Peter Willemoes

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Portrait of Peter Willemoes, 1801, artist: Jacob Rieter
Statue of Peter Willemoes in his birthplace, Assens . Sculptor: Christian Carl Peters

Peter Willemoes (born May 11, 1783 in Assens (Funen) ; † March 22, 1808 in battle near Sjællands Odde and buried in a hero's grave on the Odde) was a Danish naval officer. She was born in the port town of Assens on the Little Belt , his parents were the treasurer (Danish official) Christensen Willemoes (1736-1818) and Christiane Dreyer (1753-1832). His brothers were the priest Joachim Godske Willemoes, the doctor Friedrich Wilhelm Willemoes and the officer Martin Willemoes-Suhm.

Life

Peter Willemoes was sent to the Naval Cadet Academy in Copenhagen at the age of 12 , where he was a mediocre student who repeatedly rebelled against the harsh discipline. In 1795 he became a cadet and in 1800, at the age of 17, he got his first officer rank as a lieutenant (Danish Sekondløjtnant = first lieutenant level), after which he served on the orlog ships Princess Louise Auguste and Danmark .

Willemoes achieved great fame in the sea ​​battle of Copenhagen on April 2, 1801 (Danish: Slaget på Reden). He was in command of a Gernerske Flaadebatteri No. 1 , an unsinkable, massive wooden raft (Danish stykpram ) with 24 cannons and a crew of 129. In the battle, he directed the raft into a position opposite the English ship of the line Elephant , the flagship of Admiral Horatio Nelson and the ship of the line Ganges . After a good 1.5 hours of fighting, Willemoes gave up and allowed the battery to drift out of the combat zone. He fought with such bravery that even Horatio Nelson commended him to Crown Prince Friedrich after the battle. After the battle, Peter Willemoes became a Danish celebrity and a member of the Danish Order of Freemasons (Danish: Den Danske Frimurerorden (DDFO)). Due to his celebrity status, his curly hair became a fashion model among women in Copenhagen.

He then did service as first officer on the schooner Mercurius , which served as an auxiliary ship for frigates . In 1802 he went on a Mediterranean voyage on the frigate Rota . In 1804 he enlisted on the orlog ship Neptunus and on August 18, 1804 he was promoted to chief helmsman on the parcel ship . In 1805 he assisted the commander Lorentz Fisker in testing various sails for gunboats and was used in the same year for troop transports with the orlog ship Seieren .

Peter Willemoes also began to study law, but dropped out in 1807 because he was allowed to enter Russian military service.

This engagement was only brief, however, because after the British attack on Copenhagen he returned immediately and traveled home by land. He reported to the Danish headquarters in Rendsburg . He was supervised with the task of leading troop transports between the islands of Langeland and Lolland . He received the highest recognition for the good execution of these services.

After the entire Danish fleet was seized by the English as a result of the bombing of Copenhagen in 1807, Peter Willemoes hired the Prins Christian Frederik on the only ship of the line that remained in Denmark . On March 22, 1808, he was on board this ship, armed with 68 cannons and a crew of 576 men, on its way back from Norway to the Great Belt . In the Kattegat off Sjællands Odde, the ship met an English naval formation, which consisted of two ships of the line, a frigate and two smaller ships. After a few hours of fighting, the Danes gave up as the ship sank. There were 132 injured and 69 dead on board, including 24-year-old Peter Willemoes, who was hit in the head.

Reputation and impact

Sea battle of Copenhagen 1801, the young Willemoes drives his soldiers on (painter: Christian Mølsted)
Grave and memorial stone for Peter Willemoes in Sjællands Odde

Peter Willemoes was a sympathetic and nationally minded young man who, as a whole, stood for the symbol of the growing national consciousness and idealistic spirit as it emerged in Denmark in the first decade of the 19th century. Last but not least, the poem by Nikolai Frederik Severin Grundtvig Kommer hid, I Piger smaa, in which national feeling and manliness are praised, was one of the reasons why Willemoe's name traditionally belongs to the circle of Danish sea heroes.

  • The Danish author Laurits Christian Nielsen (1871-1930) wrote the play Willemoes in 1907 , a play in four acts that premiered on February 7, 1908 in the Volkstheater (Danish Folketeatret ) in Copenhagen. The music for the stage was composed by Carl Nielsen and Emilius Bangert. Blandt Carl Nielsens sang the well-known song Havet omkring Danmark (German: The sea surrounds Denmark).
  • In a number of Danish cities you can find Willemoesgade (German Willemoes Street), named after the sea hero, for example. B. in Copenhagen in the Østerbro district , in Århus , in Aalborg , in Esbjerg and of course in his native town Assens on the island of Funen .
  • In 1940 the book Hurra for Willemoes by the author Cai Schaffalitzky de Muckadell was published as a book for young people about Peter Willemoe's life as a young Danish sailor and sea hero in the Napoleonic Wars. The book closes with the sea battle at Sjællands Odde.
  • The Royal Danish Navy (Danish: Kongelige Danske Marine) named an anti-aircraft frigate of the Iver Huitfeldt class that entered service in 2009 and is stationed in Korsør after Peter Willemoes.

literature

Web links

Commons : Peter Willemoes  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Peter Willemoes . denstoredanske.dk, Dansk-Biografisk Leksikon (Danish); Retrieved July 5, 2017
personal data
SURNAME Willemoes, Peter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Danish admiral
DATE OF BIRTH May 11, 1783
PLACE OF BIRTH Assens (Funen)
DATE OF DEATH March 22, 1808
Place of death Sjællands Odde