Background
Bohm-Ermolli was born in Ancona on February 12, 1856, the son of an army major.
Bohm-Ermolli was born in Ancona on February 12, 1856, the son of an army major.
After graduating from the cadet school at St. Polten and the Theresa Military Academy in Vienna in 1875, Bôhm-Ermolli joined the dragoons (Fourth Regiment). From 1880 to 1896, he was assigned to the General Staff in various capacities, and in 1911, attained the rank of general of cavalry as commander of the I Army Corps in Cracow.
The outbreak of war in August 1914 found Bôhm-Ermolli head of the Second Army, originally intended for the campaign in Serbia with General Oskar Potiorek, but which already in August was hastily dispatched to Galicia, where it engaged the invading Russian forces in and around Lemberg. The Second Army was deployed in defense of Silesia for the remainder of the year; in February 1915, it bridged the gap in the Carpathian front between the German South Army and the Austro-Hungarian Third Army.
In June 1915, Bôhm-Ermolli participated in the breakthrough at Gorlice and stormed Lemberg; in the grade of colonel general he was appointed commander of Army Group. Bôhm-Ermolli, composed of the Second Army and the South Army, on September 19, 1915.
For much of 1916 Army Group Bôhm-Ermolli fought a tenacious defensive struggle in the east and only after repulsing General Aleksei Brusilov's offensive could it take the initiative and recapture East Galicia and Czernowitz.
Böhm-Ermolli was promoted field marshal on the last day of January 1918, and in March took part in the occupation of the Ukraine and Odessa. Emperor Charles relieved Böhm-Ermolli of his command on May 16, 1918, owing to the field marshal's inability to get along with German military leaders in the east. A plan in the summer of 1918 to appoint Böhm-Ermolli chief of staff of the army in place of General Arz von Straussenburg never reached fruition. The veteran commander of the Great War was appointed a field marshal by a fellow native of the Dual Monarchy in the army of the Greater German Empire in 1940; Böhm-Ermolli died in Troppau, Sudetenland, on December 9, 1941.