Otto Hermann von Lossow
(15.1.1868 - 25.11.1938)
place of birth:  Hof an der Saale, Oberfranken  (Bavaria)


Lossow grew up in the northern Bavarian household of  Landrat Oskar von Lossow. He enlisted in the Bavarian Army in 1886, serving with the Königliche Infanterie-Leib-Regiment in Munich and attended the Military Academy there as well. He worked at various assignments, receiving training as a general staff officer. He participated in a relief expedition with the German Empire in China during the Boxer Rebellion in 1900. Beginning in 1911, Lossow served in Turkey with the Turkish General Staff, also participating in the Balkan Wars.

The Great War saw him spending the first year on the Western Front as von Fasbender's Chief of Staff in the II. Bavarian Reserve Corps, attached to Sixth Army. Thereafter transferring to Istanbul, he worked with the Germany's Turkish allies as military attache. He thus had a small role in the planning of the ongoing defense of Gallipoli during the Allied landings there. It was to no avail that von Lossow vehemently protested the starving out of the Armenian people carried out by the Young Turks' regime.

Following the War, Generalmajor von Lossow was assigned as commandant of the Infantry School in Munich. As part of the transitional Reichswehr forces in post-War Germany, he later became commander of Wehrkreis VII, the region which covered Bavaria. In 1923, von Lossow played a fairly prominent role in the Beer Hall Putsch along with Gustav Ritter von Kahr and Hans Ritter von Seisser. As a result, Reichswehr commander von Seeckt replaced him with Friedrich Kress von Kressenstein. He thereafter retired to live in Turkey, but died back in Munich in November 1938.