Walter Forstmann

Walter Forstmann , also Walther Forstmann (born March 9, 1883 in Werden ; † September 2, 1973 in Essen-Bredeney ) was a German submarine commander in World War I and a knight of the Pour le Mérite order . With his submarine SM U 39, he sank a total of 146 ships with 384,304 GRT on 16 companies  , making him one of the commanders who sank most ships. After the wars he became the "settler father".

Career before the First World War

Forstmann drove on SMS Sperber as a watch officer

Walter Forstmann was the son of the medical council Dr. med. Gustav Forstmann born. He attended the Burggymnasium in Essen . On April 7, 1900, he joined the Imperial Navy as a midshipman and was thus a member of "Crew 00". Forstmann received basic nautical training by April of the following year. During this time he traveled on board the ships of the Imperial Navy, including the Mediterranean and the waters around Great Britain and Scandinavia . In April 1901 Walter Forstmann was promoted to ensign at sea and came to the Kiel Naval School . In 1903 Forstmann drove on SMS Kaiser Wilhelm the Great . In August of the same year he was promoted to lieutenant at sea and then went on to serve as an officer on watch on the light cruiser SMS Ariadne . As an officer in the 1st Sailor Division in Kiel , Leutnant z. S. Forstmann took part in test runs of the newly built liner SMS Preußen in 1905 . He then became a watch officer on the small cruiser SMS Sperber and stationed with it in the German colony of Cameroon . At the end of March 1906, Walter Forstmann was promoted to lieutenant at sea . In 1908 Oberleutnant Forstmann was given command of the torpedo boat D 8 . For the rescue of a sailor who had fallen overboard, he was awarded the Rescue Medal on Ribbon and awarded on August 25, 1908. On October 1, 1909, Walter Forstmann was assigned to the submarine weapon and drove under the commandant Eberhard von Mantey as the first officer on the lifting ship SMS Vulkan . During this time he also received his submarine training.

Submarine harbor in Kiel 1914

Forstmann took up his first submarine command on May 1, 1910. He became the commander of the deep-sea submarine U 11 . On this boat, Kapitänleutnant Forstmann - promoted on April 10, 1911 - took part in the great imperial maneuver in the summer of 1912. For his participation he was awarded the Red Eagle Order IV class by the Emperor . This year, the U 11 and the U 5 undertook an eleven-day continuous journey on which the boats covered 300 nautical miles . Since the German submarines had carried out marching exercises of up to 50 hours at the most, this trip was considered an almost unlikely record. In the winter of the same year, Grand Admiral von Tirpitz , building on this experience, ordered the entire 1st U-Flotilla for an endurance test run of 300 nm, which simulated the approach and departure route between Heligoland and England. In October 1913, Lieutenant Forstmann was assigned to the Kiel Naval Academy . Captain von Suchodoletz took command of U 11 . Lieutenant Forstmann took part in the maneuvers of the high seas fleet on the small cruiser SMS Cöln during the holiday season . At the outbreak of war he was the flotilla chief of the port flotilla of Heligoland.

U-boat commander in World War I

HMS Niger - the first ship sunk by Forstmann

At the beginning of the war, no great importance was attached to the submarine fleet. Accordingly, the Reichsmarineamt has already negotiated with other nations about the sale of submarines, for example to Greece . Only the success of Otto Weddigen on the SM U 9 brought a slow rethinking in motion. On August 6, 1914, Kapitänleutnant Forstmann took command of U 12 , a boat of the same type (type U 9) as his previous boat, SM U 11 . With this boat he sank the gunboat HMS Niger on November 11 in front of the British city of Deal . On January 13, 1915, Kapitänleutnant Forstmann became the commandant of U 39 , a modern U 31 boat that was launched at the Germania shipyard in September of the previous year . The later commander of the submarines, Karl Dönitz, served as a watch and records officer under Forstmann on U 39 until December 1917 . In the first half of 1917, the later theologian and resistance fighter Martin Niemöller also drove as a helmsman on U 39 . With U 39 , Kapitänleutnant Forstmann completed 16 enemy voyages on which he sank 147 merchant ships. In May 1916 he successfully shelled the port facilities of Portoferraio . For his services he was honored with the order Pour le Mérite in August 1916 and in November of the same year with the Knight's Cross of the Royal House Order of Hohenzollern and the Knight's Cross of the Leopold Order with war decorations. In December 1917 Kapitänleutnant Forstmann was ordered to the U-Boot Inspektion (UI), which had been set up in March 1914 to propose structural measures and type changes, as well as to check them and to ensure the war-like training of the submarine officers. Captain Forstmann remained at the UI in Kiel until December 1917 . In January of the following year he became the flotilla chief of the 3rd U-Flotilla in Wilhelmshaven . He remained in this post after the end of the war until he was finally retired from the Navy in March 1919.

Between the wars

Forstmann began to study economics and entered the August Thyssen-Hütte in Duisburg in 1920 . There he rose within a short time to operations director and social affairs officer. In 1924, Forstmann received his doctorate on the subject of housing for miners and steelworkers in Hamborn . Before he could fully devote himself to building settlements, however, he put on his naval uniform again.

Use in World War II

Walter Forstmann was reactivated in August 1939 and joined the Osnabrück Armaments Command. Until April 1940 he was employed there as head of the naval department, until on April 16 he was assigned to the high command of the Wehrmacht , where he served as head of the Copenhagen liaison office and was responsible for the occupation of Denmark (Weser exercise south) as part of the Weser Exercise company . On April 10, Walter Forstmann landed on the staff of the commander of the occupation forces, General Röttger, in Korsør . Until May 1945 he was chief of the military economic staff in Copenhagen . During this time, Walter Forstmann was promoted several times: on April 15 to Corvette Captain , on April 7, 1941 to Frigate Captain and finally on July 1, 1942 to Captain of the Sea . On May 9, 1945 he was taken prisoner by the British and was interned in Malente-Gremsmühlen .

After the war

Walter Forstmann was released from captivity on August 3, 1945. After 1945 he became a member of the Wohnstätten-Aktiengesellschaft again. In the later years he was involved in many honorary positions. Forstmann worked, for example, as the Vice President of the German Settlers Association and during this time developed the idea of ​​supporting private homes. He participated in the fact that 120 small group settlements could be built and these offered space for a total of 3,500 accommodations. In addition, after the end of the Second World War, Forstmann implemented the construction of 30 Pestalozzi villages . These shared apartments offered mountain apprentices who did not come from the immediate vicinity a family life. His housing policy efforts earned Walter Forstmann the nickname “Settler Father”. He was honored with the plaque of honor of the city of Essen for his pioneering work in settlement construction and the associated intensive efforts to meet the wishes and needs of the workers for living space . Federal President Heinrich Lübke honored Forstmann on March 9, 1968 by awarding him the Great Cross of Merit with Star of the Federal Republic of Germany . He also received honorary doctorates from the Accademia Tiberina (1968) and the Unione delle Università del Mediterraneo (1972) in Rome.

Two settlements in Dortmund-Kirchlinde were named after Walter Forstmann (Walter-Forstmann-I and -II) because of his many services to Essen, the Ruhr area and the mining sector.

Walter Forstmann died on November 2, 1973 in Essen-Bredeney, where he was buried in the Bredeney cemetery.

literature

• Erwin Dickhoff: Essen heads: who was what? Bacht, Essen 1985.
• Andreas Michelsen: The U-Boat War 1914–1918. v. Hase & Koehler Verlag, Leipzig 1925.
• Bodo Herzog, Günter Schomaekers: Knights of the Deep Gray Wolves. The most successful submarine commanders in the world. Verlag Welsermühl, Munich 1976, ISBN 3-85339-136-2 .
• Paul Kemp: German and Austrian submarine losses in both world wars. Urbes Verlag, Graefelfing 1997, ISBN 3-924896-43-7 .
• Helmut Pemsel: Biographical lexicon on naval war history: naval heroes from antiquity to the present. Bernard & Graefe, Koblenz 1985.
• Eberhard Rössler : History of the German submarine building. Bernard & Graefe Verlag, Bonn 1996, ISBN 3-86047-153-8 .

Web links

• Walter Forstmann (English)
• Cemetery Guide Essen , accessed on July 26, 2015

Notes and individual references

1. ↑ Bodo Herzog , Günter Schomaekers: Knights of the Deep Gray Wolves The most successful submarine commanders in the world. Verlag Weslermühl, Munich 1976, ISBN 3-85339-136-2 , p. 53.
2. ↑ In the Imperial Navy officer year as was crew called, this tradition was later by the Imperial Navy and the Navy adopted
3. ↑ Commander von Suchodoletz sank with U 11 on December 9, 1914 off the Belgian coast, probably through a mine
4. ↑ E. Rössler: "History of the German U-Bootbau" Vol. 1, p. 55.
5. ↑ Martin Niemöller: From the submarine to the pulpit. Martin Warneck Verlag, Berlin 1938.
6. ↑ E. Rössler: History of the German submarine building. Volume 1, p. 71.
7. ↑ The defense industry offices organized and coordinated the orders to armaments factories, as well as the allocation of labor. The term Wehrwirtschaftsstab was replaced by the term armaments staff in May 1942 and was no longer subordinate to the OKW, but to the Reich Ministry for Armaments and Ammunition .