53/968/0/-/801

Sixteen pages and a cover from the papers of Albert Breyer (Spuścizna Alberta Breyera) in the State Archive in Poznań. Breyer (1889-1939) taught at the German secondary schools of Zgierz and Sompolno and studied the history of the German settlements in central Poland. The pages are written in one hand of the twentieth century; the archive dates them about 1930 and describes them as copies of documents of 1805 and 1806 on the parcelling of the estates of Zagórów, Witów and Trąbczyn. They copy three papers that belong together, each of them a document here: a power of attorney, a royal consent and a lease contract. The pages do not say where the originals were when the copy was made.

Historical background

Prince Friedrich Ludwig of Hohenlohe-Ingelfingen (1746-1818), a Prussian general, owned the lordships of Zagórów and Trąbczyn in South Prussia, the part of Poland that Prussia had taken in 1793. His agent there was the War and Forest Councillor Peter Friedrich von Triebenfeld. In 1805 and 1806 the demesne farms and forests of both lordships were divided into holdings and let to settlers in hereditary lease: the holder paid a fixed yearly rent for ever and could sell or bequeath the holding. Dividing a noble estate in this way needed the King’s consent, which the provincial administration, the War and Domains Chamber at Kalisz, issued in his name.

Contents

The general power of attorney, 19 February 1805. At the Guhrwitz justice office near Wrocław, Hohenlohe-Ingelfingen authorises Triebenfeld to act for him in all matters of his estates of Zagórów, Witów and Trąbczyn in the Kalisz department, whether parcelling, sale, lease or mortgage: to apply to the Chamber and to the Government at Kalisz, the provincial court, to settle with the lessees, to pay and receive money, and to give orders to the estate officials and suspend them. The justice office attests the Prince’s signature the same day. The Hohenlohe patrimonial court on Trąbczyn certifies the copy at Mariantów on 21 March 1806 [1].

The consent of the Chamber, 28 January 1806. In the King’s name, and on cabinet orders of 22 October and 7 December of the year before, the South Prussian War and Domains Chamber allows the Prince to parcel out the demesne farms of Drzewce, Kopojno, Świątniki, Święcia and Broniki in the lordship of Zagórów and of Nowa Wieś, Przybysław, Stara Huta and part of Trąbczyn in the lordship of Trąbczyn; to let the demesne farms and villages of Oleśnica and Szetlewek in hereditary lease; and to turn the labour services and dues of all his subjects into a fixed money rent. He keeps back part of the Trąbczyn demesne farm and the demesne land at Mariantów, and a part of the forest. Four conditions are attached. The compensation of the subjects for their rights of pasture and wood is to be fixed, and the rent-free land each receives entered in his deed, after a corrected survey. No peasant holding may lapse: where nobody rebuilds one after a fire, the lordship must. The state’s taxes continue to be paid and are secured in the mortgage book on the land the Prince keeps. The wood rights of the abbey and provostry of Ląd are entered on the forest he keeps, and if that forest proves too small for the wood rights of the royal domain office of Ratyń, a yearly payment is to make up for it [2].

The hereditary-lease contract. The copy begins in the middle of the list of the parties; the opening of the record, with its date, is missing. Through Triebenfeld the Prince lets 100 Magdeburg Hufen of the forest of his estate of Drzewce to eighteen named settlers for ever. Sixteen take 5 Hufen each and two take 10. The land is waste overgrown with wood, so no entry money is paid and four rent-free years are allowed for clearing it, ending at Christmas 1808. From then the rent is 30 Reichsthaler a Hufe, 3000 Reichsthaler a year in all, paid in two halves at Midsummer and at Christmas. The nineteen paragraphs also provide that the lessees may pass parts of their land to others; that they build at their own cost with the timber standing on the land; that a tenth of the price is due to the lordship at every sale, but nothing on inheritance; that after the free years half the rent can be redeemed at 5 per cent, while the other half stays for ever; that the lessees and their descendants are free of hereditary subjection and of labour service but remain under the lordship’s court; that the community receives 21 Morgen free of rent for a schoolmaster, a village mayor and a churchyard; that beer and spirits must be bought from the lordship’s brewery; that no rent is remitted for any misfortune; that a lessee more than two years in arrears loses his holding; and that all are liable for the rent jointly. Triebenfeld signs, and the Prince adds that he has read and approved. Seven of the lessees sign their names and eleven make three crosses. The court engrosses the contract at Mariantów on 21 March 1806 [3].

The four free years are said to begin at Christmas “of this year” and to end at Christmas 1808 [3].

Four years before Christmas 1808 is Christmas 1804. The contract therefore appears to have been recorded in 1804 and engrossed only in March 1806, after the Chamber had given its consent. Another lease in the Prince’s own copies was recorded on 20 December 1804 and engrossed in May 1806, with the same official and the same court attesting it.

Form and language

German, in the legal register of the time, with the Latin terms of the courts. The copyist writes the German in Kurrent script and names and foreign words in Latin script, numbers the pages 1 to 16, and spells several places in his own way (Zagurowo, Trompczyn, Lond). He copied the list of the lessees’ shares with corrections: two names are written in between the lines and the numbering is altered. A note of the court’s fees beside the last lines is not transcribed.

Related holdings

A lease of the same kind from the same court, with another copy of the same power of attorney: 53/71/0/-/57. The Prince’s own copies of the leases made on Trąbczyn in 1804 to 1806, among them another copy of the Chamber’s consent: Oe 1 Bü 14526. The lease of Oleśnica, which the consent names: I. HA GR, Rep. 7 C, Nr. 3705. Triebenfeld’s letters to the Prince, which follow the parcelling from his side: Oe 1 Bü 9454.

Scans

The archive supplied seventeen images: the cover and sixteen single pages. They are shown as they came, without cropping.

Transcription

The editor supplied the transcription as one text, written paragraph by paragraph and not line by line, and marked with the page numbers 1 to 15. It was divided to match the pages; the text of page 16, which had no mark of its own, was separated at the first signature on that page. The words on the cover were added from the image.

Division into documents

Each of the three papers is one document, by the editor’s decision: the power of attorney, the consent and the lease contract. Each is dated from its own text: the power of attorney by the day it was given, 19 February 1805; the consent by the day it was issued, 28 January 1806; the contract by the day the court engrossed it, 21 March 1806, since the opening of the record, with the day the contract was made, is missing.

Corrections

An AI model (Claude) compared the whole transcription with the scans and corrected it where the page is plain. 84 passages were changed, each logged with its reason. Most are typing slips and single misread letters. For two of the three papers another copy of the same text is in the edition, and each was used as a second witness: the power of attorney in 53/71/0/-/57 and the Chamber’s consent in Oe 1 Bü 14526. Four changes go beyond a letter or two. A line and a half of the consent that the transcription had skipped was added. The share of one lessee, Michael Just, was corrected from 10 Hufen to 5, as the page has it; with 10 the shares would not add up to the 100 Hufen the contract names. One lessee’s name was corrected from Siemert and Liemert to Liewert. The three crosses with which eleven lessees signed were added before their names as “xxx”. The copyist’s own spellings were kept.

Summaries

The summaries were written in German from a reading of each document against its scans, and translated into English. Each statement in them was then checked against its document, under the same rules as the separate check that the summaries of other holdings received: a summary may say only what the document says. Of 35 statements two said more than the text and were weakened: one on the wood rights in the consent, one on the purpose of the rent-free years in the contract.

Translation

The documents were translated into English in a working session under the same rules as the other holdings: every figure, name and mark of doubt carried across, names in the edition’s settled forms where it has settled them and otherwise as the page spells them, and passages that do not read left visibly doubtful rather than smoothed. The published English of the other copies of the power of attorney and of the consent, and of a lease from the same court, was read beside them, so that the same German formula has the same English. Where this copy differs from the others in a word, the English follows this copy and a note records the difference. The same automatic check as elsewhere then confirmed that every figure survives into the English.

Still to do

The note of the court’s fees on the last page is not transcribed.