Johann Georg Emil von Brause

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Johann Georg Emil von Brause (1774–1836), lithograph after a painting by Franz Krüger

Johann Georg Emil von Brause (born December 14, 1774 in Stettin , † April 10, 1836 in Berlin ) was a Prussian major general who served as the military educator of the future German Emperor Wilhelm I , as the commander of all Prussian cadet institutions and finally as the director of the general War School made a significant contribution to the humanization of Prussian military education.

family

Johann Georg Emil was the son of the Prussian captain a. D. and post director Johann Georg von Brause (1728–1800) and his wife Henriette Luise Hermine, née von Schack (1745–1794). He is the cousin of Friedrich August Wilhelm von Brause and a cousin of the brothers Wilhelm (1786–1831), Ferdinand (1787–1846), Hans (1791–1866) and August von Schack (1793–1864).

Brause married Albertine Karoline von Schlegell from the house of Zehringen (1777–1845) in Potsdam in 1803 . There are five children from the marriage:

One of his grandchildren was the philosopher and Majoratherr auf Klein Oels Paul Graf Yorck von Wartenburg (1835-1897). Count Peter Yorck von Wartenburg (1904–1944) is one of his great-great-grandchildren .

Life

Franz Krüger's monumental painting Parade on Opernplatz (1829) with the childlike playful depiction of the cadets on the lower left edge of the picture
Main building of the Berlin Cadet Institute at Neue Friedrichstrasse 13 opposite the Gray Monastery
Playing cadets in the courtyard of the Berlin Cadet House 1828
Cadet house in Potsdam
Former cadet house in Culm
Facade of the General War School in Berlin, of which Brause was director from 1834 until his death

By royal cabinet order of July 31, 1788, Brause was admitted to the Académie militaire in Berlin, founded by Frederick the Great as an elite school for careful training for the higher civil service . He began his military career in 1794 as an ensign in the Crown Prince's infantry regiment , which was stationed in Potsdam .

With Rühle von Lilienstern , Ernst von Pfuel and his childhood friend Heinrich von Kleist , he belonged to a group of young, educated officers who found their spiritual mentor in Colonel Christian von Massenbach .

After the mobilization 1805 shower was adjutant of General Alexander von Knobelsdorff and participated in the Battle of Auerstedt in the immediate aftermath of the king in part, he also on the flight to East Prussia accompanied. After the Peace of Tilsit he was on the staff of General Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher , with whom he stayed for a while at the headquarters of the Swedish King Gustav IV . In 1809 he became adjutant at Bülow in Stargard , who showed him great esteem and friendship. In the Russian campaign in 1812 he was adjutant with Florian von Seydlitz and his cousin Wilhelm von Schack on the staff of General Johann David Ludwig Graf Yorck von Wartenburg and received the order Pour le Mérite and the Legion of Honor for his services . When he returned to Königsberg from the campaign , he helped build the Prussian Landwehr .

After the Wars of Liberation Brause was taken over by the Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm III. on March 1, 1813 appointed tutor of Prince Wilhelm of Prussia , later Emperor Wilhelm I, whose fatherly friend and advisor he remained even after he left this office in 1817. Brause mediated the equality dispute about Princess Elisa Radziwill , Prince Wilhelm's childhood sweetheart, and negotiated his planned marriage to Princess Augusta of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach .

On September 12, 1817, the Prussian king appointed him commander of the Prussian cadet corps and commissioned him to reorganize the military educational institutions that had been neglected during the wars of liberation. In this role, Brause campaigned for a comprehensive renewal of the scientific and educational training of the cadets . He succeeded in winning well-known scientists such as the geographer Carl Ritter or the historian Johann Wilhelm Löbell as well as the theologian Adolf Sydow as a preacher for the cadet institute in Berlin and in humanizing the military education as a whole and making it more child-friendly in the sense of Rousseau . Under his direction, the new cadet house in Potsdam was built in 1822. In Culm , the cadet institute was expanded structurally and provided with a spacious garden. The Berlin institute received its own residential building for the teachers and a large lecture hall building in which Napoleon's sword, captured by Blücher, was also kept. Zelter wrote on August 21, 1831 to his friend Johann Wolfgang von Goethe : The local Cadettenhaus is in high regard for this major general von Brause; he is considered to be an active, strict, fatherly leader of the youth and a capable soldier. Franz Krüger artistically expressed this new humanistic style of upbringing with the unusual depiction of the cadets in his famous painting Parade on Opernplatz .

In his official apartment at Neue Friedrichstrasse 14 and in his country house in Berlin-Lichtenberg , Brause led a sociable life together with his literarily educated wife Albertine, a cousin of the poet Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué , and his daughters. State ministers such as Altenstein and his brother-in-law, postmaster general Karl Ferdinand Friedrich von Nagler , military officials such as Hermann von Boyen , Oldwig von Natzmer , Wilhelm von Krauseneck , Karl Friedrich von dem Knesebeck and the brothers Adolf Eduard and Ludwig Gustav von visited the Brausesches Haus Thile and the family of General Boguslawski , ladies of the company such as Amalie von Hellwig , Ernestine von Wildenbruch , Lulu Countess von Stosch with her mother Marie von Kleist and Adolphine von Klitzing , scholars such as the aforementioned geographer Carl Ritter, the historian Johann Wilhelm Löbell, Friedrich von Raumer , Henrik Steffens , Friedrich August Pischon and the young officers of the cadet institute who later, like Albrecht von Roon , held high military posts in Prussia. When his cousin Wilhelm von Schack died in Berlin in 1831 after a long illness, Brause commissioned Christian Daniel Rauch to make a portrait bust of the deceased, probably at the request of the widow Wilhelmine Auguste von Schack, née von Schütz. Rauch was able to fall back on Wilhelm von Schack's death mask.

In 1818 Brause was promoted to colonel and in 1825 to major general and in 1829 he was awarded the Order of the Red Eagle, 2nd class with oak leaves. At his own request, on March 30, 1834, he was relieved of his exhausting task as a cadet commander and appointed director of the General War School, which later became the War Academy.

Brause died on April 10, 1836 in Berlin and was buried in the old garrison cemetery in Berlin with great sympathy from friends and admirers, including the three royal princes Wilhelm , Carl and Albrecht . His grave cross donated by Prince Wilhelm was unveiled on April 10, 1838. It bore the dedication on the pedestal: True gratitude to the leading guide and friends. Wilhelm Prince of Prussia . The grave has not been preserved.

When asked whether he had had any real friends in his life, the old Kaiser Wilhelm I answered after long doubts to his councilor Louis Schneider : Yes - General von Brause, he never asked me for anything.

Memberships

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Gothaisches genealogical pocket book of the German count's houses. 1874, p.983
  2. ^ Friedrich Wilhelm Riemer (eds.): Goethe and Zelter in the years 1796 to 1832. 6th part: the years 1830 July to 1832. Duncker and Humblot, Berlin 1834, p. 255.
  3. ↑ In the contemporary commentaries, particular attention was paid to the cadets lined up at the roadside, whose unmilitary, playful demeanor unabashedly undermines conventional notions of a proper understanding of duty. Renate Franke: Berlin from the king to the cobbler boy. Franz Krüger's "Parades" pictures of Prussian self-image. P. Lang, 1984 (Europäische Hochschulschriften: Kunstgeschichte, 35), p. 142.
  4. ↑ It was to the left of the grave of his eldest daughter Emilie von Willisen, whose marble grave cross has been preserved to this day.
  5. ↑ Deutsche Rundschau. Vol. 151, Gebr. Paetel, Berlin 1912, p. 204.
  6. ^ Kurt von Priesdorff: Soldatisches Führertum. Volume 4, Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt Hamburg, undated [Hamburg], undated [1937], DNB 367632799 , pp. 464-467, no. 1393.
  7. ↑ Gerlach, Karlheinz: The Freemasons in Old Prussia 1738-1806 (Volume 2, p. 54) The lodges between the Middle Oder and Lower Rhine Part 1 and 2. Sources and representations on European Freemasonry, ed. by Helmut Reinalter in collaboration with the Institute for the History of Ideas and the Scientific Commission for Research into Freemasonry, Volume 8, StudienVerlag, Innsbruck, Vienna, Bozen 2007
personal data
SURNAME Brause, Johann Georg Emil von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES von Brause, Johann Georg Emil
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Prussian major general, cadet commander
DATE OF BIRTH December 14, 1774
PLACE OF BIRTH Szczecin
DATE OF DEATH April 10, 1836
Place of death Berlin