Maximilian Bayer

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Maximilian Bayer 1916

Maximilian Gustav Stephan Bayer (pseudonym: Jonk Steffen ; born May 11, 1872 in Karlsruhe ; † October 25, 1917 at Nomeny ) founded the German scout movement in 1909 together with Alexander Lion . During the First World War he built up the core of what would later become the Finnish army with the 27th Royal Prussian Jäger Battalion .

Life

Maximilian Bayer was born the first child and had a sister. His parents were Major General Stephan Bayer (1816–1893) , who came from an old family of officers , and his second wife, Julie Henoch (1839–1888). Between 1873 and 1875 the family was in Italy (Pisa, Florence, Bagni di Lucca, Viareggio), after that they lived in Baden-Baden until 1876, in Gotha at the place of residence of Julie Henoch's mother until 1877 and again in Baden-Baden until 1883 , where Maximilian fell ill with severe ocular diphtheria. From 1883 to 1886 the family lived in Italy again . First on Capri and then in Venice , where Maximilian attended the Marco Polo high school. Here he also became familiar with the Italian culture and language . At Easter 1887, at the age of 14, following the military family tradition, he joined the main cadet institution in Groß-Lichterfelde in Berlin. In 1888 his mother died. In 1891 he left the institute as a secondary lieutenant at the age of 18.

From 1891 to 1898 Bayer served in the 1st Upper Rhine Infantry Regiment No. 97 in Saarburg , after which he was posted to the War Academy in Berlin . In 1901 he was transferred to the General Staff and in 1903 appointed to the General Staff .

When the Herero uprising broke out on January 12, 1904 in German South West Africa , Bayer volunteered. After leaving the army on January 31, 1904, he was deployed on February 1 of the same year in the staff of the leader of the Marine Expeditionary Corps for German South West Africa in the 2nd Sea Battalion . He was promoted to captain temporarily without a patent , which was given to him on March 10th after his arrival at the colony. In the same month Bayer was assigned to the High Command of the Schutztruppe under Governor Colonel Theodor Leutwein as Second General Staff Officer . His stationing was at the main department in Okahandja . Also in 1904 he met the later founder of German scouting, Alexander Lion , in South West Africa , but without any friendship.

For his participation in almost all major battles of the Herero War, he was awarded the Prussian Red Eagle Order IV Class with Swords on November 3, 1904 . In June 1905 he fell ill with typhoid and as a result had chronic heart problems. In August 1905 he received the Knight's Cross II. Class with Oak Leaves and Swords of the Grand Ducal Baden Order of the Zähringer Lion .

From October to December 1905 he was on vacation in Germany. On January 27, 1906, he was awarded the Royal Bavarian Order of Military Merit IV class with swords. In the spring he began a lecture tour through 35 German cities to report on the hostilities in South West Africa. He also wrote several books about his experiences, some of which he chose the pseudonym Jonk Steffen . He was also successful with his adventure stories.

In 1907 he became company chief of the 1st company in the 3rd Lower Alsatian Infantry Regiment No. 138 in Dieuze , Lorraine.

In the second half of 1908, Bayer met the medical officer Alexander Lion, himself a former member of the protection force in German South West Africa, at a meeting of the German Colonial Society . He was enthusiastic about the idea of ​​scouting that Lion had brought with him from London after personal conversations with the English General Robert Baden-Powell , the founder of the World Scout Movement, and from then on devoted almost all of his free time to building up the Scouting Movement in Germany and firmly establish. Bayer agreed to support Lion in editing and editing a planned translation of Baden-Powell's youth book Scouting for Boys . He got to work between November and December of the same year. This was also the time of his ongoing correspondence with Lion.

On January 20, 1909, the Boy Scout Association "Youth Sports in Field and Forest" was founded in Berlin. A prominent figure could be found as the first chairman, Consul General Georg Baschwitz . Bayer was elected to the extended board. However, the establishment of this association mobilized numerous opponents. Lion, Bayer and their comrades-in-arms suffered criticism from military, civil and ecclesiastical circles in the years that followed, focusing on the fact that the Boy Scout method had been developed in England , which was hated by many . As a result, the first wave of violent attacks by the press followed in March 1909. The club members feared for their existence and feared being socially ruined. Therefore, Bayer resigned in May of the same year after official resistance to his “patriotic behavior” from the board of the Boy Scout Association “Youth Sports in Field and Forest” and had his name deleted from the title page of the boy scout book that appeared shortly afterwards.

In May 1909, Alexander Lion published the boy scout book , of which Bayer had written essential parts (including the sections on nature , scouting techniques and fatherland ). The compromises that were necessary for the German transfer of the British customer did not make themselves noticeably noticeable in the first edition, which resulted in new attacks. The badly ill Bavarian had to take a three-month vacation this year due to a renewed heart condition.

When the German Scout Association (DPB) was founded in Berlin in 1911 , Bayer was elected “First Reichsfeldmeister”. Bayer took leave of absence for a year without a salary in order to devote himself exclusively to building up the scouting movement during this time. He remained Reich Field Master of the DPB until his death. In May the second, completely revised edition of the Boy Scout Book appeared as a compromise to please the opponents of the Boy Scout Movement. Bayer has now been featured on the front page. From this edition onwards, the content of the work moved further and further away from Baden-Powell's original ideas, it became German and stylized Friedrich Ludwig Jahn as a model for the first German scouts.

In the spring of 1912, Emmerich Teuber , founder of the “Vienna Scout Corps” and thus the Austrian scouts, visited Maximilian Bayer in Berlin. However, Teuber was disappointed because Bayer's efforts to do real scouting work had become impossible due to the massive resistance in Germany. The only viable compromise emerged as a one-sided pre-military training for young people.

Between October and November 1912 there were again massive accusations against Bayer, Lion and von Seckendorff by General Albano von Jacobi . He accused the editors of the boy scout book, among other things, lack of patriotism, loyalty to the king and religious feelings. Von Jacobi had a diatribe printed on the occasion that was anti-Semitic and alluded to Lions' Jewish birth. Jacobi from the association “Judensport in Wald und Feld” mocked and called the boy scout sponsor Baschwitz a “vain”, “Jewish” gentleman.

In February 1912 Bayer, Lion and von Seckendorff took part as authors of the “Boy Scouts Book for Young Girls” published by Elise von Hopffgarten , which wanted to promote a self-determined life for young women, free from patriotic slogans and religious one-sidedness. There are numerous references to the women's movement . Bayer gave the trigger for this work and the resulting Association of German Girl Scouts .

On October 1, 1913, Bayer was promoted to major at the age of 42 and transferred to the headquarters of Infantry Regiment No. 27 in Halberstadt . Since he mainly had to do office work, he had a lot of time for scout work. On October 12th he was able to take part in the second representative day of the Rhenish regional association of the DPB in Bonn and on October 19th he was able to organize a pageant with around 2,000 “his” scouts at the end of the centenary in Berlin.

Between March 14 and 16, 1914, he took part in the third general meeting of the DPB in Berlin; at the same time as the field master's day. During the meeting on March 15, he was at the forefront of an honor given to the German Crown Prince and Prince Karl II of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen , who is on a state visit to Germany, which the DPB with around 1,600 scouts and 100 field masters carried out in Eichkamp in Berlin .

In World War I, Bayer was initially on the Western Front used. He received the Iron Cross 2nd class for participating in the Assault on Liège . From August 30, 1914 to January 5, 1915 Bayer was city commandant of Brussels . There he used young German scouts for military relief services.

Bayer's grave in Mannheim

At the beginning of 1915 Bayer was first ordered to Berlin to develop a concept for building a Turkish scout movement based on the German model. A little later Bayer received the order to train Finnish volunteers in the Lockstedt camp . The first "Pathfinder Field Master Course" began in Lockstedt on February 25th . In August 1915 Bayer became the commander of the "Lockstedt Training Force", which in 1916 was converted into the Royal Prussian Jäger Battalion No. 27 ( Finnish Hunters ). From May 1916, the Jäger battalion was deployed under Bayer in Courland . In 1917 Bayer was awarded the Iron Cross 1st Class for this mission .

After a brief assignment to the General Staff (January 5 to April 6, 1917) Bayer was transferred to the Western Front in the Verdun area as commander of the Reserve Infantry Regiment No. 259 , where heavy fighting raged between August and October . After he was retired on October 22, 1917 in St. Jürgen near Nomeny ( Lorraine ), he was killed there “between the fronts” on October 25, 1917 during an inspection tour through the front positions at the hands of an enemy sniper . His body was only identified six months later, on April 2, 1918, and deposited in the Unterhofen military cemetery near Metz . The scouts of the German Scout Association held a first memorial service in October 1918.

In 1924, Bayer's remains were divested in the Féy military cemetery near Novéant on the Moselle and transferred to Germany on August 28, 1926. On October 9, 1926, these were buried in the family grave of the main cemetery in Mannheim with the participation of numerous scout leaders and representatives of Finland, and on May 11, 1929, a memorial stone was inaugurated on the grave with the participation of the scouts and Finns. Scouts commemorate events at this site to this day.

On his grave is a Finnish granite boulder with an oval medallion in writing in a laurel wreath made of galvanized bronze. The black-white-red sign of the Boy Scout Association is embedded in the inscription. Furthermore, a representation of the Cross of Merit and the Iron Cross with a laurel wreath was placed on the board.

Bayer was further honored as a youth leader on June 19, 1977 with the ceremonial unveiling of a memorial stone on the grove of honor of the German youth movement near Waldeck Castle in the Hunsrück.

Publications

  • Maximilian Bayer: The nation of bastards . W. Süsserott, Berlin 1906 ( Koloniale Abhandlungen 1); English under the title The Rehoboth baster nation of Namibia . Basler Afrika-Bibliografie, Basel 1984. ISBN 3-905141-38-8 .
  • Maximilian Bayer: The war in South West Africa and its significance for the development of the colony . Published by Friedrich Engelmann, Leipzig 1906, DNB 579153517 .
  • Maximilian Bayer: With the headquarters in South West Africa . Verlag Wilhelm Weicher, Berlin 1909. Reprint: Melchior Verlag, Wolfenbüttel 2012, ISBN 978-3-944289-00-7 .
  • Jonk Steffen (pseudonym of Maximilian Bayer): In the orlog: a south-west African novel . Publishing house of colonial political magazines, Berlin 1910.
  • Jonk Steffen (pseudonym of Maximilian Bayer): Okowi - a Hererospion? A story from the South West African war . Weicher, Berlin 1910; later editions with changes in the text under the title Die Rache des Herero ; Reprint of the first edition from 1910: heiselbetz / medien, 2007 ISBN 978-3-940167-00-2 .
  • Maximilian Bayer: In the fight against the Hereros: pictures from the campaign in the southwest . Schaffstein, Cologne 1911.
  • Maximilian Bayer: The German Scout Association . Langensalza, 1914.
  • Jonk Steffen (pseudonym of Maximilian Bayer): The heroes of the Naukluft . Spamer, Leipzig 1912; Reprint: Peters Antiques, Swakopmund 1998 ISBN 99916-741-5-2 .
  • Maximilian Bayer (Ed.): Scherls Jung-Deutschlandbuch 1914 . Scherl, Berlin 1913 - and other years .

literature

  • Karl Seidelmann: The scouts in the German youth history : Vol. 1. Presentation . Hannover, Schroedel 1977. ISBN 3-507-38037-4
  • Karl Seidelmann: The scouts in German youth history : Part 2.1. Sources and documents from the period up to 1945 . Hannover, Schroedel 1980. ISBN 3-507-38038-2
  • Heinz Halter: Finland's youth break Russia's chains. The history of the Prussian Jäger Battalion 27 . Leipzig 1938
  • Carl. F. Ronsdorf: Maximilian Bayer: A trailblazer for Finland's independence . Helsinki 1973
  • Stephan Schrölkamp: Founding Fathers of the Scout Movement : Vol. 1, Baunach, Spurbuch 2004. ISBN 3-88778-226-7

See also

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Deutsches Kolonialblatt, 15th year 1904, November 1904, p. 686
  2. ^ Deutsches Kolonialblatt, 16th year 1905, August 1905, p. 520
  3. ^ Deutsches Kolonialblatt, 17th year 1906, March 1906, p. 127.
  4. ^ Secret State Archives Berlin, I, 89 (2.2.1), 15593 vol. 2
  5. ^ W. Münkel: Die Friedhöfe in Mannheim (SVA, 1992) p. 120