Robert Kosch

Robert Paul Theodor Kosch circa 1915

Robert Paul Theodor Kosch (* 5. April 1856 in Glatz ; † 22. December 1942 in Berlin-Halensee ) was a Prussian general of infantry and military leaders in the First World War .

Life

Robert was the youngest of ten children of Hermann Kosch and his wife Agnes, née Heinrich.

After visiting the Cadet Corps , Kosch joined the 4th Lower Silesian Infantry Regiment No. 51 of the Prussian Army on April 23, 1874 as a Second Lieutenant . From 1877 to 1880 he graduated from the military academy . On April 3, 1880, he married Gertrude Noeggerath, with whom he had three daughters. From April 1, 1881 to March 31, 1887 a battalion and regimental adjutant at Infantry Regiment No. 132 in Glatz, he was assigned to the General Staff in Berlin on April 1, 1887 . Various other uses followed.

On April 22, 1912 he was promoted to lieutenant general and was appointed commander of the 10th Division in Poznan on June 4, 1912 . With this large association he fought successfully on the Western Front after the outbreak of the First World War . On October 9, 1914, he was appointed commander of the First Army Corps fighting in Lithuania , which opposed the numerically superior Russian troops and, after an initial retreat, was successful in the winter battle in Masuria . For this, Kosch was awarded the Pour le Mérite order . On June 11, 1915, he was appointed commanding general of the X. Reserve Corps and led it to the Bug in the battles on the Dniester , Gnisa Lipa, and Krasnostaw . He was then transferred to the Balkans , where he took part in the campaign against Serbia with the 101st and 103rd Divisions, which were subordinate to him . On November 27, 1915, Kosch received the oak leaves for the Pour le Mérite.

Assigned to Verdun at the end of February 1916 , he was promoted to General of the Infantry on August 18, 1916. On August 28, 1916 he was appointed commanding general of the newly formed General Command (z. B. V.) No. 52 , with which he was deployed in the Bulgarian Danube region to protect against the Romanians who had also entered the war . In the Battle of the Argesch , which lasted several days , from late November to early December 1916, the Romanians were defeated and the Romanian capital Bucharest was captured, sealing the collapse of the Romanian western and northwestern fronts. From May 1, 1917, he temporarily led the 9th Army until the arrival of Johannes von Ebens as their new commander-in-chief.

After the dissolution of the Danube Army in March 1918, Kosch took part in the occupation of Ukraine and the fighting against the Red Army as commander of General Command 52 . On May 1, 1918 he was appointed commander in chief of all troops in Tauria and the Crimea . After the end of the war, he took over command of the Eastern Border Guard before retiring from army service on January 10, 1919.

Kosch was buried in the Invalidenfriedhof in Berlin in 1942 . The grave has not been preserved.

Awards

• Order of the Crown II class on January 18, 1909
• Iron Cross (1914) 2nd and 1st class
• Order of the Iron Crown 1st class with war decorations on August 31, 1915
• Iron Crescent on January 20, 1916
• Hanseatic Cross Hamburg on June 10, 1916
• Friedrich-Kreuz on October 17, 1916
• Order of St. Alexander on March 14, 1917
• Grand Cross of Ö.-K. Leopold Order with war decorations on September 13, 1917
• Grand Cross of the Order of Albrecht with the star in gold and swords on August 22, 1917
• Order of the Red Eagle 1st class with oak leaves and swords on August 6, 1918

literature

• Hanns Möller: History of the knights of the order "pour le mérite" in the world war. Volume 1: A-L. Bernard & Graefe Verlag, Berlin 1935, pp. 607-609.
• Karl-Friedrich Hildebrand, Christian Zweng: The knights of the order Pour le Mérite of the First World War. Volume 2: HO. Biblio Verlag, Bissendorf 2003, ISBN 3-7648-2516-2 , pp. 254-256.

Web links

• personal estate in the Federal Archives Department MA: Military Archives; Freiburg i. Breisgau