Alexander von Linsingen

He was a Prussian general, born in 1850 in Hildesheim and died in 1935 in Hanover. He began his military career in 1868 and before the Great War advanced to the position of corps commander. During his entire career, he served as a troop officer and did not hold any staff position. In 1915, he was ordered to the Eastern Front, at which time he was already an army commander. In the great Allied offensive in the summer of 1915, his troops, the German Southern Army, achieved major successes (e.g. at Stryj).

He later became the commander of the combined German-Austro-Hungarian army group. This corps, including the 4th Austro-Hungarian Army, successfully resisted the 1916 Russian offensive in Eastern Galicia. The army group existed with changing composition from October 1915 to the beginning of 1918. After the end of the Russian front, the army group was dissolved. Linsingen was then the commander of the German occupation forces in Ukraine until the end of the war.

The Austro-Hungarian officers and generals did not like him, I think they were primarily jealous of him. In any case, despite the important successes on the battlefield, there were continuous frictions at the higher command level. Presumably, cooperation was better at the lower troop level. This is indicated by the fact that the Arkanzas company produced the portrait of Field Marshal Linsingen in the Generals’ portrait gallery series. The badge was made in two versions. They differ only in the circular inscription around the portrait.