Nikolai Ottowitsch from Essen

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Nikolai von Essen as commandant of the Nowik , February 1904
Admiral Nikolai Ottowitsch von Essen

Nikolai Ottowitsch von Essen (Russian. Николай Оттович фон Эссен ) (* December 11th July / December 23rd  1860 greg. In Saint Petersburg ; † May 7th July / May 20,  1915 greg. In Reval ) was an admiral of imperial Russian Navy , Marine reformer and supreme commander of the Baltic fleet in the First world war . He is widely regarded as the most capable Russian admiral at the start of the First World War.

Life

Parentage and career start

Of food came from a German-Baltic seafaring family , which in the 1833 Russian count conditions raised was. His parents were the privy councilor , senator, state secretary and assistant to the Ministry of Justice Otto von Essen (1828–1876) and Lyubow Druzhinin († 1906). His ancestors had served in the navy for more than two centuries, and seven of them had been honored with the St. George's Cross , the highest military decoration in the Russian Empire. After graduating from the Russian Naval School (1880) and the Nikolajewski Naval Academy (1886), von Essen first served in the Black Sea and Mediterranean and then in the Far East . His first command was mine sweeper No. 120, which he commanded from 1897 to 1898. This was followed by the gunboat Grozjashchi (1898–1900), the steamer Slavianka (1901–1902) and finally the protected cruiser Nowik (1902–1904).

Russo-Japanese War

In the Russo-Japanese War 1904–1905, Captain 2nd rank of Essen initially continued to command the cruiser Nowik . Then he took over, on the orders of Admiral Makarov , the ship of the line Sevastopol , which he commanded in the naval battle in the Yellow Sea and which was then included with the rest of the Russian fleet in Port Arthur . (The predecessor, Captain Chernichev, had disqualified himself in Makarov's eyes due to navigational errors and other omissions.) In disregard of his orders, von Essen undertook to avoid the foreseeable glorious end of the Russian Pacific Fleet during the siege of Port Arthur , with the Sevastopol and the Cruiser Novik attempted a breakout and only returned after he had entered the battle with the far superior enemy and had been thrown back. Four of the five Russian ships of the line in Port Arthur were sunk or incapacitated by heavy land-based siege batteries during the Japanese siege. The Sevastopol received five heavy hits, but was ultimately able to escape from the fire area of ​​the Japanese batteries. As a result, Admiral Togo sent six waves of destroyer attacks against the last remaining Russian battleship over the next three weeks. A total of 124 torpedoes were shot down on the Sevastopol , which was badly damaged, but remained partially ready for action. Two destroyers were sunk and six others were damaged. When Port Arthur finally surrendered on January 2, 1905 , von Essen had his severely damaged ship sunk by its own crew in about 55 m water depth. Like the rest of the Port Arthur defenders, he was captured by Japan.

Interwar period

After the end of the war and its repatriation, von Essen received the command of the new armored cruiser Rurik (Russian Рюрик), which was built in 1906 at Vickers in England for the Imperial Russian Navy. The Rurik was the most heavily armed armored cruiser ever built in terms of the number and caliber of its main artillery . However, she was quite slow at only 21.4 knots. During the First World War, the Rurik was the flagship of the Baltic fleet.

In 1908 von Essen was promoted to Rear Admiral, and in the following year he was given the newly created post of commander of the Baltic Fleet. The promotion to admiral took place in 1913.

Like many younger Russian naval officers, von Essen had learned from the catastrophically lost naval war against Japan and the mutiny of the Black Sea Fleet and urged far-reaching reforms. Since the naval construction program passed in 1907 was carried out only very hesitantly, despite his efforts, he and a handful of like-minded people advocated a new construction and modernization program 1912–1916, which was finally passed by the Duma . He supported and promoted officers who, like him, sought to introduce modern structures, methods of combat and means of communication, and he recognized the importance of submarines and aircraft at an early stage. To improve the training of young naval officers, he founded the Naval Cadet School in Kronstadt . He also emphasized, especially after he had become familiar with the details of the mutiny on the Pamiat Azova , that in addition to technical and tactical training, attention was also paid to better leadership and troop morale. Based on his experiences from the Russo-Japanese War, von Essen had the tactical instructions modernized and geared towards offensive warfare; It was important to him not to have the fleet locked up in the Gulf of Finland and to secure its tactical and operational freedom.

First World War

When the First World War broke out, Admiral von Essen had put the Baltic fleet in a state that was remarkably ready for war for the Russian conditions at the time, which also permitted offensive combat operations. The fleet, with headquarters in what was then Helsingfors , consisted of four ships of the line, five armored cruisers, four small cruisers , 62 torpedo boats , 12 submarines and numerous smaller and special units. His superiors (he was operationally subordinate to the 6th Army under General KP van der Flit, which was supposed to defend Petrograd ) preferred caution and a defensive stance in the Baltic Sea. Von Essen was therefore forced to concentrate his main power in the Gulf of Finland, to station the older units in the Gulf of Riga , and to withdraw from Libau . For the offensive warfare he preferred, he was left with his submarines and torpedo boats, the latter being used in particular in mine warfare .

Nevertheless, during the first weeks of the war, von Essen tried to take the initiative with stronger forces. On August 9, 1914, he led part of his fleet west to attack Swedish units in the Gotland area. However, before fighting broke out (which would probably have forced Sweden to enter the war), he was ordered back because Petrograd feared a major German offensive in the Baltic Sea and wanted to keep the fleet in a defensive position.

On August 27, 1914, von Essen led the two armored cruisers Rurik and Pallada into the Baltic Sea to wage a trade war there. Although the operation was unsuccessful, this advance was important for the morale of the Russian Navy, as it signaled to the crews that they should not just remain idle in their ports.

death

Nikolai von Essen died unexpectedly suddenly on May 20, 1915 of pneumonia . He was buried in the Novodevichy Cemetery in Saint Petersburg.

family

Nikolai von Essen's wife Maria von Essen, b. Vasilyev (1862–1929) campaigned as chairwoman of the Navy Women's Society for the material and moral support of the sailors of the Baltic Fleet. His son Anton (* 1888) was in command of the submarine AG-14 and fell on October 24, 1917. The daughters Maria (* 1886), Julie (* 1892) and Wera (* 1897) were married to naval officers.

Post Comment

During the Russian Civil War in 1919 the White Army owned an armored train called "Admiral Essen", which operated in the Narva -St. Petersburg was used.

In 2014 the Russian Navy named an Admiral Grigorovich-class frigate (Project 11356M) after Admiral Essen (751), which belongs to the Black Sea Fleet.

literature

  • Peter Brook: Armored Cruiser versus Armored Cruiser, Ulsan, August 14, 1904. In: Warship 2000-2001. Conway's Maritime Press, ISBN 0-85177-791-0 .
  • Julian Corbett : Maritime Operations in the Russo-Japanese War 1904–1905. Two volumes, 1994, ISBN 1-55750-129-7 .
  • Tony Gibbons: The Complete Encyclopedia of Battleships and Battlecruisers . 1983
  • René Greger: The Russian Fleet, 1914–1917 . University of Michigan / Ian Allen Publishing, 1972 (translation of The Russian Fleet in World War I, 1914–1917 )
  • Paul G. Halpern: A Naval History of World War I . UCL Press, London 1994, ISBN 1-85728-295-7
  • Rotem Kowner : Historical Dictionary of the Russo-Japanese War . Scarecrow 2006, ISBN 0-8108-4927-5
  • Р. М. Мельников: «Рюрик» был первым . Судостроение, 1989. (RM Melnikov: The Rurik was the first . Sudostroenie Publishing Company, Leningrad 1989)
  • Charles A. Repington: The War in the Far East, 1904-1905 . London 1905
  • FR Sedwick: The Russo-Japanese War . Macmillan Company, 1909
  • Boris A. Shalagin: Sobiratel Balflota . Morskoi sbornik, No. 12, 1990
  • Boris A. Shalagin: Vziat more v svoi ruki . Nizhnii Novgorod, 1996
  • Spencer C. Tucker : Who's Who in Twentieth Century Warfare. Routledge, London & New York 2001, p. 92, ISBN 0-415-23497-2 .
  • Denis and Peggy Warner: The Tide at Sunrise: A History of the Russo-Japanese War, 1904-1905 . New York, 1974/2002

Web links

Commons : Nikolai Essen  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Otto Magnus von Stackelberg (Beab.): Genealogical manual of the Estonian knighthood , Volume 1, Görlitz, p. 80.
  2. ↑ Otto Magnus von Stackelberg (Beab.): Genealogical Manual of the Estonian Knighthood , Volume 1, Görlitz, p. 82.
  3. ↑ Otto Magnus von Stackelberg (Beab.): Genealogical manual of the Estonian knighthood , Volume 1, Görlitz, p. 81.
  4. ↑ David Bullock and Alexander Deryabin: Armored Units of the Russian Civil War - White and Allied . Osprey Publishing, 2003, ISBN 1-84176-544-9
personal data
SURNAME Essen, Nikolai Ottowitsch from
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Эссен, Николай Оттович фон (Russian)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Admiral of the Imperial Russian Navy, naval reformer and Commander in Chief of the Baltic Fleet
DATE OF BIRTH December 23, 1860
PLACE OF BIRTH St. Petersburg
DATE OF DEATH May 20, 1915
Place of death Reval