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Manfred was extremely truthful

Event ID: 492

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Der rote Kampfflieger von Rittmeister Manfred Freiherrn von Richthofen, 1933, Eingeleitet und ergänzt von Bolko Freiherr von Richthofen, mit einem Vorwort von Generalfeldmarschall Hermann Göring, Verlag Ullstein & Co, Berlin

02 May 1904

50.84890767354939, 16.476310886960174
Władysława Sikorskiego 19, 58-105 Świdnica, Polen
Swidnica
Schweidnitz

Source ID: 22

Der rote Kampfflieger von Rittmeister Manfred Freiherrn von Richthofen, 1933, Eingeleitet und ergänzt von Bolko Freiherr von Richthofen, mit einem Vorwort von Generalfeldmarschall Hermann Göring, Verlag Ullstein & Co, Berlin p.  21 

“Manfred was extremely truthful. Even today, my mother cannot praise the extent to which my parents could always rely on him. He gave precise and clear answers to every question, regardless of what the consequences might be for him. As a twelve-year-old boy, he was once unable to curb his passion for hunting on his grandmother’s estate. When he couldn’t find any wild ducks on the Weistritz, he shot some tame ones, which were then missing from his grandmother’s duck pen. Manfred was put under strict interrogation, but it only lasted half a minute. It didn’t occur to him to deny or even gloss over what he had done. And the good grandmother gladly forgave her grandson, who could not lie. Manfred’s first ‘hunting trophies’, three drake feathers, still hang in his parlour in Schweidnitz today. Visitors will not be able to look at them without emotion. Manfred’s mother summarised these feelings and this conviction of Manfred’s nature in the short words: ‘He stood firm, wherever he was placed.’ This belief in his own ability, coupled with inner nobility and self-evident modesty, enabled my brother, I believe, to be a real leader. His Uhlans, when he was a lieutenant, and later all his subordinates in the Richthofen fighter squadron could trust him implicitly. He did not flatter them, but he protected them and kept his word, and serving under him was made easier by the cheerfulness and cheerfulness, indeed often by the exuberance with which he showed himself equal to even the most difficult tasks. For in one thing he was a perhaps unparalleled example to all who had to follow him in war: in the bravery of his spirit, in the absolute lack of any fear, indeed in the complete impossibility of being able to imagine any process or impending event that could be associated with any feeling of fear for him.”

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