It cannot be explained how he could have reached Hohenstein so quickly when the orders were tight. However, Estner was stationed in Königsberg. Estner, a civilian teacher in Hohenstein, wants to have the coffins - not sarcophagi - removed. Except for a small black notebook, his estate has not survived. Why the so careful researcher Gert Sailer did not publish an initially plausible version can no longer be checked today. The other pieces of equipment of the eight towers, which - according to Gert Sailer - had previously been removed by the monument head Fritz Stubenrauch, have also been lost. There was no trace of the bronze sarcophagi. Hindenburg and the 69 Tannenberg field signs. On the cruiser "Emden" in Königsberg, however, the two bronze sarcophagi from the Hindenburg crypt no longer arrived, but only the two oak coffins of the married couple. "He also looked around the Hindenburg crypt, the two sarcophagi were no longer there." All towers had been cleared out and empty. Shortly before the explosion, as there was complete silence, a Wehrmacht soldier was able to inspect the Tannenberg monument again in detail. Another note from Gert Sailer is even more important. It follows that the 229th Infantry Division was commissioned to blow up the memorial, but not to retrieve the coffins, and furthermore that the order to destroy was given only after the successful rescue from the Tannenberg memorial had been carried out. Unfortunately, Sailer does not say who took away coffins on January 20 and how.īut in his documentation, which was created with scientific meticulousness, further, essential information is contained, such as that the 229th Infantry Division only started its new command post - coming from the east - in Hohenstein in the Hotel "Kaiserhof" in Hohenstein on the night of January 20 set up where, on the morning of the 21st, the VII Panzer Corps received the leader’s command to destroy the Tannenberg monument by radio. Hindenburg was brought to Königsberg together with the replicas of the flags and standards involved in the battle in Königsberg. On January 20, the bones of the couple v. A little later, however, the coffins were ordered to be rescued, as was the destruction of the Tannenberg monument. Hitler is said to have initially rejected the request. This emerges from a very carefully researched documentary by Gert Sailer, which appeared in the German Soldier Yearbook in 1988.Īccording to Gert Sailer, the initiative to salvage the Hindenburg coffins also came from the Königsberg fortress commander and military commander general of the infantry Otto Lasch, but especially from Lasch's chief of staff, colonel in the general staff Frhr. The existing explosives were only sufficient to destroy the Hindenburg tomb and the main and entrance towers. However, the explosion did not actually occur until the evening of January 21. After the war more destruction was caused by looting of bronze and metal from the structure, and even stones and bricks were taken to help with the rebuilding of Hohenstein.On January 25, 1945, the 229th Infantry Division reported to the 7th Panzer Corps that all measures to destroy the Imperial Memorial had been initiated in the midday hours of January 21. On 22 January Germans demolished more of the construction with a further 30 tonnes of explosives. On 21 January 1945, withdrawing German forces planted demolition charges inside the entrance tower and the tower previously housing von Hindenburg's coffin, causing both towers to collapse. Elizabeth's, the church of his Teutonic ancestors in Marburg, where they remain today. In August 1946, 20 months after being removed from the Tannenberg Memorial, Hindenburg and his wife were finally laid to rest by the American army at St. Army Ordnance troops on 27 April 1945, and were moved to the basement of the heavily guarded Marburg Castle in Marburg an der Lahn, Germany. The four coffins were hastily marked to indicate their contents using red crayon, and interred behind a 6-foot-thick (1.8 m) masonry wall in a deep recess of the 14-mile (23 km) mine complex, 1,800 feet (550 m) underground. They were first moved to a bunker just outside Berlin, then to a salt mine near the village of Bernterode, Thuringia (in north central Germany), along with the remains of both Wilhelm I, German Emperor and Frederick II of Prussia (Frederick the Great). In January 1945, as Soviet forces advanced into East Prussia, Hitler ordered the lead coffins of Hindenburg and his wife to be disinterred and along with some of the regimental standards in the tomb, removed to safety. Hindenburg's Disinterment and Partial Demolition of The Memorial
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