Hermann von der Lieth-Thomsen

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Hermann Thomsen (center), October 1916
Thomsen's signature
General von Hoeppner and Lieutenant Colonel Thomsen
Grave in the Invalidenfriedhof, Berlin

Hermann von der Lieth-Thomsen , born as Hermann Thomsen (born March 10, 1867 in Flensburg ; † August 5, 1942 in Berlin-Zehlendorf ) was a German aviator general who is considered to be the co-founder of the German air force .

Life

Thomsen was the offspring of a farming family from Dithmarschen . His grandfather Peter Thomsen was married to Martha von der Lieth and since she was the last of their family, the couple received permission to use the combined name “von der Lieth-Thomsen”. The grandmother's family was not aristocratic, but there was an ancient Bremen noble family of the same name.

Hermann von der Lieth-Thomsen joined the Schleswig-Holstein Pioneer Battalion No. 9 of the Prussian Army on October 1, 1887 as a flag junior and was promoted to second lieutenant on September 21, 1889 . From mid-October 1890 he served as a company officer in the 1st Lorraine Pioneer Battalion No. 16 for six years, was then transferred to the 3rd engineer inspection and commanded to the fortress of Metz . For further training as a staff officer, Thomsen was from October 1, 1897 to July 20, 1900 at the War Academy . After a short period of service he was assigned to the General Staff on April 1, 1901 . Two years later he was transferred to the fortress of Strasbourg , where he served as a company commander in the 2nd Alsatian Pioneer Battalion No. 19 from April 18, 1903 to October 18, 1905 and was promoted to captain on September 15, 1904 . Thomsen spent the following years in the General Staff, where he had been in charge of flight operations within the Technical Section since 1907. However, he himself only took part in a flight on October 8, 1909. Promoted to major on March 20, 1911 , he was assigned to the Inspectorate of Military Aviation and Motor Vehicles under General Wilhelm Messing in 1913 . On February 17, 1914, he was transferred to Hanau to the staff of the No. 2 Railway Regiment.

At the beginning of World War I , after a brief assignment with the 8th Army , with which he was involved in the Battle of Tannenberg , Thomsen was deployed as General Staff Officer of the airship Z V (Commander Captain Grüner) on the Eastern Front. On August 22nd, the day on which ZV was lost in an attack on the Mława train station in Russian Poland , he was recalled as Ia to the XXIV Reserve Corps . With this he took part in the battles for Ypres and in the " Winter Campaign in the Carpathians " in 1914/15. On March 27, 1915, he was appointed head of field aviation in the main headquarters and assigned to the Supreme Army Command . On August 10, 1916, he had the first squadrons set up according to Oswald Boelcke's suggestions . From November 1916 he served as chief of staff with the new commanding general of the air forces ( Kogenluft ), Ernst von Hoeppner ; his previous position as chief of field aviation was dissolved. After receiving both classes of the Iron Cross and the Knight's Cross of the Royal House Order of Hohenzollern with Swords, he was awarded the Order Pour le Mérite on April 8, 1917 and promoted to colonel on August 18, 1918 .

As a result of the Treaty of Versailles , Germany was no longer allowed to maintain air forces. After a brief activity in the Prussian War Ministry , Thomsen retired from military service on August 11, 1919. However, contacts were made with the Soviet Union in the 1920s in order to prepare for the covert establishment of an air force there . Hermann Thomsen was actively involved in this work and headed the German military mission in the Soviet Union from 1925 .

Soon after, he developed an eye condition and went blind. Nevertheless, he was reactivated when the German Air Force was set up on November 1, 1935, promoted to Major General and nominally appointed Head of Department in the Air Force Department of War Studies in the Reich Ministry of Aviation . In 1939 he was promoted to General der Flieger . Although already 75 years old and completely blind, von der Lieth-Thomsen was still an active air force officer at the time of his death in the summer of 1942.

Hermann von der Lieth-Thomsen died in a spa hotel on Sylt and was buried in the Invalidenfriedhof in Berlin. The original grave decorations have not been preserved, but the grave has been marked by a restitution stone since 2000 . On July 15, 2017, the General-Thomsen-Kaserne in Stadum was renamed Südtondern-Kaserne .

Familiar

His son Joachim von der Lieth-Thomsen (1896–1918) was a naval aviator, was shot down over the Thames estuary in July 1917 and died on November 19, 1918 in British captivity .

literature

Web links

Commons : Hermann von der Lieth-Thomsen  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Yearbook of German Aviation Research . 1942 ( google.de ).
  2. ↑ Peter Supf: The book of German flight history. 1935, p. 283.
  3. ^ Norman Franks: Albatros Aces os World War 1, p. 7.
  4. ↑ press reviews
  5. ↑ In the volume published in 1939 Die deutsche Wehrmacht, 1914–1939: Retrospect and Outlook, ( ES Mittler & Sohn , Berlin, 1939) he published his contribution “Luftwaffe: The Luftwaffe before and during the world wars” still under the name Hermann Thomsen.
  6. ↑ https://www.shz.de/lokales/nordfriesland-tageblatt/neuer-name-mit-heimat-haben-id17320046.html
personal data
SURNAME Lieth-Thomsen, Hermann von der
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Thomsen, Hermann (birth name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German aviator general in World War II
DATE OF BIRTH March 10, 1867
PLACE OF BIRTH Flensburg
DATE OF DEATH August 5, 1942
Place of death Berlin-Zehlendorf