Hermann von Boyen

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Ludwig Leopold Gottlieb Hermann von Boyen (born June 23, 1771 in Kreuzburg , † February 15, 1848 in Berlin ) was a Prussian field marshal and minister of war in 1814/19 and 1841/47 .

Herman von Boyen, age portrait
Hermann von Boyen, oil painting by François Pascal Gérard

Life

origin

The family originally came from the Netherlands . The progenitor of this branch served as a colonel in the Swedish and Dutch armies before he settled in East Prussia after the Peace of Westphalia . His parents were lieutenant colonel and regimental commander Johann Friedrich von Boyen (1720–1777) and his wife Hedwig Sophie, née von Holtzendorff (1735–1778) from the Gerlauken family. His uncle Ernst Johann Sigismund von Boyen (1726–1806) was a Prussian cavalry general and a knight of the Black Eagle Order .

Military career

After the early death of his parents, Boyen was first brought up in the house of an unmarried sister of his father in Königsberg . In April 1784 he joined the Infantry Regiment "von Anhalt" of the Prussian Army as a private corporal . After his appointment as Portepeefähnrich , he was transferred to the infantry regiment "von Wildau" in December 1786 and was promoted to second lieutenant until mid-April 1788 . Boyen graduated from the war school in Königsberg, where he also attended lectures by Kant , whose ethical ideas impressed him greatly.

After he had attended the campaign in Poland in 1794/95 as adjutant to General von Günther , he became a staff captain in 1799 and took part in the war of 1806 , in which he was wounded near Auerstedt , on the general staff of the Duke of Braunschweig Friedrich Wilhelm . After the Peace of Tilsit he became a major and a member of the military reorganization commission under Scharnhorst and in 1810 gave the lecture to the king as director of the general war department.

In 1808 Boyen in Königsberg was accepted by the lodge "To the three crowns" in the league of Freemasons .

From 1803 Boyen belonged to the " Military Society " around Gerhard von Scharnhorst and in 1807 he became a member of the Commission for Military Reforms. A year later he was assigned a major to the Military Reorganization Commission and in 1810 director of the General War Department. Along with August Neidhardt von Gneisenau, he was Scharnhorst's most ardent assistant in establishing the new army constitution . He consistently advocated the reforms of Freiherr vom Stein . In 1811 he tried together with Scharnhorst and Gneisenau King Friedrich Wilhelm III. to move to war against France. When Prussia allied itself with France in 1812, Boyen took his leave as a colonel and after a visit to Vienna, like many other Prussian officers who would have preferred to enter the war against France, went to Russia, where he lived in Saint Petersburg .

When Prussia again changed sides in 1813 and the wars of liberation began, Boyen returned to Prussian service. As a colonel in the General Staff of Friedrich Wilhelm von Bülow , he accompanied the Russian army from the headquarters in Kalisch to Saxony. After the battle of Großgörschen he was given the task of mobilizing in the Mark Brandenburg and, if necessary, of defending Berlin; during the armistice, Friedrich Wilhelm III appointed him . as Chief of the General Staff of the 3rd Army Corps. With this Boyen took part in the battles and skirmishes of 1813/14. For his behavior in the Battle of Dennewitz he was awarded the Iron Cross First Class and promoted to Major General on December 8, 1813.

After the First Peace of Paris in August 1814 , Boyen replaced Major General Karl von Hake as Minister of War and was awarded the Order of Pour le Mérite with Oak Leaves . On September 3, 1814, the most important official act he issued was the “Law on Obligation to Do Military Service” , which was the most important element of Scharnhorst's army reform in Prussia . In addition, he continued the organization of the Landwehr that had begun during the war with the Landwehr Ordinance of 1815. This avoided the injustices of the canton system with its many exceptions, even if it was still possible for the educated and wealthy to serve as a volunteer for only one instead of three years. Every Prussian citizen should belong to the Landwehr after his service time up to the age of 39, so that the Landwehr could play a major role as a form of popular armament alongside the standing army. In the two institutions, the reformers saw the gap between the army and the people overcome.

He was awarded the Order of the Red Eagle First Class for his work and was promoted to Lieutenant General on March 30, 1818 with a patent from April 2, 1818 . Shortly after the end of the wars of liberation, the conservative criticism of the reform program arose, which in the military area was directed primarily against the broad base of the Landwehr. As this resistance grew stronger, Boyen resigned as Minister of War in December 1819. This event is often seen in historiography as the final end of the reform phase and the beginning of the reaction.

The Boyen family grave in the Invalidenfriedhof in Berlin

He then lived as a private citizen for 21 years, joined the Lawless Society in Berlin in 1822 and dealt with historical studies until King Friedrich Wilhelm IV called him back to active service immediately after his accession to the throne as General of the Infantry . When War Minister Gustav von Rauch died on February 28, 1841, Boyen was put back at the head of the War Ministry on the same day, but without exerting any major influence. During his service he received several awards. On June 18, 1841 Boyen received the Order of the Black Eagle, in October 1842 the Grand Cross of the Order of the Dutch Lion and the following year the Grand Cross of the Guelph Order and the Order of St. Andrew the First Called . In addition, on November 19, 1842, Boyen was the 19th to receive honorary citizenship of the city of Berlin. In November 1847 he resigned and was appointed General Field Marshal and Governor of the Invalidenhaus in Berlin .

Boyen died in Berlin on February 5, 1848. In 1848 he was buried next to his wife Amalie, who died in 1845, in the neighboring Invalidenfriedhof in grave field C. The grave complex goes back to court architect Friedrich August Stüler . Later, the son and daughter-in-law and daughter Amalie Friederike found their final resting place there.

The tombs of Scharnhorst and Boyen's previous ministers of war Job von Witzleben and Gustav von Rauch are within sight of his grave. It is dedicated to the city of Berlin as an honorary grave .

The king named the festival erected between 1847 and 1855 in Masurian Lötzen after him .

family

Boyen married Antoinette Amalie Berent (1780-1845) in Gumbinnen on December 9, 1807 .

The marriage had three children. The son, General of the Infantry Leopold Hermann von Boyen (1811-1886) married Princess Franziska Biron von Curland , daughter of Lieutenant General Gustav Kalixt Prince Biron von Curland and his wife Franziska, née Countess von Maltzan . He became governor of Mainz in 1871 , of Berlin in 1875 and adjutant general of Wilhelm I. The daughters were Amalie Friederike (1815–1886) and Johanna Sophie Hedwig (* 1819).

monument

His hometown Creuzburg i. Ostpr. honored the General Field Marshal as the creator of general conscription with a monument, which is still in a damaged condition in today's Slavskoye.

Works

Of his writings are to be emphasized:

  • Contributions to the knowledge of General von Scharnhorst. Berlin 1833.
  • Memories from the life of Lieutenant General von Günther. Berlin 1834.
  • Memories from the life of Field Marshal Hermann von Boyen. Edited from his estate on behalf of the family. by Friedrich Nipold, volumes 1–3, Leipzig 1889–1890.

He is also the poet of the song Der Prussian slogan 1838.

literature

Web links

Commons : Hermann von Boyen  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Eugen Lennhoff, Oskar Posner, Dieter A. Binder: Internationales Freemaurerlexikon. Munich 2003 (revised and expanded new edition of the 1932 edition), ISBN 3-7766-2161-3 .
  2. ↑ Two photos by Dmitri Petuchow from 2015 on https://plus.google.com/ : [1] and [2] . The monument is shown in its original condition on this picture postcard at http://www.bildarchiv-ostpreussen.de/ .
  3. ↑ Full text at Archive.org
personal data
SURNAME Boyen, Hermann von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Boyen, Ludwig Leopold Gottlieb Hermann von (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Prussian Field Marshal General, Minister of War
DATE OF BIRTH June 23, 1771
PLACE OF BIRTH Kreuzburg
DATE OF DEATH February 15, 1848
Place of death Berlin