Background
Carl Baron Bardolff was born in Graz in the Steiermark, Austria on September 3, 1865.
Carl Baron Bardolff was born in Graz in the Steiermark, Austria on September 3, 1865.
In the fall of 1885 Bardolff entered Graz University and earned his doctorate of jurisprudence; in 1888 he decided on a career in the army.
Bardolff attended the War College in Vienna and until 1901 was attached to the General Staff. Next came service with the infantry in the Sanjak Novibazar, an instructorship at the War College, further duty with the General Staff, and finally commandant of the Nineteenth Infantry Regiment in Vienna.
From 1911 to 1914 Bardolff served as chief of the military chancellery as well as adjutant to the heir presumptive, Archduke Francis Ferdinand. In this capacity Colonel Bardolff, in January 1913, worked out a plan to move certain Czech, Magyar, Croat, and Dalmatian regiments from their home stations and to replace them with nonindigenous units because "the existence of national dissension in certain units can no longer be denied." Both Generals Conrad von Hotzendorf and Alexander von Krobatin agreed to this plan to ensure a safer ethnic balance; but when it was leaked to the Vienna press in October, Emperor Francis Joseph cut short the proposed station changes.
Bardolff was entrusted with command of the Twenty-Ninth Infantry Brigade within the VI Corps of the Fourth Army (Auffenberg) at the outbreak of the war, and in the grade of brigadier led his unit into Komarow on August 30, 1914. Bardolff, onhorseback, rallied his soldiers by swinging his cap and exhorting them in Hungarian: "Forward, long live the King!" This feat earned him a baronage as well as an appointment as chief of staff of the Second Army, later Army Group Bohm-Ermolli, in East Galicia and the Bukovina in September 1914.
Although a military member of Francis Ferdinand's Belvedere Circle before the war, Bardolff did not transfer his unbounded enthusiasm to the new Emperor Charles in November 1916, even though the young ruler went out of his way to appoint numerous members of that charmed circle to his government. Bardolff was dubious about the monarch's firmness and worried about his desire for peace at almost any price; he grew apprehensive about Charles' aspirations for military command.
In the wake of serious strikes in January 1918, Charles sought to appoint Prince Alois Schönburg-Hartenstein head of a military government at home with Bardolff as his deputy, but fortunately the wave of strikes receded and Bardolff instead was given command of the Sixtieth Infantry Regiment on the southern front. In October 1918, Charles recalled him to Vienna to serve as section chief of supply and provisioning in the War Ministry.
After the war, Bardolff returned to his law practice and served politically as head of the German Volksrat in Austria; as one of the leaders of the völkisch movement in Austria he was a bitter opponent of Chancellors Dollfuss and Schuschnigg. In 1938 Adolf Hitler appointed Bardolff lieutenant general in the Wehrmacht, SA Oberführer, and member of the German Reichstag; the general died in Graz on May 17,1953.