Alexander Schimmelfennig

Alexander Schimmelfennig (July 20, 1824 – September 5, 1865) was a

At the time of the Civil War, there was strong nativist sentiment in the Union. This prejudice was directed toward the German troops of the XI Corps, who retreated en masse after they were flanked by Stonewall Jackson at Chancellorsville. The mostly German corps took the brunt of the scorn that poured forth from the press. Among the critics was the corps commander Oliver Otis Howard, who sought a scapegoat for his own mistakes. During the battle, Schimmelfennig commanded a brigade in the 3rd Division of the XI Corps.

At the subsequent Battle of Gettysburg, Schimmelfennig commanded a brigade in fellow Forty-Eighter-turned-major general Carl Schurz's 3rd Division of the XI Corps. For a short time, Schimmelfennig took command of the 3rd Division when Schurz briefly commanded the corps. His brigade suffered greatly, mostly due to a high prisoner rate as hundreds of men became confused in the narrow streets of Gettysburg and ended up being captured by oncoming Confederates. It and Colonel Charles Coster's brigade did their best to cover the retreat of the rest of the XI Corps, but they soon became disorganized and fled too. During the retreat through the town, Schimmelfennig briefly hid in a culvert on Baltimore Street, and then stayed for several days in a shed on the Henry and Catherine Garlach property,^[7] avoiding capture. (There is a marker outside the Garlach house commemorating this event.) After the battle, he rejoined the corps, much to the joy of the troops who thought he was dead. However, Schimmelfennig's story was seized upon by news writers and presented as another example of German cowardice.

After the Battle of Gettysburg, from mid-July until early August 1863, Schimmelfennig was moved to command a brigade in 1st Division, XI Corps. He and his brigade were reassigned to the Southern District of the Department of the South, in

• List of American Civil War generals (Union)
• German Americans in the Civil War

Notes

References

• Bostick, Douglas W., Charleston Under Siege: the Impregnable City, Charleston: History Press, 2010.
• Eicher, John H., and
  ISBN 0-8047-3641-3
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• Pfanz, Harry. Gettysburg, The first day. — Chapel Hil: University of North Carolina Press, 2001. — 496 p. —
  ISBN 0-8078-7131-1
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• Warner, Ezra J. Generals in Blue: Lives of the Union Commanders. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1964.
  ISBN 0-8071-0822-7
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• Carl Schurz. Reminiscences (3 volumes). New York: The McClure Company. 1907. Schurz knew Schimmelfennig (or Schimmelpfennig — it is spelled both ways in his Reminiscences) in Germany and in the United States and places in between. In Chapter VIII of Volume One, Schurz reflects on the irony of commanding Schimmelfennig in the United States who was Schurz's military instructor in Germany. They were also both members of the Brüning Salon in England (see Chapter XIV of Volume One).
• Abraham Jacobi relates an encounter in Germany with Schimmelfennig in his speech "Young Germany in the Storm and Stress Period". (Banquet to the Honorable Carl Schurz. March 2, 1899)
• "Schimmelpfennig, Alexander" . Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography. 1900.

External links

• Photograph of Schimmelfennig's grave site