Feng Yuxiang

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Feng Yuxiang (1930)
Feng in front of the Lenin Mausoleum in Moscow, 1926
Negotiations between Chiang and Feng (left) in Xuzhou, 1927
Feng Yuxiang between 1936 and 1946

Feng Yuxiang ( Chinese  馮玉祥  /  冯玉祥 , Pinyin Féng Yùxiáng , W.-G. Feng Yü-Hsiang ; maiden name 馮 基 善 , Féng Jīshàn , Feng Chi-shan ; Zì 焕章 , Huànzhāng , Huan-chang ; * 1882 in Xingji ( Hebei ) ; † August 22, 1948 near Odessa ) was one of the warlords in the early period of the Republic of China , the era of the warlords and the Chinese Civil War .

Feng was born in Hebei Province in northern China , but his family is from what is now Chaohu in Anhui Province . He was the second son of seven children of a low-ranking officer in the Qing Dynasty Imperial Army and only attended school for a year and a half due to lack of funds. At the age of 14 years, Feng joined the Huai Army of Li Hongzhang in Anhui. In 1902 he was in the Beiyang Army from Yuan Shikai displaced and made therein by reason of his hard work and his persistent self-study career. Shortly before the start of the Xinhai Revolution , the tall Feng was promoted to command of a battalion. On January 3, 1912, in response to the Wuchang uprising, he carried out the unsuccessful Luanzhou uprising , which led to his discharge from the army and the death of his comrades-in- arms Wang Jinming and Shi Congyun .

After the establishment of the republic, he began a new military career with the help of his sponsor, Minister of War Lu Jianzhang . In 1914 he commanded a regiment stationed near Beijing . He converted to Christianity and began to lead his troops with a mixture of Christian socialism and military discipline. He became known for baptizing his soldiers with a water hose . His regiment was posted to Shaanxi to fight bandits there. In this phase he began to use his troops politically: He opposed the ambitions of Yuan Shikai to proclaim himself emperor ; in 1916 he declared the province's independence from Yuan's empire as governor of Sichuan . In 1917, he fought attempts by Zhang Xun to reestablish the Qing Dynasty. In 1918 he published a manifesto calling for a peace settlement with the Guangzhou government of Sun Yat-sen , although the Beijing government under Duan Qirui pursued the opposite policy. This partisanship led to military clashes with the other north Chinese warlords, through which he suffered high military losses.

In 1921 he was sent to Shaanxi again by the Zhili clique around Cao Kun and Wu Peifu , this time with the task of fighting the troops of Chen Shufan from the Anhui clique . As a reward for this successful service, his troops were increased to division size and Feng was appointed governor of Shaanxi. In this function, Feng enlarged his army, which was now also known as the Northwest Army, he was considered the designated ruler of Northwest China.

In 1922 - the alliance between the Zhili clique and the Fengtian clique had just broken - he rushed to the aid of Wu Peifu, who was in the First Zhili-Fengtian War against Zhang Zuolin . As a result of this war, Feng's 30,000-strong army became the protector of Beijing; it was now the best-trained military power in the country. In the Second Zhili-Fengtian War , Feng broke with Wu Peifu and made peace with Zhang Xueliang . He carried out a coup d'etat against the government of Cao Kun and invited Sun Yat-sen to negotiate a peaceful unification of China with the three most powerful men in North China, namely Zhang Zuolin, Duan Qirui and himself. At the same time, he accused Puyi of being involved in a conspiracy to reestablish the Qing Dynasty, reversed the edict on " Treating the Emperor of the Great Qing Dynasty Benevolently " and forced Puyi to leave the Forbidden City . Feng's annoyance at the financial disadvantage of Cao and Wu in the payment of his troops led to this coup, which amounted to a betrayal of Wu. In his autobiography, written much later, he states that he saw Sun Yat-sen as the only revolutionary and that he wanted to give him the opportunity to reorganize China. It is also likely that he received bribes from Japanese sources - Japan was keen that Wu Peifu did not expand towards Manchuria. After the Beijing coup, Feng terminated his alliance with the Beiyang clique and founded the National People's Army .

After Sun's death, the trio of Zhang, Duan and Feng fell out. General Guo Songling allied with Feng, revolted against Zhang Zuolin and besieged his capital Shenyang . Feng managed to conquer Tianjin while Guo was defeated by Zhang and executed on December 23, 1925. The alliance between the Zhili clique and the Fengtian clique experienced a renaissance against Feng Yuxiang and wrested control of Beijing from Feng. In this militarily difficult situation, Feng made the decision, at that time hardly understandable for everyone, to withdraw from political life. He handed over command to his deputy in January 1926; the war between Feng's and Zhang's troops dragged on until the summer of 1926, when Feng's army was defeated at Nankou .

As early as 1925, Feng had come closer to the Soviet Union and the Kuomintang . Feng retired to Moscow, where he stayed for nine months and also met Stalin . Stalin promised him extensive aid deliveries worth 11 million rubles and numerous Soviet advisers, which Feng was to receive in Ulaanbaatar . The military developments in China forced Feng to end his visit prematurely and return to China. In what was then Suiyuan Province , he reorganized his troops from September 1926, moved from there in the direction of Xi'an to liberate the city from the siege of Wu Peifu, and advanced to Tongguan on the western border of Henan by the end of December . It was planned that Feng's troops would join the Kuomintang's northern campaign there . He supported Chiang Kai-shek in the intra-party power struggles against the Wuhan government , and when the First United Front collapsed in 1927, Feng reached an agreement with Chiang at a meeting on June 19, 1927 in Xuzhou on a cooperation. All of the communists in Feng's army - including Deng Xiaoping - had to leave the troops or were killed. In February 1928, Chiang and Feng even took a brotherly oath. As part of the northern campaign, Feng forced the warlord Zhang Zuolin to give up Beijing and retreat to Manchuria; at the end of the northern campaign, Feng was one of the victors and celebrated the triumph with Chiang and Yan Xishan at the grave of Sun Yat-sen in the western mountains near Beijing . In October 1928, Feng became vice president of the Executive Yuan .

Chiang's troop disbanding conference in January 1929 failed because the warlords did not want to give up their influence in favor of the central power. Just a few weeks later, tensions between Chiang and the Guangxi clique around Li Zongren , Bai Chongxi and Li Jishen escalated . Chiang tried to pacify Feng Yuxiang by paying two million Chinese dollars and agreeing to rule over Shandong Province . In May, however, Feng found that Chiang was not keeping these promises and therefore declared Shandong to be independent. However, Chiang had previously bribed two of Feng's most important generals, Han Fuqu and Shi Yousan, with 100,000 soldiers. Feng was forced to resign, and Feng's remaining troops were ousted from Henan and Shandong.

On February 10, 1930, Feng, who still had 100,000 men under arms, allied himself with Yan Xishan, Li Zongren and Bai Chongxi against Chiang Kai-shek. An extremely bloody and expensive war broke out in the Chinese central plains , which Chiang won thanks to the support of Zhang. The densely populated Henan and Shandong provinces were devastated, killing around 300,000 people. Feng's army was integrated into Zhang Xueliang's Northeast Army and Feng himself had to flee into exile, but soon returned. As a result, Feng was appointed deputy chairman of the military council of the nationalist government - Chiang was the chairman - and in this role often opposed Chiang's policy in the war against Japan . In May 1933 he put in Chahar the Anti-Japanese People's Army of Chahar , which quickly grew to 100,000 men and the Japanese troops had driven out of the province until July 1933rd Apart from that, he remained in Chiang's military council and temporarily acted as commander in chief in the 3rd or 6th war zone, but these functions were more symbolic in nature.

After Japan surrendered , Feng took on the role of a special envoy from China to study hydraulic engineering projects abroad . He left China on September 2, 1946 and stayed in the United States for two years. There he joined the revolutionary committee of the Kuomintang, which was critical of Chiang, so that Chiang removed him from his post. Feng therefore sided with the communists and planned to return to China via the Soviet Union. The occasion for his departure was Mao Zedong's call for a consultative conference in Beijing. Feng died, coming from the USA, in a ship fire on the Soviet Pobeda en route via the Soviet Union to China in August 1948.

literature

  • James E. Sheridan: Chinese Warlord: The Career of Feng Yu-hsiang . Stanford University, 1966.
  • 簡 又 文 (Jian Youwen): 馮玉祥 傳 (Biography of Feng Yuxiang) . 傳記 文學 出版社, Taipei 1982.
  • 馮玉祥 (Feng Yuxiang): 我 的 生活 (My life) . 上海 书店, Shanghai 1996, ISBN 7-80569-994-1 .
  • 蒋铁生: 冯玉祥 年谱 (Chronological Biography of Feng Yuxiang) . 齐鲁书社, Jinan 2003, ISBN 978-7-5333-1219-0 .

Web links

Commons : Feng Yuxiang  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g h i Tien-wei Wu: Feng Yuxiang . In: Leung, Pak-Wah (Ed.): Political leaders of modern China: a biographical dictionary . 1st edition. Greenwood Press, Westport, Conn. 2002, ISBN 0-313-30216-2 , pp. 40-43 .
  2. ↑ a b c d e James Z. Gao: Historical dictionary of modern China (1800–1949) . Scarecrow Press, Lanham 2009, ISBN 978-0-8108-4930-3 , pp. 113-114 .
  3. ↑ Jay Taylor: The Generalissimo: Chiang Kai-shek and the Struggle for Modern China . 1st edition. Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass. 2009, ISBN 978-0-674-03338-2 , pp. 58 .
  4. ↑ Dieter Kuhn : The Republic of China from 1912 to 1937 - Draft for a political history of events . 3. Edition. Edition Forum, Heidelberg 2007, ISBN 3-927943-25-8 , p. 150 .
  5. ↑ Dieter Kuhn: The Republic of China from 1912 to 1937 - Draft for a political history of events . 3. Edition. Edition Forum, Heidelberg 2007, ISBN 3-927943-25-8 , p. 295-297 .
  6. ↑ Dieter Kuhn: The Republic of China from 1912 to 1937 - Draft for a political history of events . 3. Edition. Edition Forum, Heidelberg 2007, ISBN 3-927943-25-8 , p. 342-343 .
  7. ^ A b Christopher R. Lew and Edwin Pak-wah Leung: Historical dictionary of the Chinese Civil War . 2nd Edition. Scarecrow Press, Lanham 2013, ISBN 978-0-8108-7874-7 , pp. 63-65 .
  8. ↑ Dieter Kuhn: The Republic of China from 1912 to 1937 - Draft for a political history of events . 3. Edition. Edition Forum, Heidelberg 2007, ISBN 3-927943-25-8 , p. 351-353 .
  9. ↑ Dieter Kuhn: The Republic of China from 1912 to 1937 - Draft for a political history of events . 3. Edition. Edition Forum, Heidelberg 2007, ISBN 3-927943-25-8 , p. 399 .
  10. ↑ Jay Taylor: The Generalissimo: Chiang Kai-shek and the Struggle for Modern China . 1st edition. Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass. 2009, ISBN 978-0-674-03338-2 , pp. 71 .
  11. ↑ Dieter Kuhn: The Republic of China from 1912 to 1937 - Draft for a political history of events . 3. Edition. Edition Forum, Heidelberg 2007, ISBN 3-927943-25-8 , p. 409 .
  12. ↑ Jay Taylor: The Generalissimo: Chiang Kai-shek and the Struggle for Modern China . 1st edition. Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass. 2009, ISBN 978-0-674-03338-2 , pp. 84 .
  13. ↑ Dieter Kuhn: The Republic of China from 1912 to 1937 - Draft for a political history of events . 3. Edition. Edition Forum, Heidelberg 2007, ISBN 3-927943-25-8 , p. 427 .
  14. ↑ Dieter Kuhn: The Republic of China from 1912 to 1937 - Draft for a political history of events . 3. Edition. Edition Forum, Heidelberg 2007, ISBN 3-927943-25-8 , p. 433-435 .
  15. ↑ Dieter Kuhn: The Republic of China from 1912 to 1937 - Draft for a political history of events . 3. Edition. Edition Forum, Heidelberg 2007, ISBN 3-927943-25-8 , p. 435-437 .
Note: This article places the family name before the person's first name. This is the usual order in Chinese. Feng is the family name here, Yuxiang is the first name.
personal data
SURNAME Feng Yuxiang
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Warlord in the Republic of China and the Chinese Civil War
DATE OF BIRTH 1882
PLACE OF BIRTH Xingji ( Hebei )
DATE OF DEATH August 22, 1948
Place of death near Odessa