Wilhelm Heye

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Wilhelm Heye on a photograph by Nicola Perscheid

August Wilhelm Heye (born January 31, 1869 in Fulda ; † March 11, 1947 in Braunlage ) was a German colonel general and chief of the army command in the Weimar Republic .

Life

Heye was a son of the Prussian lieutenant colonel Wilhelm Heye and his wife Charlotte, née von Finckh .

Career in the empire

On March 22, 1888, he transferred from the cadet corps to the Prussian army and initially served in the infantry . With his move to the General Staff in the spring of 1900, his career as a General Staff officer began. From 1906 to 1908 Heye belonged to the stage command for the protection force in German South West Africa , which put down the Herero uprising during this time . From 1910 to 1913 he headed Department III b ( intelligence service ) in the General Staff .

At the beginning of the First World War Heye was appointed lieutenant colonel chief of the general staff of the Landwehr Corps under Remus von Woyrsch , from which the army department or army group Woyrsch later emerged. He proved himself in the changeable battles on the Eastern Front . In September 1917 he moved to the Western Front and became Chief of Staff of Army Group Duke Albrecht .

On September 21, 1918 Heye - meanwhile a colonel - was appointed to the General Staff of the Field Army , where he was appointed chief of the operations department. This gave him direct contact with the highest military decision-makers. When Erich Ludendorff was dismissed as Quartermaster General on October 26th, Heye temporarily took over his duties, despite his comparatively low rank, until Ludendorff's successor Wilhelm Groener could take office.

Career in the Reichswehr

Wilhelm Heye (left), 1929

After the defeat and the armistice of Compiègne , Heye became Chief of the General Staff of the AOK Grenzschutz Nord in East Prussia in April 1919 , which coordinated the military operations against the Red Army in the Baltic States . He became the successor of Hans von Seeckt , with whose life Heye's military career was to remain closely linked in the period that followed. In East Prussia, Heye first found out about the putsch plans of conservative officers and politicians around Wolfgang Kapp and Walther von Lüttwitz , whom he did not want to join because of the lack of prospects of success.

On October 1, 1919, Heye moved to Berlin as Chief of Staff of the Troops Office in the Reichswehr Ministry . The chief of the office (and thus the secret chief of staff) was Seeckt, who made Heye his right hand. When the Kapp Putsch actually came about in March 1920 and Seeckt withdrew to his private apartment as a precaution, Heye represented him in the ministry. Like Seeckt, he also pursued the intention on the one hand not to participate in the putsch, but on the other hand not to defeat it militarily, in order to maintain the solidarity of the Reichswehr .

When Seeckt was appointed head of the army command in the wake of the coup attempt, Heye succeeded him as head of the troop office in June 1920. At the same time he was promoted to major general. In 1922 he was promoted to Lieutenant General Chief of the Army Personnel Office and in 1923 Commander in Military District I ( Königsberg ).

Chief of Army Command

When Reichswehr Minister Otto Geßler used what was actually a trivial occasion in October 1926 to dismiss Seeckt, who had become too powerful and stubborn, he decided in favor of Heye as his successor. The government hoped to finally be able to politically control the Reichswehr under Heye, since he was considered a weak personality and had no political plans of his own. This goal was not achieved, however, because the Reichswehr now came under the influence of von Geßler's successor, Wilhelm Groener , who had newly created Kurt von Schleicher's post as head of the ministerial office. He pulled the strings in the background, while Heye limited himself to his actual official business. At the beginning of his service as Chief of Army Command , Heye was promoted to General of the Infantry , in early 1930 he was made Colonel General and retired in October of the same year. He was succeeded by Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord .

family

Heye married Else Karcher in 1894, daughter of the industrialist Fritz Karcher , with whom he had three sons and two daughters. The son Hellmuth (1895-1970) later became Vice Admiral of the Navy and Defense Commissioner of the German Bundestag .

Gravestone in Braunlage

Awards

Web links

Commons : Wilhelm Heye  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Thilo Vogelsang :  Heye, Wilhelm. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 9, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1972, ISBN 3-428-00190-7 , p. 79 ( digitized version ).
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y Ranking list of the German Reichsheeres , Mittler & Sohn Verlag, Berlin 1930, p. 106
personal data
SURNAME Heye, Wilhelm
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Heye, August Wilhelm (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German Colonel General
DATE OF BIRTH January 31, 1869
PLACE OF BIRTH Fulda
DATE OF DEATH March 11, 1947
Place of death Braunlage