Danish Campaign of 1864: Recollections of an Austrian General Staff Officer

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Published by Helion & Company 2010, in association with Iser Publications

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Cover designed by Farr out Publications, Wokingham, Berkshire

Printed by Henry Ling Ltd, Dorchester, Dorset

This English translation © Stuart Sutherland 2001

Excerpted from the original edition: Memoiren eines österreichischen Generalstäblers, 1832–1866 by Wilhelm Gründorf von Zebegény, published Stuttgart 1913.

ISBN 978-1-906033-69-9

ISBN 978-1-908916-42-6 (eBook)

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Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Appendix: People mentioned in the text

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Introduction

The war of 1864 between Austria and Prussia on the one side and Denmark on the other was short but important for European history. The two Germanic great powers combined to force a much weaker but intransigent Denmark to cede its two provinces of Schleswig and Holstein, which freed German territory from foreign rule, but the war also marked the end of the cooperation of Prussia and Austria and the start of a new and potentially lethal relationship between them. Indeed, just two years later the two powers were at war, and at the end of that conflict Prussia had excluded Austria from Germany and was on the road to achieving German unity under her banner.

The 1864 war, or to give it its popular name the Second Schleswig War, has long been studied, and it is with an eye to extending its literature in English that I present this translated extract from the memoirs of an Austrian officer, Wilhelm Ritter von Gründorf, who was at the headquarters of the Austrian force during the campaign. Gründorf was born plain Wilhelm Gründorf in 1832 in Reigersburg, Styria, one of at least two sons of an official on one of the many estates of the princely and fabulously wealthy Liechstenstein family; his brother Karl (1830–1906) would become known as an actor, theatre director and librarian. In the revolutionary year of 1848 the brothers were studying at the Polytechnic Institute in Graz, the provincial capital. Wilhelm, fired with enthusiasm for the radical cause, joined the Academic Legion, an armed student body. But the local police soon suppressed the Legion, and Wilhelm was saved from prosecution only because his uncle, colonel of an artillery regiment, took him into the Austrian army as a volunteer artillery cadet. Gründorf, despite his previous convictions, soon took a liking for the service. He entered the Artillery School, the main training institute for that arm, in 1851 and studied for two years before graduating first in his class on 25 August 1853, to become a junior lieutenant, the lowest officer rank, in the 3rd Field Artillery Regiment. He served in two other regiments before in 1855 being appointed an instructor at the Artillery School Company in the imperial capital of Vienna. Returning to active service in 1856, Gründorf was promoted senior lieutenant in 1858, and then in 1859 he was advanced to captain and transferred to the general staff. His services during the war with France and Piedmont in the latter year were valued enough that he was given the Order of the Iron Crown. This decoration carried with it the right to personal nobility, and Gründorf therefore became a Ritter (knight), assuming the title in January 1860. Shortly before he had married Marie Bardolf, and the marriage produced a daughter.

In 1864 Gründorf was assigned to arrange the transportation of an Austrian corps to northern Germany, and when that task was completed he was attached to the headquarters of the corps. He served throughout the campaign, being present at two actions and generally distinguishing himself. Once the war was over, Gründorf was transferred to Hungary. In 1866 he learned his wife was having an affair with another officer. Naturally outraged, he allowed his anger to get the better of him, to the extent that he attacked the other officer with a sword in the corridors of the War Ministry in Vienna. Arrested for this extremely rash act, he did not take part in the campaign of 1866, and he was dismissed from the army at the end of that year for his crime.

It seemed as if Gründorf’s career was in ruins, but there were many ways in imperial Austria in which a delinquent could rehabilitate himself, and Gründorf was able to enter the royal Hungarian railway administration and rise to become one of its senior officials. He divorced and remarried, and his new wife bore him two sons. Moreover, in November 1885 he was allowed to add the title von Zebegény, after a small village in Hungary, to his name, and in 1887 he was rehabilitated in the army when he was permitted by imperial decree to have the rank of a retired captain.

Gründorf left the civil service in 1888 and went to settle in Graz, which has been called the Pensionopolis of the Austrian army because of the large numbers of inactive officers who lived there to enjoy its relatively cheap lifestyle. In 1906 he was allowed to have the title of an honorary retired major. But despite Gründorf’s age, the outbreak of World War I called him back into service. He was attached for the duration of the war to the Military Surveillance Office in Vienna, being promoted retired major in 1915 and retired lieutenant colonel in 1917. In 1918, the end of the war and the dissolution of the empire naturally resulted in Gründorf’s being retired once again, and he returned to Graz, where he died on 16 November 1920, aged 88.

Between 1896 and 1906, during his first period of retirement in Graz, Gründorf wrote tourist guides of the city and Styria in general, which proved fairly popular. Then in 1913 his memoirs, Memoiren eines österreichischen Generalstäblers 1832-1866, were printed in Stuttgart. The account of the 1864 campaign which follows is taken from this work. Like other memoirs, they are not free from personal bias and inaccuracy, but in general I feel they give a good account of life in Austrian headquarters during the campaign. In translating and editing I have followed Gründorf’s style as closely as possible, only omitting superfluous titles where necessary. He also uses archaic measurements, the pace (Schritt), equal to 75 cm or 2.5 ft, and the German mile, equivalent to 5 miles or 8.1 km.

In order to provide more information about some of the people mentioned, I have given brief details on them in an appendix, identifying them in the text by means of an asterisk, as well as inserting footnotes for other information. A number of works proved useful in identifying people, places and events. The most helpful were: Allgemeine deutsche Biographie (55 volumes and index, Berlin, 1875–1912); Österreichisches biographisches Lexikon ab 1815 (53 parts to date, Graz, 1957–); Constantin von Wurzbach [Ritter von Tannenberg], Biographisches Lexikon des Kaiserthums Österreich (60 volumes, Vienna, 1856–91); Dansk Biografisk Leksikon, edited by Povl Engelstroff (27 volumes and supplement, Copenhagen, 1933–44); Austria, War Ministry, Militär-Schematismus des kaiserlichen Heeres für das Jahr.... (Vienna, various years); Friedrich Gatti and Albert Edler von Obermayer, Geschichte der k. und k. technischen Militär-Akademie (2 volumes, Vienna, 1901–5), 1; Johann Svoboda, Die theresianische Militär-Akademie zur Wiener-Neustadt und ihre Zöglinge von der Gründung der Anstalt bis auf unsere Tage (3 volumes, Vienna, 1894–97); Antonio Schmidt-Brentano, Die österreichischen Admirale (1 volume to date, Osnabrück, 1997–); Günter Wegner, Stellenbesetzung der deutschen Heere 1815-1939 (4 volumes, Osnabrück, 1990–96); Svend Bjørke et al., Krigen 1864: den anden slesvigske krig i politisk og krigshistorisk belysning (Copenhagen, 1968); the Danish Geographical Institute’s 1982 1: 100 000 atlas of Denmark.

Stuart Sutherland

1

At the end of 1863 there began the intrigues at the Federal Diet in Frankfurt which were to lead to war against Denmark in 1864. King Christian VIII* of Denmark, who as duke of Schleswig and Holstein was a member of the Germanic Confederation, increasingly tried to effect the complete separation of his German provinces from the Confederation and made increasing attempts to Danify them, until at last the Federal Diet lost patience. The diplomatic assembly in the Eschenheimergasse was usually deaf to the opinion of the German people, but at last the loud complaints of the Schleswigers, and still more those of the Holsteiners, had to be heard. An order was sent to the king of Denmark not to encroach on the Germanic character of his German provinces, Holstein and Lauenburg, and not to try to incorporate Schleswig into the Danish kingdom. But this order, which went to the Danish government on 9 July 1863, was not heeded, and so at last, despite British mediation, there was proclaimed against Denmark the federal intervention which had been threatening for a very long time but had never been agreed on before. A force under Lieutenant General von Hacke* from Saxony, consisting of a Saxon brigade under Major General von Schimpff*, a Hanoverian one under General von Gebler* and an Austrian one under General Gondrecourt*, first moved into Holstein and then threatened to invade Schleswig in order to force the king of Denmark and Hall*, his prime minister, to comply with the Confederation’s demands. These forces were much too weak to impose their will on the Danish army and navy, which in the meantime had been mobilized. The great powers of Austria and Prussia had foreseen and had asserted it in the federal parliament before the expedition departed.

As a result the two great powers decided on common action, which caused terrible confusion in the Diet and placed the federal troops under the friendly Saxon Hacke in a situation the like of which has never been seen. Austria and Prussia each sent a full army corps, 30,000 and 45,000 men respectively, to the north and threatened to declare war on Denmark if it did not surrender at once. But the Danish government was much too obstinate and the population much too fanatical to think of complying, and it had to come to war. Now the allied force had to deploy on the Eider [River] as quickly as possible. As a result, a new mission began for me, to travel to Leipzig, where were gathered the directors of the railways to be used and the military representatives of Prussia and Saxony, and with them make all preparations for the transport of an Austrian corps from Vienna and Prague to Hamburg. I was allowed to take an Austrian railway expert with me as a technical consultant, and on the advice of Major Baron Dumoulin* of the general staff I chose the head traffic controller of the Austrian state railway in Prague, Imperial Councillor Stempf, who waited for me in Prague and then accompanied me to Leipzig. There I met the railway directors and the general staff officers. The following day I presided over a large meeting in the drawing room of the offices of the Dresden-Leipzig Railway. The first task was to set down a proposal for the military transport from Prague to Hamburg, and then obtain rolling stock, ensure that at the way-stations there was sufficient food for the troops during their 36-hour journey, organize the transport service, and last organize its military direction. In opening the meeting I asked the participants to aid me in carrying out my difficult task in a foreign land as best they could, told the conference of my daily orders, which I had written with Stempf’s help, and opened the debate about what was to be done.

At the start I was regarded with a fair amount of mistrust. The directors could not believe that such a young general staff officer (I was 32) would be that familiar with the practical details