Georg Rimpler

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Georg Rimpler (also: Georg Rümpler ; * 1636 in Leisnig , Electorate of Saxony , † August 3, 1683 in Vienna ) was a famous fortress builder and miner in the 17th century.

He became known in particular through the reinforcement of the Vienna Fortress for the Second Turkish Siege of Vienna . His technical knowledge contributed significantly to the fact that the city could be held until the relief army arrived. After one of the first mines of the Turks, he was wounded in a counterattack by the Viennese on July 25, 1683 and died in the night of August 2 to 3, 1683.

childhood

Georg Rimpler was born in Leisnig around 1636 as the son of a journeyman white tanner . In the great fire of Leisnig in 1637 as a result of the Thirty Years' War , his parents and later his sister were killed. In addition, his birth records were destroyed in this fire, so that his exact date of birth is unknown. After the fire, he lived with his grandmother. He learned the white tanning trade from his foster father, a brother of his father's . But he gave up and financed his studies with the money from his family. He took mathematics, fortification, history, ancient war history, logic, dialectics and rhetoric. The imperial city of Nuremberg was then known as the “school of the art of war” and, as the most heavily fortified city in the empire, had a highly specialized arms production facility . One of Rimpler's teachers was the famous kit master Hanns Carl (also Johann Carl) (1587–1665). Gun models from his production are still in the Nuremberg Germanic Museum .

Years of apprenticeship

Mine Warfare
Engraving by Jacobus Peeters

In 1655, Rimpler was recruited by Sweden for the war against Poland and fought in the siege of Riga . He got his first impressions of the fortress construction here. After 1660 he studied fortress construction near Nuremberg under Georg Christian Gorck. In 1665 and 1666 he was again in Swedish service as a lieutenant and engineer officer during the siege of Bremen . In 1669 he fought as captain for the Republic of Venice in the last months of the siege of Candia . The Doge of Venice awarded him the highest order of the city-state. In the wake of the Swedish general Otto Wilhelm Graf Königsmarcks, he embarked for Candia and was deployed with Brunswick-Lüneburg auxiliary troops in the St. Andrea bastion. Here Georg Rimpler completed his knowledge of mining and fortress construction. The siege had degenerated into a huge mine war , which remained unique until the First World War . This siege became a trial by fire for him . During a mine attack, Georg Rimpler was seriously injured by a Turkish Fornell (mine) and just got away with his life. Conditions at the troops were even worse and the warfare was extremely inhuman. Later he will complain in one of his books: “ How difficult it is for generals to learn to deal with their most precious material, namely soldiers' blood. It is irresponsible to lead the innocent and upright people to the slaughter in this way. The infantry than sending the soul and the life of the fortress so vorsetzlich to death, is a big mistake. "

Master of fortress construction

From 1670 to 1674 he wrote a three-fold treatise on the fortresses and fortified fortress on his two works . In these books he discarded the old method of fortification of surrounding cities and fortresses with continuous and connected walls and ditches, and instead suggests individual forts around the city - in such numbers and close proximity that one can be shot at from the others. An attacker would be compelled to besiege and storm all parts of the fortress individually before he could have taken the city. This form of defense is also known as Inner Defension . Georg Rimpler could not realize his manner.

In Stettin he met Emperor Leopold I and Duke Charles V of Lorraine . He was known in the German-speaking area and had an excellent reputation as a fortress builder and miner.

Second Turkish siege of Vienna

Attack of the Turks on besieged Vienna
Etching by Romeyn de Hooghe

In April 1682 he was initially employed by Emperor Leopold I for 2000 guilders in the army of the Court War Council President Field Marshal Margrave Herrmann von Baden to strengthen the fortresses against the Turks from Leopoldstadt , Raab , Pressburg , Komorn to Vienna as a lieutenant colonel and chief of engineering posed. Most of the structural measures to strengthen the fortification of the cities go back to Georg Rimpler. The considerations were to break the Turkish armed forces from Raab to Vienna and to repel the weakened Turkish troops with a relief army. From this year on, Daniel Suttinger took part in the expansion of the fortifications under his leadership , who later created a detailed plan of the second Turkish siege of Vienna.

Georg Rimpler correctly recognized that the main attack by the Turks would take place near Fortress Vienna between Burgbastei and Löbelbastei. He left this section reinforce especially built caponier and Künette in the ditch . The Viennese city wall , the bastions , ravelins and the counter scissor carpe were repaired and received loopholes for the artillery on the face . The covered path was reinforced with palisades . The separation and division of the fortress parts goes back to him in order to prevent the occupation of the whole complex when a section is conquered.

On July 25, the Turks blew up a mine in front of the Löbelbastei and threw a large section of the wall of the counter-rake into the trench. Georg Rimpler was wounded in the left arm during the counterattack by the Viennese to re-fortify this section. The wound was not serious in itself, but under the inadequate medical conditions his condition worsened and he died a few days later on the night of August 2-3, 1683. He was with thousands of defense lawyers and civilians who participated in combat operations and Epidemics had perished, buried. Today nobody knows where his grave is.

Even after his death, Vienna was defended according to his ideas and principles. At the beginning of September 1683, the Viennese built the first streets into another line of defense, which was no longer needed.

Rimpler's works

  • A threefold treatise on the fortresses (1671, published 1673)
  • Fortified fortress, artillery and infantry posed with three meetings in Bataille (1674 in Franckfurt)
  • Stable foundation for fortification and defending (1674 in Frankfurt / Main)

Criticism of his works

Views differ widely about his writings. Many call him a famous war builder who promoted the art of fortification and a reforming, fortification writer who was not an imitator or supporter of the ruling Italian and Dutch systems and could be described as a forerunner of Marc-René de Montalembert . Even his contemporary, friend and comrade in arms, Colonel and engineer Scheichter, with whom Rimpler's activity is sometimes confused, remarked on the other hand that one might judge some of Rimpler's suggestions more favorably if one knew what he wanted and if he had explained his ideas through drawings . It is certain that Rimpler never worked according to his own ideas and thus his thoughts and suggestions only formed the subject of discussion.

On the other hand, it was believed that Rimpler had been overrated, and this was justified by referring to his two works. These include: I. Rimpler's newly invented fortification method, II. Rimpler's knowledge of the importance of hollow wall construction, and are thus in contradiction to one another, because Rimpler's conception of the importance of hollow construction is not fully developed into a fortress system and makes no significant use of hollow construction.

Nevertheless, in the last section of his first work, Rimpler had already written down findings that were only fully recognized 90 years later under Montalembert. And so, in the end, it can be said that Rimpler was a person endowed with many intellectual abilities, who nevertheless made a memorable appearance as a military and engineer under the circumstances of the time, considering his incomplete training.

Traces of Georg Rimpler

  • The Rimplergasse in Vienna's 18th district of Währing still reminds of him today .
  • In Leisnig there is the Georg-Rümpler-Weg .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b The Cross and the Crescent. The History of the Turkish Wars by Klaus-Peter Matschke S358f.
  2. ↑ War of the Moles
  3. ↑ Homepage Leisnig Online (history / personalities)
  4. ↑ A stable foundation for fortifying and defending . Franckfurt 1674, online edition of the Saxon State Library - Dresden State and University Library
  5. ^ Adolf Schinzl:  Rimpler, Georg . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 28, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1889, p. 618 f.
personal data
SURNAME Rimpler, Georg
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Rümpler, Georg
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German builder, fortress builder and miner in German-speaking countries
DATE OF BIRTH 1636
PLACE OF BIRTH Leisnig , Electorate of Saxony
DATE OF DEATH August 3, 1683
Place of death Vienna