Valentin Feurstein

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Valentin Feurstein (born January 18, 1885 in Bregenz ; † June 8, 1970 in Innsbruck ) was major general in the Austrian armed forces and, after the Anschluss, general of the mountain troops in the Wehrmacht .

Life

Young years and first world war

Valentin Feurstein joined the 2nd Tyrolean Kaiserjäger Regiment as a lieutenant on August 18, 1906 . He stayed there until December 19, 1913. During this time, from September 1910 to the end of August 1913, he attended the Vienna War School . He then served from December 20, 1913 to the end of April 1914 as a general staff officer in the 8th Infantry Troop Division . On May 1, 1914, he moved to the same position in the General Staff of the 122nd Infantry (Mountain) Brigade . It was here that Feurstein experienced the outbreak of the First World War . In 1916 he was transferred to the General Staff of the XX. Corps . At an unknown point in time in 1917, he switched to the Rivs section command as a general staff officer, in which he remained until 1919 after the end of the war.

Interwar years

After the war Feurstein served from 1919 to the end of June 1920 for the regional commander in Vorarlberg and on July 1, 1920 joined the armed forces with the rank of captain . Here he initially acted as head of the military department of the Army Administration Office in Bregenz . On February 16, 1924 he was promoted to head of this department, whose function he held until the end of June 1929. During this time, Feurstein served from April 1917 to November 1928 with Alpenjäger Battalion 4 in the troop service there. From July 1929 to February 1930 he was employed as Chief of Staff of the 6th Brigade Command . Feurstein then acted from March 1930 to August 1931 as an assigned officer in Brigade Command 6 and then in the same position from September 1931 to March 1933 at Brigade Command 1 (Burgenland).

On April 1, 1933 he was appointed head of the Lower Austria Army Administration Office . In November of the same year he was transferred to Vienna , where he initially served as a consultant in the Federal Ministry of National Defense until the end of March 1937, and from 1935 on as head of the supplementary department. With the rank of major general , Feurstein succeeded Field Marshal Lieutenant Wilhelm Gebauer as commander of the 3rd Division in St. Pölten on April 1, 1937 . Here he also served as the military commander of Lower Austria until the end of March 1938.

Second World War

Promotions

After the annexation of Austria , Feurstein was appointed commander of the 2nd Mountain Division on April 1, 1938 , which he then led during the attack on Poland and during the occupation of Norway in the spring of 1940. On March 4, 1941, Feurstein handed over command of the division to Lieutenant General Ernst Schlemmer and joined the Führerreserve until the beginning of March 1941 . During this time, from March 4 to May 10, 1941, he was also the leadership of the LXII. Army Corps instructed. On May 10, 1941 he was appointed to the leadership of the Higher Command z. b. V. LXX appointed, whose commander became on March 1, 1942. He had previously been promoted to general of the mountain troops in this capacity on September 1, 1941 . On January 25, 1943, his existing command was transferred to the LXX. Army corps with command post in Oslo converted, with Feurstein fulfilling the function of commanding general until June 22, 1943. Then he saw himself transferred to the Führerreserve again until August 1943. On August 25, 1943 Feurstein became the commanding general of the LI. Mountain Army Corps appointed. He led this in the battles in northern Italy , later in the Battle of Monte Cassino , for which he was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross on August 12, 1944 .

During this time, two English parachutists were not taken prisoner near the Italian city of Ponzano and at Passo di Cisa, but shot on the spot. This happened in his area of ​​command. That is why Feurstein was brought to trial in Hamburg for war crimes after the war.

Then his corps was involved in further defensive battles in northern Italy. In January 1945 Feurstein gave command of the corps to General of the Artillery Friedrich Wilhelm Hauck and rejoined the Führer Reserve. During this time, he was assigned to the command area of ​​the Commander-in-Chief Southwest Field Marshal Albert Kesselring until April 22, 1945 . On April 22, 1945 he was appointed Inspector General of the Tyrolean Standschützen and Commander of the Alpine Front . In this capacity he declared Bregenz an open city on April 28, 1945 in view of the approaching French troops and was deposed as the fortress commander by Gauleiter Franz Hofer that same afternoon . His successor was General of the Infantry Hans Schmidt .

But he also refused to defend Bregenz "down to the last man" and agreed with Kesselring to defend only the strategically important hermitage. Bregenz's status as an open city fell and parts of Bregenz were destroyed shortly before the end of the war. Feurstein was taken prisoner of war on April 29, 1945 , from which he was released on August 28, 1948.

In 1963 his memories of the war appeared in the book Irrwege der Dienst , which he wrote down in Wels . What the title announces is refuted by the content: Others have taken the wrong turns, Feurstein only has to fulfill his duty, the soldierly one - in his eyes an absolute value that need not be questioned. For Feurstein, millions of deaths in war are not worth mentioning - and there is no reason to doubt the sense of his duty. After his death, Feurstein was buried in Innsbruck at the old military cemetery.

Awards

literature

  • Heribert Kristan: The General Staff Service in the Federal Army of the First Republic
  • Schematism for the Austrian Armed Forces and the Armed Forces Administration from 1933
  • Dermot Bradley: The Generals of the Army 1921-1945 Volume 3: Dahlmann-Fitzlaff, Biblio Verlag, Osnabrück 1994, ISBN 3-7648-2424-7 , pp. 459-460
  • Wolfgang Keilig: The Generals of the Army 1939–1945 . Podzun-Pallas-Verlag, Friedberg 1983, ISBN 3-7909-0202-0 , p. 89

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ From the armed forces. From Ordinance Gazette No. 16. In:  Oesterreichische Wehrzeitung , December 11, 1936, p. 6 (online at ANNO ).Template: ANNO / Maintenance / add
  2. ↑ Veit Scherzer : Knight's Cross bearers 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. 306.
personal data
SURNAME Feurstein, Valentin
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian general
DATE OF BIRTH January 18, 1885
PLACE OF BIRTH Bregenz
DATE OF DEATH June 8, 1970
Place of death innsbruck