Jürgen Alexander von Grone

Jürgen Alexander von Grone (born November 14, 1887 in Schwerin , † February 18, 1978 in Stuttgart ) was a German officer and knight of the order Pour le Mérite .

Life

origin

Grone came from a family of the Lower Saxon nobility , which belongs to the ministeriality of the empire and is first mentioned in a document with the Bevo de Grune, regni ministerialis, 1134. He belonged to the Westerbrak line and was the fifth child of the later Prussian Lieutenant General Otto von Grone (born February 7, 1841 in Westerbrak; † May 16, 1907 there), provost of the Steterburg monastery and entrant on Westerbrak, and his wife Anna Wilhelmine Karoline Elise Klara von Oheimb (born May 24, 1849 in Minden; † December 9, 1900 in Westerbrak).

Military career

Grone chose the soldier profession as he was not entitled to inherit his father's entails and joined the 1st Kurhessische Feldartillerie-Regiment Nr. 11 of the Prussian Army in Kassel in 1913 as a flag junior . There he was promoted to lieutenant with a patent from October 19, 1913 .

When the First World War broke out , he went into the field as a platoon leader with the 5th battery . He moved with his regiment into neutral Belgium and took part in the siege of the fortress of Namur . He then moved to the Eastern Front , fought in the Battle of the Masurian Lakes and then took part in the southern Polish campaign. After the withdrawal, a new offensive followed by the 9th Army in north-western Poland and the Battle of Łódź . During the fighting on the Rawka , Grone was wounded on March 18, 1915 and was sent to the hospital .

After its recovery, Grone first led a balloon defense platoon and reported to the air force in December 1915 . He trained as an observer and pilot and was then transferred to Fliegerabteilung 222 in March 1916. Here Grone was used as an observer and stood out on 130 enemy flights, especially through artillery shooting and photo flights. On December 28, 1916, he was promoted to first lieutenant . On July 18, 1917, Grone was appointed leader of the 7th Army serial picture train . On September 10, 1917, he was the first observer of the 7th Army to film the French capital Paris from an altitude of 7,000 m. For this service and 50 other enemy flights, which were mainly long-distance flights, Grone was submitted to the Pour le Mérite by the commander of the aviators of the 7th Army, Hugo Sperrle . On October 13, 1918 , Wilhelm II. Grone awarded the highest award in Prussia for bravery through AKO .

After the end of the war, Grone was initially accepted into the Reichswehr . However, he resigned as captain on September 30, 1920 as a result of the army reduction due to the Treaty of Versailles from military service.

Grone received on 27 August 1939 the so-called Tannenbergtag , the character as Major awarded.

His multiple requests to be reused during the Second World War were refused because he was a member of the anthroposophical movement .

Civil life

He became a journalist and editor and was also active as an author of military literature.

family

Grone died unmarried in Stuttgart.

literature

• Karl-Friedrich Hildebrand, Christian Zweng: The knights of the order Pour le Mérite of the First World War. Volume 1: A – G, Biblio Verlag, Osnabrück 1999, ISBN 3-7648-2505-7 , pp. 531-532.
• Hanns Möller: History of the knights of the order pour le mérite in the world war. Volume I: A – L, Verlag Bernard & Graefe, Berlin 1935, pp. 408–409.

Publications

• How the Battle of the Marne came about , Stuttgart, 1936 (1971)
• The Marne Battle , Stuttgart, Neues Tagblatt, 1936

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Monumenta Germaniae Historica , Diplomata Lothars III. , No. 65
2. ^ Kurt von Priesdorff : Soldatisches Führertum . Volume 8, Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt Hamburg, undated [Hamburg], undated [1941], DNB 367632837 , pp. 195-196, no. 2561.
3. ^ ^{A b} Genealogical Manual of the Nobility , Volume A XXII, CA Starke-Verlag, Limburg 1992, ISBN 3-7980-0700-4 , page 110.