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Otto
Karl Viktor Liman von Sanders
(17.02.1855 - 22.08.1929)
place of birth: Stolp, Pommern (Slupsk,
PL)
Königreich
Preußen: OBH,
General der Kavallerie
Imperial German General der Kavallerie Otto
Liman von Sanders was responsible for molding the Ottoman
Army into an effective fighting force during the Great War.
He was born on the Pomeranian manor belonging to his businessman
father, Carl Leonhard Liman and his spouse Emma Michaelis. Otto
traveled to Darmstadt to join the military in 1874 as an officer
candidate. During his three-year training period at the War Academy, he
was transferred to a cavalry regiment, also located in Darmstadt.
Upon working his way up to a cavalry
brigade command, and later an infantry division command,
Generalleutnant Liman was elevated into the nobility in June 1913, the
25th anniversary of Kaiser Wilhelm II's accession to the throne. The
suffix von Sanders was chosen as his first wife
Amelie was the last member of that Scottish family. Soon thereafter,
the Kaiser selected General Liman von Sanders to head up a German
military delegation requested by Ottoman authorities to deploy to the
port of Constantinople in order to help restructure the Turkish Armed
Forces. General Liman thus became the Inspector General of the Turkish
Army prior to the War, and upon mobilization became the commander of
the First Turkish Army. He later took control of the Fifth Turkish Army
during its defense of Gallipoli (1915) and thus
helped prevent the Allies seizure of Constantinople. In 1918, Liman
also commanded the Fourth, Seventh and Eighth Turkish Armies in Syria
and Palestine, and replaced Erich von Falkenhayn as commander of Army
Group Yildirim during that same year.
In Palestine, he was defeated by the British
under Allenby and by the Arabs under T.E. Lawrence. Due to his ancestry
(his great grandfather Wolff Nathan Liepmann was a Jewish merchant from
Halberstadt), Liman von Sanders was considered by some fellow
generals such as Hans von Seeckt to be unfit for command a German
corps. General Liman died on 22 August 1929 in Munich at the age of 74.
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General
der Kavallerie |
14.01.1914 |
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Pour
le Mérite |
23.08.1915
(Eichenlaub: 10.01.1916) |
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