Richard Lange (naval officer)

Richard Lange (* 27. February 1868 ; † 18 February 1939 in Berlin-Charlottenburg ) was a German naval officer , most recently Rear Admiral in the First World War . He was deployed as a ship commander and naval attaché in Tokyo .

Life and career development

Richard Lange joined the Imperial Navy in 1886 after completing his general school education . Here he went through the usual training as a naval officer on the training ship Niobe and the naval school with interim on-board deployments until 1890. After that, he was used as a company commander in the II. Sailor Division and as an officer on watch on several torpedo boats. This was followed by further assignments in the area of ​​the II. Torpedo Department and as a deck officer until he was employed in 1895 to service the torpedo inspection. His first assignment abroad took him to Kiautschou as a navigational officer on May 14, 1899 on board the Irene. The ship was ordered here to support the East Asian squadron under the command of Rear Admiral Otto von Diederichs (1843-1918). Lange started his journey home from Nagasaki in November 1899 and returned to Germany in January 1900. For one year he was then available to the staff of the North Sea naval station as an adjutant and was temporarily used as the commander of the torpedo division boat D 2 . From 1901 further orders as a company commander, as first officer on the ship of the line Kaiser Friedrich III. and as commander of the II. Torpedo Reserve Division.

Navy attaché in Tokyo

Richard Lange traveled to Japan on November 4, 1905 for his second major foreign assignment. After a five-month training period and handover of official business, he replaced the naval attaché Corvette Captain Konrad Trummler (1864-1936) stationed there at the German embassy in Tokyo on March 31, 1906 . Chargé d'affaires of the German embassy at this time was Emmerich von Arco-Valley (1852–1909). Military attaché had been Günther von Etzel (1862-1948) since 1902 , who was still on the battlefields of the Russo-Japanese war as an observer at the time Langes arrived in Tokyo. The area of ​​responsibility of the naval attaché lay clearly with his investigations and reports in the sector of maritime developments, but in the temporary absence of the military attaché it was always necessary that events from this military area had to be taken into account. The topics of the naval attaché otherwise concentrated on the organizational and personnel-political issues of the Japanese navy, its strength, logistics, the arming and deployment of individual areas. Above all, there were strategic issues that became visible in the context of maneuvers and operational exercises, budget issues, armaments developments and connections between domestic and foreign policy in Japan that had an impact on marine-political decisions. The rapid technical progress in the field of naval technology and armament, the introduction of wireless telegraphy , the development of torpedoes and other submarine weapons were other topics of interest to the Imperial Navy in Germany. With his previous career, Lange had good qualifications for his duties as a naval attaché. What was quite new for him was the necessary interaction with other attachés working in Tokyo, the political arena on which he had to learn to move and the extreme reluctance of the Japanese. In no other country had distrust of the attachés become as common as in Japan. In a report to Berlin he wrote that the Japanese, and in particular the Japanese officers, are extremely “careful in their answers”, even if one only “asks about a harmless matter. It is as if they fear that their answer will be treason. "

During Richard Lange's tenure, the power rivalries between the United States and Japan came to a head. Military clashes between the two countries seemed almost inevitable, especially after the Russo-Japanese war. Political tensions, mutual provocations and the struggle for new positions of power in the Pacific region determined the picture. The high point was the dispatch of the US fleet to the Pacific in 1907. This raised the question of whether there would be a war or whether the United States only intended to send the signal that it would not renounce its naval rule over Japan. In the event of war, the question was whether the Japanese fleet would be able to defeat the “Pacific Fleet” and what alliance policy decisions would result for Germany. This was very clearly reflected in Lange's need for information and reports to his superiors in Berlin. To this end, in November 1907 he prepared an analysis “re. Behavior of the Japanese fleet in the event of war ”and concluded that there was no danger of war as long as the Americans did not violate the Japanese's sense of honor. And also at later times it could be confirmed by several attachés that an invasion of the USA had never been the main military target of the Japanese during these years. On December 26, 1909, Lange's successor, Corvette Captain Paul Fischer (1872–1939), arrived in Tokyo for delivery. Richard Lange started his journey home to Germany on March 31, 1910. On the return trip, Lange reported again on the Japanese-American tensions after the situation had been heated up again by press reports, and confirmed his earlier findings.

First World War

When he returned to Germany, Richard Lange made himself available to the chief of the North Sea naval station and, after a short interim phase, was appointed commander of the ship of the line Kaiser Wilhelm II . He carried out this task for two years and in 1912 also transferred to the Wittelsbach liner as commander . In the following years, including the time after the outbreak of the First World War, he led the ship of the line Posen , which took part in all major missions of the imperial ocean-going fleet . In 1915 it supported the advance into the Riga Bay and was involved in the Battle of the Skagerrak , where there was an unwanted collision with the cruiser Elbing , in which the Posen remained unscathed. When she had to go to the shipyard for an overhaul in June 1917, Lange left the ship. He was promoted to rear admiral with effect from May 1917 and appointed inspector of the naval depot inspection. He carried out this activity until the beginning of 1919, resigned his service on January 23rd and was dismissed by the State Secretary in the Reichsmarineamt on January 31st.

Richard Lange died on February 18, 1939 in Berlin-Charlottenburg.

literature

• Hans H. Hildebrand and Ernest Henriot: Germany's Admirals 1849-1945 Volume 2: H-Qu , Biblio Verlag Osnabrück, 1988, p. 351 f. ISBN 3-7648-2480-8 .
• Hans H. Hildebrand, Albert Röhr, Hans-Otto Steinmetz: The German warships. Biographies - a mirror of naval history from 1815 to the present. Volume 6: Ship biographies from Lützow to Prussia. Mundus Verlag, Ratingen, p. 239 ff.
• Klaus-Volker Giessler: The Institution of the Naval Attaché in the Empire , Harald Boldt Verlag, Boppard am Rhein, 1976
• Hans Hildebrand: Formation history and staffing of the German armed forces: 1915–1990 , Volume 2 Marine, Biblio Verlag Osnabrück, 2000.
• Ranking lists of the Imperial Navy from 1888 to 1919 , Mittler und Sohn Verlag, Kiel University Bookstore.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Heinrich Otto Meisner: Military attachés and military representatives in Prussia and in the German Reich , Rütten & Loening Verlag Berlin 1957, p. 25 ff.
2. ^ Report of the naval attaché Richard Lange of July 30, 1908. In: Klaus-Volker Giessler: The Institution of the Naval Attaché in the Empire , Harald Boldt Verlag Boppard am Rhein, 1976, p. 130 f.
3. ^ Richard Lange report of November 13, 1907 and accompanying letter from the ambassador with the same date, BA MA Fasc. 7202 PG 69 066. In: Klaus-Volker Giessler: The Institution of the Naval Attaché in the Empire , Harald Boldt Verlag, Boppard am Rhein, 1976, p. 118
4. ^ Reports of the naval attaché Georg Hebbinghaus (USA), the envoy Alfons Mumm von Schwarzenstein (Japan) and Richard Lange. In: Klaus-Volker Giessler: The Institution of the Naval Attaché in the Empire , Harald Boldt Verlag, Boppard am Rhein, 1976, p. 118.
5. ^ Richard Lange report of May 10, 1910 regarding operational planning f. Troop landings in the USA. In: Klaus-Volker Giessler: The Institution of the Naval Attaché in the Empire , Harald Boldt Verlag, Boppard am Rhein, 1976, p. 118.
6. ↑ Hans H. Hildebrand, Albert Röhr, Hans-Otto Steinmetz: The German warships. Biographies - a mirror of naval history from 1815 to the present. Volume 6: Ship biographies from Lützow to Prussia. Mundus Verlag, Ratingen, p. 239 ff.