Carl von Helvig

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Carl von Helvig , also Karl Gottfried von Helvig (born September 4, 1764 in Stralsund as Carl (Friedrich Ludwig) Gottfried Hellwig ; † May 11, 1844 in Berlin ) was a Swedish general field master and Prussian lieutenant general of the artillery .

Life

He came from an originally Saxon family and was the son of the master carpenter and elder of the carpenter Kaspar Christian Hellwig. Helvig attended the city school in Stralsund. The father's income was insufficient to enable him to attend a higher educational institution. Although his talent for drawing and mathematics had already been discovered and promoted at school, his father wanted him to begin an apprenticeship as a carpenter. However, he proved to be physically unsuitable and, after an injury, self-taught with fortification drawings . In 1781 he passed the entrance examination and went to Gothenburg as an engineer cadet for fortress construction . After he could no longer finance his living there and received no support, he was recruited there by the Swedish artillery. He became a non-commissioned officer in 1782 and took part in a campaign to Norway. In 1788 he became a second lieutenant. During the Finland campaign in 1789, King Gustav III. attention to him. The regent who succeeded him, the Duke of Södermannland , decided to set up mounted artillery. For this purpose , artillery officer Carl Friedrich Kobes (later ennobled as Carl von Cardell ) from Swedish Pomerania was appointed from Stralsund to Sweden. He chose Helvig as his assistant, who was promoted to staff captain in 1794. Although the two got into a dispute and Helvig was promoted to major in the Wendesschen (Wendland) artillery regiment in 1795, Cardell took over some of Helvig's decisive ideas.

When Helvig proposed in his new position to equip the Swedish artillery with iron guns, he got into another dispute. The Duke of Södermannland therefore ordered him to be an embassy in Constantinople . In 1796 Helvig conducted investigations in the area of Çanakkale , where Troy was later discovered, and made contact with various scholars of his time as well as Napoleon Bonaparte .

After his return he campaigned again for a reform of the artillery. In 1802 he became a lieutenant colonel in the artillery of the life guards and a member of the artillery committee. He made a living as a weapons designer and in 1804 introduced the Helvig field cannon , later named after him , which was about a third lighter than the older model from 1749, but was later replaced by Cardell's design. In the same year he became a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences . The Feldjäger trutzen developed by him had a barrel with an octagonal chamber, four pulls and a bayonet . Its 21.2 millimeter caliber was the largest in Sweden in the 19th century.

In 1805 Helvig was promoted to adjutant general to the king and to colonel and inspector of the artillery. In 1807 he was promoted to general field master and commander of the entire artillery. In the same year he was raised to the Swedish nobility. Relations with King Charles XIII. Later turned out to be unfavorable, so that Helvig took his leave in 1815 with the transition from Swedish-Pomerania to Prussia and entered the Prussian military service as major general on December 19, 1815. Here people were particularly interested in his knowledge of iron cannon barrels. When he fell out with the smelter authorities about the manufacture, the matter stalled. Finally Helvig was retired as lieutenant general in 1826.

Until his death he lived in Berlin, where he did scientific work. Since 1803 he was married to Amalie von Imhoff (1776-1831).

Fonts

  • Remarks about lightning and thunder, together with assumptions about the origin of the air phenomena. In: Annals of Physics . Volume 51, Issue 10, 1815, pp. 117-148.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The GHdA nobility lexicon calls him Carl Gottfried Helvig , Swedish nobility on February 6, 1807 as "Helvig" (without "from") and introduction to the nobility class of the Swedish knighthood on February 4, 1809 as royal Swedish colonel of the artillery, adjutant general and Artillery inspector. It was not until his grandson Hugo Helvig was enrolled as "von Helvig" in the aristocratic class in the Kingdom of Bavaria on September 5, 1876. Thus the naming of "von Helvig" would be wrong for the Carl Gottfried Helvig described here . - Source: Genealogical manual of the nobility, Adelslexikon . Volume V (1984).
  2. ↑ In Swedish encyclopedias, September 7, 1765 is mentioned as the birthday without further comment. Helvig, Karl Gottfried . In: John Rosén, Theodor Westrin, BF Olsson (eds.): Nordisk familjebok konversationslexikon och realencyklopedi . 1st edition. tape 6 : Grimsby – Hufvudskatt . Gernandts boktryckeri, Stockholm 1883, Sp. 1011 (Swedish, runeberg.org ).
  3. ↑ Otto Titan von Hefner : Register of the flourishing and dead nobility in Germany . Volume 2, Georg Joseph Manz, Regensburg 1863, pp. 135-136 ( /books.google.de )
  4. ↑ In Nordisk familjebok is Wolgast indicated as the birthplace. At Poten (ADB) and Hefner, 1764 is given as the year of birth.
personal data
SURNAME Helvig, Carl von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Helvig, Carl Gottfried von; Helvig, Karl Gottfried; Hellwig, Carl Gottfried; Hellwig, Carl Friedrich Ludwig Gottfried
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swedish General Feldzeugmeister, Prussian Lieutenant General of the Artillery
DATE OF BIRTH September 4, 1764
PLACE OF BIRTH Stralsund
DATE OF DEATH May 11, 1844
Place of death Berlin