Common Army
largest part of the Austro-Hungarian land forces
The Common Army (German: Gemeinsame Armee, Hungarian: Közös Hadsereg), as it was officially designated by the Imperial and Royal Military Administration, was the largest part of the Austro-Hungarian land forces from 1867 to 1914, the other two elements being the Imperial-Royal Landwehr (of Austria) and the Royal Hungarian Honvéd. However, it was simply known as the Army (Heer) by the Emperor and in peacetime laws, and, after 1918, colloquially called the k.u.k. Armee (short for Imperial and Royal Army).
Established on 15 March 1867 and effectively disbanded on 31 October 1918 when its Hungarian troops left, the Common Army formed the main element of the "armed power" (Bewaffneten Macht or Wehrmacht) of the new dual monarchy, to which the Imperial and Royal Navy (k.u.k. Kriegsmarine) also belonged. In the First World War all land and sea forces of the monarchy were subordinated to the Armeeoberkommando set up in 1914.
History
Origin of the name
Until 1889 the armed forces bore the title "k.k." (kaiserlich-königlich i.e. "Imperial-Royal", which was technically incorrect after 1867 for a common institution of both Austrian and Hungarian halves of the Empire), as they had done before 1867. Only on the express wish of the Kingdom of Hungary was the designation "k.u.k." and "cs. és kir." (German: "kaiserlich und königlich", Hungarian: "császári és királyi", i.e.
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This entry incorporates text from “Common Army” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.