Hermann von Eichhorn (13 February 1848-30 July 1918) was an Imperial German Army Field Marshal who served in the Prussian Army during the Austro-Prussian War and the Franco-Prussian War and in the German military during World War I.
Biography[]
Hermann von Eichhorn was born in Breslau, Silesia, German Empire (present-day Wroclaw, Poland) on 13 February 1848. He served in the Prussian Army during the Austro-Prussian War and the Franco-Prussian War, fighting at the 1866 Battle of Koniggratz, among other battles against the Austrian Empire and France. He became chief of staff of the VI Armeekorps in 1897, commanded the German 9th Infantry Division from 1901 to 1904, the XVIII Armeekorps from 1904 to 1912, and the German 10th Army from January 1915 to March 1918. This army fought at the Second Battle of the Masurian Lakes and captured Kovno, Grodno, and Olita in August 1915. Eichhorn was promoted to command an army group on 30 July 1916, and he was promoted to Field Marshal in December 1917. In April 1918, he was given command of a new army group headquartered at Kiev, and he was appointed military governor of the Ukraine following the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk and amid the Ukrainian War of Independence. On 30 July 1918, he was killed by the Socialist Revolutionary Boris Donskoy, who threw a bomb at him and mortally wounded him. Eichhorn's assassination was provoked by the German army's role in the suppression of the socialist revolution in Ukraine, his elevation of the conservative Hetman Pavlo Skoropadsky to power, and confiscating land from peasants.