Beuys volunteered for the German military on May 1, 1941, training as a radio operator in the air force in Posen and Erfurt. He was stationed at the student air force news communication school in Königgrätz. Following this he was stationed at five different dive-bomber wings, coming into contact with "all fields of arms." On March 16, 1941, his plane crashed "200 meters east of Freifeld, Crimea," killing the pilot Hans Laurink. Seriously injured, Beuys was taken the next day to a mobile military hospital and was reportedly unconscious for a total of 12 days. Beuys was discharged from the hospital on April 7, 1944, and returned to serve another five years in the military. He was retrained as a pilot in August 1944 and sent to the western front as a paratrooper, where he was again injured several times. After the Germans surrendered, Beuys was taken into captivity and held by the British as a P.O.W.[3b] Beuys would later write a mythical account of the crash in which
he was rescued by the Tartars of the Crimea, who cared for him by
wrapping him in layers of fat and felt, nursing him back to health. |