Wolfgang Fürstner (officer)
Wolfgang Fürstner (born April 4, 1896 in Posen , † August 19, 1936 in Döberitz ) was a German officer and sports official. During the 1936 Summer Olympics he was deputy commandant of the Olympic Village .
Life
Wolfgang Fürstner was a nephew of the brain researcher Carl Fürstner . He took as a lieutenant in the First World War, in part, leading in 1921 when the uprisings in Upper Silesia a volunteer corps . As a member of the board of directors of the German Officers Association , he founded the first sports association of the German Officers Association in Berlin in 1928. Karl von Halt appointed him chairman of the Association of Brandenburger Athletic Clubs (VBAV) in April 1933. In May 1933 he was accepted into the Reichswehr .
From 1934 to 1936 Fürstner was responsible for the construction of the Olympic Village for the 11th Summer Games in Berlin under the Wehrmacht's direction. In early 1935 he was appointed to the Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games. On May 27, 1936, Lieutenant Colonel Werner Albrecht Frhr. v. Gilsa relieved; as a major in the rankings, he was only deputy commander. Officially, it was said that Fürstner “did not take action with the necessary energy” when around 370,000 visitors streamed through the village on the open days from May 1 to June 15, causing damage.
This was probably just an excuse to recall him as commanding officer. Earlier, rumors had allegedly emerged that Fürstner was a “ quarter Jew ”. In fact, Fürstner's grandfather on his father's side was a Jew who had converted to Christianity, and Fürstner's father was baptized from birth. Fürstner shot himself three days after the closing ceremony of the Games - after he had previously been awarded the 1st Class Olympic Medal of Honor . Since there is no farewell letter from Fürstner, the motive for the act is not clear: Obvious would be the fact that, according to the Nuremberg Laws, he could have threatened to be discharged from the Wehrmacht due to the lack of Aryan proof . However, it is not known whether this was actually planned by those responsible. However, due to its outstanding position, tacit circumvention of the provisions would have been difficult. To what extent the criticism of his administration as village commandant by senior officials or Fürstner's marital problems provided possible motives for the act, must remain speculation: Fürstner's wife Leonie (born von Schlick until their wedding in 1925) supposedly wanted a divorce and later married Fürstner's former adjutant, Joachim Bernau.
In order to avert damage to Germany's international reputation, suicide was portrayed as an accident and Fürstner was buried in the prominent Invalidenfriedhof . The grave was included in the cemetery guide Der Invalidenfriedhof in Berlin - A Grove of Honor for Prussian-German History ; between 1936 and 1940 it appeared in several editions.
family
Fürstner's son emigrated to the USA after the war. Because of the onset of Alzheimer's disease, he also shot himself there. He stayed in friendly contact with his classmates from the Knight Academy (Brandenburg an der Havel) until the end, most closely with Otto Graf Lambsdorff .
The lawyer and association official Wolfgang Fürstner is a great-nephew of Wolfgang Fürstner.
Memorial stone
A memorial stone in the Invalidenfriedhof commemorates Wolfgang Fürstner. It was donated by the National Olympic Committee (NOK) and inaugurated in June 2002 by the then NOK President Walther Tröger .
Biographical film
His life was filmed in the docu-drama "The Dream of Olympia - The Nazi Games of 1936" (directed by Mira Thiel and Florian Huber , WDR , 2016). Wolfgang Fürstner is portrayed here by Simon Schwarz .
literature
- Susanne Dost: The Olympic Village in 1936 through the ages. Neddermeyer, Berlin 2003, ISBN 3-933254-12-4 .
- Roland Kopp: Wolfgang Fürstner (1896–1936). The first commandant of the Olympic Village from 1936 (= Military-Historical Studies , Vol. 10). Lang, Frankfurt am Main a. a. 2009, ISBN 978-3-631-59216-8 .
- Roland Kopp: The "accident" of Captain Wolfgang Fürstner. A lesson on the Janus face of the Olympic Games of 1936. In: Diethelm Blecking , Lorenz Peiffer (ed.): Athletes in the “century” of the camps - profiteers, resistors and victims. Göttingen 2012, pp. 248-254.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Roland Kopp: The "accident" of Captain Wolfgang Fürstner. A lesson on the Janus face of the Olympic Games of 1936 , in: Diethelm Blecking / Lorenz Pfeiffer (eds.): Athletes in the “century” of the camps - profiteers, resistors and victims . Göttingen 2012, p. 248.
- ↑ Ibid., P. 250.
- ↑ Saul Friedländer: The Third Reich and the Jews. Special edition Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-406-56681-3 , p. 675. The fact that the Jewish grandfather was baptized as a Christian did not play a role in the classification based on the law.
- ↑ cf. Arnd Krüger : The Olympic Games 1936 and world opinion. Its importance in foreign policy, with particular reference to the USA. Bartels & Wernitz, Berlin 1972, ISBN 3-87039-925-2 .
- ^ Roland Kopp: Wolfgang Fürstner (1896-1936). The first commandant of the Olympic Village from 1936. Lang, Frankfurt am Main u. a. 2009, Military Historical Studies, Vol. 10, cf. Volker Kluge, book review, p. 2 ( Memento from August 19, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Fürstner, Wolfgang |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German captain and sports official |
| DATE OF BIRTH | April 4, 1896 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Poses |
| DATE OF DEATH | August 19, 1936 |
| Place of death | Doberitz |