Ernst von Pfuel

Ernst Heinrich Adolf von Pfuel (3 November 1779 – 3 December 1866) was a Prussian general who served as Minister of War and later Minister President of Prussia.

Biography

A member of the noble Pfuel family, Ernest Pfuel was born in Jahnsfelde, Prussia (present-day Müncheberg, Germany), the son of General and Johanna Christiane Sophie Krantz. He studied at the Prussian War College. He was a member of the Prussian National Assembly of 1848 and later that year served as Prussian Minister of War from 7 September to 2 November, as well as Minister President of Prussia.

Pfuel was a close friend of Heinrich von Kleist. He was also an innovator of the breaststroke swimming technique, and the founder of the world's first military swimming-school, in 1810 in Prague. From 1816 he was a member of the Gesetzlose Gesellschaft zu Berlin. He died in Berlin on 3 December 1866, aged 87.