Wilhelm Leopold Colmar Freiherr von der Goltz
(12.8.1843 - 19.4.1916)
place of birth:  Bielkenfeld, Ostpreußen  (Ivanovka, Poland)
Generalfeldmarschall:  1 January 1911


German baron, military theorist, and one of Germany's ten active duty field marshals during the Great War. Von der Goltz, the second son of an impoverished Prussian landowner and former military officer, was commissioned as a lieutenant at the age of 18. He served in both the Austro-Prussian War (wounded at Trautenau) and the Franco-Prussian War, where as a general staff officer he saw action at Mars-la-Tour and Le Mans. Baron von der Goltz was married to Therese Dorguth, with whom he had five children.

Captain von der Goltz spent much of his post- 1871 career in staff positions, taking this time to also serve from 1878 to 1883 as a history lecturer at the Military Academy, and to pen the military histories noted for their scholarly analysis: "Roßbach und Jena" and "Das Volk in Waffen" (A Nation in Arms).  He thereafter was promoted to major and in his restlessness was sent to Turkey as military advisor to the Ottoman Empire (1883-1895), where he helped modernize the Turkish Army. Upon his return to Germany, Lieutenant General von der Goltz served as a divisional commander before being selected as Chief of Combat Engineers and Inspector General of Fortresses.

At the turn of the century, von der Goltz consistently warned of an impending military conflict with England. His attitude ruffled some feathers at Great General Staff, and so in 1902 he was brushed off to the province of East Prussia where he commanded I. Corps. He had been in line to succeed von Schlieffen as Chief of General Staff, but instead remained in Königsberg as Inspector General of the Sixth Army Inspectorate, simultaneously serving as commander of all troops based in East Prussian. In early 1911, von der Goltz was promoted to general field marshal but retired from military service two years later.

As Germany marched to war, Field Marshal von der Goltz returned to active duty in 1914 to serve as military governor of  Belgium. In November 1914, he transferred back to Constantinople as Sultan Mehmed V's senior military advisor and eventually replaced General Liman von Sanders as commander of the Bosporous Army in Mesopotamia, present-day Iraq. Later, as commander of the Turkish Sixth Army, he fought Sir Charles Townsend's Anglo-Indian forces at Ctesipon and supervised the five-month siege of Kut-al-Amara. On 19 April 1916, a few days before the garrison surrendered, von der Goltz died in Baghdad due to complications from typhus; he was also (falsely) rumored to have been poisoned by the so-called Young Turks.