Michael Pössinger

Michael "Michl" Pössinger (born January 18, 1919 in Ettal ; † May 23, 2003 in Garmisch-Partenkirchen ) was a German officer in the mountain troops of the Wehrmacht and the Bundeswehr and world champion in bobsleigh .

Life

Pössinger came from a family of small farmers, attended the monastery school in Ettal and in 1937 chose the soldier's career with the mountain troops (regiment 98). In 1939 he took part in the attack on Poland as a sergeant and platoon leader and in 1940 as a lieutenant in the French campaign , where he received the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross on July 19, 1940 . Promoted to first lieutenant in 1940 , he took part in the Balkan campaign in 1941 and was a company commander on the Eastern Front from June 1941 , where he sabotaged supplies behind the Russian lines with a ski company. In the summer of 1942 he was seriously wounded in fighting in the Caucasus , but returned to his company in the Caucasus during the course of the year and received the German Cross in Gold on February 16, 1943 . In 1943 he was employed as a captain (appointed in October) and battalion leader in the 98 Mountain Infantry Regiment in the fight against partisans in the Balkans .

In September 1943 he was involved in measures against the former Italian allies in Greece. According to his own statements in his memoirs, he was not involved in the massacre of 4,000 Italian prisoners of war on the Greek island of Kefalonia . Hermann Frank Meyer suspects that the 6th Company of the 98th Regiment, led by Pössinger, was involved in another massacre on July 10, 1943 in Kefalovriso , in which 21 Greeks were burned alive.

October 1944 he was promoted to major and was involved in the defense of East Prussia , where he received the oak leaves for the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross (759th award) for a relief attack near Allenstein on February 28, 1945. He was also awarded the close combat clasp in gold on May 1, 1945 . March 1945 he was wounded and relocated to Garmisch-Partenkirchen (at that time hospital town ), which he handed over to the Americans as a member of parliament in consultation with the senior Colonel Ludwig Hörl (1901-1993) , where he said he had already decided to bomb the City could avert.

Released from US captivity in May 1945 , he worked as a merchant after the war. During the establishment of the Bundeswehr, he was a soldier again from autumn 1956 as major and commander of Mountain Infantry Battalion 8 (later 221). In 1958 he became a lieutenant colonel and from 1961 to 1965 was teaching group commander and deputy school commander at the mountain and winter combat school in Mittenwald .

Until his retirement in 1975 he was in command of the Defense District Command (VKK) 653 in Murnau am Staffelsee . In 1998 he published his memoirs, where he drew a transfigured picture of his life story.

As an athlete, he won a silver medal at the " Ski World Championships " in Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy, during the war in 1941 . In the four-man bobsleigh he won gold at the 1951 World Championships in Alpe d´Huez, 1953 in Garmisch-Partenkirchen bronze (shared with Sweden), in 1954 in Cortina d'Ampezzo silver.

literature

• Josef Bader, Michl Pössinger Life Pictures of a Mountain Hunter , Garmisch 1998

Web links

• Events at the end of the war in Garmisch-Partenkirchen with a biography of Poessinger and his memories

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d} Veit Scherzer : Knight's Cross bearers 1939–1945. The holders of the Iron Cross of the Army, Air Force, Navy, Waffen-SS, Volkssturm and armed forces allied with Germany according to the documents of the Federal Archives. 2nd Edition. Scherzers Militaer-Verlag, Ranis / Jena 2007, ISBN 978-3-938845-17-2 , p. 600.
2. ^ Hermann Frank Meyer, Bloody Edelweiss. The 1st Mountain Division in World War II , Ch. Links Verlag, Berlin 2008, ( Online ) p. 171, p. 647.