Adolf Schiel

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Adolf Schiel (cigarette picture, around 1898)

Adolf Schiel (born December 19, 1858 in Frankfurt am Main ; † August 8, 1903 in Bad Reichenhall ) was a German officer, farmer in South Africa and commander of the German Freikorps in the Boer War from 1899 to 1902.

Life

Career

Adolf Schiel served for a short time as an officer in the Brunswick Hussars , a cavalry regiment . At the age of twenty he quit his job and went to the British colony of Natal in October 1878 to build up a living as a farmer. He married a missionary's daughter. It turned out to be more difficult than expected to make a living with the harvest, and so after a year he moved on to the independent Transvaal with a Boer trek .

Adolf Schiel applied to the Transvaal government and was employed as a border lieutenant and secretary to the native commissioner Joachim Ferreira. One of his tasks was to collect hut tax from the natives. On Ferreira's behalf, he intervened in the Zulu civil war in 1882. Schiel uses an example to describe the traditional information system of the Zulu . There was a need to quickly get villagers in the area to a safety zone: “The speed with which such a message spreads is unbelievable. The messenger runs as fast as he can to the next kraal , from where someone else immediately takes the message on. If the kraal lies in a valley and the messenger stands on a mountain, then he calls down the message, which, when the wind is favorable, is understood in the resounding Zulu language from a great distance. "

Prince Dinuzulu, 1883

Schiel became counselor and minister of Dinuzulu , son of the Zulu king Cetshwayo . After Cetshwayo's death, he helped crown Dinuzulu king in March 1884.

Schiel took citizenship of the Transvaal. In 1887, Boer General Joubert Schiel cited to Pretoria and suggested that he join the artillery corps as an officer . Schiel was the youngest officer in charge of the magazine there . There were 16 guns in it , including 9 of German origin. Schiel noted: “1 long Krupp field gun, 8 centimeters; 4 mountain cannons with Krupp breeches, on heavy, clumsy field mounts , 8 centimeters; 4 Krupp mountain guns, 6 centimeters. "

In 1888, Schiel was appointed native commissioner in the Spelonken region near newly discovered gold fields in the northern Transvaal. Above all, he tried to enforce the legal system of the Transvaal government among the natives. Natives (here the Maquambos tribe) liked to stick to their traditional legal system, which - according to Schiel - consisted of a complicated system of spells and gifts of money to magicians, chiefs and sub-chiefs. Finally, Schiel was appointed head of the prison system and, in 1898, was entrusted with the construction supervision of Fort Johannesburg, a fortress around the Johannesburg prison.

Together with the wholesale merchant Adolf Lüderitz and the Heidelberg traveler August Einwald , Schiel (taking advantage of his good relationship with Dinuzulu) took part in the acquisition of land in Santa Lucia Bay. This should - so the futile hope - create the basis for a new German protected area . They even dreamed of a transcontinental reserve.

→ Main article: Santa Lucia Bay

In the German Reich , which was interested in increasing its influence in South Africa , the situation there was observed with great attention. Schiel was invited to Berlin to report to the Foreign Office. The highlight of the trip was a private invitation from Bismarck . The Chancellor had, in secret, had the Hamburg Senate explored whether the Hanseatic city could be installed as the bearer of the colonial administration. After Bismarck had initially been undecided about the demand to install new German protected areas in South Africa, he ultimately clearly refused to support such projects because of the conflicts that could be expected in this regard.

In 1892 Schiel bought a farm on the southern slope of the Spelonkenberge, which he called Roßbach , and moved in with his wife, five children, nanny and a house tutor.

In the Boer War

Colonel Adolf Schiel, around 1898
Tomb of Adolf Schiel in the St. Zeno cemetery

In view of the escalation of the conflict between the British colonial power and the Republic of Transvaal, Adolf Schiel founded a German volunteer corps "Deutsches Kommando Johannesburg " two weeks before the start of the war with Richard Albrecht, who was born in Berlin and with the permission of the South African Republic . Police officers from the prison staff formed the core of the force. Schiel had previously released prisoners with sentences of less than six months and closed smaller institutions. Boers and foreigners, especially German-speaking Swiss , joined the Freikorps, as did Schiel's brothers Walter and Max, his eldest son Adolf junior. and the reporter Erich Gentz ​​from the Berlin Daily Rundschau . At last the command consisted of around 400 men. The uniforms were similar to those of Prussia . The crew was equipped with Snyder breech-loaders , Schiel owned an American Winchester bolt - action rifle . The unit was subordinated to General Jan Kock .

In October 1898, the Transvaal Republic declared war on Great Britain . Whether Adolf Schiel was promoted to colonel at this time, as his biography indicates - or what his rank was exactly - is disputed in the professional world.

The reason for the war was the desires of the colonial powers for rich South African mineral resources and political influence on the one hand and the xenophobic tendencies of Boers on the other. Reason for the declaration of war: Great Britain did not follow the ultimatum of the Transvaal and the Orange Free State to withdraw its troops from the independent Boer republics.

At the beginning of the war, Schiel was part of a command that destroyed the railway line at the small settlement Elaandslagte between Ladysmith and the Dundee detachment . It was a matter of cutting off the British units, which had armored railroad cars, from their bases. The Battle of ElandslaAGEN followed .

Ten days after the start of the war, Schiel was wounded in this battle on October 21, 1899 and was taken prisoner by the British. His unity was wiped out. His son Adolf jun. fell near the Rossbach farm.

The Consul General of the South African Republic in Berlin, Winterfeldt, collected donations for relatives of those who fell and were wounded in the battle. Even popular magazines like Die Gartenlaube reported.

After stopping at the military hospital, prison, troop transport and a prison camp near Simon's Town , Schiel was brought to the island of St. Helena , where he was interned until the end of the war in 1902. While in captivity, he wrote his autobiography. After his release, Adolf Schiel returned to Germany. He died on August 8, 1903 in Bad Reichenhall as a result of his wounding. His autobiography was published under the title 23 Years of Storms and Sunshine in South Africa and had several editions.

Honors

  • In the Niederrad district of Frankfurt am Main, a sports club has been called NSG Oberst Schiel since 1902 . The club became known to the wider public through the success of its women's soccer team.
  • In Vienna a private street was named after Adolf Schiel.
  • Adolf-Schiel-Street exists in Uitsig Bloemfontein South Africa.

Works

  • 23 years of storm and sunshine in South Africa . FA Brockhaus publishing house, Leipzig 1902.

gallery

  • Schiel visits General Piet Cronjé (left)

  • Outside Kent Cottage, where General Cronjé and his wife were staying.

  • Squint in civilian clothes, presumably also during internment.

  • Schiel (center) with other German prisoners

  • The temporary accommodation Rosemary Hall (left) and the surrounding area on Francis Plain on St. Helena.

  • The "prison" around 1901 seen up close.

literature

  • M. Van Niekerk: Adolf Schiel en the Duitse Kommando . MA, Department of History, University of Pretoria, 1949. (in Afrikaans)
  • Brian Pottinger: The Foreign Volunteers: They Fought for the Boers (1899–1902) Scripta Africana, Johannesburg 1986.
  • Hans-Ulrich Wehler : Bismarck and Imperialism . Deutscher Taschenbuch-Verlag, Munich 1976. ISBN 3-423-04187-0 .
  • The Leipzig State Archives contain 62 letters from Adolf Schiel and 2 letters from Max Schiel to the former FA Brockhaus publishing house .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Kürschner's Universal-Konversations-Lexikon, Hermann Hilligers Verlag, Berlin and Leipzig 1926.
  2. ^ Neville Gomm: The German commando in the South African War of 1899-1902 in: Military History Journal December 1971.
  3. ^ Adolf Schiel: 23 years of storms and sunshine in South Africa . Verlag FA Brockhaus, Leipzig 1902, p. 26.
  4. ^ Werner Schmidt-Pretoria: German migration to South Africa in the 19th century. D. Reimer, Berlin 1955, p. 274 ( name register online at safrika.org ).
  5. ^ Adolf Schiel: 23 years of storms and sunshine in South Africa . Verlag FA Brockhaus, Leipzig 1902, p. 176ff.
  6. ^ Adolf Schiel, p. 218 ff
  7. ^ A b J. Robert Williams: Adolf Schiel, Commandant of Johannesburg Fort, and the Fortress Artillery Corps . In: Military History Journal . Ed. The South African Military History Society, Vol. 8 No. 3 (June 1990).
  8. ↑ Hans-Ulrich Wehler : Bismarck and Imperialism . Deutscher Taschenbuch-Verlag, Munich 1976. ISBN 3-423-04187-0 , p. 296
  9. ↑ Relevant and inapplicable in: Die Grenzboten , vol. 62, 1903, p. 115f.
  10. ↑ Hans Nirrheim: Hamburg as the support of the colonial administration . In: ZHG Volume 42, 1953, pages 1-7
  11. ↑ Hans-Ulrich Wehler : Bismarck and Imperialism . Pp. 294-96, 298.
  12. ^ Adolf Schiel: 23 years of storms and sunshine in South Africa . Verlag FA Brockhaus, Leipzig 1902, pp. 277-279.
  13. ↑ L. Jooste: Foreigners in the defense of South Africa in: Scientia Militaria - South African Journal of Military Studies , pp. 25 f.
  14. ↑ Steffen Bender: The Boer War and the German-language press. Verlag Ferdinand Schöning, Paderborn 2009, ISBN 978-3-506-76714-1 , p. 43 f.
  15. ↑ / The war in South Africa in Die Gartenlaube, issue 25, Verlag Ernst Keil's Successor, Leipzig 1899, pp. 802f. [1]
  16. ^ Website of the Niederräder Schützengesellschaft "Oberst Schiel" 1902 eV
  17. ^ Peter Autengruber : Lexicon of Viennese street names. Meaning, origin, earlier names . Pichler Verlag, Vienna 2014, 9th edition, p. 25.
  18. ↑ http://www.google.de/search?q=Adolf-Schiel-Street&oq=Adolf-Schiel-Street&aqs=chrome..69i57j0j35i39j0l3.14428j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

Web links

Commons : Adolf Schiel  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Schiel, Adolf
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Colonel Schiel; Adolf Friedrich Schiel; Matevan (war name of the Zulus)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German officer, farmer in the South African Republic and commander of the German Freikorps in the Boer War
DATE OF BIRTH December 19, 1858
PLACE OF BIRTH Frankfurt am Main
DATE OF DEATH August 8, 1903
Place of death Bad Reichenhall