Melitta Schenk Countess of Stauffenberg

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Melitta Klara Schenk Countess von Stauffenberg , b. Schiller (born January 9, 1903 in Krotoschin , Posen Province , † April 8, 1945 near Straßkirchen ) was a German engineer and aviator .

Life

Early years

Melitta Schiller was the daughter of the building councilor and Prussian civil servant Michael Schiller, who came from a Jewish fur trader family. Her mother, Margaret Eberstein, came from Bromberg . She had four siblings: Marie-Luise, Otto, Jutta and Klara.

During the First World War Melitta lived with her grandmother in Silesia , because her father was on the front lines and her mother and older sister were in the medical service. After the war, the province of Poznan fell to Poland. The family moved to Hirschberg in Silesia, where Melitta graduated from high school in 1922. She then studied mathematics, physics and flight mechanics at the Technical University of Munich . In 1927 she graduated with honors. Since her father, as a disabled veteran, could not finance her training, Melitta earned the money for her studies through tutoring and private lessons. From 1928 on, she worked as a graduate engineer at the German Aviation Research Institute (DVL) in Berlin-Adlershof.

Over the next eight years, Melitta Schiller carried out theoretical and experimental studies on controllable pitch propellers . In addition, she trained as an aircraft pilot so that she could carry out the test flights necessary for her scientific work herself. During this time she met the historian Alexander Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg , a brother of the later Hitler assassin Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg . Melitta and Alexander married in 1937; the marriage remained childless.

In 1936 Melitta Schiller switched to the Askania works in Berlin-Friedenau as an engineer . Here she dealt with problems of the automatic control of aircraft. During her time at the DVL in 1935/36 and also in the winter of 1936/37, she took part in blind flight courses at Lufthansa in Hanover and Wroclaw and was also a test pilot at Askania. There she developed navigation and control systems for the Dornier Do 18 and Blohm & Voss Ha 139 flying boats . She was also involved in the development of the Askania 3-axis controller. The automatic controls tested by Schiller were used in prototypes of the Junkers Ju 87 .

Melitta Schiller had aircraft license for all classes of powered aircraft, the aerobatics license and all glider licenses. On October 28, 1937, she was appointed flight captain - the second woman in Germany after Hanna Reitsch .

Second World War

Melitta Schenk Countess von Stauffenberg was drafted into service in October 1939 and assigned to the Rechlin test site of the Air Force . Here she continued her work on targeting devices for diving and shooting sights. In order to try out her improvements to the devices, she herself performed around 2500 dive flights with the Stukas Junkers Ju 87 and Ju 88 . In 1940 her Jewish grandparents were identified by the Reich Office for Family Research . As a result, Melitta Schenk, Countess von Stauffenberg, became a “first-degree Jewish half-breed” in the sense of National Socialist racial legislation . Presumably because her work was classified as "war important", her application for "equality with Aryan people" was approved in 1941.

From 1942 Stauffenberg was transferred to the Air Force Technical Academy in Berlin-Gatow , where she continued her test flights. On January 22nd, 1943 she received the Iron Cross II. Class and the "Military Aviator Badge in Gold with Diamonds and Rubies". A month later she was awarded the pilot and observer badge in gold with diamonds. At the beginning of 1944 she received her doctorate with the assessment “very good”. From May 1, 1944, Melitta Schenk Countess von Stauffenberg was appointed technical director of the test center for special flight devices .

Melitta von Stauffenberg had regular contact with Claus and Berthold von Stauffenberg in his apartment in Tristanstrasse 8-10 in Berlin-Nikolassee . The last time she met the Stauffenberg brothers and well-known people from the circle of conspirators in this apartment was on July 16, 1944. Melitta von Stauffenberg's personal diary notes prove this. To derive a co-conspiratorial role from this information she provided is just as absurd as the contrary claim that Melitta von Stauffenberg did not know about her brother-in-law's plans. After the failed coup attempt she and her husband Alexander were by the Nazis in Sippenhaft taken. Melitta was released from prison after six weeks because of her “war-important tasks” and soon resumed her research activities. From then on she was officially called “Countess Schenk” without the addition “von Stauffenberg”. Her husband remained in custody with eleven other family members of the Stauffenbergs, from which they were transferred to the concentration camp. Stauffenberg used her position to help them as best she could; she managed to see her husband once a month.

Stauffenberg burial site in Lautlingen

Her office was relocated in April 1945 from Berlin-Gatow to Weimar-Nohra near the Buchenwald concentration camp, where her husband was temporarily imprisoned. After the evacuation of the concentration camp, Stauffenberg tried to find her husband's whereabouts. It was shot down on April 8, 1945 in a Bücker Bü 181 near Straßkirchen (near Straubing) by a US fighter plane. Melitta was still able to make an emergency landing, but died of the injuries within a few hours. At the time of her death, her husband was in a school in Schönberg in the Bavarian Forest, where they had taken a rest while the prisoners were being transported.

literature

radio play

Web links

References and comments

  1. ^ Karl Christ: The other Stauffenberg. P. 55.
  2. ^ Jörg Nimmergut : German medals and decorations until 1945. Volume 4. Württemberg II - German Empire. Central Office for Scientific Order Studies, Munich 2001, ISBN 3-00-001396-2 , p. 2441.
  3. ↑ cf. Gerhard Bracke: Melitta Countess Stauffenberg. The life of an aviator. Herbig, Munich 2013, ISBN 978-3-7766-2707-7 , pp. 172-173.
  4. ↑ Litta could do anything. Berthold Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg, 77, eldest son of the Hitler assassin, about his aunt Melitta. In: Der Spiegel , Hamburg, No. 10/2012, March 5, 2012, p. 139.
  5. ^ In a certificate from the Reich Security Main Office it says: "Flight captain Dipl.-Ing. Melitta Schenk Countess v. Stauffenberg works on instructions .... Countess S chenk is driving tonight ... "etc.
  6. ↑ Peter Koblank: The Liberation of Special Prisoners and Kinship Prisoners in South Tyrol . Online edition Myth Elser, 2006.
  7. ↑ This has not been proven beyond doubt, but it is highly probable, cf. Christ, p. 7, 48, 58, 175. Thomas Medicus, on the other hand, writes in his biography, p. 317 f., That the English, the SS or their own flak could have been responsible for their downing. There was also talk of suicide. Her death has never been solved.
personal data
SURNAME Stauffenberg, Melitta Schenk Countess of
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Schiller, Melitta Klara (maiden name); Schenk von Stauffenberg, Melitta
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German aviation pioneer in World War II
DATE OF BIRTH January 9, 1903
PLACE OF BIRTH Krotoschin , Poznan Province
DATE OF DEATH April 8, 1945
Place of death near Straßkirchen