German U-boat commander during World War I. His great grandfather Jean-Gabriel Arnauld, Seigneur de la Perière, a young artillery officer aged 26 in Saint Plantaire (Indre), after a duel with a Prince de Bourbon had to leave the country to avoid being imprisoned. He went to Prussia and joined the army of Frederick the Great, King of Prussia. Because of his noble descent, he became a member of the Prussian nobility, and because of his service he attained the rank of three star general. Married three times, he had 14 children. His 12th, Eugen Ahasverus Albertus, born in 1800, was the grandfather of Lothar von Arnauld de la Perière.
Arnauld de la Perière entered the Kaiserliche Marine in 1903. At the outbreak of the First World War, he was transferred to an active post where he served in the Marine-Luftschiff-Abteilung. In 1915, Arnauld de la Perière transferred to the U-boats. After a course in Pula, he was given command of the U-35 in November 1915. He made 14 voyages with the U-35 during which he sank 189 merchant vessels and two gunboats for a total of 446,708 GRT. One of his kills was the French troop carrier SS Gallia, which sank with great loss of life. Transferred to the U-139 in May 1918, he sank a further five ships with a combined tonnage of 7,008 GRT. His record number of sunken tonnage and number of sunken ships is unsurpassed since then. For his service, he was awarded the Iron Cross, second and first class, and the Pour le Mérite in 1916.
After the end of the war, Arnauld de la Perière stayed in a vastly-reduced German navy. During the 1920s, he served as navigation officer on the old pre-dreadnoughts SMS Hannover and SMS Elsass. From 24 September 1928 to 10 October 1930, he commanded the light cruiser Emden. Promoted to captain in 1931, he was put on the retired list. He then taught at the Turkish Naval Academy from 1932 to 1938. At the start of World War II, Arnauld de la Perière was again called up for active duty. Until March 1940, he served as naval commandant in Danzig until he was sent to the Low Countries as naval commandant for Belgium and the Netherlands. Promoted to Konteradmiral Arnauld de la Perière was made naval commandant in Brittany and later for the entire western French seacoast. He was promoted to Vizeadmiral on 1 February 1941. Transferred to take up command as Admiral South, he was killed when his plane crashed on takeoff near Le Bourget Airport on 24 February 1941.

Link to Wikipedia biography