Alois Schusterschitz

Alois Schusterschitz

Alois Schusterschitz (born May 27, 1867 in Gorenja vas ; † March 1, 1948 in Zagreb ) was an Austro-Hungarian naval officer and admiral who was in Yugoslav service from 1919 to 1921 as Alojz Šusteršič. In 1900 he took part in the suppression of the Boxer Rebellion as commander of the kuk naval detachment in Tientsin (Tianjin). In 1919 he was naval advisor to the Slovenian delegation as part of the delegation of the SHS state at the peace negotiations in Paris. His brother was the Slovenian politician Ivan Šusteršič . He is considered one of the founders of the Slovenian maritime identity.

Private life

Alois Schusterschitz came from a strictly Catholic family of officials. He was born on May 27, 1867 as the youngest child of district judge Valentin Schusterschitz (born 1805, died 1885) and Maria Schusterschitz born. Jallen (born 1834, died 1874).

Service in the Austro-Hungarian Navy

After retiring from the Naval Academy in 1888, Schusterschitz mainly took on board functions. During the Boxer Rebellion in China in 1900 he was appointed kuk stage commander in Tientsin and took part in several skirmishes with boxers, during which he captured a cannon and several boxer flags, which are now in the Army History Museum. Participation in the capture of the Peitang forts on September 20, 1900, which took place together with German and Russian units, was of greater strategic importance. In the course of this operation, among others, the Imperial and Royal Naval Cadet Georg Ludwig von Trapp was subordinate to the (then) Liner Lieutenant Schusterschitz. Schusterschitz remained in Beijing as the commander of the legation guard detachment until 1902. In 1913 he was in command of the cruiser Szigetvár stationed in the Middle East and stayed for a few days in November 1913 in the Austrian hospice of the Holy Family in Jerusalem. When war broke out in 1914, he was in command of the (obsolete) liner SMS Árpád , with which he sailed from Pola in November 1914 to secure the captured French submarine Curie and in May 1915 for a large-scale naval operation against the Italian coast. During the aforementioned fleet action, the Árpád mainly shelled the Ancona train station. Later he was given command of the more modern battleship Zrinyi , which, however, like the other heavy units, remained in port. At the beginning of 1918 he finally took over command of the Cattaro naval defense district, the port of the most active units of the Austro-Hungarian Navy. He experienced the end of the war as deputy port admiral in Pola and was appointed on November 1, 1918 Rear Admiral appointed. At the end of 1918 he was retired by the liquidating kuk authorities.

Life in Yugoslavia

After the collapse of Austria-Hungary, he was one of the few Slovenian flag officers to be kept in the status of the SHS fleet and - with recognition of his admiral rank - went to Paris in spring 1919 as a Slovenian naval expert to represent the interests of the SHS state in fleet matters. However, after the Paris suburb contracts were signed, it could not be used in the Yugoslav fleet, as the few admiral posts first had to be divided between the Croats and Serbs. The Prince Regent offered him a high-ranking post in diplomacy, namely the post of Yugoslav delegate to the Debt Commission, which met in Vienna. This was particularly important for all the successor states of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, as it decided on the division of the debts. However, he refused because he wanted to remain connected to the sea and shipping. So he retired in 1921, but to his great annoyance he did not receive an admiral's pension, only a captain's pension. For this, among other things, his impeccable zeal for service in the Austro-Hungarian Navy as well as the fact that his brother, Ivan Šusteršič , who had decisively determined Slovenian politics for the last 20 years, adhered to the empire until the end and went into exile in Switzerland in 1918, to have been crucial. Even changing his name from Schusterschitz back to Šusteršič doesn't seem to have helped. As a result, he first lived in Belgrade, where he represented a number of French shipping companies, and finally from around 1930 in Zagreb. However, he kept his love for the sea as he had a sailing yacht on the Adriatic until World War II . The disintegration of Yugoslavia enabled him to stamp out the humiliation on the part of the Serbian authorities in 1921. Immediately after the establishment of the Ustaša state in 1941, he applied for the admiral's pension, which he was ultimately awarded. After the liberation of Yugoslavia, the communist authorities adhered to it and so he received an admiral's pension until his death in 1948.

literature

• Theodor Winterhalder: Fights in China. A representation of the turmoil and the participation of Austria-Hungary's naval power in its overthrow in the years 1900–1901 (1902).
• Antonio Schmidt-Brentano: The Austrian Admirals , Volume III, No. 235 (2005).
• Peter Jung: Storm over China. Austria-Hungary's involvement in the Boxer Rebellion in 1900 (2000).
• Andrej Rahten, Mateja Matjašič Friš, Nadja Terčon (eds.): Tvorci slovenske pomorske identitete (2010).
• Andrej Rahten: Šusteršiči - zgodovina kranjske legistimistične rodbine , in: Kronika 58 (2010).

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Rahten / Matjašič Friš / Terčon (eds.) , Tvorci slovenske pomorske identitete (2010)
2. ↑ Rahten / Matjašič Friš / Terčon (eds.) , Tvorci slovenske pomorske identitete (2010), p. 235.
3. ^ Jung , Storm over China. Austria-Hungary's involvement in the Boxer Rebellion 1900 (2000)
4. ^ Schmidt-Brentano , The Austrian Admirals, Volume III (2005).
5. ↑ Rahten / Matjašič Friš / Terčon (eds.) , Tvorci slovenske pomorske identitete (2010), p. 241.