Hans Mathiesen Lunding

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HM Lunding 1932

Hans Mathiesen Lunding (born February 25, 1899 in Stepping , † April 5, 1984 in Aarhus ) was a Danish officer , eventing rider , resistance fighter and head of the military intelligence service in Denmark .

Life

The son of a small farmer from the then Prussian North Schleswig was drafted into the Prussian Army in 1916 during the First World War . After basic training, he joined the 2nd Guards Uhlan Regiment , where he held a non-commissioned officer degree at the end of the war .

From 1919 to 1920 Lunding worked as a gendarmerie officer at the International Commission for the Supervision of Referendums in North and Central Schleswig (CIS).

Lunding joined the Danish army in 1922 , became a lieutenant in the 3rd Dragoons Regiment in Aarhus in 1927 and attended riding school from 1928 to 1929. He completed the general staff course from 1933 to 1935 and was adjutant to the General Inspector of the Cavalry from 1935 to 1936. After he had been promoted to Rittmeister in 1937, he moved to the General Staff, where he worked in the news department as deputy head of department for the next six years.

At the Summer Olympics in Berlin in 1936 , Lunding took part in the versatility competition (then called Military). With the horse "Janus", he won the bronze medal.

In the days before the German attack on Denmark and Norway on April 9, 1940 ( Operation Weser Exercise ), Lunding was on the German-Danish border and was able to watch the deployment of German troops here. Lunding reported his observations to Copenhagen , but the Danish government did not dare to take countermeasures.

When the Danish army and the Danish fleet ( Operation Safari ) were dissolved on August 29, 1943, Lunding was arrested by the Gestapo . He was charged with making several illegal trips to Stockholm to contact British and Polish intelligence officers - which was true. Lunding was transferred to Berlin , where the Gestapo chief Heinrich Müller informed him that he had been sentenced to death . Heinrich Himmler wanted to personally decide on the time and method of execution .

After almost a year in the Gestapo prison on Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse in Berlin, Lunding was transferred to the prison of the Flossenbürg concentration camp , where for some time he had the detained chief of the Abwehr , Admiral Wilhelm Canaris , as a cell neighbor. The two were able to communicate by knocking, and Lunding became the last person Canaris was in contact with before his execution on April 9, 1945. As the front approached Flossenbürg, the prisoners, including many prominent people, were transferred to the Dachau concentration camp . In the last days of the war, Lunding was one of the 139 special prisoners and clan prisoners who were transported by the SS from Dachau to Niederdorf (Villabassa) in South Tyrol . Here, on April 29, the German prisoner Colonel Bogislaw von Bonin succeeded in placing the group under the protection of a Wehrmacht unit led by Captain Wichard von Alvensleben . A few days later the group surrendered to American troops.

Returned to Denmark, Lunding rejoined the Danish army and was promoted to lieutenant colonel. From 1945 to 1950 he was the liaison officer between the Danish government and the British military government in the Schleswig part of the country , and from 1950 until his retirement in 1963 he was - now promoted to colonel - the first head of the combined army and naval intelligence services in Denmark.

swell

  • Vilhelm la Cour et al .: Denmark under Besættelsen. Volume I-III. Copenhagen 1945. (Danish)
  • HM Lunding, Otto Lippert: Stemplet fortroligt. Copenhagen 1970. (Danish) ISBN 87-00 02002-8 .
  • Hans Christian Bjerg: Ligaen. Den danske militære efterretningstjeneste 1940–1945. Copenhagen 1985. (Danish) ISBN 87-01-20352-5 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Lunding. P. 17ff.
  2. ^ HM Lunding - Gyldendal - Den Store Danske .
  3. ↑ Lunding. P. 40ff.
  4. ↑ la Cour . Volume IS 102.
  5. ↑ Lunding. P. 94.
  6. ↑ Peter Koblank: The Liberation of Special Prisoners and Kinship Prisoners in South Tyrol , online edition Mythos Elser 2006
personal data
SURNAME Lunding, Hans Mathiesen
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Danish officer, secret service worker and Olympic participant
DATE OF BIRTH February 25, 1899
PLACE OF BIRTH Stepping
DATE OF DEATH April 5, 1984
Place of death Aarhus