Wilhelm Wolfing

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Wilhelm Wölfing as the Heidelberg Vandal (1904)

Wilhelm Wölfing (born September 18, 1883 in Berlin ; † October 17, 1972 ibid) was a German officer , businessman and ocean sailor.

Life

As the son of the Protestant field provost of the Prussian Army Max Wölfing , Wilhelm Wölfing began studying law in Heidelberg . In 1903 he became a member of the Corps Vandalia Heidelberg . Corps students were also Wölfing's father ( Hannovera ) and grandfather ( Franconia Jena , Lusatia Leipzig ). Wölfing studied a few more semesters at the Friedrich Wilhelms University in Berlin . In Berlin he passed the first state examination in law. He completed his legal traineeship in Frankfurt (Oder) . With a Bremen resident , a Tübser Swabian and two other trainee lawyers in the corps, he founded the "five-man commission to investigate beer conditions at German universities". In the pubs , the “commission” was greeted with a salamander everywhere . The friendships of the five beer tasters lasted for life. During his internship, Wölfing learned the Russian language privately . In 1911 he was transferred to the district town of Burgsteinfurt as a Prussian government assessor .

Russia

Still a lieutenant on May 6, 1914 , he took part in the First World War from 1914 to 1918 in the 1st Guard Uhlan Regiment , most recently as Rittmeister of the Reserve . When he 1915 observers on a reconnaissance flight on the Eastern Front was that had Etrich dove behind the Russian lines make an emergency landing . On the march back to his troops, Wölfing became a prisoner of war . Treated strictly according to the Geneva Convention in the camp near the southern Urals , the German officers led a “relatively independent life”.

Awarded both Iron Crosses , in 1918, after the October Revolution , Wölfing became head of the foreign aid agency that the Supreme Army Command had set up for the repatriation of German prisoners of war in Moscow . In a memorandum he correctly predicted the development of the Bolshevik regime and recommended intervention by the Western powers . The representative of the chargé d'affaires in the Republic of Latvia headed the memorandum to personal acquaintances in the Foreign Office on.

From a biography of Otto Schmidt-Hanover , who later became a member of the Reichstag , it is said of the Brest-Litovsk peace treaty at that time : »The very unfavorable source situation is unfortunately also confirmed by another document. In the Federal Archives-Military Archives (PH 3, Vol. 51 - Collection 1. World War - East 1916/18) there is a 23-page memory report from a “Reg.Rat a. D. Wilhelm Wölfing, s. Currently Rittmeister of the OHL branch in Moscow "under the not uninteresting title: Moscow 1918 (Experiences in captivity and while working in Moscow - manuscript) , October 1955."

In the Free State of Prussia to the Governing Council appointed Wölfing took in 1919 the favorable retirement offer of the new government, which is by as many royal. Prussian wanted officials to disconnect, and became a merchant. During the Second World War , he served as a major in the Air Force in the Berlin Armaments Command from 1942 to 1945 .

Corps student and ocean sailor

Wölfling married Ethel Parkinsen, an Englishwoman from London living in Berlin, in 1921 . With her and her sister, who was widowed at an early age, he began sailing on the Wannsee . He named his first boat Ettsi after his wife . As an enthusiastic ocean sailor, he acquired the 20 m Ketch Thalatta in 1931 . The Ettsi IV was relocated to Stettin via Kiel , where it found a new home port at the Stettiner Yacht Club. The corps student Wölfing sailed the Ettsi IV under the stander of the Berlin Watersports Association of Old Corps Students (WVAC), which was established in 1921 . The Ettsi IV made numerous long trips, including to Norway . On the way to the Mediterranean Sea , she took part in the 1929 Plymouth to Santander regatta organized by the Royal Ocean Racing Club . With Wölfing and other corps students (Burchard-Motz, Carl Ferdinand Semper , both Corps Vandalia, Hans Heinz Steffani (Corps Rheno-Guestphalia Münster), Hans Kadelbach , Georg von der Osten, Friedrich Reuss, Peter Gebauer), a prospective officer in the merchant navy , a boatswain and a cook , the Ettsi IV crossed the finish line as the seventh of eleven ships. British sailors were more experienced in handling the Vizcaya .

During the German inflation from 1914 to 1923 he sold the ship to his fellow sailors Hans Kadelbach , Hans Heinz Steffani and Georg von der Osten with the proviso that he could sail it for four weeks each summer. She became known as a regatta ship in 1936; as the oldest of nine ships, she was at the Bermuda-Cuxhaven Last Ship Home ocean race . Skipper Wölfing and the navigators Volz and Semper had chosen an extreme course. While all other yachts had passed through the English Channel , the Ettsi IV was the only ship north of Scotland to sail through the Pentland Firth . There she fell into a doldrums. Later in the German Bight , she had to show up for the finish line in a northeast wind. To cross the finish line in Cuxhaven she needed 28 days and 17 hours to go it alone, while the victorious Roland von Bremen of the sailing companion “The coat of arms of Bremen” only needed 21 days and 3 hours for 3,400 nautical miles.

Even after the Second World War, Wölfing sailed the Ettsi again as a consultant for a film company in the Mediterranean. The ship was then for a long time the training ship of the Hanseatic Yacht School .

Even when he was old, Wölfing went to the deep-sea sailing evening in Bremen and to Vandalia's foundation festival in Celle .

literature

  • Ludwig Dinklage: Ocean races, 70 years of transatlantic regattas, 1866–1936. Bremen 1936.
  • Heinz Lange, Lothar Kühne: The famous Neptune ketch "Ettsi IV" ex "Thalatta". in: The Northern Lights. Announcements of the shipping history society OSTSEE eV , Rostock, issue 57 (15th year) December 2007, pp. 14-19.
  • Maximilian Terhalle: German National in Weimar: the political biography of the Reichstag member Otto Schmidt (-Hannover) 1888–1971 , Böhlau Verlag Cologne-Weimar-Vienna 2009, ISBN 978-3-412-20280-4 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Kösener Corpslisten 1960, 68/729.
  2. ↑ a b c d e Heinrich Burchard-Motz: Obituary for Wilhelm Wölfing. Vandalo-Guestphalia AHV, January 5, 1973.
  3. ^ The charge d'affaires was August Winnig , the representative was Heinrich Burchard-Motz's father
  4. ↑ Maximilian Terhalle: German National in Weimar: the political biography of the Reichstag member Otto Schmidt (-Hanover) 1888–1971 , Böhlau Verlag Köln-Weimar-Wien 2009, p. 43 in footnote 195 .
  5. ↑ The ship was built in 1923 by Actien-Gesellschaft “Neptun”, shipyard and machine factory in Rostock.
  6. ^ Government assessor Erwin Semper (1908 – missing 1943) was the son of Carl Ferdinand Semper (1870–1962) and also a member of the Corps Vandalia Heidelberg
  7. ^ Erich Volz (1902–1971) was a member of the Corps Borussia Berlin; see. Kösener corps lists 1996, 15/307.
  8. ^ Travel photos in Die Yacht 1937, issue 19, p. 12 ff.
personal data
SURNAME Wolfing, Wilhelm
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German officer, merchant and ocean sailor
DATE OF BIRTH September 18, 1883
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH 17th October 1972
Place of death Berlin