Bogdan von Hutten-Czapski
Bogdan Graf von Hutten-Czapski (born May 13, 1851 in Smogulec near Exin , Kingdom of Prussia , † September 7, 1937 in Posen ) was a Prussian politician and officer of Polish origin.
Life
origin
Bogdan Graf von Hutten-Czapski was born in 1851 as the son of Joseph Napoleon Graf Hutten-Czapski (1797-1852) and his wife Eleonora, née. Countess Mielzynski (1815–1875) was born under her parents' rule in the Prussian province of Posen . Just a year after his birth, his father died of cholera , which means that Bogdan became head of his house as a child. The family belonged to that group of Polish aristocrats who, after the partition of Poland, had become loyal subjects of the King of Prussia without denying their Polish national identity. The young Count Hutten-Czapski followed this tradition.
Military career (1873–1895)
On October 1, 1873, the twenty-two- year- old joined the Prussian army and served as a one-year volunteer with the 2nd Guard Dragoon Regiment in Berlin . Two years later, in August 1875, he was appointed reserve officer of this regiment. In the same year he passed his legal traineeship and entered the legal civil service at the Charlottenburg district court . On January 31, 1877, he was promoted to active secondary lieutenant by the highest cabinet order and was a career officer until 1899 .
During his time with the Guard Dragons, with whom he worked until 1881, Hutten got to know the Berlin society of the early days and played a leading role in the capital's “beau monde” early on: he frequented the salons of Countess Marie Schleinitz , Anna von Helmholtz and Helene von Lebbin and established close relationships with the old imperial couple, with whom he had been in personal contact for a long time thanks to his origins. He was regularly invited to the “Thursday evenings” in the salon of the city palace of the Emperor Unter den Linden , where the liberal, Catholic-friendly Empress Augusta especially enjoyed the presence of the strictly Catholic Polish magnate. However, this closeness to the Empress later earned him the suspicion of being an "agent Augusta" or representative of anti-Prussian interests among conservative statesmen, above all Bismarck , which somewhat hampered his civil service career. In Berlin he also came into contact with Clovis zu Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst (1819–1901), who was a member of the Reichstag at the time and whose son Philipp Ernst was his regimental comrade in the 2nd Guards Dragons. Hohenlohe soon became the most important reference person in his professional existence, a "political teacher and fatherly patron".
On October 11, 1882 Hutten was promoted to Prime Lieutenant and at the same time transferred to the Leib-Garde-Hussar Regiment in Potsdam , where he met the future Kaiser Wilhelm II , who was then serving in the same regiment. As early as August 1884 he, whose mother had been close friends with Countess Manteuffel, who died in 1879, was appointed Adjutant of the Reich Governor of Alsace-Lorraine , Field Marshal General Edwin von Manteuffel - a prestigious position which he did, however, soon after Manteuffel's death on 17th August June 1885, had to give up again. Hutten came to Hanover as a brigadjutant to the 20th Cavalry Brigade , where he stayed until 1888. On 22 March 1887 it returned the old Kaiser Wilhelm I to his ninetieth birthday with promotion to captain for the second Kurhessische Hussars "Landgrave Friedrich II." No. 14 , where he in 1888 in November squadron was.
Political activity (1895-1914)
On April 8, 1895, Hutten-Czapski was appointed to the Prussian mansion on the recommendation of his old patron Hohenlohe, who had been Chancellor since 1894 . This began his official participation in Prussian politics. After his appointment to the General Staff, favored by War Minister Walther Bronsart von Schellendorff , had been rejected several times by the Kaiser, Hutten decided in 1896 to take a longer vacation, which was converted into a transfer to the Landwehr in 1899 . However, Hutten also remained in a subordinate position as a politician, which gave him influence, but not power. His close relationship with Prince Hohenlohe meant that he was able to intervene more strongly in current political events: In the 1890s, for example, he helped to enforce the reform of the military criminal court , which finally succeeded against the resistance of the conservatives.
With Hohenlohe's departure in 1900, however, his influence became noticeably less. He had a reasonably good relationship with the new Chancellor Bernhard von Bülow ; but his fight against the "expropriation law" planned by the Prussian state government, which was supposed to facilitate the transfer of some goods located in the Polish part of Prussia into state property, ultimately remained in vain. Hutten, who was himself a Pole, was one of the few conservatives, along with Field Marshal Gottlieb von Haeseler , who opposed the law that wanted to bring racially motivated tendencies towards Germanization into legal form. In early 1908 it was accepted in the House of Representatives , then also in the Manor House.
In the autumn of 1901, Kaiser Wilhelm II appointed him captain of the Posen Castle .
Polish Question (1915-1918)
With the First World War began the most significant section in Hutten's political life. Immediately after the outbreak of war in August 1914, he, meanwhile a lieutenant colonel in the reserve, was transferred to the Department for Eastern Issues in the General Staff . After a brief interlude in occupied Belgium , he was commanded on September 10th to join the 8th Army in East Prussia , which was then headed by General von Hindenburg . Here he experienced the victory at Tannenberg , the repulsion of the Russian army and - after an intermezzo as a mediator on the Italian question in the early summer of 1915, which ended unsuccessfully - the capture of Warsaw on August 5, 1915 by the 9th Army under Field Marshal Prince Leopold of Bavaria . He then played an influential role as an advisor to the Military Governor of Poland, Colonel General Hans von Beseler .
As early as July 31, 1914, the emperor had told him in a personal audience:
"It is my decision, if the Lord God gives our weapons the victory, to restore an independent Polish state with which Germany would be forever secured against Russia."
As the offspring of a Polish-German family with extensive political and social connections, Hutten-Czapski, now over sixty years old, was predestined like no other to act as a mediator in the tense relationship between the Prussian government and the Polish minority. Even now, however, the Polish aristocrat and loyal Prussian public servant was not allowed to hope for an official political position in an elevated position, as evidenced by a telegram from Kaiser Wilhelm on August 14:
“His Majesty the Emperor and King have deigned to order that Lieutenant Colonel Count v. Hutten-Czapski was to be assigned to the Warsaw Governorate at Army High Command 9. The very same are convinced that Lieutenant Colonel Graf v. Hutten-Czapski would be a valuable support and a good advisor to the Imperial Government due to his precise knowledge of Polish conditions and his good relations with Polish circles. The governor should make extensive use of his services. "
Even now Hutten remained politically in the second row, in that "hybrid position" between informal influence and formal insignificance that he himself aptly characterized in retrospect:
“As a Prussian peer, I spoke from the tribune of the manor house; As the personal secretary of the Chancellor and confidante of Holstein, I exercised a certain political influence; As the leader of my squadron in the barracks yard, in the riding arena and in the training area, I was nothing but hundreds in the same position. When my parliamentary obligations did not call me to Berlin, I did my usual duty in Kassel. But it was in the circumstances that, even as a simple squadron chief, I came into contact with historical personalities. "
At the same time, Hutten vigorously advocated a planned re-establishment of Poland as the reign of Poland under a German protectorate with the General Government of Warsaw . He represented a Wielkopolska program in the sense of the historical unity of the former Kingdom of Poland , regardless of modern ethnographic conditions, but initially only demanded Russian areas with consideration for the Central Powers : Lithuania , Belarus and significant parts of the Ukraine . In a conversation with Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg in June 1916, he spoke out against the Austro-Polish solution , i.e. the unification of Russian Poland with Galicia under Habsburg rule. The turnaround in the war situation and the eventual collapse of the German monarchies in 1918 brought an abrupt end to this project, which had been his heart's desire as a Prussian citizen of Polish origin.
family
Count Hutten-Czapski remained unmarried. He himself reported an anecdote about this, but kept silent about his actual motives:
“When the Kaiser [Wilhelm I.] was a guest in the middle of our officer corps in June 1880 , he said to me in passing, probably because he had heard that I was dancing:“ You give big balls and still have always not a woman ”. No matter how many mistakes I have to make, there is one thing I have never regretted without wanting to offend any readers: that I have not taken a companion for my path in life. The deficiency that some may see in this was made up for by my independence. "
Despite the name, the Polish Hutten-Czapskis had nothing to do with the Frankish family of the von Hutten family . The name Czapski comes from the family estate, the villages of Czaple and Czapelki in Pomerellen , in the Schwetz district . The nickname “Hutten”, on the other hand, goes back to a family legend: It did not appear until the beginning of the 18th century and is a translation of the Polish word Tschapka (in German “military hat”), which corresponded to the baroque fashion among Polish magnates , legendary and medieval foreign ones To fake the origins of their sexes. King Friedrich Wilhelm III bestowed the Prussian title of count with confirmation of the name "Hutten" . on September 27, 1804 to two former generals of the old Kingdom of Poland, Joseph and Nicholas. But these were only distantly related to Bogdan Hutten-Czapski and his father. (Given the award of the title Berlin on September 3, 1861) to the still immature Bogdan has been obtained by his mother with the family King I. William was a friend.
In 1922 the childless Count Bogdan adopted a distant relative, Emeryk August Hutten-Czapski (1897–1979) from a well-to-do line of the family near Minsk , who inherited part of his property. His Majorat Smogulec bequeathed Bogdan to a foundation that was supposed to pass on the proceeds from the goods to the Warsaw universities. His important collection of documents and books came to the Czapski Museum in Cracow and was dispersed during the Second World War .
memoirs
After retiring from politics, Hutten-Czapski wrote his memoir Sixty Years of Politics and Society , published in two volumes. To this day, his memories are an important source of social and cultural history. They also document how limited the political horizons of a cosmopolitan and astute man like Hutten could be in relation to the approaching Nazi rule . In the foreword he noted his expectations for a German-Polish understanding in the 1930s, which, barely two years after his death in 1937, would prove to be a fatal misjudgment:
- “Unfortunately my endeavors to bring about a German-Polish alliance or even an agreement failed back then [1918]. But the two men who recognize the German and Polish people as their leaders ( Hitler and Piłsudski , note), have initiated an understanding under completely changed circumstances and conditions, which can be hoped for duration and success and also new paths for the entire European policy has shown. "
Works
- (Ed.): Marian Hutten-Czapski: The history of the horse. Bath, Berlin 1891.
- A fight for law. The trial of the rulership of Romsthal. Berlin 1930.
- Sixty years of politics and society. 2 volumes, Berlin 1936.
literature
- Hutten-Czapski, Bogdan Graf von. In: Walther Killy, Rudolf Vierhaus (Hrsg.): Deutsche Biographische Enzyklopädie . Volume 5, Saur, Munich 1997, p. 236f.
- Hajime Konno : Bogdan Graf von Hutten-Czapski and the Polish Question (1870–1937). A Prussian nobleman between Germany and Poland. In: Historische Zeitschrift 302 (2016), pp. 41–77.
Web links
- Literature by and about Bogdan von Hutten-Czapski in the catalog of the German National Library
Individual evidence
- ↑ See Sixty Years. I, p. 37 ff.
- ↑ See Sixty Years. I, p. 183.
- ↑ See Sixty Years. II, p. 145, as well as Werner Conze : Polish Nation and German Politics in the First World War. Graz / Cologne 1958, p. 61.
- ↑ See Sixty Years. II, p. 232.
- ↑ See Sixty Years. I, p. 186.
- ↑ Hans Beyer: The Central Powers and the Ukraine 1918. Munich 1956, (= Yearbooks for the History of Eastern Europe NF Supplement 2) 12 ff.
- ↑ See Sixty Years. I, p. 57.
- ↑ Konarski, Armorial
- ↑ See Sixty Years. I, S. XIX.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Hutten-Czapski, Bogdan von |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Hutten-Czapski, Bogdan Count von; Hutten-Czapski, Bogdan Franciszek Serwacy |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Prussian politician |
| DATE OF BIRTH | May 13, 1851 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Smogulec |
| DATE OF DEATH | September 7, 1937 |
| Place of death | Poses |