Heinrich Löhlein

Heinrich Ludwig Löhlein (born February 1, 1871 in Karlsruhe , † March 2, 1960 in Herrsching am Ammersee ) was a German vice admiral and head of the General Naval Office.

Life

family

Heinrich Löhlein was a son of the officer, writer, Government Council and the prison director Louis William Löhlein and his wife Emilie, born Bleidorn (1848-1920), daughter of the Mayor of Durlach . He had three sisters and four brothers.

Imperial Navy

After attending school, Löhlein joined the Imperial Navy in April 1888 and received his basic training in seafaring. He was promoted to lieutenant at sea in 1894 and from 1893 to 1895 he was an officer on watch on the gunboat Iltis with the East Asia Squadron. From February 25, 1895 until September 1897 he was in command of the Tender Ulan . He was promoted to lieutenant captain in 1901 and then worked as an artillery officer on the great cruiser Vineta in Central America until 1902 . In 1904 he was promoted to the Wittelsbach liner as a navigational officer . From there he was transferred to the military department of the Reichsmarinamt in Berlin in 1906 as a department head .

He then served as commander of the small cruiser Pfeil and was transferred to the small cruiser Berlin on September 15, 1910 in the same capacity . On June 28, 1911, the Berlin sailed from Kiel heading for Agadir to replace the gunboat Panther stationed there during the second Moroccan crisis ("Panther jump to Agadir") . The cruiser remained in Agadir together with the Eber until November 1911.

As a frigate captain , Löhlein moved to the news office of the Reichsmarinamt on November 12, 1911. After a brief induction, he was promoted to head of the news office and sea captain in 1912 .

With the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, the mobilization order had de facto assigned the intelligence office of the Reichsmarinamt to the admiralty staff. Because of the resulting tensions between the military institutions, at the end of August 1914, Löhlein and Hugo-Ferdinand Dähnhardt, in agreement with State Secretary Clemens von Delbrück, approached the Reichstag speaker for military and colonial issues, Matthias Erzberger, with the suggestion that a central body be established for the To create press work and the exchange of news under his leadership. So the “ Central Office for Foreign Service ” was established at the Foreign Office by October 1914 , where Löhlein's employees Ernst Jäckh and Paul Rohrbach , among others , moved. With the establishment of the central office, he was an honorary representative for the Reichsmarineamt in the advisory committee of the central office together with Arnold Wahnschaffe , Paul Rohrbach and Ernst Jäckh, among others .

In mid-1914 Löhlein took over the regular press conference in the Reichstag, which had actually been set up by the army. When he defended the media against the Foreign Office in the course of this press conference, called Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg of Alfred von Tirpitz mid-December 1914, the immediate removal of Löhlein. A short time later, Löhlein resigned the leadership of the press conference and the conflict subsided.

Heinrich Löhlein was also given a new area of responsibility and from June 1915 was head of the central department in the Reichsmarineamt and became Alfred von Tirpitz's agent. The former naval attachés of the German Reich for Japan , Captain Paul Fischer, took over his previous work in the news office . As early as September 1914, Löhlein played a key role in the appeal to the cultural world! participated. However, since the critical, high-publicity positions between the State Secretary in the Reichsmarineamt Alfred von Tirpitz and the Reich Chancellor regarding the conduct of the submarine war and also from von Löhlein as a representative of von Tirpitz misinterpreted figures on the size of the fleet (Löhlein differentiated among other things into school ships, Prototypes and plan completions, which in the total number was understood as the current fleet size), von Tirpitz resigned on March 16, 1916 and further personnel restructuring in the naval authority, which also affected Löhlein. At the beginning of March 1916, Bethmann Hollweg had directly held Tirpitz responsible for the allegedly incorrect figures presented by Löhlein in a letter.

As a result of these consequences, Löhlein took over command of the liner SMS Oldenburg at short notice in June 1916 and then became the commander of the large liner SMS König Albert . On July 14, 1916, he returned to the Oldenburg as a commander . From August 16 to October 7, 1918, Löhlein acted as the commander in charge of securing the North Sea. He then returned to the Reichsmarineamt and became head of the U-Boot-Office (U). For his work during the war, Löhlein had received the Order of the Crown, 2nd Class with Swords, in addition to both classes of the Iron Cross .

After the establishment of the Weimar Republic , he was employed in the Admiralty in 1919 , promoted to Rear Admiral and then until 1921 in the Bauer , Müller I , Fehrenbach and Wirth I cabinets as head of the General Naval Office (B) of the naval command formed in 1920 . In this position he participated in selected cabinet meetings and meetings of the Council of Ministers. On 20 December In 1920 with RDA from 1 November 1920 was promoted to Vice Admiral before from military service on September 26, 1921 adopted was. He took part in the respective cabinet meetings until the summer of 1921.

Heinrich Löhlein died in 1960.

literature

Dermot Bradley (eds.), Hans H. Hildebrand, Ernest Henriot: Germany's Admirals 1849-1945. The military careers of naval, engineering, medical, weapons and administrative officers with admiral rank. Volume 2: HO. Biblio Verlag, Osnabrück 1989, ISBN 3-7648-1499-3 , pp. 387-388.
Sebastian Rojek, Sunken Hopes: The German Navy in Dealing with Expectations and Disappointments 1871–1930, De Gruyter Verlag Oldenburg, 2017
K. Fr. Müller: Ludwig Wilhelm Löhlein. In: Friedrich von Weech , Albert Krieger (Ed.): Badische Biographien . V part: 1891-1901. Winter, Heidelberg 1906, pp. 525–527, online at the Baden State Library.

Web links

Biographical data and documents about Heinrich Löhlein at the Federal Archives

Individual evidence

↑ Nicole Eversdijk: Culture as a political advertising materials . Waxmann Verlag, ISBN 978-3-8309-7308-9 , pp. 55 ( google.de [accessed on May 5, 2020]).
^ Matthias Erzberger, Experiences in World War I, Deutsche Verlagsanstalt Stuttgart, Berlin 1920 and Klaus Epstein, Matthias Erzberger and the dilemma of German democracy, 1962
↑ Horst Bieber, Paul Rohrbach. A conservative publicist and critic of the Weimar Republic, Verlag Documentation, Berlin, Munich 1972
↑ Jürgen von Ungern-Sternberg, Wolfgang von Ungern-Sternberg: The appeal "To the cultural world!": The manifesto of the 93 and the beginnings of war propaganda in the First World War: with a documentation . Franz Steiner Verlag, 1996, ISBN 978-3-515-06890-1 , p. 122 ( google.de [accessed on May 5, 2020]).
↑ Nicole Eversdijk: Culture as a political advertising materials . Waxmann Verlag, ISBN 978-3-8309-7308-9 , pp. 57 ( google.de [accessed on May 5, 2020]).
↑ Christian Götter: The power of assumptions about effects: media work of the British and German military in the first half of the 20th century . Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG, 2015, ISBN 978-3-11-045220-4 , p. 110 ( google.de [accessed on May 5, 2020]).
↑ Christian Götter: The power of assumptions about effects: media work of the British and German military in the first half of the 20th century . Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG, 2015, ISBN 978-3-11-045220-4 , p. 176 ( google.de [accessed on May 5, 2020]).
↑ Jürgen von Ungern-Sternberg, Wolfgang von Ungern-Sternberg: The appeal "To the cultural world!": The manifesto of the 93 and the beginnings of war propaganda in the First World War: with a documentation . Franz Steiner Verlag, 1996, ISBN 978-3-515-06890-1 , p. 17 ( google.de [accessed on September 22, 2019]).
^ Kurt Riezler: Diaries, Articles, Documents . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1972, ISBN 978-3-525-35817-7 , pp. 339 ( google.de [accessed on May 5, 2020]).
↑ Sebastian Rojek: Sunken Hopes: The German Navy in dealing with expectations and disappointments 1871-1930. De Gruyter Verlag, Oldenburg 2017, p. 116 ff.

personal data
SURNAME	Löhlein, Heinrich
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Löhlein, Heinrich Ludwig (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	German Vice Admiral in the Weimar Republic
DATE OF BIRTH	February 1, 1871
PLACE OF BIRTH	Karlsruhe
DATE OF DEATH	March 2, 1960
Place of death	Herrsching am Ammersee

[1] Nicole Eversdijk: Culture as a political advertising materials . Waxmann Verlag, ISBN 978-3-8309-7308-9 , pp. 55 ( google.de [accessed on May 5, 2020]).

[2] Matthias Erzberger, Experiences in World War I, Deutsche Verlagsanstalt Stuttgart, Berlin 1920 and Klaus Epstein, Matthias Erzberger and the dilemma of German democracy, 1962

[3] Horst Bieber, Paul Rohrbach. A conservative publicist and critic of the Weimar Republic, Verlag Documentation, Berlin, Munich 1972

[4] Jürgen von Ungern-Sternberg, Wolfgang von Ungern-Sternberg: The appeal "To the cultural world!": The manifesto of the 93 and the beginnings of war propaganda in the First World War: with a documentation . Franz Steiner Verlag, 1996, ISBN 978-3-515-06890-1 , p. 122 ( google.de [accessed on May 5, 2020]).

[5] Nicole Eversdijk: Culture as a political advertising materials . Waxmann Verlag, ISBN 978-3-8309-7308-9 , pp. 57 ( google.de [accessed on May 5, 2020]).

[6] Christian Götter: The power of assumptions about effects: media work of the British and German military in the first half of the 20th century . Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG, 2015, ISBN 978-3-11-045220-4 , p. 110 ( google.de [accessed on May 5, 2020]).

[7] Christian Götter: The power of assumptions about effects: media work of the British and German military in the first half of the 20th century . Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG, 2015, ISBN 978-3-11-045220-4 , p. 176 ( google.de [accessed on May 5, 2020]).

[8] Jürgen von Ungern-Sternberg, Wolfgang von Ungern-Sternberg: The appeal "To the cultural world!": The manifesto of the 93 and the beginnings of war propaganda in the First World War: with a documentation . Franz Steiner Verlag, 1996, ISBN 978-3-515-06890-1 , p. 17 ( google.de [accessed on September 22, 2019]).

[9] Kurt Riezler: Diaries, Articles, Documents . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1972, ISBN 978-3-525-35817-7 , pp. 339 ( google.de [accessed on May 5, 2020]).

[10] Sebastian Rojek: Sunken Hopes: The German Navy in dealing with expectations and disappointments 1871-1930. De Gruyter Verlag, Oldenburg 2017, p. 116 ff.