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The Austro-Hungarian Naval Officer Corps, 1867–1918

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 February 2009

Lawrence Sondhaus
Lawrence Sondhaus
Affiliation:
Professor of History at the University of Indianapolis, Indianapolis, IN 46227
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Extract

Two Decades Ago, Holger Herwig's The German Naval Officer Corps: A Social and Political History, 1890–1918 (1973) chronicled the story of the new military elite that rose to prominence when imperial Germany went to sea: a corps that sought to emulate the traditions of the Prussian army, its middle-class officers eager to embrace the values and attitudes of the more aristocratic army officer corps.1 Recently Istvan Deak's excellent work Beyond Nationalism: A Social and Political History of the Habsburg Officer Corps, 1848–1918 (1990) has provided a comprehensive picture of the officer corps of the Habsburg army.2 Like imperial Germany, Austria-Hungary was a central European land power with few long-standing traditions at sea, but differences in social composition, training, and outlook distinguished the Austro-Hungarian naval officer corps from its German counterpart. Within the Dual Monarchy the navy had to deal with the nationality question and other challenges that also faced the army, but in many respects its officer corps reflected the diversity of the empire more than the Habsburg army officer corps did, contributing to the navy's relatively more successful record as a multinational institution.

Type
Articles
Information
Austrian History Yearbook , Volume 24 , January 1993 , pp. 51 - 78
Copyright
Copyright © Center for Austrian Studies, University of Minnesota 1993

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References

1 See Herwig, Holger, The German Naval Officer Corps: A Social and Political History, 1890–1918 (Oxford, 1973)Google Scholar. Earlier accounts tended to depict the German naval officer corps as a far more liberal institution than its army counterpart. See Drascher, Wahrhold, “Zur Soziologie des deutschen Seeoffizierkorps,” Wehrwissenschaftliche Rundschau 12 (1962): 555–67Google Scholar, and Endres, Franz Carl, “Soziologische Struktur und ihr entsprechende Ideologien des deutschen Orfizierkorps vor dem Weltkriege,” Archiv fur Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik 68 (1932): 282–319Google Scholar.

2 See Deak, István, Beyond Nationalism: A Social and Political History of the Habsburg Officer Corps, 1848–1918 (New York, 1990)Google Scholar.

3 See Sondhaus, Lawrence, In the Service of the Emperor: Italians in the Austrian Armed Forces, 1814–1918 (Boulder, Colo., 1990), 83–84Google Scholar.

4 The academy was in Trieste from 1852 to 1855, Fiume from 1855 to 1858, and Trieste again in 1858–59. Thereafter the cadets were mustered into service for the War of 1859.

5 The archduke's predecessors following the revolution in Venice were the Danish commodore Hans Birch von Dahlerup (1849–51) and army general Franz von Wimpffen (1851–54).

6 See Sondhaus, Lawrence, The Habsburg Empire and the Sea: Austrian Naval Policy, 1797–1866 (West Lafayette, Ind., 1989), 237–59Google Scholar.

7 After Haus's death in February 1917, the office of Marinekommandant was left vacant from February to April 1917. Njegovan held both titles from April 1917 to February 1918. The office was again vacant from February 1918 until the end of the war.

8 Höbelt, Lothar, “Die Marine,” in Die Habsburgermonarchie 1848–1918, vol. 5: Die bewaffnete Macht, ed. Wandruszka, Adam and Urbanitsch, Peter (Vienna, 1987), 734–37Google Scholar. On the deck officers of the German navy see Herwig, German Naval Officer Corps, 134–53.

9 The Militär-Schematismus des österreichischen Kaiserthums (annual, title varies) and Rangs-und Eintheilungsliste der k.u.k. Kriegsmarine provide rosters of navy officers. In some cases the author consulted the Qualifikationslisten (personnel records) of individual officers in the Kriegsarchiv, Vienna.

10 Given the lack of interest in the navy prevailing at the time among Hungarians, Czechs, and other inland Habsburg nationalities, other foreign officers—mostly Scandinavians brought to the Adriatic by Dahlerup in the years 1849–51—were needed to cushion the transition from an Italian-to a German-dominated officer corps. See Sondhaus, Habsburg Empire and the Sea, 162, 177–78. For a roster of officers of the German federal navy see Hubatsch, Walther, ed., Die erste deutsche Flotte, 1848–1853(Herford, 1981), 104–9Google Scholar.

11 See Sondhaus, , In the Service of the Emperor 82–95, and “Croatians in the Habsburg Navy, 1797–1918,” East European Quarterly 26 (1992): 151–53Google Scholar. Before the Venetian revolution a contingent of italianized Croats had accounted for between 15 and 20 percent of all sea officers. In 1848–49 over two-thirds of them left the navy, and afterward Croatians showed little desire or aptitude for mastering the new German language of command.

12 Wilhelm Wickede and Karl Paschen, both of Mecklenburg-Schwerin. The former made it to rear admiral in 1881, the latter in 1885. See Paschen, Karl, Aus der Werdezeit zweier Marinen: Erinnerungen aus meiner Dienstzeit in der k.k. osterreichischen und kaiserlich deutschen Marine (Berlin, 1908), 223, 256Google Scholar.

13 Italian-surnamed officers advancing to rear admiral included Count Oscare Cassini (1892), Baron Francesco Minutillo (1894), and Count Rudolf Montecuccoli (1897). See Sondhaus, In the Service of the Emperor, 103.

14 See Gebhard, Louis A., “The Croatians, the Habsburg Monarchy and the Austro-Hungarian Navy,” Journal of Croatian Studies 11–12 (1970–71): 153Google Scholar.

15 Stenographische Protokolle der Delegation des Rekhsrathes, Session 43 (10 31, 1908), 613Google Scholar. Hereafter cited as StPD, with session number, date, page.

16 StPD, 41/2 (01 5, 1907), 1177Google Scholar.

17 See Horthy, Miklós, Memoirs (London, 1955),43–60, 76–77Google Scholar. Horthy and Charles first met in 1901, when the future emperor was fourteen. The navy had provided one of the emperor's aides-de-camp since Sterneck's time, but Horthy was the first Magyar to hold the position.

18 See Table 1. In 1912 representative Vjekoslav Spinčić proposed a resolution in the Austrian Delegation calling for the navy's officer corps to reflect the national makeup of the common manpower; it was defeated. StPD, 46 (10 15, 1912), 912Google Scholar.

19 Deák, Beyond Nationalism, 185.

20 Ibid., 181–82, 184.

21 StPD, 49 (05 28, 1914), 541, 543Google Scholar.

22 The Wehrgesetz of 1868 fixed the term of active service at three years; the navy continued to attract volunteers even after 1882, when the fleet secured an increase in its term to four years.

23 In 1910 the army's 102 infantry regiments included fifty-two with one regimental language, forty-six with two languages, and only four with three languages. By law, any language spoken by at least 20 percent of the manpower of an army regiment was recognized as an official regimental language. Of course regiments conscripted in large urban areas such as Vienna must have included at least a handful of men from every Habsburg nationality. Figures from Militarstatistisches Jahrbuch (1910): 195Google Scholar.

24 Militarstatistisches Jahrbuch (1887 and 1907).

25 Paschen, Aus der Werdezeit zweier Marinen, 12, 37.

26 Figure from Jahrbuch der k.k. Kriegsmarine (1875): 88.

27 Salcher, Peter, Ceschichte der k.u.k. Marine-Akademie (Pula, 1902), 38Google Scholar.

28 The Danish Dahlerup (1849–51) was Lutheran, and his successor, Feldmarschalleutncmt Wimpffen (1851–54), was a Calvinist, but after 1854 every Marinekommandant was Catholic.

29 Frühling, Moritz, Biographisches Handbuch der in der k.u.k. österr.- ung. Armee und Kriegsmarine aktiv gedienten Offiziere, Ärzte, Truppen-Rechnungsfiihrer und sonstigen Militarbeamten judischen Stammes (Vienna, 1911), 207–9Google Scholar.

30 Ibid., 210–17.

31 von Bayersburg, Heinrich Bayer, Österreichs Admirak und bedeutende Personlichkeiten der k.u.k. Kriegsmarine 1867–1918 (Vienna, 1962), 141–43Google Scholar.

32 Herwig, German Naval Officer Corps, 43, notes that “several baptized Jews” were commissioned in the German navy.

33 Quoted in Höbelt, “Die Marine,” 748n.

34 Tegetthoff's, obituary in the Neue Freie Presse (04 8, 1871): 2Google Scholar, notes that in the Herrenhaus he “voted loyally with the Left.” In his private letters Tegetthoff railed against the “Ausgleichskomödie” and speculated that the power-sharing arrangement with the Hungarians would not last long. On the admiral's views of the Ausgleich see Tegetthoff to Baroness Emma Lutteroth, Vienna, June 3, 1870, in Steinrück, Heinz, ed., Tegetthoffs Briefe an seine Freundin (Vienna, 1926), 115Google Scholar.

35 von Sterneck zu Ehrenstein, Maximilian Daublebsky, Erinnerungen aus den Jahren 1847–1897, ed. Boinik, Jerolim Benko von (Vienna, 1901), 317Google Scholar.

36 Herwig, German Naval Officer Corps, 71.

37 Koudelka, Alfred von, Denn Österreich lag einst am Meer: Das Leben des Admirals Alfred von Koudelka, ed. Baumgartner, Lothar (Graz, 1987), 47Google Scholar.

38 Salcher, Marine-Akademie, 32, 69. On Tegetthoff's literary tastes see Beer, Adolf, ed., Aus Wilhelm von Tegetthoff's Nachlass (Vienna, 1882), 82–83, 88Google Scholar. From 1859 to 1866 most instruction took place aboard the frigate Venus, docked in Trieste harbor, in emulation of the British navy's school ship Britannia. In contrast, the five-year French naval curriculum followed that of the French lycée, with specialized naval subjects reserved for late in the program. See Ropp, Theodore, The Development of a Modern Navy: French Naval Policy, 1871–1904 (Annapolis, Md., 1987), 43Google Scholar.

39 Salcher, Marine-Akademie, 37.

40 The naval academy first introduced Hungarian in 1869, as an elective. See Salcher, Marine Akademie, 39–40.

41 See “Stundenplan, ” in Jahrbuch der k.k. Kriegsmarine (1875): 83Google Scholar; see also Herwig, German Naval Officer Corps, 65.

42 Koudelka, Denn Österreich lag einst am Meer, 48, recalls using French in such situations.

43 Salcher, Marine-Akademie, 40.

44 StPD, 39 (02 5, 1904), 403Google Scholar.

45 Winkler, Dieter, “Fregattenkapitän des Ruhestandes Felix Falzari,” Marine—Gestem, Heute 8 (1981): 6–7Google Scholar; Ginzkey, Franz Karl, “Aus meiner Seemannszeit,” Marine—Gestem, Heute 8 (1981): 42–44Google Scholar. Lehár served as Marinekapellmeister in Pola from April 1894 to July 1896, then went on to fame and fortune after the turn of the century as composer of Die lustige Witwe (1905) and many other operettas. Ginzkey, son of a navy chemist, had such severe bouts with seasickness that he had to transfer to the army to complete his military service.

46 On the number of graduates and aspirants see Salcher, Marine-Akademie, 65–67.

47 Almanach für die k.u.k. Kriegsmarine (1892, 1903, and 1914).

48 See Herwig, German Naval Officer Corps, 62.

49 In ibid., 64, Herwig argues that in the German case this change in policy contributed to the narrow-mindedness of the officer corps.

50 This occurred, for instance, in thirteen out of the seventeen years 1885 through 1901. See Salcher, Marine-Akademie, 66.

51 Cf.rosters of officers in the Almanach für die k.u.k. Kriegsmarine (1913, 1914, and 1915).

52 For a biographical sketch of Haus see Bayersburg, Heinrich Bayer von, Unter der k.u.k. Kriegsflagge (Vienna, 1959), 7–19Google Scholar. Of the previous commanders, Tegetthoff (class of 1845), Pöck (1843), and Sterneck (1847) had received their naval education in Italian at the old Venetian academy. Spaun entered the service in 1850 as a provisional cadet; Montecuccoli entered the academy in the late 1850s and was mustered out early for the War of 1859.

53 Figures from tables in the Jahresbericht der k.u.k. Kriegsmarine (1878 through 1897).

54 Unfortunately the navy compiled no statistics on the family background of See-Aspiranten, and the available evidence concerns relatively small samples of the corps. For example, of the provisional sea cadets who became submarine commanders during World War I, 70 percent were sons of private citizens. See Aichelburg, Wladimir, Die Unterseeboote Österreich-Ungams, 2 vols. (Graz, 1981), 2:474–80Google Scholar passim.

55 In one case the son of an admiral became an admiral: Richard von Barry (1861–1939), son of former Vice Admiral Alfred von Barry (1830–1907), reached the rank of rear admiral in 1912. See biographical sketches in Bayer von Bayersburg, Österreichs Admirale, 13–16.

56 According to Herwig, German Naval Officer Corps, 40, in the entering class of German navy cadets of 1907 only 26.4 percent were sons of officers; for all German navy cadets in 1910, the figure was a mere 14.5 percent.

57 Schmidl, Erwin A., Jews in the Habsburg Armed Forces, 1788–1918 (Eisenstadt, 1989), 134Google Scholar, gives the best concise explanation of the Heiratskaution.

58 Cf. Deák, , Beyond Nationalism, 139–40, and Almanach für die k.u.k. Kriegsmarine (1914): 202–4Google Scholar. For a comparison of army and navy officer ranks see Table 3.

59 Deák, Beyond Nationalism, 140; Almanach für die k.u.k. Kriegsmarine (1914): 202Google Scholar. Marriages beyond the quota were permitted if the prospective bride signed an official document renouncing her claim to a widow's pension. See Koudelka, Denn Österreich lag einst am Meer, 53–54.

60 The officer, Ludwig von Höhnel, had served as aide-de-camp to Francis Joseph. After accompanying British explorers on expeditions in East Africa, he developed an international reputation as an explorer and scholar. In 1905, serving as plenipotentiary diplomat, he negotiated a treaty of trade and friendship between Austria-Hungary and Emperor Menelik of Abyssinia. In 1907, after resigning his commission, Höhnel married the woman Francis Ferdinand found so objectionable. For a biographical sketch of Höhnel see Bayer von Bayersburg, Österreichs Admirale, 79–88; on the marriage affair see Koudelka, Denn Österreich lag einst am Meer, 90.

61 Herwig, German Naval Officer Corps, 91; Lauffer, Dora, Die Wellen: Altösterreichische Familiensaga zwischen Adria und Schliesen (Graz, 1989), 151Google Scholar.

62 Lauffer, Die Wellen, 331–32.

63 Ibid., 129.

64 See Montecuccoli's, remarks in StPD, 41 (01 5, 1907), 1186Google Scholar.

65 Cf. Almanach für die k.u.k. Kriegsmarine (1914): 605–6Google Scholar, and Herwig, German Naval Officer Corps, 78.

66 Bayer von Bayersburg, (Unter der k.u.k. Kriegsftagge, 19.

67 Counting all sea officers and non-sea officers together, 269 of 1,371 (19.6 percent) were nobles. Deák's only comprehensive set of statistics for noblemen in the army officer corps, for 1896, reveals that 3,534 of 15,580 (22.7 percent) were nobles. These figures include the “technical” branches of the service, and are cited from a work published in 1897 that argued that the share of nobles in the army was declining. If that was indeed the case, and if the trend continued down to 1914, the navy, even including the non-sea branches, may have had a higher proportion of noblemen than the army officer corps at the outbreak of World War I. Of the various branches of the army officer corps in 1896, the cavalry by far had the highest percentage of noblemen (58 percent). See Deák, Beyond Nationalism, 161–62; Kandelsdorfer, Karl, “Der Adel im k.u.k. Offizierskorps,” [Streffleurs] Österreichische Militärische Zeitschrift 38 (1897): 248–69Google Scholar.

68 According to the lively (and perhaps inaccurate) memoirs of Leopold Ferdinand, the emperor almost refused to grant him permission to attend the academy on the grounds that his classmates, mostly boys with vastly inferior bloodlines, would be “totally unfit companions” for an archduke. Leopold Ferdinand refers to the navy officer corps of his time as “a disgustingly democratic institution, largely composed of the prosperous sons of … the haute bourgeoisie.” According to his version of the story, he left the navy after a falling-out with Francis Ferdinand; thereafter he renounced his status as an archduke, married a commoner, and changed his name to Leopold Wölfling. He later recalled that “my years in the navy were the happiest of my life.” See Wölfling, Leopold, My Life Story: From Archduke to Grocer (New York, 1931), 31–33Google Scholar.

69 This was not always the case in the Habsburg navy. Georg von Millosicz, the only Romanian admiral in the navy's history, entered the service as a common sailor in 1843 and rose to the rank of vice admiral, serving as second-in-command under Pöck from 1871 to 1883. See Bayer von Bayersburg, Österreichs Admirale, 128–29.

70 For a comprehensive account of the most serious Austro-Hungarian mutiny, at Cattaro in February 1918, see Plaschka, Richard Georg, Cattaro-Prag: Revolte und Revolution (Graz, 1963), 13–192Google Scholar.

71 In 1914 the top salary of a Linienschiffsleutnant was 3,600 kronen per year. His engineering equivalent, an lngenieur 1. Klasse, could earn up to 4,800 kronen per year. Whereas the former faced a Heiratskaution of 60,000 kronen and the one-third quota rule, the latter was required to post only 20,000 kronen; the engineers had no marriage quota at all. See Almanach für die k.u.k. Kriegsmarine (1914): 117–18, 204Google Scholar.

In the German navy, where even chief petty officers wore the sword-knot, the engineers' campaign for the trappings of equality focused on the sea officers' sash. See Herwig, German Naval Officer Corps, 118. On the question of servants, admirals were allowed up to four, vice admirals three, rear admirals (and captains serving as commodores) two, and all other sea officers one. See Almanach für die k.u.k. Kriegsmarine (1914): 146Google Scholar.

72 Herwig, German Naval Officer Corps, 109–11.

73 Remarks of Kaftan, Jan (Young Czech party), StPD, 31 (06 24, 1895), 66Google Scholar.

74 StPD, 34 (May 25, 1898), 229.

75 StPD, 37 (June 7, 1901), 334.

76 StPD, 42 (February 27,1908), 948. Proponents of the cause of navy engineers acknowledged that Austrian society overall had also failed to accord engineers the status they deserved. See Wilhelm Exner of Lower Austria in ibid., 928, and Montecuccoli's response, 949.

77 StPD, 41/2 (01 5, 1907), 1187Google Scholar.

78 StPD, 42 (February 27,1908), 949. The changes took effect on February 6, 1907. Two months later General-lngenieur Siegfried Popper retired from the navy, to continue designing Austro-Hungarian battleships as a civilian employee of the Stabilimento Tecnico Triestino. According to legend, he timed his resignation to protest the navy's refusal to award engineers the gold Portepée. In Germany, William II granted the coveted sea officers' sash to engineer officers in January 1908. See Herwig, German Naval Officer Corps, 118.

79 Cf. rosters of naval officers in the Militär-Schematismus (1871) and the Almanack für die k.u.k. Kriegsmarine (1881, 1891, and 1901).

80 Koudelka, Denn Österreich lag einst am Meer, 23–24, 86. Months assigned aboard a ship in harbor counted toward the promotion quota. The imperial German navy initially had a similar requirement but abolished it in 1899. See Herwig, German Naval Officer Corps, 72.

81 When Pöck resigned in the fall of 1883 the navy had 505 active sea officers on its rolls, of whom 129 were cadets. On the slow pace of promotion, compare rosters in the Rangs-und Eintheilungsliste der k.k. Kriegsmarine (1871 through 1883).

82 The cliques first coalesced in the 1850s around Bernhard von Wüllerstorf and Anton Bourguignon von Baumberg; the latter faction, including the young Tegetthoff, was closest to Archduke Ferdinand Max. As time went on the two cliques consisted of the officers whose greatest claim to fame was their service with Wüllerstorf aboard the frigate Navara on its celebrated circumnavigation of the globe in 1857–59 and those who served under Tegetthoff aboard the flagship Erzherzog Ferdinand Max at the battle of Lissa in 1866. The former included Pöck and his second-in-command from 1871 to 1883, Maximilian von Pitner; the latter included Sterneck and Spaun. The rivalry finally ended only at the end of the century, with the death of Sterneck (1897) and retirement of Pitner (1898).

83 According to Herwig German Naval Officer Corps, 73, a similar reform in the German navy in 1899 “introduced a certain amount of stability and relaxed atmosphere” and eliminated “the less savory aspects of competitive promotion.”

84 Among 322 cadets from the graduating classes of 1884–96, only sixteen (4.9 percent) resigned their commissions before being promoted to ensign. Of the 293 academy cadets from 1872–83, twenty-two (7.5 percent) had resigned, and of the 293 navy-educated cadets entering service in the years 1848–71, fifty-three (18 percent) quit before making ensign. See Salcher, Marine-Akademie, 66–67.

85 In the years 1885–95 just over 90 percent of all provisional sea cadets (107 of 118) stayed with the program and became ensigns. Their attrition rate was double that of academy graduates but still remarkably low; during this period they accounted for almost 30 percent of all men reaching the rank of ensign (256 academy graduates became ensigns in the years 1885–95). Figures from Salcher, Marine-Akademie, 66.

86 Cf. Almanach für die k.u.k. Kriegsmarine (1901 and 1915).

87 Koudelka, Denn Österreich lag einst am Meer, 98.

88 See Almanach für die k.u.k. Kriegsmarine (1918): 515–17Google Scholar. Horthy's advancement technically only violated the seniority of the ten captains he passed on the Rangliste, and of these, seven were his own classmates from the academy class of 1886. The admirals ahead of him posed a more serious problem; all had to retire or accept posts on land. A similar situation occurred in Germany in August 1918, when Franz von Hipper was promoted to chief of the High Sea Fleet over a number of senior officers. See Herwig, German Naval Officer Corps, 72–73.

89 Montecuccoli recounts the early history of the program in StPD, 42 (02 27, 1908), 950–51Google Scholar.

90 Statistics from Jahresbericht der k.u.k. Kriegsmarine (1875 through 1888). See also charts in ibid. (1903): 97; ibid. (1913): 130; and StPD, 35 01 12, 1900), 350Google Scholar.

91 Statistics from Jahresbericht der k.u.k. Kriegsmarine (1875 through 1888). See also the charts cited in note 90. The navy also had a one-year volunteer program for medical students. After their graduation from medical school they performed their year of service at army hospitals in Vienna, Budapest, or Prague, and were commissioned as navy physicians in reserve. On the initial guidelines for one-year medical volunteers see Jahrbuch der k.k. Kriegsmarine (1871): 111.

92 Jahrbuch der k.k. Kriegsmarine (1871): 110.

93 For example, see remarks by Vuković, Ante of Dalmatia, StPD, 42 (02 27, 1908), 937Google Scholar.

94 The leading shipping lines of the Dual Monarchy were dominated by the Italians of Trieste and Fiume, and the proprietors of the smaller companies were either Italian or Croatian. Italian remained the lingua franca of the Austro-Hungarian merchant marine until 1914.

95 The data in this section is drawn from biographical sketches in Aichelburg, Die Unterseeboote, 2:474–82.

96 Eight (16 percent) of the submarine commanders were born in the Hungarian half of the empire, but only one was of Magyar origin. The submariners also had more than their share of counts among their contingent of nobles: the younger Montecuccoli, Emmerich Thun-Hohenstein, and Albrecht Attems were three of only fifteen counts in the entire navy as of 1914.