Othmar Matzke

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Othmar Matzke on the day of the surrender, April 27th in Regensburg

Othmar Matzke (born March 30, 1914 in Bärnkopf in Lower Austria , † January 16, 1999 in Mautern an der Donau ) was a major in the Wehrmacht and a Knight's Cross .

Life

Othmar Matzke was born as the son of a teacher in Bärnkopf. After elementary school he moved to the secondary school in Krems an der Donau, where he graduated in 1932. The following year he briefly attended the Vienna University of Technology . In November 1933, Matzke began his service with Infantry Regiment No. 6 in Krems. A year later he attended the military academy in Vienna, which he left in 1937 as a lieutenant to join the engineer battalion in Melk an der Donau .

Entry into the Wehrmacht

After the so-called Anschluss of Austria in March 1938, Matzke was taken over into the Wehrmacht . In 1939 he set up a pioneer company as first lieutenant in Krems and Melk.

As a company commander , Matzke took part in the campaign against France in 1940 and against the Soviet Union in 1941 . In the winter of 1941/1942 he completed a battalion leader course in Munich . In 1942 and 1944 he was again on the Eastern Front. As commander of the 211 Pioneer Battalion of the 211th Infantry Division , Matzke was awarded the Knight's Cross by Lieutenant General Heinrich Eckhardt on November 16, 1944. The reason for this was a nightly action in close combat and house-to-house combat.

At the beginning of 1945, Matzke was posted to Regensburg and appointed as the deputy of the pioneer school there. In mid-April 1945 he was appointed tactical assistant, the so-called Ia officer , to the Regensburg combat commanders when the city was to be defended to the last stone on the instructions of Gauleiter Ludwig Ruckdeschel .

Matzke's role in the surrender of Regensburg

On April 26th, Wehrmacht units and combat commander Hans Hüsson left the city of Regensburg and headed southeast. A corresponding withdrawal order has not been handed down; according to the military historian Joachim Brückner, the Wehrmacht High Command has not canceled its previous order to defend the city. Major Othmar Matzke, the highest-ranking officer who remained in the city against the general situation of retreat, then sent retired Major General in the morning of April 27, in consultation with Mayor Otto Schottenheim . D. Leythäuser as a member of parliament to the US troops. This offered an unconditional surrender and then Regensburg was handed over to the 3rd US Army without a fight, without further destruction or death .

After the end of the war

After the end of the war, Matzke was taken prisoner in the US in an internment camp in Kreuznach . The surrender in Regensburg was interpreted by other members of the Wehrmacht as a dishonorable removal from the troops. After his release he returned to Austria, where he lived as a civilian.

Surrender of Regensburg in the local historical tradition

Regensburg traditions have so far failed to agree on the question of how the surrender, the end of the fighting and the surrender of the city to the US troops without a fight, especially since historical research did not specifically deal with the last days of the war. In addition, the former mayor and SS brigade leader Otto Schottenheim was indicted as the "main culprit" in the denazification process in 1948, and he claimed in his defense that he had handed over or saved the city at risk of death. In the following decades, Schottenheim repeatedly claimed in numerous reports in the local press that the city was spared as his merit. It was only after Schottenheim's death on September 2, 1980 that his role was massively disputed and that of Othmar Matzke was pointed out.

Another explanation says that the cathedral preacher Johann Maier sacrificed his life for the preservation of the city. However, even after many years of research, no causal connection could be found between Maier's execution and the end of the fighting.

In 1984, the former Wehrmacht major and contemporary witness Robert Bürger surprisingly spoke up with an essay and claimed that Regensburg should be preserved from destruction at the end of the war as his merit. Bürger's account, according to which, after a flash of inspiration, he personally led the withdrawal of the combat troops from Regensburg and, with a certain amount of help from Schottenheim, saved the city, then entered the local historical literature.

In February 1985 Werner Chrobak and the Regensburg city archivist Heinrich Wanderwitz Matzke interviewed about the last days of the war in Regensburg and also asked him about the statements and the role of Bürger. Matzke basically denied Bürger's information and his presence on site. The interview was recorded on tape; the 90-page written form of the recording was lost by the end of 2012. Matzke publicly disputed the citizen's representations in press reports for the first time ten years later.

Only a detailed revision of Bürger's account from 2012 came to the conclusion that it was a subjective and self-serving account of a contemporary witness that was not secured by any reliable source base. Citizens rather wrote their own written evidence. The revision also comes to the result that it is largely thanks to Matzke that he initiated the surrender and surrender of the city without a fight.

literature

  • Peter Eiser, Günter Schießl: End of the war in Regensburg. Verlag Friedrich Pustet, Regensburg 2012. ISBN 978-3-7917-2410-2 .
  • Helmut Halter: City under the swastika. Local politics in Regensburg during the Nazi era. Universitätsverlag Regensburg, 1994, ISBN 3-9803470-6-0 .
  • Marzell Oberneder: We were in Kreuznach. Impressions and pictures from the prisoner-of-war camps in Kreuznach and St. Arnold. Attenkofersche Buchdruckerei Straubing, (no year = 1954).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ How Regensburg wanted to settle the "Othmar Matzke case" . regensburg-digital . Retrieved March 22, 2014.
  2. ↑ Peter Eiser, Günter Schießl: End of War in Regensburg , 2012, p. 112.
  3. ↑ Jürgen Mulert: American sources on the prehistory of the surrender of Regensburg in April 1945 , in: Negotiations of the Historical Association Regensburg and the Upper Palatinate (VHVO) Volume 127, 1987, p. 274.
  4. ↑ Joachim Brückner: End of the war in Bavaria 1945 , Verlag Rombach Freiburg, 1987, p. 150.
  5. ↑ Helmut Halter: Stadt unterm Hakenkreuz , 1994, p. 549.
  6. ↑ Joachim Brückner: End of War in Bavaria 1945 , Verlag Rombach Freiburg, 1987, p. 154.
  7. ↑ Helmut Halter: Stadt unterm Hakenkreuz, 1994, p. 86.
  8. ↑ Berta Rathsam: The great error. Dr. med. Schottenheim followers? , Golddistel Verlag Regensburg 1981, p. 31.
  9. ↑ Berta Rathsam: The great error. 1981, p. 30.
  10. ↑ Werner Chrobak : Cathedral preacher Dr. Johann Maier - a blood witness for Regensburg , in: Negotiations of the Historical Association of Regensburg and the Upper Palatinate (VHVO) 125, 1985, p. 483.
  11. ^ Robert Bürger: Regensburg in the last days of the war , in: Negotiations of the Historical Association of Regensburg and the Upper Palatinate (VHVO) 123, 1983, pp. 379–394.
  12. ^ Politics of the past a la city archivist. How Regensburg wanted to deal with the “Othmar Matzke case” (report on Regensburg-Digital from June 21, 2012, last accessed in Dec. 2013).
  13. ↑ Günter Schießl: The Forgotten Major , in: DIE WOCHE, from May 27, 1993.
  14. ^ Peter Eiser, Günter Schießl: End of the war in Regensburg. 2012, p. 149.
personal data
SURNAME Matzke, Othmar
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian officer and knight's cross bearer
DATE OF BIRTH March 30, 1914
PLACE OF BIRTH Bear head
DATE OF DEATH January 16, 1999
Place of death Mautern on the Danube