August von Mackensen

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August von Mackensen

Anton Ludwig Friedrich August Mackensen , from 1899 von Mackensen (born December 6, 1849 in Leipnitz , †  November 8, 1945 in Burghorn ), was a Prussian field marshal . Coming from middle-class family, he grew as an officer to the adjutant of the Emperor Wilhelm II. , And was knighted by this 1,899th During the First World War he was a successful military leader and was later used as a supporter of Hitler by the National Socialists for propaganda purposes.

Life

Youth and education

August Mackensen was born in December 1849 as the son of the estate manager Ludwig Mackensen (1817-1890) and his wife Marie (née Rink, 1824-1916) in the Prussian province of Saxony . After attending the Dahlenberg village school, he switched to the state high school in Torgau in 1859 . Mackensen also received piano lessons there and took part in theater performances. In 1865 he moved to a secondary school run by the Francke Foundation in Halle an der Saale . This school later changed its name to Mackensen School . In 1866 he was confirmed .

At Easter 1868 he left school under pressure from his father after the subprima to do an apprenticeship as a farmer. Because of his weak constitution, he was initially retired from military service, but in 1869 he was found fit and joined the 2nd Body Hussar Regiment "Queen Victoria of Prussia" No. 2 in Lissa in the province of Posen as a one-year volunteer .

Before the Franco-Prussian War in 1870/71 he began studying agricultural science at the Martin Luther University in Halle an der Saale, among others with Julius Kühn . In Halle an der Saale he also joined the ALV Agronomia, later Corps Agronomia . He also heard history from Gustav Droysen .

After returning from the war, Mackensen initially continued studying from October 1871, but personal interest led him to deal with military science after his war experience. So he turned away from the profession of farmer, broke off his studies in the spring of 1873 and became a professional soldier.

In 1898 he co-founded the German Army Research Association and became its honorary chairman.

Military career

August von Mackensen in the uniform of the 1st Leib-Hussar Regiment No. 1

In the Franco-Prussian War of 1870/71 Mackensen served as a reserve officer candidate. For a daring exploratory ride at Toury near Orléans , he received the Iron Cross 2nd Class from his division commander Prince Albrecht of Prussia in October 1870 . In December he was promoted to lieutenant .

In 1873 he continued his military career as a professional officer. His diligence and ambition were reflected in positive qualification reports. Mackensen knew how to win over superiors. His military-historical writings proved to be a further means of his professional advancement. His work The 2nd Leib-Husaren-Regiment Nr. 2 in the war against France , published in 1877, was well received.

In 1877 he was transferred to the garrison in Königsberg . There he got to know Dorothea von Horn, whose brother Georg von Horn Mackensen, who died in the war, had honored her in his book. In mid-1878 Mackensen was promoted to prime lieutenant. On May 14, 1879, he became engaged to Dorothea von Horn, and the couple were married on November 21 of the same year. Marrying into the influential aristocratic family - Dorothea's father Karl von Horn (1807–1889) was President of the Province of East Prussia  - helped his social and professional advancement.

Without the Military Academy to have visited, Mackensen was in the 1880 General Staff ordered and 1882 to the General Staff added. In 1891 he was promoted to First Adjutant of the then Chief of the General Staff Alfred Graf von Schlieffen . On June 17, 1893 entrusted with the command of the 1st Leibhusar Regiment and six months later on January 27, 1894, promoted to lieutenant colonel commander of the regiment. In 1898 he became a wing adjutant and in 1903 adjutant general of Kaiser Wilhelm II and in the meantime promoted to major general in mid-April 1900 . In 1901 Mackensen took over command of the newly formed body hussar brigade in Danzig-Langfuhr after he had previously commanded the body hussar regiment . In 1911 he handed this command over to Crown Prince Wilhelm , but Mackensen was allowed to continue to wear the uniform of the 1st Leib-Hussar Regiment No. 1 for life . On September 11, 1903, he was appointed lieutenant general and commander of the 36th division in Danzig. On January 27, 1908, he rose to general of the cavalry and commanding general of the XVII. Army Corps .

Army leader in the First World War

Mackensen with Kaiser Wilhelm II on the Eastern Front, 1915

Mackensen played a major role in the warfare of the Central Powers in World War I. Together with his chief of staff, Hans von Seeckt , he was the architect of the strategically important victories of Gorlice - Tarnów , Brest-Litowsk , Pinsk , Belgrade and Romania .

Refugee and evacuation transport from Serbia in Leibnitz , 1914
With Bulgarian officers at the reception of the German Emperor in Niš , around 1916

When war broke out in August 1914, Mackensen was initially in East Prussia commander of the XVII. Army corps that suffered heavy losses (over 9,000 men in just two hours) in the Battle of Gumbinnen . In his memoirs he himself spoke of “mass murder” and “mass slaughter”. In the subsequent Battle of Tannenberg , Mackensen's corps played a decisive role in the encirclement of the Russian 2nd Army. From November 1, 1914, he led the 9th Army and on April 16, 1915 received supreme command of the newly formed 11th Army . With this he took part in the offensive in Poland in the summer of 1915 . In the battle of Gorlice-Tarnów (May 1 to 3, 1915) his army made a surprising breakthrough through the West Galician front of the Russians, and in June he achieved another breakthrough at Gródek and Magierów . Appointed Field Marshal General after the reconquest of Lemberg , he took part in the next offensive in Poland in the summer of 1915 with the Army Group named after him .

Mackensen takes down a parade of Austro-Hungarian troops after the capture of Bucharest , December 1916

The first offensives of the Austro-Hungarian army in the campaign of the Central Powers against Serbia in 1914 all failed because of the bitter Serbian resistance, especially in the Battle of Cer and the Battle of the Kolubara . Only the Army Group led by Mackensen succeeded in taking the Serbian capital Belgrade.

A year later, a German-Austrian offensive under Mackensen against Romania was just as successful: by the end of 1916, most of the country had been conquered. He spent the last two years of the war there as military governor and thus retained his nimbus as an undefeated military leader despite the war that was ultimately lost. His military successes earned him the respectful nickname "(New) Marshal Forward", based on Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher , who had received this name in the Wars of Liberation against Napoleon Bonaparte and to whom he also had a certain physiognomic similarity.

Weimar Period and National Socialism

At the end of the war he was interned in Hungary and Salonika . In December 1919 he returned to what was now republican Germany, resigned from the army and was involved in various organizations with mostly military orientation. While as a loyal monarchist he was just as hostile to the emerging ideology of National Socialism as to the parliamentary democracy of the Weimar Republic, he was extremely sympathetic to Adolf Hitler as a person and his successes in the "revision" of the Treaty of Versailles .

August von Mackensen on the Cavalry Arms Day in Dresden, 1931

As a conservative representative of the old order, Mackensen - like more or less the entire right wing of the time - was hostile to the republic. He was also undoubtedly anything but a democrat. Like almost all German military leaders of the World War, he blamed the defeat on his political opponents ( stab in the back legend ) instead of admitting military inferiority. He felt satisfaction at the murder of Matthias Erzberger , who was held responsible for the Versailles peace treaty by the right (“We are rid of the pest”), and considered overcoming the conditions for the peace agreement, which many felt at the time to be dictated peace, to be the most important task for Germans Politics. On the basis of these clues, Mackensen's attitude can be relatively clearly assigned to the German national camp.

His relationship with the National Socialists was ambivalent. Like many traditional advocates of the old Prussian culture, he was extremely suspicious of the behavior and behavior of the NSDAP. In a striking contradiction to this is his personal admiration for Hitler, which clearly differentiated his attitude from that of Paul von Hindenburg . Like this he was following the seizure of power by the Nazis in January 1933 as a symbol of the old Prussia exploit, without, however, expressly to take for the new regime party. Mackensen was present on the day of Potsdam on March 21, 1933.

The Nazi propaganda built on Mackensen's enormous popularity among the population and used it symbolically to establish a continuity between the imperial era and the Third Reich . The ex-military occasionally used his influence and his position to help people persecuted by the regime. In particular, reprisals against the churches and their representatives, but also atrocities committed by the SS during World War II in Poland upset the pious Protestant Mackensen, but did not change his admiration for Hitler. The claim by the National Socialist propaganda earned him the nickname Reichstafelaufsatz . Otto von Habsburg described him as the “noble Prussia” of the “Third Reich”.

August von Mackensen and Hitler on Heroes' Remembrance Day in Berlin, 1935
Mackensen at the funeral of Kaiser Wilhelm II in Doorn, 1941

On October 22, 1935, Mackensen received the Prussian domain of Brüssow in the Prenzlau district by law from Hitler as a donation . This had an extent of more than 1231 hectares of land "including forest of 150 and lake of 300  acres ". He also received 350,000 Reichsmarks in cash. In addition, in 1936 he was appointed chief of the 5th Cavalry Regiment stationed in the Stolp garrison , which continued the tradition of the Pomeranian Hussar Regiment “Fürst Blücher von Wahlstatt” No. 5.

He protested several times against violent attacks by the SA . Abuses, for example the church struggle , which was incompatible with his Protestant piety, were in his eyes exclusively the fault of Hitler's followers. On the other hand, he denied the dictator's responsibility . In July 1934 Mackensen had participated in the synod of the Wartburg parish and had been in contact with the Confessing Church since then . He intervened in some drastic cases on behalf of pastors. He also wrote public letters of protest against the atrocities of war behind the German lines in Poland. At the beginning of the 1940s Hitler and Goebbels suspected Mackensen of disloyalty, but did not want to take action against him.

Mackensen remained a monarchist to the end. In 1941 he traveled to Haus Doorn in the Netherlands for the funeral of the last German emperor, Wilhelm II, and attended the funeral in a Prussian hussar uniform. The attempt on Hitler in July 1944 by officers of the Wehrmacht he strongly condemned ( "accursed assassination"). In November 1944, Mackensen, when he was 95 years old, sent an appeal to the youth, in the tone of National Socialist perseverance propaganda, to exhort them to “willingness to make sacrifices and fanaticism”. Apparently nothing changed in his admiration for Hitler until his death.

At the beginning of 1945 the General Field Marshal fled with his wife from the Red Army to Lower Saxony and died there on November 8, 1945, just under a month before his 96th birthday. He was buried in the city cemetery in Celle .

family

August von Mackensen with family, 1929

In 1879 he married Dorothea von Horn (1854–1905), with whom he had five children:

In 1899 Mackensen was raised to hereditary nobility by Wilhelm II on his 40th birthday and was henceforth called von Mackensen .

After the death of his first wife in 1905, he married Leonie von der Osten (1878–1963), who was half his age, in 1908 at the age of 58. This marriage remained childless and lasted until his death in 1945.

Honors

Orders and decorations

Honorary doctorates

Other honors

In 1911 Mackensen was allowed to wear the uniform of the 1st Leib-Hussar Regiment No. 1 for life . This was a special honor. This uniform would later become his trademark.

On April 27, 1915 he was appointed chief of the infantry regiment named after him “Generalfeldmarschall von Mackensen” (3rd West Prussian) No. 129 .

The paddle steamer Stadt Wehlen , which was only completed in 1925, was laid down in the Laubegast shipyard in 1916 under the name of Field Marshal von Mackensen .

On April 21, 1917, the SMS Mackensen , the type ship of a new class of large cruisers , was baptized in his name when it was launched .

Mackensen was an honorary citizen of numerous cities, such as Danzig , Swinemünde , Heilsberg , Bütow and Tirnowo . In 1915 the newly formed rural community Mackensen in Pomerania was named after him. Streets have been named after him in various cities. Mackensenstrasse in Berlin's Schöneberg district was renamed Else-Lasker-Schüler- Strasse in 1998 on the grounds that research results made it a pioneer of National Socialism . The square in front of the Düsseldorf police headquarters , which bore his name from 1937, was renamed " Jürgensplatz " in the summer of 1945 in memory of a central actor in the resistance of Aktion Rheinland against the Nazi regime .

Fonts

  • Wolfgang Foerster (Ed. And edit.): Mackensen: Letters and notes of the Field Marshal General from War and Peace. Bibliographical Institute, Leipzig 1938.

literature

  • Joachim Niemeyer:  Mackensen, August von. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 15, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1987, ISBN 3-428-00196-6 , p. 623 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • Hans-Joachim Böttcher : Mackensen, ALF August (from). In: Important historical personalities of the Düben Heath . (= Series of publications of the Working Group for Central German Family Research . No. 237), Leipzig 2012, pp. 63–64.
  • Otto Kolshorn: Our Mackensen. A picture of life and character. ES Mittler & Sohn, Berlin 1916.
  • Theo Schwarzmüller : Between Kaiser and “Führer”. Field Marshal General August von Mackensen. A political biography. Ferdinand Schöningh, Paderborn / Munich / Vienna / Zurich 1995; Paperback edition after the 2nd revised edition Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, Munich 2001, ISBN 3-423-30823-0 .
  • Uwe Wolfradt and Moritz Waitschies: August von Mackensen - a story of ascent from Central Germany In: Sachsen-Anhalt-Journal 29 (2019), no. 4, pp. 13-15.

Web links

Commons : August von Mackensen  - Collection of images

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Daily news. (...) Appointment of (on) Mackensen's field marshal. In:  The New Newspaper. Illustrated independent daily paper, No. 175/1915 (8th year), June 26, 1915, p. 5, center left. (Online at ANNO ). Template: ANNO / Maintenance / nzg.
  2. ^ Janusz Piekałkiewicz : The First World War. Econ Verlag, Düsseldorf / Vienna / New York 1988, ISBN 3-430-17481-3 , p. 111 ff.
  3. ↑ Gerhard Hirschfeld, Gerd Krumeich and Irina Renz in connection with Markus Pöhlmann (eds.): Encyclopedia First World War. Ferdinand Schöningh, Paderborn 2009, ISBN 978-3-506-76578-9 , p. 833 f.
  4. ↑ John Keegan: The First World War. A European tragedy. Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag, Reinbek bei Hamburg 2001, ISBN 3-499-61194-5 , p. 220 ff.
  5. ↑ Theo Schwarzmüller: Between Kaiser and "Führer". Field Marshal General August von Mackensen. A political biography. Paperback edition after the 2nd revised edition Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, Munich 2001, ISBN 3-423-30823-0 , p. 318.
  6. ^ Karl-Heinz Janssen: Faithful to the fall of hell. From zeit.de, March 15, 1996, accessed May 24, 2017.
  7. ↑ Theo Schwarzmüller: Between Kaiser and "Führer". Field Marshal General August von Mackensen. A political biography. Paperback edition after the 2nd revised edition Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, Munich 2001, ISBN 3-423-30823-0 , p. 424.
  8. ^ Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945? S. Fischer, Frankfurt 2003, ISBN 3-596-16048-0 , p. 385.
  9. ↑ Gerd R. Ueberschär , Winfried Vogel : Serving and earning. Hitler's gifts to his elites. Revised edition Fischer Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt 2000, ISBN 3-10-086002-0 .
  10. ^ Bogdan Frankiewicz : The opposition society in the Nazi era. The example of Pomerania. Findings and important research problems. In: Jürgen Schröder (ed.), Ernst-Moritz-Arndt University of Greifswald (ed.): Pommern. History - culture - science. 2nd Colloquium on Pomeranian History, September 13 and 14, 1991. Weiland, Rostock / Greifswald 1991, ISBN 3-86006-046-5 , p. 141.
  11. ↑ Norman JW Goda: Black Marks. Hitler's Bribery of His Senior Officers during World War II. In: The Journal of Modern History , Vol. 72, no. 2. (June, 2000), pp. 430-432.
  12. ↑ Mackensenstrasse . In: Street name lexicon of the Luisenstädtischer Bildungsverein .
personal data
SURNAME Mackensen, August von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Mackensen, Anton Ludwig Friedrich August (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Prussian Field Marshal General
DATE OF BIRTH December 6, 1849
PLACE OF BIRTH Leipnitz ,
DATE OF DEATH November 8, 1945
Place of death Burghorn