Peter Strasser (captain)

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Frigate Captain Peter Strasser

Peter Strasser (born April 1, 1876 in Hanover ; † August 5, 1918 north of Wells-next-the-Sea ) was a German naval officer , most recently a frigate captain and "leader of the airships" (FdL). In this position he was responsible for planning and deploying naval airships in World War I , but also took part personally in raids against England.

Life

Peter Strasser was born in Hanover as the son of the architect August Strasser during the founding period of the German Empire . He attended the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gymnasium there from 1883 to 1885 . After his family had moved to Bruchsal in 1883 , he graduated from high school there in 1894. That same year, on April 16, 1894, he joined the Imperial Navy as a cadet .

Strasser received his training at the Marine Infantry School in Kiel and Wilhelmshaven . On October 25, 1897 he became a lieutenant at sea and served on board the SMS Hertha until 1899 , most recently in East Asia. After that he was with the 2nd shipyard division in Wilhelmshaven and was promoted to lieutenant captain. On the artillery training ship he received training as an artillery officer, he came first as the first artillery officer on the liner SMS Mecklenburg , then on the large liner SMS Westfalen .

On September 27, 1913, Strasser was appointed as corvette captain to command the naval aviation department in the Reichsmarineamt . Now Peter Strasser was responsible for the development of the airships. During his tenure, he increased the number of men in the new branch of arms from an initial 120 to 7000 men.

Together with the airship pioneer Hugo Eckener , an employee of the Count von Zeppelin , he began training on the airships L 3 and L 4, of which only two were available to the Navy in 1914. During the First World War , the first airships took off to fight the British Isles in January 1915 .

Since December 1916, Peter Strasser had the title of “Leader of the Naval Airships”.

For his services, Strasser was awarded the Pour le Mérite on August 20, 1917 , which Admiral Reinhard Scheer presented to him ten days later in Ahlhorn . When an entire Zeppelin squadron took off on August 5, 1918, Strasser was on board the L 70 / LZ 112 , an advanced type of airship that was only in service from June 1918. During this mission it was shot down by a British Airco DH.4 near the British east coast. His body was recovered by the British Navy and later buried at sea.

Awards

Peter-Strasser-Allee

A path in the - today - Hanoverian district of Vahrenheide , which led to the parade ground on the Vahrenwalder Heide as early as 1900 , was named after the “[…] leader of the airships in the First World War, the frigate captain , at the time of National Socialism and in the first year of the Second World War Peter Strasser ”.

literature

  • Thor Goote: Peter Strasser: The leader of the airships: biography . Diplomica Verlag, 2018, ISBN 978-3-96389-058-1 ( limited preview in Google book search).
  • Hanns Möller: History of the Knights of the Order pour le mérite in World War I , Volume 1, Verlag Bernard & Graefe, Berlin 1935, pp. 389-390

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Douglas H. Robinson: German Navy Airships 1912-1918. ES Mittler Berlin 2005 ISBN 3-8132-0786-2 pp. 353-360. In contrast, the German archivist Helmut Zimmermann assumed that he had crashed at Kings Lynn . This is possibly due to the misjudgment of the actual location by the commander of the L 65, Kptlt. Walter Dose, who was involved in the attack and who was near the L 70. Kings Lynn is, however, inland and thus outside of the crash area proven on the British side; Robinson also uses the archived internal British reports on the one hand, as he also goes into in detail on the investigation of the wreck lying at sea which followed shortly afterwards
  2. ^ NN : Peter Strasser. In: Niedersächsische Lebensbilder , edited by Otto Heinrich May, on behalf of the Historical Commission, Vol. 1 (1939), pp. 371–380; Preview over google books
  3. ↑ a b c Klaus Mlynek : Strasser, Peter. In: Dirk Böttcher, Klaus Mlynek, Waldemar R. Röhrbein, Hugo Thielen: Hannoversches Biographisches Lexikon . From the beginning to the present. Schlütersche, Hannover 2002, ISBN 3-87706-706-9 , p. 352.
  4. ↑ a b c d e Ranking list of the Imperial German Navy for the year 1916 , Ed .: Marine-Kabinett, Mittler & Sohn Verlag, Berlin 1916, p. 17
  5. ^ Helmut Zimmermann : The street names of the state capital Hanover. Verlag Hahnsche Buchhandlung, Hannover 1992, ISBN 3-7752-6120-6 , p. 195.
personal data
SURNAME Strasser, Peter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German naval officer, most recently frigate captain and leader of the airships in World War I.
DATE OF BIRTH April 1, 1876
PLACE OF BIRTH Hanover
DATE OF DEATH August 5, 1918
Place of death Wells-next-the-Sea , Norfolk, England