Wilhelm von Wickede

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Wilhelm von Wickede (born December 5, 1830 in Güstrow , † November 28, 1895 in Berlin ) was a German vice admiral .

Schleswig-Holstein War (1848-1851)

Wickede came from the old Lübeck patrician family Wickede and initially joined the Hamburg merchant fleet as a cabin boy . In 1849, after Danish ships had blocked the Elbe , he joined the Navy of Schleswig-Holstein as a junior and took part in naval battles against Danish ships during the Schleswig-Holstein War (1848-1851) . He left this navy on March 20, 1850.

Austrian services

As early as March 27, 1850, Wickede entered Austrian service as a naval cadet . There he went through a regular officer career and was promoted as follows:

Wickede served in various functions on a number of ships and was in command of several. As early as 1852 and 1853 he was used as the commander of the Pénichen Sireno and Amazone . In 1859 he took command of the "Goelette" ( frigate ) Aretusa during the blockade of Venice by France . In 1860 he commanded the lagoon boat Pelikan , later the paddle steamers Curtatone and Andreas Hofer and the gunboat Sansego . In the naval battle of Lissa on July 20, 1866, he was in command of the Dalmatian gunboat . In 1867 he took part in the pursuit of pirates in the Aegean Sea . For several years he was an orderly officer of Archduke Maximilian . In the spring of 1868 he traveled to England on a special order from the Presidential Chancellery and took leave of absence from the Austrian Navy on July 20, 1868.

Navy of the North German Confederation

On September 3, 1868 Wilhelm von Wickede joined the Navy of the North German Confederation as a corvette captain . He was first port major in Kiel until February 1869 , before he was transferred to the tank frigate King Wilhelm until October 1869 . After a brief service in the staff of the Baltic Sea Naval Station , he returned to this ship as first officer in April 1870 . Subsequently, in May 1871, he took command of the brig Musquito , which served as a training ship .

Imperial Navy

After the establishment of the Empire in 1871, the Navy of the North German Confederation became the Imperial Navy . Wickede became a teacher at the Naval Academy in 1872 and performed several side tasks at the same time, as was common at the time. He commanded the covered corvette Vineta for a time and was promoted to sea captain on May 2, 1874 . In 1875 he was also the commander of the sailing frigate Niobe . This was followed by a time as head of the II. Shipyard Division (1875/76) and as commander of the covered corvette Elisabeth (1876-78), who was deployed in foreign service. During this time, Wickede was also the senior officer of the East Asian Station (1877) and later (1878) commodore of a squadron off Nicaragua . In this function he succeeded in settling the so-called Eisenstuck affair in Corinto (Nicaragua) .

After returning and taking a short vacation, Wilhelm von Wickede worked again at the Naval Academy before he took over command of the tank corvette Saxony in March 1879 and the tank frigate Prussia in May 1879 . In the fall of 1879 he returned to the staff of the chief of the naval station of the Baltic Sea and in 1880 led the naval training squadron for the first time, which was put together from May to September each year. This task was assigned to him several times in the following years.

On September 17, 1881 Wickede was promoted to Rear Admiral and in 1885 to Vice Admiral. From 1883 to 1887 he was chief of the naval station of the Baltic Sea and, under the chief of the Admiralty Albrecht von Stosch, worked out an extended draft for the naval tactics .

For five years, Wickede directed the annual large squadron exercises and sea maneuvers of the German fleet, but was released from service in 1887 due to an illness. The real background to his retirement, however, were disputes with Admiral von Stosch and his successor Caprivi about the training and use of warships in the trade war . Wickede refused to let formal military training go at the expense of technical components. Together with the head of the naval station of the North Sea , Vice Admiral Count Monts , he also rejected the trade war as a pirate act against Caprivi.

Wilhelm von Wickede died in Berlin on November 28, 1895.

literature

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Wickede, Wilhelm von
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German Vice Admiral
DATE OF BIRTH December 5, 1830
PLACE OF BIRTH Guestrow
DATE OF DEATH November 28, 1895
Place of death Berlin