August Graf Neithardt von Gneisenau

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Gneisenau, FM Graf August Wilhelm Neithardt von (1760-1831). The son of a Saxon cavalry officer, Gneisenau served briefly in the Austrian cavalry before joining the Bayreuth-Anspach army, which sent him off to serve with the British in North America. He joined the Prussian army as a captain in 1786 and spent the next twenty years on garrison duty, rising no higher than major. Having fought at Jena/Auerstadt, he distinguished himself in the siege of Kolberg in 1807, becoming a symbol of Prussian resistance to Napoleon. Taken up by Scharnhorst, he was promoted major general and appointed to the Military Reorganization Commission. He worked tirelessly, in company with military reformers like Grolman and Boyen as well as civilian supporters like Stein and Konen. The officer corps was purged of the old and incompetent. Selection and promotion were opened up, although the fact that regiments continued to select their own officers partly nullified this measure. Service, either in the standing army or the Landwehr, was made compulsory, and when Napoleon restricted the size of the Prussian army the Krümper system was devised so that trained men could be sent on leave and their places filled by recruits.

Gneisenau became COS to Blücher in 1813, and was ennobled after Leipzig. After Prussian defeat at Ligny in 1815 he wanted to fall back on Liège, but Blücher arrived in the nick of time to order a concentration on Wellington's army, and the Prussian contribution to Waterloo proved decisive. After the war his liberal views led him to resign when King Frederick William failed to implement a constitution. However, he returned to serve as governor of Berlin, was promoted field marshal in 1825, and in 1831 commanded the force sent to face the Polish insurgents. Like Clausewitz, his COS, he died of cholera in the epidemic sweeping Europe.

Gneisenau is one of the period's most attractive personalities. Brave, intelligent, and patriotic, he was a talented staff officer, whose style brilliantly complemented Blücher's own, as well as a skilled administrator. Ultimately the liberal wing he championed was to lose the military reform debate: the result was a Prussian army which combined a military effectiveness he would have admired with a social exclusiveness which he would not.

— Richard Holmes

Gneisenau, August Wilhelm Anton Neithardt, Graf von (Schildau nr. Torgau, 1760-1831, Posen), a Prussian general, was at first an officer of the Markgraf of Ansbach-Bayreuth, in which capacity he saw service with the British in America in 1782-3, entering the Prussian army in 1786. He served as an infantry officer in the Polish campaigns of 1793 and 1795, and in the French war of 1806 was present at Saalfeld and, as a staff officer, at Jena; in 1807 he successfully defended Kolberg. Until Stein's dismissal he was active in furthering the reorganization of the Prussian army. In 1809 Gneisenau visited London and St Petersburg, returning to Berlin in 1811 as an advocate of resistance to Napoleon. In 1813, 1814, and 1815 he was Blücher's chief of staff, and was the inspirer of the strategic and tactical dispositions which led to Blücher's successes, including the Prussian intervention at Waterloo, though the decision to intervene was Blücher's. (See Revolutionskriege and Napoleonic Wars.)

In 1816 Gneisenau retired, and in 1818 he became Governor of Berlin. In 1831 he was appointed to the command of a corps destined to subdue a Polish rising, but died of cholera. His original name was Neithardt; in 1782 he assumed the name of the Austrian noble family of Gneisenau in the erroneous belief that he was a descendant. His title Graf dates from 1814. Gneisenau is the subject of a play, Neidhardt von Gneisenau, by W. Goetz (1925).