Hans-Wolfram Knaak

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Knaak as senior senior officer

Hans-Wolfram Knaak (born July 4, 1914 in Magdeburg , † June 26, 1941 in Dünaburg ) was a German army officer in the Wehrmacht.

Life

As the son of a director of the Magdeburg fire society, Knaak came to study at the Albertus University in Königsberg when he was 18 . In 1932 he became active in the Corps Baltia Königsberg . As the penultimate senior , he opposed the Nazi appropriation of the Corps in 1933 . He sent demands for sabers to some “leaders” . He was arrested several times with other Corps brothers in custody by the Secret State Police and the Assault Division . He was only released through the intervention of his mother, who knew the SA-Obergruppenführer Edmund Heines as a regimental comrade of her husband and went to Breslau . Because of its recalcitrance of the Albertus University relegated , Knaak went as a soldier to the Reichswehr . In 1934 he became a flag junior in Potsdam in the 4th (Prussian) cavalry regiment of the 1st Cavalry Division (Reichswehr) . Taken into the army (Wehrmacht) , he came to Kraftfahr -teilung 7 (later armored reconnaissance aircraft ) when the armored forces were formed in 1935 . Promoted to lieutenant in 1937 , he reported to the "Brandenburgers" , the secret commando force under Admiral Wilhelm Canaris . As early as 1938 he, together with General Erwin von Witzleben and Hans Oster, decided to assassinate Hitler. Awarded with both classes of the Iron Cross , as company commander of the 8th company of the training regiment, for example V. 800, he was one of the first soldiers to cross the Soviet border during the attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941. Knaak and the 10th Panzer Regiment of the 8th Panzer Division took the Dune bridges occupied by the Red Army on June 26, 1941 in the Latvian town of Daugavpils and fell at the age of 26. The success was of strategic importance for the advance of Army Group North from Vilnius to Leningrad . Knaak was therefore posthumously promoted to Rittmeister and was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross on November 3, 1942 . He left his wife Jutta geb. Düms, whom he married in 1940. She was the daughter of Captain Arthur Düms and his wife Elsa geb. Stratmann from Königsberg.

literature

Family grave in the Wilmersdorf cemetery

Web links

Commons : Wolfram Knaak  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. Kösener Corpslisten 1960, 84/371.
  2. P. Hoffmann, p. 124.
  3. ^ Siegfried Schindelmeiser: The history of the Corps Baltia II zu Königsberg / Pr. , Vol. 2. Munich 2010. p. 493.