Mildred provided our salon with a copy from the story of Kiekemal by a local historian and descendantn of the original settlers, Emmi Wegfraß, which turns out to be the source of the story I first came across in Fahlenkamp's book, which you can read discussed at length here.
To repeat the key charge as Fahlenkamp phrases it: On April 9th 1757, Fredersdorf gets dismissed from his office as Chamberlain for, as it is said, dishonesty together with the Kriegs and Domänenrat Johann Pfeiffer when buying Kiekemal near Mahlsdorf. Kiekemal was then an empty dispopulated era in the south east of Berlin. The King had provided money for the resettling of this era, which however ended up being pilfered by the director of the Ressettling Commmission of the Kürmärkische Kammer, Johann Friedrich Pfeiffer (1717 - 1787) into his own pockets, under the cooperation of Frederdorf. That his closest confidant Fredersdorf took part in this must have been a heavy blow to Friedrich. The whole thing - an affair that dragged on for years - was discovered when several of the colonists complained, who had been lured from Würtemburg to Brandenburg with the promise of land and no taxes and had ended up being stuck in miserable huts for which they had to pay rent.
Emmi Wegfraß goes into way more detail about this, to which I'll get in a moment. First, something that remains completely unresolved is the contradiction which I spotted when googling Johann Friedrich Pfeiffer after reading Fahlenkamp's book, which starts with the dates, and this is even more puzzling in Wegfraß' book, and ends with what's said about the conclusion. Every biographical entry online I found on Pfeiffer says he was commissioner until 1750, and that he then left Prussia after the "unjustified" (wiki) charge. This article mentions a short stint in prison while the trial was ongoing but also says his name was cleared and that the trial ended in his favour, that he was "freigesprochen" (declared innocent). Emmy Wegfraß, by contrast, says that the commission in charge of investigating the entire affair delivered their report to Fritz on March 31st 1756, declaring that Pfeiffer was guilty, which results in Fritz ordering Pfeiffer's possessions were to be liquidated to compensate for the damage. She also quotes a cabinet order from June 4th 1756 by Fritz in which it says "Pfeiffer has executed the commission entrusted to him badly and derelict of duty and brought everything in great confusion". She then claims that Pfeiffer spent four years under arrest while the commission was investigating, then in 1758 when the "Berliner Kriminal Senat" sent a confirming judgment he got condemned to a further two years imprisonment, and then banished from Prussia. This is at a time when all the online dictionaries say he had already left Prussia and was working elsewhere. This made me wonder for a while whether in fact there were two Pfeiffers and I had the wrong man all the while, but no, in a short "who died when" at the end of the opening section she grudgingly admits that after "the judgment was spoken about him in Prussia", Pfeiffer "occupied himself practically and as a writer with the Cameralwissenschaften" and died a professor in Mainz, so, it is indeed supposed to be the same guy from the dictionaries. (She does not, however, mention what he was writing about, or that his post Prussia CV was that of a liberal innovator; he's a 100% villain in her book.) Since she quotes dated documents from the archives like the cabinet order, I'm still at a loss as to where the date divergence from all the dictionaries comes from.
Now, Fredersdorf. Re: his particular involvement in the entire affair, I'll get to what she quotes from letters and documents from, and what conclusion she drwas. Where she gets speculative is concluding that the lack of Fritz letters to Fredersdorf after 1956 is because of Kiekemal, saying that Fritz dismissing him (as opposed to Fredersdorf retiring) on April 9th 1757, and saying Fredersdorf died of grief for his lost honor (in January 1758). (She seems to be the source for this bit in wiki.) I checked her bibliography, and on Fredersdorf, she solely has Fontane's Wanderungen, which contains nothing of the sort, it just has the story which she also has that supposedly Fredesdorf wanted to be buried with his cartridge bag from his Küstrin uniform (Fontane was a believer in the "they met at Küstrin" variant), and Voltaire's memoirs (she quotes some of his comments on Fredersdorf). Considering I've seen no other source for "died in grief for his lost honor", I'm now tempted to go with the idea that this was her original conclusion (because Fredersdorf's death followed relatively soon after his dismissal/retirement) which was subsequently accepted as fact. She does not mention his various illnesses and doesn't appear to know he got consulted by his successor re: Glasow when that affair went down in the spring and summer of 1757.
However, the woman really did solid research re: the whole settlement story. I don't necessarily always agree with her conclusions, but here's what she can document, and how the story went in her account:
- Johann Friedrich Pfeiffer from Köpenick appointed as Comissioner in 1748. In the same year, he clashes with the Bock family from which he has rented a dairy, as he denounces one of the Bocks for illegally keeping 100 sheep more than declared to the administration; thereafter, the Bock family hates on Pfeiffer and refers to him only as "Secretary Informer Pfeiffer"
- Pfeiffer, who is in charge of colonisation projects (that's what he's the commissioner for as of that year, fitting with his life long speciality), after viewing the ca. 32 hectar land around the Müggelsee decides they're fit for colonisation and asks Bock whether he'd sell to the sate
- Bock, hating on Pfeiffer for the sheep matter, see above, says "Hell no!"
- Pfeiffer ends his renting the dairy from Bock's brother, and in August 1750 suggests the area as suitable for 2 to 3 foreign colonists; he also approaches Fredersdorf with the idea
- in December 1750, Fritz invites Pfeiffer to make a personal report to him at Potsdam
- In a letter by Präsident von Gröben (a relation to the lieutenant of FRitz' youth?) from February 22 1751, Commissioner Pfeiffer gets instructed to officially assess the area in terms of whether it can be settled by 2 - 3 foreign farming families
- in the original plan, each farmer is supposed to get a certain amount of land, and can own up to 100 sheep plus 6 - 10 cows. After six tax free years (to attract settlers and to get the whole thing going) he's supposed to pay rent and tax thereafter
- however, since the commission doesn't have money to finance building farms and providing animals etc. for the farmers in the first place, there should be a private entrepeneur involved who will finance the entire business at first and gets a share from the profits from the farmers till his original investment is covered, plus interest
- as said entrepeneur, Commissioner Pfeiffer suggests Colonel Johann Ferdinand von Trachenberg, who in turn provides Pfeiffer with a document enabling Pfeiffer to negotiate a contract on his behalf; however, this document isn't signed by Trachenberg but by Fredersdorf; it gets accepted by the Köpenick city administration
- The Bocks are pissed off and still don't want to give up the land; however, they themselves have rented it from the state, and their contract is about to run out; they petition to have it prolonged
- in May 1751, the document empowering Pfeiffer on Trachenberg's behalf is questioned because Fredersdorf has signed it, not Trachenberg. Trachenberg himself then shows ups and personally delivers the declaration demanded to the commission
- on July 6th 1751, the ministry responsible for land says that the contract to the Bocks has run out, and the Kiekemal territory can now be used to colonisation; however, Trachenberg hasn't yet delivered the money
- Fredersdorf then provides 4 000 Reichstaler from his personal money; because of her later involvement, Emmi Wegfraß speculates the money may alternatively have come from Frau von Marschall, widow of the late Samuel von Marschall, and was loaned to Fredersdorf in turn, but if so, there aren't any document proving this
- after Fredersdorf has provided the money, the plans can now get signed off, and advertisement to potential settlers starts
- At the start of 1752, the Bocks sell their brewery to Trachenberg; they later will say they were pressured into it. This is the brewery the settlers will later get their beer from. As you might recall, Fredersdorf among other things was invested in breweries.
- on December 24 1751, Trachenberg via Pfeiffer makes the offer to provide money for the settlement of six more families if there is additional land; this gets greenlighted by Fritz
- on July 7th 1752, Colonel von Trachenberg transfers all his claims on the Bock property plus the Kiekenmal land to Fredersdorf; this contract is co-signed by the Köpenick administration
- in August 1752, the chamber for agriculture confirms the transfer
- on December 21st 1752, a cousin of Pfeiffer's buys additional land at the Müggelsee next to the colonisation land so far, which thus further expands
- on January 17th 1753, Fredersdorf writes to Frau von Marschall to offer her the Kiekemal land. He says there will three full time farmers to work on the land as leaseholders
- Frau von Marschall asks whether there will be tax and rent free years; Fredersdorf replies that since hte farmers will get cattle, houses, and land provided to them right from the beginning, there will not be tax and rent free years; this is of course a direct contrast to the original intention (Wegfraß doesn't say this, but I do: since Fredersdorf at this point has provided the money for most of the aquisitions and the land, it could be argued he's entitled to change the rules, but it IS a significant change from how the whole project started)
- on March 27th, 1753, Fredersdorf signs a contract with Frau von Marschall, selling her the Kiekemal territory along with all the houses built so far as well as the cattle bought (6 oxes, 5 cows, one bull, 160 sheep with ca. 60 lambs) and farming equipment, for 4 000 Reichstaler (i.e. his original investment)
- on June 24th 1753, the three colonist families from Würtemberg arrive; however, they don't have a written contract, and the news that a) the land they're supposed to settle on is owned by Frau von Marschall, and b) Frau von Marschall wants to charge interest immediately instead of waiting for 6 years, which means essentially they'll work for her, not themselves, is a big shock
- cue a year of clashes between the three farmer families and Frau von Marschall, ending in the farmers refusing to work
- on June 28th 1754 Commissioner Ockel is supposed to check out the situation and complaints, and seems to blame the settlers more than Frau von Marschall, since the settlers he says let horses starve despite Frau von Marschall having given each 10 Reichstaler to help them over the winter
- Frau von Marschall writes indignant letters to the commission, calling the settlers lazy; Emmi Wegfrass says this is unfair (since settlers are refusing to work for her is their only way to fight against being exploited, given they were promised tax and rent free years they now don't get), but speculates she might vent her personal misery on them, since of her seven children, all but two are dead, one son is in debt and shocks his mother by leaving the country and becoming a Catholic, the other also is into gambling and acquiring debts
- the mulberry trees and silk spinning houses which Pfeiffer was supposed to plant and build, respectively, haven't yet been done or finished
- on November 23rd, 1754, Colonel von Ingersleben (tea cup guy or a relation?) reports to the King that Pfeiffer has mishandled the situation and has personally enriched himself
- on November 25th, 1754, Pfeiffer gets arrested under this charge; a commission is supposed to investigate the actual state of things at Kiekemal
- Spring 1755: Fritz dismisses his valet Anderson without a pension and confiscates Anderson's correspondence with Pfeiffer; Anderson had been given the estate Philippsthal by Pfeiffer
- August 1755: Fredersdorf writes a letter to Frau von Marschall, saying he's heard the commission is supposed to investigate the following complaints:
1) The Colonists complain that they don't get the tax- and rent free years promised and that instead their rye harvest has been confiscated
2) The local administration hasn't received the 500 Reichstaler bail
3) The beer comes from Dahlwitz instead of Köpenick
4) The sheep farming is conducted in Dahlwitz and not by the colonists
5) the House for spinning hasn't been finished yet despite the wood having been provided
He advises her to come to terms with the Köpenick administration and the farmers, and says he won't interfere any further, he's done with the entire business.
Edited 2021-09-03 17:36 (UTC)
Re: The Kiekemal Tale: Commissioners, Councillors and Colonists
Woooow, you guys have no idea how excited I get when we turn up something like this that we've been looking and looking for! Buying this book was a gamble, and it paid off. This is a gold mine! Enough dates to make even me happy!
I, uh, was going to reply in full, but I now have 33 tabs dedicated to the subject of Pfeiffer's dates open, and now I must get off the computer. But! I have a 3-day weekend, so expect more.
One question: does she have a source for the April 9, 1757 date? Because the letter from Fredersdorf's successor is dated April 3, which I've always taken as another strike against the claim of dismissal for embezzlement on April 9.
Re: The Kiekemal Tale: Commissioners, Councillors and Colonists
April 9, 1757: no, she does not quote from a document there. She just says that this is when the dismissal happens. I should say there aren’t any footnotes at all, not in this chapter nor as far as I can see in the rest of the book, but whenever she provides a direct quote - as when Fritz gives a cabinet order saying Pfeiffer has managed the commisson badly, for example - , I’m assuming she has found the document in question in the archives. (The Prussian Secret State Archive and the Berlin city archive.) She also includes the occasional facsimile, as of Fredersdorf’s letter to Frau von Marschall. (No, I can’t read it. It’s 18th century hand writing. I can make it out his signature, that’s all.) BTW, the format of the book is very scan unfriendly large, in case you’re wondering.
Re: The Kiekemal Tale: Commissioners, Councillors and Colonists
April 9, 1757: no, she does not quote from a document there. She just says that this is when the dismissal happens.
One of these days, we should order a copy of the original April 3, 1757 document from the archives and see if we can get prinzsorgenfrei to help us read it! (Along with several other items I'm interested in.)
BTW, the format of the book is very scan unfriendly large, in case you’re wondering.
Gah! This is exactly what I was wondering and was going to ask. Hang onto it, then, I guess, and maybe someday I'll be in Germany and can pick it up and see if I can make it work with my fancy digitizing technology. (I don't trust the overseas mail enough to risk sending the only copy I've been able to find.) Or if another copy comes on the market for a reasonable price, I'll consider ordering it, now that we know it contains reams of data and won't just be tossed aside after a quick skim.
I just want to give cahn due credit, because I'd found this book months ago, but had been hesitating to fork over $25 for it, with no way to tell if it mentioned Fredersdorf or not. It really was a gamble. All I knew was that 1) the Fredersdorf Wikipedia article mentioned financial dishonesty in the colonization of Kiekemal, 2) the Kiekemal Wikipedia article mentioned that some nameless officials had engaged in financial dishonesty during the initial mid 18th century colonization, 3) the Kiekemal article cited Wegfraß's book as a source.
But then Cahn wanted an out-of-print book (not relevant to salon) digitized, because I apparently run a book-digitizing business now, lol, this is awesome. And of course she offered to bribe me with books, and I proposed a contribution to the Cause of Exonerating Fredersdorf that was dear to her heart. Because $25 is not a lot for a book you want to read, but is a lot for a book that you might toss aside after discovering it contains nothing of interest.
And so Cahn donated $7 to the cause, and she sent me an Amazon gift card with a note reading "For [book to be digitized] and Fredersdorf Defense Fund," which still makes me laugh.
And then I sent selenak the book, because while $25 is a bit much for a book that may or may not contain anything of interest, $40 to ship to the US is *definitely* too much, and Selena naturally had a write-up completed the day she received the book.
Only for books I think you might also be interested in my reading and reporting on! :P (Selena, because this may in fact be of interest to you as well, it's this book.)
Yes, same! It's exactly what I'd been looking for a couple years ago but my Google-fu had failed me, and I was just delighted when cahn turned up on an old entry of mine this week with, "HEY, someone on my friends list just read this book that is relevant to your interests in this post, we should get a copy!"
I will definitely read it at some point, but no idea when.
Haha, well, it's because you commented on my post going "Hey, that author you're reading, you should check out my Entire Tag on this author!" :)
Yep, Selena is definitely making my reading list quiiiiite long. Although the composition is rather different than yours (says the person who just finished Sandman -- actually, speaking of which, there's a discussion with Selena regarding Fritz and Algarotti on that post that you might find amusing :) You need not have read Sandman, really -- I mean, obviously that would lend a lot of nuance, but it's enough to know that the Endless are personifications of Desire, Death, etc., and skip the non-Fritzian bits.)
Oh, I've been following the discussion (and skimming the non-Fritizan bits), not to worry! Algarotti as desire, and Lehndorff's reaction, were indeed hilarious, and I've been chortling. :)
Edited 2021-09-06 14:32 (UTC)
Re: The Kiekemal Tale: Commissioners, Councillors and Colonists
First of all, I'm delighted by all the specifically documented facts and dates. You're right that the chronology diverges greatly from the biographies, which is something I'm investigating.
Considering what we've found, I'm unsurprised that the Fredersdorf claims turned out to be unsourced. Like you, I suspect she's making inferences. Though I'm still really curious about that April 9th date, though--it seems like she has some kind of source for that.
But now we've finally found the source for Wikipedia, and aside from the April 9th date, it doesn't appear to be drawing on earlier sources. Wikipedia so clearly was that it was bugging me and that's why I got so persistent in trying to find what source.
the lack of Fritz letters to Fredersdorf after 1956 is because of Kiekemal, saying that Fritz dismissing him (as opposed to Fredersdorf retiring) on April 9th 1757
If so, it took Fritz a full year to stop paying him and stop entrusting him with important stuff after he stopped speaking to him? I always assumed that the lack of letters from after 1756 was similar to the lack of letters before 1745, a survival accident based on the part where Fritz was asking Caroline for the letters back, and she sent these and promised the others had been destroyed.
It's kind of interesting to me that the periods we don't have letters from overlap with the wars so much: our letters start with Soor, at the end of the Second Silesian War, and stop shortly after the Diplomatic Revolution, when Fritz realized there was going to be a Third Silesian War. Maybe wartime letters really were more likely to get destroyed. But we do have those post-Soor letters, so it's not that we have no wartime letters. Nor do we have letters from the peacetime gap between the First and Second Silesian Wars.
Anyway, given that Caroline, as I recall, said that the rest of the letters had been destroyed, I would be very wary of making an argument from silence here.
(Wegfraß doesn't say this, but I do: since Fredersdorf at this point has provided the money for most of the aquisitions and the land, it could be argued he's entitled to change the rules, but it IS a significant change from how the whole project started)
It is, and if he had just changed the rules, I would say maybe he was entitled to do that, but the fact that it was still being advertised to the colonists with the original terms, I agree with you that this was very dastardly of him. If I were a colonist, I would be most upset! But I also agree that it doesn't seem like he personally profited.
Frau von Marschall writes indignant letters to the commission, calling the settlers lazy; Emmi Wegfrass says this is unfair (since settlers are refusing to work for her is their only way to fight against being exploited
I have to agree with this.
on November 23rd, 1754, Colonel von Ingersleben (tea cup guy or a relation?)
With the caveat that these noble families have multiple members with the same rank, Wikipedia says teacup guy was a colonel in 1754, and Chief of the Feldjägerkorps and Hofjägermeister. Also that, at least in the 1740s, As an officer of the Guard Battalion, Ingersleben was now a constant companion of the king, even on his travels. Occasionally Friedrich sent him to the Reich with special assignments.. So I'm guessing it's teacup guy.
- Spring 1755: Fritz dismisses his valet Anderson without a pension and confiscates Anderson's correspondence with Pfeiffer; Anderson had been given the estate Philippsthal by Pfeiffer
Oooh, I knew that valet Anderson had been dismissed for financial shenanigans not long before Glasow was dismissed (arrested, imprisoned) for financial shenanigans, but I didn't realize it was the same financial shenanigans that Fredersdorf was allegedly involved in!
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The Kiekemal Tale: Commissioners, Councillors and Colonists
To repeat the key charge as Fahlenkamp phrases it: On April 9th 1757, Fredersdorf gets dismissed from his office as Chamberlain for, as it is said, dishonesty together with the Kriegs and Domänenrat Johann Pfeiffer when buying Kiekemal near Mahlsdorf. Kiekemal was then an empty dispopulated era in the south east of Berlin. The King had provided money for the resettling of this era, which however ended up being pilfered by the director of the Ressettling Commmission of the Kürmärkische Kammer, Johann Friedrich Pfeiffer (1717 - 1787) into his own pockets, under the cooperation of Frederdorf. That his closest confidant Fredersdorf took part in this must have been a heavy blow to Friedrich. The whole thing - an affair that dragged on for years - was discovered when several of the colonists complained, who had been lured from Würtemburg to Brandenburg with the promise of land and no taxes and had ended up being stuck in miserable huts for which they had to pay rent.
Emmi Wegfraß goes into way more detail about this, to which I'll get in a moment. First, something that remains completely unresolved is the contradiction which I spotted when googling Johann Friedrich Pfeiffer after reading Fahlenkamp's book, which starts with the dates, and this is even more puzzling in Wegfraß' book, and ends with what's said about the conclusion. Every biographical entry online I found on Pfeiffer says he was commissioner until 1750, and that he then left Prussia after the "unjustified" (wiki) charge. This article mentions a short stint in prison while the trial was ongoing but also says his name was cleared and that the trial ended in his favour, that he was "freigesprochen" (declared innocent). Emmy Wegfraß, by contrast, says that the commission in charge of investigating the entire affair delivered their report to Fritz on March 31st 1756, declaring that Pfeiffer was guilty, which results in Fritz ordering Pfeiffer's possessions were to be liquidated to compensate for the damage. She also quotes a cabinet order from June 4th 1756 by Fritz in which it says "Pfeiffer has executed the commission entrusted to him badly and derelict of duty and brought everything in great confusion". She then claims that Pfeiffer spent four years under arrest while the commission was investigating, then in 1758 when the "Berliner Kriminal Senat" sent a confirming judgment he got condemned to a further two years imprisonment, and then banished from Prussia. This is at a time when all the online dictionaries say he had already left Prussia and was working elsewhere. This made me wonder for a while whether in fact there were two Pfeiffers and I had the wrong man all the while, but no, in a short "who died when" at the end of the opening section she grudgingly admits that after "the judgment was spoken about him in Prussia", Pfeiffer "occupied himself practically and as a writer with the Cameralwissenschaften" and died a professor in Mainz, so, it is indeed supposed to be the same guy from the dictionaries. (She does not, however, mention what he was writing about, or that his post Prussia CV was that of a liberal innovator; he's a 100% villain in her book.) Since she quotes dated documents from the archives like the cabinet order, I'm still at a loss as to where the date divergence from all the dictionaries comes from.
Now, Fredersdorf. Re: his particular involvement in the entire affair, I'll get to what she quotes from letters and documents from, and what conclusion she drwas. Where she gets speculative is concluding that the lack of Fritz letters to Fredersdorf after 1956 is because of Kiekemal, saying that Fritz dismissing him (as opposed to Fredersdorf retiring) on April 9th 1757, and saying Fredersdorf died of grief for his lost honor (in January 1758). (She seems to be the source for this bit in wiki.) I checked her bibliography, and on Fredersdorf, she solely has Fontane's Wanderungen, which contains nothing of the sort, it just has the story which she also has that supposedly Fredesdorf wanted to be buried with his cartridge bag from his Küstrin uniform (Fontane was a believer in the "they met at Küstrin" variant), and Voltaire's memoirs (she quotes some of his comments on Fredersdorf). Considering I've seen no other source for "died in grief for his lost honor", I'm now tempted to go with the idea that this was her original conclusion (because Fredersdorf's death followed relatively soon after his dismissal/retirement) which was subsequently accepted as fact. She does not mention his various illnesses and doesn't appear to know he got consulted by his successor re: Glasow when that affair went down in the spring and summer of 1757.
However, the woman really did solid research re: the whole settlement story. I don't necessarily always agree with her conclusions, but here's what she can document, and how the story went in her account:
- Johann Friedrich Pfeiffer from Köpenick appointed as Comissioner in 1748. In the same year, he clashes with the Bock family from which he has rented a dairy, as he denounces one of the Bocks for illegally keeping 100 sheep more than declared to the administration; thereafter, the Bock family hates on Pfeiffer and refers to him only as "Secretary Informer Pfeiffer"
- Pfeiffer, who is in charge of colonisation projects (that's what he's the commissioner for as of that year, fitting with his life long speciality), after viewing the ca. 32 hectar land around the Müggelsee decides they're fit for colonisation and asks Bock whether he'd sell to the sate
- Bock, hating on Pfeiffer for the sheep matter, see above, says "Hell no!"
- Pfeiffer ends his renting the dairy from Bock's brother, and in August 1750 suggests the area as suitable for 2 to 3 foreign colonists; he also approaches Fredersdorf with the idea
- in December 1750, Fritz invites Pfeiffer to make a personal report to him at Potsdam
- In a letter by Präsident von Gröben (a relation to the lieutenant of FRitz' youth?) from February 22 1751, Commissioner Pfeiffer gets instructed to officially assess the area in terms of whether it can be settled by 2 - 3 foreign farming families
- in the original plan, each farmer is supposed to get a certain amount of land, and can own up to 100 sheep plus 6 - 10 cows. After six tax free years (to attract settlers and to get the whole thing going) he's supposed to pay rent and tax thereafter
- however, since the commission doesn't have money to finance building farms and providing animals etc. for the farmers in the first place, there should be a private entrepeneur involved who will finance the entire business at first and gets a share from the profits from the farmers till his original investment is covered, plus interest
- as said entrepeneur, Commissioner Pfeiffer suggests Colonel Johann Ferdinand von Trachenberg, who in turn provides Pfeiffer with a document enabling Pfeiffer to negotiate a contract on his behalf; however, this document isn't signed by Trachenberg but by Fredersdorf; it gets accepted by the Köpenick city administration
- The Bocks are pissed off and still don't want to give up the land; however, they themselves have rented it from the state, and their contract is about to run out; they petition to have it prolonged
- in May 1751, the document empowering Pfeiffer on Trachenberg's behalf is questioned because Fredersdorf has signed it, not Trachenberg. Trachenberg himself then shows ups and personally delivers the declaration demanded to the commission
- on July 6th 1751, the ministry responsible for land says that the contract to the Bocks has run out, and the Kiekemal territory can now be used to colonisation; however, Trachenberg hasn't yet delivered the money
- Fredersdorf then provides 4 000 Reichstaler from his personal money; because of her later involvement, Emmi Wegfraß speculates the money may alternatively have come from Frau von Marschall, widow of the late Samuel von Marschall, and was loaned to Fredersdorf in turn, but if so, there aren't any document proving this
- after Fredersdorf has provided the money, the plans can now get signed off, and advertisement to potential settlers starts
- At the start of 1752, the Bocks sell their brewery to Trachenberg; they later will say they were pressured into it. This is the brewery the settlers will later get their beer from. As you might recall, Fredersdorf among other things was invested in breweries.
- on December 24 1751, Trachenberg via Pfeiffer makes the offer to provide money for the settlement of six more families if there is additional land; this gets greenlighted by Fritz
- on July 7th 1752, Colonel von Trachenberg transfers all his claims on the Bock property plus the Kiekenmal land to Fredersdorf; this contract is co-signed by the Köpenick administration
- in August 1752, the chamber for agriculture confirms the transfer
- on December 21st 1752, a cousin of Pfeiffer's buys additional land at the Müggelsee next to the colonisation land so far, which thus further expands
- on January 17th 1753, Fredersdorf writes to Frau von Marschall to offer her the Kiekemal land. He says there will three full time farmers to work on the land as leaseholders
- Frau von Marschall asks whether there will be tax and rent free years; Fredersdorf replies that since hte farmers will get cattle, houses, and land provided to them right from the beginning, there will not be tax and rent free years; this is of course a direct contrast to the original intention
(Wegfraß doesn't say this, but I do: since Fredersdorf at this point has provided the money for most of the aquisitions and the land, it could be argued he's entitled to change the rules, but it IS a significant change from how the whole project started)
- on March 27th, 1753, Fredersdorf signs a contract with Frau von Marschall, selling her the Kiekemal territory along with all the houses built so far as well as the cattle bought (6 oxes, 5 cows, one bull, 160 sheep with ca. 60 lambs) and farming equipment, for 4 000 Reichstaler (i.e. his original investment)
- on June 24th 1753, the three colonist families from Würtemberg arrive; however, they don't have a written contract, and the news that a) the land they're supposed to settle on is owned by Frau von Marschall, and b) Frau von Marschall wants to charge interest immediately instead of waiting for 6 years, which means essentially they'll work for her, not themselves, is a big shock
- cue a year of clashes between the three farmer families and Frau von Marschall, ending in the farmers refusing to work
- on June 28th 1754 Commissioner Ockel is supposed to check out the situation and complaints, and seems to blame the settlers more than Frau von Marschall, since the settlers he says let horses starve despite Frau von Marschall having given each 10 Reichstaler to help them over the winter
- Frau von Marschall writes indignant letters to the commission, calling the settlers lazy; Emmi Wegfrass says this is unfair (since settlers are refusing to work for her is their only way to fight against being exploited, given they were promised tax and rent free years they now don't get), but speculates she might vent her personal misery on them, since of her seven children, all but two are dead, one son is in debt and shocks his mother by leaving the country and becoming a Catholic, the other also is into gambling and acquiring debts
- the mulberry trees and silk spinning houses which Pfeiffer was supposed to plant and build, respectively, haven't yet been done or finished
- on November 23rd, 1754, Colonel von Ingersleben (tea cup guy or a relation?) reports to the King that Pfeiffer has mishandled the situation and has personally enriched himself
- on November 25th, 1754, Pfeiffer gets arrested under this charge; a commission is supposed to investigate the actual state of things at Kiekemal
- Spring 1755: Fritz dismisses his valet Anderson without a pension and confiscates Anderson's correspondence with Pfeiffer; Anderson had been given the estate Philippsthal by Pfeiffer
- August 1755: Fredersdorf writes a letter to Frau von Marschall, saying he's heard the commission is supposed to investigate the following complaints:
1) The Colonists complain that they don't get the tax- and rent free years promised and that instead their rye harvest has been confiscated
2) The local administration hasn't received the 500 Reichstaler bail
3) The beer comes from Dahlwitz instead of Köpenick
4) The sheep farming is conducted in Dahlwitz and not by the colonists
5) the House for spinning hasn't been finished yet despite the wood having been provided
He advises her to come to terms with the Köpenick administration and the farmers, and says he won't interfere any further, he's done with the entire business.
Re: The Kiekemal Tale: Commissioners, Councillors and Colonists
I, uh, was going to reply in full, but I now have 33 tabs dedicated to the subject of Pfeiffer's dates open, and now I must get off the computer. But! I have a 3-day weekend, so expect more.
One question: does she have a source for the April 9, 1757 date? Because the letter from Fredersdorf's successor is dated April 3, which I've always taken as another strike against the claim of dismissal for embezzlement on April 9.
Re: The Kiekemal Tale: Commissioners, Councillors and Colonists
Re: The Kiekemal Tale: Commissioners, Councillors and Colonists
One of these days, we should order a copy of the original April 3, 1757 document from the archives and see if we can get
BTW, the format of the book is very scan unfriendly large, in case you’re wondering.
Gah! This is exactly what I was wondering and was going to ask. Hang onto it, then, I guess, and maybe someday I'll be in Germany and can pick it up and see if I can make it work with my fancy digitizing technology. (I don't trust the overseas mail enough to risk sending the only copy I've been able to find.) Or if another copy comes on the market for a reasonable price, I'll consider ordering it, now that we know it contains reams of data and won't just be tossed aside after a quick skim.
Fredersdorf Defense Fund
But then Cahn wanted an out-of-print book (not relevant to salon) digitized, because I apparently run a book-digitizing business now, lol, this is awesome. And of course she offered to bribe me with books, and I proposed a contribution to the Cause of Exonerating Fredersdorf that was dear to her heart. Because $25 is not a lot for a book you want to read, but is a lot for a book that you might toss aside after discovering it contains nothing of interest.
And so Cahn donated $7 to the cause, and she sent me an Amazon gift card with a note reading "For [book to be digitized] and Fredersdorf Defense Fund," which still makes me laugh.
And then I sent
Salon alchemy strikes again!
Re: Fredersdorf Defense Fund
Yay salon alchemy!!
Re: Fredersdorf Defense Fund
Re: Fredersdorf Defense Fund
I will definitely read it at some point, but no idea when.
Blame Selena for the length of my reading list.Re: Fredersdorf Defense Fund
Yep, Selena is definitely making my reading list quiiiiite long. Although the composition is rather different than yours (says the person who just finished Sandman -- actually, speaking of which, there's a discussion with Selena regarding Fritz and Algarotti on that post that you might find amusing :) You need not have read Sandman, really -- I mean, obviously that would lend a lot of nuance, but it's enough to know that the Endless are personifications of Desire, Death, etc., and skip the non-Fritzian bits.)
Re: Fredersdorf Defense Fund
Re: The Kiekemal Tale: Commissioners, Councillors and Colonists
Considering what we've found, I'm unsurprised that the Fredersdorf claims turned out to be unsourced. Like you, I suspect she's making inferences. Though I'm still really curious about that April 9th date, though--it seems like she has some kind of source for that.
But now we've finally found the source for Wikipedia, and aside from the April 9th date, it doesn't appear to be drawing on earlier sources. Wikipedia so clearly was that it was bugging me and that's why I got so persistent in trying to find what source.
the lack of Fritz letters to Fredersdorf after 1956 is because of Kiekemal, saying that Fritz dismissing him (as opposed to Fredersdorf retiring) on April 9th 1757
If so, it took Fritz a full year to stop paying him and stop entrusting him with important stuff after he stopped speaking to him? I always assumed that the lack of letters from after 1756 was similar to the lack of letters before 1745, a survival accident based on the part where Fritz was asking Caroline for the letters back, and she sent these and promised the others had been destroyed.
It's kind of interesting to me that the periods we don't have letters from overlap with the wars so much: our letters start with Soor, at the end of the Second Silesian War, and stop shortly after the Diplomatic Revolution, when Fritz realized there was going to be a Third Silesian War. Maybe wartime letters really were more likely to get destroyed. But we do have those post-Soor letters, so it's not that we have no wartime letters. Nor do we have letters from the peacetime gap between the First and Second Silesian Wars.
Anyway, given that Caroline, as I recall, said that the rest of the letters had been destroyed, I would be very wary of making an argument from silence here.
(Wegfraß doesn't say this, but I do: since Fredersdorf at this point has provided the money for most of the aquisitions and the land, it could be argued he's entitled to change the rules, but it IS a significant change from how the whole project started)
It is, and if he had just changed the rules, I would say maybe he was entitled to do that, but the fact that it was still being advertised to the colonists with the original terms, I agree with you that this was very dastardly of him. If I were a colonist, I would be most upset! But I also agree that it doesn't seem like he personally profited.
Frau von Marschall writes indignant letters to the commission, calling the settlers lazy; Emmi Wegfrass says this is unfair (since settlers are refusing to work for her is their only way to fight against being exploited
I have to agree with this.
on November 23rd, 1754, Colonel von Ingersleben (tea cup guy or a relation?)
With the caveat that these noble families have multiple members with the same rank, Wikipedia says teacup guy was a colonel in 1754, and Chief of the Feldjägerkorps and Hofjägermeister. Also that, at least in the 1740s, As an officer of the Guard Battalion, Ingersleben was now a constant companion of the king, even on his travels. Occasionally Friedrich sent him to the Reich with special assignments.. So I'm guessing it's teacup guy.
- Spring 1755: Fritz dismisses his valet Anderson without a pension and confiscates Anderson's correspondence with Pfeiffer; Anderson had been given the estate Philippsthal by Pfeiffer
Oooh, I knew that valet Anderson had been dismissed for financial shenanigans not long before Glasow was dismissed (arrested, imprisoned) for financial shenanigans, but I didn't realize it was the same financial shenanigans that Fredersdorf was allegedly involved in!
Excellent amount of detail, thank you!