Teodors Spāde

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Teodors Spāde (born March 7, 1891 in Ventspils , † July 25, 1970 in Temirtau ) was a Latvian naval officer. From 1931 to 1940 he was the highest officer in the Latvian fleet .

Life

Teodors Spāde was born in Ventspils as the son of a coachman. The son was able to attend school in Riga, where he also graduated from the local polytechnic in 1914 in mechanics. As a student he was a participant in an expedition to Siberia and the Arctic Ocean .

At the beginning of the First World War , Spāde was drafted into the Navy , graduated from the officers' school in St. Petersburg in 1915 and then served in the Russian Black Sea Fleet . Here he commanded various torpedo boats and was with the naval headquarters in Batumi from 1917 . There he married the Grusinian Nadeždu Švelidzi-Petrov . After the October Revolution , Spāde served in the fleets of the Ukrainian People's Republic and then the Republic of Georgia . In 1918 he was imprisoned by the Turks when their military had occupied Batumi. From October 1918 he made himself available to the fleets of Generals Denikin and then Wrangel . In 1920 he was in command of the important port of Sevastopol .

After the evacuation of the remnants of Wrangel's army, Spāde returned to Latvia. He was involved in several civil shipping companies until 1926 before returning to the military. There he was used in the maritime reconnaissance department. In preparation for higher offices, Spāde graduated from the Academy of the French Navy in Paris by 1928 . After his return he was appointed captain of the flagship of the Latvian Navy in 1929, and in 1931 he succeeded Archibald von Keyserling as chief of the coastal defense squadron . In 1938 Spāde, promoted to admiral , was appointed commander of the Latvian navy .

Because of the occupation of Latvia by the Soviet Union in 1940, Spāde was first released and then on June 14, 1941 his arrest and deportation to the Tomsk area . Spāde went through various penal camps. Despite an amnesty after Stalin's death in 1953, he was not allowed to return to Latvia. Until his death he worked as an accountant for a hospital in the city of Temirtau in Kazakhstan . His body was reburied in his hometown of Ventspils in 1990.

literature

  • Mārtiņš Bisters and Juris Ciganovs: Admirālis Teodors Spāde , Valters un Rapa, Riga 2002, ISBN 9984-595-70-6

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Mārtiņš Bisters and Juris Ciganovs: Admirālis Teodors Spade. P. 11.
  2. ↑ Laiks magazine of May 30, 1990 online
personal data
SURNAME Spāde, Teodors
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Latvian naval officer
DATE OF BIRTH March 7, 1891
PLACE OF BIRTH Ventspils
DATE OF DEATH July 25, 1970
Place of death Temirtau