Dietrich von Saucken

Friedrich Wilhelm Eduard Kasimir Dietrich von Saucken was a general in the German Army during World War II. Saucken commanded the 4th Panzer Division at Kursk, before becoming acting commander of the III Panzer Corps in June 1944. Turning down an offer to escape by air, he surrendered to the Red Army in May 1945. In captivity, he was crippled for life, before his release in 1955. Saucken was the last officer to be awarded the Knights Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves, Swords and Diamonds.

Saucken was born onMay 1892 in Fischhausen, East Prussia, a province in the Kingdom of Prussia. Today it is Primorsk in Baltiysky District of Kaliningrad Oblast, Russia. He was the son of Landrat, the chief administrative officer of a Landkreis, Wilhelm Eduard Erich von Saucken and wife Berta Marie, ne Westphal. As a child, Saucken attended the Collegium Fridericianum, a prestigious gymnasium in Knigsberg, presentday Kaliningrad, where he graduated with his Abitur in 1910. As a student, Saucken showed aptitude as an artist, a talent supported by his mother and the director of the Fridericianum, Georg Ellendt. He often visited Nidden, presentday Nida, Lithuania, where his ambitions to become an artist where influenced by the Knstlerkolonie Nidden, an expressionist artists colony.

Source: Wikipedia