Otto Weddigen
Otto Eduard Weddigen (born September 15, 1882 in Herford , † March 18, 1915 at sea off Scotland ) was a German naval officer , most recently a lieutenant captain and submarine commander in the First World War .
Life
Otto Weddigen was born as the eleventh and youngest child of a linen manufacturer . After a year-long stay at the Wilhelmsplatz Citizens' School, Weddigen attended the Friedrichs-Gymnasium in his home town of Herford from 1890 to 1901 , and then joined the Imperial Navy as an officer candidate . In contrast to the army , which was still dominated by the Prussian nobility , the navy offered young men from the bourgeoisie opportunities for advancement.
In 1902 he was promoted to ensign in the sea and in 1904 to lieutenant in the sea . In May 1906 Weddigen was transferred to the East Asia Squadron, which was stationed in the German colony of Kiautschou in China . He was made a watch officer on the river gunboat Vaterland and promoted to first lieutenant at sea . In 1907 he served as an officer on watch on the Tiger gunboat .
Returning to Germany, Weddigen came to the submarine weapon under construction in October 1908 . From April 1909 to September 1910 he served as an officer on watch on U 1 , U 2 and U 4 . Then he received his first command with U 4 . During the next year, he also temporarily commanded U 3 and U 5 , before he became commander of U 9 on October 1, 1911 , one of the newest submarines in the Navy. On April 25, 1912 Weddigen was promoted to lieutenant captain. On May 21, 1913 he put three ships of the line out of action with U 9 in an exercise with four torpedoes, namely the Ostfriesland , the Thuringia and the Frederick the Great .
A few days after the start of the First World War , Weddigen left Heligoland for its first mission with U 9 and nine other submarines . This first act of war by German submarines failed at all. Two boats were lost and U 9 had to return to the Kaiserliche Werft Wilhelmshaven , battered and with technical problems . Weddigen used the weeks of rest to marry a childhood friend.
On September 20, 1914, U 9 ran out of the Heligoland naval base for a reconnaissance trip to the west. In the morning hours of September 22, 1914, about 50 km north of Hoek van Holland, three British warships were sighted, which were sailing in the keel line. Weddigen succeeded in sinking the three technically obsolete British armored cruisers Aboukir , Hogue and Cressy one after the other in just 75 minutes . According to the report of the commander of the Cressy , Bertram W. L. Nicholson, an observation post on the Aboukir had apparently mistaken the periscope of U 9 for a piece of driftwood . A fluke in the weapons magazine of Aboukir triggered a huge explosion and chaos aboard the British ship. When Cressy rushed to help , it was made more difficult by the fact that the crew consisted almost exclusively of less well-trained reservists.
In a report that was written later, Weddigen frankly admitted that, in addition to military skills, a large portion of luck was also involved in the successful action for the Germans and clearly emphasized what he believed to be the brave demeanor of the opposing soldiers. About 1,500 members of the British crews lost their lives. 800 survivors were, u. a. recovered by a British fishing boat and the Dutch passenger steamers Flora and Titan . U 9 managed to return to Heligoland unscathed despite being chased by British ships. It was then received triumphantly in Wilhelmshaven. Weddigen was celebrated as a war hero in the German Empire.
The sinking of three enemy ships within a very short time established submarines as a means of warfare. For the German submarine weapon it was a success that had not been thought possible until then. Weddigen was awarded the Iron Cross II and I Class by Kaiser Wilhelm II . The remaining crew members received the Iron Cross, 2nd class. From then on, the U 9 boat was allowed to carry the Iron Cross on the tower.
Almost three weeks later, on October 15, 1914, Weddigen sank the British cruiser Hawke off Aberdeen , for which he was personally awarded the Pour le Mérite , the highest Prussian order of bravery, by the Kaiser on October 24, 1914 as one of the first German naval officers .
After the imperial government's declaration of unrestricted submarine warfare , although contrary to international law , but in response to the equally illegal blockade of Germany by Great Britain, the U 9 also sank three civilian ships under Weddigen Ships.
Due to an injury, Weddigen had to surrender his command to his first officer Johannes Spieß in January 1915 . After his recovery, he took over U 29 on February 13, 1915 . In contrast to the petroleum boat U 9, this boat had diesel engines. On March 10, 1915 was U 29 of Zeebrugge for the first use under Weddigen out. It reached its area of operations in the Irish Sea and was able to sink four ships with 12,934 GRT in the next few days . On the march back around Scotland U 29 encountered the Grand Fleet on March 18, 1915, east of the Pentland Firth (between the Scottish mainland and the Orkney Islands) . She was on her way home to her base at Scapa Flow . After a miss shot at the battleship Neptune , the periscope of the submarine on the battleship Dreadnought was sighted. Weddigen was no longer able to go deep in time. At about 1:40 p.m., the Dreadnought rammed the German boat, which shot to the surface with the forecastle for a short time. The boat number was identified. Then U 29 sank , and Otto Weddigen and his entire team were killed. It was the only military action of the Dreadnought during naval warfare in World War I .
The outpost boat Weddigen , put into service in 1917 , was named after him. Likewise, the U-boat cruiser U 140, built in 1917/1918 and operational from summer 1918, was given the name Kapitänleutnant Weddigen in honor of the well-known U-boat commander .
Aftermath
Weddigen was celebrated as a war hero in Germany as a result of his military successes, which were perceived as sensational, and his hometown made him an honorary citizen at the age of 32 . Adoration and the creation of legends quickly spread, propagandistically guided by the tabloids loyal to the emperor . Beer mugs , medals, wall plates and portrait busts of him were put into circulation in large numbers. Soon it was said that there was a souvenir of Weddigen in almost every German household. The cult around the submarine commander during the First World War was later only surpassed by the fighter pilot Manfred von Richthofen , who was shot down on April 21, 1918 .
The memory of the naval officer also remained alive during the Weimar Republic and National Socialism. Heinz Paul shot the feature film U 9 Weddigen in 1927 with Carl de Vogt in the leading role. Under the National Socialist rule, the memory of the former “war hero” was once again promoted, and several biographies were published . At the University of Kiel , the Association of German Students there formed together with other student associations in 1933 an Otto Weddigen comradeship . During the reconstruction of the German submarine weapon, the first newly founded flotilla was named after Weddigen in 1935. The first boss was Karl Dönitz . The boat U 9 , like Weddigens U 9 , wore the Iron Cross as a tower badge. Department 6/160 of the Reich Labor Service in Herford was also named after Weddigen. In 1937 the newly built youth hostel in Wilhelmshaven - Rüstringen was given the name Weddingen Youth Hostel . During this time, Leitz built both an underwater camera and prism binoculars called Weddigen under the brand name Leica .
After the Second World War , Weddigen - unlike Richthofen - was largely forgotten outside of those interested in the navy. At the beginning of the 1950s, Pabel-Moewig published a few novels about U 9 and Weddigen, u. a. 1953 On a great war voyage with Weddigen . Books about Weddigen as well as devotional items from the hero worship that took place in the German Reich can only be found in second-hand bookshops and at flea market dealers specializing in militaria . However, in the course of a revitalized interest in the events of the First World War , research and the feature section began to show interest in Weddigen as a person.
In Herford , a memorial plaque is attached to the Frühherrenhaus , the house where Weddigen was born in the corner of Petersilienstrasse and Frühherrenstrasse . The Weddigenufer on the Werre was named after him. An open-air swimming pool, which was built there in 1935 - during the Nazi era - was used as a military facility for a long time (after the war also by the British Army), bore the name. The people of Herford called the swimming pool “Otto” for short in the last few years before it was demolished. In 1997 a leisure pool with the name H2O , a synonym for Herford's 2nd Otto , was built on the site . The town-based naval comradeship Otto Weddigen also remembers him.
U 9 of the Federal Navy also had the Iron Cross as its coat of arms.
A swimming pier at the Kiel naval base is called Weddigen Bridge.
Several streets in Berlin were named after the submarine commander, Weddigenweg in the Steglitz-Zehlendorf district still exists today. In Oberhausen - Sterkrade , too, Thalstrasse was renamed after him in 1936 and has been called Otto-Weddigen-Strasse since then .
In Augsburg , Aurich , Bielefeld , Freiburg im Breisgau , Gerlingen , Hanover , Landsberg am Lech , Lünen , Munich , Münster , Nuremberg , Oldenburg , Wuppertal and Danzig-Stolzenberg (until 1945), Hamburg (until 1947) and Kiel (also until 1947 ) streets are or were also named after him. In the small town of Neukirchen-Vluyn on the Lower Rhine, three streets of a colliery settlement built in 1919 bear his name (Weddigenplatz, Weddigenallee, Weddigenstraße).
In Düsseldorf-Niederkassel a rifle company has been known as the Otto Weddigen Company since 1935 - the twentieth year of the submarine's death .
In the private, publicly accessible U-Boot-Archiv museum in Cuxhaven , the Otto-Weddigen room is named after him.
Filmography
U9 - Weddigen . Director: Heinz Paul . Script: Willy Rath. Actors: Carl de Vogt , Mathilde Sussin a . a., Germany 1927
In the occupied Rhineland , the strip was banned in December 1927 by the censors of the Interallied Rhineland Commission because of feared "disturbance of public order", but a few weeks later with deletions under the title Brothers. U9, Captain Weddigen released again. The changed title is appropriate in that the film rolls up the German-British submarine war on a private German-British family history as a tragic fratricidal war. Weddigen is portrayed less as a marine daredevil and more as a kind of romantic hero .
literature
- Source Records of the Great War, Vol. II, ed. Charles F. Horne, National Alumni, 1923 (source collection, including reports by Weddigen and Nicholson dated Sept. 22, 1914).
- Jürgen Busche: Hero's test. The denied World War I legacy. DVA, Frankfurt 2004.
- Volker Jakob: From the decay of fame (essayistic portrait of Weddigen). In: Westfalenspiegel 1 (2006), p. 56f.
- Rene Schilling: "War Heroes". Interpretation patterns of heroic masculinity in Germany from 1813 to 1945. Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh , Paderborn 2002, ISBN 3-506-74483-6 (War in History, Volume 15).
- Heinrich Richter: Otto Weddigen, a picture of life. Published by Velhagen & Klasing, Bielefeld / Leipzig 1915.
Web links
- Kapitänleutnant Otto Weddigen on the website of the German Navy
- Newspaper article about Otto Weddigen in the press kit of the 20th century of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .
Individual evidence
- ↑ The company Weberei Weddigen still exists today.
- ↑ The extensive family was one of the most respected in the Ravensberger Land and has over several generations u. a. evangelical clergy , scientists , writers and merchants .
- ↑ "U 9" number three . In: Die Zeit , No. 16, April 21, 1967. Retrieved July 17, 2015.
- ↑ Deutsche Bauzeitung, year 1937, art print section, page 23
- ↑ Sports and leisure pool H2O . Website of the city of Herford, accessed on July 5, 2015.
- ↑ Winfried Grützner: Blankenese between Pfahlewer and Range Rover. BOD GmbH, 2013. Retrieved August 8, 2015.
- ↑ Kiel Street Lexicon Retrieved March 12, 2018.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Weddigen, Otto |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Weddigen, Otto Eduard |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German submarine commander, captain lieutenant |
| DATE OF BIRTH | September 15, 1882 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Herford |
| DATE OF DEATH | March 18, 1915 |
| Place of death | at sea |