kuk Technical Military Academy

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Austro-Hungarian Technical Military Academy was a military training facility founded in 1717 for certain officer groups of the Habsburg monarchy. The location of the academy changed several times in the course of its existence: originally located in Vienna , it was located in Klosterbruck near Znaim from 1851 to 1869 , in the Stiftskaserne in Vienna from 1869 to 1904 and finally in Mödling from 1904 to 1918 .

history

18th century

The origins of the Technical Military Academy of the Austro-Hungarian Army up to 1918 go back to Field Marshal Prince Eugene of Savoy . During the War of the Spanish Succession he recognized the shortage of military engineers in the Habsburg army and urged Emperor Charles VI. to set up a corresponding training facility ( formal engineering academia ). This was then implemented provisionally in 1717 and permanently in 1720. The Technical Military Academy was thus much older than the Theresian Military Academy founded in Wiener Neustadt in 1752 .

In 1743 the Imperial Councilor Johann Jakob Marinoni presented the regent Maria Theresa with a memorandum in which he referred to the urgently needed establishment of a military engineering corps , which took place in 1747. In the years that followed, the military engineering academy changed name and location in Vienna several times .

19th century

Under Emperor Franz II the engineering academy reached the peak of its reputation and can be described as the most important technical university of the Habsburg monarchy. The academy was also reformed by merging the military engineer corps with the less academically educated sappers and miners to form the “genius corps”. It now actually consisted of two academies, one for future artillery officers and the other for genius officers. As a result, the academy temporarily lost some of its high reputation and in 1851 even had to go into exile as a genius academy in Klosterbruck near Znaim .

In 1869 the institute returned to the collegiate barracks in Vienna and remained there until the move to the newly constructed building in Mödling in 1904. According to István Deák , the Technical Military Academy consistently produced highly qualified artillerymen, fortress builders and sappers. Its graduates had extraordinary knowledge, formed an exclusive circle and were highly respected .

20th century

Main building around 1904
Emperor Franz Joseph leaving the Austro-Hungarian Technical Military Academy on November 4, 1904

Since the buildings of the Viennese collegiate barracks no longer met the requirements of a technical military academy towards the end of the 19th century, people began to look for a new location. The choice fell on building a new military academy in Mödling . On the northern slope of the Eichkogel , 18 hectares of a pasture was purchased by the Reich Ministry of War for four million crowns from the city of Mödling in 1896 . This sum was to be paid off in installments over the next 54.5 years, but the last installment payment was made in 1918 due to the collapse of Austria-Hungary . Despite the lack of installment payments, the city of Mödling benefited from the building of the academy, as its level of awareness increased increased enormously, and the economy also benefited from the frequent visitors.

In 1901 the construction of the main building and the other 25 individual buildings began according to the plans of the military chief engineer Paul Acham, which was finished in 1904 and opened on November 4, 1904 by Emperor Franz Joseph . Up to 370 students could live and be taught in the academy at this time. In addition, there was an almost self-sufficient infrastructure. B. In addition to the facilities required for military operations such as stables and parade grounds, we also have our own nursery, a butcher's shop, a sick and isolation pavilion, several libraries, a swimming pool, a hairdresser's room, etc.

Military importance

Those frequenting the Technical Military Academy in Mödling (1904 to 1918) were recruited from graduates from military high schools or civilian high school graduates. The curriculum of the three-year training differed from the Theresian Military Academy in Wiener Neustadt in that artillery , technical weapons training and military construction were given much greater weight. Of the graduates of the Technical Military Academy who were retired as lieutenants, 30 went to the artillery each year, while 25 were transferred to the engineer, railroad and telegraph regiments.

The Technical Military Academy also organized the "higher artillery course" for officers at regular intervals, in which the future members of the artillery staff (from 1896 "officers in special use of artillery") were trained. The successful graduates of this two-year course were deployed as specialists in the higher command and authorities of the army and were also able to advance to artillery engineers. In peacetime the "officers in special use of the artillery" were z. B. responsible for the uniformity of the training of the artillery and supervised the service in the artillery production facilities.

Academy commanders 1904–1918 Beginning The End
FML Artur Horeczky 1904 1907
FML Georg Ritter von Dormus 1907 1911
FML Georg Hefelle 1911 1914
FML Carl Ritter von Wessely 1914 1915
FML Oskar von Heimerich 1915 1918

Well-known graduates

Among the graduates of the Technical Military Academy were z. B .:

Successor organization

With the collapse of the Habsburg Monarchy and after only 14 years of study at the Mödling site, the kuk Technical Military Academy ceased operations on November 12, 1918 with the proclamation of the Republic of German Austria . The military academy was briefly followed by a German-Austrian state secondary school , but then it was decided to continue with technical training. On November 17, 1919, regular teaching was started for the first time at the Höhere Technische Bundeslehr- und Versuchsanstalt (HTBLuVA) Mödling under the name "German-Austrian Technical-Industrial State College in Mödling" with 154 students in 4 departments (civil engineering, structural engineering, mechanical engineering and electrical engineering) and initially accepted 10 teachers. Ten years later, over 1000 students were taught in 6 departments. The Linz resistance fighter Robert Bernardis , Lieutenant Colonel in the General Staff of the German Wehrmacht , was also one of the high school graduates of the HTBLuVA Mödling and is therefore one of its most prominent graduates.

literature

  • Gerhard Janaczek: Efficient Officirs and Righteous Men. A historical picture journey to the military educational institutions of the k. (U.) K. Monarchy . Vitalis Verlag, 2007, ISBN 978-3-89919-080-9 .
  • Karl Glaubauf: Robert Bernardis - Austria's Stauffenberg . Self-published, Statzendorf 1994, without ISBN.

See also

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. István Deák , Der K. (below) K. Officer 1848–1918, translated by Marie-Therese Pitner, Böhlau Verlag (Vienna-Cologne-Weimar) 1991, p. 105.