[Criminal Number 18F]

Florian Geyr

I'm sure you mean Florian GeyEr. Florian Geyr happens to be a distinguished attorney in Germany. Florian Geyer was a 16th-century or so knight who died in a hopeless cause, the kind of guy the Nazis named cavalry divisions for. Sort of a Bavarian Braveheart, if you will, although his end was more ignominious than the character's (and perhaps less ignominious than the actor's career).

Geyer's unit, the "Schwarzer Haufen," is usually translated as "the Black Company," and of course the SS called themselves the "Black Companies."

Interestingly enough, both Florians covered about the same stomping ground -- the areas of Bavaria, Franconia and Swabia that formed the homeland of National Socialism. But their battles take place in somewhat different milieus.

d.o.l.

Criminal Number 18F

[PzLdr]

Thanks for the heads up on the spelling. FLORIAN GEYER made its bones in the Pripet Marshes of the then USSR [People tend to forget that the great majority of the Wehrmacht was horse drawn, and that horse cavalry played a larger role than one would imagine on the Eastern front].

One of the officers in the division in the USSR was Hermann Fegelein, who later became Gretl Braun's husband and Hitler's liaison officer with the SS. Fegelein was caught trying to flee after deserting the bunker. He was interrogated by 'Gestapo' Mueller, then shot on Hitler's orders [one of his last].