niE BIOGRAPHY OF PRESIDENT VON HINDENBURG ·~· "' Q THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 21'1\V you; • 108'1'011' • CElCAOO • D.&LL.II .m.Ali'I.'A • IWI raA.NClSCO MACMILLAN & CO., Ltllll'l'lll LONDOII' • BOXBA'l' • ~ XILBOVIII'II THE MACMILLAN COMPANY OF CANADA, Ltlll'lB 'IOIION'1'0 PRESIDENT VON HINDENBURG THE BIOGRAPHY OP PRESIDENT VON HINDENBURG BY RUDOLPH WETERSTETIEN AND A.M.K. WATSON NEW YORK 1HB MACMILLAN COMPANY 1930 CorntG:u:T, !$130, BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. All rights reserved-no part of this hook may he reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. Set up and electrotyped. Published April, ~930. SET UF BY BI!OWK BIIOTREllS LIIIOTYFEllS FBlii'TI!D Ill' THB V.IIITI!D STATES OF AIIIElllCA BY THB FEllBlS l'llllfTIII'G COMFAII'Y ILLUSTRATIONS Prtsidenl SJDn Hindmburg • • • • • • Pro ntis pie" · PACING PAGI Pmidenl SJDn Hindenburg 111 M.aior General tmd Chief of the General Staff of the Eighth Army Corpr in 1897 IIJ Coblentz • • • • • • • • • • • 34 General SJon Hindenburg, tandidate for the Rekhsblot!t, ,,. 11iewt11 demonstration of patriolit 11/sodationr al hit flillll in Hanofler • • • • • • • • • • • , • 140 Field-Marshal JJOn Hindenburg Ill the lime of hit nomination for the Presidency • , • • • • • • • • • 154 field-Marshal fiOn Hindenburg, the Nationalislttmdidate for the Germtm Presidential Election • • • • • • • 160 Pmidenl 11on HinJmburg telebratetlhe Sixtieth Anniflersary of hit entrante into the German Arm1 • • , • • 172 Pmidenl "on Hindenburg and General Diretlor Heineken of the NordJeutuhe UoyJ, pronouncing 4 "Hoth" • • 196 Pmidenl fiOn HinJenburg returning home from 4 wa/4 in Htmofler IIJ 1h1 lime of hit e/ettion • • • • • • 2U PmiJenl flon HinJenburg inspetting the Guard of Honour on hit •"ivai at Leipzig fair • • • • • • • • 226 In the gardtn of the Pmident's Palau, Wilhelmstram, Blf'lin 250 PmiJenl 11011 Hindtnburg t~.boullo celebrate hit Sixtieth Mili· ,.,, Jubilll • • • • • • • • • • • • 274 THE BIOGRAPHY OF PRESIDENT VON HINDENBURG mE BIOGRAPHY OF PRESIDENT VON HINDENBURG CHAPTER I TowARDS the end of the eighteenth century, King Fred­ erick William offrussia was graciously pleased to sanaion the union of the names and arms of the two old military families von Beneckendorff and von Hindenburg. The Beneckendorffs had been famouS soldiers for over seven cen· tudes; the von Hindenburgs are .first mentioned in history in the year 1208. The union of the two families in the eight· eenth century was based on the marriage of Hans Joachim von Beneckendorff, a man of poor health, with Scholastica von Hiodenburg, the daughter of a house, ancient and noble indeed, but threatened with extinction. Scholastica's only brother, Otto Friedrich von Hindenburg, a soldier, lived for twenty-five years without being called upon to face the real business of his profession. At the end of this time, he fought in the two Silesian wars, and had his leg shattered by a can· non ball, so that he was obliged to retire in 1579. The King, at whose side he had fought, rewarded him with the gift of two estates, Limbsee and Neudeck. It seems possible that Otto Friedrich von Hindenburg may have called to his house his sister's son, Christoph Wilhelm von Beneckeo­ dorff. The latter left the Prussian army with the rank of [1] THE BIOGRAPHY OF captain, married Katherina Tugendreich von Brandt, heiress to two estates, and devoted himself to the management of the property. He and his brother, Johann Daniel, sold their shares in the est11.tes of which they became possessed when their parents died. Johann Daniel remained without issue. The von Beneckendorff family, after the sale of these estates in Neumark, remained settled in Prussia. In 1747, Johann Otto Gottfried von Beneckendorff was born. He also adopted a military career, which, like his father, he early abandoned to devote himself to estate man­ agement. However, on the death of Margarethe von Hin­ denburg (sole heiress of her brother Otto Friedrich), who left everything to her sister's grandson, he gave up his former possessions, settled on the two properties of Limbsee and Neudeck, and accepted the condition that he should unite the name and arms of von Hindenburg with his· own. He mar­ ried Louisa von Eulenburg, daughter of a famous Prussian family, and had two sons by her. The elder, after a distin­ guished military career, died, without male heirs, in 1847. The second son, Otto Ludwig, born in 1778, also became an officer, but he soon tired of military life, and, with his wife Eleonore von Brederlow, took up his residence at Neudeck, which he acquired from his father in 1801. The property of Limbsee was sold in 1833, and Neudeck remained henceforth the true home of the von Hindenburgs. Otto Ludwig and his wife had fourteen children, who were brought up with the Spartan simplicity usual in the family of a Prussian officer; a simplicity which, in this case, was perhaps heightened to some extent by the terror of the Napo­ leonic Wars and the period of suffering which they brought [2] PRESIDENT VON HINDENBURG to Germany. The youngest son of this numerous family, Robert, was born at Neudeck in 1816, and was destined to become a distinguished officer and the father of Paul von Beneckendorff and von Hindenburg, the second President of the German Republic. With fourteen children to bring up, it was plain that the estate of Neudeck could hardly afford great luxury to its possessor. Albert, the fourth son, married the daughter and heiress of the owner of a neighboring property, and devoted himself to agriculture. For the sake of tradition, however, the army was the career which the sons were expected to adopt. The youngest boy, Robert, at the age of sixteen, entered the 18th Regiment of Foot, in the year 1832. He was a sensitive youth, a little inclined to melancholy, and he cherished a deep devotion for his home and for the amenities of home life. He soon learned to love his profes­ sion and was known to be unusually capable and conscien­ tious in the carrying out of his duties. In 1845 he married Luise Schwickart, daughter of a military surgeon, a man who bore a high reputation in Prussia and who had been awarded the Iron Cross for very distinguished conduct on the battlefield. To Robert and Luise, on October 2, 1847, their first son was born in the town of Posen. This boy, destined to become world-famous, and to be the just admiration of both friend and foe, was given the names Paul Ludwig Hans Anton. The shadow of war hung over him even in his infancy, for the Polish Rebellion of 1848 broke out in the year following his birth. The town of Posen, which, together with Danzig and certain other plac~s, had, in the days of [3] THE BIOGRAPHY OF Catherine II of Russia, been handed over to Prussia at the Second Partition of Poland, was left unguarded, the garrison having been sent into the .field to suppress the rising. Mieroslawski ' was able to enter the town. Hindenburg tells us, in his book of memoirs: that his mother, forced, as were all inhabitants of Posen, to illuminate her house in honor of the Polish leader, sat in a back room at the cradle of her little son, and comtorted herself with the reflection that, in her heart, the lights in her front windows were burn­ ing in honor of the King of Prussia's birthday, which hap­ pened to fall upon that day. Mieroslawski's triumph was but a transient one, for the Prussians put down the rebellion with great rigor, and it was followed by trials and condem­ nations to death and imprisonment. Robert and Luise von Hindenburg had three more chil­ dren: a son, Otto, just under two years younger than Paul, who died in 1908; a sister four years younger; and a still younger brother, Bernhard, who has written a biography of von Hindenburg. In the year 1850, Robert was appointed company com­ mander in the militia, and the little family removed from Posen to Pinne. ·Here they settled in a small house with a big garden, and the children passed their early years in a healthy country environment. In 1855, Robert was trans­ ferred to Glogau as captain and company commander, and here Frau Schwickart, Paul's maternal grandmother, came to join her daughter and her family. It was in Glogau that Paul went to school; at .first to the little evangelical Burgerschu/e, and later to the Royal Gym- 1 Leader of the Polish Rebellion in Prussia. 1 A.tls meinem Lebe11. (4] PRESIDENT VON HINDENBURG nasium,' which, however, he left in his second year to go to the military academy. On the first page of his Aus meinem Leben, Paul von Hindenburg says that "to become a soldier was not a decision for me-it was a matter of course:• So, a little eleven-year-old boy "not without fears•• passed through the iron gates of the military school in Wahlstatt (in Silesia) and shamefacedly dashed away the unbidden tears that the parting with his father had brought into his eyes, knowing that it would never do to disgrace the new cadet's jacket. There was nothipg soft about the life of the Prussian cadet corps in the time of von Hindenburg's youth. Discipline was severe, the life, as he himself says, "con· sciously and purposely rough." The boy seems to have been quite an ordinary sort of boy, with nothing in particular to distinguish him ·from his fel­ lows or to point to the high destiny he was to fulfil. He appears to have conceived the highest admiration for certain of the masters in the cadet school and to have thrown him­ self eagerly into the general life of the place.