Friedrich Hermann von Staabs  
(11.03.1859 - 07.09.1940)
place of birth:  Aachen
Königreich Preußen:  KG,  General der Infanterie


Imperial German general officer Hermann von Staabs served as a divisional and corps commander during the Great War. His father Louis was an Oberst-Lieutenant in the Prussian Army. Hermann chose the same career path, entering military service in 1877 with Infanterie-Regiment Nr. 62 in Cosel. After graduating from Prussia's War Academy in 1888, Hermann spent the bulk of his pre-War service as a Great General Staff officer. He was assigned to the War Ministry from 1910 to 1913, heading up the Army Administration Department (BD.) On the 25th anniversary of Kaiser Wilhelm II's ascension to the throne, Generalleutnant Staabs was elevated into the Prussian nobility and transferred to Allenstein with command of 37. Infanterie-Division headquarters.

It was with this formation that Staabs entered the War in August 1914. Fighting in support of Scholtz's XX. Armee-Korps, his infantry division saw action at Tannenberg and the Battle of Masurian Lakes. After having command of 3. Infanterie-Division from 1915 to 1916, German Supreme Command assigned Staabs with charge of XXXIX. Reserve-Korps headquarters whose troops were engaged in Lithuania at the end of summer 1916. The corps was then sent by train to the newly-developing Romanian Front in order to fight as part of Falkenhayn's 9. Armee. His outstanding leadership during the occupation of Bucharest earned von Staabs the highest Royal Prussian order of bravery, the Pour le Merite.

XXXIX. Reserve-Korps was redeployed in early 1917 to Germany in order support the Imperial German Coastal Defense mission. Staabs and his reservists then moved to France where they were engaged in the stalemate of trench warfare. Staabs was promoted to General der Infanterie in December 1917 and in 1918 took responsibility for the Cambrai sector of the so-called Siegfried-Stellung (Hindenburg Line.) During this time, he served simultaneously as acting commander of the Württemberger XIII. Armee-Korps headquarters, leading up to the German Spring Offensive. In the fall of 1918, he and his corps were transported to northern Serbia where they spent the final weeks of the War engaged in defensive tactics along the Balkan Front. After the Great War, General von Staabs wrote a book which pointed out that Chief of General Staff von Moltke was wrong when he had reported to Kaiser Wilhelm II. (immediately before War's outbreak) that stringent railway plans prohibited a switch from war in the west to the Eastern Front. Staabs passed away in September 1940 in the town of Kassel. The general's daughter Gerdhild was a renowned psychologist, while his son Herman Jr. served as an airborne reconnaissance observer and was killed in action when shot down over France.

	General der Infanterie	03.12.1917
	Pour le Mérite	11.12.1916  (Eichenlaub:  15.05.1918)