Karl Rudolf Brommy

Rear Admiral Karl Rudolf Brommy by Ernst Wilhelm Straßberger around 1855 in the Leipzig City History Museum

Karl Rudolf Brommy , actually Karl Rudolf (Carl Rudolph) Bromme (born September 10, 1804 in Anger , † January 9, 1860 in Lesum ) was a naval officer and German rear admiral . From 1849 he was in command of the Reichsflotte , the first all-German navy.

Life

Brommy's birthplace around 1900. Memorial plaque above the gate entrance.
Demolished in 1929

Karl Rudolf Brommy

Youth and education

Karl Rudolf was the fifth child of the judge Johann Simon Bromme (1758–1808) and his wife Friederike Louise, nee. Berthold (1771-1806). The house where he was born was in Anger, a village near Leipzig, which was incorporated into Leipzig in 1889. He lost his parents when he was a child. In 1818 his guardian gave him permission to become a seaman. He learned at the Hamburg Navigation School and then embarked on his first sea voyage on the brig Heinrich .

Service in foreign navies

There are only patchy records of Bromme's early seafaring years after leaving the navigation school in Hamburg in the summer of 1820. Apparently he made some trips to Central America with the brig Heinrich . According to his own statements, he was hired on various US sailing ships from 1822 and was promoted to captain in 1826 . During this time he also changed the spelling of his name from the English pronunciation to Brommy . There is no evidence of his alleged involvement in the Chilean and later in the Brazilian liberation struggle .

In 1827 he became a member of the Freemasons Association , his Apollo Lodge is based in Leipzig. Inspired by reports about Thomas Cochrane , the British admiral involved in these wars of freedom, Brommy joined the Greeks in their War of Independence in 1827 . From 1827 to 1828, Cochrane led the Greek Navy in the fight against the Turks and Egyptians . Brommy had entered her service , now with the rank of corvette captain . First he was first officer of the 64-gun sailing frigate Hellas (ex. American Hope ) from April 27, 1827 , then in the same function on the 26-gun sailing corvette Hydra , with which he was involved in the fight against piracy in the archipelago and was involved in the fumigation of the pirate stronghold Grabusa . On June 11, 1828 Brommy was promoted to frigate captain and commander of the 8x64 pounder paddle steamer corvette Enterprise (Greek: Epicheiresis ), a sister ship of the wheeled corvette Karteria, commanded by frigate captain Frank Hastings and made famous by him . In the squadron of the Greek admiral Miaoulis , Brommy took part in battles off Preveza ( Gulf of Arta ) and was involved in the conquest of Messolongi .

In 1831 Brommy left the country and undertook scientific trips through France, England and Germany. Then he returned to Saxony. In Meissen he published an autobiographical novel under the pseudonym R. Termo .

In 1832 the Bavarian Prince Otto von Wittelsbach became King of Greece as Otto I. Brommy also joined the Greek delegation under Admiral Miaoulis, which was to accompany the King of Munich into his new kingdom. On November 16, 1832, he returned to his old rank as an officer in the Greek Navy. At the same time he became the commander of an old paddle steamer, the Hermes, and six months later on its sister ship the Mercur . At the same time Brommy was a member of a naval commission, port captain and later prefect of the lake prefecture established by King Otto I. in Poros . He had to leave this post again in 1835 after he was sentenced to 4 months' arrest and a fine of 60 drachmas through a court martial. He had slapped a sergeant in the face in self-defense.

During the following period of service in the Navy Ministry, Brommy created a new organizational plan for the Greek Navy. He later became deputy commander of the military school, first in Aegina , then in Piraeus . His wish to set up his own naval school did not come true for him during his service in Greece. According to his ideas, a naval school should be set up on a ship in order to be as close as possible to practice at sea. In several lectures before King Otto, Brommy promoted his idea, but without success. Even when the Greek corvette captain Leonid Palaskas had the same idea in 1848 and even set up a floating naval school on a trial basis on the frigate Ludovicos , he failed due to the resistance of the Greek naval leadership.

After another uprising in 1843 for a new constitution, all foreigners had to leave the country, but Brommy was allowed to stay because of his merits. Although he was put up for disposition, at the same time he was appointed a member of the Naval Court, which he led temporarily as first chairman. Allegedly, Brommy is said to have been mainly in Berlin from this date .

Establishment of German naval forces

The German Reichsflotte 1848-1852 under Admiral Brommy

Main article: Imperial Fleet

In 1845, Brommy applied to the Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm IV for acceptance into the Prussian Navy , but this was rejected. The publication of his textbook Die Marine - a common understanding of the entire maritime affairs for educated people of all classes took place in Berlin in 1849 . As a result of the revolutionary events of 1848, calls in the German states for their own fleet became louder. In a letter to the President of the Frankfurt National Assembly , Heinrich von Gagern , dated July 23, 1848, Brommy offered to help build up the German imperial fleet . In his reply from November 4, 1848, Minister of Commerce Arnold Duckwitz asked him to come to Frankfurt, where Brommy arrived at the beginning of 1849. Brommy had received six months' leave from his Greek king, during which he could decide whether to stay in Germany or to return to Greece. Brommy decided to stay and on April 19, 1849 submitted his resignation to the Greek king.

SMS Barbarossa

Initially, Brommy worked on the Naval Technical Commission of the Naval Department. After its head, Prince Adalbert of Prussia , was recalled from this position by the Prussian King, Brommy took over this office. On March 18, 1849 Brommy became Commander in Chief of the North Sea Flotilla with his flagship SMS Barbarossa in Brake . The seaport city of Brake became the provisional naval station of the first German fleet at that time. Brommy also received military reinforcements from the Hamburg flotilla .

With the start of the Schleswig-Holstein war against Denmark , Brommy became captain at sea on April 3, 1849, and head of the sea craft in Bremerhaven , which served as an arsenal for the fleet to be built. Despite major material, personal and financial problems, Brommy managed to set up a small fleet for the fight against Denmark. It initially consisted of nine seaworthy paddle steamers, two sailing ships and 27 rowing cannon boats. In order to fill the higher officer positions, Brommy mostly had to fall back on British and Belgians due to a lack of local staff. The first and only combat mission of the German fleet under Brommy against the Danes ended on June 4, 1849 with the breaking off of the battle in front of the then British Heligoland to avoid a conflict with Great Britain (→ Seegefecht bei Helgoland ).

On November 23, 1849, Brommy was appointed rear admiral by the imperial administrator Archduke Johann of Austria . On December 20, the Reichsverweser resigned his powers in favor of an Austro-Prussian Federal Central Commission. In 1850/1851 the German Confederation was restored. Brommy continued to try to build up the fleet, but met increasing resistance from the German states. Nobody wanted to take over the fleet with its costs.

On April 2, 1852, the Bundestag in Frankfurt am Main decided to dissolve the fleet; this task is entrusted to a federal commissioner , Laurenz Hannibal Fischer . In this situation, Brommy stood up for his employees and subordinates who were threatened with dismissal. The ships of the fleet were auctioned in the same year, mostly below their value. Prussia took over two modern ships. On March 31, 1853, Brommy signed the final order and with the dissolution of all naval authorities and the dismissal of the personnel still in service on April 1, 1853, the history of the first German fleet ended. During this difficult time, Brommy married Caroline Gross, the daughter of a businessman and hotel owner from Brake (Unterweser) .

Later years

Rear Admiral Brommy received his farewell on June 30, 1853. The German Confederation granted him a one-off settlement of 2,500 thalers . Only later was he granted a monthly pension of 125 thalers for the duration of his non-employment. His application to the Prussian Navy was rejected. In June 1857 Brommy took a position as a technical assistant in the Austro-Hungarian Navy in Milan , but had to give up this activity after a few months because of his poor health. With his wife and son Carl Traugott Gerhard he lived disappointed and withdrawn in the Schwalbenklippe house in Bremen - Burglesum , where he died in 1860 and a memorial was recently erected on the banks of the Lesum . Wrapped in the black, red and gold flag of his flagship "Barbarossa" , his coffin was transferred to the cemetery in the village of Kirchhammelwarden (now a part of Brake ) for burial on the steamer Merkur .

A memorial stone on his grave bears the inscription:

“Karl Rudolf Brommy rests in this grave, /
The first German fleet admiral. /
Remember the brave and remember the times, /
rich in beautiful hope and bitter deception, /
And what turn then by God's providence. "

Brommy was considered a liberal esthete who worked not only as a naval officer, but also as a writer and composer.

Remembering Brommy

Admiral Brommy bust in Knoops Park in Bremen St. Magnus

Bromme monument near the house where he was born in
Leipzig-Anger-Crottendorf

Monuments

• Grave monument in the cemetery of Brake- Kirchhammelwarden , redesigned in 1904 by the sculptor Roland Engelhard
• Bust of Admiral Brommy ( Thomas Recker , 2004) in Bremen-Burglesum in the immediate vicinity of Knoops Park
• Brommedenkmal on Breiten Straße in Leipzig near the former location of the house where he was born

museum

• Maritime Museum of the Oldenburg Lower Weser in Brake with a focus on Admiral Brommy

Streets and squares

Several streets and squares were named after Karl Rudolf Brommy:

• The Brommybrücke over the Spree in Berlin between the Brommystraßen from Kreuzberg (here with the dedication on the street sign: "First Admiral") to Friedrichshain .
• The Brommy Square in Bremen in the district of Peter Werder in the district of Eastern suburb .
• The Admiral-Brommy-Weg in Bremen, in the districts of St. Magnus and Lesum in the Burglesum district .
• Brommystraße in Bremerhaven (district Geestemünde )
• Brommystraße in Wilhelmshaven with the adjacent Brommygrün Park.
• Brommystraße (since 1908) in Oldenburg , Nadorst district .
• The former Brommestrasse in Leipzig (1885–1950, since then Harnackstrasse), since 2010 a Brommeweg elsewhere.
• Brommystraße in Brake / Unterweser, leads from the harbor to the former Brommy barracks (Marine Training Battalion 4).
• There is also the "Brommy Bridge", which runs along Neustadtstrasse across the Canal Harbor.

Ships

• The Tecklenborg - shipyard in Geestemünde 1851 provided the Bark Admiral Brommy from.
• The shipyard of the Gross Brothers in Hammelwarden, Brommy's brother-in-law , delivered the Bark Admiral Brommy in 1860 .
• The Navy notified on 26 November 1937, the former minesweeper M 50 in Brommy and sat there as Räumbootbegleitschiff one.
• In 1938 the former US freighter Nawitka (built in 1919, size 3,550 t, National Shipbuilding, Orange (Texas) ) was bought by the "Hafenbetriebsverein Bremen" after an accident in the Elbe estuary in 1925 and used as a training ship for the seamen of the North German Lloyd , who managed the ship until it was taken over by the National Socialists, put into service. After being renamed “Admiral Brommy”, the ship was hunted down in the timber and industrial port in Bremen in 1936 as a seaman's school. Young men who wanted to become sailors were trained there. The Hitler Youth played a large part in this. From 1940 the "Admiral Brommy" was set up as a prisoner of war camp for up to 690 prisoners of war. Because of the intolerable conditions on board, it was evacuated in 1942 and the prisoners of war, all of them French, were housed in a shed - as Admiral Brommy 's camp - and later Ukrainian slave laborers were added. On December 13, 1943, the ship fell victim to a bomb attack in the Bremen timber and industrial port, burned out completely and sank on a level keel.
• The school frigate Brommy was in the German Navy from 1959 to 1965 .

barracks

• The former Admiral Brommy barracks in Brake (Unterweser) , built in 1936, existed until 1997

Restaurants

• In Oldenburg, the restaurant Zum Admiral Brommy existed on Nadorster Strasse in the 1930s , presumably due to the fact that Brommy Strasse branches off from it. In 1934, the restaurant was a storm establishment for Motor-SA. (Source: Nationaler Werbedienst Oldenburg (Hg.): Directory of sources of supply of national companies, trade, commerce, industry and professions City of Oldenburg 1934 , o. O., o. J., p. 42)
• In the Bremen suburb of Ostliche Vorstadt ( Peterswerder district ) there is the Brommy pub named after him .

society

• In August 2009 the Carl Rudolph Bromme Gesellschaft Leipzig e. V. founded.

Movie

Brommy, played by Herbert Huebner , plays an important role in the propaganda film Secret Files WB 1 by Herbert Selpin (D 1941); a biography about the submarine designer Wilhelm Bauer .

literature

Non-fiction books and individual contributions

• Eilhart Eilers: Rudolf Brommy. The admiral of the first German fleet in 1848 , Dresden 1939.
• Wolfgang Petter: Admiral Brommy in literature. How do they relate to one another: poetry and truth, tradition and history? In: Schiff and Zeit 12 (1980), pp. 12-22.
• Albrecht Eckhardt: Brake, Brommy and the Federal Fleet , in: Albrecht Eckhardt / Wolfgang Günther / Friedrich-Wilhelm Schaer / Heinrich Schmidt / Friedrich-Wilhelm Winter (eds.): Brake. History of the seaport city on the Unterweser , Oldenburg 1981, pp. 156–175.
• Albrecht Eckhard, Detlev G. Gross : Brommy and Brake , Oldenburg 1998.
• Claus Uhlrich: Carl Rudolph Brommy. The admiral of the first German fleet . Semikolon-Verlag, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-934955-02-9
• Brommy's original documents and his copy book for the years 1828–1849, in the shipping museum of the Oldenburg Weser harbors in Brake eV (Brake shipping museum); Translations from it.
• Frank Ganseuer: Carl Rudolph Brommy and the Reichsflotte - admiral of the revolution . In: SCHIFF Classic, magazine for shipping and marine history eV of the DGSM , issue: 4/2018, pp. 44–47.
• Frank Ganseuer, Erwin Wagner: Carl Rudolph Brommy - Admiral der Revolution , ES Mittler & Sohn, Hamburg 2018, ISBN 978-3-8132-0984-6
• Erwin Wagner: Carl Rudolph Brommy (1804–1860) as a naval officer in Greece (1827–1849) . Isensee-Verlag, Oldenburg 2009, ISBN 978-3-89995-605-4
• Jan Murken u. a .: King Otto of Greece Museum of the Ottobrunn community . Weltkunst-Verlag, Munich 1995 (Bavarian Museums; Vol. 22)
• Bernhard Zebrowski: Brommy, admiral without a fleet. The first Reichsmarine from 1848 . Neff Verlag, Berlin 1943
• Carsten Jöhnk (Ed.): A Saxon conquers the world. Admiral Brommy on his 200th birthday . Maritime Museum, Brake 2004, ISBN 3-926294-15-9 (catalog for the exhibition of the same name).
• Keyword: evacuation boats. Brommy (M 50 / M 550) , in: Hans Hildebrand / Albert Röhr / Hans Otto Steinmetz: The German warships. Biographies - a mirror of naval history from 1815 to the present , seven volumes in one volume, 3rd edition Herrsching approx. 1984, vol. 7, p. 74f.
• Hedwig Schultz: A wreath of memory around the picture of great-uncle Brommy. Put together from yellowed family letters and stories from childhood , Rittetgut Schmölen bei Wurzen o. J. (1904).
• Antonio Schmidt-Brentano: The Austrian Admirals Volume I: 1808–1895, p. 133 f., Biblio Verlag - Osnabrück 1997, ISBN 3-7648-2511-1 .
• Horst Diere: Admiral Karl Rudolf Brommy. In: Marinekalender der DDR 1988. Berlin: Militärverlag der DDR 1987, pp. 103–112.
• Lutz Mohr : Karl Rudolf Bromme (1804-1860) - The admiral from Anger-Crottendorf. In: Urania Universum , Vol. 34. Leipzig, Jena, Berlin: Urania Verlag 1988, pp. 432-436.
• Gerhard Wiechmann: Karl Rudolf Brommy (1804–1860) in German places of remembrance ... In: Yearbook 2010 of the German Society for Marine History e. V., ed. by Kathrin Orth and Eberhard Kliem. Brake: Isensee-Verlag Oldenburg 2010, pp. 89–123.
• Karl Demeter :  Bromme, called Brommy, Karl Rudolf. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 2, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1955, ISBN 3-428-00183-4 , p. 633 ( digitized version ).
• Wolfgang Meironke: The history of the first German fleet under the colors black-red-gold (1848 to 1853). With special consideration of the life of Carl Rudolph Brommy (1804-1860), the first German admiral , Frankfurt / Main (RG Fischer Verlag) 2020. ISBN 978-3-8301-9653-2

Fiction

• Bernhard Zebrowski : Brommy. Admiral without a fleet , Berlin 1937
• Adolf Lindemann: Germany's first admiral , Karl Schroeder-Verlag, Cologne 1939
• Erich to Klampen: Brommy. Consecration game for German unity, German freedom, German flag , Brake 1954.
• Heinrich Zerkaulen : Admiral Brommy. Drama in 5 acts . Verl Dietzmann, Hamburg 1972.
• Ingo Sax : Brommy, the freedom of the seas . Low German Stage, Brake 1998.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Pictures of Ernst Wilhelm Straßberger in the picture index of art & architecture
2. ↑ Picture of Bromme's birthplace  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
3. ↑ ^{a b} Brommy's "Copierbuch", in which he copied all of his letters, reports and statements in the years 1828-1849. Other documents are currently being evaluated in the Maritime Museum Brake, some of the results have not yet been published
4. ^ Curriculum vitae for the application for admission to the Apollo Masonic Lodge in Leipzig from April 15, 1827 Investigations by the Maritime Museum Brake at the American Navy did not lead to success: allegedly there was no officer named Bromme or Brommy in the American Navy during the entire 19th century . (In this respect, it is a secret where Brommy learned the trade from; in Chile and Brazil it is very likely not!)
5. ↑ Personalities from the register list from 1805 to 1932 . In: Website of the Masonic Lodge Apollo . Archived from the original on September 17, 2015 Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . Retrieved October 23, 2015.  
6. ↑ Government Gazette No. 24 of August 17, 1833
7. ^ Meyers Konversationslexikon from 1876
8. ↑ Brommystrasse. In: Street name lexicon of the Luisenstädtischer Bildungsverein (near  Kaupert )
9. ↑ Leipzig Lexicon
10. ^ Establishment of the Bromme Society
11. ↑ Brommy together with Wilhelm Bauer in a still photo of the feature film Secret Files WB1  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  

Web links

Commons : Karl Rudolf Brommy  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Karl Rudolf Brommy in the catalog of the German National Library
• Article about Karl Rudolf Brommy in the Preussische Allgemeine Zeitung
• Lecture by Albrecht Eckhardt: Brake, Brommy and the Federal Fleet at the Maritime Museum Brake
• Website of the city of Brake
• Rear Admiral Karl Rudolf Brommy
• Collection focus on Admiral Brommy at the shipping museum of the Oldenburg Weser ports in Brake eV
• Open-air theater 1998 in Brake
• Information on the training ship Admiral Brommy (ex Nawitka ) [1]
• Karl Rudolf Brommy (1804-1860) in German places of remembrance. The admiral of the "first German fleet" and his staging from the Empire to the Federal Republic, 1897 to 1997 at bromme-gesellschaft.de [2]