Ludwig Adolf Wilhelm von Lützow

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Adolf von Lützow
"Lützowhaus" in Schöneiche , in whose predecessor building Lützow, according to legend, was nursed back to health after being wounded in 1809
Memorial plaque at the "Lützowhaus"
Grave in the old garrison cemetery in Berlin

Ludwig Adolf Wilhelm Freiherr von Lützow (born May 18, 1782 in Berlin ; † December 6, 1834 there ) was a Prussian major general . He was best known for the Lützow Freikorps named after him .

Life

Ludwig Adolf Wilhelm came from the Mecklenburg noble family Lützow . His father was the Prussian major general Johann Adolph von Lützow (1748-1819), and his mother Wilhelmine, née von Zastrow (1754-1815).

Lützow was employed on May 26, 1795 as a private corporal in the 1st Guard Battalion of the Prussian Army . Promoted to ensign on January 20, 1798 , he was appointed second lieutenant on December 10, 1800 . Since Lützow was a passionate and good rider, he asked to be transferred to the cavalry . On December 31, 1804 he was transferred to the cuirassier regiment "von Reitzenstein" in the Tangermünde garrison . In the course of the battle of Jena and Auerstedt on October 14, 1806, the regiment was crushed and its remains, including the wounded Lützow, fled to the Magdeburg fortress . When the surrender of Magdeburg became apparent, Lützow left the fortress. Via Copenhagen he made his way into the besieged Kolberg to join the Freikorps Ferdinand von Schills . In recognition of his services, he received the order Pour le Mérite after the peace treaty and was taken over as staff commander and squadron chief in the 2nd Brandenburg Hussar Regiment. Wounded several times, Lützow's health deteriorated to such an extent that he asked for his departure. At the same time he was promoted to major on August 31, 1808, he was given farewell.

Lützow then tried his hand at the forest career , but soon gave up on this project. He made contact with Prussian patriots around the chamber court president Ludwig von Vincke , advisor to Freiherr vom Stein , and was involved early on in the preparation of the struggle against the rule of Napoleon Bonaparte . In the autumn of 1808 this led him to Kassel , where Wilhelm von Dörnberg organized the resistance, and to East Frisia to prepare actions there. Spontaneously he and his brother Leopold von Lützow joined Major von Schill's platoon on April 30, 1809. On May 5, 1809, he was seriously wounded in the battle near Dodendorf and then brought before a Prussian court martial. Since, as a Mecklenburg resident in Prussia, he was a foreigner and had previously been discharged from the Prussian army, the court found no guilt.

On March 20, 1810 he married Elisa Davidia Margarethe Countess von Ahlefeldt .

On February 7, 1811, Lützow was returned to the Prussian service, initially with a waiting salary, from January 1, 1812 with a fixed salary, but without any real use in service. In the event of a popular uprising, Gneisenau initially intended him to be its leader in East Frisia and parts of Westphalia . This was specified by Scharnhorst , so that on February 9, 1813 Lützow sent a request to the Prussian king to be allowed to set up a volunteer corps.

It became the most famous German volunteer association of the Wars of Liberation. The Lützow Freikorps consisted of over 3000 mostly non-Prussian volunteers and operated mainly in the rear of the enemy. With the armistice in the early summer of 1813, Lützow let the given deadline to reach his own lines pass and was attacked with parts of his free corps on June 17, 1813 at Kitzen near Leipzig by Napoleonic cavalry without warning. Lützow and his adjutant Theodor Körner were badly wounded and escaped with difficulty. After the individual parts of the Freikorps had been assigned to the Prussian line troops at the end of 1813, Lützow fought in the Ardennes in 1814 . On March 23, 1815, two line regiments were formed from the remnants of the Freikorps: the infantry became the 25th Infantry Regiment , the cavalry became the 6th Uhlan Regiment under Lieutenant Colonel von Lützow. In the campaign of 1815 Lützow led a cavalry brigade. He was wounded in French captivity on June 16 near Ligny .

Even if Heinrich von Treitschke considered the Freikorps to be of little military importance, it had a considerable mobilization effect for the German revolt against Napoleon.

For his services Lützow was awarded the oak leaves to the order Pour le Mérite on October 2, 1815 and promoted to colonel a day later . On March 8, 1817, he was appointed commander of the cavalry brigade in Münster . In the same capacity, Lützow took over the 13th Cavalry Brigade in Torgau on September 5, 1818 and was promoted to major general on March 30, 1822.

His marriage to Elisa von Ahlefeldt was divorced in 1824. On April 10, 1829 he married Auguste Uebel, the widow of his youngest brother Wilhelm, who died in 1827, a woman who - as he soon confided to Elisa, who was divorced from him - made him “unspeakably unhappy”. In 1830 he was given command of the 6th Cavalry Brigade. He handed this command over to Prince Albrecht of Prussia on March 30, 1833, and was then put up for disposal with a pension . He spent the last years of his life in seclusion in the country. Before his death, Lützow is said to have expressed the wish to go to Greece "in order to be at the head of the Greek army ."

Lützow's grave is in the old garrison cemetery in Berlin.

Honors and souvenirs

5 Mark commemorative coin of the GDR for the 150th anniversary of Lützow's death from 1984

literature

Movies

Web links

Commons : Ludwig Adolf Wilhelm von Lützow  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Großer Brockhaus from 1894, quoted in W. Hegemann, p. 179.
  2. ↑ Werner Hegemann : Unmasked history. Berlin 1933, pp. 188–194, with reference to Treitschke's Prussian Yearbooks and the depiction of Johann Friedrich Gottfried Eiselen
  3. ^ The former Freischarenführer v. Lützow in Münster and his district 1817–1830. In: Journal for patriotic history and antiquity. Seventy-eighth volume. Verlag Regenberg'sche Buchhandlung, Münster 1900, p. 212.
  4. ^ New Nekrolog der Deutschen , 12th year, 1834, Volume 2, Weimar 1836, pp. 1029-1030.
  5. ^ Website of the house on Lützowplatz . Also the publication by Marc Wellmann : Black Bandits - 200 Years: # Lützow # Liberation Wars #Napoleon #Waterloo . Ernst Wasmuth Verlag, Tübingen 2015, ISBN 978-3-8030-3372-7 .
personal data
SURNAME Lützow, Ludwig Adolf Wilhelm von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Lützow, Adolf Wilhelm Freiherr von
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Prussian major general; Commander of the Lützow Free Corps
DATE OF BIRTH May 18, 1782
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH December 6, 1834
Place of death Berlin