Karl Mauss

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Mauss in the final phase in Gdynia (during the German occupation: "Gotenhafen"), PK photo from March 1945

Emil Karl Hans Mauss (born May 17, 1898 in Plön ; † February 9, 1959 in Hamburg ) was a German dentist and officer , most recently lieutenant general and commander of the 7th Panzer Division in World War II . He was one of the 27 soldiers who received the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves, Swords and Diamonds .

Life

origin

Mauss was the son of the pastry chef Karl Mauss and his wife Minna, nee Lohoff. During his school days, they initially ran a café near the Lübeck train station and from 1911 until it closed in April 1921, the Metropol Kino opposite Niederegger .

career

From 1904 Karl Mauss attended the Johanneum zu Lübeck , which was run in the form of a secondary school from 1905 . At the outbreak of the First World War he enlisted on August 8, 1914 as countless students as a volunteer and became a soldier. On May 20, 1915, he was promoted to lieutenant . On August 16, 1915, he wrote from the field to his schoolmate Heinrich , son of Bernhard Dräger , that all officers already had their Dräger tubs and that the self -rescuer could be found in every trench. He fought in the 4th Silesian Infantry Regiment No. 157 on March 22, 1916, awarded the Lübeck Hanseatic Cross by the Lübeck Senate . Mauss was last used in the air force and suffered a serious back injury after a crash landing at the end of the war. After his healing he took part in the Battle of Annaberg during the 1921 uprisings in Upper Silesia . He resigned from the Reichswehr on April 1, 1922 and was given the character of a first lieutenant when he left . He married on April 1, 1922 and the couple had several children.

After professional attempts as a publishing and commercial agent in Upper Silesia , Mauss completed a degree in dentistry at the University of Hamburg from the winter semester 1925/26 . During his studies he joined the Hamburg fraternity Germania . Mauss was at Alfred Rohrer with the theme teeth abnormalities in idiots and imbeciles Dr. med. dent. PhD . In December 1928 he was approved . He then practiced as a resident dentist in Lübeck . During the Weimar Republic he belonged to the steel helmet .

At the time of National Socialism , he was reactivated on September 1, 1934 in the rank of captain with the 69th Infantry Regiment in Lübeck. He was used as a company commander in the 69th Infantry Regiment. On September 1, 1939, the beginning of World War II , he was still a company commander in the same regiment. On September 11, 1939 he became battalion - commander in the 69th Infantry Regiment. On April 1, 1941 he was promoted to lieutenant colonel . On March 1, 1942, he became the commander of the 33rd Panzer Grenadier Regiment of the 4th Panzer Division . On April 1, 1942, he was promoted to colonel . On January 30, 1944, he became the commander of the 7th Panzer Division . The promotion to major general took place on April 1, 1944. On October 1, 1944 he was promoted to lieutenant general. Mauss was named in the Wehrmacht report on March 13, 1944, August 15, 1944 and February 20, 1945. In the final stages of the war, Mauss was seriously wounded, so that his leg had to be amputated.

An alleged promotion to General of the Panzer Troops on April 1, 1945 is based solely on oral sources, but there is no written evidence. According to the historian Christian Hartmann , Mauss was one of the "most highly decorated soldiers in the Wehrmacht" and was also referred to as "Mauss with the lion's heart" during the war. As the highest honor he was awarded the Knight's Cross with Oak Leaves, Swords and Diamonds.

Hereditary grave of the Mauss family in Lübeck, which was laid out in 1928 in the cemetery of St. Lorenz Church

After the end of the war, Mauss was a British prisoner of war until the end of January 1947 and practiced as a dentist in Hamburg-Wandsbek soon after his release . After the death of his wife, he remarried in 1949 and had a son. During the post-war period, according to the military historian Roland G. Foerster , a group of soldiers formerly subordinate to him formed around Mauss in Hamburg, who were comparable to the previous group of the HIAG or the Brotherhood. In the course of the establishment of the Bundeswehr in the mid-1950s, Mauss tried to re-use it as an officer, but was rejected by the responsible personnel appraisal committee.

Karl Mauss died on February 9, 1959 in Hamburg after a brief serious illness of two heart attacks . Six Bundeswehr officers stood guard at the funeral of Mauss in the Lübeck family grave. Besides stepped -melted on his fraternity. On the coffin, next to a steel helmet and sword, lay the dead man's fraternity cap. The funeral speech was held by the Protestant theologian Hans-Rudolf Müller-Schwefe .

reception

Scientific reception

Christian Hartmann names Mauss 2010 in his work Wehrmacht in the Eastern War and rates him as an example of the social permeability and the small group of officers with academic degrees. In his dissertation on the rebuilding of the Bundeswehr, Matthias Molt describes the professional biography of Mauss and notes that he was not accepted into the Bundeswehr because of his Nazi past. A more recent publication on the history of dental medicine on Mauss comes from the French medical historian Xavier Riaud.

Person-oriented reception

In 1955, in an article about Mauss, Der Spiegel wrote that it was not an operational figure, but rather a valiant field soldier . In 1958 Günter Fraschka's book appeared for the first time ... with swords and diamonds in the "Soldierly and humanly blameless characters", "Heroes because of their selfless commitment", "Bearer of the highest German order of bravery" (from the foreword), meaning the knight's cross bearers of the highest distinction to be introduced. Mauss is one of the men who are presented. In 1960, the Allgemeine Schweizerische Militärzeitschrift considered the book to be inadequate with regard to information on people's lives and unsuitable in terms of both language and orientation. In 2015, Jörg Weigand certified Fraschka as having an “ultra-conservative-militaristic worldview”. The book has been translated into several languages ​​and has had 13 editions to date. In 1961, Fraschka published a Landser volume with the same publisher, Pabel , with the title: Lieutenant General Dr. Karl Mauss . In 1962, the Burschenschaftliche Blätter reminded of Mauss, whom they compared to Walter Flex ; this text was also used in later publications, such as the 1978 German Soldier's Yearbook. In 1989 the Frenchman Dominique Venner , a former member of the right-wing terrorist organization OAS , published the book Ein deutscher Heldenkampf: the history of the Freikorps, 1918–1923: Mercenaries without pay , in which Mauss is mentioned. In 1996, Fred Frank published a “Landser Großband” with Pabel : Dr. Karl Mauss. Diamond bearer and last commander of the 7th Panzer Division (No. 732).

Around the turn of the millennium, the extreme right-wing National-Zeitung published a glorifying series of articles with biographies of Nazi soldiers. This is also available as a book series Heroes of the Wehrmacht. Immortal German soldiers published in the first volume with 100 biographies. Mauss is part of the series. In it, soldiers were introduced in part using the linguistic formulas of the Wehrmacht and Nazi propaganda . The political scientist Fabian Virchow classifies the series in “the imagination of the extreme right of the men who are oriented towards the deed and who shape the course of events / history in the interest of the 'national' or ' folkish ' collective”. The characterizations referred “at the same time to a conceptualization of masculinity , the profile of which - very unified - would be marked by characteristics such as 'hardness', 'willingness to sacrifice', 'courage to death', 'bravery', 'tenacity', 'cutting' or 'standing qualities' ".

In 2009, his fraternity commemorated the “most decorated fraternity and weapons student of the Second World War” with another biographical article in the fraternity leaves and an honor guard at the grave on the 50th anniversary of his death. The umbrella organization of the German Burschenschaft also dedicates an entry to Mauss under “Military, Resistance” on its homepage. The website emphasizes that Mauss was "the most decorated fraternity member in World War II (swords and diamonds for the Knight's Cross") and "savior of thousands of women and children from Gdansk and East Prussia to the ships."

Also on the 50th anniversary of his death, the Preussische Allgemeine Zeitung , according to the historian Peter Oliver Loew , published a lengthy biographical article on Mauss, at least in its “political part picking up on right-wing radical content” . Mauss is one of the bravest, most chivalrous and highly decorated troop leaders in the Wehrmacht, but he has remained almost unknown to the German public. He made it possible for many East Prussians to flee . Olaf Haselhorst, former chief editor of the extreme right in the opinion of the Federal Government sheet The Silesian , organ of the right faction "Central Council of German Expellees" reviewed on 2011 for the German military journal that the Arndt publishing house is close to Peter Stockerts in extreme right-wing le Pour Merite publishing house published book The diamond wearers of the German Wehrmacht and remarked with reference to Mauss that “the soldiers of the Wehrmacht and the Waffen-SS had been given a memorial” that seemed “all the more necessary” since people lived in times when “they no longer recognized military achievements ready ”.

Fonts

  • Tooth anomalies in idiots and imbezillen. Dental dissertation. Hamburg 1928, DNB 570889901 .

literature

Web links

Commons : Karl Mauss  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Mauss, 1928 biography
  2. ^ Digitized version of the address book of the city of Lübeck from 1905 ; Mauss, CV 1928.
  3. ↑ see: Metropol (Lübeck) , cited there as literature: Petra Schaper: Kinos in Lübeck. Verlag Graphische Werkstätten GmbH, Lübeck 1987 ISBN 3-925402-35-7 , (online)
  4. ↑ a b c Karl Mauss, curriculum vitae in his dissertation 1928.
  5. ↑ a b c Wolfgang Keilig: The Generals of the Army 1939–1945. Friedberg 1983, p. 219.
  6. ^ Michael Kamp : Bernhard Dräger : Inventor, Entrepreneur, Citizen. 1870 to 1928. Wachholtz Verlag GmbH, 2017, ISBN 978-3-52906-369-5 , p. 372.
  7. ^ Directory of the owners of the Lübeck Hanseatic Cross in the inventory of the New Lübeck Senate Files.
  8. ↑ a b c d e f personnel appraisers / armed forces. Where to look for the defects . In: Der Spiegel . Issue 51, December 14, 1955, p. 17.
  9. ↑ Anke Beyer, Anke Knigge, Johann Koch and others: ... and he must be German ... - the past and present of student connections in Hamburg. Hamburg 2000, p. 208.
  10. ^ Karl Mauss: Tooth anomalies in idiots and Imbezillen. Dissertation . Hamburg 1928, p. 29.
  11. ↑ The reports of the High Command of the Wehrmacht . Volume 5, January 1, 1944 to May 9, 1945, Cologne 2004, ISBN 3-89340-063-X , pp. 82, 257 u. 533.
  12. ↑ Reinhard Stumpf : Die Wehrmacht-Elite Rank and origin structure of the German generals and admirals 1933-1945 , Boppard am Rhein 1982, p. 125, p. 127.
  13. ^ Christian Hartmann: Wehrmacht in the Eastern War. Front and military hinterland 1941/42. Munich 2010, p. 148.
  14. ^ Christian Hartmann: Wehrmacht in the Eastern War. Front and military hinterland 1941/42. Munich 2010, p. 180.
  15. ↑ Xavier Riaud: General-lieutenant Dr Karl Mauss (1898-1959). In: Journal of Dental Problems and Solutions. Volume 4, No. 1, 2017, p. 9.
  16. ^ Roland G. Foerster : From the surrender to the Pleven plan. Oldenbourg, 1982, p. 721.
  17. ↑ Ludwig Elm : The past is not past. In: Ludwig Elm , Dietrich Heither , Gerhard Schäfer: Füxe, Burschen, Alte Herren: student corporations from the Wartburg Festival until today . PapyRossa-Verlag, 1992, p. 209.
  18. ↑ Meyer-Clemens 1962, p. 40.
  19. ^ Christian Hartmann: Wehrmacht in the Eastern War. Front and military hinterland 1941/42. Munich 2010.
  20. ^ Matthias Molt: From the Wehrmacht to the Federal Armed Forces - Personnel Continuity and Discontinuity in the Development of the German Armed Forces 1955–1966. Retrieved June 19, 2017 .
  21. ↑ Vita Xavier Riaud (French) ; Xavier Riaud: Lieutenant General Dr Karl Mauss (1898-1959). In: Dent Hist. (48), Jul 2008, pp. 64-69. Overview of Riaud's publications in Pubmed
  22. ↑ Quotations from the foreword after Jörg Weigand : Party soldier and Landser author. Günter Fraschka (born 1922) wrote under a variety of pseudonyms. In: Youth Media Protection Report. JMS, Volume 38, Issue 3,2015, p. 5, ISSN  0170-5067 , doi: 10.5771 / 0170-5067-2015-3-5 .
  23. ↑ Review of … with swords and diamonds In: Schweitzer Militärzeitschridft. Volume 3, 1960, pp. 261f.
  24. ↑ Weigand 2015, p. 5.
  25. ↑ Meyer-Clemens: Hanns, men from our ranks: In memory of Karl Mauss. In: Burschenschaftliche Blätter. No. 2/1962, p. 39f. The fraternity member ( Germania Hamburg 1933, Germania Halle , Frankonia Erlangen ) Hanns Meyer-Clemens is a friend and doctor of Mauss
  26. ↑ Wolfgang Hausen: Lieutenant General Dr. med. dent. Karl Mauss. In: German Soldier Yearbook. Volume 26, Schild-Verlag , 1978, pp. 386-391.
  27. ↑ Sniplet
  28. ↑ Fabian Virchow : Against civilism. International relations and the military in the political conceptions of the extreme right (= research politics ). VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, Wiesbaden 2006, ISBN 3-531-15007-3 , p. 347.
  29. ↑ Virchow 2006, p. 394.
  30. ↑ On the 50th anniversary of the death of diamond wearer Karl Mauss. In: Burschenschaftliche Blätter. January 29, 2010, accessed online November 8, 2013.
  31. ↑ Military, Resistance. Retrieved February 20, 2017 .
  32. ↑ Peter Oliver Loew: An image of Poland by the German right? Contents - functions - dangers. In: Dieter Bingen, Peter Oliver Loew, Kazimierz Wóycicki (eds.): The Destruction of Dialogue: for the domestic political instrumentalization of negative external images and enemy images (= publications of the German Poland Institute ). Wiesbaden 2007, pp. 328-344, here: p. 330.
  33. ↑ Jan Heitmann : The commander is where his men are . In: Preussische Allgemeine Zeitung. February 6 and 7, 2009, p. 11.
  34. ^ Nazis, boys, Bundeswehr. Retrieved February 8, 2017 .
  35. ↑ Bundestag printed paper 14/4467 accessed on February 8, 2017.
  36. ^ Thomas Pfeiffer: The information capillary system. New right journalism in the media mix of a movement from the right. In: Wolfgang Gessenharter, Thomas Pfeiffer (Eds.): The New Right - a Danger for Democracy? Wiesbaden 2004, pp. 187–198, here: p. 189.
  37. ↑ Bundestag printed paper 16/1282 , p. 7, point f, accessed on February 8, 2017.
  38. ↑ online ( memento of November 9, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) accessed on February 6, 2017.
personal data
SURNAME Mauss, Karl
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Mauss, Emil Karl Hans (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German officer
DATE OF BIRTH May 17, 1898
PLACE OF BIRTH Plön
DATE OF DEATH February 9, 1959
Place of death Hamburg