Alexander Franz Anton Lion (born 15 December 1870 – 2 February 1962) was the co-founder of the German Scout Movement.
[2] On 5 August 1889, Lion was awarded a bronze medal of the Order of Orange-Nassau after saving the life of a drowning boy.
[1][2][3] While serving in South-West Africa he met the man with whom he would later go on to found the German branch of the Scout Movement, Maximilian Bayer.
In January 1909 "Jugendsport in Wald und Feld", a club to promote Scouting in Germany, was founded.
[4] Jacobi created an anti-Semitic cartoon lampooning Lion, playing on Lion's Jewish birth, changing "Jungensport in Feld und Wald" (youth sports in field and forest) to "Judensport in Wald und Feld" (Jews' sports in forest and field), and calling Scouting supporter General Baschwitz a "vain Jewish man".
[1] There he met Colmar Freiherr von der Goltz, who was a big supporter of the Scouting movement in Germany and Lion and Bayer.
After the war, Lion joined a volunteer division, Freikorps[1] Epp, taking part in the dismantling of the Bavarian Soviet Republic.
The last military rank he hold was that of a Generaloberarzt a.D.[1][7][8] After being demobbed from the army in 1921, Lion worked as a doctor at the spa resort of Oberhof.
In 1936 Alexander Lion became Honorary Scoutmaster of the Österreichischer Pfadfinderbund, which was the Austrian interdenominational member organization of World Scouting since 1922.
When Austria was annexed by Germany at Anschluss, the Gestapo found incriminating documents,[1] sparking a wave of arrests among Scouts.
Immediately after the end of the war, Lion became the head of the Youth Office in Bad Aibling, using his position to build up the Federation of German Scouts, and in October 1948 he was appointed the honorary president of the organisation.
[3] In the same year, the Bavaria Federation of German Scouting was founded, with Lion as its honorary president.
[3] In July and August of the same year, a Scout camp was organised at the Chiemsee lake with groups attending from Munich, Cologne and Hesse.