PEEBLES PROFILES
EPISODE XXXI: Erich Kästner
THE LAST GERMAN?
Erich Kästner was the last documented World War I veteran who fought for the German Empire (including all nationalities and ethnic groups). He was also the last to be born in Germany. Consequently, he was the last Central Powers combatant of the Western Front.
Kästner was also the second oldest man in Germany at the time of his death, but he was not the last living veteran of the Fatherland. Franz Künstler was an ethnic German who was born in and fought for the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He migrated to Germany in 1946 and subsequently became a German citizen.
Erich Kästner was born on March 10, 1900 in Leipzig-Schönefeld, Germany. He was a middle class boy who answered his country’s call in July 1918 after completing school.
German commanders had committed an exhausted army to one last push on the Western Front to try to break the Allied defenses. Called Operation Michael and launched in March that year, it failed four months later.
The young private became a member of Sonderbattalion Hauck, a group of highly-trained recruits named after a prominent commander in the Imperial German Army. Despite not seeing front-line action, Kästner served in the ranks trying to halt the Allies as they pushed the Germans back, causing great losses.
In November 1918, shortly before the armistice and the Kaiser’s exile into Holland, Kästner was among a number of troops reviewed by Wilhelm II. When the war ended, so did Kästner’s service with the Imperial German Army.
He later rejoined the military in 1939 as a first lieutenant. During the Second World War, Kästner rose to the rank of major serving as ground support for the Luftwaffe (primarily in France).
Kästner earned a doctorate in law from the University of Jena in 1924 with a dissertation on Das landwirtschaftliche Pachtwesen und die Pachtschutzordnung unter besonderer Beleuchtung der Verhältnisse des früheren Großherzogtums Sachsen-Weimar-Eisenach (The agricultural leasehold system and the Leasehold Protection Act with special regard to the situation in the former Grand Duchy of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach). He subsequently worked as a judge at the Higher Regional Court (Oberlandesgericht), for which work he was awarded the Lower Saxony Merit Cross, First Class.
Kästner was also honored by Germany’s president for his 75-year marriage to his wife Maria, shortly before her death in 2003 at the age of 102. The couple had lived in Hannover since 1945.
In his final months, Kästner moved to a retirement home in Pulheim near Cologne. He died on New Year’s Day 2008 at the age of 107 years and 297 days.
At the time of his death, only five Great War veterans from the major powers of Europe remained. Three of the survivors were British: front-line soldier Harry Patch, 109, Royal Naval stoker William Stone, 107, and Royal Naval Air Service flier Henry Allingham, 111. The other two survivors were French: Louis de Cazenave and Lazarre Ponticelli, both 110 years old.
“With the death of Erich Kästner, no more Germans can talk about firsthand experiences in the war. We have lost a chance — for ever.”
– quote from Der Spiegel