Josef Pomiankowski

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Josef Pomiankowski

Josef Pomiankowski , actually Józef January Klemens Pomiankowski (* 23 November 1866 in Jarosław , Empire of Austria ; † 23 January 1929 in Lvov , Poland ), was a field marshal lieutenant of the Imperial Army and the military representative of the Austro-Hungarian military mission in the Ottoman Empire in World War I. . He was in charge of shaping the Austrian Orient policy, often in competition with the allied German Empire .

Life

Family and education

At the age of ten, Pomiankowski, who came from a Polish family in Galicia, entered the military lower secondary school in Güns , four years later the military upper secondary school in Mährisch Weißkirchen , and from 1883 to 1886 he graduated from the Imperial and Royal Technical Military Academy in Vienna, which he left as a lieutenant. He served three years with the Uhlans and from 1890 attended the Theresian Military Academy for two years , where he received general staff training. Subsequently served in the general staffs of various corps and as a troop commander. He was married and had two daughters, born in 1904 and 1905; the family lived in Lemberg and Vienna.

Pre-war career

In November 1901 he received the important post of military attaché in Belgrade in the Kingdom of Serbia . There he acted in the military field and also made appropriate economic and political-strategic assessments, which he reported to Vienna. He was also able to demonstrate success in the field of intelligence and gather information about Serbian terror groups in Macedonia and Bosnia . He called for the "Serbian agitation" to be countered vigorously through direct measures. At the end of 1909 he started as a colonel as a military attaché in Constantinople , where he was also responsible for Greece . In 1912 he made a gross miscalculation when he considered an attack by the small Balkan states unlikely due to the supposed strength of the Ottoman army .

Politics in World War

With the outbreak of the First World War, Pomiankowski, major general since 1914, as military plenipotentiary also became head of the Austro-Hungarian military mission in the Ottoman Empire and thus junior partner of the German military mission under Otto Liman von Sanders . As such, he tried to use the differences between the Germans and the Ottomans in order to assert Austria-Hungary's political and economic interests in the Orient despite limited power. Together with the Austro-Hungarian Foreign Minister Leopold Berchtold and the ambassador of the monarchy in Constantinople, Johann Margrave Pallavicini , Pomiankowski endeavored to pursue an independent policy on the Orient. With full equality with Germany, they wanted to jointly achieve a dominant role, a kind of condominium, in the Ottoman Empire. Since the respective interests often clashed, there was constant friction and jealousy. In 1917, Germany and the Danube Monarchy quarreled over almost every question about the Turkish alliance. He found a good understanding with the old ambassador Pallavicini, also because he voluntarily submitted his reports to him for correction. He kept his distance from the kuk Chief of Staff Conrad .

Pomiankowski was not only active in the military, but also actively shaped Austrian policy on the Orient, worked as a diplomat, head of his own intelligence service, propagandist, cultural ambassador, economist and diplomat. At his urging, an "Orient Department" was set up in the War Ministry in 1917 in order not to fall behind the overpowering partner Germany in the economic exploitation of the Balkans and the Ottoman Empire.

German officials in Constantinople tried in vain to intervene with Kaiser Wilhelm II or Chief of Staff Conrad to replace their Austrian opponent. Pomiankowski valued the character of the Turks highly, but blamed Islam for the problems and backwardness of the Ottoman Empire, which prevented any modernization. He rejected the largely unsuccessful German policy of revolutionizing Muslims against the allied colonial powers through a jihad because the religious fragmentation of Islam meant that joint mobilization was not possible. Like Pallavicini, he was also skeptical of the Austrian mission to the Orient by Alois Musil and Archduke Hubert Salvator , from September to November 1917.

In connection with the genocide of the Armenians , he recognized early on that the government's deportation order was tantamount to exterminating the Armenians in Asia Minor. At the side of one of the main responsible persons, Enver Pascha , he visited the eastern Anatolian areas in which the genocide occurred in May 1916 and reported it to Vienna. Pomiankowski's tentative diplomatic attempts to obtain security for the persecuted Armenians were not of lasting success. After the war he defended his German colleagues from the accusation of the former American ambassador in Constantinople Morgenthau that they had suggested the idea of ​​mass deportations to the Turks.

Pomiankowski, Field Marshal Lieutenant since 1917, coordinated the troops of the monarchy in the unsuccessful fighting on the Palestine front after a brief deployment on the Italian front from June 1917 .

After the war

After the end of the war, Pomiankowski organized the return transport of 200 officers and 1,050 soldiers with an Italian ship via Trieste to Austria. With Ottoman support, he sent 200 revolting soldiers who tried to install soldiers' councils to the Austrian-occupied Odessa by ship .

After the collapse of the Habsburg Empire in late 1918 was Pomiankowski Military Plenipotentiary of Poland to Sweden, Denmark and Norway in Stockholm and later head of the military commission agent for war material in Paris. On March 25, 1919, after taking on Polish citizenship, he joined the Polish army , and in January 1922 he retired.

His book The Collapse of the Ottoman Empire , published in Vienna in 1927, became one of the most important sources for historians on the history of the alliance with the Ottoman Empire. In a 1929 review, the Turkologist Herbert W. Duda stated that Pomiankowski had a strongly anti-German policy on the Orient. His grave is in the Lychakiv Cemetery in Lviv.

Fonts

  • The collapse of the Ottoman Empire. Memories of Turkey from the time of the world war. Amalthea, Vienna 1927.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Alexander Will: The opponent in the background: Josef Pomiankowski and the anti-German Orientpolitik of Austria-Hungary 1914–1918. In: Wilfried Loth , Marc Hanisch (Hrsg.): First World War and Jihad. The Germans and the revolutionization of the Orient. Verlag Oldenbourg, Munich 2014, ISBN 978-3-486-75570-1 , pp. 193-214, here: pp. 194f.
  2. ↑ Alexander Will: The opponent in the background. P. 196ff.
  3. ^ Günther Kronenbitter: War in Peace. The leadership of the Austro-Hungarian army and the great power politics of Austria-Hungary 1906–1914 . Verlag Oldenbourg, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-486-56700-4 , p. 327.
  4. ↑ Alexander Will: The opponent in the background. P. 199.
  5. ^ Günther Kronenbitter: War in Peace. The leadership of the Austro-Hungarian army and the great power politics of Austria-Hungary 1906–1914 . Verlag Oldenbourg, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-486-56700-4 , p. 259.
  6. ^ Günther Kronenbitter: War in Peace. The leadership of the Austro-Hungarian army and the great power politics of Austria-Hungary 1906–1914. Verlag Oldenbourg, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-486-56700-4 , p. 375.
  7. ↑ Wolfdieter Bihl : The Caucasus Policy of the Central Powers. Part 1: Your basis in the politics of the Orient and your actions 1914-1917. Böhlau, Vienna / Cologne / Graz 1975, p. 113.
  8. ^ Frank G. Weber: Eagles on the Crescent. Germany, Austria, and the Diplomacy of the Turkish Alliance 1914-1918. Ithaca / London 1970, p. 261.
  9. ^ Günther Kronenbitter: War in Peace. The leadership of the Austro-Hungarian army and the great power politics of Austria-Hungary 1906–1914 . Verlag Oldenbourg, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-486-56700-4 , p. 263.
  10. ↑ Alexander Will: The opponent in the background. P. 193.
  11. ↑ Alexander Will: The opponent in the background. P. 211.
  12. ↑ Alexander Will: The opponent in the background. P. 204.
  13. ↑ Alexander Will: The opponent in the background. P. 206.
  14. ↑ Wolfdieter Bihl : The Caucasus Policy of the Central Powers. Part 1: Your basis in the politics of the Orient and your actions 1914-1917. Böhlau, Vienna / Cologne / Graz 1975, pp. 136 and 140.
    Robert-Tarek Fischer : Austria in the Middle East. The great power politics of the Habsburg Monarchy in the Arab Orient 1633–1918. Böhlau, Vienna 2006, ISBN 3-205-77459-0 , pp. 274ff.
  15. ↑ Michael Schwartz : Ethnic "cleansing" in the modern age. Global interactions between nationalist and racist politics of violence in the 19th and 20th centuries. Oldenbourg Verlag, Munich 2013, ISBN 3-486-70425-7 , p. 85.
  16. ↑ Michael Schwartz: Ethnic "cleansing" in the modern age. Global interactions between nationalist and racist politics of violence in the 19th and 20th centuries. Oldenbourg Verlag, Munich 2013, ISBN 3-486-70425-7 , p. 92.
  17. ↑ Michael Schwartz: Ethnic "cleansing" in the modern age. Global interactions between nationalist and racist politics of violence in the 19th and 20th centuries. Oldenbourg Verlag, Munich 2013, ISBN 3-486-70425-7 , p. 79.
  18. ^ Robert-Tarek Fischer: Austria in the Middle East. The great power politics of the Habsburg Monarchy in the Arab Orient 1633–1918. Böhlau, Vienna 2006, ISBN 3-205-77459-0 , pp. 283f.
  19. ↑ Alexander Will: The opponent in the background. S. 214.
    İnanç Atılgan: Austria's Dilemma 1915: Turks or Armenians? Wieser Verlag, Klagenfurt 2008, ISBN 978-3-85129-707-2 , p. 111.
  20. ↑ Alexander Will: The opponent in the background. P. 193.
  21. ↑ Alexander Will: The opponent in the background. P. 194.
  22. ↑ Alexander Will: The opponent in the background. P. 214.
personal data
SURNAME Pomiankowski, Josef
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Pomiankowski, Joseph; Pomiankowski, Józef Jan Klemens
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian general in the First World War
DATE OF BIRTH November 23, 1866
PLACE OF BIRTH Jarosław , Galicia
DATE OF DEATH January 23, 1929
Place of death Lviv , Poland