1ST INFANTRY DIVISION GROUP Officer

[desiro]

A recent interesting pickup to a career soldier.He died in early 1941.

All comments welcome

[desiro]

AH and Bloomberg promotion document

[desiro]

1

[desiro]

2

[Hank C.]

Awesome grouping. Spange to the EK2, and a fairly early EK1. Is the date on the Ehrenkreuz für Frontkämpfer 30 December?

Verrrry nice.

best
Hank

[Brian R]

Can you post better pics of the wound document? Am I seeing that right... he was wounded in action on September 1, 1939 (and severely, given the award of a silver badge)?

[hucks216]

Very nice group to a senior officer. Do you know if he died on the battlefield or from the wounds he received in 1939 although as he received the EK II Spange & I in 1940 I'm assuming he recovered from those?

[desiro]

Hi Guys,

Ive only had the group for a few days so little known about him.
I found a bit of info on panzer-archive.de
Ottomar Domizlaff
Promoted to Major 1.10.1936
Commander I/inf regiment 22
Promoted to Lieutenant Colonel 1.2.1940
Died 08.01.1941

His wound certificate is indeed for wound he recieved on 1.9.39.He got the Silver badge 17.7.1940
so must have been a bad one.I have another group where the guy got a Silver for
one injury and that was loss of a eye.

The Frontkamper is dated 30 december 1934.

Note the cracking scare on his right cheek.

[Simon O.]

Very interesting grouping. The WB doc is fantastic given the date.

If he died 8th Jan '41 then it wasn't in action. He's not buried in a volksbund cemetery but that isn't surprising really.

[Brian R]

Yes, I agree with Simon. Either he died of his wounds suffered on the first day of the war or he died of an unrelated illness or accident. Nevertheless, this is an extraordinary group which has to be considered quite rare. You gave made a great score adding this to your collection!

[Hank C.]

...edit..., this is an extraordinary group which has to be considered quite rare. You gave made a great score adding this to your collection!

Agree. Very very desirable!

Hank

[Ian Jewison]

Very nice group!

I can not find him listed on the German War Graves site, only confirmation of his unit as of 1.1.1939.

/Ian

[desiro]

Thanks for all the comments and Ian for the page.I have a update on Otto!

I have been in touch with Rob Schaefer (IR22 historian) and thanks to him for the following information,he also called the oldest living Veteran from the regiment
yesterday for info.Here is the text of his message.

"The officer whose papers you have there was a very popular man in the regiment and is quite well documented in the regiments history.
talked to our oldest surviving IR22 veteran today (served with IR22 from 1939 to 1942 - I. and III. Bataillon) and checked my papers. Otto died in a car accident near Königsberg. He was wounded by polish shell fire while the bataillon was attacking polish positions near Krzynowloga/Mala in the evening of 1. September 1939. What I could not find out, what kind of a wound he recieved. The incident is mentioned in sidenote attached to 1.IDs KTBs. And also in Richters draft of the divisional history (the car accident). I was also informed that there is something about him in a magazine published by the 1IDs veterans organisation ("Ostpreussische Kameraden") in the 1960s. I have all editions but so far I could not pinpoint the article. "

Best regards
Andy

[IR22]

Hello everyone,

what I wrote about Domizlaff is wrong. So forget the first research results. That is all propaganda.

Further research in some Bundesarchiv papers brought the truth to light, and believe me when I say that the results probably make the document group unique and priceless.

As the group belongs to Andy I leave it to him to tell you the story about Ottomar Domizlaff.

Wonderful story.

Best wishes

Rob

[IR22]

Hello everyone,

Andy gave me the honor to post the information on Oberstleutnant (then Major) Domizlaff.

What Andy owns is priceless from a historical point of view.

The key to Ottomar Domizlaffs story was found in a series of letters in the Bundesarchiv/Militärarchiv in Freiburg (Germany).

The HAUPTMANN VON LA CHEVALLERIE (later in September commanding 11./IR22)wrote a series of letters to a friend after the end of the polish campaign. In this he describes the opening stages of the campaign and also the early morning of 1st September 1939.

The troops are ready and waiting for the attack to begin. German artillery has just begun firing some rangefindig shots when suddenly (now follows a rough translation from the german original):

""Major Domizlaff, commander of I./IR22 also known as "Borante", who was heavily disliked by old and young alike, could not wait patiently (for the attack to begin), and crept forward crossing the border. Doing that he was wounded (by german shellfire) when he recieved shrapnell into his butt. Harmless but painful. This story spread like wildfire through the division which was soon roaring with laughter."

So...there we have it. Here we have a german career officer and bataillon commander who might have been, who knows, the first "casuality" of the campaign against Poland, being wounded by german shellfire "in the butt" BEFORE the initial attack (by his own fault). As he seems to have been disliked a lot anyway you can imagine that this probably stuck to him for the rest of his life.

The completly different story in Richters draft of the divisional history is interesting (wounded while attacking a polish position) but plainly wrong as the positions near Krzynowloga/Mala were only attacked about 12 hours later that day. That might be the reason why this version never found its way to the printed version of Richters book.

The car accident was probably a cover up aswell. I have some clues that he might have taken his own life in January 41, but I am still working on that.

As to the "Verwundetenabzeichen in Silber"; he got that because he already had the black version (being wounded in WW1 - noted in the regimental history of Infanterie-Regiment von Boyen).

So no heroic war story but I think an even better one. Silly somehow but who knows, probably a unique story and a very very interesting document group.

Thanks for the chance to do some research on that Andy. It was a pleasure.

One last thing from my side: Should anyone out there have any documents/papers/photos related to units of the 1. INFANTERIE-DIVISION I would be happy if you would share scans or pictures for our archives.

Attached a link to the copy of the Bundesarchiv document with the relevant info:

http://www.kriegspfade.de/Bericht.jpg