Eduard von Knorr
Ernst Hugo Eduard Wilhelm Heinrich Knorr , von Knorr since 1896 , (born March 8, 1840 in Saarlouis , † February 17, 1920 in Berlin ) was a German admiral .
Life
On June 24, 1854, Eduard von Knorr joined the Prussian Navy at the age of 14 . Two years later he took on the wheel Corvette SMS Danzig at the battle of Tres Forcas with Riffpiraten off the coast of Morocco in part, where he was wounded by a gunshot. In 1859 he was made a lieutenant.
From 1859 to 1862 he took part in the East Asian expedition on the transport ship SMS Elbe . His appointment to lieutenant in 1862 was followed by promotion to lieutenant captain in 1865 . From October 1869, Knorr commanded the gunboat SMS Meteor at the West Indian station abroad . On November 12, 1870, Knorr led a battle against the French Aviso Bouvet as commander of the Meteor off Havana during the Franco-German War . This battle off Havana ended in a draw and was the baptism of fire for the Imperial Navy . Because of this battle, Knorr was promoted to Korvettenkapitän in 1871 and received the Iron Cross, 2nd class . Now in the Imperial Navy , he took over the management of the hydrographic office of the Admiralty the following year .
On a journey through the Pacific Ocean that began in 1874 , he concluded a friendship and trade treaty with Tonga for the German Empire . In 1876 he was appointed captain of the sea . In 1881 he became Chief of Staff of the Admiralty, in 1883 Rear Admiral .
As head of the West African Squadron , Knorr intervened in Cameroon in December 1884 in power disputes between rival Douala clans, thereby enforcing the recognition of the German patronage of the Cameroon estuary and temporarily managing the administration of the German colony until the arrival of the first governor. In the following year he went to Zanzibar as head of the East African cruiser squadron and forced the sultan there to recognize the German patronage on the East African mainland on December 20, 1885.
In 1886 Eduard von Knorr intervened in Samoa as head of the permanent cruiser squadron . In 1889 he was appointed Vice Admiral and Chief of the Naval Station of the Baltic Sea , on May 31, 1893 as Admiral and in 1895 as Commanding Admiral of the Imperial Navy . In this capacity he was with others in Lübeck on May 31, 1895 to lay the foundation stone for the Elbe-Trave Canal . After the blows with the silver hammer by the Minister of State , Karl von Thielen , the commanding admiral, followed by President Georg von Steinmann , hit the granite stone in the ceremony .
On January 18, 1896 , Kaiser Wilhelm II. Von Knorr was raised to the hereditary Prussian nobility . During the mandatory autumn maneuvers of the imperial navy, Eduard von Knorr was appointed as the commander of the participating naval units. At the beginning of 1896 he had a meeting with the Chancellor Prince Clodewig zu Hohenlohe Schillingsfürst (1819–1901) in which, among other things, the admiral's staff was informed in the event of war. In May of the same year, he reaffirmed his view that provision must be made for a secret naval intelligence service to be organized via the attachés deployed at the German embassies in a personal letter to the Chancellor. Three years later, on March 7, 1899, he was placed at the disposition and at the same time à la suite of the naval officer corps. He was a Knight of the Order of the Black Eagle with the Chain .
In 1904 Knorr began to set down his memories. He used materials that had been made available to him by the Secret Admiralty Councilor Paul Koch, who was employed in the Reichsmarineamt and regularly published articles on German naval history in the semi-official Marine-Rundschau . Knorr's memoirs, which cover the period from approx. 1856 to approx. 1895, have not yet been published. They are now in the Federal Archives-Military Archives in Freiburg im Breisgau as estate (N) 578.
Knorr retired in 1920 after a hunting a pneumonia and died shortly afterwards. His grave in the Columbiadamm cemetery in Berlin's Hasenheide remains.
His son Wolfram von Knorr (1880–1940) commanded in the First World War a . a. the auxiliary cruiser SMS Meteor . His only grandson , Wolf von Knorr (1907–1928) was killed in a traffic accident.
Contemporary characterization
Knorr was considered an extremely conservative and choleric superior. He stylized himself as the "only real sailor that the Navy still owned". According to Albert Hopman , hundreds of anecdotes about the admiral circulated in the Imperial Navy . Hopman, however, did not consider him suitable for leading a modern and high-tech fleet, which automatically made him oppose Tirpitz .
Honors
- A bust of the admiral was erected in front of the naval academy in Kiel in 1905. In his hometown Saarlouis the Admiral-Knorr-Strasse and in Wilhelmshaven and Kiel the Knorr-Strasse were named after him. In addition, two patrol boats of the Imperial Navy were named after him: the end of the 19th century-built Admiral Knorr and the end of the 1910s-built Admiral Knorr .
literature
- G. Beckmann, KU Keubke (ed.): Everyday life in the Imperial Navy around 1890. ISBN 3-89488-051-1 , pp. 102-103.
- Cord Eberspächer, Gerhard Wiechmann: Admiral Eduard von Knorr (1840-1920). A career in the new elite of naval officers in Prussia-Germany. In: Karl Christian Führer, Karen Hagemann , Birthe Kundrus (Ed.): Eliten im Wandel. Social leaders in the 19th and 20th centuries. For Klaus Saul on his 65th birthday. Münster 2004, pp. 239-258.
- Klaus Volker Giessler, The Institution of Naval Attachés in the Empire, Harald Boldt Verlag, Boppard am Rhein, 1976.
- Erich Gröner u. a .: The German warships 1815-1945 , Vol. 8/2: Outpost boats, auxiliary minesweepers, coastal protection associations (part 2), small combat associations, dinghies , Koblenz (Bernard & Graefe) 1993, p. 533. ISBN 3-7637-4807-5
- Heiko Herold: Imperial violence means sea violence. The cruiser squadron of the Imperial Navy as an instrument of German colonial and world politics 1885 to 1901. (Contributions to military history, vol. 74, also Phil. Diss. Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf), Munich (Oldenbourg Verlag) 2012, ISBN 978-3 -486-71297-1 .
- o. V. (Albert Hopman): Admiral Knorr as a person and superior. in: Illustrated German fleet calendar for 1926. 24th year, Minden in Westphalia 1926, p. 81f.
- PK (d. I. Paul Koch): Admiral von Knorr. In: Marine-Rundschau. 15th year 1904. pp. 864f.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Service anniversaries in the German Navy. In: The yacht. Berlin 1904, issue 1, p. 28.
- ↑ Dermot Bradley (ed.), Hans H. Hildebrand, Ernest Henriot: Deutschlands Admirale 1849-1945. The military careers of naval, engineering, medical, weapons and administrative officers with admiral rank. Volume 1: A-G. Biblio Verlag, Osnabrück 1988, ISBN 3-7648-1499-3 , pp. 262-264.
- ^ Georg Wislicenus , Willy Stöwer : Germany's sea power . Reprint-Verlag, Leipzig 2007, ISBN 3826223136 , p. 84.
- ↑ a b Meyer's Large Conversation Lexicon. Sixth edition, eleventh volume, pp. 191f.
- ^ The laying of the foundation stone for the Elbe-Trave Canal. In: Lübeckische Blätter ; Volume 37, number 44, edition of June 2, 1895, pp. 297–301.
- ^ Military weekly paper . No. 6, January 22, 1896, pp. 173-174.
- ↑ Klaus Volker Giessler, The Institution of Naval Attachés in the Empire, Harald Boldt Verlag, Boppard am Rhein, 1976, p. 133ff.
personal data | |
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SURNAME | Knorr, Eduard von |
ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Knorr, Ernst Hugo Eduard Wilhelm Heinrich von (full name) |
BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German admiral |
DATE OF BIRTH | March 8, 1840 |
PLACE OF BIRTH | Saarlouis |
DATE OF DEATH | 17th February 1920 |
Place of death | Berlin |