Peter Wladimir von Glasenapp

Coat of arms of the von Glasenapp family

Peter Wladimir von Glasenapp ( Russian Пётр Владимирович фон Глазенап transcribed Pyotr Vladimirovich of Glazenap ; * 2. March 1882 in Gzhatsk in the Smolensk , Russian Empire , † 27 May 1951 in Munich ) was a Russian officer, commander of the Imperial Russian , the Volunteer Army and the Northwest Armies ( White Guard ) and Lieutenant General.

Life

Glasenapp comes from the Baltic branch of the noble von Glasenapp family . He married Countess Maria ("Mary") von der Borch in Danzig in 1940 , born January 14, 1895 in Trockoje near Smolensk; † March 18, 1969 in Munich, nurse and writer (Soldatka. The warlike adventures of Countess B). He had two children, Tatiana and Vladimir. Tatjana (married Maeker) * August 22, 1925 in Danzig; † August 14, 1951 in Aachen as a result of a "riding accident of the elite", as noted on the gravestone. She is buried in a family grave with her parents. The son Vladimir, born December 30, 1913 in Saint Petersburg ; † May 3, 1965 in Valencia , Venezuela, was a half-brother of Tatiana.

Imperial Russian Army

At the age of ten, Peter Wladimir von Glasenapp was accepted into the 1st Moscow Cadet Corps, and after graduation he went to the Nikolai Cavalry School, and was promoted to cornet in 1903, and transferred to a dragoon regiment. During this time he developed into a very good rider and subsequently became one of the most famous racing riders in Tsarist Russia. In 1909 he was transferred to the Guard Cavalry and in 1911 he was sent to the Higher Officer Cavalry School in Saint Petersburg. His training took place u. a. with one of the legendary riding masters of the late 19th century, the Englishman James Fillis . After two years of training, he is taken on as a permanent staff member of the school due to his performance as a teacher. In August 1914 von Glasenapp went to the First World War with the regiment of the cavalry school as Rittmeister and leader of a squadron . In 1915 he was given command of an independent troop unit. In April 1916 he was promoted to colonel and appointed commander of a mixed brigade. In this role he experienced the Russian Revolution, the armistice and the peace of Brest-Litovsk .

Participation in the White Movement

At the end of 1917 he went with the majority of his officers and soldiers to Novocherkassk in southern Russia to subordinate himself to Generals Alexejew and Kornilov in the formation of the volunteer army (White Army). Initially commander of a cavalry regiment consisting mainly of officers and later as a higher cavalry leader, Glasenapp distinguished himself particularly in the First Kuban Offensive (" Ice March ") against Jekaterinodar . Having been wounded several times himself, he succeeds in breaking the ring of enclosure of the Soviet forces and making a decisive contribution to the continued existence of the White Army. Glasenapp, who has meanwhile been promoted to major general (October 20, 1918), leads various Cossack units under General Denikin . He becomes the commander of a cavalry division and finally the commander of a section of the front, and while maintaining this military position, he is Governor General of Stavropol from July 1918 to June 1919 . On October 18, 1919, von Glasenapp was appointed commander-in-chief and governor-general in the war zone of the Northwest Army, and from November 7-28, 1919 he was governor-general of the north-west region ( Pskow ). On November 24, 1919, he was appointed lieutenant general. General Denikin sends Glasenapp to reinforce the white Northwest Army, whose attack under General Yudenitsch came to a halt in front of Saint Petersburg. On arrival, however, the collapse of the army cannot be stopped.

Flight and emigration

At first he was Chief of Staff and Governor General of the Occupied Territories and later, after General Yudenitsch's resignation, he succeeded him from November 28, 1919 until the Northwest Army was dissolved on January 21, 1920, as its Commander-in-Chief. On February 24, 1920 he arrived in Riga with General Yudenich. Glasenapp is leading the withdrawal and evacuation to Estonia and Finland. At the beginning of 1920 he tried to raise forces for the 3rd White Army in Warsaw. A closer operational cooperation with the re-established state of Poland fails. At the end of 1920 Glasenapp was ordered back to the Southern Army in the Crimea, now under the command of General Wrangel . After the military collapse of these forces, he was evacuated to Turkey with the remains of the Belarusian army. In 1921 he tried to create a Hungarian anti-Soviet "police army" made up of former soldiers and officers of the Austro-Hungarian army. Glasenapp had been sent several times by Wrangel on a diplomatic mission to various countries in support of the Belarusian movement. This led to talks with Admiral Horthy , Piłsudski in Poland, Poincaré in France, Churchill and Ludendorff , which were unsuccessful. In 1923 he moved to Gdansk, where he continued the fight against Bolshevism in Russia as head of several Russian emigre organizations. The attempt to cooperate with the leadership of the Third Reich failed because of the fundamentally different views on the future of a "liberated" Russia. After Germany surrendered, Glasenapp moved to Munich, which developed into the center of Russian emigration in Europe. With close support from American government agencies, he continued the fight against Bolshevism in Russia. In particular, he tried to bundle and unite the various currents of Russian emigration. In 1948 this led to the founding of the Association of the St. Andrew's Flag, a Russian emigrant organization operating worldwide with the aim of liberating Russia from Bolshevism. The founder and first president was Lieutenant General Peter von Glasenapp until his death on May 27, 1951.

Awards

• Russian Order of Saint Anne 2nd class
• Order of Saint Stanislaus 2nd class
• Medal In memory of 300 years of reign of the Romanov family
• Kuban Ice March Medal

swell

• NN Rutych: Belyi Front Generala Iudenicha Biografii Chinov Severo-Zapadnoi Armii. (The White Front of General Ludenich: Biographies of officers of North-East Army) Russkii Put, Moscow 2002, ISBN 5-85887-130-5 .
• Andreǐ Grigorevich Shkuro: Zapiski belogo partizana. (Шкуро, Андрей Григорьевич: Записки белого партизана. ). Moscow 2013, ISBN 978-5-4444-0542-0 .
• Emigrants: freshly sharpened dagger. In: Der Spiegel. No. 41, 1950. (spiegel.de)
• Significant award group of Lieutenant General Peter von Glasenapp and his wife Mary Countess von der Borch. In: Hermann Historica. (hermann-historica.de)