Georg von Reisswitz
Prussian army officer, wargaming pioneer
Georg Heinrich Rudolf Johann von Reisswitz (1794–1827) was a Prussian army officer. Reisswitz is regarded by many as the father of wargaming, as he developed the first wargaming system to be widely used as a serious tool for training and research. The particular genre of wargaming he developed is known in the English-speaking world as Kriegsspiel. It is characterized by high realism, an emphasis on the experience of decision-making rather than on competition, and the use of an umpire to keep the system flexible.
Life and career
Reisswitz's father was George Leopold von Reisswitz, a Prussian baron.
In 1810, Reisswitz was a volunteer in an artillery unit in Neisse. In late 1813, during the Siege of Glogow, Reisswitz was promoted to second-lieutenant and awarded the Iron Cross 2nd Class. By 1819, he was a first-lieutenant in the Guard Artillery Brigade in Berlin.
Reisswitz was a skilled fencer and a skilled violinist.
The wargame designer
In 1812, Reisswitz's father developed a wargaming apparatus which he presented as a gift to the Prussian king, which the royal family embraced and regularly played.
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This entry incorporates text from “Georg von Reisswitz” 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.