Horst von Pflugk-Harttung

Freikorps (Germany, 1918–1923) Counter-revolutionary forces 1889–1967 ○ Natural causes

Freikorps naval officer whose squad of the Guards Cavalry Rifle Division shot Karl Liebknecht in January 1919

On 15 January 1919 a squad of the Guards Cavalry Rifle Division under his command shot Karl Liebknecht in the Tiergarten; a military court acquitted him.

Born in Basel, a historian’s son, he joined the Imperial Navy in 1907 and served on torpedo boats in the First World War. Early in the November Revolution he gathered naval officers ready to fight the revolutionary left, and they joined the Guards Cavalry Rifle Division, the largest Freikorps unit. On 15 January 1919, on Pabst’s instructions, a squad under his command shot Karl Liebknecht in Berlin’s Tiergarten. A military court accepted the claim of an “escape attempt” and acquitted him. Fleeing to Sweden, he worked covertly for naval offices until expelled for smuggling arms to fascists, and from 1933 ran a spy ring in Copenhagen until it was exposed in 1938. He served in the Abwehr in the Second World War and died in Hamburg in 1967.

Also known as: Horst Gustav Friedrich von Pflugk-Harttung