Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 30

[cahn]

In which, despite the title, I would like to be told about the English Revolution, which is yet another casualty of my extremely poor history education :P :)

Also, this is probably the place to say that RMSE opened with three Fritz-fics, all of which I think are readable with minimum canon knowledge:

The Boy Who Lived - if you knew about the doomed escape-from-Prussia-that-didn't happen and tragic death of Fritz's boyfriend Hans Hermann von Katte, you may not have known about Peter Keith, the third young man who conspired to escape Prussia -- and the only one who actually did. This is his story. I think readable without canon knowledge except what I just said here.

Challenge Yourself to Relax - My gift, I posted about this before! Corporate AU with my problematic fave, Fritz' brother Heinrich, who's still Fritz's l'autre moi-meme even in corporate AU. Readable without canon knowledge if one has familiarity with the corporate world and the dysfunctions thereof.

The Rise and Fall of the RendezvousWithFame Exchange - Fandom AU with BNF fanfic writer Voltaire, exchange mod Fritz, and the inevitable meltdown. (I wrote this one and am quite proud of the terrible physics-adjacent pun contained within.) Readable without canon knowledge if one has familiarity with fandom and the dysfunctions thereof :P

Comments

Pfeiffer chronology

[mildred_of_midgard]

All right, I can't be sure, but I *think* I know what's going on here. Courtesy of my now 45 open tabs on the subject:

[ETA: there's a TL;DR at the end, if you only care about the conclusions and not the excruciatingly detailed evidence.]

Reminder: the problem here is that various biographical dictionaries, articles, and sources to be found on the internet say that Pfeiffer was commissioner from 1747-1750, that he was charged with embezzlement in 1750, that he was found innocent, and that he then left Prussian service. Whereas Wegfraß, author of the Kiekemal volume I sent Selena, says that he was commissioner until 1756, when he was found guilty and sentenced to several years of imprisonment, then banished from Prussia.

I think our confusion can be traced back to two 1797 sources.

One is the source felis turned up: an article on page 151 of Allgemeiner litterarischer Anzeiger oder Annalen der gesammten Litteratur für die geschwinde Bekanntmachung verschiedener Nachrichten aus dem Gebiete der Gelehrsamkeit und Kunst, by J. D. A. Höck. Höck says, and a German speaker should check me, but my interpretation is that Höck says, "Pfeiffer is well known, but so far he has no biography, which I am going to try to remedy here! Unfortunately, when I got to know him in Hanau, I couldn't get him to talk about his life. So I've cobbled together some things I got from what he said, and what he wrote, and what other people who know him better than I do have said. Here goes!

Johann Friedrich Pfeiffer was born--where? I don't know--in 1717...He became royal Prussian war councillor and between 1747 and 1750, he founded 105 villages and settlements in the Brandenburg Mark. He ascended in Prussian service to the level of a secret councillor, but was accused of embezzlement in the timber trade, and sent to Spandau. Although he was found innocent and soon let go, he left Prussian service. He traveled to [long list of places], finally ending up in Mainz, where he died a professor in 1787."

Key points:
1. Höck is admitting he's not the most reliable source.
2. He doesn't even know where Pfeiffer was born, and as we'll see later, gets the year wrong.
3. He thinks it's the timber trade Pfeiffer was accused of embezzlement in.
4. He actually says nothing about the role as commissioner ending in 1750, nor about the trial taking place in that year. My reading is that he's mentioning 1747-1750 as the most productive period--"He founded 105 settlements in just 3 years!"--not necessarily as the whole period.

Then, also in 1797, we've got page 6 of volume 11 of the Hessisches Gelehrtenlexikon, by Friedrich Wilhelm Strieder. Strieder writes, and again a German speaker should check me, "Back in 1780, when Pfeiffer was in Hanau, he sent me this essay on his life. According to him:

Johann Friedrich von Pfeiffer was born in Berlin in 1718. [Became a soldier, present at Mollwitz, etc.] Entered the civil service, became a war and domain councillor...was entrusted with the direction of new settlements in the Brandenburg Mark. After leaving Prussian service, he went to various principalities..."

Key points:
1. Claims to be Pfeiffer's own words.
2. Contradicts Höck on really basic things like birth year. Also gives the place of birth, which Höck didn't know.
3. Mentions nothing about any embezzlement.
4. Mentions no dates for the service.

Further biographies that I've checked cobble together these two sources. Then, finally, in 1893, the Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB) writes, "[Pfeiffer] was active from 1747 to 1750 Director of the Dispute Commission and New Settlements in the Brandenburg Mark...founded during this time 150 villages and settlements in the Mark, but was finally because of suspicion of embezzlement in the timber trade drawn into an investigation and brought to Spandau. Although pronounced innocent, P left Prussian service."

Key points:
1. This is the first source I can find that actually says he was *director* from 1747-1750, not that he founded X villages from 1747-1750.
2. The language is copied almost verbatim from Höck.
3. The number of villages and settlements is 150, not 105, which strikes me as the ADB author having a dyslexic moment.

Now, the ADB was *the* major source for the lives of obscure Germans (and a significant one for even less obscure Germans) until the revised version, the Neue Deutsche Biographie (NDB), came out in the twentieth century.

Here's the revised version from the Deutsche Biographie (online version incorporating material from both the ADB and NDB): "Between 1747 and 1750 he was responsible for the founding of more than 100 peasant settlements. Because of an alleged embezzlement he was accused and briefly imprisoned, whereupon P, despite being pronounced innocent, left Prussian service."

Key points:
1. We're back to him founding X settlements between 1747 and 1750, not to him being commissioner between those dates.
2. No mention of dates for the end of the stint as commissioner or the trial and imprisonment.
3. Incorporates material from the ADB's sources but is more faithful than the ADB to those sources.

Final note: none of these sources mention him being found guilty.

TL;DR: So here's what I think happened.

1. Pfeiffer was commissioner from 1748 to 1756.
2. Pfeiffer was found guilty and imprisoned.
3. Pfeiffer really didn't want to talk about this in the 1780s.
4. He omitted any discussion of any trial at all in his write-up.
5. Höck, who couldn't even get a write-up out of Pfeiffer, cobbled together what he could from sources of varying reliability. His unreliable sources are responsible for the claim that Pfeiffer, now famous and successful, was found innocent.
6. Höck was calling attention to the 1747-1750 period as the most productive, i.e. saying Pfeiffer really hit the ground running there.
7. Höck got the 1747 year wrong for 1748, just as he got 1717 wrong for 1718. (He may even have heard or read "when Pfeiffer was 30" and have done the math there.)
8. The ADB was sloppy about overapplying the 1747-1750 dates to include his whole stint as commissioner, just as it was sloppy about 105 vs. 150 villages and settlements.
9. The ADB has been repeatedly copied by later authors, for example by the Gutenberg Biographics that Fahlenkamp and Buwert pointed me to.
10. The NDB revised the ADB by removing some of its mistakes, but still used the same 1797 sources, so still believes in Pfeiffer's innocence. (Interestingly, no mention of the timber trade; I wonder if one of the NDB sources said it was Kiekemal, and the author decided to be agnostic about the specifics of the accusation.)
11. Nobody but us and some Wikipedia author has read Wegfraß. [ETA: Wegfraß was writing in what, 2003?, so obviously nobody writing before that could have read her specific work, but I mean both that the authors of recent articles and posts haven't read her, and also that nobody, before or after 2003, has read her sources, either because they didn't have access to the archives, or because they copied what they'd read instead of digging through the archives.]

Re: Pfeiffer chronology

[selenak]

By Jove, you've got it! All hail the Royal Detective.

A footnote on the timber trade: actually, this sounds to me as if Höck at least heard some semi-founded rumors, because remember, one of the issues brought up in 1756 was that despite the necessary wood having been provided (and presumably paid for), the house for the spinners hadn't been built and the houses for the colonists were smaller than planned.

Anyway, that accounts for the contradictions, and yet again proves the danger of writers, no matter whether they're biographers or just writers of encyclopedia entries, copying each other. Mind you, I know I'm sitting in glass houses, because I sure as hell didn't go to the Prussian Secret State Archive, either, and if I did I probably would not be able to decypher anything, whereas MS Wegfraß did both. Our salon is so lucky that, say, Schmidt-Lötzen translated and transcribed Lehndorff's diaries! And Koser did all the work with Henri de Catt's diary and memoirs! ETc.

Re: Pfeiffer chronology

[mildred_of_midgard]

actually, this sounds to me as if Höck at least heard some semi-founded rumors

That's a definite possibility that did occur to me, but even if it did get to him via that route, we've clearly got a game of telephones at work here that shows how little info Höck has. Which is relevant to him being the apparent source for the claim that Pfeiffer was found innocent.

Mind you, I know I'm sitting in glass houses, because I sure as hell didn't go to the Prussian Secret State Archive, either

Ahahaha, I am painfully aware that I live in a glass house. Number of times I've critiqued other people for not using the archives: countless. Number of times I've consulted archives: ...once if you count FamilySearch? :P Oh, I guess the scanned documents from the Academy of Sciences that had Peter Keith's name, but thank goodness for other people to transcribe, digitize, and organize them for me.

Also, producing something the scope of the the ADB or NDB and expecting every author to have hunted through the archives...will result in a lot less works like the ADB or NDB. Much less other types of works.

I too am grateful for everyone with the skills, access, and dedication to go through the archives so I don't have to. :)

I probably would not be able to decypher anything

Which reminds me, while hunting for Pfeiffer material, I found that the Mainz city archives web page has a video tutorial on paleography, with sample documents to practice on! If I get to the point where I have more time, I might check it out (it looks good), and I encourage all interested parties in salon to do the same! (Especially ones who know German better than I do.)

My plan is still to wait for the pandemic to end so that archive-ordering becomes a thing again and for prinzsorgenfrei to come back, then to start trying to order material from the Prussian archives. I have a wishlist. :D

Re: Pfeiffer chronology

[mildred_of_midgard]

Also, I have to say, it was really helpful of Höck to call attention to his ignorance and lack of reliability in his sources. Usually these authors are not so honest!

Re: Pfeiffer chronology

[cahn]

I have nothing particularly interesting to contribute, but this is awesome, sounds very plausible, and I always get a super kick out of all this stuff happening in my DW :D

Re: Pfeiffer chronology

[mildred_of_midgard]

I get a SUPER kick out of this happening in your DW! Also, thanks to your contribution to the defense fund!