General Meik Rinder was a Boskenmark military commander and the provisional head of state of the Federation of Boskenmark following the collapse of the Vosti Empire in 1918. Appointed by the Provisional Council to oversee the drafting of the new constitution, he led Boskenmark’s disastrous military intervention in the Kresimirian Unification War before transferring power to the civilian administration of Stefan Hartschnell.
The Provisional Junta (1918–1922)
After the imperial collapse, Rinder seized power in Vost as head of a military junta. He appointed Hartschnell as a civilian advisor while retaining executive authority. The junta’s legitimacy rested on its promise to protect ethnic Boskens in the north and resist Kresimirian centralization.
The 1921 Intervention
In March 1921, Boskenmark deployed 20,000 troops across the River Brod into the ongoing Unification War. Rinder personally commanded the expeditionary force, intending to annex Moraviskameja and crush the Kresimirian centralists.
The campaign ended in catastrophe at the Battle of the Brod Ford. Rinder had left a secondary seasonal ford unguarded, believing spring rains had made it impassable. General Dominik Loncar exploited intelligence from Kresimirian sympathisers in Brod Moravice and routed the Boskenmark force. Rinder’s subordinate Capt. Lev Ruka participated in the Bosken retreat.
The defeat discredited the military leadership and paved the way for Hartschnell’s election. The subsequent Treaty of Sinj (1921), which abandoned Moraviskameja to Kresimirian rule, became known in Boskenmark as the “Humiliation of Sinj” — a national trauma that poisoned domestic politics for generations.
Legacy
Rinder’s failed war shaped the worldview of officers who served under him, including a wounded junior officer named Nielz Metzger, who reportedly vowed never to accept the River Brod as a permanent border.
Rinder’s great-grandson, Viktor Luxenberg, later became President of Boskenmark, inheriting the family’s revanchist political legacy. When Milos Hrdlicka pleaded for Boskenmark intervention during the Unification War, Rinder’s government hesitated, sending only weapons and volunteers rather than a formal treaty of union.