Karl-Friedrich Merten

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Karl-Friedrich Merten (born August 15, 1905 in Posen ; † May 2, 1993 in Waldshut-Tiengen ) was a German naval officer and submarine commander in World War II .

Life

Merten was the son of a local politician and later mayor of Elbing . After graduating from high school in Köslin , he joined the Reichsmarine Crew 1926 on April 1, 1926 . After basic training on Dänholm near Stralsund , he was commanded as a midshipman on the sailing training ship Niobe in May 1926 . From November 1926 to March 1928 he made a trip abroad on the light cruiser Emden , which once led around the world. Then Merten, promoted to ensign at sea on April 1, 1928 , went to the Mürwik naval school . From February 1930 he served on the liner Schleswig-Holstein and from the end of September 1930 on the light cruiser Königsberg .

On October 1, 1930 he was promoted to lieutenant at sea . Various courses followed at the ship artillery school in Kiel-Wik as well as commands on torpedo boats and as II. AO (second artillery officer) on the light cruisers Karlsruhe and Leipzig . On October 1, 1937, now promoted to lieutenant captain, he took over his first command of the fleet companion F-7 , which he held until February 12, 1939. Merten experienced the outbreak of war as a cadet officer on the Schleswig-Holstein liner . The bombardment of the Westerplatte by this ship is considered to be the beginning of the Second World War. In April 1940, Schleswig-Holstein took part in the occupation of Denmark as part of the Weser Exercise company .

Merten's career as a submarine driver began as a commanding student of Heinrich Liebe on U 38 , with whom he went on a patrol in autumn 1940. On February 11, 1941, he put U 68 into service as commander . With this boat he made a total of five patrols, on which he operated in the North and South Atlantic and in the Caribbean . On the second voyage, Merten was able to bring the crews of the sunk auxiliary cruiser Atlantis and the auxiliary ship Python home over thousands of nautical miles.

On November 6, 1942, Merten torpedoed the former passenger ship City of Cairo , which was now used as a supply ship, but continued to carry passengers. Merten informed the surviving passengers and crew members of their position. 207 people were saved.

His last two voyages were among the most successful enemy voyages of the Second World War, each with more than 50,000 GRT sunk. Merten sank a total of 29 ships with over 170,000  GRT and was awarded the Knight's Cross with Oak Leaves and the U-Boat War Badge with diamonds.

Corvette Captain Merten gave up command of U 68 in early 1943 and became Deputy Chief of the 26th U Flotilla in Pillau on January 19 . From March 1, 1943 he was chief of the 24th U-Flotilla in Memel . On January 1, 1944, he was promoted to frigate captain . In October 1944 Merten moved the flotilla to Gotenhafen when the Red Army approached . In March 1945 the flotilla in Hamburg was disbanded. In the meantime, from May to June 1944, he was in command of the U-Boats Mitte . Subsequently, Merten was assigned to the Fuehrer's headquarters , where he was assigned as a naval representative to a stand-up court of the Fiihrer who was personally subordinate to Hitler , but refused to attend. He experienced the end of the war as a sea ​​captain in the so-called Alpine fortress . Merten was released from captivity on June 30, 1945 .

In November 1948, Merten, who was living in Wiesbaden at the time , was arrested by the French and charged with the allegedly illegal sinking of the French tanker Frimaire in June 1942 off Panama . The trial in Paris ended in an acquittal. The Frimaire , which belonged to the Vichy government , had neither been registered nor properly marked.

He later tried unsuccessfully to be accepted into the German Navy . Until 1974 he worked in civil (inland) shipping. When the former submarine commander Erich Topp campaigned in the post-war years for the rehabilitation of Oskar Kusch , who was sentenced to death in 1944 , Merten, Hans-Rudolf Rösing and others opposed this request. Mertens memoirs were published posthumously under the title Nach Kompass .

In 1986 Karl-Friedrich Merten published a book in collaboration with the former submarine commander Kurt Baberg with the title We submarine drivers say no: It wasn't like that! out. The authors dealt with the works of Lothar-Günther Buchheim , especially with his work Die U-Boot -fahrer , partly also with Buchheim's famous novel Das Boot . They wanted to prove errors and tendencies in the representation of the events and the service on a German submarine in the Second World War.

Awards

literature

  • Franz Kurowski: Karl-Friedrich Merten. In: Franz Kurowski: Hunter of the Seven Seas. The most famous submarine commanders of World War II. Motorbuch Verlag, Stuttgart 1998 (2nd edition), pp. 207–220. ISBN 3-613-01633-8 . (Biographical, representation of the patrols)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Dieter Hartwig : Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz - Legend and Reality , Ferdinand Schöningh, Paderborn 2010, ISBN 978-3-506-77027-1 , p. 331
  2. ↑ Clay Blair : " The U-Boat War Volume 2 The Hunted 1942-1945 ", Wilhelm Heyne Verlag, Munich 1999, page 545
  3. ↑ We submariners say no: It wasn't like that! An Anti Buchheim publication in J. Reiss-Verlag, Großaitingen 1986
  4. ↑ Veit Scherzer : Knight's Cross bearers 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. 538.
  5. ^ Merten: Nach Kompass , ISBN 978-3-548-26402-8 , p. 563
personal data
SURNAME Merten, Karl-Friedrich
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German naval officer, submarine commander and technician
DATE OF BIRTH August 15, 1905
PLACE OF BIRTH Poses
DATE OF DEATH May 2, 1993
Place of death Waldshut-Tiengen