
Albrecht Katczinsky (1881-11 November 1918) was a German soldier who served in the Imperial German Army on the Western Front of World War I.
Biography[]
Albrecht Katczinsky was born in Silesia, German Empire in 1881 to a Germanized Polish family. He never learned to read or write, and he was a poor student; he went on to work as a cobbler, and he married and had a son who died young from smallpox. He joined the Imperial German Army during World War I, serving in the 78th Reserve Infantry Regiment on the Western Front. Katczinsky befriended the new recruits Peter Bäumer, Franz Muller, and Aaron Kropp and fellow veteran Tjaden Stackfleet during their time in the trenches, and he and Bäumer often stole geese and chicken eggs from a nearby French farm, braving shotgun fire to steal fresh food. On the morning of 11 November 1918, Katczinsky was ambushed by the farmer's son as he urinated in the woods, with the boy shooting Katczinsky in the liver with a shotgun before fleeing. Bäumer labored to carry Katczinsky back to the medic at camp, but Katczinsky, who had been shot in the liver, bled out and was dead on arrival, leaving Bäumer with no living friends in the trenches.