. In the last days of the war, the last imperial government under Karl Dönitz was set up in Flensburg - Mürwik in the so-called special area Mürwik . On the evening of May 4, 1945, von Friedeburg signed the partial surrender of the Wehrmacht for north-west Germany, Denmark and the Netherlands on the Timeloberg on the outskirts of Wendisch Evern on behalf of Karl Dönitz in the presence of Field Marshal Montgomery . This was the de facto end of all fighting in northern Germany, Denmark, Norway and the northern Netherlands, that is, the vast majority of the territory that was still held by German troops at the time. On May 7th, as one of the negotiators, he was present at the signing of the unconditional total surrender of the German Wehrmacht by Colonel-General Alfred Jodl in the operational headquarters of the SHAEF in Reims , and on the night of May 8th to 9th he was Commander-in-Chief of the Kriegsmarine co-signer of the ratifying document of surrender at the headquarters of the Red Army in Berlin-Karlshorst .

death

Tomb of Hans-Georg von Friedeburg, date of birth and death with the Elhaz rune occasionally used during the Nazi era

Von Friedeburg was summoned to the Patria on May 23, 1945 with Dönitz and Jodl by the Allied Monitoring Commission for the High Command of the Wehrmacht and the Navy . There the summons was announced by US Major General Rooks that the executive government had been dissolved and that they had been arrested. For von Friedeburg this was the fourth surrender in three weeks. In contrast to Dönitz and Jodl, he did not become a prisoner of war, but instead took his own life on that day after he had returned to his quarters in the Meierwik barracks using a cyanide capsule . He was buried in the Adelby cemetery in Flensburg.

The Allies appointed Walter Warzecha as his successor , who organized the demobilization of the German naval troops.

family

His elder son Ludwig von Friedeburg (1924-2010) was the youngest submarine commander in the Navy. After the war he became a well-known sociologist in the circle of Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno at the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research . He was politically active in the SPD , from 1969 to 1974 he was the Hessian minister of culture.

His younger son Friedrich von Friedeburg (1926–1991) was also a submarine driver and became a journalist after the Second World War . He was involved in protecting Heligoland against the English plans for a bomb training target. In 1962 he was awarded the Silver Anvil by the Public Relations Society of America for the best public relations work in international relations. He was press spokesman for various industrial companies, most recently Braun AG .

Awards

• Spain Cross
• Wehrmacht service award IV. To I. class
• Clasp for the Iron Cross, 2nd and 1st class
• War Merit Cross (1939) 2nd and 1st class with swords
• German silver cross on June 6, 1942
• Knight's Cross of the War Merit Cross with Swords on January 17, 1945

literature

• Gothaisches genealogical pocket book of the postal aristocratic houses. 1916. Volume 10, Justus Perthes, Gotha 1915, p. 244.
• Heinz-Ludger Borgert: General Admiral Hans-Georg von Friedeburg. In: Gerd R. Ueberschär (ed.): Hitler's military elite. From the beginning of the war to the end of the world war. Volume 2. Primus, Darmstadt 1998, ISBN 3-89678-089-1 , pp. 55-62.

Web links

• Literature by and about Hans-Georg von Friedeburg in the catalog of the German National Library
• Information on his career ( Memento of 26 October 2009 on Webcite ) on Axis Biographical Research (English)

Footnotes

1. ^ Kurt von Priesdorff : Soldatisches Führertum . Volume 10, Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt Hamburg, undated [Hamburg], undated [1942], DNB 986919810 , p. 109, no. 3107.
2. ^ Reichswehr Ministry (ed.): Ranking list of the German Reichsmarine. ES Mittler & Sohn , Berlin 1929, p. 46.
3. ↑ Both ships had to be delivered to France in June 1920.
4. ^ Die Zeit : Die 21 Tage der Dönitz Government , page 2, of: November 8, 1951; Retrieved on: April 25, 2016
5. ↑ The surrender on the Timeloberg (pdf, 16. S .; 455 kB)
6. ↑ Gerhard Paul and Broder Schwensen (eds.): May '45. End of the war in Flensburg , 2015, page 124.
7. ↑ Gerhard Paul and Broder Schwensen (eds.): May '45. End of the war in Flensburg , 2015, page 129.
8. ↑ Honors: Friedrich von Friedeburg , Der Spiegel, June 6, 1962, accessed on January 10, 2013