German General and Military Engineer. General of Artillery and Professor of Technical Physics at the Technical University of Berlin. He joined the 2 Foot Artillery Regiment of the Bavarian Army in 1898 as a cadet. He was sent to study at the War School in Munich and then at the Bavarian Artillery and Engineers School and then became a teacher at the Military Technical Academy in Berlin, where he also served as an assistant in the Artillery Test Commission. In 1913, he transferred to the Prussian army with the rank of Captain. When World War I broke out he was assigned as batter commander in Naval Cannon Battalion 2, but returned to the Artillery Test Commission in 1916. After the war he joined the new Reichswehr as an inspector of weapons, and studied chemistry at the Technical University of Berlin, receiving his Ph.D in engineering in 1922. He became the head of the Ballistics and Munitions Department in the Army Weapons Office in 1926. As director of research from 1929, he pushed the development of rocket research and was one of the founders of the Peenemunde research facility in 1936. He was also in part responsible for the formation of the “Uranium Club” the Nazi atomic weapons program. He was promoted to Major General in 1933, Lieutenant General in 1934, and General of Artillery in 1936. He took command of the Army Weapons Office in March 1938. He also, after the Nazi takeover in 1933, was named Professor at the Technical University of Berlin, as well as the Dean of the Faculty of Military Technology, and was given the Chair of Technical Physics in 1937 at the same institution. He was named a Senator of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society in 1936. He was the first president of the Reichs Research Council when it was formed in 1937. He was a holder of the Iron Cross First and Second Class for his service in World War I, the Bavarian Military Merit Cross with Swords, and the Goethe Medal for Art and Science (in 1939). Heavy criticism by Hitler and others for shortfalls in munitions production in the early days of the war led to his suicide. He was given a state funeral.