Bonaventure by Rauch

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Johann Bonaventure von Rauch
Major General Bonaventura von Rauch

Johann Bonaventura von Rauch (born July 25, 1740 in Peterskirchen / Upper Bavaria , † February 9, 1814 in Spandau ) was a Prussian major general , engineer officer and director of the engineering academy in Potsdam .

Life

Bavarian origin

Bonaventura von Rauch came from a Bavarian family from the Chiemgau . The church books of the Roman Catholic parish of St. Peter and Paul in Peterskirchen name his parents Johann Anton Rauch (1687–1745) and his wife Gertraud, née Reither (1709–1742). His father was a teacher and sacristan in the parish.

After the early death of his parents, the little Rauch Johann Cajetan Graf von Lamberg , pastor in Peterskirchen, Privy Councilor and Provost of Straubing , took care of him and made it possible for him to attend the Straubing Jesuit College . However, he did not stay there long and found himself in Dresden under circumstances that had not yet been clarified . From there he came to Bayreuth to receive his first scientific training.

Brunswick page and engineer officer

At the mediation of Margrave Friedrich III. of Brandenburg-Bayreuth , Bonaventure became a page in 1756 at the ducal court of Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel . In 1761 he appeared as an engineer in the Brunswick service. Under the Prussian General Ferdinand von Braunschweig he took part in the final phase of the Seven Years' War in the campaign of 1761/62 in the sieges of Kassel , where he was wounded, of Meppen and of Ziegenhain . Since 1764 a conductor in the engineering corps of the Brunswick Army , Rauch rose to lieutenant in 1766 and captain in 1772 . In 1775, during a trip to the Harz Mountains, in collaboration with Eberhard August Wilhelm von Zimmermann , professor of mathematics, physics and natural history at the Collegium Carolinum in Braunschweig, he took part in one of the first height measurements of the Brocken from Ilsenburg .

Career in the Prussian army

On the recommendation of Duke Ferdinand von Braunschweig, Rauch joined the Prussian army in August 1777 . Equipped with personal instructions from Frederick the Great , he initially taught at the rank of staff captain in the mine corps in Königsberg , interrupted in 1778/79 by a deployment in the War of the Bavarian Succession . After teaching mathematics to the pages as a Brunswick engineer officer, Bonaventura von Rauch earned an extraordinary reputation in the Prussian army as a military teacher. Minister of War and Field Marshal General Hermann von Boyen remembered his training officer Rauch in Königsberg: “Our teacher was the miner captain von Rauch, father of the later Minister of War von Rauch, a man whom nature created entirely to teach young, often wild beginners in the war trade would have. With great mildness of character, he also had the necessary firmness to reject any carelessness in its place; his lecture was a model of clarity and precision. "

The Cabinet House at Potsdamer Neuer Markt 1: the seat of the former engineering academy of the Prussian army

In 1788, King Friedrich Wilhelm II founded the Royal Engineering Academy in Potsdam as a step towards modernizing the Prussian army. He transferred the training of geographic engineers to Rauch and promoted him to major . Rauch traveled to Silesia several times between 1790 and 1792 for the purpose of recording the state in the Glatzer Schneegebirge and to build the Karl Fortress in the Heuscheuergebirge . On August 28, 1790, the poet's 41st birthday, Bonaventura von Rauch received Johann Wolfgang von Goethe on the Great Heuscheuer . During these years Rauch also emerged as an author of military theoretical treatises and as a cartographer . In the campaign in France , Rauch served as captain des guides on the royal staff . Rauch took part in the conquest of the fortresses Longwy and Verdun , then fell ill with dysentery and stayed in a Koblenz hospital until November 1792 .

In 1796, the king made Rauch lieutenant colonel and appointed him director of the engineering academy to succeed Major General Heinrich Otto von Scheel . From 1788 to 1806 Bonaventura von Rauch lived with his large family in the academy building - later known as the cabinet house - at Neuer Markt 1 near the royal city ​​palace in Potsdam.

Since 1805 he was major general, and when the war against France broke out in the summer of 1806 , Rauch was assigned to the governor of the fortress Stettin , the 77-year-old lieutenant general Friedrich Gisbert Wilhelm von Romberg , as vice-commander and in command of the fortress of Prussia. Romberg was strongly influenced by the lost battles of Jena and Auerstedt and the extensive dissolution of the Prussian army during their retreat. On October 28, 1806, the Commander-in-Chief of the Prussian Field Army, General of the Infantry Friedrich Ludwig Fürst zu Hohenlohe-Ingelfingen , accepted the surrender of Prenzlau after only a short battle against French troops. When 800 French horsemen appeared in front of Stettin the following day, October 29, 1806, Lieutenant General von Romberg, without having assessed the strength of the enemy, handed them the fully defensive fortress including the 5,184 men inside. Rauch, together with the Szczecin fortress commander, Major General Kurd Gottlob von Knobelsdorff , agreed without resistance. For his decision, Rauch was released from the army on December 1, 1806 without saying goodbye , later placed under house arrest and sentenced to life imprisonment in the citadel of the Spandau fortress on March 17, 1809 . King Friedrich Wilhelm III had comparable draconian punishments . of Prussia with his "Ortelsburger Publicandum" of December 1, 1806 against a large number of his generals and staff officers who had made similar decisions as Romberg, Knobelsdorff and Rauch in October 1806.

Rauch's situation aroused sympathy in the Prussian officer corps. The punishment appeared to be too severe because the elderly Romberg had never commanded in the field, but was primarily known as a deserving teacher and scientist. Even Queen Luise's interest reached Friedrich Wilhelm III. only that Rauch was granted at least half the major general's pension from January 1810 and was allowed to serve his arrest in the city of Spandau. He died there on February 9, 1814.

family

Since Rauch had switched to the Prussian military service in 1777, he has carried the title of nobility without objection.

Rauch married on June 13, 1773 in the patronage and today's village church of Kunow Johanna Bandel (1752-1828), the daughter of the Prussian councilor Johann Justus Bandel in Schwedt / Oder and his wife Helene Catharina, née Copal.

The marriage of Bonaventura and Johanna von Rauch had twelve children:

⚭ I 1802 Caroline von Geusau (1780–1867), daughter of the Prussian Lieutenant General and Quartermaster General Levin von Geusau and his wife Marie Caroline, née Grepler (divorced 1815)
⚭ II Rosalie von Holtzendorff (1790–1862), daughter of staff captain Georg Friedrich von Holtzendorff and his wife Rudolphine Wilhelmine, née von Lütke, granddaughter of the Prussian major general Georg Ernst von Holtzendorff

literature

  • Gothaisches aristocratic paperback. B 1928 (older genealogy) and 1939, p. 468ff.
  • Genealogical manual of the nobility. Volumes B VII (1965), p. 335ff., And B XXI (1995), p. 434ff.
  • 90 years ago. A contribution to the history of the Prussian engineer corps . In: New Military Papers, IX. Volume (1879), pp. 1ff
  • The von Rauch family in the Prussian army. In: Military weekly paper . No. 79, pp. 1979ff.
  • Kurt von Priesdorff : Soldier leadership . Volume 3, Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt Hamburg, undated [Hamburg], undated [1937], DNB 367632780 , pp. 180-182, no. 1091.
  • Historical Association for Upper Bavaria: Upper Bavarian Archive for Patriotic History . Volume 5. Verlag Georg Franz. Munich, 1844
  • Eberhard August Wilhelm von Zimmermann: Observations on a trip to the Harz Mountains along with an attempt to determine the height of the chunk using the barometer. Verlag der Fürstliche Waisenhaus-Buchhandlung, Braunschweig 1775, p. 7 ff.
  • Friedrich Nippold : Memories from the life of General-Field Marshal Hermann von Boyen. Publishing house S. Hirzel, Leipzig 1889.
  • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: From the notebook from the Silesian journey. In: Goethe works. Weimar Edition, III. Section Volume 2: July – September 1790, 1887.
  • Adalbert Hoffmann: The Goethe Day of the Schneekoppe and the Heuscheuer for a new source. In: The hiker in the Giant Mountains. Volume 42 No. 473.
  • Johann Friedrich Zöllner : Letters about Silesia, Krakow, Wieliczka and the County of Glatz. Verlag Friedrich Maurer, Berlin 1795, p. 433.

Archival material

  • Rauch family. The entire offspring of Bonaventura and Johanna von Rauch. Handwritten manuscript by Colonel a. D. Leopold von Rauch, 1945 ( German Aristocratic Archive Marburg)

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Wording in Priesdorff (Lit.), p. 182.
  2. ↑ On the events in Stettin see Oscar von Lettow-Vorbeck: The war of 1806 and 1807. Volume 2: Prenzlau and Lübeck. Mittler, Berlin 1892, pp. 288-293.
  3. ↑ For the convictions see: Großer Generalstab (Ed.): 1806. The Prussian Officer Corps and the Investigation of the Events of the War. ES Mittler & Sohn, Berlin 1906, pp. 48-50.
personal data
SURNAME Rauch, Bonaventure of
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Rauch, Bonaventure
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Prussian major general
DATE OF BIRTH July 25, 1740
PLACE OF BIRTH Peterskirchen
DATE OF DEATH February 9, 1814
Place of death Spandau