Frederick the Great discussion post 12
Feb. 26th, 2020 09:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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rheinsberg :)
All the good stuff continues to be archived at
rheinsberg :)
Re: Trenck discussion
Date: 2020-03-06 03:57 pm (UTC)Hmmm, yeah. Looks like he skipped right over second lieutenant and first lieutenant.
I want to know what exactly he contributed to the Austrian cause more than ever.
Circumstantial evidence is certainly damning!
Schell, the guy who leaves Trenck's door in Glatz unlocked and deserts with him, whom I suspect of having been gangpressed into Prussian service due to him not having been a Prussian, is a Lieutenant.
I don't know enough about impressment practices: were foreign noblemen impressed as officers? He is a von Schell and he is a lieutenant. I could be wrong, but it strikes me as dangerous to have your officers serving involuntarily, and impressing noblemen is probably going to cause a hue and cry that impressing lower and middle classes isn't.
Googling around, I'm not finding evidence that noblemen and officers were impressed, and am finding statements that press gangs worked the lower and middle classes, and that noblemen were exempt. I remember Duffy saying that Prussian recruiters would trick people into enlisting voluntarily by telling them they would be officers, and then when they signed up, they were forced into service as common soldiers and not allowed to leave. But if you know of any examples where nobles were impressed as officers, let me know. It's hard to prove a negative after a few minutes of googling.
While googling, I ran across something else that backed up my sense that pardons for desertion were common: "Desertion was to be punished by death. Yet, most deserters were in fact not executed but often enough pardoned and re-admitted to the service if they requested a pardon." This is from Prussian Army Soldiers and the Seven Years' War: The Psychology of Honour, a scholarly volume that was published in 2019, costs $80, and has something like 12 footnotes per page. This particular line has a footnote citing a 1996 scholarly volume. So it looks legit. Again, the book is about the Seven Years' War, but this particular page seems to be talking about practices in general, including peacetime practices. The citation is Disziplin und Desertion: Strukturprobleme militärischer Organisation im 18. Jahrhundert (Historische Forschungen), page 288, which would probably tell us everything we ever wanted to know about how exceptional Trenck's pardon offer was (my sense without reading it is: not enough to warrant concluding that he slept or at least flirted with one of the royal siblings).
Btw, Google is giving me Müncherode as an acceptable alternate spelling for Rot_an_der_Rot Abbey in Swabia, and Wikipedia tells me the town developed out of the abbey, so I'm guessing Schell's from the town called Rot an der Rot today.
Re: Trenck discussion
Date: 2020-03-07 12:41 am (UTC)Hey, I have access to that! Thank you for introducing this to me!
There's lots of stuff on the structure of the Prussian army, recruitment, the role of women and Africans in the army, primary sources etc. Here's just some stuff I found interesting, not necessarily about Friedrich. I'm smashing together quotes from the book:
Tidbits about the recruitment of the army:
The majority of Prussian soldiers were Kantonisten, draftees from the recruiting districts (Kantone) of the regiments. They were the second, third or fourth sons of peasants and craftsmen, coming from the centre of Prussian society. Most of them were Lutheran Protestants of the Pietist brand, who believed that the faithful and professional fulfillment of their duties would secure them a place in heaven. The regiment as the basic organizational unit had its own area of recruitment. There, all male peasants, artisans and small traders who reached a certain height and were not only sons were enrolled at the age of thirteen and drilled for two months during the summer each year once they reached the age of twenty. When it was war time, who was actually called up was decided by the regiment together with the local authorities. More than half of those who had been enrolled were able to evade service. Rich merchants and certain religious minorities such as Jews, Quakers, and Mennonites were excluded from the draft.
The other soldiers were Ausländer (foreigners), which were not always foreigners in the modern sense of the word. The term meant that the person came from outside the Kanton, or was a mercenary, who came from the Kanton but was not required to serve. The Ausländer who volunteered signed six year contracts. But many were not volunteers, and were forcibly recruited by violence, deceit and press gangs.
Tidbits about the role of women:
A soldier did not need to marry a woman for her to be formally recognised as a companion. Direct quote: "Sweethearts: A Prussian idiosyncrasy was the legalization of the Liebsten (sweethearts). Soldiers, who were not allowed to marry due to a lack of money or permission by their master, could get a Liebstenschein (sweetheart diploma). With this, the army recognized the girlfriend of a soldier as a legitimate companion, cared for the women in times of war and made the relationship honourable." Basically, just like wives, they were Soldatenfrauen ("soldiers' women") who could travel between the army and the Kanton if they desired. Or send letters. Friedrich established a free postal service so soldiers and their families could communicate. Women in most soldiers' families needed to take on paid work in addition to housework, and soldiers often took on second jobs. Soldiers’ wives could also take over the military duties of their absent men, such as guard duties or supervising the cleaning of stables. Up to 72 women were allowed to accompany each Prussian regiment in wartime, and they cooked, mended uniforms, sold looted goods, etc.
The Potsdam Orphanage:
"One of the darkest chapters of the Prussian army’s history was the handling of the military orphanage in Potsdam. While Frederick William I had carefully built up the orphanage and provided the inmates with spiritual guidance and a good education by Pietist chaplains and musical instructors, Frederick II sent the children to the arms factories, where many of them perished due to a harsh labour regime and long working hours."
Later in the book, when talking about musicians in the Prussian army: "Some the drummers also came from the military orphanage in Potsdam. During the reign of the Soldier King, orphaned boys were taught to play the drum by older invalid drummers and at the same time taught to write and read in order to join one of the regiments of the elite Potsdam garrison. Under Frederick II, the orphanage degenerated and became a prison-like institution which supplied cheap labour to the nearby factories. The king was not interested in educating the orphans and music and drumming lessons were abandoned."
Sympathy to the author:
The pains of historical scholarship: "(...)but the documents were missing. Unfortunately, the Household Archive could not be accessed at the time of writing as the heirs of the Prince of Stolberg-Wernigerode and the state of Sachsen-Anhalt are involved in a legal dispute about the further use of the Archive."
Sorbs:
Frederick II – and some of his generals – valued soldiers from Magdeburg, Pomerania and Brandenburg greatly. Officers seem to have agreed that men from the West Slavic minority of the Sorbs, who lived in Brandenburg, were ‘the best infantrymen in the world’, as they were totally obedient to their king.
Child soldiers:
Child soldiers were used by the Prussians in siege of Schweidnitz in 1762:
"the regiments used to besiege the fortress were amongst the worst of the entire army and almost entirely composed of children. One day, the garrison staged a sortie and some of the Prussian soldiers began to cry. The colonel commanding the trenches feared that they might do something worse [flee, K. & S.M.], [but] did not abuse them, not even with words but shouted: ‘Cry as much as you want, my children, but open fire and do not run away.’ His gentle behaviour made them fight as good soldiers."
Former slaves in the Prussian army:
I think I remember Mildred being curious, at some point, about the status of black people in Prussia - after she read about a 're-naming ceremony' in Count Lehndorff's diaries? This book provides some answers in the military sense:
"Some of the musicians [in the Prussian army] were black Africans. For example, the Pfeifer (fifers) of the Potsdam Giants were slaves bought in the Netherlands or England. Upon their arrival in Prussia, they were taught German, baptized and given German names. Legally, they were freed and theoretically had the same rights as other non-noble subjects of the king. There were twenty-three of these former slaves in the army at the end of Frederick William’s reign."
This blogpost has visual illustrations of African musicians in the Prussian army, in Friedrich's lifetime. It's an interesting article overall.
Related, here's Friedrich's own opinions about the slave trade, found in Christopher Duffy's biography:
'He replied with angry sarcasm to one of his customs officials who asked for leave for his brother, a Bordeaux merchant, to go slaving under the Prussian flag:
I have always been of the opinion that the trade in negroes is a blight on the human race. Never shall I do anything to authorise or promote it. However, if this business is so attractive to you, you have only to go back to France to be able to indulge your taste. May God keep you in his holy and fond care! (Preuss, 1832-4. IV. 296).'
(But Fredersdorf bought an entire plantation didn't he...??? Fritz????)
Re: Trenck discussion
Date: 2020-03-07 04:41 am (UTC)Potsdam orphanage: that is terrible. And a really black mark against Friedrich.
Incidentally, re: socially beneficial institutions founded by FW, the most famous of these which is still ongoing is the Charité, the famous Berlin hospital. (Though it became famous for its high medical standards only in the later half of the 19th century.)
Citation for Fredersdorf buying a plantation? Is it in this book? Because I don't recall it mentioned in the sources we've had so far. As far as I know, over the years he bought additional estates once given Zernikow in 1740, which became the Fredersdorfischen Güter, but these were all within Brandenburg. Don't know whether directly attached to Zernikow. I'm ready to stand corrected - any additional information is welcome!
Re: Trenck discussion
Date: 2020-03-07 06:49 pm (UTC)The source is not this book, but I explicitly remember reading that he bought a plantation in Mexico. This newspaper article mentions that Fredersdorf "bought a plantation in South America", and I'm assuming they're drawing from the same source I read that I can't remember. Giles MacDonogh writes that he had a 'colony' in the East Indies. His doesn't quote sources for each sentence but has a list of sources for the paragraph about Fredersdorf, in the frustrating truncated way he lays out his references. Since that information is in the first sentence, and the first reference in the list is Johannes Richter "Die Briefe Friedrichs des Grossen an seinen vormaligen Kammerdiener Fredersdorf" 1979, pages 20-21, I'm assuming the information is there.
Fredersdorf
Date: 2020-03-07 07:21 pm (UTC)His doesn't quote sources for each sentence but has a list of sources for the paragraph about Fredersdorf, in the frustrating truncated way he lays out his references.
MacDonogh is terribly unreliable about his sources actually saying what he says they say, but in this case, he's got it in one. Richter, page 20, "...kaufte Fredersdorf später noch mehrere Besitzungen hinzu, ja er wurde sogar, wie wir aus der früher erwähnten Urkunde des Grafen Schlitz wissen, Besitzer einer 'Kolonie' in Ostindien."
Aaaand, it does appear that the slave trade was thriving in the 18th century in the East Indies (about which I know virtually nothing and had to check).
:(
Nothing in Richter on South America or Mexico, or even the West Indies, that I can see, but I'm hindered by my rudimentary German. Still.
The past is a terrible place, I mean we already knew that. :( A few props to Fritz for speaking out about the slave trade, I guess, though Fredersdorf has some splainin to do.
Oh,
Re: Fredersdorf
Date: 2020-03-07 09:21 pm (UTC)Yeah! I'll offer up some more public domain Volz from archive.org that doesn't seem to be on there yet - it's the Grumbkow-Hille-Wolden correspondence, which gives insight into Friedrich's mindset/behaviour at Küstrin as well as other things.
My German is rudimentary too, but I see a pretty sad entry on pages 15 to 16:
Hille to Grumbkow, 23rd of December 1730
"[You?] will have heard from the King from the relay sent yesterday that the Crown Prince had two attacks of Wechselfieber [malaria]. So much excitement, grief and fear must have had a violent effect on his body. Thank God it didn't result in anything more serious(...)" (cont but Google Translate struggles)
I suppose it would be better to post about it on the new discussion topic, hah.
Re: Fredersdorf
Date: 2020-03-07 09:46 pm (UTC)Let's just acknowledge that I personally would be a terrible person in the past.
Yeah! I'll offer up some more public domain Volz from archive.org that doesn't seem to be on there yet - it's the Grumbkow-Hille-Wolden correspondence, which gives insight into Friedrich's mindset/behaviour at Küstrin as well as other things.
Oh, that's the first volume of the three-volume work I've been trying to get from our royal patron! I don't know why I didn't see it on archive.org. Oh, it looks like they only have the first volume, so maybe I ignored it in favor of getting all three volumes from the same source.
I don't suppose you have access to download entire volumes from Hathitrust? I was assuming you didn't, because it's US-only, but it doesn't hurt to ask?
(cont but Google Translate struggles)
I think I've noticed you saying this before. If you ever want to post something and ask for help, we have a native German speaker here, and with my year or two of German at school, I usually don't have trouble getting the gist of a text when Google Translate struggles. I usually get it, sometimes miss nuance, rarely get stumped, and frequently ask
Anyway, you can get basic German support from me and advanced German support from her, if you ever have any questions. And I occasionally post something short in German or French on the assumption that everyone here can handle a sentence or two, but if that's no longer true, then I can get better about translating. And feel free to poke if I don't.
For example, that Fredersdorf quote from Richter says that Fredersdorf later acquired still more possessions, and as we learned in the Count Schlitz document mentioned earlier, he even became the owner of a 'colony' in the East Indies.
And yeah, I suppose we should drift over to the new place. :)
Re: Fredersdorf
Date: 2020-03-16 09:58 pm (UTC)Sorry for the late reply on this; unfortunately, I don't. Oxford isn't on the list of partner institutions rip
Re: Google Translate
My issue is that I can't read the old-timey German font that everything 18th-century Prussian-related is written in. :\ And neither, apparently, can Google Translate (for archive PDFs my go-to has been taking pictures of my laptop screen with my phone and using GT that way, which is extremely inefficient, I realise). If it's in regular font, I'm usually fine with a bit of German (thanks to Duolinguo LOL). I feel bad asking for translations for minute things that I'm curious about, since I don't want to take up anybody's time
Re: Fredersdorf
Date: 2020-03-16 10:32 pm (UTC)No worries, we have someone at UCLA who does.
My issue is that I can't read the old-timey German font that everything 18th-century Prussian-related is written in.
Neither could I in December, but I'm getting better at it! As measured by: how much less angry when I see the font, lol. Occasionally, something relevant even jumps out at me when I'm scrolling while looking for something else! I'm still much slower with it than with more familiar typefaces, but I'm now only totally defeated by it when it's a very blurry scan.
I feel bad asking for translations for minute things that I'm curious about, since I don't want to take up anybody's time
At the moment I have nothing but time, but that's going to change in a couple weeks. In any case, you can always ask, and it might end up on somebody's backlog.
I do intend to continue incorporating the recently uncovered Katte execution material into
Pro tip on Google translate: if the blackletter font is in a copy-pastable PDF, it's usually pretty good about OCRing properly and all you usually have to do is swap out the s's manually to get a better translation. But if it's just an image, then yeah, you have to be able to transcribe yourself. Which I can now do a page or two at a time of, but in December I just deferred altogether, and you're certainly welcome to ask for help. It never hurts to ask, especially if you're willing to wait for the response.
Re: Fredersdorf
Date: 2020-03-17 04:34 am (UTC)Re: Fredersdorf
Date: 2020-03-23 12:11 am (UTC)Re: Fredersdorf
Date: 2020-03-23 03:11 am (UTC)Re: Fredersdorf
Date: 2020-03-23 03:21 am (UTC)Re: Trenck discussion
Date: 2020-03-07 09:57 pm (UTC)ETA: Oh, I see you already found the sentence. The „earlier mentioned document“ refers to the one in which Fredersdorf‘s widow doesn‘t sign herself „von“, which is how Richter concludes Fredersdorf wasn‘t ennobled. Also, belatedly it’s occured to me that before the demise of the East India Trading Company it‘s not British India yet, but in terms of 18th century use of the term „Ostindien“ in the fictional texts I‘ve seen it in, it was employed for the continent and not the islands. Again: „I could be wrong“ caveat, big time.
Fredersdorf
Date: 2020-03-07 10:29 pm (UTC)Hmm. What I had found was that Wikipedia says the Dutch East India Company was involved in slaving in the 18th century, though whether that geographically lines up with the use of the German term Ostindien in the 18C, I'm not sure. It looks like most of the focus on slavery in Wikipedia is the Cape Colony, which is a very specific location on the African continent (Cape of Good Hope). I don't know about slavery practiced by the East Indies company outside of that region, and I don't know if Fredersdorf could have had his "Kolonie" (whatever that is) in one of the slave-based regions.
This person, of unknown scholarly rigor, is making a case that the British East Indies engaged in the slave trade, and that this aspect has been downplayed in the literature due to the low numbers relative to the transatlantic slave trade.
Wikipedia says "Ostindien" is "a historical designation for a large region in Asia, consisting of the Vorderindien (roughly the Indian subcontinent), Mainland Southeast Asia (Hinterindien) and the East Indies Islands." It predates the later use of the term for British India.
To what extent slavery was widespread there, as opposed to the Cape Colony in South Africa, I don't know.
So for now, I'm going to say Fredersdorf's possible involvement as an overseas slaveowner is inconclusive. If he was dealing with either the British or Dutch East Indies companies, he certainly profited indirectly from the slave trade, but then, who didn't? All that tobacco's got to come from somewhere, and I don't think most of it was what you'd call ethical labor practices.
Wow. So far Fredersdorf has been accused of murder, embezzlement, and slaveowning, and so far he's eluded a guilty verdict on all three! (Please let it stay that way, she says, ever the objective historian.)
Re: Trenck discussion
Date: 2020-03-07 01:22 pm (UTC)Ooh, you lucky dog!
A Prussian idiosyncrasy was the legalization of the Liebsten (sweethearts).
Did not know about that! Or that the women could take over some of the military duties. I did know about the free postal service and that both soldiers and their wives worked for extra pay to supplement their meager income from serving.
I knew Fritz's wartime practices were indefensible, but did not know that about the children, ouch. It's worse because from everything I've seen, his labor conditions in his porcelain factory were *above* average for the time, but "win at all costs" Fritz during wartime is a different beast than Fritz during peacetime, and this isn't the first time I've had occasion to make that observation.
I think I remember Mildred being curious, at some point, about the status of black people in Prussia - after she read about a 're-naming ceremony' in Count Lehndorff's diaries?
It's definitely something we discussed before.
I second
This book sounds interesting--I wish it weren't $82! Or that I could read library books. But thank you for sharing cool details with us!