Colmar Freiherr von der Goltz was one of the leading military figures in Wilhelmine Germany. Described by The Times's correspondent, Colonel Repington, as perhaps Germany's most important general, he rose in 1911 to the rank of field-marshal, retiring two years later. At the outbreak of the Boer War in October 1899, he was a relative newcomer to Germany's military leadership, having exercised the functions of chief of the corps of engineers and pioneers and inspector of fortifications only since May 1898, with the rank of lieutenant-general. For the preceding two years he had served as commander of the 5th division at Frankfurt an der Oder, and for the 12 years before that he had served abroad, as an adviser and instructor in the army of the Ottoman Sultan. He was not to remain in his new post for long, soon provoking controversy with his proposals for a thorough reorganization of the corps of engineers and pioneers, and a change in fortifications policy, and in January 1902 he was abruptly transferred to command of the 1st army corps in East Prussia. Meanwhile he had also expressed controversial views on the subject of German foreign policy, and the Boer War in particular; it is not clear whether these opinions contributed to his eventual removal from Berlin, though Goltz appears to have believed that they had, and henceforth regarded himself as something of an outsider and dissident.