I. HA GR, Rep. 7 C, Nr. 1414

Four pages from a file of the Prussian central administration for South Prussia (I. HA Geheimer Rat, Rep. 7 C), kept in the Geheimes Staatsarchiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin. The archive’s title for the file is “Aufenthalt des Anton v. Prusimski in Venedig” (the stay of Anton von Prusimski at Venice). The papers were written in and for the department of foreign affairs between December 1796 and March 1797. They are three documents: two in German and one in French.

Historical background

Antoni Prusimski, Starost of Niszczewice, owned the Trąbczyn and Kamionna estates in the part of Poland that Prussia took in 1793. The Prussian authorities named him among the leaders of the Polish rising of 1794, and he left the country. His estates were declared forfeit, and in August 1796 King Friedrich Wilhelm II granted them to Prince Friedrich Ludwig of Hohenlohe-Ingelfingen. Prussia’s share of Poland was then administered in two parts, each under its own minister in Berlin: South Prussia under Count Hoym and New East Prussia under Baron Schroetter. Prussia kept a resident, a diplomatic agent, at Venice.

Contents

The resident’s dispatch, 14 December 1796. An extract in French from dispatch No. 423 of Count Cattaneo, the Prussian resident at Venice. The Polish gentleman Antoine Prusimski had come to him in ruined health and dulled almost to stupor by the death of his wife, and had asked for a certificate of his condition and that he could not travel at present and in that season. Cattaneo writes that he did not think he could refuse it: a man exhausted by going from one house to another could not go from one country to another. The department of foreign affairs received the extract on 2 January 1797 and routed it to its councillor Raumer, who directed on 8 January 1797 that Hoym and Schrötter be notified [2].

The department’s letter, 11 January 1797. The draft of the letter sent on that direction. It is addressed to Hoym and in the same words to Schroetter; a larger hand adds the Grand Chancellor von Goldbeck, and three fair copies are ordered. The department communicates a copy of what the resident has reported about Anton Prusimski, a resident of the provinces acquired from Poland who is at present at Venice. Two ministers of the department sign. The second signature is Haugwitz’s. Of the first only the initial A can be read; it is taken to be Alvensleben’s, the one minister of the department whose name begins with that letter. The letters went to the post on the 12th [1].

Schrötter’s reply, 29 January 1797. Schrötter thanks the department and reports that he has passed the news on to Hoym, since it is not established whether Prusimski is settled in New East Prussia or in South Prussia. The department received the letter on 8 February 1797 and put it with the files in March [3].

The papers do not say what Prusimski wanted the certificate for, or what was done with the news. A later document does. The statement of his daughter’s claim that the Russian envoy handed to the Prussian government in 1818 says that the Prussian authorities had summoned Prusimski in October 1795 and February 1796 to justify his leaving the country, that the summonses reached him at Venice only months later, and that he sent a certificate, legalised by the Prussian legation councillor at Venice, Count “Cathane”, and asked for more time to answer; he died before he obtained it (III. HA MdA, III. Nr. 12366, document 2). That statement calls it a certificate of his wife’s illness and death; the resident’s dispatch speaks of Prusimski’s own condition.

Form and language

The first page is the department’s own draft, with its registry marks and two ministers’ signatures. The extract is a clean copy made in the department. Schrötter’s letter is the original he sent. On the extract and on Schrötter’s letter the department noted the day of receipt, the journal number and what was to be done; on the pages of this edition these notes stand under a label after the text they were written on. The direction of 8 January 1797 is written on a slip of its own.

Related holdings

The grant of Prusimski’s estates to Hohenlohe-Ingelfingen in 1796: I. HA GR, Rep. 7 C, Nr. 3570 and Oe 1 Bü 14525. The suit of his daughter Michalina for her mother’s estates, 1800 to 1802, from the same record group: I. HA GR, Rep. 7 C, Nr. 3709. Her claim of 1818, which tells what the certificate from Venice was for: III. HA MdA, III. Nr. 12366. The return of the confiscated estates to her in 1807: 1/174/0/2/73 and 1/174/0/1/6.

Scans

The archive supplied seven scans. The editor chose four: the others are the modern folder and blank leaves. One scan is a single page and is shown whole. Three are openings whose left side is blank; each was cut to the written side, and on one of them to the slip that carries the writing.

Transcription

The editor transcribed the four pages line by line, one file for each scan. A word broken at the end of a line is marked and shown joined in the reading text.

Division into documents

Each letter is one document, three in all, numbered in the order the pages lie in the file, which is not the order of their dates. The slip with the councillor’s direction of 8 January 1797 is counted with the extract it was written about and stands first in that document, as it lies in the file.

What the department wrote on a paper it received (the day of receipt, the journal number, the routing to an official, the order to file it) is set after the text of that page under a label. The draft is the department’s own paper, and its marks stay where they are.

Corrections

An AI model (Claude) compared the whole transcription with the scans and corrected it where the scan is plain. 20 passages were changed, each logged with its reason. Half are typing slips and single letters. A word the transcription had left out of the French extract (“affatigué”) was added. The others concern the hurried office hands and the signatures. The councillor who signs the directions is Raumer: his name is written out in Latin script at the head of the extract, and the transcription had read his three signatures as Rammer, Maunes and Maurer. The line a larger hand added to the draft names the Grand Chancellor von Goldbeck as a third addressee. Of the two ministers’ signatures under the draft the second reads Haugwitz; the first is probably Alvensleben and is given with a mark of doubt.

Summaries

The summaries were written in German from a reading of each document against its scan, 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 19 statements two said more than the text and were weakened.

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 extract was translated from the French. The registry marks are given in English; two abbreviations that the page does not expand are left as they stand. The same automatic check as elsewhere then confirmed that every figure and every mark of doubt survives into the English.

Still to do

Of the first signature under the draft only the initial A is read; the rest of the name, Alvensleben, is supplied in square brackets, because he was the one minister of the department in 1797 whose name begins with that letter. Two short marks at the head and foot of the draft are not transcribed.