Hans Pries

Hans Pries (born February 15, 1914 in Kiel ; † November 11, 2013 in Ahrensburg ) was a German intelligence officer and administrative lawyer .

Life

After graduating from high school and doing voluntary labor , Pries was initially a supernumerar (civil servant candidate) and an intern at the post office in Schleswig-Holstein and Hamburg .

Wehrmacht

In 1936 he joined the Wehrmacht and was placed in the Division News Department 20. In 1938 he took part in the occupation of the Sudetenland . At the beginning of the Second World War he was head of the intelligence service in the 170th Infantry Division . With her he took part in the occupation of Denmark . Promoted to lieutenant in the reserve, he was put on active service. In the western campaign he came to the Channel coast of Normandy via Holland , Belgium and Paris .

In 1941 the division was transferred to Romania as a "teaching force" . As a company commander of the 1st / intelligence department, Pries came to the Soviet Union via Bessarabia and the Ukraine . Already awarded the Iron Cross 2nd Class, he received the Iron Cross 1st Class in the Crimea . His troops were deployed in front of Sevastopol and transferred back to the east of the Crimea. There she sealed off a Russian landing company in Feodosia from the Black Sea . In the Kerch-Feodosia operation , the Red Army briefly recaptured the Kerch peninsula . After the German military hospitals in Feodosia had been recaptured, it became clear that around 160 (according to WUSt ) severely wounded persons and their carers had been violated and murdered. After the storming of Sevastopol, the "strongest land and sea fortress in the world", all soldiers in the division were awarded the Crimean shield .

For Captain transported Pries was with the Division on the southern outskirts of Leningrad laid. He came to Albania as a company commander in the intelligence department of the 28th Jäger Division and to Serbia as a department commander in the Panzer-Nachrichten-Regiment 2 (Wehrmacht) . In the 2nd Panzer Army he was a staff officer with the intelligence leader and an orderly officer in the general staff .

After commanding courses at the Army and Air Force Intelligence School in Halle (Saale) and at the Army School Bastogne in Belgium , Pries was given command of the intelligence department of the 716th Infantry Division . With the remnants of the retreating German troops, they fought in the relief offensive to southern France. Promoted to major , Pries then came to the Vosges with the division . There they had to avoid French and American combat units and, after the hopeless defense of Schlettstadt, retreat across the Rhine. She experienced the end of the war as a combat group in the northern Black Forest . Disguised as a farmer, Pries reached Kiel on foot and by bicycle.

Kiel and Hamburg

At the age of 31, Pries began to study law at the Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel in 1945 . He was one of the founders of the Collegium Albertinum (Kiel) . With him he became a corps student at Palaiomarchia-Masovia in January 1950 . After the first state examination (1949) he was a trainee lawyer in North Rhine-Westphalia . After the second exam in Düsseldorf (1953) he was an associate lawyer in Minden . In 1954 he entered the Hamburg civil service. In 1955 he was transferred to the Court of Auditors of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg , where he rose from government councilor to vice-president . On August 1, 1974, he became a State Councilor , responsible for finance and justice. He retired on March 31, 1979.

literature

• Günter Ernesti: From the Collegium Albertinum to the Corps Palaiomarchia-Masovia . Kiel 2008, pp. 100–110 (with handwritten life report by Pries)

Individual evidence

1. ^ Date of death according to the list of members of the Corps Palaiomarchia-Masovia.
2. ^ Alfred de Zayas : The Wehrmacht Investigation Center - German Investigations into Allied Violations of International Law in World War II , 4th expanded edition, Ullstein Verlag, Frankfurt / M., Berlin, 1984, ISBN 3-548-33080-0 , p. 308ff.
3. ↑ Kösener Corpslisten 1960, 76/16.