Stephan von Gröning (officer)

Stephan Albert Heinrich von Gröning (* 7. May 1898 in Bremen , † 1982 ) was a German officer of the defense in the Second World War .

Life

The House of Groening in Bremen

Stephan von Gröning came from the Bremen patrician family Gröning and grew up in extremely wealthy circumstances. His mother, née Helena Graue (1863–1939), came from the United States , which is why he spoke fluent English . His father Heinrich von Gröning (1856–1913) was a wholesale merchant and, since 1902, the Dutch consul in Bremen. The family lived in the house at Am Wall 113, built by Jacob Ephraim Polzin in 1833 .

During the First World War , von Gröning joined the "Queen Olga" dragoon regiment known as the White Dragoons with the rank of first lieutenant , was wounded on the western front and was awarded the Iron Cross, 2nd class. A pneumonia , the disease of tuberculosis followed, led to his dismissal for Dienstuntauglichkeit. During a recovery stay in Davos , he met the British girl Gladys Nott Gillard , who was also suffering from tuberculosis , and whom he married there on December 19, 1923.

Together with his wife, he traveled a lot and tried his hand at being a businessman: he bought a coffee trading company that went bankrupt a little later, and speculated on the stock market with a considerable loss . After these failures, von Gröning refrained from any further business activity, although he was still listed in the Bremen address book as a businessman .

The failed investments had resulted in Groening's fortune being almost consumed, which he ignored. He spent the following years inactive, apart from collecting works of art and reading books in several languages. In 1932 he divorced his wife.

Von Gröning, who rejected extreme ideologies and viewed anti-Semitism as vulgar, had no sympathy for National Socialism and did not seek any proximity to Adolf Hitler's regime after 1933 either . At the beginning of the Second World War he reported again to the cavalry and served with the rank of Rittmeister in the staff service. After a year, he applied to the Abwehr because he was attracted to the intellectual challenge of the intelligence work. His extensive knowledge of British and American language and culture quickly proved very useful to him; In addition, it turned out that he had a considerable knowledge of human nature and was able to quickly gain the trust of interlocutors.

Von Groening's abilities earned him a reputation within the defense; When in 1941 it was decided to create an agent school near Nantes , he was chosen to run the facility. As head of the defense branch in Nantes , which was based in the Château de la Bretonnière in Vigneux-de-Bretagne , von Gröning was under the alias of Dr. Graumann (chosen by himself on the basis of his mother's maiden name) from April 1942 to Eddie Chapman's chief officer ; A friendship developed between the two men, which became even closer as von Groening, in the course of time, more and more openly expressed his growing disgust for the National Socialist regime to Chapman. There is a presumption that von Gröning suspected Chapman's double play or was even inaugurated by himself.

In 1944 the house at Am Wall 113, in which all of Gröning's possessions were located, was destroyed in a bomb attack on Bremen. Since he had no more assets, he was practically destitute and from then on lived with his sister Dorothea von Gröning. At the end of the war he was arrested by the US Army , but released after only six months. Since he had to prove that he had a job in order to get ration cards , friends of the family gave him a sham job in a Bremen museum. Von Gröning married again and from then on led a very inconspicuous life; In 1974, Chapman, who had only learned the real name of his former commanding officer by chance 29 years after the end of the war, contacted him again. At the wedding of Chapman's daughter in 1979 von Gröning and his wife Ingeborg von Gröning were among the invited guests.

Stephan von Gröning died in 1982. He was buried in the family grave in the Waller Friedhof (grave location NN 21) in Bremen.

Representation in the film

In the 1966 film Spy Between 2 Fronts Gröning is portrayed as Baron von Grunen by Yul Brynner . The cinematic interpretation of the character, however, has little in common with the role model: While the real Stephan von Gröning was an intelligent, cultivated and astute, but also lazy, enjoyable and unmilitary person, follows the figure of von Grunen, who was a strict, military-precise one Maintains appearance, rather the common stereotype of the Prussian officer . However, there is clear consensus in the negative attitude towards National Socialism. The discrepancy between real person and film character is most evident in the fact that Baron von Grunen is shot towards the end of the film because of his connections to the assassins of July 20 , while Stephan von Gröning survived the end of the war by decades.

literature

• Ben Macintyre: Zigzag - The story of the double agent Eddie Chapman . Fackelträger-Verlag, 2008, ISBN 978-3-7716-4358-4 .
• Nicholas Booth: Zigzag: The Incredible Wartime Exploits of Double Agent Eddie Chapman . Skyhorse Publishing, 2013, ISBN 978-1-62872-157-7 .
• Lydia Niehoff : 200 years of the Dutch consulate in Bremen. In: Bremisches Jahrbuch . Volume 85 (2006), ISBN 3-925729-52-6 .

Web links

• genealogy.net - Gravestones : Grave site of the von Gröning family at the Bremen-Walle cemetery
• A big family - Stephan von Gröning