Luftwaffe, Stab Flieger Division 7, Oblt. On board DFS 230 glider that crashed on Aegina Island, Greece. Von: The abolition of the monarchies in Germany and Austria in 1919 meant that neither state has a privileged nobility, and both have exclusively republican governments. In Germany, this means that legally von simply became an ordinary part of the surnames of the people who used it. There are no longer any legal privileges or constraints associated with this naming convention. According to German alphabetical sorting, people with von in their surnames – of noble or non-noble descent alike – are listed under the rest of their names (e.g., the economist Ludwig von Mises would have been found under M rather than V ).