81st Infantry Brigade (German Empire)

81st Infantry Brigade
active	1897 to 1919
Country	Free and Hanseatic City of Lübeck
Armed forces	Prussian Army
Branch of service	infantry
Type	brigade
structure	see story
Location	see story
management
Commanders	see commanders
deputy commander	see Deputy Brigade Command

Brigade headquarters until 1901

Staff seat from 1901

Staff seat from 1912

The 81st Infantry Brigade was a large unit of the Prussian Army .

history

The 81st Infantry Brigade was established on April 1, 1897. The command was in Lübeck . In 1901 the brigade moved from Moltkestrasse 25 to Schloss Rantzau , in 1912 to Mengstrasse 4 (later known as the Buddenbrookhaus ) and in 1913, where it stayed until its end, to Braunstrasse 12. In peacetime, the brigade was 17th Division of the IX. Army Corps subordinated. It included the infantry regiment “Lübeck” (3rd Hanseatic) No. 162 in Lübeck, the Schleswig-Holstein Infantry Regiment No. 163 in Neumünster and the Landwehr districts of Bremen II and Lübeck.

First World War

To mobilize , the brigade set up the Brigade Replacement Battalion 81 , which was subordinate to the 33rd (mixed) Replacement Infantry Brigade of the 4th Replacement Division . From the end of September Gustav Schaumann commanded the battalion. With the dissolution of the brigade, the Brigade Replacement Battalions 33, 34, 35 and 81 were formed into Infantry Regiment No. 362 in the 13th Replacement Infantry Brigade on July 9, 1915 . When its IV. Battalion was transferred to the newly established Reserve Infantry Regiment No. 273 on August 2, 1916, the Brigade Replacement Battalion provided the new IV. Battalion of the 362nd regiment on April 5, 1916.

With the outbreak of World War I , the brigade of the 17th Reserve Division of IX. Subordinate to Reserve Corps . Initially used for security tasks, the large unit was relocated to the western front on 23 August . She fought at Leuven and Mechelen , Termonde , Noyon and, in October, at Laucourt , before the war of movement turned into warfare of positions .

Operation in the battle of Wijtschaete (Flanders April 11, 1918)

In mid-July 1916 she was used on the Somme . In the course of the transformation of all divisions into three infantry regiments each, the 33rd Reserve Infantry Brigade was disbanded and, from September 5, the brigade also had Reserve Infantry Regiment No. 76 and the 1st Squadron of the Reserve Hussars. Subordinated to Regiment No. 6. At the end of October the general command moved to Champagne .

In February 1917 the brigade was in front of Ypres before it was used in the spring battle of Arras and then moved to the Siegfriedstellung .

In the last year of the war, 1918, it was used in the Fourth Battle of Ypres , off Soissons and Reims and in the Second Battle of Cambrai . The brigade commander was awarded the medal Pour le Mérite for the Battle of Wijtschaete (part of the 4th Ypres Battle) .

Around October 27, 1918, the parts of the division were withdrawn from the front and transferred to Strasbourg . In the night of November 9th to 10th, the radio message arrived about the impending armistice , which was provided to the leaders with the addition: "An amicable agreement is to be reached with the workers 'and soldiers' councils that are being formed."

Whereabouts

The 17th Reserve Division had the task of ensuring the security service in the city until the French arrived. She did this when, on November 18, the clothing offices of the Manteuffel barracks, the seat of the 3rd Lower Alsatian Infantry Regiment No. 138 , were to be looted until the end of the war . On the night of November 21, the posts were relieved and the division left France across the Rhine in the direction of Kehl - from where the regiments returned to their garrisons .

In the course of the demobilization caused by the Versailles Peace Treaty , the brigade was disbanded in 1919.

Commanders

Rank	Surname	date	image
Major general	Günther von Bünau	0April 1, 1897 to April 20, 1898
Major general	Friedrich von Mejer	April 21, 1898 to June 15, 1901
Major general	Alexander von Linsingen	June 16, 1901 to April 21, 1905
Major general	Wigand von Gersdorff	April 22, 1905 to September 10, 1907
Major general	Theodor Melior	September 11, 1907 to March 21, 1910
Major general	Ernst von Oidtman	March 22, 1910 to January 16, 1912
Major general	Curt of tomorrow	January 27, 1912 to August 1, 1914
Major general	Karl von Lewinski	0August 2 to December 9, 1914
Major general	Carl von Wichmann	December 10, 1914 to March 31, 1916
Colonel	Wilhelm von Beczwarzowski	0April 1, 1916 to December 14, 1917
Major general	Hans von Werder	December 15, 1917 to February 20, 1919
Colonel	Georg Sick	June 30th to July 25th 1918 (deputy)
Major general	Ernst von Heynitz	February 21, 1919 to 1919

Deputy Brigade Command

Rank	Surname	date	image
Major general	Harry from Wright	0September 9, 1915 to 1918

In order to master the Kiel sailors' uprising , the chief of the naval station of the Baltic Sea and the Kiel governorate , Admiral Souchon , did not turn to the chief military commander in his home area on November 3, 1918, but rather to the deputy general command of the adjacent corps area in Altona. Their commanding general, General of the Infantry Adalbert von Falk , thereupon instructed the troop leader of the deputy brigade command closest to the Kiel fortress area, Lieutenant General von Wright, to collect all available infantry forces from the reserve battalions under his command and to transport them to Kiel that same night. The General Command had trains ready for their transports in Lübeck and Neumünster . Wright alerted the reserve battalions of the 162 and the Schleswig Reserve Regiment garrisoned here, the 84 in Lübeck and the 163 in Neumünster. However, as it was said during the night that the unrest in Kiel had been suppressed, the measures initiated were reversed before midnight.

But the next morning the unrest there lived again, and at 10 am Souchon asked the head of the Deputy General Staff of the corps to help troops from Rendsburg ( '85 ) and Lübeck. At 11 o'clock, he called Wright to command all the replacement battalions to be deployed against Kiel.

His plan was to gather all the intervention troops arriving from the corps area south of Kiel and to march into Kiel with united forces. The plan was based not only on his “experiences in the history of war”, but also on the general staff study from 1908 on the “fight in insurgent cities”, which was distributed to the brigade staff.

Souchon, however, rejected the plan and, as a result, the commander. It is excluded that a troop commander of the land army in the area of ​​the naval war port of Kiel is in command. He got in touch with the military commander in Altona, and managed to come to an understanding with him, largely asserting his personal reputation and immediate position . At noon, Wright was released from his command by a call from the General Command and placed the reaction forces under Souchon's direct command. Its tactical concept consisted in creating Remedur within the fortress area with the help of the last formations still loyal to him and the army troops that had been sent to them.

However, his tactics proved to be useless in the beginning. Contrary to the forceful counter-ideas of the army commander, who had been rejected by him, the station command allowed all special trains manned by intervention troops to enter the main station of the rebel- ruled city. The revolutionary crowd took the incoming transports by surprise.

Four warships with red flags coming from Kiel , one of them the SMS König , ran into Travemünde on the evening of November 5th, 1918 . From there, their teams moved up the Trave on their pinnacles or on foot, or from Kücknitz by tram to the center of Lübeck. There Wright met them with his gun drawn and tried to maintain military discipline .

Like the Lübeckischen ads in its evening edition of the 6th under Latest News said that while the brigade commander had recently in his business room in the Brown Street no. 11 of mutineers have been arrested and led away to the station. The Lübeck Soldiers' Council lifted both the district and brigade command on the 7th .

References

literature

• Holger Ritter: History of the Schleswig-Holstein Infantry Regiment No. 163. (= memorial sheets of German regiments. Troops of the former Prussian contingent. Volume 184), Leuchtfeuer Verlag, Hamburg 1926.
• Otto Dziobek : History of the Infantry Regiment Lübeck (3rd Hanseatic) No. 162. Officers Association formerly 162 , Lübeck 1922.
• Hugo Gropp: Hanseatic people in battle. Association of former members of reserve 76 e. V., Hamburg 1932.
• Harboe Kardel : The Reserve Field Artillery Regiment No. 17. (= memorial sheets of German regiments. Troop units of the former Prussian contingent. Volume 30), Verlag Gerhard Stalling, Oldenburg 1922.
• Ernst-Heinrich Schmidt: Heimatheer and Revolution 1918. Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt , Stuttgart 1981, ISBN 3-421-06060-6 .

Web links

Commons : 81st Infantry Brigade  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

1. ↑ The 33rd (mixed) replacement infantry brigade was commanded by Lieutenant General Melior until 1910, who was in command of the 81st Infantry Brigade until 1910.
2. ^ Hermann Cron: History of the German Army in World Wars 1914–1918, Berlin 1937 <
3. ^ Jürgen Kraus : Handbook of the associations and troops of the German army 1914 to 1918 ; 3 volumes, Verlag Militaria, Vienna 2007–2010.
4. ↑ ^{a b} Dermot Bradley (ed.), Günter Wegner: Occupation of the German Army 1815-1939. Volume 1: The higher command posts 1815-1939. Biblio Verlag, Osnabrück 1990, ISBN 3-7648-1780-1 , p. 308.
5. ↑ was retired from active service on December 16, 1919
6. ↑ See also list of abandoned buildings in Lübeck: Wisbystraße
7. ↑ The state of Germany at the end of the war was not reflected in the fact that a so-called revolution broke out, but rather in the fact that it was not opposed to any resistance. Only two generals had taken up arms to maintain military discipline. Besides Wright, in Hanover v. Hänisch , the deputy commanding general of the X. Army Corps , met the mutineers with his sword in his fist. Only three emperor naval officers had found themselves ready to sacrifice their lives on the SMS König for the black-white-red war flag and against the red cloth of the revolution.