Baron Nikolai Robert Maximilian Freiherr von Ungern-Sternberg (Russian: Роман Фёдорович фон Унгерн-Штернберг, romanized: Roman Fyodorovich fon Ungern-Shternberg; 10 January 1886 – 15 September 1921), often referred to as Roman von Ungern-Sternberg or Baron Ungern, was a Russian military leader in the Russian Civil War and then an independent warlord who intervened in Mongolia against China.
Part of the Russian Empire's Baltic German minority, Ungern was an ultraconservative monarchist who aspired to restore the Russian monarchy after the 1917 Russian Revolution and to revive the Mongol Empire under the rule of the Bogd Khan. His attraction to Vajrayana Buddhism and his eccentric, often violent, treatment of enemies and his own men earned him the sobriquet "the Mad Baron" or "the Bloody Baron".
In February 1921, at the head of the Asiatic Cavalry Division, Ungern expelled Chinese troops from Mongolia and restored the monarchic power of the Bogd Khan. During his five-month occupation of Outer Mongolia, Ungern imposed order on the capital city, Ikh Khüree (now Ulaanbaatar), by fear, intimidation and brutal violence against the Bolsheviks and Chinese. In June 1921, he travelled to eastern Siberia to support anti-Bolshevik partisan forces and to head off a joint Red Army-Mongolian rebel invasion. That action ultimately led to his defeat and capture two months later. He was taken prisoner by the Red Army and, a month later, was put on trial for counter-revolution in Novonikolayevsk, now Novosibirsk. He was found guilty after a six-hour show trial, and on 15 September 1921 he was executed.
Nikolai Robert Maximilian Freiherr von Ungern-Sternberg was born in Graz, Austria, on 10 January 1886 [O.S. 29 December 1885] to a noble Baltic German family. The Ungern-Sternberg family had settled in present-day Estonia during the Middle Ages. Ungern-Sternberg's first language was German, but he became fluent in French, Russian, English and Estonian. His mother was a German noblewoman, Sophie Charlotte von Wimpffen, later Sophie Charlotte von Ungern-Sternberg. His father was Theodor Leonhard Rudolph Freiherr von Ungern-Sternberg (1857–1918). He also had Hungarian roots and claimed descent from Batu Khan, Genghis Khan's grandson, which played a role in his dream of reviving the Mongol Empire.
In 1888 his family moved to Reval (Tallinn), the capital of the Governorate of Estonia in the Russian Empire. His parents divorced in 1891. In 1894 his mother married the Baltic-German nobleman Oskar Anselm Hermann Freiherr von Hoyningen-Huene. Ungern-Sternberg grew up in the Governorate, with his home being the Hoyningen-Huene estate at Jerwakant (modern Järvakandi, Estonia), deep in the forests, about 65 kilometres (40 miles) from Reval. In the summer, Ungern-Sternberg lived on the Baltic island of Dagö (now Hiiumaa), which he liked to boast had belonged to his family for over 200 years.
As a boy, Ungern-Sternberg was noted for being such a ferocious bully that even the other bullies feared him and several parents forbade their children from playing with him as he was a "terror". Ungern was well known for his love of torturing animals, and at the age of 12 he tried to strangle to death his cousin's pet owl. Ungern-Sternberg had extreme pride in his ancient, aristocratic family and later wrote that his family had over the centuries "never taken orders from the working classes" and it was outrageous that "dirty workers who've never had any servants of their own, but still think they can command" should have any say in the ruling of the vast Russian Empire.
Ungern-Sternberg, although proud of his German origin, identified himself very strongly with the Russian Empire. When asked whether his "family had distinguished itself in Russian service", Ungern proudly answered: "Seventy-two killed in wartime!". Ungern-Sternberg believed that return to monarchies in Europe was possible with the aid of "cavalry people" – meaning Russian Cossacks, Buryats, Tatars, Mongols, Kyrgyz, Kalmyks, etc.
In 1898, his father was briefly imprisoned for fraud before being committed to the local insane asylum the following year. From 1900 to 1902 Ungern attended the Nicholas I Gymnasium in Reval. His school records show an unruly, bad-tempered young man who was constantly in trouble with his teachers because of frequent fights with other cadets and breaking other school rules: smoking in bed, growing long hair, leaving without permission, etc.
In February 1905, the schoolmaster wrote to his stepfather and mother, asking them to withdraw him from the school or he would be expelled. They chose withdrawal, and Ungern joined the fighting in eastern Russia during the Russo-Japanese War. It is unclear whether he saw action against the Japanese or if all military operations had ceased before his arrival in Manchuria, although he was awarded the Russo-Japanese War Medal in 1913.
During the 1905 Russian Revolution, Estonian peasants went on a bloody jacquerie against the Baltic-German nobility, who owned most of the land. Aristocrats were lynched and their estates burned down, among them the one at Jerwakant where Ungern-Sternberg had grown up. These events were traumatic for Ungern-Sternberg, confirming his belief that the Estonian peasants who worked on his family's lands were all "rough, untutored, wild and constantly angry, hating everybody and everything without understanding why".
In 1906, Ungern was transferred to the Pavlovsk Military School, in St. Petersburg, as a cadet of ordinary rank. As an army cadet, he proved to be a better student than he ever was as a naval cadet, and he actually studied his course material, but in the words of Palmer, he was a "mediocre student" at best. During the same period, Ungern-Sternberg became obsessed with the occult and developed an interest in Buddhism. His cousin Count Hermann von Keyserling, who later knew him well, wrote that the baron was very curious from his teenage years onward with "Tibetan and Hindu philosophy" and often spoke of the mystical powers possessed by "geometrical symbols". Keyserling called Ungern-Sternberg "one of the most metaphysically and occultly gifted men I have ever met" and believed that the baron could read minds.
Later, in Mongolia, Ungern became a Buddhist but did not leave the Lutheran faith. There is a widespread view that he was viewed by Mongols as the incarnation of the "God of War", the figure of Jamsaran in Tibetan and Mongol folklore. Comparison of old narrations collected by B. Rinchen with scattered memoir data and memories preserved in Mongolia suggested that Ungern could be associated with Gesar, who in some Buddhist representations of the Mongols was considered the God of war and associated with Jamsaran. Although many Mongols may have believed him to be a deity or at the very least a re-incarnation of Genghis Khan, Ungern was never officially proclaimed to be any of those incarnations.
After graduating, he specifically asked to be stationed with a Cossack regiment in Asia, to learn more about Asian culture. His request was granted, and he served as an officer in eastern Siberia in the 1st Argunsky and then in the 1st Amursky Cossack regiments, where he became enthralled with the lifestyle of nomadic peoples, such as the Mongols and Buryats.
Ungern-Sternberg was notorious for his heavy drinking and exceptionally cantankerous moods. In one such brawl, his face was scarred when the officer that he fought struck him with his sword. It was rumored that brain damage from the injury had affected his sanity. A special study found that Ungern-Sternberg was sane, although the wound affected his irritability.
In 1913, at his request, he transferred to the reserves. Ungern moved to Outer Mongolia to assist the Mongols in their struggle for independence from China, but Russian officials prevented him from fighting on the side of Mongolian troops. He arrived in the town of Khovd, in western Mongolia, and served as an out-of-staff officer in the Cossack guard detachment at the Russian consulate.