Austro-Hungarian Perspective on Jutland

Colloredo-Mannsfeld, painted in 1914.

After the Battle of Jutland the amazingly named Fregattenkapitäne Hieronymus Graf von Colloredo-Mannsfeld, Naval Attaché of the Imperial and Royal Austro-Hungarian Navy at the embassy in Berlin, visited the German fleet and sent a report on the battle to his superiors. It is dated 17 June 1916, less than three weeks after the fight, and therefore gives a relatively raw insight into the German experience. Arthur Marder used a British naval intelligence translation of the report in his Jutland volume of From the Dreadnought to Scapa Flow, and a copy is in his papers at the University of California, Irvine. I first read it years ago when I was sent photos of it by a friend who had done research there. When I consulted the Marder papers for the second time last year I made my own photographs of the document. I’ve been meaning to transcribe it for a very long time, and in the end it didn’t take too long, despite there being over 40 sheets of typescript. It is now on The Dreadnought Project: http://www.dreadnoughtproject.org/tfs/index.php/Austro-Hungarian_Naval_Attach%C3%A9_Report_on_the_Battle_of_Jutland.

A Hungarian historian named Mihály Krámli has translated a post-war copy of the report which is in a Hungarian archive. His translation is now available at NavWeaps. Apparently he believes his “translation is more ‘to the letter’, closer to the original German.” However, it is also admitted that the British translation “includes some closing remarks which are not part of the Marinesektion version found in the archives.”

Leave a comment