High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Alfred Graf von Schlieffen, mostly called Count Schlieffen (German pronunciation: ; 28 February 1833 – 4 January 1913) was a German field marshal and strategist who served as Chief of the Imperial German General Staff from 1891 to 1906. His name lived on in the 1905 Schlieffen Plan for the defeat of the French Third Republic and the Russian Empire.