Born: 2-May-1892
Birthplace: Breslau, Germany
Died: 21-Apr-1918
Location of death: Vaux sur Somme, France
Cause of death: War
Remains: Buried, S�dfriedhof Cemetery, Wiesbaden, Germany

Gender: Male
Race or Ethnicity: White
Occupation: Military, Aviator

Nationality: Germany
Executive summary: The Red Baron

Military service: German Army (1911-15, to lieutenant); Prussian Air Service (1915-18, to captain)

Baron Manfred von Richthofen was born in Breslau, Germany (now Wroclaw, Poland), and joined the Prussian Army as a cavalry officer in 1912. He spent the last three years of his short life in his nation's World War I air force. He was credited with shooting down eighty enemy aircraft, and was shot down himself in 1917, but recovered from his injuries and resumed battle flights three weeks later. His skill and red-painted plane earned him international fame as "the Red Baron". At the age of 25 he was shot through the chest in an air battle over Somme Canal in France, and according to an eyewitness who rushed to von Richthofen' plane, his last word was "Kaput".

He was related, albeit distantly, to Leopold I, explorer Ferdinand von Richthofen, World War II Field Marshal Wolfram von Richthofen, Frieda von Richthofen (wife of D. H. Lawrence) and Hermann von Richthofen (Germany's Ambassador to England in the late 1980s and early '90s). The Red Baron's uncle, Baron Walter von Richthofen, emigrated to America in 1877 and settled in Colorado, where he was co-founder of the Denver Chamber of Commerce.

Father: Albrecht von Richthofen (Prussian nobility)
Mother: Kunigunde Schickfuss von Richthofen
Sister: Ilse von Richthofen (b. 1890)
Brother: Lothar-Siegfried von Richthofen (pilot, b. 1894, d. 1922 air crash)
Brother: Bolko von Richthofen (archaeologist, b. 1899, d. 1983)

    High School: Royal Military Academy, Lichterfelde, Germany

    Plane Crash 6-Jul-1917
    Brain Injury 6-Jul-1917
    Shot: Battle 21-Apr-1918
    Plane Crash 21-Apr-1918
    German Ancestry

Author of books:
Der Rote Kampfflieger (1918, memoir)

Do you know something we don't?
Submit a correction or make a comment about this profile

Copyright ©2021 Soylent Communications