Rudolf Stöger-Steiner from Steinstätten

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Rudolf Stöger , from 1892 Stöger-Steiner Edler von Steinstätten , from 1918 Stöger-Steiner Freiherr von Steinstätten , from 1919 Rudolf Stöger-Steiner (born April 26, 1861 in Pernegg an der Mur , Styria ; † May 12, 1921 in Graz ), kk was Privy Councilor and kuk Colonel General and final war minister of Austria-Hungary .

Rudolf Stöger-Steiner von Steinstätten (1917)

Life

Family and education

Stöger was the son of the factory owner Georg Stöger (1818–1874) and Agathe Maria Stöger born. Hofer. After the father's death, the widowed mother married the later adoptive father Joseph Steiner von Steinstätten in 1877 . Rudolf Stöger attended the cadet school in Liebenau (Graz) and joined the common army in 1879 . He was able to specialize in ballistics and artillery and was appointed to the general staff .

Until 1891 his name was Rudolf Stöger, after adoption and nobility transfer from his stepfather Joseph Steiner von Steinstätten, his name was Rudolf Stöger-Steiner von Steinstätten from 1892 to 1919 . He had been married to Maria Magdalena von Link since 1892 (born March 27, 1869 in Graz; † January 20, 1939 in Jundorf near Brno).

His daughter Margarete Stöger-Steiner Edle von Steinstätten (1893–1969), married (von) Rohrer, worked as a publisher, under the pseudonym "Ferwall" as a narrator and also as a women's rights activist. After the Second World War, she brought the Friedrich-Rohrer-Verlag, founded by her late husband, Friedrich Rohrer, to Austria and took over its management in Innsbruck until 1967.

His son Johann (1896–1897) died at an early age.

Rudolf von Stöger-Steiner had two brothers (Julius Stöger-Steiner Edler von Steinstätten and Gustav Stöger-Steiner) who served as officers in the kk Landwehr .

Military career and world war

Rudolf Stöger became a lieutenant in Feldjäger Battalion No. 9 on November 1, 1880. After attending the war school in Vienna, he was appointed first lieutenant on November 1, 1886 . Stöger then served as an adjutant in the general staff in the 50th Infantry Brigade, the 8th Mountain Brigade and finally in the 18th Infantry Troop Division, where he was promoted to captain on May 1, 1890 . He then served in the command staff of the I. and VIII. Corps, with a short interruption he was also company commander of the Jäger Battalion No. 9. From 1896 to 1899 he was a lecturer in tactics at the war school, where he was on November 1, 1899 Major was promoted. On June 4, 1903 he became a colonel , on March 30, 1907 he took over command of the 74th Infantry Regiment and on March 18, 1909 that of the 56th Infantry Brigade in Gorizia .

He was promoted to major general on November 1, 1909, and on March 24, 1910, he became commander of the army shooting school near Bruck an der Leitha . On July 22nd, 1912 he was honored by the award of the Leopold Order and at the same time received command of the Imperial and Royal 4th Infantry Division in Brno . On November 1, 1912, he was promoted to Lieutenant Field Marshal .

When the First World War broke out, FML Stöger-Steiner took to the field as the commander of the Austro-Hungarian 4th Infantry Division of the II Corps (under Blasius Schemua ). His division operated during the Battle of Krasnik near Biłgoraj and advanced during the Battle of Komarów on the left wing of the Austro-Hungarian 4th Army across the Wieprz section towards Zamość .

On July 26, 1915, Stöger-Steiner was appointed Commanding General of the XV. Corps operating on the Italian Isonzo Front along the Krn – Tolmein –St. Lucia-Auzza was used. On November 1, 1915 he was promoted to general of the infantry and took part with his corps in eight of a total of twelve Isonzo battles until 1917 , in which the Italian attacks were successfully repulsed. The "Stöger-Steiner-Höhe" in the municipality of Tolmein in today's Slovenia is named after him .

As a thank you for the fact that Stöger-Steiner, as the commanding officer at the front, always made sure to show consideration for the civilian population as much as possible, he was hired on August 2, 1917 by the municipality of Veldes (Bled) on Lake Veldes ( Lake Bled , Slovene Blejsko jezero ) in the northwest of Carniola was made an honorary citizen. The later Austrian Federal President Theodor Körner served him as Chief of Staff of the Army Corps .

Rudolf Stöger-Steiner von Steinstätten (far right) in the Villa Wartholz , 1917

On April 12, 1917, he was appointed kuk war minister by Emperor Karl I as successor to Alexander Freiherr von Krobatin . As a politician, Stöger-Steiner was far less successful than as a general. During his term of office, which was to prove to be the last of an Austro-Hungarian Minister of War, he had a hard time dealing with professional politicians , especially in the Austrian Reichsrat , which was convened by the Kaiser in spring 1917 after three years without parliament . He also found himself facing increasing supply problems in the army confronted as they appeared for the population.

Stöger-Steiner brought the later creator of the republican constitution, Hans Kelsen , to the war ministry as legal advisor. Kelsen dealt with the question of how armed power would be organized if the real union between Austria and Hungary were to be replaced by a personal union, as finally happened on October 31, 1918.

Coat of arms of Baron Stöger-Steiner von Steinstätten

On December 7, 1917, the United States also declared war on Austria-Hungary, after having waged it against the German Reich since April 6, 1917. The armistice reached with Ukraine and Russia in December 1917 , followed by the Brest-Litovsk peace treaty at the beginning of 1918 , brought only brief relief: the chances of winning the war became ever smaller. In January 1918 Stöger-Steiner had to withdraw seven infantry divisions from the front to crush a strike by industrial workers . The civil authorities increasingly needed help from soldiers in order to maintain state power. From February 1st to 3rd, 1918 , a great sailors' revolt took place in Cattaro (Kotor), Dalmatia . In 1918 the equipment and supply problems of the Austro-Hungarian Army became obvious, and war fatigue increased sharply.

At the joint Council of Ministers on October 2, 1918, Stöger-Steiner supported the reservation of the Hungarian Prime Minister Sándor Wekerle regarding the order of the internal situation and warned that if Trentino were to leave without a plebiscite, revolutionary outbreaks could result in Tyrol .

Hungary ended the Real Union with Austria on October 31, 1918. On the same day, when Stöger-Steiner and his section chief Carl von Bardolff drove up to the War Ministry in Vienna in a service car, members of the soldiers' council asked him to remove the imperial cockade from his cap to take. When, like Bardolff, he refused, stones were smashed into the windows of the car, the minister was injured and the cockades were forcibly torn off.

On November 1, 1918, Stöger-Steiner's responsibility for the Hungarian troops was transferred to the new Hungarian Minister of War, Béla Linder , who ordered her to return home immediately from the front. On November 3, 1918, the armistice of Villa Giusti was signed on behalf of the emperor and king . The former Austro-Hungarian War Ministry only had to administer the dissolution of the army formally demobilized by the monarch on November 6th; the navy had been handed over to the new South Slav state on his behalf at the end of October , since neither Austria nor Hungary had any share on the Adriatic coast.

The last Austro-Hungarian Foreign Minister, Gyula Andrássy the Younger , resigned on November 2, 1918, the last joint finance minister, Alexander Spitzmüller , on November 4. Stöger-Steiner, the third of the three ministers who worked together until October 31, 1918 , served as minister until November 11, 1918, when Charles I in Austria renounced any share in state affairs.

Stöger-Steiner was personally friends with the Styrian poet and mansion member Peter Rosegger , who died on June 26, 1918.

After the end of the war

After the emperor's resignation from the government on November 11, 1918, Stöger-Steiner was subordinate to the German-Austrian State Office for Army Affairs until the beginning of December 1918 as head of the liquidating war ministry (see also Ludwig von Flotow as head of the liquidating foreign ministry).

Stöger-Steiner then moved first to Innsbruck and later - already severely affected by illness - to Graz, where he died in spring 1921. He was buried in the Graz Central Cemetery in an honorary grave (field 6a I 2) dedicated by the city of Graz. The date of birth and place of birth are incorrectly stated on the grave plate (April 17, 1861, Kirchdorf in Steiermark). In 1939, Stöger-Steiner's wife Marie was also buried here.

literature

Web links

Commons : Rudolf von Stöger-Steiner  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The title was made bourgeois on the basis of the "Law on the Abolition of the Nobility, Secular Knights and Ladies Orders and Certain Titles and Dignities" of the Republic of Austria (Nobility Repeal Act ) of April 3, 1919 with effect from April 10, 1919.
  2. ↑ Karin Derler, Ingrid Urbanek: Planning for Infinity - The Graz Central Cemetery , Steirische Verlagsgesellschaft, Graz 2002, ISBN 3-85489-086-9 .
  3. ↑ a b Spencer Tucker (Ed.): The Encyclopedia of World War I. A Political, Social and Military History . ABC-Clio Verlag, Santa Barbara 2005, ISBN 1-85109-420-2 , p. 1116.
  4. ↑ Austria-Hungary's Last War Volume I., Vienna 1930, sketch 4
  5. ↑ Miklós Komjáthy (Ed.): Protocols of the Joint Council of Ministers of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy (1914–1918) . Budapest 1966, p. 687 ff.
  6. ^ Report of the police officer Dr. Franz Brandl of October 31, 1918, quoted in: Rudolf Neck (Ed.): Austria in the year 1918. Reports and documents. Verlag Oldenbourg, Munich 1968, p. 97.
personal data
SURNAME Stöger-Steiner von Steinstätten, Rudolf
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Stöger-Steiner von Steinstätten, Rudolf Freiherr
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austro-Hungarian Minister of War
DATE OF BIRTH April 26, 1861
PLACE OF BIRTH Pernegg on the Mur
DATE OF DEATH May 12, 1921
Place of death Graz