Franz Sznayde

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Franz Sznayde - in exile in France in 1831

Franz Sznayde also François Sznajde , Franz Schneider or Franciszek Sznajde , (* October 8, 1790 in Warsaw , † December 13, 1850 in Grenelle ) was a Polish cavalry officer and in May / June 1849 during the Palatinate uprising he was in command of the Palatinate Revolutionary Army.

Life

From a young age, Sznayde went to the military of the Duchy of Warsaw and was involved in the Napoleonic Wars from 1807 to 1813 . From 1811 to 1813 he served in the corps of the French Marshal Louis-Nicolas Davout and took part in the Russian campaign in 1812 . After being wounded and briefly imprisoned, Sznayde took part in the defense of Danzig. He was awarded the Legion of Honor for his bravery .

From 1815 he was then to be found in the newly formed army of the Kingdom of Poland , where he was appointed major and commander of a cavalry regiment. In the Polish November uprising of 1830 he was commissioned by the dictator Józef Chłopicki to form an elite cavalry division and appointed its commander with the rank of lieutenant colonel. He was with his unit u. a. also involved in the battle of Grochów and that of Ostrołęka . For his success in combat he was promoted to colonel. On July 28, 1831 he was appointed brigade general and on August 21 he was placed under a larger cavalry brigade. He also received the Polish Order of Military Merit Virtuti Militari . On September 17, 1831, he and his brigade transferred to the Austrian Galicia as part of the 2nd Polish Army Corps , as the Polish army no longer had a chance to beat the Russian troops. Since he did not trust the assurances of the Austrian government, Sznayde emigrated to France. On his way to Paris he was enthusiastically received in Strasbourg along with other revolutionaries. In 1846 he appeared as a member of the Polish Democratic Society in Paris and in 1846 was involved in the preparation of the Cracow uprising .

Commander in Chief in the Palatinate 1849

On May 21, 1849 he took over the supreme command of the rebels' associations in the Rhine Palatinate . These associations were later integrated into the joint Baden-Palatinate Revolutionary Army under Ludwik Mierosławski as the 6th Division . After the previous commander-in-chief of the Palatinate troops, Daniel Fenner von Fenneberg , resigned from his post on May 20, Sznayde arrived in Kaiserslautern with a number of Polish officers on May 21 and took over the command. Sznayde had been recruited for 10,000 guilders. His plan to defend the Palatinate was to build three fortified camps at Homburg , Kaiserslautern and Mutterstadt , which, however, did not materialize. When a Prussian corps under Moritz von Hirschfeld marched into the Rhine Palatinate on June 11, 1849, Sznayde had unfavorably distributed his few and less powerful troops and had not covered the entrances to Kaiserslautern - the seat of the provisional government. The 59-year-old was hardly able to leave an impression on anyone and the reviews of him are devastating. “At a young age he might have been a capable equestrian officer, now he was old, comfortable, slow, and a friend of the dining pleasures.” ... “Even a young, capable general would not have won the victory, but with Sznayde at the head a quick defeat was inevitable ” .

A damning verdict on Sznayde has also come down to us from Friedrich Engels , who took part in the revolution in the Palatinate as adjutant to August Willich .

“General Sznayde arrived. It was a short, fat man who looked more like an elderly bon vivant than a "caller in Menelaus' quarrel". General Sznayde assumed command with great dignity, received a report on the state of affairs, and immediately issued a series of daily orders. Most of these orders extended to uniforms - the blouse, and the badges for officers - tricolor armbands or sashes, in response to requests to serving cavalrymen and riflemen to volunteer - requests that had already been made ten times unsuccessful, and the like. Like. He himself set a good example by immediately purchasing an Attila with tricolor cords to instill respect in the army. What was really practical and important in his daily orders was limited to the repetition of orders long since issued and to suggestions which the few good officers present had made earlier, but never implemented, and which could only now be implemented through the authority of a commanding general . For the rest, General Sznayde relied on God and Mieroslawski and lived the joys of the table, the only sensible thing that such a totally incompetent individual could do. "

Sznayde was not involved in the few and insignificant battles between his units and the Prussians in the Palatinate. With the agreement between the Palatinate and Baden, the Palatinate associations were integrated into the joint revolutionary army as the 6th division and, in view of the obvious weakness of the Palatinate troops, Mieroslawski ordered the retreat to Baden to concentrate his forces. On June 18, the Palatinate troops left the Palatinate over the Rhine bridge near Knielingen . On June 23, the Palatinate corps under Sznayde - which had been reinforced by Baden line troops - lost the battle at Ubstadt against Prussian troops. Sznayde was only able to gather his fleeing bandages again before Bruchsal . On June 24th, Sznayde and his division moved from Bruchsal, leaving only his rearguard behind. Already after the battle in Ubstadt, resentment arose among his troops. At Ubstadt he was accused of having supported his avant-garde too late with the main force of the division. This gave rise to further speculations that he was actually not a Pole, but a Prussian (Franz Schneider). He intends to surrender his troops to the Prussian army when the opportunity arises. When a people's defense unit near Weingarten refused to give the order for this reason, Sznayde went there. He was insulted as a traitor to the people, pulled from his horse and robbed of his French and Polish medals. In the end he was injured before he could be brought to safety by the levelheaded forces of the Revolutionary Army. Sznayde resigned from his office and returned to France, where he died a year and a half later in Grenelle near Paris and was buried in the north cemetery in Montmartre .

literature

  • Hans Booms, Marian Wojciechowski, Heinz Boberach (Editor): Germans and Poles in the Revolution 1848-1849: Documents from German and Polish Archives . Boppard am Rhein 1991, p. 697 in the Google book search
  • Joseph Straszewicz: The Poles and the Polish women of the revolution of November 30, 1830, or descriptions of the lives of those people who distinguished themselves in the last Polish fight for freedom , Stuttgart 1832-1837, pp. 505-508 in the Google book search

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ in Pierer Łowicz is given
  2. ↑ in Booms is given as 1850; in the Polish personal database 1859 is given
  3. ↑ s. Straszewicz
  4. ↑ including Theophil Mniewski who was summarily executed in Rastatt on 25 August 1849
  5. ^ Ludwig Bamberger : Experiences from the Palatinate survey in May and June 1849 , Frankfurt am Main 1849, pp. 41–43 online at the Frankfurt University Library
  6. ↑ s. Otto Fleischmann: History of the Palatinate uprising in 1849: described according to the available sources , E. Thieme, Kaiserslautern 1899 in the Internet.archive p. 146
  7. ↑ s. Friedrich Engels : The German Reich constitution campaign . In: Karl Marx - Friedrich Engels - Works, Volume 7, pp. 109–197, Dietz Verlag, Berlin / GDR 1960, here p. 155 online
  8. ↑ s. Engels p. 172
  9. ^ Daniel Staroste: Diary about the events in the Palatinate and Baden in 1849: a memory book for the contemporaries and for all who took part in the suppression of that uprising, Volume 1, Potsdam 1852, pp. 349-350
  10. ↑ s. nelso.pl Cmentarz Montmartre ( Memento of October 19, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
personal data
SURNAME Sznayde, Franz
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Sznajde, Franciszek; Schneider, Franz
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Polish officer
DATE OF BIRTH October 8, 1790
PLACE OF BIRTH Warsaw
DATE OF DEATH December 13, 1850
Place of death Grenelle