Philipp Freiherr von Boeselager

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In 1989 Philipp Freiherr von Boeselager received the Federal Cross of Merit from parl. State Secretary Wolfgang von Geldern

Philipp Freiherr von Boeselager (born September 6, 1917 in Heimerzheim ; † May 1, 2008 in Altenahr ) was a German Forest Association official, former professional officer in the Wehrmacht and reserve officer in the Bundeswehr . He was one of the last survivors of the inner circle of the military resistance group around Major General Henning von Tresckow and Colonel Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg , who committed an assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler on July 20, 1944 . After the Second World War , he played a decisive role in the development of German forestry , for example from 1968 to 1988 as chairman of the Association of German Forest Owners' Associations (AGDW) .

Life

Family and education

Philipp Freiherr von Boeselager was born in 1917 as the fifth of nine children of Freiherr Albert von Boeselager (1883-1956) and his wife Maria-Theresia von Salis-Soglio (1890-1968) at his family's ancestral home , the Heimerzheim Castle . His great-great-grandfather Maximilian Anton (1775–1821) was a Maire in Münster . Relatives included the diplomat and opponent of National Socialism, Wilhelm Freiherr von Ketteler , and his great-uncle, Clemens August Graf von Galen . His parents' house was shaped by Rhenish Catholicism . The son Albrecht Freiherr von Boeselager is a lawyer. The son Georg is a banker in Frankfurt am Main and his son Damian is a management consultant and founder of the Volt Europa party .

Even as a child he was anti-Prussian because of his Catholic upbringing and was skeptical of the National Socialists . Early on he disliked the fact that the crosses were removed from schools. In 1936 Boeselager passed his Abitur in the Aloisius College of the Jesuit Order in Bad Godesberg . First, he wanted jurisprudence study, to enter the Foreign Service to be able to go. His grandfather advised him against the Nazis and instead recommended that he join the army. In 1936 Boeselager joined the 15 Reiter Regiment in Paderborn and was promoted to lieutenant on September 1, 1938 .

He named the Latin proverb Etiam si omnes, ego non (freely translated: even if everyone participates, not me ) as his motto that has accompanied him through life and has shaped him from childhood . There is also the inscription of a half-timbered house built in 1648 below his Kreuzberg Castle, which Boeselager had made his retirement home.

The assassination attempt on Hitler

As adjutant of Field Marshal Günther von Kluge on the Eastern Front used, he learned for the first time in 1941 by the systematic murder of Jews and Gypsies. Encounters with high SS and party leaders convinced him of how unscrupulous the National Socialist German Workers' Party was with human lives and religious beliefs. In 1942 he met Henning von Tresckow during his daily report on the situation in the occupied Soviet Union and joined his resistance group.

On March 13, 1943, Baron von Boeselager was involved in an attempted assassination attempt on Hitler as an officer in the Wehrmacht . When the opportunity for an assassination attempt arose during Hitler's visit to the front , Philipp, his brother Georg and six other people present volunteered for the execution. Hitler should be shot. Since Himmler was surprisingly not present, General Field Marshal von Kluge forbade the assassination attempt, because he feared civil war-like relationships between the army and the SS.

In the 11th Infantry Regiment he had set up an army technical test unit during the Second World War and was thus able to obtain various German and captured explosives . From this, after attempts, he made a selection for two bombs that were to kill Hitler on the plane after a visit to the Eastern Front. Fabian von Schlabrendorff put the bombs, disguised as cognac bottles, on Hitler's plane. The attack failed, as Boeselager said, because the detonators in the aircraft's unheated luggage compartment were frozen. He himself was extremely surprised by the news that Hitler's plane had landed safely in Wolfsschanze .

Together with his brother Georg, he was one of the conspirators in the assassination attempt of July 20, 1944 . He was the commander of the 3rd Cavalry Brigade with six squadrons (1200 men) who rode their horses on July 18, 1944, initially towards Brest-Litovsk . Then they were supposed to drive to Warsaw by lorry and from there take an airplane to the “driverless” Berlin in order to occupy both parts of the Reich Security Main Office . When he was warned by Lieutenant Colonel Robert Bernardis (who himself was one of the conspirators) with the code "Back to the old holes" and learned of the failure of the attack on Hitler, he immediately turned around after 200 km to return to the old positions and go unnoticed. He survived because all of the co-conspirators - even under torture - remained silent about his involvement.

After 1945

After the Second World War, Freiherr von Boeselager studied law and economics in Cologne and completed a forestry internship. In 1948 he married Rosa Maria Countess von Westphalen zu Fürstenberg (1924-2014) with whom he had four children, and moved to Kreuzberg Castle in Altenahr.

After the Second World War, Philipp Freiherr von Boeselager lived with his family at Kreuzberg Castle in Kreuzberg (Ahr) until his death .

For decades, he managed the family's forestry business in Kreuzberg an der Ahr . In the period that followed, Freiherr von Boeselager was involved in various organizations and committees in the German forestry sector and held high positions in the representation of forest interests. He made outstanding contributions to the forest and forest property, which was reflected in many high awards and honorary memberships. The development of German forestry after the war is inextricably linked to his name.

In 1952 he was the founding chairman of the Ahrweiler forestry association, which he chaired until his death. For 50 years he also held the office of deputy chairman of the forest owners' association of Rhineland-Palatinate. He was also active in forest policy at the federal level. From 1968 to 1988 he was chairman of the Association of German Forest Owners' Associations (AGDW), the federal association of private and municipal forest owners in Germany. In addition, he was the first chairman of the German Forestry Sales Fund - today the Holzabsatzfonds (HAF). He initiated that the economic sector " wood " was anchored in 1969 part of the sales fund of the German agriculture, forestry and food industry and forestry in the joint federal and state task "Improvement of the agricultural structure and coastal protection" (GAK).

He was particularly concerned with the self-administration of rural forest ownership and the preservation and strengthening of private and communal forest ownership . Since his aim was always to preserve the forest property in its broad distribution of ownership, he also supported the demands for the return of the forest areas expropriated in the course of the land reform between 1945 and 1949 and later state-owned to the original owners.

In the 1950s, he was a member of the personnel appraisal committee that decided on the recruitment of former Wehrmacht officers to the Bundeswehr . Philipp Freiherr von Boeselager later served in the Bundeswehr as a lieutenant colonel in the reserve .

He was also one of the founding members of WWF Germany .

Boeselager was accepted into the Order of Malta on March 13, 1946 and was one of the founders of the Maltese Aid Service . The sick pilgrimages to Lourdes carried out by the German Association of the Order go back to his initiative and he worked for many years as the Order's Lourdes Commissioner. Boeselager last had the rank of Honor and Devotion Grand Cross Bailli in Obedienz in the Order of Malta . His son Albrecht continues this tradition.

Freiherr von Boeselager was a sought-after contemporary witness and reported on his experiences and views in schools and on many public occasions. He gave interviews to numerous television and radio stations as well as newspapers and magazines. a. also in the Junge Freiheit , as well as in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung three weeks before his death. He also signed the appeal for press freedom of Junge Freiheit on the occasion of the Leipzig Book Fair .

As a devout Catholic, he campaigned for the protection of unborn life against abortion - also and especially against the background of the experience of National Socialism . In protest against the "abortion compromise" he resigned from the CDU in 1993 - as he wrote, "in consequence of the central goals - such as the right to life - for the restoration of which the men of July 20 were executed" .

Freiherr von Boeselager was also the patron of the Boeselager competitions , an international military versatility competition of the tank reconnaissance troops in memory of his brother Colonel Georg Freiherr von Boeselager.

Philipp Freiherr von Boeselager died on the night of May 1, 2008 at Kreuzberg Castle in Kreuzberg near Altenahr .

On October 7, 2009, in the presence of his widow, Rosa Maria Freifrau von Boeselager, the barracks of the Strategic Reconnaissance Command in Gelsdorf was named "Philipp-Freiherr-von-Boeselager-Barracks" by the Federal Minister of Defense Franz Josef Jung . In 2010, the secondary school in Bad Neuenahr-Ahrweiler was renamed "Philipp Freiherr von Boeselager Realschule Ahrweiler".

Awards

Wehrmacht

Federal Republic of Germany

France :

Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur in January 2004

Quotes

"Whatever the teachers have to endure in school, you have to practice civil courage from childhood on, that is crucially important and not just ducking."

- Philipp Freiherr von Boeselager, 2008 

"The survivors of a tragedy are never its heroes."

- same day, 2004 

"I wasn't brave at all."

- same day, 2004 

“With their arrogance to judge lives that are 'unworthy of life' - be it the disabled, 'foreign races' or socially different people - the National Socialists stood in the spiritual tradition of the atheist-Jacobin French Revolution and the bloody communist rule since 1917. And they find their successors in all of today's, insofar as they strive to relativize human life. Since 1976, since paragraph 218 was amended , up to eight million unborn children in Germany have probably fallen victim to this new hubris, according to the number of unreported cases. An ethical catastrophe of unprecedented proportions! "

- same day, 2006 

literature

Movie

Web links

Wikiquote: Philipp Freiherr von Boeselager  - Quotes
Commons : Philipp Freiherr von Boeselager  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Interviews

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c N.N. : Professor Niklas Medal for Baron von Boeselager . In: AFZ / DerWald . 52nd year, issue 20/1997, p. 1111, ISSN  1430-2713 .
  2. ↑ a b c d e f dvf, el: Philipp Freiherr von Boeselager turns 90. Tireless commitment to forests and forest property. In: AGDW press release of August 20, 2007.
  3. ↑ a b Christian Lindner: The Baron's dream of murdering a tyrant. In: Trierischer Volksfreund , October 23, 2007.
  4. ↑ a b c d Christoph Arens: Philipp von Boeselager: The last survivor. In: Frankfurter Rundschau , July 7, 2004.
  5. ↑ (March 31, 1924; December 27, 2014) according to FAZ from December 31, 2014 FAZ
  6. ↑ Maltese mourn the loss of Philipp Freiherr von Boeselager. In: press release. Malteser Hilfsdienst , May 2, 2008, archived from the original on May 5, 2008 ; accessed on March 15, 2014 .
  7. ↑ Frank Schirrmacher : The last interview. “I could have shot him.” In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , May 1, 2008.
  8. ^ Boeselager as a signatory of the Young Freedom Appeal on the occasion of the Leipzig Book Fair , February 17, 2006.
  9. ^ A b Boeselager: Appeal for the protection of life and against abortion. , Front page of Junge Freiheit , September 22, 2006.
  10. ↑ Wolfgang Schmid: The Boeselager competition . In: www.pzaufkl.de . November 15, 2005. Archived from the original on August 22, 2014. Retrieved on January 19, 2009.
  11. ^ Daniel Phillipp Tolksdorf: Jung gives Bundeswehr property a new name. Bundeswehr, October 8, 2009, archived from the original on October 11, 2009 ; accessed on March 15, 2014 .
  12. ↑ Home page and imprint of the Philipp Freiherr von Boeselager Realschule Ahrweiler , accessed on January 26, 2013.
  13. ↑ a b Veit Scherzer : Knight's Cross bearer 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. 231.
  14. ^ NN : Federal Cross of Merit for Baron von Boeselager . In: AFZ / Allgemeine Forst magazine for forest management and environmental protection . Volume 44, issue 27/1989, p. 725
  15. ^ Chamber of Agriculture mourns Baron von Boeselager. Chamber of Agriculture Rhineland-Palatinate, May 2, 2008, accessed on March 15, 2014 .
  16. ↑ Quotation as a final remark in: Memories of a Resistance Fighter. Baron Philipp Freiherr von Boeselager. Interview in January 2008 with SWR1 editor Steffen Sturn.
  17. ↑ Quotation in: Academy talk. Philipp Freiherr von Boeselager: “My way to July 20th. - The loneliness of resistance. ” In: Bavarian State Parliament , July 14, 2004.
personal data
SURNAME Boeselager, Philipp Freiherr von
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German private forest owner, forestry association functionary and resistance fighter under National Socialism
DATE OF BIRTH September 6, 1917
PLACE OF BIRTH Heimerzheim
DATE OF DEATH May 1, 2008
Place of death Altenahr