Johannes Poeppel
Johannes Poeppel | |
|---|---|
Schivelbein, Farther Pomerania (today Świdwin, Poland) | |
| Died | 29 September 2007 (aged 86) |
| Allegiance |  Nazi Germany
 |
| Awards | Commander's Cross of the Order of Merit |
Johannes "Hans" Poeppel (20 July 1921 – 29 September 2007) was a general in the
Early life
Poeppel was born in
Career
Wehrmacht
That year he passed his Abitur, Poeppel joined the
Post-war
In 1947–49, he studied at the Pedagogic Institute in Celle, including a semester at the University of Manchester. He started to work as a teacher in 1949 in Wriedel (Uelzen) and became an academic assistant at the Pedagogic University of Osnabrück in 1952.[4]
Bundeswehr
After the founding and organization of the Bundeswehr in 1955, Poeppel volunteered and was reinstated at his former rank of captain. Poeppel passed his general staff training at the
Within the Bundeswehr, Poeppel was known as an advocate of the "traditionalist" school, which saw the Bundeswehr as a continuation of the Wehrmacht, the Reichswehr, the Royal Prussian Army and ultimately could trace its descent all the way back to the army founded by the Great Elector of Brandenburg in 1640.[5] Against the "traditionalist" school with its emphasis on the continuity of Prussian-German military history, there were the "reformers" who argued that the Bundeswehr was a new force unconnected to the past and who placed an emphasis on the discontinuity between the Reich that had existed between 1871-1945 and the new Federal Republic founded in 1949.[5] As such, the "reformers" argued that the Bundeswehr should not be venerating men such as Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg and Admiral Günther Lütjens as heroes.[5] Poeppel argued in a memo because the Defense Minister Theodor Blank had stated the intellectual role models for the Bundeswehr were to be Carl von Clausewitz, August Neidhardt von Gneisenau, and Gerhard von Scharnhorst, that in his view that the Bundeswehr was a continuation of the old Prussian Army, and as such figures from the past like Hindenburg and Lütjens were to be venerated in the new Bundeswehr.[5]
On 1 January 1970, Poeppel became the commander of
On 1 April 1978 Poeppel returned to Bonn and became the Deputy Inspector of the Army and a year later Inspector (Inspekteur de sHeeres). Poeppel retired on 1 October 1981.[4]
In 1983, the American historian
Personal life
Poeppel was married in 1947 to Edelgard, "the girl next door" to him in Pomerania, and the couple had two children. Their son, Burkhardt, also became a Bundeswehr officer; their daughter, Susanne studied for an advanced degree at the Pädagogische Hochschule in Bonn. Poeppel was an able and ardent tennis player all his life.
Bibliography
- Abenheim, Donald (2014). Reforging the Iron Cross: The Search for Tradition in the West German Armed Forces. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ISBN 1-4008-5977-8.
- Hans Poeppel, Wilhelm-Karl Prinz von Preußen, Karl-Günther von Hase, Die Soldaten der Wehrmacht, 6. Auflage, München 2000. ISBN 3-7766-2057-9
- Wette, Wolfram (2006). The Wehrmacht: history, myth, reality. Cambridge (Mass.): Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-02213-0.
References
- ^ a b obituary of the Clausewitz-Gesellschaft
- ^ Wirtschaftswoche.de "Gelobt sei was hart macht" 20 May 2009 (in German)
- ^ a b c Wette 2006, p. 250.
- ^ a b c d e Biography at deutschesheer.de[dead link]
- ^ a b c d Abenheim 2014, p. 278.
- ^ Wette 2006, p. 248.
- ^ Wette 2006, p. 243-244.
- ^ Wette 2006, p. 249.
- ^ Wette 2006, p. 249-250.
External links
- Johannes Poeppel in the German National Library catalogue
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