Paul von Rennenkampf

Paul Georg Edler von Rennenkampf (Па́вел Ка́рлович Ренненка́мпф; – 1 April 1918) was a Baltic German nobleman, statesman and general of the Imperial Russian Army who commanded the 1st Army in the invasion of East Prussia during the initial stage of the Eastern front of World War I. He also served as the last commander of the Vilna Military District. Rennenkampf gained a reputation as an effective cavalry commander during the Boxer Rebellion and the Russo-Japanese War. Following service in the latter, he led the detachment that suppressed the Chita Republic during the 1905 Russian Revolution. This earned him further promotion, and by the outbreak of World War I Rennenkampf was commander of the Vilna Military District, whose forces were used to form the 1st Army under his command. He led the 1st Army in the invasion of East Prussia and won an early victory at Gumbinnen in late August 1914, but was relieved of command after defeats at Tannenberg, the Masurian Lakes and Łódź, although he was later proved innocent for the mistakes made in the Battle at Łódź by an official inquiry into his actions. Rennenkampf was shot by the Bolsheviks in Taganrog during the Red Terror in 1918. Rennenkampff Paul Georg Edler von Rennenkampff was born on 29 April 1854 in the manor of Konofer (now Konuvere, Märjamaa parish, Estonia) in the then Governorate of Estonia; one of eight children of Captain Karl Gustav Edler von Rennenkampff and Anna Gabriele Ingeborg Freiin von Stackelberg, he came from the Konofer-Tuttomäggi-Sastama branch of the Baltic German Rennenkampff family and was of Lutheran faith. His paternal ancestors were of Westphalian origin, originating in Osnabrück. On his mother's side was the Stackelberg family, whose common ancestor was Carl Adam von Stackelberg, a Swedish cavalry officer and participant in The Great Northern War; he thus remained a fifth cousin of the Russo-Japanese War general Georg von Stackelberg.