Background
Franz von Holub was born in Prague in 1865.
Franz von Holub was born in Prague in 1865.
Holub graduated from the Naval Academy in Fiume in 1882 and devoted his early career to the development of mines and torpedoes; later he transferred to the artillery branch and until 1905 taught courses for both officers and men at the Artillery School of the fleet.
This activity brought Holub the post of chief artillery officer in the Adriatic Fleet in 1909. The following year he was reassigned to the Naval Section of the War Ministry in Vienna, and in 1911 he was promoted captain. Holub next headed the second, or technical, department of the Naval Section in 1912, but one year later returned to the fleet as commander of the dread-nought Viribus Unitis.
Holub's steady work at Pola did not go unrecognized: in May 1915, he was promoted to the grade of rear admiral, and in 1916 raised into the Austrian nobility and assigned chief of staff to fleet commander Admiral Maximilian Njegovan. It was not a particularly rewarding experience for Holub who, like his chief, was relieved of command on March 1, 1918, in the wake of serious riots in the Dual Monarchy's Adriatic sea ports. When Rear Admiral Miklos Horthy was given command of the fleet, Holub returned to Vienna to take charge of the Naval Section of the War Ministry, a post that he held until the end of the war. Holub died in Vienna on October 28, 1924.
