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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: 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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