Ludwig von Eimannsberger

General Ludwig v. Eimannsberger

Ludwig Alfred von Eimannsberger or Ludwig Ritter von Eimannsberger (born November 19, 1878 in Vienna ; † July 31, 1945 in Innsbruck ) was general of the artillery and army inspector of the federal army in the First Republic of Austria as well as strategist and visionary of tank warfare and the use of large armored formations in combined arms combat .

Coat of arms of the Knights of Eimannsberger

Life

monarchy

Ludwig Alfred v. Eimannsberger was the only son of the kk major Ludwig Matthäus Eimannsberger from Vienna and his wife Ernestine, daughter of the kk major general Robert v. Kutschenbach / Kutzschenbach regiment commander of the kuk Uhlan regiment "Graf Auersperg" No. 8 . Ludwig Matthäus Eimannsberger was a career officer and most recently served in the kuk infantry regiment Archduke Friedrich No. 52, he was used in the general staff and as a teacher and took part in the campaigns in 1859, 1866 and 1878. During the occupation campaign in Bosnia , he was shot through the chest in the street fighting in Sarajevo on August 19, 1878 and died on September 4 of that year. Due to his death, he was posthumously awarded the Order of the Iron Crown III on October 20, 1878 . Awarded class with war decorations. As a result of this award, his widow Ernestine had the right to apply for tax-free elevation to the hereditary knighthood, which she did on June 28, 1880. The request was granted on September 14, 1880 by the highest resolution.

Ernestine Eimannsberger and her son Ludwig Alfred were thus raised to the nobility and from then on belonged to the Second Society of Austria-Hungary. In this context, the ennoblement of surviving dependents was only possible from 1859 and was also very rare. This nobility is referred to as the systematized nobility or order nobility and was part of the untitled nobility, which made up about two thirds of the Austrian aristocratic landscape. In 1880 there were around 3,000 families of the Austrian, untitled nobility, today this group only counts around 800 families. The reduction results from the Salic legal principle, which states that the nobility can only be inherited in the male line of marital descent. Ernestine v. Eimannsberger, who grew up in an officer milieu and lived according to an iron line, sent her 10-year-old son Ludwig Alfred to the military lower secondary school in St. Pölten and from there to the kuk Technical Military Academy , where Ludwig Alfred joined the 11th field artillery regiment in Budapest in 1899 was retired. From 1903 to 1905 he completed the war school and then came to the artillery directors in Sarajevo and Przemyśl as a general staff officer , where he and his wife Charlotte, the daughter of the Imperial and Royal Major General Ludwig Vetter v. Bruckthal regiment commander of the kuk dragoon regiment "Count Montecuccoli" No. 8 , lived.

In 1910 his first-born son Ludwig Karl was born in Przemyśl, he was taken over as a professional officer in the Austrian Armed Forces and later in the Wehrmacht, in line with family tradition. There he was 1st General Staff Officer in the 3rd Mountain Division in the Eastern campaign, most recently in the rank of colonel. When his first son was born, Ludwig Alfred v. Eimannsberger captain of the artillery staff and teacher for artillery firing and weapons theory at the kuk Technical Military Academy in Mödling. When the First World War broke out, he came to the staff of the Transylvanian XII as an artillery officer . Corps and took part in the campaign in Eastern Galicia and Russian Poland and in 1915 contributed to the conquest of the Russian fortress Ivangorod with his proposals . In the summer of 1916 he was artillery commander in the Kaiserschützendivision in South Tyrol and then artillery officer in the XV. Corps command on the upper Isonzo , where he earned high merits in October 1917 at the breakthrough at Karfreit , which earned him the Knight's Cross of the Austrian-Imperial Leopold Order . During the war his daughter Margarete was born in 1918 and then his second son Robert in 1919. He was called up in 1939 as a student at the technical university in Vienna and died on January 10, 1943 as a first lieutenant in the 44th Infantry Division in the battle of Stalingrad , when the artillery position he commanded in the Rossoschka valley was hit directly.

First republic

Gene. Eimannsberger during a maneuver (photo from the family fund)

After the collapse of the Danube Monarchy, Ludwig Alfred v. Eimannsberger argued that Austria, which had become small, had an army at its disposal, despite the restrictions imposed as far as possible. He was taken over as a colonel in the armed forces and worked as a teacher at the officers' school. From 1926 he headed the weapons technology department in the Federal Ministry for the Army as an artillery inspector. In 1927 he became head of the section and most recently he was Army Inspector of the Federal Armed Forces until February 28, 1930, making him the highest-ranking officer in Austria.

time of the nationalsocialism

In 1938 he began his new military use as general of the artillery z. V., but for the time being he was no longer deployed because the Wehrmacht severely downgraded all high-ranking officers from Austria at the beginning of the war. In 1940 he was given an inadequate position as a senior artillery officer with the staff of the High Command East , where however, after a few months of inactivity, he found himself dispensable and asked for his release. In 1943 he was dismissed from the army. In early 1945, shortly before the occupation of Vienna by the Red Army, Ludwig Alfred v. Eimannsberger moved into his house in Mödling with his wife Charlotte and drove to Mutters near Innsbruck to the family of his first-born son. 1951, only 6 years after the death of Ludwig Alfred v. Eimannsbergers, his firstborn son also died of a war wound and only his 13-year-old son Ludwig Harald remained as the bearer of the Ritter v. Eimannsberger.

plant

The Eimannsberger Chariot War, Romanian edition (there were also editions in French, Polish and Russian)

In his first retirement in 1930, Eimannsberger began a new phase in his life, where he worked as a scientific, military-technical private scholar. His full attention was given to the new military equipment that revolutionized combat in 1917 and 1918. With scientific thoroughness, Eimannsberger investigated the fateful events for the Central Powers that were evoked by the use of armored vehicles. From his analyzes Eimannsberger drew the conclusions, which he outlined in the following words: “The cavalry is dead, there is no more space for them next to the tanks. But their tasks have remained, for the solution of which one will have to appoint tank squadrons in the future! ”One reads further in the scientific work of Eimannsberger, which already sketched out the tank strategies of the Second World War:“ Attack is fire and movement, and these two elements are combined in the armored fighting vehicle in a combat device! ”These foreboding theories of Eimannsberger were put to practical use in World War II with the Blitzkrieg .

As early as 1933 Eimannsberger tried to publish his book Der Kampfwagenkrieg , but the publication was more difficult than expected. Thus, the book was not printed until 1934 and enriched the military special literature of that time with an important work. Colonel-General Heinz Guderian , influenced by Eimannsberger's book, noted in his book Attention - Panzer! of 1937 presented similar theories, whereby he was able to successfully put the theory into practice. Eimannsberger, on the other hand, remained a theorist, but it was his groundbreaking work on whose findings the famous tank battles of the Polish campaign, the French campaign and at the beginning of the war with the Soviet Union were based. Eimannsberger was not recognized, however, as Guderian clearly stood out due to his success as a troop leader.

In autumn 1943 Eimannsberger wrote a short, never published manuscript On his own behalf (available in the Vienna War Archives), writing with disappointment that he absolutely does not agree with the role that Guderian has assigned him in the history of the armored weapon, since the German Panzer force was led at the beginning of the Second World War according to its very own structures and combat principles and he is thus the creator of the German tank weapon. Eimannsberger's leading role has only been confirmed internationally in the last few decades. In conclusion, only a handful of officers recognized the real possibilities of a future armored weapon in the interwar period. These included the French General Aimé Doumenc , General Jean Baptiste Estienne and General Charles de Gaulle , then the British Captain Basil Liddell Hart and General John Frederick Charles Fuller , the Austrian General Eimannsberger and the German officers General Oswald Lutz , General Walther Nehring and Generaloberst Heinz Guderian . Despite this international knowledge, only the Germans put these ideas into practice and overran all Allied positions at the beginning of the Second World War.

Fonts

• The chariot war. JF Lehmann publishing house, Munich 1934.

family

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  Robert v. Kutschenbach 1819-1874

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  Ernestine v. Eimannsberger, b. v. Kutschenbach 1853-1939

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  Ludwig Matthäus v. Eimannsberger 1831-1878

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  Charlotte v. Eimannsberger, b. Cousin v. Bruckthal 1887--1966

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  Ludwig Vetter v. Bruckthal 1850-1918

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  Sieglinde v. Eimannsberger, b. Liensberger-Kreid 1914-1994

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  Ludwig Karl v. Eimannsberger 1910-1951

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  Anton Liensberger 1873–1953

Residences

The parental home of Ludwig Matthäus v. Eimannsberger was at Neubaugasse 23 in Vienna and was bought by his grandparents in 1791. After the early death of his parents, this house was sold by his guardian in 1837 for his education. His wife Ernestine b. v. Kutschenbach came from the Kaimberg manor near Gera , which her ancestor Heinrich Friedrich v. Kutzschenbach, Herzogl. Landkammerrat, 1766. Ludwig Alfred v. Eimannsberger lived with his family in his house at Lärchengasse 9. in Mödling near Vienna. The country house in Mutters and the partnership in the Hotel Kreid in Innsbruck came about through the marriage of Ludwig Karl v. Eimannsberger with Sieglinde Liensberger-Kreid into the family of Ritter v. Eimannsberger.

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  House Lärchengasse 9, Mödling near Vienna 1920

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  Landhaus Mutters 1929

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  Hotel Kreid in Innsbruck 1890

literature

• Rudolf Kiszling : Eimannsberger, Ludwig von. In: New Austrian Biography from 1815, Great Austrians. Volume 15, Amalthea, Vienna 1963, pp. 171-175.
• Walther Albrecht: Gunther Burstyn 1879-1945 and the development of the tank weapon. Osnabrück 1973, p. 198.
• Janusz Piekałkiewicz : War of the tanks. Munich 1975.
• Genealogical manual of the nobility , noble houses B XII, volume 64, CA Starke Verlag 1977
• Wolfgang Sagmeister: General of the Artillery Ing. Ludwig Ritter von Eimannsberger. Theorist and visionary of the use of large armored formations in combined arms combat. Unprinted dissertation, University of Vienna 2006.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Bertrand Michael Buchmann: Austrians in the German Wehrmacht. Böhlau, Vienna 2009. p. 25.
2. ↑ James S. Corum : The roots of Blitzkrieg University Press of Kansas. 1992, p. 139.
3. ^ André Deinhardt: Panzergrenadiers - a type of troops in the Cold War: 1960 to 1970. Oldenbourg Verlag, Munich 2012, p. 16.
4. ↑ Russel Hart: Guderian. Panzer pioneer or myth maker? Potomac Books Inc. 2006. p. 41.
5. ↑ Eddy Bauer: Der Panzerkrieg Verlag Offene Words Bonn 1965. P. 336.