Wichard von Alvensleben (officer)

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Wichard von Alvensleben

Wichard von Alvensleben (born May 19, 1902 in Wittenmoor , † August 14, 1982 in Ascheberg (Holstein) ) was a German farmer and forester . In 1945, as a German officer, he freed prominent SS hostages in South Tyrol .

Life

Wichard von Alvensleben came from the Low German noble family von Alvensleben and was the fourth and youngest son of Ludolf Udo von Alvensleben (1852-1923) from Wittenmoor and his wife Ida von Glasenapp (1866-1924). His oldest brother was the art historian Udo von Alvensleben , who took over his father's Wittenmoor estate. His second oldest brother was the SS and Police Leader in Italy Ludolf Jakob von Alvensleben . He attended school in the monastery of Our Lady in Magdeburg as well as the knight academy in Brandenburg Cathedral and graduated from high school in 1921 at the Roßleben monastery school . After four years of practical training in agriculture and forestry , he studied forestry, agriculture and law in Eberswalde and Munich . In 1927 he married Cora von Erxleben, heiress of the Tankow -Seegenfelde estate, Friedeberg Nm district. , and Dertzow , District Soldin in the Neumark . From 1929 to 1939 he managed these estates. In 1936 he also acquired the Viarthlum forest estate in the Rummelsburg i. Pom. Two daughters were born in 1934 and 1936. Wichard von Alvensleben was a legal knight of the Order of St. John and a deeply religious Christian.

During the Second World War , von Alvensleben served as an officer in the Wehrmacht in Poland , France , Russia , in the African campaign and in Italy . In Russia he was seriously wounded in 1941 and received the Wound Badge , the Infantry Assault Badge and the Iron Cross 1st Class . His wife Cora shot herself when the Red Army arrived in Tankow on January 29, 1945. The castle was looted and burned down and the property was placed under Polish administration.

Released from American captivity in autumn 1945, von Alvensleben initially found refuge with relatives in Nörten-Hardenberg near Göttingen . Until 1952 he worked as a lumberjack, employee of a sugar factory and was temporarily unemployed. In August 1946 he married Astrid von Brand , widowed Countess von Brockdorff-Ahlefeldt , whose husband had died in Russia. From 1952 to 1956 he managed the Brockdorffsche Gut in Ascheberg near Plön. Then he worked for the Diakonisches Werk of the Evangelical Church in Rendsburg . His areas of responsibility were the integration of refugees, especially young people, and care for alcoholics. In 1974 he retired. He died in 1982. His resting place is in the Brockdorff family cemetery in Ascheberg.

The liberation of the SS hostages

In the last days of the Second World War , an event took place that, according to his own statements, had a very deep impact on his life. On April 30, 1945, on the orders of his superior Heinrich von Vietinghoff, as captain of the Wehrmacht in Niederdorf / South Tyrol , he freed a transport of 139 prominent special prisoners from sixteen nations, whose SS guards had orders not to let these prisoners fall alive into enemy hands. Some of them were accommodated in the hotel on Lake Braies . These prisoners included a. the former Austrian Chancellor Kurt Schuschnigg , the multiple French Prime Minister Léon Blum , Martin Niemöller , the later Auxiliary Bishop Johannes Neuhäusler , Fabian von Schlabrendorff , Alexander Freiherr von Falkenhausen , Isa Vermehren , the British secret service agent Sigismund Payne Best as well as clan prisoners of July 20, 1944 , among others from the Stauffenberg and Goerdeler families .

On the morning of April 29, one of the special prisoners, Colonel Bogislaw von Bonin , secretly telephoned the High Command of Army Group C in Bozen, a hundred kilometers away, and asked the Wehrmacht for help. In response to this phone call, von Alvensleben came to Niederdorf from Moos, seventeen kilometers away near Sexten, late in the evening , to get an unobtrusive picture of the situation and then to return from Moos the next morning with a raid of fifteen NCOs . Another reinforcement of 150 grenadiers from Dobbiaco , five kilometers away , arrived two hours later and cordoned off the market square so that von Alvensleben, with the backing of SS-Obergruppenführer Karl Wolff , was able to get the SS men to give up and leave for Bolzano .

The rescue operation was not made known to a wider public until 19 years later through a major newspaper article. On the occasion of the 60th anniversary of this event , the journalist Hans-Günter Richardi compiled further details and background information in his book SS-Geiseln in der Alpenfestung . In 1964, Wichard von Alvensleben himself gave - in a letter to Niemöller - a Christian interpretation of the process at the time: It was not a coincidence, "but rather a coincidence and guidance through the rule of otherworldly forces that we Christians call God". On the other hand, pointing out any contributor is pointless, "since we were all just tools and helpers who were needed for higher intentions". There is no other way of explaining the improbable course of events for the thoughtful initiate. "But" - so he concludes the letter to Niemöller - "how do we tell the people today?"

The film Wir, Geiseln der SS from 2015 is a cinematic approach.

literature

Web links

  • Führer prisoners: Nice weather . In: Der Spiegel . No. 9 , 1967, p. 54/55 ( online report on the liberation of special prisoners and clan prisoners).

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b c Peter Koblank: The liberation of the special prisoners and clan prisoners in South Tyrol. In: Online-Edition Mythos Elser 2006.
  2. ^ Lothar Meißner: 1945: coup d'état in Pustertal. In: Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung . 5th / 6th September 1964.
personal data
SURNAME Alvensleben, Wichard von
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German farmer and forester, captain of the Wehrmacht
DATE OF BIRTH May 19, 1902
PLACE OF BIRTH Wittenmoor , Stendal , Altmark
DATE OF DEATH August 14, 1982
Place of death Ascheberg , Holstein