Heinrich von Wedel

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Leopold Friedrich Ferdinand Heinrich von Wedel (l) (born May 26, 1784 in Magdeburg , † January 22, 1861 in Berlin ) was a Prussian cavalry general and most recently adjutant general to the king and commandant of the Luxembourg fortress .

Life

origin

His parents were the Prussian major general Konrad Heinrich von Wedel (1741-1813) from the noble family Wedel and his wife Eleonore Wilhelmine, born von Rauchhaupt (1754-1832). His brother Karl (1783-1858) became a Prussian lieutenant general.

Military career

Wedel joined the infantry regiment "Prince Louis Ferdinand of Prussia" on April 15, 1796 in the Magdeburg Fortress as a private corporal . There he was promoted to midshipman on April 5, 1798 and to second lieutenant on January 6, 1800 . During the First Coalition War he was seriously wounded in the Battle of Jena . Nevertheless, he escaped to Magdeburg Fortress with his father, who was also badly wounded. After the surrender of the fortress he was able to escape captivity in an adventurous way and to get to Memel via Copenhagen , where in January 1807 he settled with King Friedrich Wilhelm III. reported. After his recovery in February 1807, he assigned him to the newly established 1st West Prussian Reserve Battalion, with which Wedel took part in the Battle of Heilsberg . After the Peace of Tilsit in 1808 Wedel resigned from the army.

In the vernacular and in the fictional literature of the 19th century, Wedel was regarded as a freedom hero, who was also credited with a failed pistol attack on Napoleon. He is said to have tried with the popular former Freikorpsführer Eugen von Hirschfeld during the Erfurt Prince Congress to murder Napoleon when he was driving through the Rautal valley with Alexander I to the battlefield near Jena , but refrained from doing so because the Tsar was too close to Napoleon in the car sat together. The story, sometimes told with other participants, has not been proven and was probably a folk tale .

When Ferdinand von Schill left Berlin on April 28, 1809, Wedel joined him. In the battle near Dodendorf on May 15, he commanded the infantry, 64 men strong, poorly armed and equipped. He tried in vain to take Dodendorf with them; his attack failed and he was captured wounded. Wedel was then taken through a series of prisons to France and, after having been incarcerated in Sedan for fourteen months , to the Bagno , first to Toulon , then to Cherbourg . He spent eight months here among the galley slaves until the efforts of the Prussian ambassador in Paris, General von Krusemark , succeeded in moving him back to the prison at Sedan. It was only when Prussia had to send troops to war against Russia in 1812 that Napoleon approved Wedel's extradition. This then came on July 17, 1812 as an aggregated Premier Lieutenant for the Silesian Rifle Battalion, but after a short time on June 24, 1812 he joined the Guard-Uhlan Squadron. When the War of 1813 broke out, he was on 27 February 1813 as Staff Captain with the 1st Guards Volunteer Jägereskadron, on 20 March 1813 as commander of the Guards Cossack squadron, he also was on 18 November 1813 captain . He fought in the battles of Großgörschen , Bautzen , Dresden , Leipzig , Paris and the battles of Haynau , Freyburg an der Unstrut, Eckartsberga, Eisenach, Glenhausen, Brienne and Arcis-sur-Aube . He acquired the Russian Order of St. Vladimir IV Class in Dresden, the Russian Order of St. Anna from Paris and the Iron Cross II Class from Haynau .

After returning from the field Wedel was promoted to major with a patent on January 7, 1815 on January 6, 1815 and as such came on February 21, 1815 to the Guard Uhlan Regiment . After the end of the campaign of 1815, in which the guard had no part, on August 5, 1815 he was a regular staff officer of the 7th Uhlan Regiment , which initially belonged to the occupation forces remaining in France and whose garrison later became Bonn . On March 30, 1827 he was promoted to lieutenant colonel and Wedel was commissioned to lead the 5th Uhlan regiment . The confirmation took place on March 30, 1829. On March 30, 1830 he was promoted to colonel and on October 17, 1837 he received the Red Eagle Order IV class. On August 18, 1837, he was transferred to Posen as commander of the 10th Cavalry Brigade and on December 11, 1838 he was aggregated to the 5th Uhlan Regiment. For this he was promoted to major general on March 30, 1838 and on September 12, 1841 he was awarded the Order of the Red Eagle, 2nd class with oak leaves. On October 30, 1844 Wedel was appointed commander of the 4th Division in Bromberg . On March 22, 1845 he became lieutenant general , on September 16, he received the star for the Order of the Red Eagle, 2nd class with oak leaves, and on April 5, 1846, finally, the Order of the Red Eagle, 1st class. The March Revolution of 1848 also broke out in Posen, but Wedel and his division were able to restore calm. For this he received the order Pour le Mérite on November 29, 1848 . On March 4, 1852, when he was appointed adjutant general to King Friedrich Wilhelm IV , he was appointed commander of the Luxembourg fortress . From the Dutch side he received the Grand Cross of the Order of the Dutch Lion on September 23, 1854 . On July 12, 1855, he became general of the cavalry and celebrated his 60th anniversary on April 15, 1856. On January 14, 1858 Wedel was knighted by the Order of the Black Eagle .

When he retired on July 1, 1860, he received the diamonds for the Order of the Black Eagle. Wedel continued to remain adjutant general to the king, but was put up for disposal with a pension . His successor at the Luxembourg Fortress was Eduard von Brauchitsch .

The general died in Berlin on January 22, 1861. He was transferred to Liegnitz on January 24, 1861 and buried in the hereditary burial there. In addition to the orders already mentioned, he was a knight of the Order of St. John , owner of the Grand Commander of the Royal House Order of Hohenzollern and other awards.

family

Wedel married Countess Charlotte von Pückler -Gröditz (March 22, 1793 - September 28, 1860), a sister of Lieutenant General Wilhelm Erdmann von Pückler . The couple had no children of their own. Therefore he adopted his niece Maria Agnes Doris Erdmuthe Wettstein (born November 13, 1831). It was raised to the Prussian nobility on January 7, 1857 by the Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm IV under the name of Wedel. She later married the captain Karl Hans Ferdinand von Natzmer , who died on June 28, 1866 near Skalitz . The monument still exists.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Kurt von Priesdorff: Soldatisches Führertum. Volume 5, Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt Hamburg, undated [Hamburg], undated [1938], DNB 367632802 , p. 356, no. 1593.
  2. ↑ Georg Bärsch : Ferdinand v. Schill's Zug und Tod in 1809. p. 287 . Leipzig 1860.
  3. ^ Friedrich Wilhelm von Schütz : History of the wars in Europe since 1792 as a consequence of the change of state in France under King Louis XVI. Volume 11, Part 1, p. 12.
  4. ↑ Leipziger Zeitung. 1856, p. 2253.
  5. ^ Protocols of the German Federal Assembly. Volume 57, p. 340 $ 184
  6. ^ Theodor Fontane : The German War of 1866: The Campaign in Bohemia a. Moravia. P. 331.
  7. ↑ http://www.denkmalprojekt.org/2013/skalitz-denkmal-gren.-reg-7_cz.html
personal data
SURNAME Wedel, Heinrich von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Wedell, Leopold Friedrich Ferdinand Heinrich von (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Prussian general of the cavalry
DATE OF BIRTH May 26, 1784
PLACE OF BIRTH Magdeburg
DATE OF DEATH January 22, 1861
Place of death Berlin