Hans Fechter

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Hans Fechter (born May 26, 1885 in Elbing ; † July 4, 1955 in Berlin ) was a German naval officer , during the First World War chief engineer on the SM U 35 , the most successful submarine in naval history and the first German naval engineer officer ever who reached the rank of admiral .

Life

Hans Fechter was born into a long-established bourgeois and craftsman family. His father was a timber merchant and the family was entrepreneurial in both construction and shipbuilding . So the great-grandfather founded a shipyard in 1806 . Many relatives of the young Hans Fechter were also seafarers. His older brother was the theater critic and editor Paul Fechter .

Due to a fire accident, the father got into a financial crisis in 1898 and the family had to move to Osterode am Harz . After the early death of his father, Fechter had to drop out of school and return to Elbing, where he began an apprenticeship as a fitter at the F. Schichau shipyard through an uncle . As part of his training, Fechter had his first contact with the Imperial Navy , as torpedo boats were also built at the training yard .

After completing his apprenticeship, Fechter joined the Imperial Navy on October 1, 1905, as a marine engineer candidate in Wilhelmshaven .

The stages of his seven-year training as a marine engineer were:

  • Basic training - October 1, 1905 to March 31, 1906
  • Ship of the line S.MS Kaiser Wilhelm der Große - April 1, 1906 to October 15, 1906
  • Torpedo boat S 122 - October 16, 1906 to December 15, 1906
  • Torpedo Weapon Course - December 16, 1906 to March 25, 1907
  • Torpedo boat G 134 - March 26, 1907 to April 3, 1907
  • Liner SMS Kaiser Barbarossa - April 4, 1907 to August 13, 1908
  • Naval Engineering School - August 14, 1908 to September 12, 1909
  • Torpedo boat G 170 - September 13, 1909 to September 9, 1910
  • Liner SMS Pommern - September 10, 1910 to September 30, 1912
  • Naval Engineering School - October 1, 1912 to September 30, 1913.

The promotion to marine engineer took place on October 30, 1913, which was followed by a 10-month submarine training. In August 1914, Fechter served two weeks on the liner SMS Wittelsbach . On August 17, he was transferred to the submarine weapon.

After the start of the war, Fechter was the chief engineer of SM U 35 between November 3, 1914 and January 18, 1917 . As a chief engineer, he was instrumental in the success of the boat.

In the hierarchical structure of the Imperial Navy, however, the technically trained engineer officers were far below the naval officers , although they were mostly poorly trained. Sea officers often achieved rank and recognition solely through their career. Engineer officers could often only achieve recognition through above-average performance. Nevertheless, Fechter was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Royal House Order of Hohenzollern with Swords. Fencer and chief naval engineer Paul Rhinow from SM U 57 were the only engineer officers in World War I who were awarded such a high order.

After using the SM U 35 , Fechter was involved in the construction of the SM U 107 and SM U 139 in 1917 . In August 1917 he was also the chief engineer on the SM U 107 . When Lieutenant Lothar von Arnauld de la Perière gave up command of SM U 35 and on December 3, 1917 the U-cruiser S.M. U 139 took over, followed by Fechter in May 1918. The U-cruiser's only patrol was broken off prematurely after a collision with an enemy ship and because of the beginning of the armistice negotiations in November 1918 after the sinking of five merchant ships.

After the war, Fechter was taken over by the Reichsmarine and studied at the Technical University of Charlottenburg . He was also active in literature. So he published the book: In the Alarmkoje von U 35 .

In 1925 Fechter became chief engineer on the light cruiser Emden , and he was involved in the construction and testing of the ship in an advisory capacity. He then became a staff engineer and was a member of the test committee for new ships. After being promoted to captain at sea (Ing.), He was a fleet engineer in Kiel .

Fechter's greatest achievement in the interwar period was undoubtedly that there was a formal equality of the engineering officers and that he reformed the technical training of the Navy. Fechter had to laboriously enforce his ideas against the reservations of the conservative naval leadership under Erich Raeder .

On October 1, 1935, he was promoted to Rear Admiral (Ing.) And took over the management of the ship engine inspection initiated by him in Wilhelmshaven. In 1937 he was promoted to Vice Admiral (Ing.) . On December 31, 1939, Hans Fechter retired with the rank of admiral (engineer) . Fechter was the first German engineer officer to achieve this rank. During World War II he worked for the Stinnes Group in Berlin.

After the war ended in 1945, Fechter was again active in literature. He dealt with the relationship between Christianity and modern technology, wrote a grotesque science fiction and his memoirs under the pseudonym Hans Christoph .

After a long and serious illness, Hans Fechter died on July 4, 1955 in Berlin.

Ranks

Imperial Navy

  • Candidate Marine Engineer - October 1, 1905
  • Senior Marine Engineer - April 1, 1906
  • Marine Engineer Applicant - October 1, 1906
  • Marine Engineer - October 1, 1909
  • Senior Marine Engineer - October 1, 1912
  • Marine Engineer - October 30, 1912
  • Senior Marine Engineer - October 17, 1915

Reich and Kriegsmarine

Awards

literature

  • Bodo Herzog: German U-Boats 1906-1966 , Karl Müller Verlag, Erlangen, 1999, ISBN 3-86070-036-7
  • Hans Christoph: The Revenge of Moloch , Delta Verlag, Berlin-Schöneberg, 1951

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e Ranking list of the German Reichsmarine , Ed .: Reichswehrministerium , Mittler & Sohn , Berlin 1929, p. 61
personal data
SURNAME Fencer, Hans
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German naval officer
DATE OF BIRTH May 26, 1885
PLACE OF BIRTH Elblag
DATE OF DEATH 4th July 1955
Place of death Berlin