Erich and Axel von Taube
Count Erich and Axel von Taube (born January 6, 1849 and February 13, 1851 in Stuttgart ; † December 2, 1870 near Champigny) were the only two sons of Count Adolf von Taube who volunteered in the Franco-German War on the same Day fell.
Happening
The two brothers had registered as volunteer hunters and moved unharmed with the Württemberg contingent as far as Paris. But now the French tried to break through the German ring of siege around Paris. Erich was the first to be fatally wounded in the battle of Champigny . When Axel rushed to his brother and held him, a bullet hit him too. Axel died on the transport from the battlefield, while Erich was brought to the hospital near La Lande, still alive. Prince Wilhelmvon Württemberg, who also took part in the campaign, learned of the fate of his friend, Count Erich, who was a year younger than him. Shortly after the battle, he went to the seriously injured man. The latter recognized him and was able to speak to Prince Wilhelm in a weak voice. Since he had suffered a puncture in the lung, Erich von Taube's case was hopeless with the current state of medicine. Prince Wilhelm visited the dying friend a second time a little later. He found him very faint but still conscious. The hope of the parents who hurried over from home that they would at least find their older son still alive was not fulfilled. They could only escort the bodies of both sons back to Stuttgart. Her funeral took place on December 10, 1870.
memory
The war death of the two brothers received a lot of attention. In keeping with the style of the time, it was transfigured as a heroic death.
Karl Gerok took the death of Count Taube as an occasion for his poem A wreath on the grave of the brothers Erich and Axel von Taube: Psalm 133 , which also flowed into his sermon at the burial of the two young men. The sermon and the volume of poetry Zwei Brüder are in the State Archives in Stuttgart.
In the church of the Löffelstelzen community , a votive plaque next to the pulpit has been commemorating the Taube brothers who fell in 1870 since 1872. Her grandfather, Count Ludwig von Taube, was the Württemberg special commissioner here in 1809 and had acquired citizenship there. The plaque was moved to the staircase on the outside of the church in the 1970s.
The court sculptor Ludwig von Hofer gave Pleidelsheim , his father's home parish, a pigeon memorial that he had made from Carrara marble. It was set up on July 5, 1885 in front of the Old Town Hall in Pleidelsheim and inaugurated in an elaborate ceremony in the presence of the artist and numerous guests of honor; Before the monument was erected, arches at the old town hall had to be closed, which were only returned to their old state in 1990/91.
The grave of the two brothers has been preserved in the Hoppenlauf cemetery in Stuttgart .
Parallels to what actually happened can be found in Émile Zola's novel The Collapse . On the one hand, Zola describes the battle of Champigny, on the other hand he tells how after the battle of Sedan two brothers were united on the battlefield until death .
See also
Individual evidence
- ↑ Paul Sauer : Württemberg's last king. The life of Wilhelm II. Stuttgart 1994, p. 47.
- ↑ Schwäbische Kronik , No. 239, October 8, 1889, p. 1965.
- ↑ Udo Dickenberger, Love, Spirit, Infinity , Olms 1990, ISBN 3-487-09405-3 , p. 124
- ^ State archive of pamphlets from the time of Deutsch-Franz. War
- ^ Community of Pleidelsheim - History
- ↑ Dickenberger 1990, p. 124