Grolman, Generalmajor Karl Wilhelm Georg von (1777-1843)

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Generalmajor Karl Wilhelm Georg von Grolman (1777-1843)

Karl von Grolman was the quarter-master general in Blücher’s headquarters. This meant that  after Blücher and Gneisenau, he was the most important figure on the battlefield in June 1815. In particular, he led the Prussian assault on Plancenoit. He came from a traditional Prussian family and joined the infantry as a young Gefreiterkorporal in 1791, fighting in Auerstaedt in 1806. Grolman is especially remembered for his role in Prussian military strategy. Like Gneisenau, he sat on Scharnhorst’s Military Reorganisation Committee, set up in 1807, introducing army reforms. Between 1809 and 1812 he served as a staff officer in the Austrian army and then in Spanish Legión Extranjera, during which he was captured by the French. He escaped in 1812. Grolman was appointed Major in the Prussian General Staff for the Befreiungskriege (Wars of Liberation) and was military advisor at the Congress of Vienna. The early twentieth-century German history Friedrich Schulze described him as ‘einer der entschiedensten unter den Patrioten’, ‘one of our most outstanding patriots’ (p. 315 of 1813 – 1815: Die deutschen Befreiungskriege in zeitgenössischer Schilderung (Leipzig: R. Voigtländer, 1912).

 

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