Friedrich von Rabenau


Friedrich von Rabenau was a German career-soldier, general, theologian, and opponent of National Socialism.

Biography

Friedrich von Rabenau was born in Berlin to the physician Friedrich von Rabenau and Wally, née Noebel. He joined the Prussian Army in 1903 as a member of the 72nd Field Artillery Regiment, served in World War I, and remained in the Weimar-German Reichswehr.
In 1936, von Rabenau was assigned by the then head of the general staff, Generaloberst Ludwig August Theodor Beck, to establish the first central archive of the German army, in Potsdam. Well suited to the task, Rabenau strove to prevent ideological falsifications with a scientific diligence in gathering sources that was second to none.
His Christian beliefs led him to join the opposition to Nazism early. Von Rabenau was a Rechtsritter in the supradenominational Order of Saint John. As a Protestant Christian and a general, he successfully applied to then Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler for permission to take over Maria Laach Abbey, which had been seized from Roman Catholic Cardinal Graf von Galen in Münster. Von Rabenau joined no resistance group, though he did act as a conduit between Generaloberst Ludwig Beck and Carl Friedrich Goerdeler, whom he knew from his time as an Abteilungskommandeur in Königsberg.
In mid-1942 von Rabenau was relieved of his office, transferred to the Führerreserve at his current rank of General der Artillerie, and thus sent into premature retirement. He studied protestant theology at the University of Berlin and in 1943 was made Licentiatus theologiae, writing his dissertation on military chaplaincy.
Von Rabenau was arrested in the aftermath of the plot which culminated in the attempt on Hitler's life on 20 July 1944. On 15 April 1945, without having been charged or tried, General von Rabenau, one of the last inmates remaining in the Flossenbürg concentration camp, was shot on Himmler's specific orders. The execution order was issued by Gestapo Chief Heinrich Müller with additional orders to report his death as resulting from a low-flying allied air attack. The Flossenburg Memorial erroneously gives von Rabenau's date of judicial murder as 9 April 1945. He was survived by his wife Eva Kautz and their two daughters.

Awards and decorations

From Liste der auszusondernden Literatur, Deutsche Verwaltung für Volksbildung in der sowjetischen Besatzungszone