Friedrich von Beck-Rzikowsky

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Friedrich Beck , from 1861 Ritter von Beck , from 1878 Baron von Beck , from 1906 Count von Beck , from 1913 Count von Beck-Rzikowsky (born March 21, 1830 in Freiburg im Breisgau ; † February 9, 1920 in Vienna ) was Privy Councilor , Colonel General and from 1881 to 1906 Chief of the General Staff of the Austro-Hungarian Army .

Friedrich von Beck-Rzikowsky as Feldzeugmeister
As commander of the Arcièren Life Guard, portrait from 1913

Life

He was a son of the Freiburg professor of surgery and ophthalmology Karl Joseph Beck . One of his brothers was the military doctor Bernhard Oktav Beck .

Beck joined the imperial army in 1846. He served as a second lieutenant and first lieutenant in the infantry , the pioneers and with the quartermaster general at the time . In 1848/49 he took part in the fighting in Hungary and in the storming of Brescia .

After graduating from war school, Beck was appointed captain II class in the general staff in 1854 and was able to distinguish himself as chief of staff of the Reischach division in Italy in 1859, especially in the battles near Candia and the battle of Magenta . In this he was badly wounded and received the Order of the Iron Crown III for bravery in front of the enemy from Emperor Franz Joseph I. Awarded class with war decorations.

1861 was followed by the collection Becks in the Austrian knighthood.

Further steps in his military career were:

In 1866 he was sent to the theater of war by the Kaiser on special missions during the German War , which made him known for the first time in wider circles.

In 1867 he became head of the emperor's military chancellery and in 1874 his adjutant general . At the same time he was appointed to the Privy Council . In 1878 the emperor promoted him to field marshal lieutenant and sent him on a secret mission to the newly occupied Bosnia . Then Beck was raised to the baron status by the emperor on October 31, 1878 .

In 1881 Beck was promoted to Chief of the General Staff (until 1906) and in 1882 to Colonel Owner of Infantry Regiment No. 47 and in 1888 to Feldzeugmeister . In 1885 the emperor appointed him to the manor house of the Imperial Council . In that year he suggested the general map of Central Europe , which was later made on a scale of 1: 200,000. He also initiated the introduction of photogrammetry as a recording method for topographic maps in the Imperial and Royal Military Geography Institute .

Beck was appointed Knight of the Order of the Black Eagle by the Prussian King Wilhelm II in 1893 .

He held the post of Chief of Staff for 25 years and during this time he exercised great influence as a confidante of Emperor Franz Joseph I. In the various internal conflicts of the army, he sought to have a balancing effect. Quiet and cautious, he took a middle position on military issues between progressive liberal modernizers and the reactionary camp around Field Marshal Archduke Albrecht . Under his leadership, the General Staff became the actual high command of the armed forces, whose subordination to the Reich Ministry of War was almost only nominal. In popular parlance, Beck was called "Vice Emperor" until 1906, because he was the same age and of a similar nature to Franz Joseph I and harmonized perfectly with him in terms of military policy.

During the Hungarian crisis in 1905 Beck developed plans ("Case U" for Hungary) to put down a possible uprising in Hungary by force.

In 1906 the 76-year-old Kaiser dismissed the 76-year -old Chief of Staff at the urging of heir to the throne Franz Ferdinand , whom he had entrusted with thinking about modernizing the armed forces. War Minister Heinrich von Pitreich was dismissed in the same year at the request of Franz Ferdinand. At the instigation of the heir to the throne, the then 54-year-old Lieutenant Field Marshal Conrad von Hötzendorf became the new chief of staff .

In recognition of his many years of service, Beck was raised to hereditary count by the Kaiser on June 11, 1906 and subsequently appointed captain of the Arcièren Life Guard. As such he was portrayed by Ludwig Koch in 1913 . The painting is now in the permanent exhibition of the Army History Museum in Vienna. In 1916 Beck-Rzikowsky was promoted to the rank of Colonel General, newly created in 1915.

Beck married Anna Maria Rzikowsky von Dobrzicz in 1861. In 1913 the imperial approval of the union of the name Beck with that of the male family of his wife was granted. His son Friedrich Graf von Beck (* 1872) was a colonel in the general staff.

literature

Web links

Commons : Friedrich von Beck-Rzikowsky  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ István Deák: Beyond nationalism. A social and political history of the Habsburg officer corps, 1848-1918. Oxford University Press, New York 1990, ISBN 0-19-504505-X , p. 70.
personal data
SURNAME Beck-Rzikowsky, Friedrich von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Beck-Rzikowsky, Friedrich Graf von (full name); Beck, Friedrich
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian cartographer and Feldzeugmeister of the General Staff of the Austro-Hungarian Army
DATE OF BIRTH March 21, 1830
PLACE OF BIRTH Freiburg in Breisgau
DATE OF DEATH February 9, 1920
Place of death Vienna