Biography | Count Felix Von Luckner

Felix von Luckner

9 June 1881 – 14 April 1966
Called the Sea Devil, Count Felix von Luckner entered the German navy for active service in 1912. He is remembered for breaking the British blockade on 23 December 1916, and subsequently capturing eleven Allied ships in the Atlantic, and sinking ten without a single loss of life of crew or captive. Between April 1917, when he rounded Cape Horn and entered the Pacific, and August 1917, when his three-masted ship, the Seeadler, was cast ashore near Tahiti, he sunk three more ships.
“I had the courage to sink ships”, he said, “but I had not the courage to deprive a mother of a child. I fought the war without killing anyone . . . I always thought of my mother, and imagined what tears and sadness I would cause if I killed the son of some other mother.”
Newbolt’s History of the Great War tells of a “bold, calculating, and adventurous leader; and we have every reason to believe that he was a kindly and courteous gentleman as well.”
Although too old for active service in World War II, Hitler attempted to use him for propaganda purposes but demanded that he renounce Freemasonry. Luckner refused.
Initiated: 26 May 1921
Zur Goldenen Kugel Lodge No. 66, Hamburg

Source: Short Talk Bulletin, William A. Moore. [STB-MA89]. Photo c. 1932.