Friedrich Schmidt
- Officer and engineer
Friedrich Schmidt was a member of the Schmidt family which since the nineteenth century has owned the “Iron wire, wire pins and wire wares factory” in Gutenstein. After volunteering for duty he fought as an ensign from August 1917 on with the Imperial-Royal Field Canon Regiment No. 25 in the Eleventh Battle of Isonzo and was assigned there to anti-aircraft duties. In 1918 Friedrich Schmidt – now already lieutenant– changed to the Anti-Aircraft Battery 13 and gained access here to the written records of the unit, a valuable source for the upcoming military significance of aviation. He wrote numerous letters, later copied by his mother and compiled into several notebooks, in which he nevertheless described his own experiences in these last months of the First World War.
