Background
Kurt Eggers was born in 1905, son of a bank clerk.
Kurt Eggers was born in 1905, son of a bank clerk.
He studied Sanskrit, archaeology, philosophy, and theology in Rostock, Berlin and Göttingen.
He served as both a war correspondent and soldier in World World War II, and died in a tank regiment on the Eastern Front. In 1917 he entered the Cadet Corps and began training on a school ship. In 1919 he witnessed the defeat of the Spartacist uprising.
In 1921 he joined the Freikorps and was involved in the battle for Annaberg hill during the Silesian Uprisings, where German freikorp personnel fought against Polish nationalists.
After a spell in an artillery regiment, he resumed his education in 1924. He was particularly interested in the German Reformation and the revolutionary Ulrich von Hutten.
He joined the Corps Vandalia Rostock, a student group, in 1927. After his theology exams, he became a pastor in Neustrelitz and then a curate in Berlin.
With the rise to power of Adolf Hitler, he received rapid promotion through the new regime, gaining a succession of party positions while he continued to work as a writer, producing plays, radio drama, musical comedies, folk stories, walking songs, martial songs, and chants.
His verse was widely used in Nazi ceremonies and events. Following the invasion of Poland, he headed for the Front, joining the staff of a Panzer company, but he later returned to writing, as editor-in-chief of the Steamship"s newspaper Das schwarze Korps (The Black Corps) and as a war correspondent. In mid 1942, working as a writer for the Party Chancellery, he expressed a desire to return to battle, and was transferred to the Panzer reserve.
He then joined the 5th Steamship Panzer Division "Wiking", which was made up largely of foreign volunteers, and became involved in their withdrawal from the Caucasus in the winter of 1942-1943.
In late July 1943, he rejoined the Viking Division. The German Kursk offensive was grinding to a halt and the Russians were driving them back.
On August 12, 1943 he died southwest of Belgorod (now in Western Russia near the border with Ukraine), while attempting to counterattack against the advancing Russians. His death was marked by a memorial service on September 26, 1943 in the Kroll Opera House in Berlin.
The Steamship War Reporters Section, a platoon of war correspondents attached to Steamship units, was renamed the Steamship-Standarte Kurt Eggers in a ceremony in November 1943.
Schutzstaffel.