Maximilian von Prittwitz

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Maximilian von Prittwitz (November 27, 1848 – March 29, 1917) was a German general.

[edit] Family

Prittwitz came from an extremely old aristocratic Silesian family in Bernstadt. His father was Gustav von Prittwitz, a Prussian general, and his mother was Elizabeth von Klass.

He married Olga von Dewitz (August 30, 1848 - January 9, 1938), the daughter of the landowner Kurt von Dewitz, on May 19, 1874.

[edit] Military career

After attending school in Oels, he joined an infantry regiment and fought in the Austro-Prussian War and the Franco-Prussian War. He rose steadily through the ranks of the German military for the next forty years, until he was appointed a Colonel General (Generaloberst) in 1913.

At the outbreak of World War I, he was made commander of the German Eighth Army, tasked to defend East Prussia from an expected Russian attack.

When the Russian advance threatened his rear, Prittwitz suggested a retreat to the west of the Vistula River. This meant the abandonment of East Prussia, which the German General Staff found unacceptable. Prittwitz was replaced as Eighth Army commander by Paul von Hindenburg in late-August 1914. Hindenburg, and his aide-de-camp, Erich Ludendorff, succeeded in halting the Russian attack with victories at the Battle of Tannenberg and the Battle of the Masurian Lakes.

Meanwhile, Prittwitz retired to Berlin, where he lived for three years before dying of a heart attack. He was buried in the Invalidenfriedhof in Berlin.