Holstein-Lauenburg federal contingent
The Holstein-Lauenburg Federal Contingent was a troop association of the German Confederation in the entire Danish state .
background
Although the German Federal Act had already been adopted on June 8, 1815, the military defense of the German Confederation was not structured until 1821/1822. 10 army corps were formed from the contingents of 41 principalities and free cities . In his capacity as Duke of Holstein and from 1815 also as Duke of Lauenburg, the Danish king was a federal member. As part of the X. Federal Army Corps , he had to provide a contingent of 3,500 men. That corresponded to the fixed “matriculation” of 1% of the population; in Holstein / Lauenburg it was estimated at 360,000 inhabitants. The troops included 2,791 infantrymen (with 140 fighters ), 514 cavalrymen , 259 artillerymen with 8 guns and 36 engineers .
“Many of the small states of the German Confederation only set up military because of the contingents they required. The larger powers, above all Prussia and Austria , assigned parts of their completely independently organized military to the contingent. Denmark proceeded in a similar way , so that part of the Danish army in the required strength was simply declared as the 'Holstein-Lauenburg Federal Contingent'; Beyond that, however, all measures were avoided to separate these units from the larger whole of the Danish army, also organizationally. So the soldiers of the contingent wore the general Danish uniform and cockade. The contingent carried the Danebrog as a troop flag since 1842 ; the command language was Danish. Basically, the contingent only consisted of the majority of the 3rd Danish General Command and so did not represent an independent 'Holstein-Lauenburg Federal Contingent' in the true sense. Although the monarchs of the great powers Prussia and Austria jealously guarded their command rights, Denmark was preparing some difficulties, partly due to the fact that the contingent was too small to form a division of its own . With reference to its larger army as a whole, the Danish contingent appeared distant and not very cooperative with the other units of the corps. "
Troops and garrisons
In 1842 a far-reaching military reform came into force in Denmark, in the course of which the infantry regiments with regional names were changed to battalions with numbers. The same thing happened with the cavalry. The names refer neither clearly to the recruiting areas of the soldiers nor to the actual stationing. They had grown historically. The 5th (Lauenburger) Jägerkorps was an exception, in which Lauenburgers actually served. Except for a few recruits who came to the Guard in Copenhagen because of their special physical aptitude, all Lauenburgers served in this unit, which was located in Kiel and with a few men also in Ratzeburg.
In Altona , the largest city in the Duchy of Holstein, there was no garrison after 1820, but there was strong civil armament. To support them, and especially in the wake of the unrest that broke out again and again in 1844/45 among the workers of the Christian VII Baltic Sea Railway (Altona – Kiel), the Rendsburg battalions regularly sent detachments there.
Artillerymen from Rendsburg were also stationed in the Friedrichsort sea fortress at the entrance to the Kiel Fjord .
1820
- Holstein Infantry Regiment (Rendsburg)
- Oldenburg Infantry Regiment (Rendsburg)
- Leibregiment Infantry "Queen" (Glückstadt)
- Lauenburg Jägerkorps (Kiel, Ratzeburg)
- Leibregiment Dragoons (Itzehoe, Kiel, Plön)
- Holstein Artillery Brigade (Rendsburg)
- Royal Engineering Corps (Rendsburg)
1842
- 14th Line Infantry Battalion (Rendsburg)
- 15th Line Infantry Battalion (Rendsburg)
- 16th Line Infantry Battalion (Rendsburg)
- 17th Line Infantry Battalion (Glückstadt)
- 5th Jägerkorps (Kiel, Ratzeburg)
- 2nd Dragoon Regiment (Itzehoe, Kiel, Plön)
- 2nd Artillery Regiment (Rendsburg)
- Royal Engineering Corps (Rendsburg)
Rendsburg
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The fortress Rendsburg was the strongest fortress in the south of the entire Danish state . As the largest garrison in the two duchies, it was the strategic hub. The Schleswig-Holstein survey began with its “gentle” intake in March 1848 . In contrast to the fortresses on the western border of the German Confederation, Rendsburg was not a federal fortress .
Between German and Danish
In the state military and in the federal contingent, language and national identity were not an issue until the German-Danish antagonism emerged in the middle of the 19th century. Nevertheless, a language boundary ran through the Duchy of Schleswig between the predominantly Danish and the majority German-speaking population, which was also reflected in the military and its recruits. Until 1772, German was the main command and even colloquial language in the Danish army. With the coalition wars , the Danish element in officer corps and men increased. In the units of the Holstein-Lauenburg Federal Contingent, German was the common language. All recruits came from German-speaking areas of Holstein and Lauenburg. In exceptional cases they came from Schleswig, which did not belong to the German Confederation; the majority of the officers were born Danes. The command language was Danish - which was repeatedly criticized by the German Confederation; because that made joint exercises with other northern German contingents of the Hanseatic cities, Oldenburg and Hanover difficult. The military correspondence was bilingual: documents from the contingent were always in German, those from Copenhagen were always in Danish.
See also
- Danish State # The duchies of Schleswig, Holstein and Lauenburg
- Duchy of Holstein
- Duchy of Saxony-Lauenburg
literature
- Michael Busch: "Deserters, Cowards and Refractairs". The Lauenburg Jägerkorps 1815–1849, in: War and Peace in the Duchy of Lauenburg and its neighboring territories from the Middle Ages to the end of the Cold War (= Lauenburg Academy for Science and Culture, Colloquium XII), ed. von Eckardt Opitz, Bochum: 2000, pp. 235-262.
- Peter Galperin: Danske militære enheder i Det tyske Forbund 1815-1864 , in: Våbenhistorisk Tidsskrift 27 (1994), No. 7, pp. 214-222.
- Peter Galperin: German Armed Forces in the German Confederation 1815–1866 with separate references to the armament, the navy, the supply of soldiers, the armed forces financing , Osnabrück 2000.
- Wolfgang Keul: The Federal Military Commission (1819–1866) as a political body. A contribution to the history of the German Confederation (= Europäische Hochschulschriften, R.III. Vol. 96), Frankfurt am Main / Bern / Las Vegas 1977.
- Ravit, Johann Chr. (Ed.): Participation of the Duchy of Lauenburg in the recruitment of the standing army , in: Yearbooks of Legislation and Administration of the Duchies of Schleswig, Holstein and Lauenburg 1 (1845), pp. 14-16.
- Jan Schlürmann : The Danish State Military in the Duchies 1773–1863 , in: Eva Susanne Fiebig, Jan Schlürmann (Ed.): Handbook on North Elbian Military History - Armies and Wars in Schleswig, Holstein, Lauenburg, Eutin and Lübeck, 1623–1863 / 67 . Husum 2010.
- Jan Schlürmann : Contingent and Citizens Corps - The Danish State Military in Vormärz , in: Jens Ahlers : Aufbruch & Civil War , Volume 2, pp. 295–307, here p. 299.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Jan Schlürmann (2010)