53/71/0/-/57

A court file kept in the Archiwum Państwowe w Poznaniu (State Archive in Poznań). It concerns a hereditary lease of land in the Trąbczyn forest, granted in 1806 by Prince Friedrich Ludwig of Hohenlohe-Ingelfingen (1746-1818) through his agent to the settler Christoph Erbet. The edition treats the file as one document of 21 pages, dated 1806 to 1811.

Historical background

Hohenlohe-Ingelfingen held the Trąbczyn estates in South Prussia by a royal grant of 1796. As lord of the estates he maintained a patrimonial court, which sat at Mariantów and recorded contracts made with the settlers. His general agent, Peter Friedrich von Triebenfeld, let parcels of forest and waste land in hereditary lease: the lessee paid a sum on entry and a fixed annual rent, and held the land heritably. After 1807 the district belonged to the Duchy of Warsaw, and its courts worked in Polish.

Contents

The record of the court, dated 31 March 1806, sets out the contract. Triebenfeld, as authorised agent of Hohenlohe-Ingelfingen, grants Christoph Erbet of the Trąbczyn Hauland one Hufe, Magdeburg measure, in the Trąbczyn forest for 100 Rthl entry money and an annual rent of 30 Rthl [1]. The first three years are free of rent, and the first payment, of 15 Rthl, falls due at Christmas 1809 [1]. The court’s order of 23 May 1806 directs that the contract be issued [1].

Filed with the contract are the general power of attorney given to Triebenfeld on 19 February 1805, in a certified copy, and the issued contract with its covering notes to both parties [1]. A letter of 1811, in Polish, records that an official, Hawich, handed the file to the peace court of the Konin district and asked that costs of 9 Rthl 18 dgl be recovered from Erbet [1].

Form and language

The file is in German, except the letter and bill of costs of 1811, which are in Polish. One image in the archive’s sequence is absent; the text continues without a gap.

Related holdings

Further hereditary leases made before the same court in the same weeks, in the copies kept by Hohenlohe-Ingelfingen: Oe 1 Bü 14526. Letters of Triebenfeld to Hohenlohe-Ingelfingen: Oe 1 Bü 9454. A lease of forest at Drzewce engrossed by the same court ten days earlier, with another copy of the power of attorney and with the Chamber’s consent to the parcelling, in copies made about 1930: 53/968/0/-/801.

Scans

The archive supplied 22 images, one page each. They are used as supplied, without cropping. The first is the file’s title page.

Transcription

The German and Polish text was transcribed by an AI system and supplied by the editor, one file for each page.

Division into documents

The editor treats the whole file as one document, dated by the contract of 31 March 1806. Its parts are the court record, the letter of 1811, the powers of attorney and the issued contract, in the order in which they are bound.

Corrections

An AI model (Claude) proposed corrections to the transcription. A word was changed only where an independent witness supported the change. Most witnesses here are the lease contracts in Oe 1 Bü 14526, which were made before the same court in the same weeks and use the same formulas. Each change is logged with its reason. The contract’s paragraph numbers were wrong at two points; the editor read the scan and the numbering was restored. Words that remain doubtful were left as transcribed.

Summary and translation

The model read the document whole and wrote a German summary. A second, separate run of the model checked the summary against the text and shortened it. The English summary is a translation of the checked German one. The model also translated the document. Two corrections it proposed during translation had a witness in the file and were applied, and the document was then translated again from the corrected text. The English marks two garbled passages as uncertain.