August (von) Willich

August (von) Willich was born November 19, 1810, in Braunsberg, Prussia. He entered the cadet house at Potsdam when he was twelve years old and, at fifteen, the military academy in Berlin. By the age of eighteen, he was a lieutenant in the Prussian army and a captain three years later. He turned communist and resigned from the army in 1846 with other officers, but was court-martialed before being allowed to resign. Willich fought with revolutionaries in Baden in 1848 then fled to the United States, where he settled in New York and worked as a carpenter in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. In 1853, he edited a labor newspaper he founded in Cincinnati for the German speaking community and earned the nickname “Reddest of the Red.” Following the outbreak of the Civil War, the Germans and Irish proposed the formation of regiments composed exclusively of their own nationality. Within 24 hours, the 9th Ohio from the German community for the Union army was formed. After a short service with the 9th in western Virginia, Governor Oliver P. Morton commissioned Willich colonel of Indiana’s German regiment, the 32nd Indiana. He earned the reputation of disciplinarian and would direct his regiment by Prussian bugle calls on the parade ground and battlefield. Willich distinguished himself at Shiloh and the advance on Corinth subsequently being named brigadier general July 17, 1862. In command of a brigade at Murfreesboro, he was captured on the first day when his horse was shot from under him. He was exchanged in May 1863, commanded a brigade of Alexander McD. McCook’s XX Corps at Chickamauga, and led a brigade at Chattanooga. In W. T. Sherman’s Atlanta campaign, he was severely wounded at Resaca by a rifle ball in the shoulder and forced to give up field duty. Following his recovery, he served until the end of the war in command of the combined posts of Cincinnati, Covington (Kentucky), and Newport Barracks, Kentucky. Willich was brevetted major general October 21, 1865, was mustered out of the service on January 15, 1866, and served three years as county auditor in Cincinnati. He returned to Europe in 1870 during the Franco-Prussian War to offer his services to King Wilhelm I, the same monarch he had tried to dethrone, but was turned down because of his age. He remained in Berlin and studied under Karl Marx. August Willich returned to the United States and settled in St. Mary’s Ohio and died there January 22, 1878. He was buried in Elmwood Cemetery.