Hellmuth von Rabenau

Hellmuth von Rabenau

Otto Karl Hellmuth von Rabenau (born January 26, 1885 in Schweidnitz , Lower Silesia , † December 19, 1970 in Prien am Chiemsee , Bavaria ) was a German frigate captain and long-time director of the Chiemsee yacht school in the German high seas sports association HANSA .

Life

Hellmuth von Rabenau came from the original Meißnian , later Silesian noble family von Rabenau and was the son of the royal Prussian public prosecutor Paul von Rabenau (1853-1890) and Klara Heinemann (1858-1937). One of his three siblings was Eitel-Friedrich von Rabenau .

Rabenau attended the Domgymnasium Naumburg and then joined the Imperial Navy in 1903 . As a young lieutenant at sea , from August 1914 to April 1917 he was a “military companion” and thus an educator in military matters for the Prussian Prince Sigismund , son of the imperial brother Prince Heinrich . It was not until the last phase of the First World War that he received command of the submarine SM U 67 from December 15, 1917 to September 15, 1918 .

After retiring from the Navy on August 31, 1920 with the rank of corvette captain , he studied law at the University of Kiel , but dropped out after three semesters and began working for the Albingia insurance company in Hamburg for financial reasons was already married and had two daughters, his son Sigismund was born in 1930, named after the Prussian prince.

In 1931, Rabenau started his own business as an insurance broker in Berlin . When the post of headmaster at the girls' sailing school on the Chiemsee was to be filled again in 1934 , people remembered Rabenau, who had already proven educational skills as a prince educator . During the following years he actually proved himself to be a competent yacht school director. In addition, he carried out intensive public relations work, was the author of numerous articles in specialist journals and, from the spring of 1936, also publisher of his own information leaflet “Die Flüstertüte” as a supplement to the DHH member magazine “Flagge” . After leasing a new piece of land, the girls' sailing school was officially renamed "Chiemsee-Yachtschule" (CYS) in 1936.

Even after the outbreak of the Second World War on September 1, 1939, school operations at Chiemsee continued. In the summer of 1941 to 1942 the CYS was used for the training of naval officers, which Rabenau also took over. The yachting school's sailing courses were moved to Tutzing on Lake Starnberg , where Rabenau held the exams once a week. In 1943 the CYS was converted into a military training camp for the naval Hitler Youth and this time too Rabenau was to take over the management, together with a Hitler Youth leader. But Rabenau refused.

Instead, he went to the “Bildungsinspektion” of the Kriegsmarine and directed the aptitude tests for officer applicants in Wilhelmshaven . Finally he was employed in Norway , later in Glücksburg, as head of the sailing courses of the Reich Ministry of Education .

In April 1945 Rabenau was discharged from the Navy as a frigate captain. The Chiemsee yacht school had been confiscated by the Americans. Rabenau therefore held private sailing courses with his own sailing yacht on Chiemsee from 1949 in order to earn money to support his family, and was supported by former CYS members in setting up a new sailing yacht fleet. In the fall of 1953 the Americans released the sailing school again, on May 29, 1954 the Chiemsee yacht school was reopened and Rabenau was again employed as headmaster. Due to his personality, shaped as an old school naval officer, he enjoyed great esteem and respect among his course participants. Over time, he was able to increase the course capacity from an initial 70 to just under 400 course participants per year. On June 1, 1957, he was appointed captain of the sea . D. Erich Heymann was formally replaced, but stood by his side as a consultant for three months and then retired. He lived in Rimsting am Chiemsee until his death at the age of 85 (1970) .

Rabenau married Ilse Grünwald on February 12, 1915 in Berlin-Wilmersdorf (born February 1, 1897 in Berlin; † February 23, 1956 in Prien), the daughter of the real secret war council Dr. jur. Friedrich Grünwald and Nataly von Grawert .

literature

• Genealogical manual of the nobility , noble houses A volume XXII, page 332, volume 103 of the complete series, CA Starke Verlag, Limburg (Lahn) 1992, ISBN 3-7980-0700-4
• Norbert Suxdorf: Hellmuth von Rabenau. A captain in stormy times , in: Der Blaue Peter , magazine for sailing and sailing training, Deutscher Hochseeverband Hansa (ed.), Issue 3/2010, pages 18-21

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Albert Stoelzel: Honor ranking of the Imperial German Navy 1914-1918 , page 237, Naval Officer Association, 1930 ( excerpt )
2. ↑ Submarines of the Imperial Navy, here SM U67 [1]  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.