Friedrich Bogislav von Tauentzien

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FBvTauentzien, detail of the Breslau grave monument (destroyed)

Friedrich Bogislav von Tauentzien (born April 18, 1710 in Tauenzin , Lauenburg district in Pomerania , † March 21, 1791 in Breslau ) was a Prussian general in the Frederician era.

Life

Friedrich Bogislav von Tauentzien was born on April 18, 1710 in Tauentzien, the ancestral seat of his von Tauentzien family in the Lauenburg estate in Western Pomerania, and according to the traditions of his family, he dedicated himself to his five brothers, several of whom died on the battlefield, early on Military service.

At the age of 15 he joined the Cadettencorps and three years later, in 1728, recommended by his stately figure, he joined the " royal regiment " of Friedrich Wilhelm I as a flag junior. In 1734 he became an ensign ; Frederick II made him second lieutenant with the rank of captain in the army in the newly established first bodyguard battalion on August 4, 1740, and at the same time appointed him adjutant. As such, he was with the king when he entered Silesia before the end of the year, participated in the battle of Mollwitz and was one of the first to receive the newly founded order Pour le Mérite . In 1744, as a major of the army , he commanded a grenadier battalion, was at the siege of Prague and the battle of Hohenfriedberg and afterwards, when the king was standing on the border of Bohemia for a long time, maintained the far advanced post near Neustadt an der Metau with two battalions, who had to cover the connection with Glatz, for six weeks, during which the imperial Baron Trenk gave him hard work for five days with great superiority and the sacrifice of many people. During the peace he was promoted to company leader in 1753 and to major in the first guard in 1756. As a colonel and commander of the same, he took part in the battle of Kolin in 1757 and, at the head of his battalion, withstood the most persistent attacks by four enemy battalions and two cavalry regiments until he was finally dangerously wounded by a bullet in the body. The bullet that hit him was later placed in his grave.

The battalion lost 24 officers and 475 men in a little over an hour at Kolin. Only 250 survived that day unharmed. After his restoration, he served in Prince Heinrich's corps against the French in 1758 and was particularly distinguished by the successful raid near Hornburg in Halberstadt , where on February 1st he and 100 volunteers captured the French garrison of 300 men. When the king wanted to have a major undertaking carried out against the French soon afterwards, he left his brother to order Tauentzien to do so, “who would have to dispose and direct everything so that I could get my purpose under it, since the generals there had to if necessary, would like to lack the vitality and prompt good disposition ”. In the same year he appointed him "since he has distinguished himself in this way on so many important occasions in the present war" as major general and interim commander of Breslau, where he also transferred his battalion of guards, which had been so badly worn at Kolin.

The headquarters of Breslau was a position of the highest confidence for Tauentzien. The capital of Silesia was of the utmost importance to the king as a large depot for ammunition and provisions, for cash registers, for the sick and prisoners, but difficult to maintain as a fortress without a strong garrison. The enemy was able to bombard the inner city from the low heights in the south. In 1757, after the defeat and capture of the Duke of Braunschweig-Bevern , the fortress had surrendered to the imperial family under the commandant Johann Friedrich von Katte and only fell into his hands again after the king's victory in the Battle of Leuthen . To protect her from repeating this fate, the king entrusted her to Tauentzien. The defense of the fortress in 1760 was to be Tauentzien's great test. The war operations of the fifth year of the Seven Years' War began with the fact that, while King Friedrich in Saxony was facing Imperial General Daun , Feldzeugmeister Gideon Ernst von Laudon, with three times stronger troops, joined General Heinrich August de la Motte Fouqué's corps at Landeshut after a strong defense defeated and mostly captured on June 23.

Thereupon he took up position with one part of his army near Liegnitz, the other he sent to Glatz and captured this on July 26th by storm. Covered in the back, he could now turn towards Breslau, against which the Russian General Soltykoff was advancing slowly from Posen. The two generals, Soltykoff and Laudon, had already brought together Frederick's worst defeat at Kunersdorf in 1759 . Now the Imperial Court had once again succeeded in appointing the Petersburg court so that Soltykoff received orders to combine his operations with those of Laudon and to direct them towards the capture of the Silesian capital. The king could not leave Dresden when Tauentzien reported the intention of the enemy. He instructed his brother, Prince Heinrich, who was watching the Russian march in Neumark, to venture something to save Wroclaw. In fact, the prince hurried to Silesia, but learned on August 1st in Glogau that Laudon had meanwhile enclosed Breslau. The imperial general had received orders to take the city before the Russians arrived.

Since only a quick success corresponded to the intentions of his government, Laudon decided to force the fortress to surrender by bombarding the city and opened the same, as Tauentzien definitely refused to surrender, on the evening of August 1st. As terrible as the effects of the bombardment were, they did not change Tauentzien's decision. On the next day he had all the suburbs burned down to prevent the enemy from establishing themselves there and risking a storm. This determination made Laudon resign. Despite all the warnings, the Russians did not get close enough, but Prince Heinrich moved in by forced marches. King Friedrich had also given up the siege of Dresden and was on the march to Silesia. With the victory on the Pfaffendorfer Heights near Liegnitz on August 15, he saved the threatened province. He rewarded Tauentzien's merit by being promoted to lieutenant general, and in the next year he also awarded him the Order of the Black Eagle . Soon after the siege of Wroclaw, towards the end of 1760, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing entered Tauentzien's service as a secretary. He has summarized the impression he received from his boss in the words: "Had the King of Prussia been so unhappy to be able to gather his army under a tree, General Tauentzien would certainly have stood under this tree." Such an excellent opportunity to prove his efficiency, like the brief siege of Wroclaw, he did not find again.

However, a joint operation by the Russians and Habsburgs in Silesia was planned for the next year, with the conquest of Wroclaw as a goal, but the king made sure that it was not carried out; It was only in passing that a Russian army division under Czernitscheff ran over the suburbs again in August and launched a brief bombardment on the city. Soon afterwards, Tauentzien and part of the garrison were able to follow the Russians in order to speed up their march back somewhat. In the next year, when there was nothing to fear from the Russians, the king placed Tauentzien at the head of the corps after the victories at Burkersdorf and Reichenbach, which was supposed to recapture Schweidnitz , which had been taken from Laudon by a coup in autumn 1761 . Now it took a siege of more than two months to recapture the fortress. It may be pointed out as interesting that in this siege, famous in war history, the engineers in front of and in the fortress were two Frenchmen, Lefebvre and Gribeauval, who were both friends and authors of various theories on the art of siege. The defender of the fortress, Gribeauval, was evidently more capable than his opponent Lefebvre; The work of the latter proceeded only slowly, because the fortress effectively disrupted them, although the fact that the garrison was stronger in number than the siege corps also came into consideration. Tauentzien had barely 10,000 men against 12,500 defenders. At the end of September the king impatiently relocated his headquarters and personally carried out the preparatory work for the storm, until finally, after part of the Jauernigker forts had been exposed by a storm, the brave garrison surrendered to Tauentzien on October 9, captive of war. So he linked his name to one of the last operations of the war.

After the peace he received his own regiment in 1763: " Tauentzien on foot ". He was also appointed governor of Wroclaw. At the same time, since the king was now setting up general inspections of the various branches of the army in the provinces, he was entrusted with the inspection of the Silesian infantry, while Friedrich Wilhelm von Seydlitz received that of the cavalry. In these positions, the king took less seniority into account than experience and merit. Tauentzien was strict to the utmost in service and meticulous attention to discipline and appearance. In 1775 he became general of the infantry. As such, he also took part in the War of the Bavarian Succession and was in command of the second meeting in the king's army. Several times he was seconded to special ventures as an experienced general. The king gave him repeated evidence of his respect and favor. To improve his income, he gave him a canon position in Brandenburg and another in St. Sebastian in Magdeburg , the latter with permission to sell them.

In the eighties, however, he no longer did what the king asked of him, but the king refused to make up his mind to say goodbye to the aged general without his request. But after the maneuver of 1784 he wrote to him so harshly criticized the achievements of the Silesian infantry subordinate to him that the latter could not help requesting his release from the General Inspection. Even after they were handed over, he remained in the service as governor of Breslau and head of the regiment until his death, as such from then on he came under the supervision of younger superiors.

The Wroclaw Fortress has seen very significant expansions and reinforcements in the long years of its governorate. Since the Seven Years' War had shown the inadequacy of the previous fortifications clearly enough, the king not only had the old outer works on the left bank extended by connected buildings, but also drew the parts of the city on the right bank by building entrenchments, namely of the large spring star behind the cathedral, into the fortification. As Breslau transformed itself into a large fortress under Tauentzien's governorate and received an ever stronger occupation, it exercised an extremely important, often sole determining influence in all conditions of the city for almost a generation, whereby he naturally put military considerations ahead of civil considerations and usually proved to be deaf to counter-ideas or contradictions.

Tauentzien was little wealthy from home, he created his existence by the sword, the long service finally brought him wealth. The king himself liked him in 1779 to 150,000 Reichstaler . Tauentzien did not have an office building in Breslau; in 1764 he acquired the house Junkernstrasse 2 from Prince Radziwill, which is adorned with the marble medallion of his former secretary Lessing. Lessing was in his service from November 1760 to March 1765. It is well known that he felt very unhappy about it, not because he was repelled by the rough nature of the general, who lacked any scientific education, but “because the King of Prussia does not pay anyone without being dependent and working ". He couldn't bear the pressure of the office at all. Nevertheless, he owed rich impressions to those years in which he got to know the lively bustle of real life from a privileged place. Here the character of Tellheim developed for him.

He died on March 21, 1791, at the age of nearly 81 years. He was buried within the fortifications at a place where his life was in danger in 1760 and which he had asked the king to rest.

Prince Heinrich of Prussia dedicated a plaque on his Rheinsberg obelisk to him .

family

After the Second Silesian War, Tauentzien married Johanna Charlotte von dem Knesebeck , daughter of Lieutenant Colonel Johann Karl Christoph von dem Knesebeck , who had once commanded the royal regiment of Friedrich Wilhelm I. He had two sons, of whom the elder, Bogislaw Friedrich Emanuel , increased the fame of his father's name as a general. The younger son Carl Heinrich (* March 21, 1766; † October 16, 1807) married Philippine Johanna Marie von Arndt (* October 19, 1781; † March 28, 1845) and died on the Balkow estate as a Prussian major a. D. His four daughters married into important families:

  • Johanna Katharina (* 1755) ⚭ 1776 Heinrich Christian Kurt von Haugwitz (* June 11, 1752; † February 9, 1832)
  • Wilhelmine Sophie (* September 11, 1763; † February 18, 1842) ⚭ Hardwig Ludwig Anton von Hoym (* July 20, 1750; † February 18, 1811) President of the Chamber of Warsaw
  • Charlotte Luise (* August 14, 1750; † November 3, 1818) ⚭ Gottfried Heinrich Leopold von Schmettau (Pommerzig) (* October 21, 1732; † November 15, 1812)
  • Friederike Elisabeth (born November 13, 1761; † July, 1835) ⚭ February 3, 1780 August Wilhelm von Kleist (born February 26, 1751; † October 13, 1797), Chamberlain

Funerary monument

The Tauentzien Monument in Wroclaw

The monument to General Tauentzien was erected as a tomb for him by his family in 1795. It was created according to a joint design by the architect Carl Gotthard Langhans and the sculptor Johann Gottfried Schadow and was intended to commemorate a special event in the general's life with narrative reliefs (failure from besieged Breslau and the recapture of the Schweidnitz fortress) and a sculpture. Accordingly, he survived the battle against Austria in 1760 only by luck. The bas-relief of the monument was created by the Wroclaw sculptor Gottfried Stein. At the site of the earlier battle - in Breslau in front of the Schweidnitzer Gate - an unusually large tomb for a normal general has now been erected. To emphasize the monumental character, a park landscape was created especially for this purpose, in which the tomb was embedded.

The object was originally erected as an elaborate tomb by the family of the deceased without claiming a public honor, which was usually reserved for princes. Only over time did the tomb develop its publicity and make an impression on the cityscape of Wroclaw, so that it was actually perceived later as a memorial rather than a tomb.

When the French marched into Wroclaw in 1806, they let the city fortifications razed. From 1810 the magistrate redesigned the suburbs. In the course of the extension of Schweidnitzer Strasse, a square was created around the monument, which placed the tomb in its center. The transformation into a memorial of honor was completed by fencing the monument and renaming the square to " Tauentzien-Platz ". Only now was the private tomb a public monument.

After the Second World War , Wroclaw passed into Polish hands. The grave monument was demolished and the destroyed plaza was rebuilt in 1954 in the style of socialist realism , at the same time based on French classicism. However, when the monument was torn down in 1945, the Polish administration probably did not know that it had actually served as a grave, i.e. that a coffin with bones would have to be found in the ground. The remains of the coffin should still exist underground in the center of this square (now named after the Polish national hero plac Tadeusza Kościuszki ).

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. http://www.stammreihen.de/getperson.php?personID=I766321T&tree=tree1
  2. [1]
  3. Gothaisches genealogical pocket book of the count's houses, 1862, digitized
  4. Grundmann, Günther: Places of Remembrance in Silesia - Gravestones and Monuments from Eight Centuries, Jam Thorbecke Verlag, Konstanz and Stuttgart 1964, p. 65