Lancken, Fritz von der.

Lancken, Fritz von der born 21-06-1890 in Diedenhofen; now Thionville, Lothrinegen, France, a descendant of an old noble family that originally came from Rügen, the largest island in Germany located on the Baltic Sea. He was married to Maria Antonia Verhoop. They had three daughters. Before the Second World War Lancken ran a boarding school for boys from noble families and/or families of estate owners. This boarding school was located in the Löwenvilla at 26 Gregor-Mendel-Straße in Potsdam. Lancken was honorary knight of the German Hospital Order of Saint John (Balij Brandenburg). During World War II, Lancken was a Oberstleutnant and member of the staff of General Friedrich Olbricht, a prominent member of a group of army officers who opposed the Nazi regime and plotted an assassination attempt and coup d’état against Adolf Hitler. In 1943 and 1944 Oberst Claus Schenk von Stauffenberg was also a member of the staff of Olbricht. The Löwenvilla in Potsdam regularly served as the meeting point for the conspirators. The explosive used for the bombing of Hitler was also kept in the villa for some time. On July 20, 1944, Stauffenberg committed the bomb attack on Hitler in the Wolfsschanze. The plan was to stage a coup immediately after his death. Lancken was fully involved in carrying out and directing this coup. In the Bendlerblock, the headquarters of the German army in Berlin, he guarded, among others, the commander of the Berlin defense forces, General Joachim Otto August von Kortzfleisch, who had been arrested by the conspirators for not wanting to participate in the coup d’état. However, Hitler survived the attack and the coup was crushed. Immediately afterwards Lancken was arrested by the Gestapo. General Kortzfleisch on 02-03-1945, became the commander of the Rhine bridgeheads of Army Group B under Field Marshal Walter Model, and they ended up in the so-called Ruhr pocket as the war progressed. On 20-04-1945, he and a handful of soldiers attempted to break through enemy lines. However, the squad was spotted and surrounded by a US patrol near Schmallenberg-Wulwesort. Kortzfleisch did not comply with the request to surrender, but raised his arm in a Hitler salute and was then shot in the chest

Death and burial ground of Lancken Fritz von der.

On September 28 and 29, 1944, Lancken stood trial before the Volksgerichtshof, a show trial led by the fanatic Nazi jurist Roland Freisler. On September 29, he was sentenced to death and hanged, age 54, the same day in the Plötzensee prison..

Fritz von der Lancken was buried at the Plötzensee prison cemetery in an anonymously grave like all Plötzensee Nazi victims, but there is a memorial stone for him on the Invaliden Cemetery in Berlin.

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