Josef Bischoff (officer)

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Major Josef Bischoff

Josef Bischoff (born July 14, 1872 in Langenbrück , † December 12, 1948 in Berlin-Charlottenburg ) was a German officer and free corps leader .

Life

Bischoff was a student at the Silesian Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität in Breslau and became active on September 27th as the third member of his family in the Corps Lusatia Breslau . On March 26, 1891 recipiert he was on 15 January 1892 without tape released because he completed his studies and joined on 19 January 1892 as the three-year volunteer in the infantry regiment "Keith" (1 Oberschlesisches) No. 22 in Gliwice . There he was appointed Portepeefähnrich on August 18, 1892 and promoted to Second Lieutenant on March 16, 1893 . On December 22, 1893 he received the Lausitzerband back.

Officer of the protection force

Bischoff took leave of absence from October 1, 1897 to early March 1898 to attend the seminar for oriental languages in Berlin . Then he joined the protection force for German East Africa . Regardless of the fact that, within the structural violence of colonial rule, it is difficult to differentiate sharply between war and peace, Bischoff was involved in separate military punitive expeditions against individual villages in East Africa.

He returned to Germany in June 1901 and served in the 1st Lower Alsatian Infantry Regiment No. 132 . After the Herero rose up against the German colonial rulers in German South West Africa in January 1904 , Bischoff returned to colonial service as first lieutenant on March 22, 1904 and joined the protection force for South West Africa. During the suppression of the uprising of the Herero and Nama , he took part on August 11, 1904 as an adjutant to Major Hermann von der Heyde in the battle of the Waterberg and in the persecution of the Herero into the Omaheke steppe . On August 15, 1904, he was wounded near Omatupa. In the fight against the Nama in 1906 Bischoff was deployed in the district of Northern Bethany - Berseba . For his service in the Schutztruppe, Bischoff was awarded the Red Eagle Order IV class with swords and the Crown Order IV class with swords in 1908 . On January 31, 1909, he resigned from the protection force for German South West Africa.

He was recruited into the army on February 1, 1909 and used as a company commander in the 4th Baden Infantry Regiment "Prinz Wilhelm" No. 112 . In the same function, Bischoff was from 1911 in the infantry regiment "Hessen-Homburg" No. 166 , in which he was promoted to major on October 1, 1913 in the regimental staff in Bitsch .

First World War

With the outbreak of the First World War he was appointed commander of a battalion in Reserve Infantry Regiment No. 60, with which he took part in the fighting in the Vosges . In March 1916, Bischoff became regimental commander of the 1st Turkish Camel Rider Regiment , which fought against the Arabs in Syria and on the Sinai Peninsula . Bischoff kept in touch with the Turks and Ataturk even after the war.

Returned to Germany at the end of October 1916, he was briefly assigned to the replacement battalion of Reserve Infantry Regiment No. 60 and on January 2, 1917 appointed commander of the newly established Infantry Regiment No. 461. First he took part in the fighting on the Eastern Front in Galicia and on the Sereth . Relocated to the western front after the armistice in February 1918 , Bischoff and his troops were deployed in the Argonne until May . For his achievements during the defensive battles, Bischoff was awarded the Order Pour le Mérite on June 30, 1918 , after he had previously been awarded both classes of the Iron Cross .

Free Corps Leader

When the German army after the Armistice of Compiègne and the November Revolution was disbanded, entrusted the Supreme Command Bischoff, as successor to the Supreme Friedrich Kumme , with the command of the remnants of the 8th Army incurred and volunteer volunteer corps . It was called the Iron Brigade, then the Iron Division and was used in the Baltic States . It was perhaps the best-known of the German Freikorps, which wanted to maintain German influence in the Baltic states despite the war defeat. The Freikorps, to which a relatively large number of criminals had volunteered, suffered from problems of discipline, against which Bischoff proceeded with severity. Looters and marauders were executed according to shortened and therefore often arbitrary court proceedings, which, however, challenged arbitrariness. The historian Bernhard Sauer compared the Freikorps in the Baltic States with "the mercenaries of the Thirty Years' War".

After the Iron Division was returned to East Prussia in December 1919, criminal prosecution of Bischoff and other Freikorps leaders was lifted on December 17, 1919 by the Reich government. The members of the Iron Division were mainly housed in East Prussia and Pomerania on the estates of large landowners as agricultural workers' communities. Under the direction of a Lieutenant von Borries, the "Iron Division" also operated an office in Berlin. Through Borries, Bischoff maintained contacts with Captain Waldemar Pabst and the National Association as well as with Hermann Ehrhardt . At Borries' mediation, a number of Baltic Germans were also accepted into the Ehrhardt Marine Brigade . Borries, who acted on Bischoff's instructions and according to his instructions, was therefore also seen as a secret mastermind of the Kapp Putsch . After the start of the Kapp Putsch, Bischoff published a call for the re-establishment of the "Iron Division" in the Ostpreußische Zeitung (DNVP). He apparently spent the last days of the putsch at the headquarters of the Rossbach regiment .

Since Bischoff was accused of participating in the Kapp Putsch, he had to avoid Germany. That is why he lived in Baden near Vienna for many years from 1920. Expelled from the corporate state by Engelbert Dollfuss in 1933/34 , he moved to Berlin-Charlottenburg .

Bischoff received on 27 August 1939 the so-called Tannenbergtag , the character as a lieutenant colonel . He died at the age of 76.

Fonts

  • The last front. History of the Iron Division in the Baltic States 1919. Berlin 1935.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Kösener Corpslisten 1960, 81 , 284.
  2. ↑ a b c List of members of the Corps Lusatia Breslau (1960)
  3. ↑ a b von Babiensky: Stammliste of the 1st Lower Alsatian Infantry Regiment No. 132 from 1881 to 1909. Printer of the Straßburger Neuesten Nachrichten AG. Strasbourg 1908. p. 95.
  4. ↑ Ernst Nigmann: History of the Imperial Protection Force for German East Africa. ES Mittler & Sohn , Berlin 1911, p. 201.
  5. ↑ Tanja Bührer: The Imperial Protection Force for German East Africa. Colonial security policy and transcultural warfare, 1885 to 1918. Oldenbourg, Munich 2011, ISBN 9783486704426 , p. 211.
  6. ↑ von Babiensky: Stammliste of the 1st Lower Alsatian Infantry Regiment No. 132 from 1881 to 1909. Printer of the Straßburger Neuesten Nachrichten AG. Strasbourg 1908. p. 96.
  7. ↑ Department of War History I of the Great General Staff: Outbreak of the Herero uprising. Triumphant advance of the Franke company. Mittler, Berlin 1906, p. 219, p. 236.
  8. ^ Department of War History I. of the Great General Staff: The Hottentot War . Outbreak of the uprising, the fighting on the Auob and in the Karras Mountains. Mittler, Berlin 1907, p. 304.
  9. ^ Ranking list of the Royal Prussian Army and the XIII. (Royal Württemberg) Army Corps for 1914. Ed. War Ministry . ES Mittler & Sohn, Berlin 1914, p. 321.
  10. ^ Military weekly paper . No. 13 of January 27, 1909. p. 284.
  11. ↑ Bernhard Sauer: From the "Myth of an Eternal Soldierhood". The campaign of German Freikorps in the Baltic States in 1919. In: Zeitschrift für Geschichtswwissenschaft 43, No. 10 (1995), p. 875.
  12. ↑ Bernhard Sauer: From the "Myth of an Eternal Soldierhood". The campaign of the German Freikorps in the Baltic States in 1919. In: Journal of History. 43, No. 10 (1995), p. 896.
  13. ↑ Sauer, Vom “Mythos einer Ewigen Soldatentums”, p. 897; Hagen Schulze : Freikorps and Republic. 1918-1920. Harald Boldt, Boppard am Rhein 1969, p. 259.
  14. ↑ Sauer, Vom “Mythos einer Ewigen Soldatentums”, p. 897.
  15. ↑ Sauer: From the "Myth of Eternal Soldierhood". P. 898.
  16. ↑ Sauer: From the "Myth of Eternal Soldierhood". P. 899.
personal data
SURNAME Bischoff, Josef
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Bischoff, Josef Maximilian Johann Bonaventura (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German officer and free corps leader in the Baltic States
DATE OF BIRTH July 14, 1872
PLACE OF BIRTH Langenbrück , Lower Silesia
DATE OF DEATH December 12, 1948
Place of death Berlin-Charlottenburg