In June 1942, Einsiedel was transferred to Jagdgeschwader 3 on the Russian Front for the forthcoming offensive against Stalingrad. He was awarded the German Cross in Gold.[1]
On 30 August 1942, during combat with Russian Ratas, he was forced to land, was captured by Russian ground forces and became a prisoner-of-war in the Soviet Union.
Released after the war, Einsiedel initially worked for the Tägliche Rundschau, the German newspaper of the Soviet Military Administration in Germany but became increasingly disillusioned with the Soviet regime after he experienced first-hand corruption and inefficiency.[citation needed] He was given permission to visit West Berlin on behalf of the NKVD for intelligence-gathering purposes. While meeting his mother, he was arrested by US Forces and sentenced by an American court for spying and having forged documents. He was released on appeal. Despite a highly publicised press conference back in the East, he was by now seen as a liability by the Soviet authorities.[citation needed]
He thus moved to West Germany in late 1948, where he worked as a translator, scriptwriter and journalist. The governing Socialist Unity Party of East Germany acknowledged Einsiedel as a bona fide anti-fascist but a petit bourgeois who, "as soon as the class war became acute", had wavered and switched political camps for his own self-interests.
Einsiedel wrote for the liberal Hamburg weekly, Die Zeit. He also wrote The Shadow of Stalingrad: Being the Diary of Temptation in 1953, which attempted to tell his complex story. Eventually, Einsiedel joined the film industry as a scriptwriter and a film soundtrack dubber. He also played the role of a pilot in the drama The Last Bridge (1953) with his first wife, Barbara Rütting.
He twice won the German bridge championship and played in the bridge World Cup.
Einsiedel died in Munich on 18 July 2007, aged 85.
Summary of career
Aerial victory claims
Mathews and Foreman, authors of Luftwaffe Aces — Biographies and Victory Claims, researched the German Federal Archives and found documentation for 35 aerial victory claims, plus one further unconfirmed claim. This number includes two claims over the Western Allies, and 33 on the Eastern Front.[3]
Heinrich Graf von Einsiedel, Joachim Wieder: Stalingrad und die Verantwortung des Soldaten, ISBN3-7766-1778-0 (German)
Heinrich Graf von Einsiedel: Tagebuch der Versuchung. 1942 – 1950, 1950; Ullstein Paperback (1985): ISBN3-548-33046-0 (German)
Heinrich Graf von Einsiedel: Der Überfall, Hoffmann und Campe 1984, ISBN3-455-08677-2 (German)
Notes
Regarding personal names: Graf was a title before 1919, but now is regarded as part of the surname. It is translated as Count. Before the August 1919 abolition of nobility as a legal class, titles preceded the full name when given (Graf Helmuth James von Moltke). Since 1919, these titles, along with any nobiliary prefix (von, zu, etc.), can be used, but are regarded as a dependent part of the surname, and thus come after any given names (Helmuth James Graf von Moltke). Titles and all dependent parts of surnames are ignored in alphabetical sorting. The feminine form is Gräfin.
Mathews, Andrew Johannes; Foreman, John (2014). Luftwaffe Aces — Biographies and Victory Claims — Volume 1 A–F. Walton on Thames: Red Kite. ISBN978-1-906592-18-9.
Patzwall, Klaus D.; Scherzer, Veit (2001). Das Deutsche Kreuz 1941 – 1945 Geschichte und Inhaber Band II [The German Cross 1941 – 1945 History and Recipients Volume 2] (in German). Norderstedt, Germany: Verlag Klaus D. Patzwall. ISBN978-3-931533-45-8.
