Ernst von Pfuel

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ernst Heinrich Adolf von Pfuel (November 3, 1779, Jahnsfelde, Brandenburg - December 3, 1866, Berlin) was a Prussian general, Governor of Berlin, Prussian Minister of War from 7 September 1848 to 2 November 1848, and Prime Minister of Prussia in 1848.

He was an intimate Friend of Heinrich von Kleist, an innovator of the breast-stroke technique, and the founder of the first military swimming-school in 1810 in Prague.

In War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy comments that:

In 1806 Pfuel had been one of those responsible for the plan of campaign that ended in Jena and Auerstadt, but he did not see the least proof of the fallibility of his theory in the disasters of that war. On the contrary, the deviations made from his theory were, in his opinion, the sole cause of the whole disaster, and with characteristically gleeful sarcasm he would remark, `There, I said the whole affair would go to the devil!’ Pfuel was one of those theoreticians who so love their theory that they lose sight of the theory’s object—its practical application. His love of theory made him hate everything practical, and he would not listen to it. He was even pleased by failures, for failures resulting from deviations in practice from the theory only proved to him the accuracy of his theory.

Prime Ministers of Prussia
Arnim-Boitzenburg, Camphausen, Auerswald, Pfuel, Brandenburg, Ladenberg, Manteuffel, Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, Hohenlohe-Ingelfingen, Bismarck, Roon, Caprivi, Eulenburg, Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst, Bülow, Bethmann Hollweg, Michaelis, Hertling, Baden, Hirsch, Braun, Stegerwald, Marx, Göring