As the son of a former officer of the cuirassier regiment "Gens d'Armes", Hans Ernst von Zieten was born in 1770 as a subject of Frederick the Great at a time when Prussia was beginning to consolidate its status as an emerging great power. In 1786 Zieten joined the Prussian army. In 1792, as a young Hussar officer, he was swept into the maelstrom of events that followed the start of the French Revolution and which enabled Zieten's contemporary Napoleon Bonaparte, one year his senior, to achieve a meteoric rise.
Apart from a brief interruption, Zieten served in all the campaigns of the Prussian army from Valmy (1792) to Waterloo (1815). He earned his greatest merits in the last three years of the epoch, but was never celebrated and popularly glorified for it like other protagonists of the wars of liberation, such as Blücher, Scharnhorst or Gneisenau. Just like them, however, he was showered with honours and awards by his king and his allies. The fact that the legacy of Zieten's order is one of the few from the time of the wars of liberation to have survived to this day provided the occasion to present it in a richly illustrated work, as well as to wrest the decorated man from oblivion. A phaleristic part of the work, consisting of expert descriptions and photographs of the objects in Zieten's award bequest, is complemented by a richly illustrated essay tracing Hans Ernst von Zieten's deeds during his military career.
Group
Books (first-hand)
Author
Bauer, Gerhard
Title
Hans Ernst von Zieten. Ein vergessener Feldherr der Befreiungskriege - seine Zeit und sein Nachlass
Details
English and German text, many illustrations, large format. 208 pages.
