Hans Sottorf

Hans Sottorf (born July 10, 1888 in Niendorf ; † September 6, 1941 in Essen ) was a German officer, most recently a lieutenant colonel in World War II and a knight of the Pour le Mérite .

Life

Sottorf was born as the son of a court owner and, after passing high school, joined the infantry regiment "Duke of Holstein" (Holsteinisches) No. 85 in Rendsburg in 1907 as a flag junior . Here he was promoted to lieutenant in 1908 .

When the First World War broke out , he was a platoon leader in the regiment's machine gun company . After battles near Liège and the Gette , he was entrusted with the command of the 1st Company . His right elbow was splintered in the Battle of Mons on August 23. During his recovery, he was awarded the Iron Cross 2nd class in early October . On November 28, 1914, he was promoted to first lieutenant .

In March 1915 he was initially in the 1st Replacement Battalion of Infantry Regiment No. 85 and took over the 1st Company again in mid-May. During the trench warfare on the Aisne , he was seriously wounded again on July 3, 1915.

On his return in March 1916, the regiment was fighting in Champagne , he became chief of the 3rd company. On April 18, at the same time he was promoted to captain, he was awarded the Iron Cross First Class. He fought with his regiment in the Battle of the Somme . On August 22, 1916 he was wounded for the third time by a bullet in both cheeks near Estrées . After staying in the hospital, Sottorf acted as a company commander in the 1st Replacement Battalion and was back on the Western Front at the beginning of 1917 .

In mid-January 1917, Sottorf became the commander of the 2nd battalion . With this he moved to the Siegfried position in the spring . In April it fought in the Battle of Arras near Gavrelle and from mid-September to mid-October in the Third Battle of Flanders . For this, Captain Sottorf received the Knight's Cross of the Royal House Order of Hohenzollern with Swords at the beginning of November . After a short stay on the Eastern Front in Vilnius , the regiment returned to the Western Front in Upper Alsace in December . On December 18, 1917, he joined the regimental staff as a machine gun officer and five days later took over the leadership of the 2nd Battalion.

On February 27, 1918 he was appointed commander of the 1st Battalion. During the spring offensive , after the breakthrough between Gouzeaucourt and Vermand, he led it through the Somme region to Ancre , Somme and Avre . After fighting in Flanders and Artois , the regiment was at the start of the Hundred Days Offensive between Soissons and Reims . For his behavior in the Battle of the Marne , his regimental commander, Major Krug, proposed the highest Prussian war award, the Pour le Mérite . The award to Sottorf was made by AKO on November 1, 1918.

After the armistice , Sottorf was entrusted with the management of the regiment, which he then led back home. The demobilization in Rendsburg took place here from December 26, 1918 . Starting in February, parts of the "Schleswig-Holstein" Freikorps were set up, to which Sottorf was a company commander from March 1919. With this he was first in Berlin in the months ahead , then in Hamburg from July onwards . Sottorf submitted his departure and was taken over with parts of the Freikorps in the local police force . On May 16, 1920, he was promoted to police major and as such he acted as district manager of the Davidwache until he left the police force of the Hanseatic city on November 30, 1922 .

Sottorf then accepted a position as head of department at the mineral oil company Rhenania-Ossag in Hamburg.

In the course of mobilization for the Second World War, Sottorf was made available to the army in 1939 and was appointed commander of the 2nd battalion of the 502 Infantry Regiment of the 290th Infantry Division . With this he participated in the attack on the Soviet Union and was seriously wounded in July 1941 off Leningrad . As a result of this wound, Sottorf finally died on September 6th in a hospital in Essen.

References

literature

• Oscar Beltz: The Duke of Holstein (Holst.) Infantry Regiment No. 85 in the World War. Heider Anzeiger. Heath 1925.
• Karl-Friedrich Hildebrand, Christian Zweng: The knights of the order Pour le Mérite of the First World War. Volume 3: P-Z. Biblio Verlag, Bissendorf 2011, ISBN 3-7648-2586-3 , pp. 328-330.
• Hanns Möller: History of the knights of the order "Pour le mérite" in the World War. Volume II: M-Z. Bernard & Graefe publishing house, Berlin 1934, pp. 347-349.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Jürgen Kraus: Handbook of the units and troops of the German army 1914-1918. Part VI: Infantry. Volume 1: Infantry Regiments. Verlag Militaria, Vienna 2007, ISBN 978-3-902526-14-4 , p. 154.