Andrei Awgustowitsch Eberhardt

Admiral Andrei Awgustowitsch Eberhardt (1912)

Andrei Awgustowitsch Eberhardt ( Russian Андрей Августович Эбергард * 9. November 1856 in Patras , Greece ; † 19th April 1919 in Petrograd ) was a Russian admiral of Swedish origin, among others 1911-1916 Commander of the Black Sea Fleet of the Imperial Russian Navy was.

Life

Training as a naval officer and chief of the naval general staff

Andrei Avgustowitsch Eberhardt, whose father was a Russian diplomat of Swedish origin and a consul in Patras in 1856, trained as a naval officer at the Naval Academy in Saint Petersburg , which he graduated in 1878. In the next few years he served as an officer in the Pacific Fleet and was between 1882 and 1884 flag lieutenant of the Commander of the Pacific Fleet, Rear Admiral Nikolai Wassiljewitsch Kopytow . In 1886 he became adjutant to Navy Minister Ivan Alexejewitsch Schestakow and then in 1891 first flag lieutenant of the current commander of the Pacific Fleet, Vice-Admiral Sergei Petrovich Tyrtow . After he was a naval attaché at the legation in Constantinople between 1894 and 1896 , he was transferred to the Black Sea Fleet. There he was first officer on the gunboat Donez from 1896 to 1897 , then from 1897 to 1898 first officer on the unit ship of the line Katharina II and from 1898 to 1899 first officer on the unit ship Chesma . During the Boxer Rebellion (autumn 1899 to September 7, 1901) he was first in command of a gunboat and then in command of the armored cruiser Admiral Nakhimov , with which he participated in the suppression of the Boxer Rebellion.

After his promotion to sea captain on December 6, 1902, Eberhardt became captain of the flagship of the Chief of Staff of the Pacific Fleet on January 1, 1903 . He then took part in the Russo-Japanese War (February 8, 1904 to September 5, 1905) as an adjutant to the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces in the Far East, Admiral Yevgeny Ivanovich Alexejew . After a brief assignment in 1905 as the commander of the battleship Tsar Alexander II and in 1906 as the commander of the liner Prince Potjomkin of Tauria , he became Deputy Chief of the Naval Staff in 1906.

After being promoted to Rear Admiral in 1907, Andrei Avgustowitsch Eberhardt succeeded Vice Admiral Lev Alexejewitsch Brusilov Chief of the Naval General Staff in 1908 and held this post until he was replaced by Vice Admiral Alexander Alexandrowitsch Lieven in 1911. During this time he was promoted to Vice Admiral in 1910 .

Commander of the Black Sea Fleet and First World War

Vice-Admiral Wilhelm Souchon , commander of the Mediterranean division of the German Imperial Navy , was an adversary of the Black Sea Fleet commanded by Admiral Eberhardt during World War I.

Vice-Admiral Alexander Wassiljewitsch Kolchak succeeded Eberhardt as commander of the Black Sea Fleet in July 1916

In 1911 he replaced Vice Admiral Ivan Fyodorowitsch Bostrem as commander of the Black Sea Fleet of the Imperial Russian Navy and remained in this position until July 1916, when Vice Admiral Alexander Wassiljewitsch Kolchak succeeded him. In 1913 he was promoted to admiral . His time as commander of the Black Sea Fleet was marked by the rapid expansion of the Ottoman Empire's navy through the purchase of standard ships of the Royal Navy until the beginning of World War I in the summer of 1914 . The Black Sea Fleet had no comparable ships until 1915, while the Ottoman Navy bought other standard liners in the United Kingdom and the USA on behalf of various Latin American states . There was also another danger within the Russian fleet, which was reflected in a sailors' uprising in the Black Sea Fleet in the summer of 1912. Despite these problems, he had fundamental success in training officers and men, but was reluctantly forced to accept a government plan in 1913 that provided a defensive role for the Black Sea Fleet in future wars.

When the Russian Empire entered the First World War, the Black Sea Fleet initially remained on hold. The Mediterranean division of the German Imperial Navy under its command, Admiral Wilhelm Souchon , reached the waters of the Ottoman Empire at the start of the war with the battle cruiser Goeben and the small cruiser Breslau , which, like Russia, had been at peace until then. They then drove under the Ottoman flag. The proposal made by Eberhardt to attack these ships in the Black Sea was rejected by Foreign Minister Sergei Dmitrijewitsch Sasonow . To add to the confusion, Eberhardt received contradicting orders in the event of hostilities: to protect the Russian Black Sea ports, he also had the task of supporting the Imperial Russian Army in the Caucasus by blocking the Turkish sea routes. The ability of the Goeben to overtake and defeat every single ship in the Black Sea Fleet added to the difficulties.

It was not until Souchon's ships shelled Odessa and Sevastopol at the end of October 1914 that Eberhardt was able to take action and in doing so proved to be more aggressive than his superiors. On December 26, 1914, the Goeben , now under the name Yavuz Sultan Selim , ran on two Russian mines near the Bosporus with the result that it was out of action for two months. However, Eberhardt had received the order to use most of his limited mine camps to build defensive fields to protect the Black Sea ports, but he achieved less success in the period that followed. The lack of mines and the difficulty of laying them in enemy waters from destroyers also contributed. After the security measures for the ports had been completed, he received additional duties from the High Command in 1915 and the power of command for offensive measures such as supporting the Anglo-French attacks on the Dardanelles at the Battle of Gallipoli , actions to cut off the coal supply to Constantinople and to block the supply of the Ottoman army in the Caucasus by sea. The implementation of these measures resulted in Constantinople faced a massive cut in coal supplies in the summer of 1915. The arrival of two Russian battleships in July and October 1915 helped to improve the balance of the naval forces in favor of Russia. However, the arrival of submarines of the German Imperial Navy in the Black Sea canceled this advantage. Together with naval units from Tsarist Bulgaria , which fought on the side of the Central Powers , these German submarines were able to dominate the west coast of the Black Sea.

This meant that Eberhardt's chances weakened. By reducing the number of destroyers and the duty to support the Caucasus campaign with amphibious operations, in 1916 he saw no possibility of countering the German submarine attacks. Furthermore, he did not succeed in completely cutting off the important coastal routes to Constantinople. At the end of June 1916, the fast German cruisers broke through the Russian protective shield and shot at Sochi and Tuapse on the east coast of the Black Sea. After months of discussion in the Supreme Headquarters, Admiral Eberhardt was finally replaced in July 1916 by a younger, more aggressive naval officer, Vice-Admiral Alexander Vasiljewitsch Kolchak , who had only been promoted to the rank of admiral two months earlier and had so far been instrumental in Russian naval operations in the Baltic Sea was responsible. Eberhardt himself then received the usual membership in the State Council. In the course of the October Revolution he was briefly arrested in 1918 and died on April 19, 1919 in Petrograd .

honors and awards

Eberhardt has received several awards for his services, including the Order of Saint Anne (1887), the Order of Saint Vladimir (1900), the Golden Sword for Bravery (1904), the Imperial-Royal Order of the White Eagle (1914) as well the Imperial Order of the Holy and Orthodox Grand Duke Alexander Nevsky (1916). In addition, he was awarded the Japanese Order of the Rising Sun (1886), the Prussian Order of the Red Eagle (1890), the Knight's Cross of the French Legion of Honor (1891), the Japanese Order of the Holy Treasure (1895), the Order of the Dragon of Annam ( 1901), the Greek Order of the Redeemer (1908), the Order of the Crown of Italy (1908), the Swedish Order of the Sword (1908) and the British Order of St Michael and St George (1916).

Web links

• Andrei Awgustowitsch Eberhardt in prabook.com
• Andrei Awgustowitsch Eberhardt in firstworldwar.com