Werner von Haeften

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Werner von Haeften (1939)

Werner Karl Otto Theodor von Haeften [ 'haftn ] (born October 9, 1908 in Berlin ; † July 21, 1944 in Berlin-Tiergarten ) was a German lawyer , reserve officer and resistance fighter against National Socialism .

Life

Werner von Haeften was born the son of Agnes (born von Brauchitsch , her brother was Walther von Brauchitsch ) and the officer and president of the Reichsarchiv Hans von Haeften . His siblings were Elisabeth and Hans Bernd (1905–1944). After graduating from high school, he studied law in Berlin and Paris. After his first state examination in 1931 and the second state examination in 1934, he first joined the legal department of the 'Deutsche Rentenbank Kreditanstalt' in Berlin, where he worked on the agricultural debt settlement according to the Hugenberg law of 1933. In 1937 he was appointed head of the legal department. At the latest in October 1938, he became General Counsel to the traditional Hamburg private bank MM Warburg & Co . The Warburg family had long been close friends of the von Haeften family; Werner's father, Hans von Haeften, met Max Warburg in 1918 when he accompanied him to negotiations with the American president.

At the beginning of the Second World War , Oberleutnant der Reserve von Haeften was deployed as an infantry platoon leader on the Eastern Front. After being seriously wounded in Russia in the winter of 1942, he served as adjutant to Colonel Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg on the general staff of the Commander-in-Chief in the Bendler Block in Berlin .

Memorial stone in the old St.-Matthäus-Kirchhof at the short-term burial place of Haeftens and other victims of July 20 (2009)

He was involved in the planning and execution of the assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler on July 20, 1944 . He accompanied Stauffenberg to the Führer headquarters Wolfsschanze near Rastenburg (today Kętrzyn ) near the village of Görlitz ( Gierłoż ) in East Prussia , in today's Poland . He then returned to Berlin with him to initiate the “ Valkyrie ” secret plan to overthrow the Nazi regime . On the orders of Colonel General Friedrich Fromm von Haeften was arrested together with Friedrich Olbricht , Ludwig Beck , Albrecht Ritter Mertz von Quirnheim and Stauffenberg and sentenced to death . When the conspirators were to be shot in the courtyard of the Bendler Block immediately afterwards and it was Stauffenberg's turn, von Haeften stood before his superiors and friends.

First of all, the remains of the conspirators in uniform and with medals and decorations were buried in the Old St. Matthew Cemetery in Berlin-Schöneberg . On the orders of Heinrich Himmler , however, took place a day later by the SS , the exhumation and burning the corpses in the crematorium Wedding . The ashes were scattered on the Berlin sewage fields . A memorial stone as an honorary grave of the city of Berlin is in the old St.-Matthäus-Kirchhof in field AS-41/42.

On the anniversary of the 1962 assassination attempt, a commemorative plaque was unveiled in the courtyard of the Bendler Block with the names of the officers shot there, including Werner von Haeften's.

Private

Haeften was engaged to Reinhild Countess von Hardenberg , daughter of the resistance fighter Carl-Hans Graf von Hardenberg .

literature

  • Hartmut Ludwig: Werner von Haeften . In: Harald Schultze , Andrea Kurschat (ed.): “Your end looks at ...” Protestant martyrs of the 20th century . Evangelische Verlags-Anstalt, Leipzig 2008, ISBN 978-3-374-02370-7 .

Honor

Web links

Commons : Werner von Haeften  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Stephen Schröder (Ed.): The Twentieth July 1944. Profile, Motive, Desiderate Münster 2008, p. 87 (short biographical contribution about Werner von Haeften).
  2. ↑ Federal Ministry of Defense (ed.): The Bendler block. 3rd, updated edition, Berlin 2009, p. 21 (short biographical contribution about Werner von Haeften).
  3. ^ Joachim Fest: Coup d'état - The long way to July 20th. Wolf Jobst Siedler, Berlin 1994, p. 280.
  4. ↑ Haeftenzeile. In: Street name lexicon of the Luisenstädtischer Bildungsverein (near  Kaupert ).
personal data
SURNAME Haeften, Werner von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Haeften, Werner Karl Otto Theodor von (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German lawyer, officer and resistance fighter against National Socialism
DATE OF BIRTH October 9, 1908
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH July 21, 1944
Place of death Berlin Tiergarten