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[G., fr. land land, country + wehr defense.]
That part of the army, in Germany and Austria, which has completed the usual military service and is exempt from duty in time of peace, except that it is called out occasionally for drill.
Landwehr, army formations composed in Germany of reservists and in Austria-Hungary of supplementary troops. The first organized Landwehr in German lands was established in Austria in 1809 by the Archduke Karl. A Prussian Landwehr was set up in 1813.
The Austrian Landwehr was a small regular force composed of normal recruits drawn from the German-speaking lands. Its Hungarian equivalent was the Honvéd. The Landwehr bore the title k. k. (kaiserlich-königlich) in subtle distinction from the k. u. k. (kaiserlich und königlich) of the regular army of the Dual Monarchy.
The Prussian Landwehr was regulated from 1815 to 1867 by the Landwehrordnung, and was composed of two categories of reservists, aged 25 to 32 (1. Aufgebot) and 33 to 39 (2. Aufgebot). This system, with modifications in the larger formations of troops, was adopted by the German Empire. The Landwehr was abolished under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles.
Landwehr, or Landeswehr, is a German language term used in referring to certain national armies, or militias found in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Europe. In German, the word means "defence of the country"; but the term as applied to an insurrectional militia is very ancient, and lantveri are mentioned in Baluzii Capitularia, as quoted in Hallam's Middle Ages, i. 262, 10th edition.
The Austrian Landwehr was one of three components that made up the ground forces of the Austro-Hungarian Dual Monarchy between 1867 and 1918, and it was composed of recruits from the Cisleithanian part of the empire. The Austro-Hungarian Army also consisted of the common army recruited from all of the empire, and the Hungarian Honvédség (Hungarische Landwehr) that was recruited from the Transleithanian part.
The Austrian Landwehr and the other components of the Austro-Hungarian Army were all full time standing armies.
The landwehr in Prussia was first formed by a royal edict of 17 March 1813, which called up all men capable of bearing arms between the ages of eighteen and forty-five, and not serving in the regular army, for the defence of the country. After the peace of 1815 this force was made an integral part of the Prussian army, each brigade being composed of one line and one landwehr regiment. This, however, retarded the mobilization and diminished the value of the first line, and by the re-organization of 1859 the landwehr troops were relegated to the second line.
In Switzerland the landwehr used to be a second line force, in which all citizens served for twelve years. It was abolished after the army reform in 1965. As a reference to this past, a number of Swiss wind bands bear the name "Landwehr".
Baltische Landeswehr was the name of the armed forces of The United Baltic Duchy. The duchy was established from territories that were ceded by Imperial Russia in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk in 1918, but the state collapsed in 1919 following the surrender of the German Empire.
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 | Dictionary. Webster 1913 Dictionary edited by Patrick J. Cassidy Read more |
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| German Literature Companion. The Oxford Companion to German Literature. Copyright © 1976, 1986, 1997, 2005 by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. Read more |
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| Word Tutor. Copyright © 2004-present by eSpindle Learning, a 501(c) nonprofit organization. All rights reserved. eSpindle provides personalized spelling and vocabulary tutoring online; free trial. Read more |
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| Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Landwehr". Read more |
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