Biography
R.F. von Ungern-Sternberg was born in Graz, Austria on December 29, 1885 to a noble Baltic German family. His mother was Sophie Charlotte von Wimpffen, later Sophie Charlotte von Ungern-Sternberg, and his father was Theodor Leonhard Rudolph von Ungern-Sternberg (1857–1918). In 1888 his family moved to Tallinn (Reval), the capital of Estonia (then part of the Russian Empire), where his parents divorced three years later in 1891. In 1894 his mother married Oskar Anselm Herrmann von Hoyningen-Huene. From 1900 to 1902 Ungern attended the Nicholas I Gymnasium, Tallinn. In 1903 he enrolled in Marine Officers Cadet School in St. Petersburg. In 1905 he left the school to join the fighting in Eastern Russia during the Russian-Japanese war, but it is unclear whether he participated in operations against the Japanese, or if all military operations had ceased before his arrival in Manchuria. In 1906, Ungern was transferred to service in Pavlovskoe Military School in St. Petersburg as a cadet of ordinary rank. After graduating he served as an officer in East Siberia in the 1st Argunsky and the 1st Amursky Cossack regiments, where he became enthralled with the lifestyle of nomadic peoples such as the Mongols and Buryats. In 1913, at his request, he was transferred to the reserves. Ungern moved to Outer Mongolia to assist Mongols in their struggle for independence from China, but Russian officials prevented him from fighting with Mongolian troops. He arrived in the town of Khovd in western Mongolia and served as out-of-staff officer in the Cossack guard detachment at the Russian consulate.
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