Robert von Klüber

Grave site in the Invalidenfriedhof , Berlin

Robert Emil Adolf von Klüber (born September 15, 1873 in Berlin , † March 2, 1919 in Halle (Saale) ) was a German lieutenant colonel in the Reichswehr and Knight of Honor of the Order of St. John .

Life

origin

Robert was the son of the later Prussian major general Friedrich von Klüber (1833-1908) and his wife Charlotte, née Countess von Brockdorff (* 1845). His grandfather was the Baden State Minister Friedrich Adolf Klüber .

Military career

After graduating from high school in 1891, Klüber joined the Schleswig-Holstein Uhlan Regiment No. 15 of the Prussian Army as an avantageur . Here he was promoted to secondary lieutenant on August 18, 1892 and later attended the military academy . As Rittmeister , Klüber was then squadron chief in the 3rd Guard Uhlan Regiment from 1910 and was then transferred to the General Staff on October 1, 1912 when he was promoted to Major . From 1913 Klüber was initially a military attaché at the embassies in Brussels and The Hague as well as at the embassy in Paris .

With the outbreak of the First World War he was recalled from this post and returned home. Here he was transferred to the General Staff of the Field Army at the beginning of August 1914 and then briefly used as a General Staff Officer in the 4th Cavalry Division . On September 7, 1914, he was appointed First General Staff Officer of the XI. Army Corps . Klüber then held this position until June 16, 1915, after which he became Chief of the General Staff of the IX. To become Army Corps . At this time the corps was on the Aisne front and was transferred to Champagne at the end of October , where it was able to assert itself several times in the autumn battle there . In mid-June 1916 his corps then moved to the northern section of the Somme . It was here that the British - French major offensive was repulsed and Klüber received the Knight's Cross of the Royal House Order of Hohenzollern with Swords in recognition of his achievements during the fighting . He had previously been awarded both classes of the Iron Cross .

On December 28, 1916 Kluber was then Chief of General Staff of the Army Department A . In the same function he was from April 11th to June 21st, 1918 in the 1st Army , then again in the Army Division A and finally from October 12th 1918 in the 17th Army . In the meantime, on June 14, 1917, Klüber was awarded the highest Prussian valor award, the order Pour le Mérite , for his services .

From 1919 he was a liaison officer of the Prussian War Ministry and representative of the - after the November Revolution republican - Reich government. As a lieutenant colonel in the Reichswehr, he came to Halle at the beginning of March 1919 with General Georg Maercker's Freikorps on the orders of the Reichswehr Minister Gustav Noske . The reason for the relocation of the troops was the civil war-like unrest after the Spartacus uprising . There were violent clashes with civilians. As part of these riots, Klüber, who had undertaken a scouting tour of the city in civilian clothes, was recognized as a soldier and ambushed. He was badly mistreated and thrown from the bridge on the Moritzburg - the later Robert von Klüber bridge - into the Saale . Despite being shot at, he managed to reach the bank. There, however, he was hit by a rifle butt. Sunk back into the water, he was eventually shot.

His grave is in the Berlin Invalidenfriedhof . The Klüberstraße in the so-called general quarters of the Berlin district of Steglitz-Zehlendorf is named after him since 1937th

family

Klüber had married Elsa von Mühlberg (* 1877) in Berlin on March 8, 1898, daughter of the Prussian major general Paul von Mühlberg .

Awards

• Red Eagle Order IV class
• Order of the Crown IV class
• Waldeck Cross of Merit IV Class
• Knight's Cross of the Persian Lion and Sun Order
• Knight's Cross 1st Class of the Order of the Sword

literature

• Hanns Möller : History of the knights of the order pour le mérite in the world war. Volume I: AL. Bernard & Graefe Verlag, Berlin 1935, pp. 588-590.
• Karl-Friedrich Hildebrand, Christian Zweng: The knights of the order Pour le Mérite. Volume 2: HO. Biblio-Verlag, Osnabrück 2003, ISBN 3-7648-2516-2 , pp. 229-230.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Marcelli Janecki : Handbook of the Prussian nobility. First volume, ES Mittler & Sohn, Berlin 1892, p. 272.
2. ^ Entry in the Federal Archives
3. ↑ Georg Ludwig Rudolf Maercker : From the Imperial Army to the Reichswehr. Verlag KF Koehler, Leipzig 1921, pp. 157–158.
4. ↑ Hanns Möller: History of the knights of the order pour le mérite in the world war. Volume I: AL. Verlag Bernard & Graefe, Berlin 1935, p. 589.
5. ^ Kurt von Priesdorff : Soldatisches Führertum . Volume 9, Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt Hamburg, undated [Hamburg], undated [1941], DNB 986919780 , p. 402, no. 2967.
6. ↑ ^{a b c d e} War Ministry (ed.): Ranking list of the Royal Prussian Army and the XIII. (Royal Württemberg) Army Corps for 1914. ES Mittler & Sohn , Berlin 1914, p. 18.