Friedrich August Peter von Colomb

Friedrich August Peter von Colomb (19 June 1775[1] – 12 November 1854) was a Prussian general.

Friedrich August Peter von Colomb
Born	(1775-06-19)19 June 1775 Aurich, Prussia
Died	12 November 1854(1854-11-12) (aged 79) Königsberg, Prussia
Allegiance	Prussia
Service/branch	Cavalry
Years of service	1792-1849
Rank	General der Kavallerie
Battles/wars	Napoleonic Wars

Biography

Colomb was born in Aurich, Eastern Frisia as a son of the highranking Prussian public official (Geheimer Ober-Finanzrat und Kammerpräsidenten von Aurich) Pierre Colomb (1719–1797; after 1786 Peter von Colomb). His brother Ludwig Christoph von Colomb (1768–1831) was the Royal Prussian President of Breslau, his sister Amalie (1772–1850) married Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher in 1795.

Colomb-stone near Zwickau

Colomb joined the Zieten Hussars in Berlin in 1792 and became a second lieutenant of the King's own Hussarregiment von Rudorff in 1797. He took part in the Napoleonic Wars of 1806 under the command of Blücher in Thuringia and the defense of Lübeck. Colomb was promoted to a Rittmeister in 1811 and fought against French troops in 1813/14. On 20 May 1813 he commanded a unit of 90 volunteers, who managed to conquer 20 French cannons and take 400 prisoners near Zwickau. A memorial reminds of this event still today.

In 1815 he became a Lieutenant Colonel and the commanding officer of the 8th Hussar Regiment and was promoted to a Colonel in 1818. On 20 October 1823 he joined the Prussian War Département and became the commander of the 12th Cavalry-Brigade in Neiße, now a Majorgeneral. 1838 Colomb became the military commander of Cologne, 1839 Lieutenantgeneral, 1841 military commander of Berlin und head of the Prussian Gendarms. In 1843 he became the commanding general of the V Army Corps in Posen.

Fort Colomb, part of the Prussian Fortification of Posen

Colomb commanded the Prussian forces throughout the Greater Poland Uprising (1848).[2][3] and was retired on 7 July 1849 with the promotion to a General der Kavallerie. The "Bastion Colomb", a part of the Fortification of Posen was named after him. He died on 12 November 1854 in Königsberg, where he had lived after his retirement.

Colomb married Wilhelmine Luise Stosch (1784–1822) in 1808 and Maria Henriette Stosch (1791–1857) in 1824. He had 4 sons (later Prussian generals Enno and Otto Gebhard von Colomb) and a daughter with Wilhelmine and two sons with Maria (later Prussian general Karl Ernst Georg von Colomb).

Notes

1. sometimes also 19 July, e.g. Bernhard von Poten: Handwörterbuch der gesamten Militärwissenschaften. 1877
2. Makowski, Krzysztof. Munich 1996 (ed.). Das Großherzogtum Posen im Revolutionsjahr 1848/49 (in German). pp. 149–172.
3. Alvis, Robert E. Syracuse University Press, 2005 (ed.). Religion and the Rise of Nationalism - A Profile of an East European City. p. 164.

References

• Peter von Colomb in Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie