Gunther E. Rothenberg

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Gunther Erich Rothenberg (born July 11, 1923 in Berlin ; † April 26, 2004 in Canberra ) was an American officer and military historian of German descent who dealt in particular with the Napoleonic era .

Life

Rothenberg was born the son of a Prussian officer. He came from a Jewish family and therefore fled the National Socialists with his parents via the Netherlands to Great Britain in 1937. In 1939 he went to Palestine and joined the Zionist youth movement. In 1941 he volunteered for the British Army and was wounded in North Africa. Then he was in the military reconnaissance in Italy, Yugoslavia and until 1946 in the occupation of Austria. From 1946 to 1948 he worked as a civilian for the US secret service and in 1948 he fought in the Israeli War of Independence (in the Haganah and then in the Israeli army) with the rank of captain. In 1948 he followed his mother to the USA and served in the US Air Force in the Korean War from 1951 to 1955 . He then studied with the support of the GI Bill at the University of Illinois with a bachelor's degree in 1954 and at the University of Chicago with a master's degree in 1956 (General Crook and the Apaches, 1871–1874: the campaign in the Tonto basin) . In 1959 he received his doctorate from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (Antemurales Christianitatis: then military border in Croatia, 1522–1749). He taught at Southern Illinois University and from 1962 at the University of New Mexico , where he held a full professorship. From 1972 he was a professor at Purdue University (European history, military history) and after his retirement in 1999 lived in Melbourne and then in Canberra, where his third wife Eleanor Hancock taught at the Australian Defense Force Academy. Rothenberg remained scientifically active until the end.

In 1985 he was a Fulbright Fellow at the Australian Royal Military College in Duntroon. From 1995 to 2001 he was a visiting fellow at Monash University . In 2003/04 he was on the Advisory Board of the Australian Army Journal .

He was considered an expert on the military history of the Napoleonic era, especially the Habsburg army, as well as general Austro-Hungarian military history from the Turkish wars of the 16th century to the First World War. He highlighted the role of the Austrian Archduke Karl as a military opponent of Napoleon, who at the Battle of Aspern put a first scratch on the nimbus of the always victorious Napoleon. His last book, completed in Australia, was dedicated to Napoleon's battle at Wagram against the Austrians under Archduke Karl, which ended victoriously for Napoleon but in which both sides suffered heavy losses.

Awards

Fonts (selection)

  • The military border in Croatia, 1522–1749, University of Chicago Press 1960 (dissertation)
  • The Military Border in Croatia, 1750–1888: a study of an imperial institution, University of Chicago Press 1966
    • German translation of both volumes: The Austrian military border in Croatia. 1522 to 1881, Herold 1970
  • The army of Francis Joseph , Purdue University Press 1976
  • The anatomy of the Israeli army, London, BT Batsford 1979
  • Napoleon's Great Adversaries: the Archduke Charles and the Austrian Army, 1792-1814, Indiana University Press 1982
  • The Art of Warfare in the Age of Napoleon, Indiana University Press 1978
  • The Napoleonic Wars, Harper Collins 2006
    • German translation: The Napoleonic Wars, Brandenburgisches Verlagshaus 2000
  • The Emperor's Last Victory: Napoleon and the Battle of Wagram , Weidenfeld and Nicholson 2004

Some essays and book contributions:

  • The Austrian Army in the Age of Metternich , The Journal of Modern History, Volume 40, 1968, pp. 155-165.
  • The Habsburg Army in the Napoleonic Wars , Military Affairs, Volume 37, 1973, pp. 1-5
  • Nobility and Military Careers: The Habsburg Officer Corps, 1740-1914 , Military Affairs, Volume 40, 1976, pp. 182-186
  • The Origins, Causes, and Extension of the Wars of the French Revolution and Napoleon , Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Volume 18, 1988, pp. 771-793.
  • The Austro-Hungarian Campaign Against Serbia in 1914 , Journal of Military History, Volume 53, 1989, pp. 127-146.
  • Moltke , Schlieffen and the doctrine of strategic envelopment , in: Peter Paret (Ed.), Makers of Modern Strategy: From Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986
  • Maurice of Nassau , Gustavus Adolphus , Raimondo Montecuccoli and the "Military Revolution" of the 17th century , in: Peter Paret (ed.), Makers of Modern Strategy: From Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Andreas W. Daum, Hartmut Lehmann, James J. Sheehan (eds.): The Second Generation. Émigrés from Nazi Germany as Historians. With a Biobibliographic Guide . New York 2016, ISBN 978-1-78238-985-9 , pp. 447 f. (Short biography and list of publications) .