Imperial reports
As Kaiser reports that in the course of are First World War from the Army High Command wrote (AOK), daily war reports to I. Franz Joseph , in a later episode of I Charles and their military leadership tool, the military office of His Majesty (MKSM), respectively.
background
In order to ensure a constant flow of information between the Army High Command (AOK) stationed in Teschen , Austrian Silesia and His Majesty's Military Chancellery (MKSM) during the war, despite the great spatial distance, a press service was set up in the Army High Command, which was intended for the public apart from the official ones Press communiqués also reported confidential information about the own military situation or that of the enemy to the military chancellery of his majesty and thus the emperor.
If only reports on events were to be transmitted at the beginning, the scope and objectives of the reports would change depending on the desired control function and the resulting opportunities to intervene in the warfare, which Emperor Franz Joseph I himself, despite delegating the supreme command to Archduke Friedrich von Austria-Teschen reserved. Since His Majesty's military chancellery also had other sources of information, there were repeated conflicts with the AOK over the content of the imperial reports to be conveyed. There were extensive changes on December 2, 1916 when Charles I took office , who, in contrast to his predecessor, Emperor Franz Josef, himself held the command of the army.
In addition to His Majesty's Military Chancellery, the reports also addressed the National Defense Minister, the Foreign Minister and the Southwest Front Command. They were each drawn by the deputy chief of the general staff, Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf . Initially, the imperial reports were written by hand, then typescripts were created that were deciphered from the actual, encrypted telegrams. With the succession to the throne of Emperor Karl I, the reports were created as "Hughes telegrams", a telegraph technology common in the Austro-Hungarian army, in the course of modernization and increased efficiency.
development
With the preparation of the reports in the General Staff Corps of the Army High Command (AOK) on August 15, 1914, the head of the press service Major Karl Schneller , who was the first "press officer" to be responsible for drafting the daily reports, was not used until the year 2015 and has been used retrospectively since then. The versatile Karl Schneller, who also wrote the war documentaries known as the Schneller Diaries , was responsible for the official press releases, the writing of well-founded war science and war history studies as well as the imperial reports and also spent time directly at the front as a war correspondent.
Since Major Karl Schneller, in cooperation with General Hugo Freiherr von Freytag-Loringhoven, was commissioned to compile a work on the official history of war, Schneller handed over the agendas of the war reports to Captain Anton Kless and Captain Richard Hatzl on January 1, 1915.
From July 17, 1915, Edmund Glaise von Horstenau took over the agendas of the imperial report. Between December 1, 1916 and October 20, 1917, these were supplemented by secret reports addressed to the ministers and the chief of the war press headquarters. In addition to his work as a press officer, Glaise-Horstenauab also wrote war diaries from July 8, 1915 to August 26, 1915, which were typed from July 11, 1915. The individual war groups had to provide him with daily reports.
Storage of the imperial reports
The imperial reports are a dozen boxes in size and are stored in the war archive of the Austrian State Archives . By means of digitization, these can now be viewed together with Karl Schneller's diaries on the homepage of the Austrian State Archive .
literature
- Gaby Bischof-Németh: General Karl Schneller: Officer out of a sense of duty - poet out of passion , Gerold Verlag: Vienna 2012, ISBN 978-3-900812-01-0
- Peter Broucek : A general in the twilight. The memories of Edmund Glaise von Horstenau . Böhlau Verlag: Vienna 1983, ISBN 978-3-205087-49-6
Web links
- Published imperial reports from August 15, 1914. Austrian State Archives, accessed on January 13, 2018 .
- The Imperial Reports 1914-1918. oesta.gv.at, accessed on January 28, 2018 .
- 100 years of World War I. Retrieved January 28, 2018 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c reports: Austrian State Archives. Retrieved January 13, 2018 .
- ^ A b Gaby Bischof-Németh: General Karl Schneller: Officer out of a sense of duty - poet out of passion . Gerold, Vienna 2012, ISBN 978-3-900812-01-0 , pp. 45 f .
- ↑ a b On the trail of the truth. Retrieved January 28, 2018 .
- ↑ a b Peter Broucek: A General in the Twilight. The memories of Edmund Glaise von Horstenau . Böhlau, Vienna 1980, ISBN 978-3-205-08749-6 , pp. 27 ff .