Kurt Dahlmann

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Kurt Dahlmann (born March 4, 1918 in Königsberg ; † August 29, 2017 in Baden-Baden ) was a German journalist . He was an officer in the air force of the Wehrmacht and editor-in-chief of the Allgemeine Zeitung in Namibia .

Life

Dahlmann joined the Air Force in 1937 as an officer candidate and was trained at Air War School 3 in Wildpark-Werder . In August 1939 he was appointed lieutenant , before becoming III on August 1, 1940 . Group of the Kampfgeschwader 4 changed. There he flew the Junkers Ju 88 , a twin-engine bomber, in the Battle of Britain . In October his unit was renamed the III. Group of the Kampfgeschwader 30 . On November 20, 1941, after he was stationed in Italy, he received the Italian Medal of Bravery in silver and on January 19, 1942 the Luftwaffe's Cup of Honor . On January 8, 1943 he took over the 9th squadron of Kampfgeschwader 30 as a squadron captain as first lieutenant . At that time it was in Comiso, Italy . Shortly afterwards, on February 15, 1943, he acquired the German Cross in Gold . From May 11, 1943, he was briefly deployed in the Reich Aviation Ministry before he became squadron captain of the 1st squadron of Schnellkampfgeschwader 10 on June 11 . After his promotion to captain on October 1, 1943, he took over the 1st group of the squadron as group commander . With this he was in northern France and intervened with his Focke-Wulf Fw 190 in the fighting at the Allied landing in Normandy . On June 1, 1944, he was promoted to major , before being awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross on June 11, 1944 . On October 20, his unit was in III. Group of Kampfgeschwaders 51 renamed. On October 31, 1944 it was renamed to Nachtschlachtgruppe 10. Dahlmann remained group commander of this group until the end of the war. On January 8, 1945, he received the oak leaves for the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross.

After the war he studied law at the Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel and passed the legal state examination in 1949 . However, he then embarked on a journalistic career as editor of the Kieler Nachrichten . In 1958 he went to Namibia and took over the position of editor-in-chief of the Allgemeine Zeitung, the only German-language daily newspaper in Africa. Due to a controversy with Diether Lauenstein , the new owner of the newspaper, about the political orientation of the newspaper, he was dismissed in 1978. From the mid-1970s onwards, under Dahlmann, the Allgemeine Zeitung had pleaded for Namibia to be independent of South Africa and its apartheid policy and called for universal and free suffrage for all Namibians. The majority of the German-speaking population in Namibia supported this course. Lauenstein, on the other hand, was on the side of the South Africa-friendly minority; he initially took over the editor-in-chief himself and tried rigorously to get the newspaper on a pro-apartheid and anti-independence course.

After he retired in the 1980s, Kurt Dahlmann moved back to Germany in 1993 because of cancer. Since 2001 he has lived in an assisted living facility. Kurt Dahlmann died on August 29, 2017 at the age of 99 in Baden-Baden.

Publications

  • Mata mata mata! Kill, kill, kill! Angola since March 15, 1961 . Allgemeine Zeitung, Windhoek 1961.
  • as co-author: From the Protected Area to Namibia 1884–1984 . Interest group of German-speaking Southwesters (IG), Windhoek 1985, ISBN 3-88746-112-6 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Former editor-in-chief of AZ has passed away , Allgemeine Zeitung, September 1, 2017, accessed on October 10, 2017.
  2. Be nice to the poor Namibia-Germans . In: Der Spiegel . No. 35 , 1978 ( online ).
  3. Dr. Regina Reinsperger: Diether Lauenstein and apartheid. (PDF) 2008, pp. 4–5 , archived from the original on June 25, 2012 ; accessed on January 28, 2017 .