Hans Jauch

Hans Jauch

Hans Jauch , actually Johannes Franz Friedrich Jauch, (* July 20, 1883 at Gut Wellingsbüttel ; † July 24, 1965 in Wesel ) was a German officer and free corps leader .

biography

family

Jauch's birthplace:
The manor house at Gut Wellingsbüttel

Jauch comes from the Hanseatic family Jauch . He founded the Catholic branch.

Jauch was married to Elsa von Othegraven (1889–1948), with whom he had six children.

Jauch's cousin was the founder of Aon Jauch & Hübener , Walter Jauch . His youngest son was the Catholic journalist Ernst-Alfred Jauch ; his grandchildren include the insolvency administrator Hans-Gerd Jauch and the television presenter Günther Jauch .

Military Riding Institute Hanover

education

Jauch spent his youth first on the grandfather's estate Wellingsbüttel , then on his father's estate Krummbek near Oldesloe . In 1902 he passed the Abitur examination at the learned school of the Johanneum in Hamburg . In the same year he joined as a cadet in the traditional first Westphalian Field Artillery Regiment. 7 , a "Princess Prince Charles of Prussia" in Wesel. Before the First World War , Jauch was a well-known rider in hunting races and assigned to the Royal Prussian Military Riding Institute in Hanover - the “best and most famous riding area in the monarchy. It is the paradise of the cavalry officers, and what Heidelberg is for the students, that Hanover with its military riding school is for the lieutenants. "

Fort Douaumont,
where around 400,000 shells exploded, in late 1916

First World War

During the First World War , when he was mobilized , Jauch changed first as first lieutenant and regimental adjutant to the Reserve Field Artillery Regiment No. 13 to be set up by Field Artillery Regiment No. 7, in which he served as captain and battery chief from the end of 1914 . Most recently he was captain and commander of the III. Section of the Field Artillery Regiment (3rd Lorraine) No. 69 . He fought u. a. 1914 during the siege of Maubeuge , during which he was buried by the impact of grenades . In 1916 he took part in the Battle of Verdun , including the battles for Fort Vaux , Fort Douaumont and Fleury-devant-Douaumont . In 1917 he fought in the Battle of the Aisne and in 1918 in the Great Battle of France . After the Iron Cross II and I Class and the Hamburg Hanseatic Cross, he was awarded the Knight's Cross with Swords of the Royal House Order of Hohenzollern .

Free Corps Leader

In 1920 Jauch led the Freikorps "Jauch" in the suppression of the Ruhr uprising . On the occasion of the Kapp Putsch against the legitimate government, a Red Ruhr Army was formed in the Ruhr area in March 1920 , which temporarily brought the area from Wesel to Remscheid under its control. Four divisions were drawn together against them. The forces gathered in and around Wesel were combined as the Wesel Division. This was followed by the 3rd Cavalry Division at Dorsten and the Munster Division. The so-called Westphalian batteries belonged to the Münster division. These were five batteries of the Freikorps Lichtschlag , which Otto Lichtschlag , who had been friends with Jauch in the 1st Westphalian Field Artillery Regiment No. 7 , had set up, and six other batteries, including the Freikorps Jauch. Jauch had erected it with the strength of one artillery battery from regular troops of the 1st Westphalian Field Artillery Regiment No. 7. Since artillery units were the exception among the Freikorps, the batteries were assigned to the individual formations of the Münster division for fire support. With the backing of the Reich government, the uprising was suppressed by General Oskar von Watter from the north. His staff led the civil war in the Ruhr area on behalf of the Reich government from Münster, during which units of the Reichswehr and Freikorps overthrew the Red Army in the Ruhr area. After the uprising was suppressed, Jauch resigned at the end of 1920 with the rank of major.

Interwar period

Jauch, who converted to the Roman Catholic Church at an early age and was deeply religious, did not join the Stahlhelm , the SA , the SS or the NSDAP like many members of the Freikorps, and did not take part in activities against the Weimar Republic . Until his reactivation, Jauch was the owner of the Weseler cement goods factory. He was the leader of the Wesel branch of the Reich Association of German Officers and until 1933 chairman of the riding club named after the Freikorpsführer Ferdinand von Schill . Schill ”in Wesel. He stopped the association's activities when the riders were transferred to the Reiter-SA without taking this step .

Second World War

In 1939 Jauch was first in command of the 2nd Division in Artillery Regiment 26 and the 1st Division in Artillery Regiment 253, since September 1940 commander of Frontstalag 205, since March 1941 Dulags 205 in Donges, Ingrandes, Berditschew, Kiev and Poltava. After his four sons, all of them artillery officers, were killed , missing or seriously injured in the Second World War , he was withdrawn from the front line and in May 1942 posted close to home as the commander of the VI F POW camp in Bocholt . Here he gained recognition for his humane treatment of the prisoners of war entrusted to him. The Dulag 205 later gained notoriety in Stalingrad as an "extermination camp". According to the statement made by the Commander Rear Army Area South on December 21, 1941, 82.06% of the prisoners died every year in Dulag 205. As the commander of the Dulag, Jauch had already requested on September 28, 1941 not to add any further prisoners to the camp due to overcrowding.

Jauch was awarded the War Merit Cross, Class II with Swords (1941) and Class I with Swords (1944). In 1944 he took his leave as a colonel .

Jauch's family had been denounced by the National Socialists in the pre-war period because, despite being asked to do so, they did not refrain from shopping at Jewish merchants. In 1944, his wife Elsa took part in the funeral service for the family friend of the Catholic martyr Heinz Bello , who had been executed in Berlin.

Defendant Alfried Krupp
in the Krupp trial

post war period

In his capacity as commander of Stalag VI F, after the war, Jauch witnessed the defense in the criminal proceedings against Alfried Krupp von Bohlen and Halbach because of the illegal use of prisoners of war for armaments production ( Krupp trial ). The prisoners of the Stalag were deployed in the Essen region. Jauch took the point of view that in the context of total war in companies like Krupp, a strict separation of the use of prisoners of war in civilian production instead of in war production was objectively impossible. He was of the opinion that the Wehrmacht High Command should generally have refrained from making prisoners of war available to companies like Krupp.

St. Martini, Wesel

Before the Second World War as a leader of the local chapter of Wesel of the Reich Association of German officers worked, was Jauch after the Second World War, Chairman of the officer association Wesel, church council of St. Martini to Wesel and chairman of the Church Building Association for the reconstruction and re-board of the newly founded Riding Club Wesel. He was also long-time chairman and in 1946 re-founder of the first civil society from 1790 in Wesel .

The Federal Republic of Germany took on the honorary pay obligation for the Knight's Cross of the House Order of Hohenzollern with Swords, which was one of the highest military awards of the First World War.

After the death of his wife, with whom he inherited his wife's share, Jauch was co- owner of the Othegraven estate . In the mid-1950s he sold his share to his brother-in-law Maximilian von Othegraven.

literature

• Henke, Carl: The 1st Westphalian Field Artillery Regiment No. 7 1816-1919. According to official documents and reports from fellow campaigners. Berlin 1928
• Meißner u. a., History of the Reserve Field Artillery Regiment No. 13 in the World War 1914/18 , Gelsenkirchen 1926

Web links

• Stalag VI / F in Bocholt

Individual evidence

1. ^ Wilhelm Meyer-Förster: Heidenstamm , 1903
2. ^ Reichsarchiv (Ed.), Battles of the World War in Individual Representations , Volume 13, 1926, The Tragedy of Verdun 1916 , pp. 71, 78, 106, 198
3. ^ Source: The military personnel file of Hans Jauch at the Central Evidence Office ; Ferdinand Maria Senger and Etterlin, "Soldiers between Rhine and Weser: Army history in North Rhine-Westphalia by D. Beginnings d. Standing armies up to the 7th Panzer Grenadier Division d. Bundeswehr " , 1980, ISBN 978-3-8033-0287-8 , pp. 61f, 64
4. ↑ Ferdinand Maria Senger and Etterlin, "Soldiers between Rhine and Weser: Army history in North Rhine-Westphalia by D. Beginnings d. Standing armies up to the 7th Panzer Grenadier Division d. Bundeswehr " , 1980, ISBN 978-3-8033-0287-8 , p. 64
5. ^ Jürgen Kraus : Handbook of the units and troops of the German army 1914-1918. Part IX: Field Artillery. Volume 1, Verlag Militaria, Vienna 2007, ISBN 978-3-902526-15-1 , p. 176
6. ↑ Hermann Jauch (1914–1943), captain and adjutant on the staff of the Art.-Regt. 69 and Hans Günther Jauch (1919–1942), first lieutenant on the staff of Art.-Rgts 227
7. ↑ Robert Jauch (1913–2000), first lieutenant and battery chief in Panzer-Art.-Rgts 16, 1943 after the battle for Stalingrad in Soviet captivity in the officers' prison camp Jelabuga
8. ↑ Ernst-Alfred Jauch
9. ^ Frank Ellis, "Dulag-205: The German Army's Death Camp for Soviet Prisoners at Stalingrad" , in: The Journal of Slavic Military Studies , Volume 19, Number 1, March 2006, pp. 123-148; Norbert Frei, "Transnational Politics of the Past: Dealing with German War Criminals in Europe after the Second World War" , 2006, ISBN 978-3-89244-940-9 , p. 217ff - The example of Dulag 205
10. ^ Alfred Streim , "The treatment of Soviet prisoners of war in the Barbarossa case: a documentation taking into account the documents of German law enforcement authorities and the materials of the central office of the state justice administrations for the investigation of Nazi crimes" , 1981, ISBN 978-3-8114-2281-0 , P. 208
11. ↑ Klaus Jochen Arnold , “The Wehrmacht and the Occupation Policy in the Occupied Territories of the Soviet Union: Warfare and Radicalization in Operation Barbarossa” , 2005, ISBN 978-3-428-11302-6
12. ↑ United Nations War Crimes Commission: Law reports of trials of war criminals , 1997, ISBN 978-1-57588-403-5 , p. 94
13. ^ US Military Tribunal Nuremberg, judgment of 31 July 1948, in Trials of War Criminals Before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals, Vol. IX, pp. 1379 and 1385
14. ^ Heinrich Drath, Sankt Martini Wesel: Festschrift for the 550th anniversary: ​​Fraterherren - St. Martini 1436–1986 , Wesel 1985
15. ^ Rudolf Haffner, partnership: 220 years of civic pride , in: rp-online from October 22, 2010
16. ↑ Hans-Ulrich Krantz: Orders and Medals of the Federal Republic of Germany , Maximilian-Verlag, Cologne 1958, pp. 172–175.