August von Thomsen

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Gustav Friedrich August Thomsen , from 1913 von Thomsen (born August 6, 1846 in Oldenswort , † September 26, 1920 in Kiel ) was a German admiral in the German Imperial Navy .

biography

Thomsen was the son of the Prussian politician Adolph Theodor Thomsen and Catharina Thomsen, born. Tönnies. The sociologist Ferdinand Tönnies and the member of the Reichstag, Gert Tönnies, come from the Tönnies family .

Thomsen joined the Prussian Navy in 1862 . From 1875 to 1878 he was a member of the artillery examination commission and at the same time department head for artillery equipment in the admiralty of the Imperial Navy. Promoted to corvette captain in 1878 , he became first officer of the ironclad Hansa and took part in trips to the West Indies. From 1880 to 1881 he was a department leader in the 1st Sailor Division and then an artillery officer from the square and director of the Wilhelmshaven artillery depot .

He commanded u. a. the tank frigate King Wilhelm , the covered corvette Gneisenau and, in 1885, the tank corvette Bavaria , on which he carried out important remote shooting exercises. He then introduced remote shooting to the Navy. From 1888 to 1889 he was Chief of Staff at the North Sea Naval Station . He was then head of the military department in the Reichsmarineamt .

In 1890 he was promoted to rear admiral, inspector of the naval artillery . At the same time he was chief of the 4th division of the maneuver fleet in the autumn maneuvers of 1893 and in the autumn maneuvers of 1894 chief of the specially trained 2nd squadron, which took up the 4th division.

Promoted to Vice Admiral, Thomsen was chief of the Baltic Sea Naval Station in Kiel from 1895 to 1896 . From 1896 to 1899 he led the I. Squadron and was replaced by Eduard von Knorr due to a restrictive assessment . From 1899 to 1903, promoted to admiral in 1900, he was chief of the North Sea naval station. As head of the North Sea naval station, he initiated the construction of the heavy coastal fortress in Cuxhaven that was built between 1905 and 1908 to protect the mouth of the Elbe , the Kaiser Wilhelm Canal and Hamburg (→ Fort Kugelbake ). In 1913 he was ennobled in Prussia.

After his departure, he supported the activities of the German Fleet Association to build a larger navy and was its vice-president in 1906. From 1917 he was a member of the main management of the Pan-German Association .

In 1918 a trawler was named after him as Admiral von Thomsen , sister ship of the Blücher (1913) .

In his first marriage, Thomsen was married to Dagmar Jensen in 1875. In his second marriage he was married to Carola Alwine von Boeckmann (1858–1923) from 1888.

plant

  • The German fleet: a chat. The young comrades from the army and navy . JF Lehmanns , Munich, 1917.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Christian Jentzsch: From Cadets to Admirals: The British and German Naval Officer Corps 1871 to 1914 . Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG, 2018, ISBN 978-3-11-060897-7 , p. 266 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  2. ↑ a b Gothaisches genealogical pocket book of noble houses . 1921, p. 840 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  3. ^ A b c University of Chicago: Illustrated Newspaper . Leipzig, [etc.]: JJ Weber, 1843, p. 434 ( archive.org [accessed February 22, 2020]).
  4. ^ A b c Klaus Franken: The naval cabinet of Kaiser Wilhelm II and his first boss, Admiral Gustav Freiherr von Senden-Bibran . BWV Verlag, 2017, ISBN 978-3-8305-3522-5 , pp. 232 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  5. ↑ Tobias R. Philbin: Admiral von Hipper: The inconvenient Hero . John Benjamin Publishing, 1982, ISBN 90-272-7258-1 , pp. 13 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  6. ↑ Jörg-Uwe Fischer: Admiral des Kaiser: Georg Alexander von Müller as head of the naval cabinet of Wilhelm II. P. Lang, 1992, ISBN 3-631-45166-0 , p. 73 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  7. ↑ a b Gothaisches genealogical pocket book of noble houses: at the same time the nobility register of the associations united in the honor protection league of the German nobility . J. Perthes., 1934, pp. 32 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  8. ^ Genealogical handbook of the nobility . CA Starke, 2003, p. 416 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  9. ↑ Johannes Leicht: Heinrich Claß 1868–1953: The political biography of an Pan-German . Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh, 2012, ISBN 978-3-657-77379-4 , p. 163 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
personal data
SURNAME Thomsen, August von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Thomsen, Gustav Friedrich August von (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German admiral
DATE OF BIRTH August 6, 1846
PLACE OF BIRTH Oldens word
DATE OF DEATH September 26, 1920
Place of death Kiel