Max-Friedrich von Schlechtendal

Max-Friedrich von Schlechtendal

Max-Friedrich von Schlechtendal (born May 8, 1868 in Düsseldorf , † July 28, 1920 in Berlin ) was a Prussian major general .

Life

family

Schlechtendal came from an old, in the pen area of direct imperial abbey at the Ruhr are local family. He was the son of the Prussian captain of the same name a. D. Max von Schlechtendal († 1896) and his wife Wilhelmine, born von Behr († 1904). Schlechtendal married Anneliese von Kalckreuth on December 7, 1894 in Berlin .

Military career

He stepped on September 22, 1887 as a cadet in the 2nd Guards Regiment walk the Prussian Army in Berlin and was promoted to mid-January 1889 second lieutenant . From October 1, 1895 to July 21, 1898 he was assigned to the Military Academy for further training . Schlechtendal rose in the meantime to prime lieutenant and, after brief service in his main regiment, was assigned to the General Staff . On September 14, 1900 he was aggregated to this and promoted to captain on March 22, 1901 . In the role of Second General Staff Officer , he was transferred to Altona on March 22, 1902, to the General Staff of the IX. Army Corps . After a year and a half of service, Schlechtendal took over as chief of a company in the Emperor Franz Guard Grenadier Regiment No. 2 . He held this position until December 18, 1905, when he was assigned to the General Staff. A year later Schlechtendal became the first general staff officer of the 2nd Guard Division . As such, he became major on September 11, 1907 . In the same function, Schlechtendal was transferred to the general staff of the Cologne governorate on November 19, 1909 and to the general staff of the Berlin governorate on April 2, 1912. There he was also assigned to the staff of the high command in the Marche. On February 18, 1913, Schlechtendal returned to service and became the commander of the 1st Battalion of the Infantry Regiment "Graf Bose" (1st Thuringian) No. 31 in Altona. As a lieutenant colonel (since January 27, 1914), he was transferred to the staff of the Guard Fusilier Regiment on April 18, 1914 .

With the outbreak of World War I and the mobilization , Schlechtendal became the commander of the 1st Guard Reserve Infantry Regiment. With this he moved into neutral Belgium and was first involved in fighting on August 20, 1914. During the battle of Namur , one of his companies managed to capture almost an entire Belgian brigade with 2,500 men. After the fall of the city, the regiment was withdrawn from the front and transferred to the eastern front in conjunction with the Guard Reserve Corps . Here it first took part in the battle of the Masurian Lakes . Then the regiment went into trench warfare. At the end of 1915, Schlechtendal returned to the Western Front with his regiment . After deployments in northern France and Flanders , it fought at Arras from May to the end of July 1916 before taking part in the Battle of the Somme , where Schlechtendal was promoted to colonel on August 18, 1916 . In the spring of 1917 the regiment then withdrew to the Siegfried Line. During the battle of Arras that followed, he managed to hold onto his positions despite the clear superiority of the enemy. After the British demolition at Wytschaete-Bogen , his regiment, which at that time was acting as a reaction force, was pulled forward. Through the independent intervention of Schlechtendal, the opposing attack could be stopped and a breakthrough prevented. For this act, Schlechtendal was awarded the Pour le Mérite by AKO on July 27, 1917 . Shortly thereafter, on August 24, 1917, he was appointed commander of the 80th Reserve Infantry Brigade. With this he fought in the following years at Verdun , in the Argonne , the Champagne and on the Marne . On September 28, 1918, he was given command of the 5th Landwehr Infantry Brigade, which he led home after the armistice .

After demobilization he was made available for a short time and on January 20, 1919 was appointed commander of the 31st Reichswehr Infantry Regiment. Schlechtendal was then appointed on October 1, 1919 as head of the dissolution staff 2 of the Guard Corps. Thereupon Schlechtendal submitted on April 9, 1920 his farewell, which was granted to him on June 4, 1920, conferring the character of major general.

Awards

• Red Eagle Order IV class
• Prussian service award cross
• Knight's Cross 1st Class of the Order of Albrecht
• Knight's Cross 1st Class of the Duke of Saxony-Ernestine House Order
• Order of the Iron Crown III. class
• Iron Cross (1914) 2nd and 1st class
• Order of the Crown, 2nd class with swords in September 1916
• Austrian Military Merit Cross III. Class with war decorations in December 1914

literature

• Hanns Möller: History of the knights of the order pour le mérite in the world war. Volume II: M-Z. Bernard & Graefe publishing house, Berlin 1935, pp. 260-263.
• Karl-Friedrich Hildebrand, Christian Zweng: The knights of the order Pour le Mérite of the First World War. Volume 3: P-Z. Biblio Verlag, Bissendorf 2011, ISBN 3-7648-2586-3 , pp. 213-215.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Freiherr von Bock: list of the officers' corps of the 2nd Guards Regiment on foot June 19, 1813– May 15, 1913. Verlag R. Eisenschmidt, Berlin 1913, p. 227.
2. ↑ ^{a b c d e} Ranking list of the Royal Prussian Army and the XIII. (Royal Württemberg) Army Corps for 1914. Ed .: Prussian War Ministry . ES Mittler & Sohn , Berlin 1914, p. 196.