Ulrich von Ritgen
Ulrich von Ritgen (born June 2, 1894 in Wetzlar ; † 1969 ) was a German officer and involved in the murder of Karl Liebknecht .
Life
Ulrich von Ritgen, son of the secret building officer in Wetzlar Hugo von Ritgen and grandson of the architect Hugo von Ritgen , joined the Imperial Navy in 1913 as a cadet , became a lieutenant in the sea in 1915 and a first lieutenant in the sea in the mine search forces in 1917 .
In 1919 von Ritgen was a member of the naval officer squadron of Lieutenant Horst von Pflugk-Harttung , a sub-formation of the Guard Cavalry Rifle Division . On January 15, 1919 he trained together with Pflugk-Harttung himself, the lieutenant to the sea Heinrich Stiege and the lieutenant d. R. Rudolf Liepmann took over the command that carried out the shooting of Karl Liebknecht in the Berlin zoo on the orders of Waldemar Pabst .
Like the other parties involved in the killing of Liebknecht and Luxemburg, von Ritgen had to appear before a field war tribunal of the Guard Cavalry Rifle Division from May 8 to 14, 1919 , but was not found guilty of any offense.
During the occupation of the Ruhr in 1923, von Ritgen produced counterfeit French banknotes ; In 1929 he was temporarily resident in Kalange-Kulasi in Tanganyika , in 1931 he joined Waldemar Pabst's Society for the Study of Fascism .
It was not until 1946 that Ritgen's role in Liebknecht's murder was unequivocally established when his own father-in-law reported him for allegedly participating in the murder of Walther Rathenau . During a subsequent house search by the CIC , clues were found which revealed his actual involvement in the killing of Liebknecht. On the instructions of the American military authorities, Ritgen was arrested by the German police, but in the subsequent trial he was finally acquitted by the Kassel Higher Regional Court and later not prosecuted again.
literature
- Klaus Gietinger: A corpse in the Landwehr Canal - The murder of Rosa L. Verlag 1900 Berlin, 1995. ISBN 3-930278-02-2
- International academic correspondence on the history of the German labor movement , volume 3/1992 (p. 329 f.)
Web links
- Ulrich von Ritgen in the online version of the Reich Chancellery Files Edition . Weimar Republic
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Ritgen, Ulrich von |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German officer and participant in the murder of Karl Liebknecht |
| DATE OF BIRTH | June 2, 1894 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Wetzlar |
| DATE OF DEATH | 1969 |