1922 Encyclopædia Britannica/Bernhardi, Friedrich von

BERNHARDI, FRIEDRICH VON (1849-      ), German military leader and writer, was born Nov. 22 1849 at St. Petersburg. He took part in the war of 1870-1 as a young officer in the 14th Hussars. When the German troops entered Paris in March 1871 he was the first German to ride into the city. From 1891 to 1894 he was German military attaché at Berne and was subsequently head of the military history department of the Grand General Staff in Berlin. He was appointed general in command of the VII. Army Corps at Münster in Westphalia in 1907, but retired two years later and busied himself as a military writer. Wide-spread attention was excited by the memoirs of his father, the diplomatist and historian, Theodor von Bernhardi, which he published, and still more by his celebrated book Germany and the Next War which appeared in 1912. On the outbreak of war in 1914 he was again placed at the head of an army corps and fought with success first on the Stochod, where he stormed the bridgehead of Tsarecze and afterwards on the western front, in particular at Armentières.