Paul Ebert (naval officer)

Corvette Captain Paul Ebert aboard the small cruiser SMS CORMORAN on August 3, 1912 south of Palau during a christening of the line

Paul Ebert (born September 21, 1873 , † August 19, 1939 ) was a German naval officer and in 1918/19 the last head of the intelligence department of the Admiralty's staff, the naval intelligence service .

activity

Australian station

Details of Ebert's official activities are not yet known. Presumably from 1909/10 to the beginning of March 1911 he served on the liner SMS Mecklenburg .

Map of the foreign stations of the Imperial Navy 1901–1914

From April 1911 to April 1913 the corvette captain was in command of the small cruiser SMS Cormoran on the Australian station . Ebert later described this time as the "most interesting period of my marine life". (Ebert, p. 236). The journey took place with the Reichspoststampfer Scharnhorst from Genoa via Colombo to Sydney , where Ebert took over the Cormoran .

During Ebert's command, the cruiser mainly carried out surveying tasks. In April 1912 the cruiser was on a visit to Nagasaki / Japan . From the beginning of May to the beginning of July 1912 the ship was overhauled in Tsingtau in the Tsingtau shipyard , which gave Ebert the opportunity to visit the city and the surrounding area. During this time he lived in the “Fürstenhof” hotel. In July there was another visit to Japan, this time to Kyoto and Kobe , where Ebert visited various sights such as the old Kyoto Imperial Palace .

In August 1912, District Administrator Dr. Scholz requested an expedition against natives in Friedrich-Wilhelms-Hafen . They had killed three Chinese and ten natives who were hunting birds of paradise on behalf of a German resident , which the natives viewed as a violation of their traditional hunting rights . The Comoran therefore transported a 60-man unit of the New Guinea police force under the command of Captain Prey, who had come from Rabaul by mail steamer, to Hansa Bay on the Gazelle Peninsula . Ebert apparently tended, like the German administration, to ban birds of paradise in order to defuse the conflict between natives and settlers, but considered the hunting rights for settlers to be necessary in the early phase of colonization to guarantee the settlers a basic income. (Ebert, p. 190). At the end of March 1913, Ebert returned to Germany via Sydney, Colombo and Genoa.

First World War

Armored coastal cruiser "Beowulf" - NARA - 17390414

From August 1914, the beginning of the First World War , to March 1916, the current frigate captain was in command of the coastal armored ship SMS Beowulf , which initially served as coastal protection in the North Sea . From the beginning of May 1915, the Beowulf was used in the Baltic Sea and took part in the bombardment and capture of Libau . From September 1915 she did outpost service in the North Sea before Borkum . From March 1916 the crew was reduced; the Beowulf now served as a target ship . Apparently in the course of these changes Ebert was transferred to the Admiral's staff and from March 1916 served as head of the counter-espionage department , a section of the naval intelligence service in the Admiral's staff.

In a transition period from February to April 1918, he took over from Walter Isendahl the management of "N", the intelligence department of the Admiralty's staff; during this time Ebert was promoted to sea captain. Details of his activities up to the dissolution of the agency in 1919 are not known. On November 24, 1919, Ebert left the service. Nothing is known about other activities. In 1924 he published his experiences during his service time on the Cormoran under the title “South Sea Memories” without reference to his earlier or later work. However, he was bitter about the lost war, especially the loss of the navy and the accusation by the victorious powers that Germany was incapable of administering colonies. He got to know the English as world citizens before the war, but did not take into account their violent history, especially their colonial history , which would have suggested a more cautious assessment. (Ebert, p. 209). At that time he lived in Wallhausen (Helme) . He died in 1939 at the age of 66.

Works

• South Seas memories , Leipzig (KF Koehler) 1924.

literature

• Thomas Boghardt : Spies of the Kaiser. German Covert Operations in Great Britain during the First World War Era , Houndmills / New York (Palgrave Macmillian) 2004. ISBN 1-4039-3248-4
• Marine Officer Association (ed.): Honorary ranking of the Imperial German Navy 1914-18 , edited by Kontreadmiral a. D. Stoelzel, Berlin 1930, p. 136.
• Hans H. Hildebrand / Albert Röhr / Hans-Otto Steinmetz: The German warships. Biographies - a mirror of naval history from 1815 to the present , Ratingen (Mundus Verlag GmbH) o. J. (One-volume reprint of the seven-volume original edition, Herford 1979ff.)