Karl von Schönberg

Karl von Schönberg

Karl Christian Franz von Schönberg (born April 12, 1872 in Kreipitzsch , † December 8, 1914 in the South Atlantic ) was a German naval officer in the Imperial Navy . Four months after the beginning of the First World War , he was killed in a sea ​​battle near the Falkland Islands as commander of the small cruiser Nuremberg .

Life

Karl von Schönberg came from the von Schönberg family and was the tenth child of Anna Louise von Schönberg, née von Helbig, (1831–1873) and Haubold von Schönberg (1821–1897). Franz von Schönberg was his grandfather. Due to the earlier death of his mother, he grew up alone with his nine siblings with his father and decided early on for a career in the Navy.

On April 14, 1890, Karl joined by Schoenberg his service as a cadet on the sail training ship Niobe and then went up in March 1891 the Cadets course at the Naval Academy . After several assignments on different warships, Karl von Schönberg was appointed sea ​​cadet on April 8, 1891 and a sub-lieutenant on May 22, 1893 . From October 1893 to August 1894 he took the officer course at the naval school and was then trained as a torpedo officer on an armored gunboat. From October 1894 he served on the armored gunboat Crocodill in Danzig in the coastal defense. Appointed lieutenant at sea in early 1896 , Karl von Schönberg served as a watch officer on the small cruiser Irene with the cruiser squadron in East Asia . However , Karl von Schönberg was not involved in the acquisition of the Kiautschou lease area by the cruiser squadron, as his ship was in the dock at the time .

After returning from East Asia, Karl von Schönberg served in the 1st Sailor Division and received several on-board commands for training purposes. With the torpedo boat S 72 he accompanied Kaiser Wilhelm II in 1901 on the yacht Hohenzollern on the annual Nordland trip to Norway . On March 15, 1902, Karl von Schönberg was promoted to lieutenant captain and received his first command of the torpedo boat S 100 . After courses at the Naval Academy and training as a navigation officer , he served on the armored cruiser Yorck until 1907 . He was then transferred to the Reichsmarineamt in Berlin and promoted to Korvettenkapitän on November 9, 1907 .

On July 8, 1908, Alice von Pelet-Narbonne and Karl von Schönberg married in Berlin. In 1912 the only daughter Walburg von Schönberg was born. In the same year Karl von Schönberg was given command of the small cruiser Hela and was appointed frigate captain on April 25, 1912 . Then he was available at the station chief of the naval station of the Baltic Sea in Kiel .

Cruiser Nuremberg

In December 1913, Karl von Schönberg took command of the small cruiser Nuremberg as part of the cruiser squadron under Admiral Maximilian von Spee , who was sent to the west coast of Mexico at the time to protect German citizens in the Mexican Revolution of 1913/1914 . Karl von Schönberg recorded his observations in Mexico in a private diary , which also covers the period of the First World War and is available to the public as a source edition .

After the beginning of the First World War, the Nürnberg met again with the cruiser squadron in early August 1914. As commander of the Nuremberg , Karl von Schönberg took part in the naval battle at Coronel on November 1, 1914, in which his ship fought the British armored cruiser Monmouth . A few weeks later, on December 8, 1914, the cruiser squadron was almost completely destroyed in a naval battle near the Falkland Islands . In the battle with the armored cruiser Kent , the Nürnberg was sunk and Karl von Schönberg went down with most of the crew .

Grave of the sea captain Karl von Schönberg on the Invalidenfriedhof in Berlin

Fonts (selection)

• From foreign service in Mexico to the sea battle of Coronel. Travel diary 1913–1914 (= Small series of publications on military and naval history . Vol. 9). Edited by Gerhard Wiechmann . Winkler, Bochum 2004, ISBN 3-89911-051-X .

Web links

• Gallery of the German Federal Archives on the sea battle at Coronel
• Exhibition at the Google Cultural Institute on the sea battle at Coronel

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Gerhard Wiechmann (ed.): From foreign service in Mexico to the sea battle of Coronel. Sea captain Karl von Schönberg. Travel diary 1913-1914. Bochum 2004, p. 175.
2. ↑ On the military career see Gerhard Wiechmann (ed.): From foreign service in Mexico to the sea battle of Coronel. Sea captain Karl von Schönberg. Travel diary 1913-1914. Bochum 2004, pp. 175-179.
3. ↑ Gerhard Wiechmann (ed.): From foreign service in Mexico to the sea battle of Coronel. Sea captain Karl von Schönberg. Travel diary 1913-1914. Bochum 2004, pp. 61-174.
4. ↑ Report on the union of the cruiser Nuremberg with the cruiser squadron from the Federal Archives, accessed on July 28, 2016. ( Memento of the original from March 5, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
5. ^ Karl von Schönberg's report on the sinking of the British armored cruiser Monmouth from the Federal Archives, accessed on July 28, 2016. ( Memento of the original from March 8, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
6. ↑ List of crew members rescued after the sinking of the cruiser Nuremberg from the Federal Archives, accessed on July 28, 2016. ( Memento of the original from March 5, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.