Eduard von Böhm-Ermolli

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Eduard Böhm , from 1885 von Böhm-Ermolli , 1917 Freiherr von Böhm-Ermolli , 1919 Eduard Böhm-Ermolli (* 12. February 1856 in Ancona , then Papal States ; † 9. December 1941 in Opava , Moravian-Silesian ) was a Field Marshal of the Austro-Hungarian Army and Army Leader in the First World War .

Eduard von Böhm-Ermolli (around 1897)

Life

Origin, education

Eduard was the son of the imperial and royal major Georg Böhm (1813-1893) from Kunewald bei Neutitschein , a former sergeant who was promoted to officer for bravery in the battle of Novara (1849) , was appointed major on retirement (1877) and had been raised to the hereditary nobility (September 14, 1885). As early as June 24, 1885, the father had received permission to add the maiden name of his Italian wife (Maria Josepha Ermolli † 1906) to his own name. Since then, the family living in the garrison town of Troppau has been called von Böhm-Ermolli .

Military career

Eduard Böhm-Ermolli went through the Cadet Institute in Sankt Pölten and the Theresian Military Academy in the imperial castle in Wiener Neustadt and on September 1, 1875, joined the Dragoon Regiment 4 "Archduke Albrecht" in Wels as a lieutenant . Three years later he was assigned to the General Staff course at the War Academy in Vienna and, after successfully completing his degree, was transferred to the 21st Infantry Brigade in Lemberg as a staff officer . On May 1, 1897, he became a colonel and commander of the Uhlan Regiment No. 3 . On April 15, 1901, he took over the 16th Cavalry Brigade in Pozsony and was promoted to major general on May 1, 1903 . On April 14, 1905, he received command of the 7th Cavalry Division and rose to Field Marshal Lieutenant on April 1, 1907 . On April 28, 1909, Böhm-Ermolli became commander of the 12th Infantry Troop Division. After these troop deployments, whose garrisons were mostly in Krakow , he finally reached on May 1, 1912 the rank (patent with April 29) of general of the cavalry . On February 7, 1911, he was finally appointed commanding general of the 1st Corps in Krakow. From December 25, 1911, he was also the Imperial and Royal Privy Councilor . Finally, on February 4, 1913, he was appointed colonel owner of the kuk Uhlan Regiment No. 13 in Galicia .

First World War

Visit to Lemberg in August 1916: Böhm-Ermolli between Hindenburg and Ludendorff

When the First World War broke out, Böhm-Ermolli was given the command of the Austro-Hungarian 2nd Army in July 1914 . Briefly involved in the campaign against Serbia , this army was transported too late by the chief of staff, Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf , against the Russian troops invading Galicia . During the final phase of the Battle of Lemberg , the 2nd Army tried in vain to counterattacks on the Wereszyca in early September to prevent the loss of Lemberg and then had to retreat behind the San . In autumn 1914 the army command was relocated to Russian Poland as a result of the failed battle on the Vistula and was concentrated in the Belchatow area until mid-February 1915 following the German Landwehr Corps Woyrsch . Returning to Galicia at the end of February 1915, the army command failed in the battle in the Carpathian Mountains with the subordinate corps group Tersztyánszky, the desired free fight of the besieged Przemyśl fortress . Coming from the Baligrod area to the north, several offensives of the 2nd Army failed with heavy losses.

After the successful breakthrough of the Central Powers in the Battle of Gorlice-Tarnów (May 1915), the 2nd Army also succeeded in leaving the Carpathian positions and, after the breakthrough at Grodek on June 23, 1915, the recapture of Lemberg. In September 1915, in addition to his army command, Böhm-Ermolli took over the command of the army group named after him, Böhm-Ermolli , which was put on the defensive during the failed campaign to Rovno by the Russian counter-attacks on the Brody - Zloczow - Strypa - Buczacz line . Böhm-Ermolli's command of the 2nd Army (lasting until May 1918), at times also under German command, was one of the longest-running military uses of the First World War.

On May 1, 1916, Böhm-Ermollis was promoted to Colonel General . His Army Group, to which the German Southern Army was subordinate, was the only one to essentially hold its old front in the defensive battles in eastern Galicia in the summer of 1916. In the following year of the war during the Russian Kerensky offensive , Czernowitz was recaptured on August 3, 1917 with German troops .

In August 1917 he received the Commander's Cross of the Military Maria Theresa Order and at the same time the elevation to the hereditary baron status. He became a member of the Austrian mansion and on January 31, 1918 kuk field marshal .

His last task as commander-in-chief was the occupation of Ukraine in 1918. Emperor Karl I commissioned him in March 1918 to carry out requisitions "ruthlessly and, if necessary, by force". At the beginning of May, the Army High Command praised Bohm-Ermolli for satisfying food requisitions. Due to conflicts with the German allies, however, he was removed from his post on May 16, 1918, and his army group was disbanded in Odessa .

Last phase of life

Böhm-Ermolli (far left) in 1941 with German field marshals
Böhm-Ermollis grave in Troppau

After the collapse of the monarchy in November 1918, Eduard von Böhm-Ermolli withdrew to Opava, which then became part of the newly emerging Czechoslovak Republic . The Czechoslovak government paid him a pension and appointed him general of the reserve, later army general, although he never did active service in the country's army .

With the annexation of the Sudetenland in 1938, the Austro-Hungarian Field Marshal von Böhm-Ermolli suddenly became a citizen of the German Empire . He was the only one of the Austro-Hungarian field marshals still alive who was awarded the character of field marshal general in October 1940 and appointed chief of the 28th Infantry Regiment stationed in Opava. When the 85-year-old Field Marshal died in 1941, he was honored with a state ceremony in Vienna in which Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel represented the Wehrmacht . He was buried in Troppau. His grave still exists today.

Awards

Böhm-Ermolli's coat of arms on the occasion of his elevation to the baron class in 1917

Eduard Freiherr von Böhm-Ermolli was the commander of the Military Maria Theresa Order (179th doctorate), holder of the Grand Cross of the Austrian Imperial and Royal. Leopold Order as well as the Royal Hungarian Order of Saint Stephen , holder of the Austrian Military Merit Cross I Class, the Star of the Decoration for Services to the Red Cross , the Oak Leaves for the Pour le Mérite and various other highest domestic and foreign orders and decorations .

literature

Web links

Commons : Eduard von Böhm-Ermolli  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. The title was made bourgeois on the basis of the "Law on the Abolition of the Nobility, Secular Knights and Ladies Orders and Certain Titles and Dignities" of the Republic of Austria (Nobility Repeal Act ) of April 3, 1919 with effect from April 10, 1919.
  2. a b c biography on Austrian Commanders.
  3. a b c d Spencer Tucker (Ed.): The Encyclopedia of World War I. A Political, Social and Military History . ABC-Clio Verlag, Santa Barbara 2005, ISBN 1-85109-420-2 , p. 216.
  4. ^ Johann Christoph Allmayer-BeckBöhm-Ermolli, Eduard Freiherr von. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 2, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1955, ISBN 3-428-00183-4 , p. 386 f. ( Digitized version ).
  5. ^ Hannes Leidinger , Verena Moritz , Karin Moser, Wolfram Dornik: Habsburgs dirty war. Investigations into the Austro-Hungarian warfare 1914–1918. Residenz, St. Pölten 2014, ISBN 978-3-7017-3200-5 , p. 185.
  6. Manfried Rauchsteiner : The death of the double-headed eagle. Austria-Hungary and the First World War. Böhlau, Vienna / Graz / Cologne 1993, ISBN 3-222-12454-X , p. 542.
  7. ^ Wolfram Dornik: The Ukraine. Between self-determination and foreign rule, 1917–1922. (= Publications of the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Research on the Consequences of War , Volume 13) Leykam, Graz 2011 ISBN 978-3-7011-0209-9 , p. 488.
  8. ^ Book of Honor of the Austrian-Hungarian Wehrmacht I. Volume, Ed .: Kuk Kriegsarchiv , Vienna 1917, Verlag Vaterländisches Archiv, p. 114.