Irnfried von Wechmar

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Irnfried Freiherr von Wechmar (born February 12, 1899 in Frankfurt am Main , † November 27, 1959 in Bonn ) was a German officer and journalist .

Life

family

Wechmar was the second child of the Prussian landowner and Rittmeister a. D. Eberhard Friedrich Wilhelm von Wechmar (born August 23, 1866 in Köslitz ; December 18, 1929 in Berlin) and his wife Friederike (Frieda) Stephanie Charlotte Marie (born August 15, 1876 in Mannheim), a born baroness of Wechmar II Line. His older brother was the landowner and SA leader Eberhard von Wechmar (1897–1934).

On May 5, 1921, Wechmar married Ilse von Binzer, divorced von Trotha (* February 22, 1895 - † May 8, 1980) in Berlin-Lichterfelde. His son Rüdiger was also in the civil service.

Military career

He was educated in the cadet house in Potsdam and in the main cadet institute in Berlin-Lichterfelde . At the beginning of the First World War in 1914, at the age of fifteen, he joined the Guard Foot Artillery Regiment as an ensign . After his appointment as lieutenant , Wechmar took an active part in the fighting as an artillery officer . Shortly before the end of the war, in which Wechmar was awarded the Iron Cross 2nd and 1st class, he was appointed head of a battery .

After the war, he initially served as an officer in the volunteer Landjäger Corps and was later accepted into the Reichswehr . In 1922, Wechmar left the Reichswehr and started working as a journalist in Berlin . After the National Socialists came to power , Wechmar was reactivated and, as captain, he was head of intelligence department 3 in Stahnsdorf (near Berlin). With this unit he took part in the campaigns against Poland in 1939 and against France in World War II . In February 1941, Wechmar, now a major , was relocated to Libya with his department as part of the German Africa Corps . At the beginning of March, Wechmar was promoted to lieutenant colonel. He took part in the battles of the Africa Corps and Italian troops in North Africa against the British. On April 13, 1941, he was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross . On January 16, 1942, he was awarded the German Gold Cross and recalled from Africa. Due to his journalistic experience, he was head of the army's propaganda department from January 1942 to 1943 . In 1943 Wechmar was promoted to colonel and from 1943 to 1944 was commander of the 147th Panzer Grenadier Regiment on the Eastern Front. From 1944 until the end of the war on May 8, 1945, Wechmar was the commandant of the Esbjerg - Fanö defense area in Jutland ( Denmark ) and was taken prisoner by the British here.

post war period

After his release from captivity, Wechmar worked again as a journalist and correspondent for several large newspapers in Bonn . Here he was one of the founders of the Federal Press Conference and also its president for a year. In 1951 he became press officer of the Association of German Soldiers and editor-in-chief of the magazine Soldat im Volk . In the spring of 1959 he took part in a reserve exercise of the 5th Armored Division of the Bundeswehr and was then removed as a colonel in the reserve of the Bundeswehr. In the same year Wechmar fell seriously ill. He died on November 27, 1959.

Wechmar was a knight of honor of the Order of St. John .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Veit Scherzer : Knight's Cross bearer 1939–1945. The holders of the Iron Cross of the Army, Air Force, Navy, Waffen-SS, Volkssturm and armed forces allied with Germany according to the documents of the Federal Archives. 2nd Edition. Scherzers Militaer-Verlag, Ranis / Jena 2007, ISBN 978-3-938845-17-2 , p. 771.