Otto Quirin Lancelle

Otto Quirin Lancelle (born March 27, 1885 in Xanten , † July 3, 1941 in Krāslava , Latvian SSR ) was a German officer, last lieutenant general in World War II .

Life

Lancelle was the eleventh child of Captain Emanuel Lancelle († 1908) and his wife Fanny Quirin. The father had participated in the wars of 1864, 1866 and 1870 and retired in 1871 due to the loss of his hearing.

After graduating from high school on April 1, 1905, he joined the Imperial Navy as a midshipman . At the end of the same year he joined the Prussian Army as a flag junior and came to Wesel in the Klevesche Field Artillery Regiment No. 43 . Here Lancelle was promoted to lieutenant on January 27, 1907 . As such, he was transferred to the teaching regiment of the field artillery shooting school in March 1912 and promoted to first lieutenant on July 8, 1914 .

With the outbreak of the First World War , Lancelle came to the 5th Battery of the 6th Guards Field Artillery Regiment as platoon leader and took part in the conquest of the Namur Fortress . Then moved his regiment to the Eastern Front , where Lancelle took over the leadership of the 2nd battery in October 1914. As the war continued, Lancelle returned to the Western Front in 1916 . Here he distinguished himself several times and received, in addition to both classes of the Iron Cross , the Knight's Cross of the Royal House Order of Hohenzollern with Swords and, on October 9, 1918, the highest Prussian bravery award, the Order Pour le Mérite .

After the armistice in Compiègne he led his troops back home, after demobilization he took over the 1st Division of the 2nd Guards Field Artillery Regiment and was taken over into the Provisional Reichswehr in July 1919 . Initially, Lancelle was deployed as leader of the 3rd battery in the Reichswehr Artillery Regiment 26, and a month later he was transferred to the training regiment of the field artillery shooting school. Here he worked from October 1, 1919 until his departure on March 31, 1920 at the settlement agency.

After retiring from military service, Lancelle joined the Stahlhelm at his place of residence in Eilenburg . He had been a member of the NSDAP since 1923 and took part in the Hitler putsch in the same year . He was later appointed to the party's Reich leadership in Munich . From November 1931 he was part of the staff of the Supreme SA Leadership (OSAF) ​​in Munich, and in the following year he became SA Oberführer . Due to sharp criticism of the then Chief of Staff SA Ernst Röhm because of his homosexuality, Lancelle was removed from the Supreme SA leadership in 1932.

In 1932 Lancelle was instrumental in the "uncovering" of the partly Jewish descent of the second Stahlhelm federal leader, Theodor Duesterberg , which the NSDAP used for propaganda purposes in order to harm Duesterberg in his candidacy for the office of Reich President and to bring Stahlhelm supporters into their camp pull.

From 1932 Lancelle was instrumental in building up the Reich Labor Service . In 1932 he set up the first state labor service in Anhalt , the following year he headed the Reichsschule for labor service in Berlin-Spandau and from June 1933 acted as head of the Reichsschule des Deutschen Arbeitsdienst in Potsdam-Wildpark (i.e. in the Neues Palais ) and as the inspector of the teaching departments . His successor was Hermann Kretzschmann . From January 1935, Lancelle was again a member of the staff of OSAF, which had since been moved to Berlin. In the SA he last achieved the rank of SA Oberführer.

On October 1, 1935, Lancelle was reactivated in the army of the Wehrmacht and initially used with the staff of the 7th Artillery Regiment. As a lieutenant colonel , he took over the artillery regiment 43 on April 1, 1938 and was commander of the artillery regiment 115 on November 10, 1938. In this function, he was promoted to colonel on New Year's Day 1939 . With the attack on Poland , Lancelle was appointed commander of Frankfurt (Oder) . However, he gave up this post on October 24, 1939 and became commander of the 168 artillery regiment.

Lancelle took part as commander of the 121st Infantry Division (with the rank of major general) in the German invasion of the Soviet Union in the summer of 1941 . He was killed on July 3, 1941 in fighting around the Krāslava bridgehead on the Daugava . Posthumously he was promoted to lieutenant general on July 1, 1941, and was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross on July 27, 1941 .

family

Lancelle was married to Elisabeth Hömberg-Board. The children Ursel (* 1917), Kraft (* 1920) and Dagmar Alexandra (* 1924) emerged from the marriage.

literature

Edited sources :

• Letter from Otto Lancelle to Adolf Hitler dated April 4, 1932, in: Alexander Dimitrios: Weimar und der Kampf gegen Rechts , Vol. 3 (Documents), Document 40.6.

Contemporary publications :

• German labor service. Issue 7 from February 18, 1934.

Entries in reference works :

• Karl-Friedrich Hildebrand, Christian Zweig: The knights of the order Pour le Mérite of the First World War. Volume 2: HO. Biblio Publishing House. Bissendorf 2003. ISBN 3-7648-2516-2 . Pp. 303-305.
• Hanns Möller: History of the knights of the order pour le mérite in the world war. Volume I: A-L. Bernard & Graefe publishing house. Berlin 1935, pp. 643-646.
• Herrmann AL Degener: Lancelle, Otto Quirin In: Wer ist's: Zeitgenossenlexikon, containing biographies and bibliographies. Edition 10, Berlin 1935, pp. 925-926.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ 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. 490.