Jean-Baptiste Piron

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Jean-Baptiste Piron (born April 10, 1896 in Couvin , † September 4, 1974 in Uccle ) was a Belgian lieutenant general and commander of the Belgian armed forces in Germany (BSD) from 1946 to 1957. The 1st Belgian Infantry Brigade (original name: Liberation or Bevrijding ) was also named after him Brigade Piron .

Life

Jean-Baptiste Piron, who had attended the Royal Military Academy in Brussels as early as 1913 at the age of seventeen, took part in the First World War, was wounded in northern France in 1917 and promoted to captain towards the end of the war . After the war, he resumed his studies at the Military Academy to continue his career as a career officer in the Belgian Army. In March 1936 he was promoted to major and was given command of a grenadier regiment.

A Staghound armored car with the badges of the Piron Brigade

A few months after the outbreak of World War II and Belgium's surrender on May 28, 1940, Piron was transferred to the Maria ter Heide prisoner-of-war camp near Brasschaat , but in April 1941 was able to escape in an adventurous escape via Marseille and Gibraltar to Greenock (Scotland), where he was on Arrived January 6, 1942. After the Belgian and Luxembourg armies in Great Britain were firmly integrated into the overall Allied forces, Piron, who had been promoted to colonel shortly before landing in Normandy , was given the command of the 1st Belgian Infantry Brigade. He and his Piron Brigade took part in important battles for the liberation of Belgium and Holland. The then Prince Regent Karl of Belgium appointed him his personal adjutant in September 1945 . In December 1945, Piron was promoted to major general.

In December 1946, Piron was given the command of the Belgian occupation forces in Germany. After an initial stationing in Lüdenscheid , the Belgian headquarters moved into the Palais Schaumburg in Bonn in 1948 . A Belgian convalescent home was set up in nearby Petersberg , which in 1949 had to be ceded to the Allied High Commission against Piron's initially fierce resistance . Until the handover to the first President of the newly created Federal Republic of Germany in November 1949, Piron himself resided in the Villa Hammerschmidt in Bonn. By the end of January 1950, Piron had to leave Bonn due to the establishment of an occupation-free zone around the provisional federal seat, after the Belgian corps had previously moved its headquarters to Cologne .

After more than forty years of service in the Belgian army , Piron retired in mid-1957 as a highly decorated lieutenant general .

Honors

Jean-Baptiste Piron received a large number of national and international medals for his military services, received the Grand Cross of the Belgian Order of the Crown and became a Grand Officer of the Legion of Honor . In addition, after his death he was venerated by members of the Piron Brigade as their namesake.

  • In Couvin , a memorial stone with a bronze relief by Jean-Baptiste Piron, created by the Belgian sculptor Victor Demanet (1895–1964), was placed on the Place du Général Piron .
  • The Generaal Pironstraat in Leerdam was named after him.

literature

  • General Jean Piron: Souvenirs 1913–1945 , La Renaissance du Livre, Brussels 1969 (French)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c www.brigade-piron.be (French)
  2. ^ Helmut Vogt : Guardians of the Bonn Republic: The Allied High Commissioners 1949–1955 , Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh, Paderborn 2004, ISBN 3-506-70139-8 , p. 45.
  3. ^ From the publications of the Historical Commission in Berlin :
    Jens Krüger: The financing of the Federal Capital Bonn , Verlag Walter De Gruyter, Berlin 2006. ISBN 3-110-19090-7 (p. 35)
  4. ↑ Reiner Pommerin : From Berlin to Bonn. The Allies, the Germans and the question of the capital after 1945 , Böhlau Verlag, Cologne 1989, ISBN 3-412-12188-6 , p. 168.
  5. ↑ see also → ars-moriendi.be: an illustrated homage to J.-B. Piron (accessed June 8, 2015)
  6. ↑ Images of the memorial stone in Couvin (accessed on April 22, 2014)
  7. ↑ Entry on openlibrary.org
personal data
SURNAME Piron, Jean-Baptiste
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Piron, Jean-Baptiste Félicien Louis Joseph
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Belgian general
DATE OF BIRTH April 10, 1896
PLACE OF BIRTH Couvin , Belgium
DATE OF DEATH 4th September 1974
Place of death Uccle , Belgium