Joachim von Winterfeld

Joachim von Winterfeld (born May 31, 1873 in Berlin ; † March 30, 1934 there ) was a Prussian officer and writer .

Life

Joachim von Winterfeld was born into an old Prussian noble family that was scattered far across Brandenburg and Pomerania. His father Carl Ludwig von Winterfeld (1839-1916) was the owner of two thriving manors: the old family estate Damerow in the Uckermark and Pätzig in the Neumark (today Piaseczno near Trzcinsko Zdrój in Poland). Joachim spent his childhood on the former. In 1885 he went to the high school in Prenzlau.

Military career

After graduating from high school, Winterfeld studied law at the University of Göttingen , but dreamed of a military career. In his writings he reveals a romantic attitude towards the life of a soldier, which even experiences of the reality of war could not tarnish. After three years he was allowed to break off his studies and joined the Prussian Army as an officer candidate in the artillery .

When the Boxer Rebellion broke out in China in 1900 , the 27-year-old lieutenant volunteered for the international expeditionary corps . He served in China for almost a year and got to know a large part of the country. In the summer of 1901 he traveled back to Germany via Japan and the United States on a long vacation.

For Winterfeld, a soldier's life and a thirst for adventure - quite typical of the time - were closely fused. After only a short time in his homeland, he joined the next colonial adventure when the Herero uprising broke out in 1904 in German South West Africa (today's Namibia ) . As the commander of an artillery unit, the "Half-Battery of Winterfeld", he took an active part in the brutal suppression of the uprising and the associated genocide of the Herero.

In 1906 he returned to Germany due to poor health and from then on taught at the field artillery school in Jüterbog . When the First World War broke out in 1914 , he initially commanded an artillery unit on the offensive against France and was deployed in Poland and Russia in 1915, later on again on the Western Front. At the end of the war he was lieutenant colonel and regimental commander. In 1920 he, as a Prussian Junker at the end of the war, the November Revolution and the Weimar Republic, could only see the "collapse of sacred values", took his leave of the military.

writing

Winterfeld spent the last years of his life on the family estate in Damerow, which he inherited in 1916 after the death of his father. In 1920 he married Margherita Moser von Filseck , with whom he had a daughter and three sons until 1926.

In addition to starting a family, he devoted himself to his passion, writing. Three volumes of poetry and prose were published during these years: From Lost Land with its poems from his time in Africa, Foreign and Home with primarily autobiographical poetry, and We and our horses . His works are full of nostalgia, soldier romance and a sense of homeland and were very popular when they were published.

On March 30, 1934, Joachim von Winterfeld died at the age of 60 in Berlin and was buried in the family cemetery in Damerow.

Fonts

From lost land: souvenir sheets from German South West Africa. Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart 1922. (2nd edition: Bärenreiter-Verlag, Kassel 1938.)
Foreign and Home: Selected Poems. German poets for youth and people, Vol. 6, Zickfeld, Osterwieck 1926.
We and our horses: A war trip across the sea (German South-West Africa). Beltz, Langensalza 1933.

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personal data
SURNAME	Winterfeld, Joachim von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Winterfeld-Damerow, Joachim von
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	Prussian officer, writer
DATE OF BIRTH	May 31, 1873
PLACE OF BIRTH	Berlin
DATE OF DEATH	March 30, 1934
Place of death	Berlin