Friedrich Bronsart von Schellendorf

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Friedrich (Fritz) Heinrich Bruno Julius Bronsart of Schelldorf (* 16th June 1864 in Berlin , † 23. January 1950 in Kuehlungsborn ) was a Prussian lieutenant general and in the First World War, Chief of the General Staff of the Ottoman Field Army . He played a leading role in the Armenian genocide .

Friedrich Bronsart von Schellendorf as Colonel (1913)

Life

Origin and family

Friedrich was the son of the Prussian general and later Minister of War Paul Bronsart von Schellendorff and grew up on his manor in Schettnienen, East Prussia . Like all his brothers, he embarked on a military career and married his cousin Veronica Bronsart von Schellendorff (1867–1968) in Schwerin in 1887 . The botanist Huberta von Bronsart (1892–1978) is their daughter. Her older sister Rosalie (1889–1909) died early. A cousin (and at the same time brother-in-law) of Friedrich was the general staff officer Bernhard Bronsart von Schellendorff , who was chief of staff of various German armies mainly on the western front during the First World War .

Military career

On April 15, 1882, Bronsart left the Cadet Corps and was assigned to the 1st Guards Regiment on foot , stationed in Potsdam , as a second lieutenant . He began a career as a general staff officer and studied from 1890 to 1893 at the War Academy , where he was promoted to Premier Lieutenant in late 1890 . In 1893 he was a member of the Imperial 1st Sailor Artillery Division for about two months. In April 1894 he was posted to the General Staff for a year , where he was promoted to captain and in March 1895 transferred to the Army General Staff. On September 12, 1895 he joined the General Staff of the IX. Army Corps and returned to the Army General Staff in December 1895.

Bronsart was appointed in September 1896 to the high command of the imperial maneuver, which this year between the V. and VI. Army Corps was carried out. The imperial maneuver, at which the emperor was also present, was the annual high point of military life in Germany, and participation meant great prestige for the young general staff officer.

Officers of the German military mission before leaving for Turkey in December 1913 (Bronsart: 4th from left)

In March 1898 Bronsart was transferred to Hamburg to the 2nd Hanseatic Infantry Regiment No. 76 and appointed chief of its 11th company . In March 1900 he was reassigned to the Army General Staff and transferred to the General Staff of the 17th Division . On July 7, 1901, he was transferred to the General Staff of the 1st Guard Regiment and promoted to Major on September 19, 1901 . In 1904/05 he took part in the Manchurian campaign in the Russo-Japanese War as a military observer in the entourage of Prince Hohenzollern Prince Karl Anton with the Japanese army and in 1906 published a book about this experience: Six months with the Japanese military.

As a colonel , Bronsart von Schellendorf was commanded to Württemberg on October 1, 1912 and appointed commander of the Grenadier Regiment "Queen Olga" (1st Württembergisches) No. 119 . Probably because of his experience abroad, he was asked in October 1913, when the personnel for the German military mission in the Ottoman Empire , whether he wanted to be there. Bronsart agreed and in December traveled to Constantinople with the senior officers of the mission . After unbridgeable tensions between the head of the mission, Otto Liman von Sanders , and the Turkish military leadership under the newly appointed Minister of War Enver Pascha , at the beginning of 1914 , Friedrich Bronsart von Schellendorf became the second man in the mission to replace his superior with the central German Figure at the Turkish headquarters and appointed Chief of the General Staff of the Ottoman Army in February . In this role he was the head of organization of the Turkish army and in particular led the mobilization preparations. With Otto von Feldmann , the head of the operations department in the Ottoman Army Command, he was one of the closest collaborators of the Turkish Minister of War Enver Pascha during the First World War and coordinated all military matters with him.

Because of the severe Ottoman defeat on the Caucasus Front in the winter of 1914/15 ( Battle of Sarıkamış ), in which Bronsart von Schellendorf had also been injured, Liman von Sanders urged Bronsart to be recalled, as he, Feldmann and the German Chief of Staff of the Turkish Caucasus Army , Colonel Felix Guse, made jointly responsible for the fiasco. However, as in the years to come, Enver stuck to his chief of staff. In the following years Bronsart von Schellendorf developed more and more into the opponent of Limans. It was not until the end of November 1917 that Erich Ludendorff finally had him recalled from Turkey under pressure from diplomatic circles and the new German commander-in-chief in Syria and Palestine, Erich von Falkenhayn . His successor was Hans von Seeckt . Bronsart von Schellendorf remained jobless for a while and was given command of the 4th Replacement Division on the Western Front in September 1918 . After the end of the war, he retired from military service in 1919 with the rank of lieutenant general. In his memoirs, Ludendorff later judged Bronsart's dismissal as a mistake and declared that he had not seen through to an intrigue.

Genocide against the Armenians

Fritz Bronsart (first row left) as Chief of Staff next to Enver Pascha on a visit to Jerusalem (1916)

As chief of the general staff of the Ottoman army, Bronsart was the most important German officer in the Turkish army and, in this capacity, he was involved in the genocide of the Armenians . In some sources, Bronsart even appears as the main architect of the deadly deportation concept and thus one of the initiators of the genocide. Vahakn N. Dadrian found many reports in the archives which show that Bronsart gave the direct order to deport the Armenian population at the risk of massacres and mass deaths.

In early 1919, Friedrich Bronsart von Schellendorf noted in his notes:

“The Armenian, like the Jew, is a parasite outside of his homeland that soaks up the health of another country in which he has settled. This is where the hatred comes from, which was discharged against them as an undesirable people in a medieval way and which led to their murder. "

On July 24, 1921, he claimed in the Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, contrary to the documents published in the meantime, that the Armenians had rebelled behind the Turkish army for no reason and caused a bloodbath. The Turkish side was therefore forced to set up concentration camps in which attempts were made to make life for the Armenians tolerable. Individual attacks have occurred but have always been punished.

Friendship with Ludendorff

Friedrich Bronsart von Schellendorf was a childhood friend and close supporter of Erich Ludendorff . In 1926 he became the official chairman of the völkisch Tannenbergbund , which was conceived as a personal political association of Ludendorff and his right-wing radical support group. He resigned from the church and confessed to Mathilde Ludendorff's neo-Pagan philosophy , which was by no means recognized during the Nazi era. In autumn 1932 he gave up the leadership shortly before the ban.

Time after 1919

After the end of his military career, he studied agriculture at the Hohenheim University of Applied Sciences , where his daughter Huberta also became a lecturer, and he retired to his farm in Runenberg (own name, also given in books, possibly alluding to the East Prussian family estate Ruhnenberg) in Brunshaupten , which was expropriated in 1947. He stayed in contact with many soldiers and was present in Tutzing with Reichswehr Minister von Blomberg for Ludendorff's birthday in 1935 . He also published until 1941. In Kühlungsborn, as his place of residence was called since 1938, he (presumably) lived until his death.

Fonts

  • Clarifications to the history book "The War Minister" by HO Meisner , [Runenberg b. Brunshaupten (Mecklbg); Ostseebad Kühlungsborn] Koehler, Berlin 1941.
  • German nobility and freemasonry. KH Heine, 1929.
  • African fauna II. Novellas and stories. Haberland, Leipzig 1915.
  • Six months with the Japanese Army. Mittler, Berlin 1906.

literature

  • Christoph Dinkel: German Officers and the Armenian Genocide. In: Armenian Review. 44 (1991) No. 1, pp. 77-133, here: pp. 102-110.
  • Jürgen Gottschlich : Aiding and abetting genocide. Germany's role in the annihilation of the Armenians. Links, Berlin 2015, ISBN 978-3-86153-817-2 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Harry von Rège : Officer Stammliste of the Infantry Regiment No. 76. 1902, number 259, p. 184.
  2. ↑ Jürgen Gottschlich: Aiding and abetting genocide: Germany's role in the annihilation of the Armenians. Ch.links Verlag, Berlin 2015, p. 125.
  3. ↑ Wolfdieter Bihl: The Caucasus Policy of the Central Powers. Part 1: Your basis in Orient politics and your actions 1914–1917. Böhlau, Vienna / Cologne / Graz 1975, p. 224.
  4. ↑ Wolfdieter Bihl: The Caucasus Policy of the Central Powers . Part 1: Your basis in Orient politics and your actions 1914–1917. Böhlau, Vienna / Cologne / Graz 1975, p. 52 and 262.
  5. ↑ Wolfdieter Bihl: The Caucasus Policy of the Central Powers. Part 1: Your basis in Orient politics and your actions 1914–1917. Böhlau, Vienna / Cologne / Graz 1975, p. 262.
  6. ↑ Jürgen Gottschlich: Aiding and abetting genocide: Germany's role in the annihilation of the Armenians. Ch.links Verlag, Berlin 2015, p. 255.
  7. ↑ Wolfgang Gust : The genocide against the Armenians. The tragedy of the oldest Christian people in the world. Carl Hanser Verlag, Munich 1993, ISBN 3-446-17373-0 , Chapter 7.
    Wolfgang Gust: Partner in silence. The German Empire and the Extermination Policy of the Young Turks. In: Huberta von Voss (ed.): Portrait of a hope. The Armenians. Life pictures from all over the world. Verlag Hans Schiler, Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-89930-087-4 , pp. 79–95, here: p. 90 in the Google book search.
  8. ^ Vahakn N. Dadrian : The history of the Armenian genocide. Ethnic conflict from the Balkans to Anatolia to the Caucasus. Berghahn, New York 2004, ISBN 1-57181-666-6 , pp. 255-257 (“General Bronsart von Schellendorf's role”, here: p. 256 in the Google book search).
  9. ↑ Huberta von Voss: The investigator. The genocide expert Vahakn N. Dadrian. In: Huberta von Voss (ed.): Portrait of a hope. The Armenians. Life pictures from all over the world. Verlag Hans Schiler, Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-89930-087-4 , pp. 96-102, here: p. 101 in the Google book search.
  10. ↑ Andreas Baum: The silence of the peoples. About dealing with the genocide of the Armenians. Broadcast on April 27, 2005 on Deutschlandradio Kultur ; accessed on November 8, 2016.
    Partial quotations also from Wolfgang Gust: Partner in silence. P. 90.
    Julius Hans Schoeps : “You Doppelgaenger, you pale fellow ...” German-Jewish experiences in the mirror of three centuries, 1700–2000. Philo, Berlin / Vienna 2004, ISBN 3-86572-361-6 , p. 330.
  11. ↑ Axel Meißner: Martin Rades "Christian World" and Armenia. Building blocks for an international ethics of Protestantism. Lit Verlag, Münster 2010, ISBN 978-3-8258-6281-7 , p. 265 f.
  12. ↑ Jürgen Gottschlich: Aiding and abetting genocide: Germany's role in the annihilation of the Armenians . Ch. Links Verlag, 2015, ISBN 978-3-86284-299-5 ( google.de [accessed on May 18, 2020]).
  13. ↑ Stefan Breuer: The Völkische in Germany. Empire and Weimar Republic. Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 2008, ISBN 978-3-534-21354-2 , p. 255.
  14. ↑ Annika Spilker: Gender, religion and ethnic nationalism: The doctor and anti-Semite Mathilde von Kemnitz-Ludendorff (1877-1966) . Campus Verlag, 2013, ISBN 978-3-593-39987-4 , pp. 208 ( google.de [accessed on May 18, 2020]).
  15. ^ Ingo Bading: Study Group Naturalism: A German Chief of Staff and the "Armenian atrocities" of 1915/16. In: Study Group Naturalism. December 29, 2011, accessed May 17, 2020 .
  16. ↑ DNB 57253423X
personal data
SURNAME Bronsart von Schellendorf, Friedrich
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Bronsart von Schellendorf, Fritz; Bronsart von Schellendorff, Friedrich; Bronsart von Schellendorf, Friedrich Heinrich Bruno Julius
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Prussian lieutenant general; General in the Ottoman Army
DATE OF BIRTH June 16, 1864
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH January 23, 1950
Place of death Kühlungsborn