Wilhelm Büchsel

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Wilhelm Büchsel

Wilhelm Gotthilf Karl Büchsel (born April 12, 1848 in Stralsund ; † April 7, 1920 ibid) was a German admiral and from 1902 to 1908 chief of the admiral staff of the Imperial Navy .

Life

origin

Wilhelm was the youngest of eight children of the Stralsund merchant and cloth merchant Ernst Friedrich Theodor Büchsel and his wife Emilie, née Lübke, called Cornelius.

Military career

He grew up in Stralsund and attended the Sundisches Gymnasium there . He passed his Abitur at Easter 1865. After successfully completing school, he joined the Prussian Navy as a cadet on April 24, 1865 , where he trained as a naval officer. This was followed by basic nautical training on board the Niobe and Gazelle , attending the naval school and other special courses. With this he was promoted to lieutenant at sea on December 9, 1869 with a patent from September 22, 1869 . Further assignments on board as a watch officer, as a company commander followed until he was assigned to the Admiralty for a year in 1874 . Back from Berlin and promoted to lieutenant captain on November 18, 1875 , he became first officer on the brig Rover . He then went on board the Nymph until the fall of 1877, worked as an instructor on the artillery training ship Renown and was sent to the Naval Academy in October 1878 for further training. By April 1881, Büchsel had completed all three courses and came to the Kaiserliche Werft Kiel for the rest of the year . After a short interim as the Ziethen's commander , Büchsel became director of equipment at the shipyard in Kiel in October 1881 . During this time in the shipyard he was promoted to Korvettenkapitän in April 1882 and switched to the Admiralty again on October 1, 1884. Here he was employed in the military department until April 1887. After that, he took over the ship's boy department as commander for a year and was in command of the Nixe training ship from 1888 . A year later he was promoted to sea captain and in 1889 appointed commander of the Second Sailors' Division.

From here Büchsel came to the Reichsmarineamt in Berlin for the first time in 1890 , where he held the post of head of the military department. Subsequently, from April 1, 1894, he was again active as a commander, including the armored ship Weissenburg, and as an inspector in the II. Naval inspection. In November 1895 he returned to the Reichsmarineamt as director of the naval department. Here the year 1897 was associated with numerous changes for him and the authority. So he was promoted to rear admiral on March 22nd . In April he temporarily took over the business of State Secretary in the Reichsmarineamt for the outgoing Admiral Friedrich von Hollmann (1842–1913). He was also the deputy of the Reich Chancellor in the field of naval administration. On June 16, the long-prepared communications department (N) was set up in the Reichsmarineamt. Its board of directors was on October 1, August von Heeringen (1855–1927). Also in June, Kaiser Wilhelm II made the decision to finally replace Admiral von Hollmann, who had recently been acting somewhat unsuccessfully, as State Secretary and to entrust Alfred von Tirpitz (1849–1930) with this office. This made the decision in favor of a long-term fleet strategy for Germany with internal and foreign policy consequences that were not always smooth. Shortly before the end of his tenure as director of the naval department, Büchsel changed to the post of director of the technical department in the Reichsmarineamt for six months in April 1899 and in autumn took command of the 2nd division in the 1st squadron of the fleet. He was then appointed 2nd Admiral of the 1st Squadron from June 1900.

At the end of 1900 Büchsel returned to the Reichsmarineamt as director of the general naval department and deputy authorized representative at the Federal Council and was promoted to vice admiral in 1901 . From February to June 1902 he temporarily took over the representation of the State Secretary von Tirpitz, from June onwards he was only entrusted with the representation of the chief of the admiral's staff on a part-time basis. This gave him good insights into the position and functioning of both naval institutions. On August 20, 1902, he was appointed as the successor to Admiral Otto von Diederichs (1843–1918) as Chief of the Admiralty's Staff of the Imperial Navy. With the beginning of his term of office, the disputes between the Reichsmarineamt and the Admiralstab, which had already been carried out during the time of his predecessor, about the necessary restructuring of the Admiralty, the urgent access to own information acquisition and evaluation, steps for a direct cooperation with the naval attachés, the financial resources as well personnel increase in this strategy-building sector, continued. According to the existing regulations, the Admiral's staff was only authorized to obtain and evaluate information independently during a state of war. Just like his predecessor, Büchsel saw a great weakness of the Admiralty's staff in the fact that it was instructed exclusively on the Reichsmarineamt, which worked like an authority, in all military-strategic decisions, in long-term marine-strategic planning for the fleet and its use. This is where information about foreign navies, the travel reports of posted officers, data about foreign ports, maritime armaments developments, ship movements on the world's oceans and maritime geography came together. But only a fraction of it and if with considerable time delays and distortions made it to the Admiral's staff. For the first time in 1903 Büchsel succeeded in asserting himself against the Reichsmarineamt in this matter. This occasion presented itself to him when the mandatory service of the naval attaché Carl von Coerper (1854–1942) at the German embassy came to an end in September 1903. He asked him to stay in London after his replacement and to set up a secret base for the naval intelligence service for the Admiralty. This also happened very quickly in this form, as von Coerper had numerous active connections in Great Britain from his time as a naval attaché. Complications only arose when it became clear that his successor as naval attaché, Hugo von Cotzhausen (1863–1945), had already been replaced in November 1904 for very flimsy reasons and von Coerper had to return to his post, but kept his intelligence work. Because that was a violation of article 4 of the instructions for the military attachés. Shortly afterwards, he succeeded a second time in asserting the priority of the admiralty's staff in matters of obtaining information. During the Russo-Japanese war that began in February 1904, Büchsel commanded the naval attaché at the German embassy in Tokyo Konrad Trummler (1864–1936), with reference to the state of war prevailing there, at the Japanese headquarters. The aim of this step was to ensure that the Admiral's staff received precise first-hand information about the course of the fighting, the strength and armament of both armed forces, especially about the technical innovations and strategic procedures. In this context, he ordered Trummer to ignore any different travel requests from the Reichsmarineamt during the ongoing state of war. From March 1904, under pressure from Büchsel, the admiral staff officer Arthur Tapken (1864–1945) was made responsible as a department head in the admiral staff for the area of ​​information procurement. But the discrepancies about the competencies for the procurement and availability of strategic information between the Reichsmarineamt and the admiral staff, in person between Admiral von Tirpitz and Büchsel, remained a point of contention in the further term of office of the admiral chief of staff. On June 23, 1905 Büchsel became the Admiral promoted and January 28, 1908. Disposition and at the same time à la suite made of Seeoffizierskorps. He was succeeded by Admiral Friedrich von Baudissin (1852–1921).

After serving as president of the Evangelical Press Association for Germany, which began in 1910 , Büchsel was reactivated on November 1, 1915 as admiral and director of the administrative department of the Imperial Navy Office during the First World War . At the same time, he was the Undersecretary of State in the Reichsmarineamt until March 15, 1916 and was most recently entrusted with the management of the official affairs of the State Secretary of the Reichsmarineamt, Grand Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz , from March 10th to 15th, 1916 . On March 15, 1916, Büchsel finally retired and returned to his hometown Stralsund.

family

The marriage with Lucie Herrmann had three children. He is a nephew of the pastor and author Carl Büchsel and uncle of the painter Elisabeth Büchsel .

Awards

literature

  • Deist: fleet policy and fleet propaganda. The message office of the Reichsmarineamte 1897–1914. Stuttgart 1976.
  • Dermot Bradley (eds.), Hans H. Hildebrand, Ernest Henriot: Germany's Admirals 1849-1945. The military careers of naval, engineering, medical, weapons and administrative officers with admiral rank. Volume 1: A-G. Biblio Verlag, Osnabrück 1988, ISBN 3-7648-1499-3 , pp. 183-184.
  • Klaus-Volker Giessler: The institution of the naval attaché in the German Empire. Harald Boldt Verlag, Boppard am Rhein 1976, p. 133ff.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Deist Wilhelm: Fleet Policy and Naval Propaganda. In: Military history messages. 1969, issue 5, p. 101 ff.
  2. ^ Biographical sketches about Carl von Coerper and Hugo von Cotzhausen. In: Marine attaché. Books LLC, Wiki Series, Memphis, USA 2011, pp. 5ff. and 33ff.
  3. ↑ General instruction of the Reich Chancellor for the military and naval attachés of December 1, 1890 in the amended version of February 2, 1900. In: Klaus Volker Giessler: The institution of the naval attachés in the Kaiserreich. Harald Boldt Verlag, Boppard am Rhein 1976, p. 256ff.
  4. ^ Klaus-Volker Giessler: The institution of the naval attaché in the empire. Harald Boldt Verlag, Boppard am Rhein 1976, p. 92 ff.
  5. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l Marine-Kabinett (Ed.): Ranking list of the Imperial German Navy. ES Mittler & Sohn, Berlin 1914, p. 106.
personal data
SURNAME Büchsel, Wilhelm
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Büchsel, Wilhelm Gotthilf Karl (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German admiral
DATE OF BIRTH April 12, 1848
PLACE OF BIRTH Stralsund
DATE OF DEATH April 7, 1920
Place of death Stralsund