III. HA MdA, III Nr. 12765

The file was kept by the third section of the Prussian Ministry of Foreign Affairs from 1814 to 1820. It concerns the claim of Prince Friedrich Ludwig of Hohenlohe-Ingelfingen (1746-1818), a Prussian general, to be compensated for the Trąbczyn estates in the former province of South Prussia, which were taken from him in 1807. It contains thirty documents: incoming petitions and reports, and the ministry’s drafts of its replies and instructions.

Historical background

In 1796 the King of Prussia granted Hohenlohe-Ingelfingen a group of estates in South Prussia, the province formed from Prussia’s share of the partitions of Poland. The estates had been confiscated from the Starost Prusimski after the uprising of 1794 [4, 14]. They comprised Trąbczyn with several villages in the district of Konin, and Kamionna and Kolno further west [4]. Hohenlohe-Ingelfingen sold Kamionna and Kolno to Leixner, a bank director; the file gives the year of the sale both as 1804 and as 1805 [4, 14].

Prussia ceded the province by the Peace of Tilsit in 1807, and the Duchy of Warsaw was established in it. Fourteen weeks after the peace a Polish administrative commission took possession of all the estates without a court judgment and transferred them to Prusimski’s daughter [4]. She is named in the file as Miączyńska and as Dąbska, after two husbands [4, 19]. Hohenlohe-Ingelfingen brought an action, and the tribunal at Kalisz declared that it had no authority to set aside the commission’s order [4]. After the Congress of Vienna the district of Konin belonged to the Kingdom of Poland under the Russian Emperor, to whom the claim was thereafter addressed [8].

Contents

Petitions of 1814 and 1815

Peter Friedrich von Triebenfeld, the general agent of Hohenlohe-Ingelfingen, petitioned the State Chancellor, Hardenberg, in Paris in May 1814 and in Vienna in October 1814 and March 1815 [1, 3, 4]. The petition of March 1815 states the case in full and asks for the return of the Trąbczyn estates with nine years’ revenue, 36,500 Rthl [4]. Hohenlohe-Ingelfingen wrote in April 1815 to Baron vom Stein and in May 1815 to Hardenberg. He gives his loss as 325,400 Reichsthaler in the first letter and as more than 261,000 Rthl in the second, and in the second asks to be given the crown estate of Sokolnik in compensation [6, 8]. The replies defer the matter until the settlement of Polish affairs and refer to a negotiation on the compensation of all holders of granted estates in South Prussia [2, 3, 5, 7, 9].

Report of Zerboni di Sposetti, 1815

Hardenberg requested a report from Zerboni di Sposetti, the senior Prussian official at Poznań [10]. The report of 2 November 1815 rejects the calculations submitted for Hohenlohe-Ingelfingen, states that he had allowed Trąbczyn to deteriorate and had encumbered it with debt, and concludes that Prussia could do no more than ask the Russian government to decide the claim [14]. A marginal opinion of April 1816 records that Triebenfeld had died [14].

Intercession at St Petersburg, 1816

In April 1816 the ministry instructed the Prussian envoy at St Petersburg, Major General von Schöler, to bring the request to the Emperor’s notice in general terms and without pressing it, compensation being a matter of grace [15, 17]. Hohenlohe-Ingelfingen was informed of the instruction [16]. Schöler reported on 23 November 1816 that the Russian ministry had refused, and the ministry sent Hohenlohe-Ingelfingen a copy of the Russian note [25, 26].

Petition of the widow von Brehmer, 1816

The widow of Colonel von Brehmer petitioned as heir of her brother, Major von Seehausen, who in 1803 had lent Hohenlohe-Ingelfingen 5,000 Rthl secured on Szetlewek, a village of the Trąbczyn estates; neither capital nor interest had been paid [19]. A marginal opinion on her petition holds that any compensation granted by Russia should go to the creditors registered on the estates [19]. The ministry directed her to sue Hohenlohe-Ingelfingen before his own court and informed Schöler of the creditors’ position [20, 21, 22]. She then submitted a judgment of 1806 in her favour; the ministry replied that it could take no further step [23, 24].

Claim of the heirs, 1820

After the death of Hohenlohe-Ingelfingen his heirs had their claim recommended to the Russian government by Duke Eugen of Württemberg, citing two Prussian generals who had been compensated [27]. The Russian envoy at Berlin, Alopeus, replied on 31 January 1820 that the claim had been refused in 1816 and that the Emperor could not act on the recommendation [27]. The ministry took no further step and referred the matter to the Minister of the Interior, von Schuckmann [29].

Request of Count Bethusy, 1819 to 1820

The same Russian note refuses an unrelated request. Count Ernst Bethusy, a landowner in Silesia and in the Kingdom of Poland, had asked for free movement between his properties under article 18 of the Treaty of Vienna. The Polish government held that the article applied only to properties divided by the new border [27, 28]. Both Prussian ministries considered the request inadmissible [29, 30].

Form and language

Twelve documents are drafts of outgoing letters, bearing the paraphs of the officials who approved them [2, 5, 7, 9, 10, 16, 17, 21, 22, 24, 26, 29]. Three drafts are written on the incoming letter to which they reply [2, 9, 10]. One reply to Hohenlohe-Ingelfingen exists as a cancelled draft and its fair copy, which was not sent [11, 12]. The paraphs are those of Hardenberg, the Councillor of State Stägemann, and the officials Hoffmann and Balan; the edition expands them in square brackets [5, 22, 29]. The documents are in German, except five in French [6, 7, 13, 27, 28]. The drafts are written in a cursive chancery hand, and several are transcribed imperfectly; this is noted on the page of each document concerned.

Related holdings

Letters of Triebenfeld to Hohenlohe-Ingelfingen, including those written from Vienna in 1814 and 1815: Oe 1 Bü 9454. The grant of 1796: Oe 1 Bü 14525 and I. HA GR, Rep. 7 C, Nr. 3570. Complaints of Prusimski’s daughter against Hohenlohe-Ingelfingen, 1800 to 1802: I. HA GR, Rep. 7 C, Nr. 3709. Two documents mentioned in the file are not in it: the letter of Hohenlohe-Ingelfingen to the Russian Emperor of 1814, and the Russian note of November 1816.

Scans

The archive photographed the file as 46 openings, two facing pages at a time. Nine blank openings were left out. Every other opening was cut at its fold, and only a side with writing on it became a page of the edition: 48 pages and a cover. The editor placed each fold line.

Transcription

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

Division into documents

Each letter, draft or note is one document, thirty in all. A reply drafted on an incoming letter counts as a document of its own. Shorter marks made by the office that received a letter, such as who it was passed to or what should be answered, stay with that letter and are shown at its end under a label, “Written by the receiving office”. Dates are taken from each document’s own dateline.

Corrections

An AI model (Claude) went through the transcription and proposed corrections. A word was changed only where something other than the model’s sense of the sentence supported the change: a second copy of the same text elsewhere in the file, a fixed formula of the chancery, or a misspelling one letter away from the only word that fits. 193 words were corrected this way, and each change is logged with its reason. The editor checked a random twenty against the scans and found all twenty right, then ruled on the doubtful ones by looking at the page. A passage too garbled to settle was left as it stands. Nine drafts are still rough and are marked as such.

Paraphs

Officials initialled drafts instead of signing them, and the transcription read these marks badly. Every one was cropped from the scans and laid side by side. They sort into four hands, which the editor confirmed as Hardenberg, Stägemann, Hoffmann and Balan, and the names are filled out in square brackets. An earlier reading of one mark as “Hoym” was dropped: a minister of that name had died in 1807.

Addition from the scan

In the letter of Hohenlohe-Ingelfingen to Stein the transcription had left out a clause giving the sum he paid to free the estates from debt. It was read on the scan and added at the editor’s wish, and the letter’s own arithmetic confirms the figure [6].

Reading and summaries

The model read each document whole and recorded who writes to whom, what is said, how legible it is and which words it doubts. German summaries were written from that reading and then checked by a second, separate run of the model, which was allowed only to cut or weaken a statement the text does not bear out. It changed eight summaries. The English summaries are translations of the checked German ones.

Translation

The model translated each document with its reading notes and doubtful words in front of it. An automatic check then confirms that every figure, every name and every mark of doubt in the German has survived into the English. A few titles and names were then corrected by hand in the English. A translation can only be as good as the transcription under it: where a draft is badly read, its English is uncertain too.

Open points

Some words remain unread and are listed for the editor. A few clauses and office marks that are on the scans but not in the transcription have not been added. No themes have been assigned to these documents.