Friedrich von Wrangel

Germany state institutions Counter-revolutionary forces 1784–1877 ○ Natural causes

Prussian field marshal who led the federal army in Schleswig in 1848 and marched into Berlin that November to crush the revolution

Born in Stettin in 1784 into the Baltic German Wrangel family, he entered a dragoon regiment in 1796, won the Iron Cross in the wars against Napoleon and, commanding the division at Münster, put down the unrest of 1837 over the Cologne church dispute. From April 1848 to the Malmö armistice of 26 August he commanded the II Corps of the German Confederation's army in the First Schleswig War, refusing an order to withdraw on the grounds that he served the Regent of Germany rather than the king of Prussia. In the autumn he was made commander in the Marches, marched into Berlin on 10 November, proclaimed a state of siege and drove out the Prussian National Assembly. He became field marshal in 1856 and at eighty commanded the allied army in the Second Schleswig War of 1864. Known as "Papa Wrangel", he died in Berlin in 1877.

Also known as: Papa Wrangel · Friedrich Heinrich Ernst von Wrangel