Hermann Kövess von Kövessháza Hermann Freiherr Kövess von Kövessháza ( ; March 30 , 1854 – September 22 , 1924 ) was the final , and completely ceremonial , Commander - in - Chief of Austria - Hungary . He served as a generally competent and unremarkable commander in the Austro - Hungarian Army and was close to retirement in 1914 when The First World War broke out and he was given a command post . Personal life . Kövess ' father was a senior military officer living in Temesvár , Hungary ( now Timișoara , Romania ) . His mothers family belonged to the small German - speaking Transylvanian Saxon minority known as the " Siebenbürger - Sachsen " . He married the Baroness Eugenie Hye von Glunek in 1892 and they had 3 sons ; Adalbert , who was killed in action in 1914 and Géza and Jenő who served as artillery officers . Military career . He enrolled into a cadet institute at Hainburg in 1865 and after spending some time there and at the academy in Znaim he moved to a military academy in Vienna . He passed the courses at the academy with fair success and received an accelerated promotion to captain . He led his first military expedition in 1882 on a mission to suppress a mutiny in Dalmatia and was commended by the Emperor Francis Joseph I of Austria with a Merit Medal and also received a Knights Cross of the Order of the Italian Crown that same year . After the campaign he failed his next examination and was transferred into the infantry . His good performance during his service with the infantry provided him with quick promotions to Major and in 1890 and then to Lieutenant Colonel in 1894 and soon - after to Colonel . He had become one of the youngest Colonels in the Austro - Hungarian Army and one of the most powerful Protestants serving in a generally Roman Catholic officer corps . His Protestantism caused a scandal when he was involved in an event where 400 Roman Catholics converted to Protestantism after a dispute . The scandal was generally ignored by the military , but condemned by the Catholic Church . The condemnation led him to believe he would be prematurely retired , however this turned out to be false due to the onset of World War I . World War I . At the beginning of World War I , Kövess commanded the XII . ( Transylvania ) Corps , and fought in the tenacious defence against the superior Russian forces in east and central Galicia , and later in Russian Poland . During the spring offensive of 1915 , he captured by storm the fortress of Ivangorod , and in the autumn , under the command of August von Mackensen , led the III . Army , with which he captured Belgrade and penetrated into Serbia , then , in independent command , overthrew Montenegro , and occupied Albania . In the early summer of 1916 , Kövess ' army cooperated in the operation against Arsiero - Asiago . But after the breakthrough of Aleksei Brusilov , he was transported in all haste to the Galician theatre of war . Kövess soon after took over the command of the VII . Army , and defended the ridges of the Wooded Carpathians against Russian attack . In the summer of 1917 , Kövess sallied from the mountains with his troops , made himself master of Czernowitz and Radautz , and drove the Russians almost entirely from the Bukovina . From the middle of January to the beginning of April 1918 , he commanded the army front consisting of the I . and VII . Armies , extending from the Dniester to the south - eastern corner of Transylvania . Entrusted after the desertion of Bulgaria with the thankless task of the command of the troops in the Balkans , Kövess could do nothing more than arrange for the evacuation of the occupied territories according to plan , and for the defence of the Danube - Sava line . When Emperor Charles laid down the supreme command , he nominated Kövess as his successor . But the dispersal of the forces closed Kövess ' s military career . Kövess was one of the most popular army leaders of the old monarchy . After his downfall , he lived in retirement , cultivating his historical and artistic tastes .