Ernst Scheurlen

Ernst Scheurlen
Birth date	5 December 1894
Place of birth	Strasbourg, Imperial Territory of Alsace-Lorraine, German Empire
Death date	⚔ 8 April 1945 (aged 50)
Place of death	Groß Eilstorf near Walsrode, Lüneburg Heath, German Reich
Allegiance	German Empire Weimar Republic National Socialist Germany
Service/branch	Kaiserliche Marine Reichsmarine Kriegsmarine
Years of service	1912–1945
Rank	Vice Admiral
Commands held	Cruiser Königsberg (1938–1939) 2nd Marine Division (1945)
Battles/wars	World War I World War II
Awards	Iron Cross War Merit Cross (1939) German Cross in Gold
Relations	∞ 1918 Else Heyd

Ernst Friedrich Robert Scheurlen (5 December 1894 – 8 April 1945) was a German naval officer of the Empire and the Reich, finally Vice Admiral of the Kriegsmarine in WWII.

Life

Ernst Scheurlen (sitting, first from left), Marine-Küstenwehr-Abteilung IV in Cuxhaven, Autumn 1924; of these 20 naval officers, seven made Admiral-level rank and six made full Kriegsmarine Captain (Kapitän zur See) or Luftwaffe Colonel, while two died before WW2.

Military career

Ernst Scheurlen rests in the German war cemetery in Walsrode; final burial location: Row 1, Grave 3.

Vice Admiral Ernst Scheurlen's father, Generalarzt Dr. med. Karl Paul Ernst von Scheurlen (1863–1952), long-standing member of the Association for Patriotic Natural History in Württemberg and the State Museum of Natural History in Stuttgart.

Son Leutnant zur See Hans Joachim Scheurlen, fallen on 25 March 1943

• March 1912 Abitur
• 1 April 1912 Joined the German Navy
  • basic training, on-board training (training ship cruiser frigate SMS Charlotte), Naval School and special purpose courses
• 1914 to 1918 WWI
  • During the Great War, he served on the coastal armored ship SMS Odin, on the battlecruiser SMS Von der Tann, as commandant of the auxiliary mine-clearing steamer Kabeljau and in 1918 as commandant of a minesweeper.
• Taken over by the Reichsmarine, he was still commandant of a minesweeper.
• 1 October 1922 Commandant of the tender and minesweeper M. 134, subordinated tot eh North Sea Naval Station
• Rank List 1924 Commander of the 1st (Artillery) Company/Coastal Defense Battalion IV in Cuxhaven
• 26 September 1925 Teacher / Instructor at the Coastal Artillery School in Wilhelmshaven
• 26 September 1928 Artillery Officer (AO) on the light cruiser Emden
• 8 January 1930 II. Artillery Officer (II. AO) on the battleship Schlesien
• 24 September 1931 Consultant at the Artillery Test Command Ships in Wilhelmshaven
• 31 March 1933 I. Artillery Officer (I. AO) on the battleship Schleswig-Holstein
• 1 October 1933 Once again, consultant at the Artillery Test Command Ships in Wilhelmshaven
• 3 October 1934 Staff Officer of the Coastal Artillery School in Wilhelmshaven
• 30 October 1935 Commander of the III. Marine Artillery Battalion
• 3 November 1938 Commandant of the light cruiser Königsberg

WWII

• 25/27 June 1939 to 28 February 1943 Commander of the Coastal Artillery and Air Defense School in Swinemünde
  • 29 August to 27 October 1940 at the same time Chief of the Naval Command Post Le Havre (France)
  • 15 July to 7 December 1942 at the same time commanded to Admiral Black Sea as Head of the Operations Staff in Crimea
• 7 January 1943 Establishment of the special staff Scheurlen
• 13 February 1943 Head of the Kertsch Task Force (Chief of the Naval Operations Staff Kertsch)
  • Establishment of the Scheurlen Task Force with effect from 1 February 1943; situation assessment at the meeting between the Chief of Staff of the Naval Group Command South and the Chief of Staff of the Commander-in-Chief Southeast (1 February 1943); situation review by the Naval Group Command South of 2 February 1943 on the issue of sea transport in the Black Sea; Russian landings at Novorossiysk (from 4 February 1943); business trip of the Commander-in-Chief of the Naval Group Command South to Athens (4 to 6 February 1943) regarding command in the Aegean Sea; meeting notes on the meeting of the Commander-in-Chief of the Naval Group Command South in Rome (7 to 12 February 1943); construction of war fishing boats and concrete ships (7 February 1943); ferry services in the Kerch (Kertsch) Strait; Compilation of the activities of the German offensive forces in the Black Sea region (11 February 1943); Issues of U-boat warfare in the Black Sea (12 February 1943); Evacuation of Rostov (14 February 1943) and relocation of the front to the Mius position near Taganrog; Typhus in the Crimea (15 February 1943).
• 15/16 May to 21 June 1943 At the disposal of the Naval High Command Baltic Sea
• 23/26 June 1943 Commanding Admiral German Bight
  • January 1944 Presiding judge in the court martial of Ernst "Ernstel" Jünger, son of the author and officer Ernst Jünger
• 13 August 1944 Commanding Admiral Southern France
  • There were few German warships on the station after the invasion of Normandy and Scheurlen's appointment may have been because of his specialism in coastal artillery. In this role he ordered the scuttling of German vessels at Toulon to avoid them falling into Allied hands. On 6 September 1944, he returned to the German Bight.
    • On 15 August 1944, more than 100,000 Allied troops landed on the Mediterranean coast of the France State. The invasion, codenamed Operation Dragoon, sought to occupy southern France and capture the ports of Marseilles, the second-largest city of France, and Toulon, so that after the impending collapse of the Falaise Pocket in Normandy, Allied troops could start pushing towards the German Reich with their supply lines secured. The opposing German force was the 19th Army (“Armeeoberkommando 19” or AOK 19) under General Friedrich Wiese, belonging to General Johannes Blaskowitz’s Army Group B (“Heeresgruppe B”). He had assumed command of Army Group B in May 1944. Its 11 divisions (including 5 reserve and 4 static divisions) were understrength, only one of them armored (the 11th Panzer Division) and some of them with no mobile capacity at all. Their equipment was outdated, many of the soldiers were overaged, wounded or Osttruppen, foreign volunteers from Eastern Europe (for instance, Armenians, Azerbaijanis and Turkmen). In 1944, several units were transferred to the Italian theatre, then to Normandy. These divisions were spread out along the coastline and had to cover an average of 56 miles / 90 km per division which was five times more than the recommended density in the German army. The Kriegsmarine forces were led by Vice Admiral Paul Wever, who had a heart attack on 11 August and had been replaced by Vice Admiral Ernst Scheurlen only after the invasion. The naval element had a separate command chain led from Paris which made coordination even more complicated. Coastal defenses, named Südwall (“Southern Wall”), consisted mainly of French medieval fortifications and other emplacements built in a hurry by the German paramilitary Organization Todt. The Germans had a complicated command structure and communication was also difficult with the headquarters in Paris and Berlin. The Allied intelligence was mostly aware of the German plans since, due to the telephone lines damaged by the French Resistance, the Germans had to use the radio. This made the Allies’ job even easier because German radio communication was intercepted by the Allied Ultra codebreakers.
• 7 September 1944 Once again, Commanding Admiral German Bight

2nd Marine Division

On 11 February 1945, Scheurlen was commissioned as commander of the 2nd Marine Infantry Division, which was then formed in March in Glückstadt and Itzehoe, largely from available naval personnel who had little training for land warfare. In addition, there were a number of young Waffen-SS soldiers, boys recruited from the Hitler Youth, some as young as 16, who were initially intended as replacements for the 12th SS Panzer Division "Hitlerjugend", as well as two Hungarian units of dubious fighting morale. The division was structured on paper like a Volksgrenadier Division, but remained practically without heavy weapons, equipped mainly with rifles and anti-tank grenades. The division was originally intended to carry out the planned liberation attack on Berlin under SS-Obergruppenführer and General of the Waffen-SS Felix Steiner ("Army Group Steiner"), along with the 7th Panzer Division and the 25th Panzergrenadier Division. It reported operational readiness on 2 April 1945 and was relocated to the Bremen area. On 5 April 1945, it was assigned to Army Group Student, which became Army Group Blumentritt on 10 April 1945 to defend the Weser-Aller line against the advancing British (in the Cloppenburg, Bersenbrück, Nienburg, Verden, Schwarmstedt, Walsrode, and Visselhövede areas). There, whilst retreating to the Elbe, it was largely wiped out in the following weeks, with heavy casualties.

Death

Vice Admiral Scheurlen himself was so severely wounded on April 7 during a low-level attack on his Horch command vehicle near Groß Eilstorf, near Walsrode, that he died the next day. He was temporarily succeeded by his senior regimental commander (Marine-Grenadier-Regiment 6), Oak Leaves recipient and former U-boat commandant Naval Captain (Kapitän zur See) Werner Friedrich Wilhelm Adolf Hartmann, until Knight's Cross recipient Army Colonel of the Reserves Werner Henning-Friedrich Ernst Graf von Bassewitz-Levetzow arrived on 10 April 1945, was delegated with the leadership of the division and on the same day was transferred to the Kriegsmarine and given the rank of Kapitän zur See. Graf von Bassewitz-Levetzow led the division in the retreat from the Weser and surrendered its remnants to the British when the war ended the following month.

Family

Ernst Scheurlen was the son of the physician and later senior medical officer Dr. med. Karl Paul Ernst von Scheurlen (1863–1952), and his wife (∞ 11 August 1889) Sophie, née von Möller (1861–1947). His father, who had been raised to personal, non-hereditary nobility (after receiving the Knight's Cross of the Order of the Württemberg Crown), worked, among other things, at the Berlin Health Department, later, he went to Strasbourg (battalion doctor since 1893) and Stuttgart (as senior medical council in the Württemberg Ministry of the Interior).

His grandfather was Karl Friedrich Scheurlen (1824–1872), jurist in Heilbronn, public prosecutor in Esslingen and Ellwangen, senior district judge in Mergentheim, senior councillor in the Ministry of Justice, 1867 Privy Councillor and Knight's Cross of the Order of the Württemberg Crown (now von Scheurlen), since 23 March 1870 head of the Department of the Interior and since 17 July 1870 Minister of the Interior of the Kingdom of Württemberg. His great-grandfather was Prof. Dr. jur. Karl Christian Friedrich Scheurlen (1798–1850) in Tübingen.

Father Ernst

Karl Paul Ernst von Scheurlen was born on 5 February 1863 in Mergentheim, the youngest of six children of the future Minister of the Interior, Karl Scheurlen, and his wife, Katharina Scheurlen. After completing school, he studied medicine in Berlin (Kaiser Wilhelms-Akademie), where he received his doctorate in 1885. After passing his state examination, he worked there from 1887 to 1891 as an assistant physician at the Charité and the Reich Health Office. Bacteriology and hygiene were already the focus of his scientific interests during this time. His marriage to Sophie von Möller, who belonged to a family of German descent from Narva, then part of the Russian Empire, also occurred during this period. In 1893, Ernst von Scheurlen became a battalion doctor in Strasbourg. At the same time, he taught hygiene and bacteriology as a private lecturer at the Technical University in Stuttgart and at the University of Strasbourg from 1893 to 1894 and from 1895 to 1897, respectively. He also headed the hygienic-bacteriological department of the large garrison hospital in Stuttgart. In 1897, he took up a position as a medical councilor at the Royal Württemberg Medical College. His duties included working with the State Insurance Institute, the Trade Inspectorate, the Reich Health Council, and the management of the State Medical Examination Office, among others. It is thanks to his work that the city of Stuttgart received its central sewage treatment plant during the First World War. Throughout the Great War, Ernst von Scheurlen, a hygienist, was involved in epidemic control and water supply in various sectors of the Western and [Eastern Front]s (earning both classes of the Iron Cross). After WWI, he devoted himself particularly to the state's water supply, goiter control, and blood group research. He published his research findings in numerous publications. He retired in 1930, but this did not mark the end of his academic career; his last publication dates from 1950, two years before his death on 8 October 1952 at the age of 89. In addition to his academic work, Ernst von Scheurlen devoted himself to documenting his family's history from around 1800. To this end, he combined numerous paintings, sketches, poems, and letters from his father, who died young, with other items from his collection, and supplemented, explained, and commented on this material with a written account of the family history.

Siblings

He had five siblings. Ernst's older brother was Richard Eugen Napoleon Scheurlen (1890-1969), a painter, graphic artist, and naval officer in World War I. Brother Dr. med. Friedrich "Fritz" Wilhelm Paul Scheurlen (1896–1978), a specialist in lung diseases, was, like the father, an Obermedizinalrat. His youngest sister, the paleontologist Dr. rer. nat. Hertha Adelheid Klara Scheurlen, later married the mathematician Prof. Dr. phil. Hellmuth Kneser (1898–1974; 3 children: Martin, Hubert and Andreas).

Richard Scheurlen

Brother Richard was a member of the Imperial German Navy from April 1910 (Crew 4/10). He served in World War I, among other roles, as a watch officer and U-boat commandant. In mid-1915, he was interned in America, but managed to escape and enrolled at the U-boat School for training. At the end of January 1918, he became commandant of U 71, where he had previously served as watch officer, and remained so until the end of July 1918. From his commissioning in early August 1918 until the submarine's surrender at the end of November 1918, he was the sole commandant of UB 98 as a 1st Lieutenant or Oberleutnant zur See (promoted on 22 March 1916), but he never undertook any combat patrols with the submarine. On 22 November 1919, he was decommissioned with the rank of honorary Kapitänleutnant.

Marriage

On 23 March 1918 in Stuttgart, Oberleutnant zur See married his fiancée Else Heyd (b. 15 August 1898). They lived in Wilhelmshaven and Swinemünde, after the war, the widow moved to Hamburg-Rahlstedt. They would have three children:

• Gisela (b. 10 May 1919 in Wilhelmshaven); ∞ Swinemünde 26 January 1945 Knight's Cross recipient Kapitänleutnant Karl Heinz "Heini" Haag (1918–1994), finally Kapitän zur See of the German Navy of the Bundeswehr
• Hans Joachim (1 February 1921 in Wilhelmshaven), officer of the Kriegsmarine, Leutnant zur See, U-boat watch officer, killed in action when the German U-boat U 469, trying to reach the enemy Convoy SC-123, was sunk by a British aircraft (presumably a Consolidated B-24 Liberator) north of Iceland on 25 March 1943. All 47 men of the crew were lost (⚔).
• Ute (b. 13 March 1923 in Wilhelmshaven), Museum Director of the Bergedorf and Vierlande Museum (unitl March 1988), Dr. phil. (dissertation: Über Handel und Seeraub im 14. und 15. Jahrhundert an der ostfriesischen Küste, Hamburg 1974)

Promotions

• 1 April 1912 Seekadett (Officer Candidate)
• 12 April 1913 Fähnrich zur See (Officer Cadet)
• 22 March 1915 Leutnant zur See (2nd Lieutenant at Sea)
• 25 December 1917 Oberleutnant zur See (1st Lieutenant at Sea)
• 1 August 1924 Kapitänleutnant (Lieutenant Captain)
• 1 December 1931 Korvettenkapitän (Corvette Captain / Lieutenant Commander)
• 1 October 1936 Fregattenkapitän (Frigate Captain / Commander)
• 1 March 1938 Kapitän zur See (Captain at Sea)
• 1 April 1942 Konteradmiral (Rear Admiral)
• 1 August 1944 Vizeadmiral (Vice Admiral)

Awards and decorations

• Iron Cross (1914), 2nd and 1st Class
  • 2nd Class on 29 June 1916
  • 1st Class on 27 September 1919
• Friedrichs-Orden, Knight's Cross 2nd Class with Swords (WF3b⚔) on 29 August 1916
• DRA/German Gymnastics and Sports Badge (Deutsches Turn- und Sportabzeichen) in Bronze
• Hungarian World War Commemorative Medal (Ungarische Kriegs-Erinnerungs-Medaille) with Swords on 9 January 1936
• Honour Cross of the World War 1914/1918 with Swords on 9 November 1936
• Austrian War Commemorative Medal with Swords on 26 November 1936
  • another source states, it was rather the Bulgarian War Commemorative Medal 1915–1918 (Kriegserinnerungsmedaille 1915/1918) with Swords
• Wehrmacht Long Service Award (Wehrmacht-Dienstauszeichnung), 4th to 1st Class
• Repetition Clasp 1939 to the Iron Cross 1914, 2nd and 1st Class
  • 2nd Class on 23 October 1940
  • 1st Class on 19 September 1942
• War Merit Cross (1939), 2nd and 1st Class with Swords
  • 1st Class on 30 January 1942
• Crimea Shield (Krimschild)
• Order of the Star of Romania, Commander's Cross on 15 June 1943
• German Cross in Gold on 29 September 1943 as Rear Admiral and Chief of the Naval Operations Staff Kertsch
• Naval Artillery War Badge (Kriegsabzeichen für die Marineartillerie) on 25 February 1944

Gallery

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