Wedige von der Schulenburg
Joachim Albrecht Ludolf Wedige von der Schulenburg (born August 14, 1896 in Beetzendorf , † April 13, 1977 in Eutin ) was a German officer and adjutant to President Paul von Hindenburg .
Live and act
Wedige von der Schulenburg was born in 1896 as the son of the Prussian district administrator and manor house member Werner von der Schulenburg (1841-1913). He was also distantly related to the von Hindenburg family.
On the occasion of the outbreak of the First World War in August 1914, Schulenburg joined the 2nd Grand Ducal Mecklenburg Dragoon Regiment No. 18 in Parchim . During the Battle of Vilna in September 1915, he and the rest of his squadron were taken prisoner by Russia , where he remained until the end of the war. After his release in 1919, Schulenburg returned to his old regiment. In the same year he joined a voluntary dragoon regiment. In 1920 he was accepted into the Reichswehr .
Adjutant to the Reich President
On November 23, 1925, von Schulenburg was appointed second military adjutant to the former Prussian Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg , who had been elected as Reich President a few months earlier . In this capacity, it was up to him, together with the 1st military adjutant, Oskar von Hindenburg , to maintain the connection between the Reich President and the Reichswehr leadership. Schulenburg was to hold this position for almost eight and a half years, until Hindenburg's death in August 1934. As Hindenburg's son gradually became a kind of personal assistant to the President, von Schulenburg ultimately became the actual link between the head of state and the Reichswehr Ministry in Bendlerstrasse.
Von Schulenburg's practical task in working with Hindenburg was to inform him about the important developments and events in the army and to forward inquiries and instructions from the president to the Reichswehr Ministry and high-ranking troop commanders and to communicate inquiries and requests from them to the president. Due to his close proximity to the head of state in the years 1925 to 1934, Schulenburg was eyewitnesses to numerous important political events during the Hindenburg presidency, especially the dramatic events of the crisis years 1931 to 1934. Schulenburg's memoirs, which have remained unpublished so far, but are cited in various historical works a rare, intimate glimpse into Hindenburg's thinking and personal environment in the years of the presidential cabinet and the early days of the Nazi dictatorship . In a diary note from August 14, 1932, Schulenburg passed on Hindenburg's view that the appointment of Adolf Hitler as Reich Chancellor was out of the question for him because he “could not entrust the empire of Kaiser Wilhelm and Bismarck to a Bohemian private ”. In 1930 Schulenburg was promoted to Rittmeister .
Brüning describes him as the secret informant who briefed the NSDAP management in detail about the meetings with the Reich President. Of unpredictable political consequences, Schulenburg's practice was to completely isolate the aged Reich President Hindenburg from the outside world for the remaining weeks of his life after his retirement to his East Prussian estate Neudeck at the beginning of June 1934 and not even let close friends and conservative politicians come to him. One result of this measure was that the attempts of politicians like Franz von Papen to go to the president to inform him about the dangerous situation that had arisen in the Reich in the summer crisis of 1934 and to induce him to call him head of state to use incoming command over the Reichswehr to prevent the establishment of the Nazi dictatorship "at the last minute" (before the foreseeable death of Hindenburg, the last obstacle between Hitler and total power had disappeared), because they failed to gain access to Hindenburg was denied. On July 2, 1934, at the height of the Röhm affair , Schulenburg refused the adjutant of Franz von Papen Wilhelm Freiherr von Ketteler , who wanted to explain to Hindenburg the true background of the murder and to get the head of state to initiate the murder with the help of the Reichswehr To end the access to the Reich President. At least Ketteler was able to persuade Schulenburg to visit him on the estate of Hindenburg's neighbor Elard von Oldenburg-Januschau , where he informed him about the arrest of Papen. After Schulenburg Hindenburg had brought this report through, he ordered the Reichswehr Minister Werner von Blomberg to arrange for the immediate release of Papen, who was under house arrest, and to inform him that he, Blomberg, was liable to him with his head. The house arrest was lifted that evening.
As early as April 1934, Schulenburg had transferred a draft for Hindenburg's will, drawn up by Papen - after some changes by von Hindenburg - in a fair copy.
In the troop
In 1934 Schulenburg married Christa von Bandemer , a daughter of the Prussian major von Bandemer.
On January 1, 1938, Schulenburg took command of the Krad-Schützen- Battalion 1 with the rank of major , which he led until March 1940. From 1939 he took part in the Second World War - now with the rank of lieutenant colonel . On March 5, 1940, Schulenburg came to the Motorized Corps IIa as a colonel . The Panzer Group 20, into which he was transferred, then emerged from the Corps, which was subordinate to Colonel General Erich Hoepner . On February 17, 1941, he was transferred to Panzer Army IIa, which took part in the 1941 attack on Moscow as part of the Army Group North . Schulenburg also took part in the fighting in 1942 with the tank troops, which were elevated to the 4th Panzer Army in January . From March 15, 1943 Schulenburg was employed in the Army Personnel Office . He then worked from November 1943 until the end of the war on the staff of the Military District Command XXI, Posen.
post war period
At the end of the war, Schulenburg was taken prisoner by the British . In the post-war period, he managed a settlement that was taken over by Gutehoffnungshütte in 1957 . In the following years he ran a spa pension.
After living in Thal near Pyrmont for two years from 1968 to 1970, Schulenburg moved to Eutin in 1970 when his niece Margarethe von der Schulenburg took over the management of the Wilhelmshöhe retirement home near Eutin .
Schulenburg's estate is now kept in the Federal Archives-Military Archives in Freiburg. It mainly contains documents from 1922 to 1949.
literature
- Horst Mühleisen : The will of Hindenburg from May 11, 1934. In: Quarterly books for contemporary history. Vol. 44, 1996, pp. 355-371 ( ifz-muenchen.de PDF).
- Dietrich Werner Schulenburg, Hans Wätjen: History of the family from the Schulenburg. 1237 to 1983. Niedersachsen-Druck und Verlag Hempel, Wolfsburg 1984, ISBN 3-87327-000-5 .
Fonts
- Memories. unprinted, Bundesarchiv-Militärarchiv, Freiburg MSG 1/2779.
Individual evidence
- ^ Hans Rudolf Hort-Lorenzen, Anders Thiset : Danmarks Adels Aarbog. 1906, p. 396. Alternatively, Dietrich Werner names Schulenburg: History of the sex of the Schulenburg. 1237 to 1983. 1984, p. 326 the first name order Ludolf Joachim Albrecht Wedige.
- ^ Hans Rudolf Hort-Lorenzen, Anders Thiset: Danmarks Adels Aarbog. 1906, p. 396.
- ^ Dietrich Werner von der Schulenburg: History of the family von der Schulenburg. 1237 to 1983. 1984, pp. 318 and 326.
- ^ Walter Görlitz: The Junkers. Nobility and peasants in the German east. 1964, p. 58.
- ↑ Memories. BA-MA, Freiburg MSG 1/2779, sheet 140.
- ^ Brüning, Heinrich: Memoirs 1918-1934. Stuttgart 1970, p. 467.
- ↑ Bella Fromm: When Hitler kissed my hand. 1994, p. 205.
- ^ Fritz Günther von Tschirschky: Memories of a high traitor. P. 326.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Schulenburg, Wedige from the |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Schulenburg, Joachim Albrecht Ludolf Wedige from the; Schulenburg, Ludolf Joachim Albrecht Wedige from the |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German officer |
| DATE OF BIRTH | August 14, 1896 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Beetzendorf |
| DATE OF DEATH | April 13, 1977 |
| Place of death | Eutin |