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The True Jacobins in the Prussian State, or - A Documentary Account of the Wicked Intrigues and Fraudulent Conduct in Office of Two Prussian Ministers of State

The True Jacobins in the Prussian State, or: A Documentary Account of the Wicked Intrigues and Fraudulent Conduct in Office of Two Prussian Ministers of State.

The Heart of the Matter.

To every possessor his own, and to every ruler a sense of justice!
That is to be wished; but you! Neither of the two do you procure us.

See the Xenien in Schiller’s Almanac for 1797.

1801.

Everywhere and nowhere.

There is no gain so legitimate but that it is surpassed by what one can make illegitimately, and the wrong done to one’s neighbour is always more lucrative than services rendered. It is therefore only a question of finding the means to secure impunity, and it is to this that the powerful devote all their strength and the weak all their cunning.

Rousseau
Discours sur l’inégalité, Note 9.

To the Exalted and Supreme Judicial Majesty of the Now-Reigning King of Prussia, Frederick William III.

Most Serene, Most Exalted Monarch, Most Revered and most upright Sovereign Lord in the State!

Before you permit the sale of this book to be forbidden within the country, devote to it but a single solitary half-hour to read it through Yourself. For its content is truly important. Then judge for Yourself as well. Your judgment alone do all those hold to be competent who see in You not only the first but also the most upright man in the State, and who revere Your exalted office and Your person far too sincerely to be capable of attempting, against both, the criminal and wretched game of an anxious and cunning cabal. You stand too high, You stand wholly independent in the sanctuary of justice, for partisan considerations toward persons within the State, who after all are always only Your servants and subjects, to be able to determine Your judgment. If need be, You may indeed inquire of a few other honest men — an Arnim, Struensee, Menke, Hoff, etc. — as to their opinions.

But properly speaking — that Your own free and just judgment should decide the fate of these pages, this is the most respectful and most humble prayer of

Year 1801

the most upright of Your servants and most faithful of Your subjects.

[p. 1]

To the Readers.

On my last journey in the summer of this year 1800, from Breslau — Whither? may be a matter of indifference to the readers — my road led me through the little South Prussian town of Krotoszyn, situated hard on the Silesian border, 12 German miles east of Breslau. I had my horses fed at the inn there, sat down on a beam before the house door, and was just musing on what sort of book might come into being if the

[p. 2]

biography were written of a certain Minister who still figures and manoeuvres most imposingly in the Prussian State, when yet another stranger arrived in a kibitka. The man looked very morose, pale, and mistrustful; nor did he descend from his conveyance, but remained lying within it, reading in a book. My efforts to draw him into conversation were fruitless. Meanwhile it so happened that we set off almost at the same time, he ahead and I behind, upon the same road. His horses were somewhat quicker than mine, and so after a while I lost sight of him in the still, dense woods of Krotoszyn. By chance I leaned out of my carriage to blow out my pipe and saw, beside the wheel-track, precisely where the man had driven, a black leather portfolio lying, which I had handed up to me. Naturally I supposed that it had fallen from the stranger’s carriage, and I hastened to overtake him. But

[p. 3]

all effort was in vain; I never saw him again.

Curiosity — I gladly confess this impulse in myself — at last made me open the portfolio, which was in any case not locked but only buttoned shut, and behold — I found within it the wholly finished, very neatly written manuscript which, since to judge by the introduction and the notes it was plainly intended for print, I herewith impart to the reading-eager world, for its edification. Long did I struggle with myself whether I ought to do so or not; in the end, however, the conviction gained the upper hand that, for the gain and victory of truth and virtue, it is always good to bring such characterizing infamies — especially when documented from the records — before the judgment seat of contemporaries and of public opinion. I therefore give my find exactly as it came into my hands; the morose stranger will not, I hope, on that account

[p. 4]

be angry with me. The circumstance that this manuscript so unexpectedly corresponded to the reflections which I had brought with me from Breslau and had continued to pursue while sitting before the inn at Krotoszyn seemed to me a hint from fate, to convey further what it had cast to me.

If I am not mistaken, all the most essential documents concerning the case in question are here supplied, so that nothing is wanting that belongs to its history and development. Whatever was secretly corresponded between v. Hoym and v. Goldbeck on the matter, the gentlemen have probably burned. Yet it might be that with the justice commissioner Früson in Posen many a written original voucher of these knaveries still lies hidden, which the possessor perhaps withholds only because his experiences have robbed him of courage and love of country. For the presentation of the heart of the matter these pages meanwhile fully suffice. The readers may

[p. 5]

for the rest judge for themselves. To anticipate them in this would, with regard to the honest, be an insult; with regard to the knaves, labour lost in any case. To both the compiler has at least spared the tedium, in that he has omitted all useless papers which concerned merely the shells and not the kernel.

I must not forget to mention a slip of paper which lay in the bottom of the portfolio and appeared to be written in a different hand than the one from which the notes proceed. It ran thus:

“Should these pieces be falsified, and should this be capable of proof, or a refutation of them be possible, this could only be done by comparison with those two files lying in the archive of the Regierung at Posen which bear the following titles:

[p. 6]

Acta primae Instantiae

“Of the Regierung at Posen, in the matter of the Ober-Amtmann Früson of Slawitz in Silesia, against the Seehandlung at Berlin, concerning reinstatement in the lease of the lordship of Krotoszyn. Begun 4 January 1794. And

Acta primae Instantiae

Of the Regierung at Posen in the matter of the Amtmann Früson against the Maritime and Salt Trading Society at Berlin and the War and Domains Chamber at Breslau, concerning the ejection from the lease of Krotoszyn. Begun 22 December 1797.”

Now whether such records really exist, and whether from them a refutation of the proceedings here delivered might be drawn, or a proof of falsification carried out, the gentlemen v. Hoym

[p. 7]

and v. Goldbeck will surely know best. The public expects the former, in case the said gentlemen should still feel some desire to save their honour; or else, if no refutation whatever appears, it will believe in the authenticity of these proceedings, and will so long hold them up before the throne of a King who makes a false conclusion only when his first servants of state lie to him — a King whose only fault is that he is not yet stern1 enough for these vice-ridden times — before the throne of Frederick William III, who in the present case was deceived with incredible insolence and shamefulness, until at last He shall become

[p. 8]

attentive and conclude: Those who were capable of carrying out so base a trick are capable of several like it. Berlin, in November 1800, at the beginning of the 4th year of the reign of Frederick William III.

[p. 9]

Introduction.

The Maritime and Salt Trading Society (the Seehandlung) in Berlin has from of old had much commerce with those regions which were formerly called: Poland. At the head of this institution Frederick the Great — who in the choice of persons was not always quite so fortunate as in the judgement of affairs — once placed the well-known Minister von Görne. This man of honour accordingly came, through the nature of the business entrusted to him, into

[p. 10]

all manner of connection with Poland, and soon also upon the idea of buying great landed properties there for himself; indeed, it was said he had entertained the project of becoming King of Poland himself, and that those great purchases were to have been merely the means of attaining this end. If there was anything in the matter — and it is almost credible, since this dunderhead was surrounded by the silliest flatterers that ever stood about a minister — then the project becomes at the least highly ridiculous, when one pictures to oneself the utterly repulsive caricature of a figure that was Görne, together with the sceptre, crown, robe, and sabre of the Polacks. And yet — such a people would have deserved such a king. Stanislaus Poniatowski was not a hair better than Görne.

However that may be, enough! Görne bought the considerable and extensive lordship of Krotoszyn in Great Poland on the Silesian border, opposite Breslau. He employed for the purpose substantial ready sums from the royal

[p. 11]

treasuries entrusted to him. This was noticed, and therefore Görne, at the beginning of the year 1782, pursuant to a cabinet order of Frederick the Great, was arrested by the then Governor in Berlin, General Ramin, in a manner attended by many comical incidental circumstances, in his palace Unter den Linden, and some weeks later was brought to Spandau. There he sat for several years, until the late King Frederick William II gave him back his freedom. He now lives in the country between Brandenburg and Potsdam.

After his above-mentioned arrest Frederick the Great had his property placed under seizure, in order to make good the treasury deficits therefrom. In this manner the lordship of Krotoszyn, lying in what was then Great Poland, became a property of the Seehandlung in Berlin, which drew the revenues through the Chamber at Breslau. The Breslau Chamber for its part had the lordship administered, during the first nine years after Görne’s fall,

[p. 12]

by a certain Triebenfeld, whom it had found there as a huntsman, timber-clerk, or forester who had stood in the private service of Görne, and it credited the Seehandlung with some 17 to 18,000 reichsthalers yearly, until in the year 1791 the then Privy Finance Councillor v. Struensee held the leasing of the lordship to the Amtmann Früson, who engaged to give 30,100 reichsthalers yearly, to be more profitable, brought it forward, and carried it through.

Until the year 1782 Görne frequently employed a War Councillor Bernhardi in Berlin for the oversight of his husbandry at Krotoszyn, and often sent the simple old man thither. Bernhardi at last, about the time when Görne was arrested, was living at Krotoszyn with his numerous family, and remained there a while afterwards as well. The forester Triebenfeld thereupon soon married — under circumstances that revolt every moral feeling — a daughter of Bernhardi (his

[p. 13]

present, still ever unhappy wife) against her will, and then his first business was to drive out his father-in-law and, as has already been mentioned, to attain to the sole administration.

From this vantage point the genius, or rather the demon, of Triebenfeld met that of the Minister Hoym in Breslau, and forthwith both hell-spirits founded between their respective protégés that friendship which not only subsists to this day but is knit all the closer by their common disgrace. Triebenfeld began to prosper; he carried on, well-nigh openly, a contraband trade in English stoneware, Hungarian wine, and so forth, out of Krotoszyn into neighbouring Silesia and its capital. He became rich, important, and acquired friends. His boldness and prompt readiness for any piece of business which would still cost other rogues of the common stamp some scruple, won him in short order the interest and the whole affection of the Silesian satrap.

[p. 14]

Hoym needed, especially after the decease of the great Frederick, a henchman eminently disposed and resolved to every evil, and therefore the formerly unknown Triebenfeld was heartily welcome to him; whom, in reward of his services and for encouragement to acquire yet more of them, he thereupon decorated in quick succession with a patent of nobility, a title, a forester’s uniform, and a collegiate cross. Krotoszyn became the depot of all the ministerial vices that were to be hidden away from Breslau, and at coarse nocturnal bacchanals in the castle at Krotoszyn one could hear bandit throats bellowing the toast: Long live little brother Hoym!!!

What was there not to be done in the hybrid little land of Krotoszyn? In this corner, about which no authority properly troubled itself, in this island between two realms, where Triebenfeld was king, as it were — so that one might have compared him with Sancho on his island of bread-rolls and sausages,

[p. 15]

did Sancho not possess infinite moral advantages over Triebenfeld? True, Krotoszyn stood, in name, under Polish sovereignty — that is to say, under the most wretched and confused sovereignty in all Europe — but it was nevertheless in Prussian possession, which meant something more than mere seigneurial possession. As one pleased, one could regard it as a little piece of Poland or else as a little piece of Silesia. Triebenfeld made excellent use of this double character. According as it was advantageous or harmful to the precious Herr Administrator, he sheltered himself now behind Prussian, now behind Polish laws, or pushed both away from him. Now he drew the boundary line dividing Poland from Silesia with great sharpness; now he declared it once more a chimera. Now he threatened with Prussian arrangements; now again he spoke with great unction of the prerogatives of the Republic of Poland. To the Prussians he was a Pole, to the Poles a Prussian.

It was accordingly no wonder that he

[p. 16]

looked upon it with mighty ill favour when this splendour was to come to an end and Krotoszyn was to be leased to the Amtmann Früson in the year 1791. To the Minister v. Hoym this change was, for a thousand reasons, inconvenient in itself in any case, and he suffered it to happen only because, at its inception, he was unable at once to thwart it with becoming pretexts. Consequently, both Hoym and Triebenfeld agreed without much ado that the best means of turning the lease once more into the former administration consisted in making life in Krotoszyn so bitter for Früson in every possible way that he would find himself moved to withdraw from there again before long. Hoym gave his consent, and promised to cover his back; Triebenfeld undertook the execution. The latter was all the easier since Triebenfeld, as Chief Overseer of the extensive forests, which were not included in Früson’s lease, remained resident in the castle at Krotoszyn,

[p. 17]

and Früson had to pay him his salary and give him a large deputat in kind — relations which, however fairly Früson might always conduct himself, nevertheless afforded a multitude of occasions for quarrel and vexation, which Triebenfeld could use and did use.

The collection of documents here laid before the public contains, then, properly the history of the chicaneries and acts of violence which, introduced and instigated by Triebenfeld, did indeed very soon drive the Amtmann Früson out of Krotoszyn again. From it one sees, with horror and disgust, how easily an unscrupulous minister decrees the injury of a private man when it comes to obliging another minister, or extricating him from an embarrassment; how little self-conquest

[p. 18]

and cunning a sun-clear fraud costs men of this stamp and rank, and how sans façon they not only play fast and loose with state revenues and private welfare, but even lie to the face of their sovereign when fear and breaking shame drive them to cover their old base acts with new ones. That during the reign of the late King much was possible which properly never and nowhere ought to be possible — to that one has by and by become resigned; but — who can ever moderate his astonishment that under the reign of Frederick William III a cabinet order such as that of 24 December 1798, at the end of these records, could issue? Whoever runs through these pages entire with even a little attention must feel, with oppressive clarity, to what manifold criticism

[p. 19]

of truth, of logic, indeed of plain sober common sense, that cabinet order is exposed from the first line to the last. What conjecture is one to give room to? What in any way tolerable explanation is one to make? Reason stands still. It is painful, most painful, in this connection to think of the Privy Cabinet Councillor Beyme, who passes for upright and noble and is at the same time known as a good jurist, and to picture him in the distressing necessity of having to draw up and dispatch such cabinet resolutions. Is not the cabinet the very last instance for eight million men who, in cases of wounded justice, are to direct their hopeful glances thither, are to take their refuge there? May the sovereign leave the demand to be just unfulfilled? And — such a cabinet resolution!!! —

[p. 20]

That Triebenfeld stands throughout behind the scenes in the transactions that follow need hardly first be pointed out to the readers. They are therefore only reminded further to keep it always present to themselves, as an important turning point of this history, that Great Poland, and consequently Krotoszyn too, came under Prussian sovereignty in the spring of 1793.

[p. 21]

Frederick the Great to the Minister of State von Hoym in Breslau.

My dear Minister of State von Hoym. Since the hitherto Chief of the Maritime and Salt Trading Company, von Görne, is indebted to the treasury of the said Company, as I have already told you, in considerable sums, and I must therefore recover payment for myself and the treasury as far as possible out of his estate, I have accordingly resolved to have his estates purchased in Poland taken into possession forthwith,

[p. 22]

and their revenues sequestrated and collected toward the reduction of the von Görne deficit, until perhaps an opportunity may arise for the sale of the estates themselves. But since these estates lie very far distant from Berlin, and the administration could not be overseen from there, whereas their distance from Breslau is by no means considerable, I hereby charge you, without any loss of time, to send off to Poland a councillor of the War and Domains Chamber there, one who has sufficient knowledge and experience of estate management, together with some capable subordinate servants, and through him to have all the estates of von Görne situated there taken into possession and sequestrated, namely the lordship of Krotoszyn2 and Rosdarczewo, and also the lordship of

[p. 23]

Polajewo. And in order that this taking of possession may proceed without any difficulty or prolixity, von Görne himself shall instruct the servants he keeps upon the estates not to resist it, which instruction my Grand Chancellor von Carmer will procure and forward to you. As soon, then, as the commissioner arrives on the spot, he must arrange the estate administration — which has hitherto been conducted in so wasteful a manner that scarcely anything could be left over from the revenues — according to sound economic principles in the most thrifty way; in general he is to draw as much money as ever possible from the estates, and in particular to attend to the sale of timber, and to correspond thereon with my Principal Utility-Timber Administration as soon as he has to some degree informed himself of the state of affairs; whereby I make known to you that, although the said Administration has already purchased a large part of the timber

[p. 24]

from the lordship of Krotoszyn, yet a very great deal of timber still remains, which, in order to raise money, must be cut down foot by foot3 and gradually, as it is possible and feasible, converted into cash. Next, the commissioner must also be intent upon leasing out the estates advantageously by Trinity, since no buyer is likely to be found so soon. All the money he takes in he must, together with the administration account, remit to the Breslau War and Domains Chamber, which shall have oversight of the administration and shall direct it; and this Chamber may deliver the money to my Bank at Breslau against a receipt,

[p. 25]

but the receipt, instead of ready money, is to be transmitted to the treasury of the Seehandlung at Berlin, on account of the von Görne deficit; wherefore, only as regards that which may in this matter require closer consideration, you have to correspond with my Minister of State Baron von Schulenburg, to whom I have entrusted the supreme oversight of the Maritime and Salt Trading Company, and thereafter to see to all that is needful with the utmost dispatch. I am your well-affectioned King.

Potsdam, 26 January 1782.

Schulenburg.

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The Breslau Privy Councillor v. Hoym, cousin of the Minister v. Hoym, to the Ober-Amtmann Früson.

Well-born Sir,

most honoured Herr Ober-Amtmann!

Since, in view of the recommendation and the good testimonials which the Royal Chamber has given Your Honour, I presume not without reason that on the part of the Seehandlung Your Honour may be considered for the Krotoszyn lease,

[p. 27]

I request you to let me know by the bearer of this whether you will offer the oblatum of Matthiae at 30,100 thalers, or perhaps even add something more, since I then intend at once to set the matter in motion here with the Privy Finance Councillor v. Struensee 4.

It would be most agreeable to me if Your Honour would take the trouble to come here yourself, since we could then arrange many things verbally on that account. I shall remain here until the seventh.

[p. 28]

In expectation of seeing Your Honour here,5 I have the honour to be, with especial respect,

Your Honour’s

Rothland
3 July 1791.

obedient servant
v. Hoym.

[p. 29]

[p. 30]

The Minister von Struensee in Berlin to the War Councillor von Triebenfeld6 in Krotoszyn.

The Ober-Amtmann Früson, during his presence here in Berlin, has complained that in the conduct of his lease you have placed many

[p. 31]

obstacles in his way. I have communicated this complaint to the Breslau War and Domains Chamber, so that it may investigate the same, settle the misunderstandings that have arisen,

[p. 32]

and forestall all future collisions; I herewith at the same time make you aware that you are on no account to meddle in the economy of the lordship of Krotoszyn, but are to leave the same entirely to the Breslau War and Domains Chamber, and

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are in general to take care that you give the said Früson no occasion for complaints, but rather live with him in peace and concord.

Berlin, 26 January 1792.

Struensee.

[p. 34]

The Composition Wrung from Früson by von Triebenfeld and Neumann, Whereby He Was to Relinquish the Lease of Krotoszyn Once More.

The undersigned Ober-Amtmann (senior domain lessee) Johann George Früson hereby attests and acknowledges,7 that he once again submits to the eviction from the lease of the Krotoszyn estates dictated against him by the Kalisch

[p. 35]

War and Police Commission, that he has wholly relinquished the lease, and that with respect to all claims which might arise out of this lease and the surrender thereof, he submits himself entirely to the decision of the Minister Count von Hoym qua super Arbiter!, without forming against it the least further claim by way of law, in whatever forum it might be; but in particular, in order that all legal proceedings in the Polish courts may from now on wholly cease, he declares that he entirely desists from all further lawsuits, and especially from the complaint lodged on the 11th of this month with the Civil Commission, and that he declares invalid the

[p. 36]

citation issued upon the memorial, upon which the said Herr von Husarzewski, the War and Forest Councillor von Triebenfeld, he himself, and the town of Krotoszyn are to appear before the same on the 25th of this month. — Likewise he annuls the power of attorney granted to Herr v. Trembinski on 25 July, in such wise that it is henceforth to be regarded as never having been given. Finally the War and Forest Councillor von Triebenfeld promises, and likewise Herr Gottlieb Hermann as governing Bürgermeister, Herr Rudolph von Gurowski and Herr Thomas Chmielik as councilmen, that they will from now on jointly desist from all intended lawsuits, withdraw all manifestations and citations, wherever they may have been made, and altogether give mutual acquittance to one another concerning the matter, and will form no new lawsuits any more. The War and Forest Councillor v. Triebenfeld promises moreover that he will procure receipts concerning the annulment of the lawsuits pending between the Herr Border-Judge,

[p. 37]

Herr v. Zablocki, v. Kordaszowski, and Herr Ober-Amtmann Früson and his son, and of all lawsuits yet to be raised, and will see to the quashing of the same. This composition (Complanation), which the one party as well as the other declares valid, and to which they expressly renounce all legal evasions that might be made against it, be they called what they may, has been drawn up in two identical copies in the Polish and German languages, and, for greater security, shall at once be corroborated and entered into the local town records. Done at Krotoszyn, 13 August 1792. Johann George Früson. Friedrich August Triebenfeld. J. G. Hermann, Bürgermeister. Joseph Gurowski Vice-Bürgermeister. Thomas Chmielik. Stanislaus Kostasowski. Friedrich Wilhelm Neumann8 as witness. Joseph Joachim v. Koszielski as witness.

[p. 38]

[p. 39]

Früson, Referendary of the Breslau Regierung, to Minister von Struensee in Berlin.

High-well-born Sir, etc.

Under the date of 28 July, my father the Ober-Amtmann Früson had the honour to give Your Excellency notice of the ordinance issued to him under the 15th of the same month by the Minister Count von Hoym, concerning the ejectment to be ordered, and of War Councillor Triebenfeld’s interim transfer of the joint supervision of the estate affairs,

[p. 40]

and at the same time most humbly to petition for the issue of an attestation for the purpose of legitimating his present possession here.

The reply already decreed by Your Excellency under the 30th of July, together with the ordered issue of the said certificate, arrived here — God knows through what delay — only under the 15th of this month, and for that reason no use could be made of it until now.

I do not venture to trouble Your Excellency at present with the detail of all the chicaneries and dishonourable instigations whereby my father has been exposed even to physical assaults; perhaps I may shortly have the grace to be permitted to wait upon His Most Exalted Person in person in matters concerning the latter, and I reserve for that occasion, with His Most Exalted approval, for an oral report, what I should now have to entrust to the pen without any use. The essential matter of which I have at present to give Your Excellency

[p. 41]

notice in the name of my father — who lies ill from chagrin — concerns the ejectment carried out against him notwithstanding all protestation. How they conducted themselves in this, Your Excellency will deign to gather from the following facts, which I shall set forth in strictest accordance with the truth.

The Hofgericht Councillor von Husarzewski9 from Bromberg presented himself and disclosed to my father that he had the disagreeable commission from His Excellency the Minister Count von Hoym to carry out his ejectment on the ground of a decree of the Polish War and Police Commission, but that he was otherwise unable to produce this decree — which the Minister alone

[p. 42]

held in his hands — for his legitimation. Naturally this proposal could not but astonish my father all the more, since nothing of it had been made known to him on the part of the said tribunal itself, and the existence of such an ordinance had therefore still seemed to him untrue. The Hofgericht Councillor, however, of his own accord resolved to undertake nothing in this matter until he could sufficiently legitimate himself with the assistance of a commissioner on the part of the Breslau Chamber. He therefore travelled to Breslau in the company of War Councillor Triebenfeld, and after a few days he arrived together with a certain Chamber Assessor Neumann, the latter of whom legitimated himself for the intended ejectment business by producing a commission signed entirely and solely by His Excellency the Minister Count von Hoym, and without the assistance of my father — who protested against it — began his operation without hesitation

[p. 43]

and continued it. I cannot here leave unremarked that business of this kind is, as a rule, not entrusted to any assessor but to a councillor from among the members of the college, and that commissions of this kind are, moreover, usually executed not merely by the head of the college but with the countersignature of some of the members themselves.

I do not, however, venture to judge the occasion of this commission. — Now, after the said Commissioner Neumann had also produced the original ejectment decree of the Kalisch War and Police Commission, and it emerged therefrom that the departure of some subjects — who have by now all returned — had given occasion for it, I did not delay, with the assistance of a Polish agent, to interpose those legal remedies which are open to losing parties, as in the Prussian States, for the redress of aggravating ordinances; without, however, even having need first to appeal to the decision of a

[p. 44]

higher instance, I was granted, before the same tribunal, a new inquiry into those accusations which had been laid to my father’s charge with respect to the emigrated subjects, and to that end an order was issued to the Krotoszyn estate administration (Gubernium) not only to appear in person in Termino praefixo, but also, for the purpose of that same investigation, to produce ad locum Judicii all the persons who had departed and had by now returned. The ferment which this decree had caused among the whole ejectment commission — excepting the Hofgericht Councillor v. Husarzewski, who departed the very next day and even before the beginning of the ejectment — caused the Commissioner to regard his ejectment business as interrupted, and he was just on the point of departing again when it occurred to War Councillor Triebenfeld to project a settlement, which was to be brought about by the way of amity or of force; they laid before my father

[p. 45]

at first, in the Polish language, a draft for his signature, whose content he could not even understand.

Upon his refusal, they therefore at last translated it into German, and from it there emerged approximately the following settlement propositions.

First. My father was to cancel the power of attorney granted to a certain Trembinski for the management of his legal affairs.

Second. To renounce the investigation lastly ordered per Decretum by the War and Police Commission at Kalisch.

Third. To renounce entirely his lease and all claims to be formed against the leasing party.

Fourth. With respect to his indemnifications, to submit himself solely to the grace of the Minister von Hoym. In return, War Councillor Triebenfeld undertook to cut off entirely all lawsuits pending against my father,

[p. 46]

and to bring about their cancellation. As to how and in what manner the said Triebenfeld intended to effect the latter — since he claims to have given no occasion for them, and all these matters concern official fiscal business — on this point he would not enter into any further explanation. I leave the matter unresolved as well, and merely note that, after the lapse of some hours which my father had requested as time for reflection, a whole swarm of townsfolk, for the most part drunk, gathered in the courtyard, then pressed into the castle and toward the room of War Councillor Triebenfeld; the sub-lessee of Sokolnicki, a notoriously wild and coarse Pole, together with his people, and other Polish noblemen at the service of the said Triebenfeld, whom he knows how to draw into his interest through promised leases — all of this was assembled around Triebenfeld and awaited the arrival of my father, whom they compelled to come up. Without

[p. 47]

further inquiry, the composition was thereupon laid before him for signature; amid fear and threats they besieged him, all the exits were occupied, and even the commissioner Neumann assured my father that he would not be able to protect him from acts of violence if he insisted on his refusal. Under these circumstances the latter seized the pen, signed an extorted contract, and from that moment on they not only calmed the townsfolk who had beforehand been prepared for this through drink, but dismissed them, as well as my father, to their dwellings. The judgment upon such conduct I may leave to Your Excellency’s own feeling.

My foremost concern is now to see to the removal of my father with the rest of his family as swiftly as possible; sooner than that I dare not venture to be active with the local authority, without perhaps exposing myself to unpleasant acts of violence. At present he has been called upon to render an

[p. 48]

accounting, and he has submitted to this in order to establish a preliminary liquidum. Yet it surely requires only very middling knowledge of economic conditions to perceive that in an undertaking so considerable, when a farmer lays out his plan for 9 years and must already depart after the lapse of the first, he, being of middling fortune as is here the case, cannot easily overlook his loss.

In this respect I believe I may not expect any contradiction, given the dexterity Your Excellency is universally acknowledged to possess, and I hope not to make a vain request when I venture to look for Your Excellency’s gracious assistance. I commend myself to Your Excellency’s gracious good will, and remain in deepest respect

Your Excellency’s

most obedient servant
Früson jun.
Referendary.

Krotoszyn
16 August 1792.

[p. 49]

Minister von Struensee to the Referendary Früson, then travelling in Berlin.

To the Herr Referendary Früson, in reply to the letter submitted on the 4th of this month as mandatary of the Ober-Amtmann Früson, I can in general only repeat what I have already told the Ober-Amtmann Früson several times, namely that the management of the Krotoszyn estates has been left entirely to the Breslau Chamber by His Majesty the King, and that it is therefore solely and exclusively the affair of the Chamber how it is to conduct that management, and whether it thinks it better to retain the Ober-Amtmann Früson or not to retain him.

[p. 50]

I can therefore neither approve nor disapprove of that agreement which the Ober-Amtmann Früson concluded on 13 August of this year with the said Triebenfeld. Neither the said Triebenfeld nor the Chamber at Breslau received any commission for this agreement from me or from the General Direction of the Seehandlung; indeed, it has not even become known here that the said Früson obtained a fresh hearing against the exmission ordered by the Polish courts on 15 June of this year. If the said Früson has failed to justify himself at this hearing recently granted to him, and has instead entered into the agreement of 13 August of this year, then he has only his own act to impute to himself. If, on the other hand, he can maintain that he was induced to this agreement by Triebenfeld through force, fear, or threats,

[p. 51]

then he must settle that matter with Triebenfeld, obtain from the authorities a declaration of the nullity of the agreement against him, and restore the matter to the condition in which it stood before the time of the agreement. In short, Triebenfeld was authorized from here neither generally, still less specialiter, to the questioned agreement; on the contrary, it appears from the instruction given to Triebenfeld on 26 January of this year, appended here in copy, that all interference in the economy of the lordship of Krotoszyn was expressly forbidden to him from here; of which, as also of the present resolution, I leave it entirely to Herr Früson10 to make such use as may be necessary.

Berlin, 5 September 1792.

Struensee.

[p. 52]

[p. 53]

The Ober-Amtmann Früson to the Regierung at Posen, which was established in that city immediately upon the taking of possession of South Prussia in the year 1793.

Most Serene etc.

Notice of Suit of the Royal Ober-Amtmann Früson of Slawitz in Silesia before the Regierung at Posen.
Contra
The Seehandlung at Berlin qua Dominium of the lordship of Krotoszyn in the district of Kalisch.

Posen, 28 December 1793.

I find myself moved to prefix to the present suit — which properly has as its object merely my reinstatement

[p. 54]

into the leasehold possession of the estates belonging to the lordship of Krotoszyn — a narrative of the history of the matter, which I can, if required, justify by documentary proofs, and which, both in itself and in regard to the persons therein concerned, may deserve some attention. —

That is to say, in the year 1791 I leased from the Seehandlung at Berlin the estates belonging to the lordship of Krotoszyn — whose administration had until then been entrusted, under the direction of the Breslau War and Domains Chamber, to a certain titular War Councillor Triebenfeld — for 9 years, at an annual rental sum of 30,100 reichsthalers. This lease, however, appeared to be inconvenable to the Minister Count von Hoym, and still more to the said Triebenfeld; for although the estates had already been physically handed over to me, it pleased the former nonetheless to enter into written correspondence with the Jew Lipmann Meyer at Breslau concerning other

[p. 55]

negotiations regarding this lease, and to annul my general lease, already entered upon, the following attempts were made. First, that is, the Breslau Chamber refused me the delivery of the lease contract,11 which His Excellency the Minister von Struensee, as head of the Society at Berlin, had executed and forwarded to the former, in order to have it

[p. 56]

conveyed to me. Next, through the mediation of the said Triebenfeld, a denunciation was lodged with the War and Police Commission at Kalisch, to the effect that I had taken possession of the estates by force and was unable to legitimate myself by a contract. Furthermore, Triebenfeld incited the villages belonging to the lordship no longer to render their services as had hitherto been done. — The timber contractually stipulated for the brewery, the distillery, and the potash-boiling he (since he had the disposal of the forests) refused to deliver, and finally it even pleased the Minister von Hoym, by a mandate to the revenue officer there, to seal off my general-lease treasury in high-handed fashion, on the pretext “that the disposal over the revenues of the estates could not be granted to me before I had legitimated myself by an attestation of the Polish courts,”

that under the Polish constitution of the land

[p. 57]

I was in my own person qualified for the general lease of the estates.

Although at that time I had already been in possession of the estates for some months, and although at the conclusion of the lease contract this had never been thought of, the Minister von Hoym nonetheless, notwithstanding all remonstrances, would not consent to lift the sealing of my general-lease treasury; nor were any appropriate ordinances issued, either by him or by the Breslau Chamber, in respect of the complaints raised against Triebenfeld on the aforementioned occasions. Through the repeated intercession of His Excellency the Minister von Struensee, at length, after the lapse of 6 months, an authenticated copy of the lease contract was delivered to me by the Breslau Chamber; during that time, however, in order to diminish my standing as general lessee and to withdraw from me the confidence of my subjects, it had been spread abroad among the public that

[p. 58]

I had no contract, nor would I obtain one, since the leasing, which until then rested merely upon negotiations, would never come about; and when at length the contract really followed, it was given out among the public as a mere memorandum of points. Since, however, all these and still many more such chicaneries attempted hitherto failed of their chief purpose — to move me to a voluntary relinquishment of the lease — at the instigation of Triebenfeld various families of the subjects were incited by bribery to leave the country; and before the War and Police Commission at Kalisch it was denounced that I had so oppressed and maltreated the subjects that they had been driven to emigration. I answered before the court that I knew none of the persons who had departed, and could appeal to the testimony of all my estate officials, who, since they had the opportunity to observe me in my economic conduct, would attest

[p. 59]

that I had never offended any of these persons by so much as a look, nor shortchanged them by a single groschen. These witnesses, however, were rejected on the ground that they had been named as accomplices in the alleged oppressions; and without entering further into any proof, I was condemned to pay a fine of 400 Polish florins, together with the imposition of bringing back the departed subjects. By chance the latter succeeded for me in the following manner. The departed subjects roamed about in the Silesian border-places and once touched upon the territory of a Polish cavalier named von Domsky, to whom the instigations of Triebenfeld had already become known by report. Of his own accord he was thereupon moved to have these people seized by his forest servants and delivered up to me. As much pleasure as this unexpected turn afforded me, I nonetheless believed I must proceed with all caution in the matter,

[p. 60]

and therefore had the people provisionally taken into custody, and thereupon at once handed the key of the prison to a certain von Koszicki (who, as I believe, still to this day administers the office of justiciary of the lordship of Krotoszyn), with the addition that, since I was still unacquainted with the constitution of the land, I would herewith leave the further measures and dispositions concerning these people wholly and solely to him.

The result of this (which, moreover, I might have expected from this man had I reflected somewhat more maturely) was that on the following day the detained persons were all gone again, having in all probability been persuaded anew to abscond. The matter nevertheless remained in this posture for some time, until, against all expectation, the Minister von Hoym caused the following notification to reach me:

that since the War and Police Commission at Kalisch had ordered my

[p. 61]

exmission per Decretum, and this decree must be satisfied, I was to hold myself in readiness for it, as a commission would shortly set out from the Breslau Chamber to Krotoszyn to carry out this business.

Everything that had gone before was bound to determine me to judge this ordinance exactly as the whole conduct of the Minister von Hoym deserved in the eyes of every man of character; I therefore held the alleged decree to be a fabrication, all the more so since nothing whatever had been made known to me of it on the part of the court, the War and Police Commission at Kalisch. I accordingly wrote to the Minister in reply that I protested against the ordinance of an exmission commission, since I was not aware for what reason the aforesaid judicium, which moreover was wholly incompetent in this matter, could have been prompted to issue this decree without hearing me further; I must therefore doubt the existence

[p. 62]

of such an ordinance, and should the same, against expectation, nevertheless exist, I would never acquiesce in it, but would seek to bring about its redress.

The Minister, however, took no notice whatever of this, but after the lapse of a few days a certain Chamber Assessor Neumann, now War and Domains Councillor at the Chamber here, arrived at Krotoszyn, and produced a commission executed by the Minister von Hoym alone, and was of the opinion that all the remonstrations made to him could not annul his charge; rather, he proceeded with it even without calling me in, formally took from my estate officials the stocks of cattle and grain, the estate utensils, and the like, and released the subjects from the obedience stipulated to me at the delivery in kind. To justify his undertakings he also produced the decree that had provisionally been made known to me by the

[p. 63]

Minister von Hoym, according to whose contents the above-mentioned withdrawal of the subjects was stated as the cause and occasion of this exmission ordinance.

They had wisely concealed this from me until now, because it was to be foreseen that if I learned of this ground of decision sooner, I could easily bring about the redress of the Polish decree before its execution might be completed; for even before the commissioner Neumann arrived at Krotoszyn, the emigrated subjects, to whom the roaming about had lasted too long, had already voluntarily returned to their possessions, were performing their services, and I deliberately refrained from calling them to account for their emigration, because I feared that out of fear of punishment they might run off once more. But after it had become known to me that their withdrawal was to serve as the ground of my exmission,

[p. 64]

I reported the return of the subjects to the War and Police Commission at Kalisch, requested redress of the exmission ordered against me, and at the same time moved that inquiry be made into the motive by which these people had been induced to withdraw. In accordance with this motion, a new inquiry was at once granted, and even before the then Assessor Neumann had completed his exmission business, the court’s ordinance was delivered to him, with the injunction that both Triebenfeld and the withdrawn subjects should present themselves on an appointed day for the investigation in this matter.

This incident seemed indeed to interrupt the operation of the said Neumann, but the fertile genius of the said Triebenfeld, in conjunction with his most incredible effrontery, soon knew how to turn the matter in such a way that neither an investigation nor anything else prejudicial to his plan could be undertaken. At

[p. 65]

his instigation, namely, a great number of townsmen were assembled in a tavern,12 and these he had persuaded through his accomplices: that Früson had had the whole citizenry summoned, and they would have a lawsuit that would reduce them all to beggary, and in no other way could they escape the affair, unless they compelled me by a settlement to renounce this lawsuit and at the same time my whole lease.

Some of them, especially those who understood a little German, would not be convinced of this at once, came to me, and asked

[p. 66]

me what I actually wanted of the citizenry, and why I had had them summoned. However much this astonished me, I could nevertheless not suspect the plan concealed beneath it, but told the people quite briefly that it had not occurred to me to sue the citizenry, and that this untruth conveyed to them probably arose from an error, since I had actually only had the said Triebenfeld and the subjects who had run off summoned. Hereupon they too seemed quite reassured, and went away; but shortly afterwards there followed them a crowd of more than 40 townsmen and Polish noblemen, some of them drunk, who all betook themselves to Triebenfeld’s room. The latter thereupon had me requested through a servant to visit him for a short time, which I accepted without apprehending anything untoward. Upon my entry into his living room, it was thereupon disclosed to me, with

[p. 67]

the War Councillor Neumann called in, that the citizenry of the town of Krotoszyn now present demanded of me that I should consent to sign an agreement already drawn up by the said Neumann in the manner of a settlement.

This was of approximately the following content:

First. I was to renounce the investigation ordered by the War and Police Commission at Kalisch concerning the withdrawal of the subjects.

Secondly. I was to cancel the power of attorney granted to my Polish agent, a certain von Trembinski.

Thirdly, I had to renounce my general lease and all claims and demands to be derived from it, and

Fourthly, to submit myself, with regard to my compensation, solely to the mercy of the Minister von Hoym.

[p. 68]

The infamy with which I was being treated appeared to me after this announcement in the clearest light, and I was about to withdraw from the room without entering into any further negotiations, when two accomplices of Triebenfeld seized me by the arm and prevented me. Thereupon I declared quite briefly that I would never willingly consent to sign that agreement, and demanded at the same time that I be permitted to retire to my room. This was indeed allowed to happen, but all those present followed at my heels, and in the lower storey of the castle, which I occupied, I found both main doors already locked, and even from outside all the windows and entrances were manned with guards; four fellows equipped with cudgels followed me into my living room, stationed themselves at the door, and stated that they merely wished to wait and see whether I would sign in good will or not. Every one of my servants withdrew

[p. 69]

and hid himself for fear of being maltreated, and even the tutor of my children, who was in my room at the time, left me out of the same apprehension. At length the said Neumann also appeared, brought me the settlement he had drafted, and remarked thereupon, with great anxiety, that he himself was no longer sure of his life and could no longer protect me from maltreatment if I persisted in refusing to sign in good will. I suspend my judgement upon this conduct of a man who has at present risen to the rank of councillor at a provincial college, and only remark that, since under such circumstances I found myself in hands where I had everything to expect, I believed myself brought to the utmost extremity, and therefore signed that agreement, was on the strength of it completely ejected, and, with the loss of the most considerable part of my fortune, was forced to abandon the leasehold possession of the lordship of Krotoszyn.

[p. 70]

All that I could do to preserve my rights was to extract the recognition of the court office at Freyhahn13, enclosed herewith in the original, concerning the protest made against the validity of the aforesaid agreement, and to make known the whole occurrence of 13 August 1792 to the Minister von Struensee as head of the Society qua lessor, and also to request his assistance, to which he expressly bound himself under the terms of § 5 of the lease contract. It is easy to see how little was required of him to comply with my just demand; yet it appears from the following that that

[p. 71]

obligation was not in the least satisfied on the part of the leasing party, that I was rather left to my fate, but that I now believe myself entitled, in the absence of the amicable settlement hitherto vainly sought, to seek by legal means my reinstatement in possession of the estates of Krotoszyn, as well as the compensation to be reserved for me in separato, solely and exclusively against the Seehandlung Society at Berlin, without prejudice to its right to assert its recourse contra quemcunque.

To this end I ground myself:

Firstly. Chiefly on the cited passage of the lease contract.

Secondly. It appears from my letter to His Excellency the Minister von Struensee, dated Krotoszyn, 16 August 1792, but still more clearly from the pro memoria, dated Berlin, 16 September

[p. 72]

of the same year, which my son himself presented to His Excellency at Berlin, that I did not fail to inform the Minister von Struensee of the then situation of the matter, and to request his assistance, just as

Thirdly, it is to be gathered from his reply of the 5th, 7th, and 12th of September 1792 that the leasing party would not take up the matter at all, but wished merely to refer me to the Minister von Hoym or to the Breslau Chamber. Indeed, despite all the efforts I applied, I could not even, according to the tenor of all the exhibits submitted, obtain the definite declaration whether and how far the Society would approve or reject the agreement of 13 August, since, according to the tenor of all the cited letters of reply of His Excellency the Minister von Struensee,

[p. 73]

it had given neither Triebenfeld nor anyone else any commission to conclude it. And if the Society finally supposes it may rely on the principle “because His Majesty the King is said formerly to have entrusted the management of the estates to the Breslau Chamber,” this assertion has, on the one hand, never been attested by anything, and moreover is in any case wholly immaterial, because,

Firstly, by the leasing of the lordship, the management thereof on the part of the Breslau Chamber eo ipso ceased;

Secondly, the lease contract was concluded and executed not with the Breslau Chamber, but solely with the Society; just as also,

Thirdly, in the entire contract not

[p. 74]

a syllable is said of the Breslau Chamber, and

Fourthly, I myself would never have entered into this business had I been able to foresee the subsequent interference of the Chamber and, as the case may be, of the Minister von Hoym in my lease affair, or had I been informed of it beforehand.

That principle can therefore no more liberate the defendant Society from its liability than it must remain open to me to assert my claims for reinstatement, on the strength of my lease contract, against it at present.

Should the Society finally, contrary to expectation, itself also invoke the agreement of 13 August 1792, and seek to derive from it an annulment of my lease contract, I do indeed believe that, in view of the nullity of the said agreement already existing in and of itself (since it

[p. 75]

by wholly unauthorized contracting parties) it ought not to be given any consideration at all, yet at worst I would also be prepared to prove fully the unlawful and violent conduct that occurred in the matter, whereby I was manifestly coerced into signing.

Should Your Royal Majesty finally also deem it necessary to refer this or several of the facts alleged in the foregoing historical account, together with their investigation, to the fisc, I am equally prepared to assist the latter in the furnishing of the requisite means of proof, as I nevertheless otherwise carry no further desire to present myself formally at present in the quality of a denunciant.

For the rest, I have nothing further to add to my present suit, and therefore most humbly request

that it be communicated to the defendant Seehandlung at Berlin mediante requisitione of a most laudable Kammergericht at Berlin

[p. 76]

and that a Terminus instructionis be most graciously appointed forthwith; but that, the causa being instructed, the defendant Seehandlung be sentenced to the effect that it be bound not only to grant my restitution into the leasehold possession of the estates belonging to the lordship of Krotoszyn, but also itself to apply for the same to Your Royal Majesty’s Regierung here, and that it be moreover held to bear alone all the costs occasioned.

My mandatary I legitimate by the general power of attorney long since conferred upon him, and I remain unto death in deepest fidelity

Your Royal Majesty’s

most humble
the Ober-Amtmann Früson
p. Früson jun.14

[p. 77]

[p. 78]

Protocol before the Regierung at Posen.

Enacted at Posen, 12 February 1794.

In the matter of the Ober-Amtmann Früson at Slawitz near Oppeln, plaintiff, against the Royal Seehandlung at Berlin, defendant, this day stands the term for the recording of the suit, at which there appeared for the plaintiff the justice commissioner Früson in person, who, ratione legitimationis, referred to the power of attorney already handed in ad Acta, and as to the substance of the matter gave the announced suit to protocol as follows. The plaintiff Ober-Amtmann Johann George Früson, my father, concluded with the Royal Seahandlung

[p. 79]

at Berlin, concerning the lordship of Krotoszyn together with appurtenances, belonging to the same and situated in the present province, a contract dated 4 September and 2 December 1791, by virtue of which the said lordship was leased to him from 1 July 1791, for 9 years, at an annual rental sum of 30,100 reichsthalers.

In this regard I refer to the lease contract itself, which was already appended in copia vidimata (attested copy) to the announcement of the suit.

The lordship in question was also, as the deed of delivery recorded on 3 and 8 September 1791, which I submit under no. 73, shows among other things, delivered to my father naturaliter. Nevertheless he possessed it only a few months.

A certain Forest Councillor v. Triebenfeld, namely, to whom the administration of the lordship of Krotoszyn had formerly been entrusted, took it upon himself

[p. 80]

to induce several of the manorial subjects to abscond from their farms, but thereupon to accuse my father of unhusbandly conduct and of oppression of the leasehold subjects, and to lay the aforementioned absconding of the subjects to his charge. This gave occasion to an investigation opened against my father by the former Polish Civil and Police Commission at Kalisch, which ended with the Commission, by a hastily passed decree, ordering the exmission of my father from the Krotoszyn lease.

To this end it was made known to him by the Minister of State Count von Hoym that he was to hold himself ready to depart from the lease, since, for the realization of the adjudged exmission, a commission appointed thereto by the Chamber at Breslau would present itself at Krotoszyn.

Here I remark (only supplementarily), that it is not precisely known to my father,

[p. 81]

by what right the Minister of State Count von Hoym and the Breslau Chamber have meddled in these lease affairs.

The said commission also soon arrived at Krotoszyn, and made a beginning with the exmission business entrusted to it in commissis, by revision and taking over of the stocks, etc., and also produced the aforementioned decree of the Civil and Police Commission at Kalisch, lying at the base thereof, which up to that point had not yet come under my father’s eyes. Since it appeared therefrom that the absconding of the subjects had been taken as the cause of the exmission quaestionis, but my father had no part whatever therein, he therefore made a counter-representation to the Civil Commission at Kalisch, and requested a new investigation, which was also ordered. Before it came to this, however, my father was, through repeated acts of violence and threats on the part

[p. 82]

of the Krotoszyn subjects, of several Polish noblemen who had been drawn in, but especially of the Forest Councillor Triebenfeld, at last compelled to execute by signature a written declaration consisting of several points, dated Krotoszyn, 13 August 1792, in which he

1) renounced the investigation otherwise extracted before the Civil Commission,

2) withdrew a power of attorney issued to von Trembinski, and

3) renounced the rights held from the lease and the lease itself, etc. In consequence of this, my father was also obliged actually to surrender the leased lordship of Krotoszyn to the appointed commissioner, without being indemnified therefor.

On account of this presentation I refer to the declaration of my father of 13 August 1792 appended to the suit, and

[p. 83]

remark only further that I reserve to myself the statement of the remaining means of proof all the more, since the facta pertaining thereto are too prolix, and have no immediate bearing upon the matter itself.

On account of this inadmissible conduct, and on account of the surrender of the lordship of Krotoszyn extorted from my father, the same immediately lodged a protestation before the courts at Freyhahn in Silesia,

as the recognition granted in that regard, to be found ad Acta, shows among other things,

but at the same time repeatedly made representation to the Chief of the Seehandlung, the Minister of State von Struensee, and urgently requested reinstatement into the Krotoszyn lease, yet obtained no further preliminary ruling than that he was to address the requests in this matter to the War and Domains Chamber

[p. 84]

at Breslau, because the management of the Krotoszyn estates had been entrusted to the same by His Majesty the King. My father, however, does not hold himself bound to this, because he entered into the lease contract in question not with the said Chamber, but with the Seehandlung, and consequently the latter must also do him justice with respect to the privileges held under the lease contract, not to mention that in its § 5 it was expressly provided,

that the lessor shall protect the lessee in the undisturbed possession and enjoyment of the realities valued to him, and that nothing shall be taken from him, without compensation, of the parcels once assigned and valued.

My father sees himself rather compelled, since the amicable regulation of the matter attempted hitherto has not had the desired success, to bring suit against the Seehandlung for

[p. 85]

reinstatement into the leasehold possession of the lordship of Krotoszyn, and to move to the following effect,

that the Royal Seehandlung be adjudged bound, in pursuance of the lease contract of 2 September and 4 December 1791, to hand over to him the lordship of Krotoszyn for the purpose of the granted leasehold enjoyment, and to grant him to that end vacuam possessionem, but for the rest to reserve to him competentia in separato on account of the enjoyments hitherto foregone, and also to condemn her in all the costs.

Finally I remark that the forum of the defendant will be founded all the more;

since 1) the forum contractus applies here, and

2) in §§ 38 and 39 of the contract it was expressly stipulated that in all disputes arising from

[p. 86]

the contract the Polish Grod courts (castle courts), or the Judicium taking their place, are to be regarded pro foro competente.

praet. rath. et subsc.

Früson v. Schmettau.

Mandatus Government Councillor of the plaintiff qua Deputatus.

[p. 87]

The Seehandlung of Berlin to the Regierung at Posen.

It has pleased a Royal and most laudable Regierung at Posen, upon the suit brought there by the Ober-Amtmann Früson against the Royal Prussian Seehandlung, to summon the latter, per modum rescripti, through requisition of the local Royal Kammergericht, to an instruction term appointed for 10 April of this year. The Seehandlung, however, is a moral person, to whom citations of this kind

[p. 88]

cannot be directed; rather, all matters concerning it are, as the Berlin Address-Calendar indicates, addressed to us, and then not per rescriptum but per requisitionem of the General Direction; which even the Royal Council of State and the remaining provincial colleges do, and to which we hereby request you, in future cases, to instruct the chancery there; where then no requisition of the Kammergericht will be needed either. As to the matter itself, we must observe that, when the former Minister of State von Görne was arrested at the beginning of the year 1782, and bankruptcy proceedings were opened over his estate, His Majesty the King of most blessed memory did indeed cause possession to be taken of the Krotoszyn and Rosdarczewo estates there — both for His Majesty’s own claims and for the claims of the Seehandlung upon the said von Görne — but the sequestration, administration, and leasing of these estates His Majesty most exaltedly entrusted to His Minister of State in Silesia, His Excellency

[p. 89]

Count von Hoym, and to the War and Domains Chamber at Breslau, as the cabinet order of 26 January 1782, herewith enclosed in copy, sets forth in greater detail.

Accordingly, His Excellency the said von Hoym and the said Chamber have administered these estates down to the present; and had leased them on behalf of the Seehandlung to the said Früson, in such wise that they administer these estates, to this very hour, not upon any authority of the Seehandlung, but upon the most exalted Royal special command still subsisting as before, and the Seehandlung, by the tenor of the said cabinet order, has nothing further to do with them than to receive the revenues accruing from these estates out of the Chamber’s administration.

If, then, the said Früson believes that a wrong has been done him by his dislodgment from the lease of these estates, he must for that reason lay his claim against those who dislodged

[p. 90]

him. And this the more so, as — as his own suit itself attests — we neither concurred by the slightest immediate act in his dislodgment, nor did we authorize anyone to do so; and to be regarded as concurring in it mediately is surely impossible, since, as has been said, the Chamber, which administers as before and to this very hour, received no authority from us for the purpose, and consequently we can in no case be held liable for its acts, and still less for the acts of the then competent Polish tribunal, upon whose judicial ordinance the dislodgment was carried out.

This is at once so plainly and clearly evident from the cabinet order enclosed in copy, and indeed from the ordinance of the then competent Polish tribunal conceded in the suit of the said Früson, that we therefore also can in no case enter into a lawsuit with the said Früson; and this state of the matter — because the term for instruction has been appointed so unusually short

[p. 91]

that the citation only reached us here on the 24th of this month — we wished only briefly hereby to point out, and hereby to request a most laudable Regierung, with dutiful deference, to instruct the said Früson, in case he should intend to pursue his suit, to lay his claim either against the Polish courts, which without any part on our side ordained his dislodgment, or against those persons who allegedly, by force and without any part on our side, pressed him to submit to the dislodgment, or against the War and Domains Chamber at Breslau, which likewise without any part on our side executed the ordinance of the Polish courts on the ground of the administration of these estates commanded to it by His Majesty the King, but will certainly know how to answer for itself against it.

Berlin, 27 March 1794.

General - Direction of the Seehandlung.

Utrecht, Treplin, Nöldichen, Labaye.

[p. 92]

The Seehandlung at Berlin to the Senior Fiscal and City-Court Director Herr Mosqua, as its plenipotentiary for this suit at Posen.

In the relation in which the institution of the Seehandlung stands with the King, what the Seehandlung loses, the King loses; and this the Regierung there could already have gathered from the words

[p. 93]

at the opening of the cabinet order of 26 January 1782, to make me and the treasury as fully paid as possible, etc.: And thus it follows of itself that with the litis-denunciation we have made we cannot have the intention of wishing to demand anything for ourselves and the King from the Breslau Royal treasuries; but rather, should the case of a recourse arise, we shall pursue such recourse against His Excellency the Minister of State Count von Hoym and the Breslau War and Domains Chamber pro personis, as those to whom the administration of the estates was entrusted by the late King of most blessed memory.

But how these may be bound to be liable among themselves, this we must leave to them among themselves, and we are all the less able to name a member of the Chamber; since the late King of most blessed memory, in the cabinet order received, does indeed say that the Chamber is to direct the administration

[p. 94]

. The cabinet order, however, was itself addressed to the Minister of State von Hoym, who issued the further directions upon it, and thereafter also, as the said Früson says in his suit, arranged the eviction through the Chamber; and so the relation of each to this matter can be determined only by the litis-denunciates among themselves, and their closer declaration is all the more to be awaited, since everything we have received in the matter has come to us in the name of the said von Hoym and in the collective name (nomine collectivo) of the Chamber. As to the further content of Your Honour’s letter of 29 December of last year, we reserve to ourselves the reply, to be sent to you shortly.

Berlin, 10 January 1795.

General Direction of the Seehandlung.

Utrecht. Treplin. Nöldichen. Labaye.

[p. 95]

The Regierung at Posen to Minister v. Hoym at Breslau.

To Our Actual Privy Minister of State and War and Directing Finance Minister Count von Hoym.

Our etc. From the representation appended herewith in copy, submitted by the Senior Fiscal Mosqua in the legal case of the Ober-Amtmann Früson against the Seehandlung, and likewise from the protocol of 18 December of last year, you will see that in the aforesaid

[p. 96]

legal case pending before Our Regierung a litis denunciatio has been served upon you. In order first of all to procure you a complete overview of the state of this matter, we hereby communicate to you:

1) The plaint-protocol of 12 February 1794, together with its enclosures,

2) The enclosures of the notification of suit,

3) the protocol of 18 December 1794 and its enclosures,

4) the protocol of the 18th of the same month concerning the litis-denunciation.

And since We have already appointed a term for the answering of the plaint on 14 March before Our local Government Councillor von Schmettau at 9 o’clock in the forenoon; We therefore command you, as litis-denunciate, to declare within 14 days and at the latest at the aforementioned term, whether you will acknowledge as established the ground of the recourse reserved against you by the litis-denunciant, and, should he lose the suit, whether you will recognize yourself bound to make good to him the object thereof,

[p. 97]

and secondly, whether you will assist him in the conduct of the principal matter; in the latter case you must appear at the aforementioned term either in person or through a mandatary furnished with legal power of attorney and detailed information at Our local Regierung, and await the conduct of the matter as prescribed, and also the opening of appropriate proposals of composition.

Should you nevertheless fail to comply with this instruction and not present yourself at all, you have to expect that the judgments passing into legal force in the principal suit will be valid against you in such wise that, in the recourse subsequently to be taken against you, you can no longer be heard with any grounds, allegations, or objections that have reference to the principal matter which was in dispute. For the rest, we presume that you possess a copy of the lease-contract of 4 September

[p. 98]

1791, since, on account of its prolixity, it was not communicated to you as well. In the contrary case, however, a copy thereof shall be imparted to you upon your notification to that effect.

Given at Posen, 23 January 1795.

v. Steudener.

(President.)

[p. 99]

The Regierung at Posen to the Regierung at Breslau.

To a Royally most laudable Oberamtsregierung we transmit herewith an ordinance issued to His Excellency the Minister of State Count von Hoym, in originali et copia, by which, in the matter of the Ober-Amtmann Früson, a litis denunciatio has been served against him regarding the Seehandlung, with the most humble request to have the former insinuated to him, but the latter, furnished with the documentum insinuationis, kindly and soon

[p. 100]

returned to us, we being as willing as ready in all mutual lawful services.

Posen, 23 January 95.

Royal South Prussian Regierung.

v. Steudener.

[p. 101]

Most Humble Pro Memoria of the Chancery-Servant Runge in Breslau to the Regierung in Breslau.

Upon the return yesterday of His Excellency the Royal Minister of State and War and Directing Minister, Count von Hoym, from Glogau, I wished, in accordance with the command laid upon me for the month of December of this year, dated the 10th of this month, to serve upon His said Excellency the citation sent hither by the Regierung at Posen. As soon as His said Excellency had read the copy of the citation, He handed

[p. 102]

the whole matter back to me again, with the intimation that the local Oberamtsregierung might simply remit the matter back to Posen, since He would never accept anything in this affair, but would rather write to the King. I therefore submit the citation together with the copy and enclosures, and most humbly submit myself for further disposition.

Berlin, 17 February 1795.

R u n g e.

[p. 103]

Minister v. Hoym in Breslau to the Regierung in Breslau.

It has pleased a Royal Oberamtsregierung to have served upon me today, to my astonishment, a decree from the Royal Regierung at Posen, which — after I had seen from the enclosed copy that I had been made subject to legal claim in public matters by a person named Früson — I did not accept, but returned to the bearer.

[p. 104]

I do not fail hereby to report this to a most laudable Oberamtsregierung, with the most humble request that it kindly make the same known to the Royal Regierung at Posen, under remission of the said decree, and thereby give it to understand that, if anyone should wish to serve a litis denunciation upon the King, or upon me in His Majesty’s name, it may write to me in the proper terminis concerning the matter, since in such cases a fiscal servant is appointed who duly attends to the jura fisci and, upon the litis denunciation, makes the further motions.

Breslau, 17 February 1795.

Hoym.

[p. 105]

The Regierung at Breslau to the Regierung at Posen.

Upon the esteemed letter issued to us by a Royal and highly commendable South Prussian Regierung, in the matter of the Ober-Amtmann Früson against the Seehandlung, dated the 23rd of last month and received on the 9th of this month, we were indeed at once prepared to have the ordinance issued to His Excellency the Royal Actual Privy and Directing Minister of State and War, Herr von Hoym, served upon him; His Excellency, however,

[p. 106]

as a highly commendable South Prussian Regierung will be pleased to gather in more detail from the letter here enclosed in copy and from the original pro memoria of the chancery servant Runge, has refused acceptance. Since a Royal and highly commendable South Prussian Regierung will likewise gather in more detail from the enclosed letter the grounds of the refused acceptance, we find ourselves obliged — being unable to effect the requested service — most respectfully to remit herewith to the same the insinuanda communicated to us.

Breslau, 20 February 1795.

Royal Prussian Breslau Oberamtsregierung.

v. Seidlitz. v. Schlechtendahl.
(President.)

[p. 107]

The Minister of Justice v. Dankelmann at Breslau to the Regierung at Posen.

Frederick William etc.

Our etc. Upon your report of the 12th of this month, concerning the litis-denunciation made by the Seehandlung in its cause against the Ober-Amtmann Früson to Our Minister of State Count von Hoym, and concerning the latter’s refusal to accept the citation issued in this matter, We hereby graciously grant you the following resolution: that, since in litis-denunciations the sole point

[p. 108]

at issue is that the litis-denunciate should in a reliable manner receive notice of the suit intended by the litis-denunciant and of the latter’s summoning of him therein, eo effectu, so that, in the event of a recourse to be sought hereafter, the litis-denunciate may not put forward the evasion that no litis-denunciation was made to him; but since in the present case it appears from the declaration of the Minister of State Count von Hoym, communicated to you by the local Oberamtsregierung, that your citation did reach him, and that he is fully aware of its contents, We accordingly do not see that anything further is incumbent upon you to ordain with respect to him, even though he has refused to accept the citation in originali. The only thing you might yet do, out of superfluity, would be to make known to the local Oberamtsregierung, with reference to the grounds just adduced, that you must rest content, in this litis-denunciation matter, with the

[p. 109]

assurance that has come into your files, namely that the contents of your ordinance have become known to Count von Hoym, and that you must leave it to him to proceed further in the matter as he might most clearly deem to be in his interest, while leaving it to the Oberamtsregierung to notify him of this. We remain etc.

Given at Breslau, 19 March 1795.

By His Royal Majesty’s most gracious special command.

v. Dankelmann.

[p. 110]

The Posen Justice Commissioner Früson to the Regierung at Posen.

Most Serene etc.

Ad Causam.

Of the Ober-Amtmann Früson.

Contra.

The Seehandlung at Berlin. The justice commissioner Früson reports most humbly ad Decretum of the 16th of this month.

Posen, 19 March 1795.

Your Royal Majesty was pleased most graciously to communicate to me, per Decretum of the 14th of this month, a

[p. 111]

representation of the Senior Fiscal Mosqua, in which the latter, in the name of the Seehandlung, gives notice that His Royal Majesty in person is said to have ordained, by the cabinet order of 4 March of this year handed over in a mere extract,

that the lordship of Krotoszyn should be taken over by His Excellency the Minister of State Count von Hoym as a South Prussian domain, and the revenues thereof brought onto the domains budget.

The Seehandlung now wishes to make use of this most exalted ordinance to my detriment, and accordingly holds itself entitled wholly to refuse me the lease of the estates of Krotoszyn as the object of the present suit, while itself being able in this manner to withdraw from my just claims; this moyen, however, does not seem to have been so thoroughly considered — for by this very means I may open myself a path to bring the whole course of the proceedings underlying the matter

[p. 112]

to the knowledge of His Royal Majesty’s most exalted person. For it scarcely needs to be mentioned that His Royal Majesty would not, by any immediate ordinance, knowingly wish to encroach upon the rights of the least of his subjects; in the present case, therefore, the same is to be expected, and it is on this account already evident that the above-mentioned most exalted cabinet ordinance was issued without prior knowledge of the circumstances pertaining to the matter, that these were rather concealed from His Royal Majesty’s most exalted person, and that His Majesty was in such wise moved to that cabinet order by a dishonest presentation.

I therefore hold myself entitled to oppose to this cabinet order of 4 March of this year an Exceptionem Obreptionis, and, in proof of my assertion in this respect, I appeal to the testimony and the examination of His Royal Majesty’s most exalted person.

[p. 113]

Since, moreover, the Seehandlung regards that objection as an exceptio litis finitae, and since I too would renounce the action of reinstatement brought against the Seehandlung only in the event that, against all expectation, His Royal Majesty should confirm the said most exalted cabinet order or ordinance to the injury of my rights, may it please Your Royal Majesty

forthwith most graciously to defer to my above motion, and to effect the examination of His Royal Majesty’s most exalted person by requisition of the competent authority.

For which grace I remain unto death in deepest fidelity

Your Royal Majesty’s

most humble
Früson
justice commissioner.

[p. 114]

The Regierung at Posen to the Justice Commissioner Früson there, in reply to his motion of 19 March 1795.

Let Früson be informed per copiam decreti that his unseemly motion, unsuited to the lawful course of a legal dispute, cannot be admitted; rather, he is to declare himself definitely within 8 days as to whether he wishes to renounce the present suit. Posen, 25 March 1795.

[p. 115]

Upon this Früson replied to the Regierung at Posen, under date of 9 April 1795, that he insisted upon the continuation of the suit and could by no means convince himself of the unseemliness of his motion of 19 March.

[p. 116]

The Minister von Hoym, then travelling in Posen, to the Regierung at Posen.

The summons which a Royal and most laudable Regierung has issued in the matter of Früson against the Seehandlung, both to me and to the members of the Breslau War and Domains Chamber, without any ground having been adduced that would palliate this personal attack founded on merely official acts, is so extraordinary that I am compelled to obtain directly the instructions of His Majesty the King in the matter. I therefore do not fail

[p. 117]

to notify you of this in advance, and that at the appointed term of the 27th of this month neither can any proceeding in the matter take place, nor can it be prejudiced in any way.

Posen, 8 June 1795.

Hoym.

[p. 118]

The Regierung at Posen to His Excellency Count v. Hoym, Royal Prussian Privy Minister of State, Finance, and Directing Minister, here present.

In reply to the letter addressed to us by His Excellency Count von Hoym, Royal Prussian Privy Minister of State, Finance, and Directing Minister, in the matter of Früson against the Seehandlung at Berlin, dated the 8th and presented the 9th of this month, we do not fail most respectfully to answer herewith that the litis-denunciation and His Excellency’s summons — issued upon the express demand of the defendant Seehandlung, whose grounds or want of grounds we have no duty to examine for the purpose of the summons —

[p. 119]

had to be ordered in accordance with the prescription of the laws, and in particular the prescription of the Code of Procedure, Title 12, since the Seehandlung expressly declared that it wished to pursue the litis-denunciation against His Excellency and the Royal, highly praiseworthy Chamber at Breslau not in its office and as administrator of the royal treasuries, but qua Privatus, as appears more fully from its declaration of the 10th of January of this year, a copy of which we have the honour to enclose for His Excellency. 15

From this His Excellency will perceive that we were far from arrogating to ourselves, by the ordinance of this litis-denunciation, anything not consistent with the strictest prescriptions of the laws.

Posen, 11 June 1795.

Royal South-Prussian Regierung.

v. Steudener.

[p. 120]

[p. 121]

[p. 122]

The Grand Chancellor v. Goldbeck in Berlin, to the Regierung at Posen.

Frederick William, King, etc.

Our etc. From the Pro Memoria appended hereto in copy, you will learn in fuller detail what has been presented and requested here on the part of Our Breslau War and Domains Chamber concerning the quashing of the suit brought by Ober-Amtmann Früson against the Seehandlung, in which the Chamber was made the object of a litis denunciation. Since the course of the matter set forth in the pro memoria

[p. 123]

is throughout supported by public and fully credible instruments produced in forma probante, We do not conceal from you that from all this it is in no way to be seen how this suit of the said Früson could, so constituted, be admitted as substantiated to the point that a formal and processual proceeding should take place upon it.

The said Früson was aware, upon entering into the lease, that the Seehandlung was indeed the pledge-holder and, moreover, by virtue of the v. Görne cession, the owner of the leased lordship; but also that the administration thereof had been entrusted by Our Most Exalted Person to the Breslau War and Domains Chamber, and that therefore, even though the contract was concluded, in view of the circumstances then prevailing, in the name of the Society, it was nonetheless the said Chamber which represented in the matter the person of the actual lessor. It is accordingly a mere twist amounting to cavillation

[p. 124]

when the plaintiff wishes to proceed against the Seehandlung upon the footing that the said Chamber, as a Tertius, had dispossessed him of the enjoyment of the leased thing. On the contrary, it is clear that the said Früson must allow everything that the said Chamber can oppose to his claim to be held against himself likewise for the benefit of the Seehandlung.

Now the Chamber, in his eviction, not only acted in accordance with the decrees of a court which the said Früson had himself expressly acknowledged as competent, but Früson also, at his eviction, repeatedly consented against the Chamber ad Protocollum of 6 August 1792, and in the Revers of the 13th of the same, and solemnly renounced all claims by way of law, in whatever forum it might be. The objection of coercion, which he wishes to set against these repeated and solemn declarations, he has in his suit supported with no facta specialia

[p. 125]

whatever; but it is well-known law that mere general allegations of dolus, of coercion, of force, etc., merit no consideration at all.

And even if a coercion had in fact occurred, it would not have been unlawful, since the said Chamber grounded its ordinances upon the decrees of the then-competent Polish courts, and thus the threat of intending to make lawful use of one’s right could not be regarded as such a coercion as vitiates the validity of a declaration of will.

But according to the nature and situation of the matter, such a coercion, to which the said Früson could not have resisted, is not to be conceived of at all. A preponderant power under the then-existing Polish government he had to fear neither on the part of the Chamber nor of the Seehandlung; and since both authorities, in respect of their local relations, were subject to the local sovereignty and the local laws, nothing could

[p. 126]

have hindered him from imploring the protection of these laws against such importunities of theirs — for which, during the long duration of the restitution business, he would have had time and opportunity just as good as he found for lodging the inadmissible and ineffective protestation at Freyhahn. Moreover, the said Früson was himself so convinced of the inadmissibility of this pretence of his that he again renounced this ground of complaint ad Protocoll of 18 December of last year.

Since now, according to the clear prescription of the Corp. Jur. Fridr. Part I, Tit. III, § 12, et Tit. IV, § 5, and the General Court Ordinance in accord therewith, Tit. V, § 12, Tit. 17, § 7, a suit is not to be admitted where the fact set forth in no way grounds the claim according to the laws, or where an objection standing against the plaintiff, the correctness of which he cannot deny, annuls his entire right; and since We are as unwilling to allow Ourselves, Our colleges, and authorities, in the exercise

[p. 127]

of their office, to be fatigued with manifestly frivolous16 and unfounded lawsuits as We are Our other subjects; We therefore hereby command you in grace to dismiss the said Früson with his inadmissible suit per Decretum, and to have the acts laid aside. We remain graciously inclined toward you. Given at Berlin, 12 July 1795.

By His Royal Majesty’s most gracious special command.

v. Goldbeck.

[p. 128]

[p. 129]

Memorial concerning the unwarranted Suit of the Ober-Amtmann Früson for the Return of the Lordship of Krotoszyn.

The Ober-Amtmann Früson, who had held the Upper-Silesian office of Oppeln on lease, and had in the process, by oppression of the subjects, provoked general discontent and unrest, bid in the year 1791 at the local auction for the leasing of the lordship of Krotoszyn 30,100 reichsthalers in annual rent for the same.

The Breslau Chamber made all the bids known to the Seehandlung, and the latter resolved of its own motion,

[p. 130]

notwithstanding that the said Früson was not the highest bidder, to grant him the lease, and requested the said Chamber to conclude the contract with him.

Already at this conclusion differences arose, which were only after long negotiations so far removed that the Seehandlung and the said Früson did indeed execute the contract, but the latter in doing so still reserved for himself conditions which had not been made at the auction; and although Früson ought to have been placed in possession of the lease, so as not to endanger the management and revenues of the lordship for 1791/2, he could nonetheless only be brought in May 1792 to desist from his unwarranted reservations, and the contract be handed over to him. As is well known, Krotoszyn lay at that time under Polish sovereignty; the Seehandlung had therefore to maintain, in the person of the Hofgericht Councillor von Husarzewski at Bromberg, a possession-capable nominal holder for the possession of this lordship,

[p. 131]

to whom was entrusted the preservation of its rights.

He had reported that, for the security of the lessors, it was necessary under Polish law that the lessee should have the lease-contract offered and corroborated in the courts there, and the Chamber had therefore, upon the handing-over of the certified engrossment of the contract, to impose this condition upon Früson in the ordinance of 14 May 1792 — a condition which suspends the validity of the contract until then, and which was never fulfilled by him. Rather, Früson had already occasioned several suits by the subjects and burghers, as also by the Polish fisc, against himself before the courts there, whereupon the enclosed resolutions of 4 and 18 May 1792, submitted to the records by himself, followed, after Früson had, according to the enclosed recognition of the 18th of the same, once again expressly submitted himself to the courts there. In the further course of the above proceedings the courts there adjudged,

[p. 132]

under 15 June 1792, the ejection of Früson, and the Seehandlung declared, upon the summons made to it, in the enclosure of 6 July, that it took upon itself no representation for the actions of Früson, but left the further conduct of the matter to the Chamber. The said Chamber, to which the administration of this lordship had been entrusted by His Majesty under the direction of the Silesian Finance Minister, could not itself, in a foreign jurisdiction, occasion judicial investigations and decisions; it had to submit itself to those of the courts there, like any other lordship.

The Hofgericht Councillor v. Husarzewski, as representative of the lordship and expert in the Polish constitution, was therefore heard with his opinion on the further conduct of the matter; and since this, in the enclosed protocol of 2 August 1792, turned out to the effect that the decision on the ejection of Früson was legally binding, that the lease was to be taken back

[p. 133]

by a commissioner of the Chamber, and that Früson had on that account no claim to compensation, this commission had to be occasioned. At the opening of this commission, Früson declared, in the enclosed protocol of 6 August 1792, that he must indeed comply with the lawful ordinances of the Kalisch Commission concerning his ejection — which declaration was signed by him in his own hand before the Chamber Commissioner and the Krotoszyn justiciary. The restoration of possession was therefore proceeded with; all the computations occurring in the process were amicably settled; all the protocols negotiated thereupon are signed by Früson in the presence of the commissioner and the justiciary; concerning which, in proof of the concluding restoration-of-possession protocol of 20 August 1792, the general computation of the inventory and the statement of the outstanding rent are enclosed.

The arrears remaining after this settlement Früson has in fact also paid, and has surrendered and returned the whole lease, after

[p. 134]

he had previously, under 13 August 1792, judicially repeated, acknowledged himself liable thereto, and renounced all further claims, as the judicially confirmed enclosed Revers states.

After this brief narration of the facts, set forth in advance and supported by documents, no further exposition is needed to show that Früson cannot possibly be entitled to make any claim on account of his removal from the lease; and since the laws command that suits so wholly manifestly groundless be at once rejected, it is not to be foreseen how, according to the enclosed letter of the Minister of State v. Struensee, whose repeated motions to that effect have found admission neither with the Regierung at Posen nor with the Minister of State Baron v. Dankelmann. But since, according to the enclosed original citation and its appendices, they persist in involving the Seehandlung, and thereby indirectly the Silesian Finance Department and the Breslau

[p. 135]

Chamber, in a protracted chicanery-suit, it is as necessary as it is easy to set forth the illegality of this procedure, and to refute the Früson suit enclosed with the citation. In this plaint-protocol Früson himself confesses that the Polish courts adjudged his ejection from the lease, and that only in consequence of this decision was the taking-back of the lease occasioned on the part of the Silesian Finance Department.

He here affects, to be sure, not to wish to know by what right this ordinance issued from the said Department and the Breslau Chamber.

But this manifestly deserves no consideration, since His Majesty had, by cabinet order, entrusted to it this administration of Krotoszyn; since it was for this reason that he received the lease also through the Chamber; and since, in the resolution of 5 September 1792 adduced by himself under E., the Minister of State

[p. 136]

von Struensee repeatedly made this known to him.

But there were the most pressing reasons for the eviction; the general dissatisfaction of the subjects, the burghers, the nobility, and the courts, stirred up by Früson, gave cause to fear — under the well-known Polish constitution — not only countless costs and lawsuits, but insurrection, self-help, and devastation, especially in the then turbulent times. The said Chamber would therefore have acted contrary to its duty had it not given effect to the eviction decreed by the Polish courts.

Früson further admits in his suit that he issued the renunciation of 13 August 1792, and therein renounced all claims, and he himself submits it in copy under C.; he would indeed have it that he was forced into this by fear of the Krotoszyn subjects, the Polish noblemen, and the Forest Councillor v. Triebenfeld; but neither the Seehandlung nor the Chamber is in any way concerned with the alleged

[p. 137]

acts of these persons; the commissioner of the latter, Assessor Neumann, he does not even accuse of any threat or force, and yet Früson had already, in the protocol of 6 August submitted above under No. 10, acknowledged toward him the obligation to vacate the lease, and had already in part fulfilled it; and how empty and groundless the whole allegation is, is proved by the protocol of 18 December 1794, which is attached to the citation, where Früson drops the ground of complaint of the asserted coercion, and renounces the proof of it; all the more indubitable is the binding force of this judicial renunciation, whose invalidity in any case the courts, before which it was recorded and confirmed, would alone have to answer for, since the party which was innocent of the asserted illegalities would always remain covered by the transaction. This whole invocation of coercion in the settlement is, moreover, plainly untrue, since he admits that

[p. 138]

the courts had decreed his eviction.

Since he acknowledged the obligation to withdraw toward the commissioner Neumann before the justiciary, since he actually rendered the restitution, settled the accounts thereupon, and paid what he still remained in arrears (all of which, however, is documented by authenticated instruments), it is quite manifest that the protestation under D., which the referendary, now justice commissioner Früson, lodged on 20 August 1792 with the court at Freyhahn, contained mere untruths, and was a malicious chicanery, over which Früson was even then secretly brooding, and which he sought to prepare, while his father, through an amicable settlement of the restitution, filched an advantageous liquid sum on the super-inventory and remission. Yet he himself feels that this secret one-sided protestation can neither prove anything, nor alter the validity of the earlier proceedings, and therefore he seeks

[p. 139]

now, by renouncing the ground of complaint drawn from the alleged coercion, to have the settlement declared invalid on the following ground.

Namely, that the Seehandlung never accepted him. Yet this scarcely deserves a refutation. His Majesty the King had, by the cabinet order of 26 January 1792, entrusted the administration of the lordship to the Breslau Chamber; through this Chamber Früson had leased it and received it by delivery; in the resolution under C., which is attached to the suit, the Minister of State von Struensee tells Früson that the continuation or cancellation of the lease is left entirely to the Chamber, and it is therefore plain nonsense when he asserts that these proceedings, which took place with the commissioner of the Chamber and were at once executed by the restitution, lack the necessary acceptance of the other party.

According to this it is thus wholly clear that the eviction of Früson was decreed, without any doing of the Seehandlung

[p. 140]

or of the Chamber, before a court whose competence he has repeatedly acknowledged; that he has also repeatedly acknowledged this decision as legally valid; and that in a judicial settlement he has renounced all further claims.

If he now, contrary to all this, sues the Seehandlung for reinstatement in the lease, there is the added circumstance that this is impossible, because the lordship of Krotoszyn has been sold by the Seehandlung to His Majesty the King, and wholly ceded as a domain. The Seehandlung no longer possesses it, and the Breslau, etc., Chamber has no further administration of it.

Yet this ground is not needed, since Früson must be dismissed on account of the judicial decision standing against him — recognized by himself as legally valid — and of the judicial settlement, which under the

[p. 141]

laws is to be regarded as equal to a legally valid judgment, on this alone.

Given this existing legally valid decision, it is therefore to be moved, with complete confidence:

that this dismissal of Früson take place, according to the prescription of the laws, by a mere decree; that neither the Seehandlung nor the litis-denunciates be expected to be dragged through all instances on account of so manifestly chicanous a claim. That thereby, at the same time, the strikingly injurious turn that has been given to the matter against the litis-denunciates be removed.

N. B. To this sophistry no signature is to be found, presumably because no one was willing to lend his name to it. The date is likewise missing.

— Ed.

[p. 142]

Früson to the Grand Chancellor v. Goldbeck.

Most Serene etc.

The Ober-Amtmann Früson of Slawitz in Silesia reports most humbly ad rescriptum of 12 July 1795 concerning the dismissal of his suit against the Seehandlung.

21 September 1795.

As a subject of the State I must of course content myself that my judgment upon the conduct of a provincial college, when I am

[p. 143]

thereby endangered, must be left solely to judicial discretion. The Memorial of the Breslau War and Domains Chamber, upon whose instigation Your Royal Majesty by decree ordered the dismissal of my suit against the Seehandlung Society, is filled with the presentation of such facts as in part do not correspond to the truth at all, and in part are also placed in a different light by subsequent events which are not mentioned therein.

The remark placed at the head of the said Memorial, as though I had, in leasing the domain office of Oppeln, aroused general unrest and dissatisfaction by oppressing the subjects, belongs particularly to the former; for from the copy of the letter of the Privy Councillor von Hoym, dated Rothland, 3 July 1791, enclosed herewith, as well as from the content of the letter of His Excellency Herr Minister von Struensee of 30 July 1792, it emerges that I owed the transfer

[p. 144]

of the Krotoszyn lease solely to the recommendations and good testimonials of this very authority, which now accuses me of a formerly so bad conduct that, were it true, its later recommendations and good testimonials might come into serious collision with their own credibility.

The same holds with respect to the remark appended by the War and Domains Chamber, that the Society had transferred the lease to me of its own accord; for both from what has been said above and from the letter of Herr Minister von Struensee of 23 May 1791 it clearly appears that everything here depended solely upon the opinion of the Breslau Chamber, and only this could determine the Society to transfer the lease to me, even notwithstanding that I was not the highest bidder.

The differences that arose upon, or rather after, the conclusion of the lease contract concerned:

First.

[p. 145]

First. The abolition of the administration.

Second. The vacating of the castle, which had been inhabited by the previous administrator Triebenfeld. Both are circumstances whose resolution, in the case of a general lease, follows of itself in every other case and can be subject to no complications; in the lease contract itself no mention had been made of them at all, and therefore I was entitled, and had at the same time very good reason, to insist upon them; these circumstances were accordingly not to be regarded as conditions which I wished to impose after the execution of the contract, but rather such as were made subsequently, without authority, on the part of the lessors.

Not content with the fact that I put up with all this in the end; the Breslau Chamber soon knew how to assert a new invention as well, which is to be gathered from the preliminary ruling dated Breslau, 14 May 1792.

[p. 146]

Here I was further made the condition that I should procure an attestation from the Polish courts of justice, according to which I would be acknowledged as a lessee conforming to the Polish provincial constitution, and indeed the lease contract, which at the same time was then furnished to me in copy, was to have no force or validity until this should have been effected. I scarcely held it worth the trouble to take account of this rare ordinance of a provincial college, especially since I had by then administered the estates for my own account for nearly a whole year; but soon thereafter followed a still more striking ordinance, by virtue of which my general lease treasury was arbitrarily and high-handedly sequestered. I had duly paid my lease monies up to then, and since no other occasion for this seemed conceivable to me, I applied in writing to His Excellency Herr Minister of State

[p. 147]

Count von Hoym with the request that the disposal over my property, obstructed without cause, might again be granted to me.

By the preliminary ruling of 22 May 1792, however, I was refused, on the ground that that reservation had not yet been satisfied by me upon the handing over of the lease contract.

At the Polish courts complaints had been instigated, as though the Seehandlung itself demanded my eviction, because I had caused much mischief and was not legitimated to possession of the lordship.

The subjects were persuaded not to render their services as had hitherto been done, and in the end a number of these people were persuaded to leave their holdings for a time; but at the Polish courts it was denounced against me that these people had been compelled to emigrate on account of the mistreatment they had suffered from me. All these singular events, of which

[p. 148]

I could here make note of a great many more, presented my future fate in this lease vividly enough before my eyes; meanwhile, in a foreign land, amid nothing but cabals and chicaneries, nothing further remained to me than to await the end, which, through the most expeditious ordinances of Herr Minister Count von Hoym, as I shall further set forth most humbly, then also followed soon enough.

I here resume the thread of the presentation contained in the Memorial of the Breslau Chamber, at the point where it is said that “I was obliged to have the lease contract oblated and corroborated according to Polish court usage.” I will leave it undecided whether it fell to me, or rather not to the leasing party, to see to the oblation of the contract; meanwhile I have several times requested ordinances to that effect, as is to be gathered from the rulings of 26 June 1792, but this was denied me under the insignificant

[p. 149]

pretext; that I must first satisfy the condition which, according to the tenor of the above-cited ruling of 14 May 1792, had been imposed upon me. But this most pointless imposition I believed I had already satisfied as well, precisely because I had long since submitted Polish decrees according to which I had been recognized by the Polish courts themselves as general lessee; and how could one arbitrarily suspend the binding force of the contract until its fulfilment, when neither at the conclusion of the contract nor at the preceding auction had this ever been contemplated, nor could this singular circumstance properly have been contemplated, since notoriously the meanest man in Poland can take up leases without any special qualification being required for it? And finally, how could I even bring about the oblation of the contract itself, when, after much solicitation, only under the date of 14 May 1792 a mere copy

[p. 150]

of it was furnished to me, whereas according to Polish judicial usage the original is at all times required for that purpose.

Next, in the memorial of Your Royal Majesty’s War and Domains Chamber at Breslau, mention is made of the complaints which the Krotoszyn subjects had allegedly raised against me.

From the produced ordinances of 4 and 18 May 1792 it now emerges that the grievances hatched against me chiefly concerned the emigration of various subjects already mentioned above. I was accused of these people having been driven to flee on account of my oppression of them. Specific facts were not therein set forth, nor could any be set forth; I therefore appealed, to prove the contrary, to the testimony of my estate officials, who had opportunity to observe me in my economic conduct; but the court rejected these witnesses on the ground that

[p. 151]

they had been denounced as accessories to the oppression of the subjects. The judgment accordingly turned out thus: that I was to bring back the departed subjects within four weeks.

These people were roaming about in the border villages of Silesia, but would settle nowhere, notwithstanding that the best conditions were offered them, particularly on the estates of Count v. Malczhahn. My efforts to get hold of them again were likewise in vain, until the roving company, duly maintained by its instigators, one day traversed the terrain of the estates of a Polish nobleman named von Domsky. To this man all the events set forth were already known; he therefore took no hesitation in having the people detained by his forest servants and delivered up to me. Upon their arrival I saw to it that they were

[p. 152]

kept in a suitable place of confinement, and was of the opinion of having them brought the following day to Kalisch for investigation. The key to the prison, moreover, I handed out of prudence to a certain v. Koczicki, who conducted himself as justiciary of the estates, and left to him the further pursuit of the matter. However, by this precaution I had ill provided for myself, for during the night the people were released from their arrest and once again persuaded to flee. I could thus no longer satisfy the ordinance of the Polish court concerning the bringing back of the people; rather the matter remained in this state, until, against all expectation, His Excellency the Minister Count v. Hoym made known to me, under the date of 14 July 1792:

That since the War and Police Commission at Kalisch had decreed my expulsion, and this decree had to be satisfied, the necessary steps for its execution should shortly be

[p. 153]

ordered by a commission.

Neither of any such decree nor of the occasion for it was anything known to me, and I myself could not even suspect that the departure of the subjects might have been used for it, since no other ordinance or commination whatever had been issued to me on the part of the court. For the rest, I reported at that time to His Excellency the Minister of State Count v. Hoym:

That I would not satisfy the alleged decree of expulsion and would in no way consent to the voluntary restitution of the estates.

Notwithstanding this, after the lapse of some days, the then Chamber Assessor Neumann, present War and Domains Councillor at Breslau, presented himself, produced a commission from His Excellency the Minister of State Count v. Hoym for the execution of the

[p. 154]

business of expulsion, and at the same time made known to me the tenor of the Polish decree, according to which, on account of the oft-mentioned emigration of those subjects, my expulsion had been moved for.

No representation was sufficient to induce the said Neumann to suspend the execution of his commission at least for so long as until the remedy of the Polish decree could be sought by me; rather, without further consultation with me, he at once set about it, taking into attachment the stocks of cattle and grain, the estate utensils, etc., released the subjects from their stipulated obedience toward me, yet could not, with all these transactions, come to completion so soon as I had effected the remedy of the decree of expulsion at the same court by which it had been rendered. Here I must most humbly remark first of all, that all the subjects persuaded to flee, weary of the roaming about,

[p. 155]

had already voluntarily reverted to their possessions. This circumstance I at the same time indicated to the court17 under the date of 11 August 1792 in the grievances raised against the expulsion ordinance, and the court ordered both a new investigation and also, per decretum of 11 August 1792, that the administration officials be charged to produce the fled and returned subjects for the investigation of those causes by which they had been induced to flee.

The alleged legal force of the decree of expulsion was thus annulled; this circumstance will, to Your Royal Majesty, in

[p. 156]

in the Memorial of the Breslau Chamber, however, wisely kept silent, and one is bold enough, notwithstanding all this, to gloss over the unlawfully executed exmission by pretending a legally binding decision of the Polish court.

As concerns the protocol of 6 August 1792 signed by me upon the opening of the Exmission Commission: the person who drafted it did indeed write down a declaration on my behalf which, in a calm state of mind, I should have hesitated to sign; yet from this too nothing of significance can be inferred to my disadvantage. For even if my declaration did amount to my having to comply with the orders of the Chamber and of the Polish court, my utterance in this matter was wholly appropriate to the time when I said it; at that moment, when the exmission decree first came before my eyes, I could neither know whether its redress could be effected, nor whether, even in this

[p. 157]

case, the Commissarius Camerere would abide by it. What further remained to me, therefore, but for the present to let everything pass over me that, in conformity with all that had already gone before, was still to be expected. Whether, moreover, I was willing to comply with those orders of my own free will — that my opponents would find it hard to prove; and to prove the contrary I here refer merely to the declaration of 18 July 1792 sent to His Excellency the Minister Count von Hoym a few days before.

With regard to the order of the Polish court issued in the meantime, dated 11 August, the Exmission Commission did indeed hesitate to proceed further with its operations; meanwhile, however, a new plan was at once forged, the execution of which under the then constitution of the country was subject to no further difficulties, and, in view of my circumstances at the time — when I saw every

[p. 158]

undertaking against me, however unheard-of, mightily enough supported — was greatly facilitated.

To this end a considerable number of burghers and other rabble was assembled in a tavern at Krotoszyn; these were induced by a few subaltern officials of the administration to believe that the entire burgher body there had been summoned by me to Kalisch, and that I would embroil them in a lawsuit which would obstruct their whole livelihood and in the end reduce them all to beggary: this misfortune, they were told, could be forestalled in no other way than by compelling me, through a composition, to renounce both this lawsuit and my whole lease.

Some of them in particular, who understood a little German and knew me, therefore came to me and asked what I actually wanted of the burgher body, and why I had had them summoned. However much this inquiry must have surprised me,

[p. 159]

I could nevertheless not suspect the plan concealed behind it, and so I only told the people that I had never thought of bringing suit against the burgher body, and that this untruth conveyed to them probably arose from an error, since in fact only the said Triebenfeld and the subjects who had absconded were being drawn into the investigation. Thereupon they went off quite reassured; but soon afterwards a swarm of more than 49 partly drunken burghers and Polish nobles followed them, all of whom betook themselves to the room of the War Councillor von Triebenfeld, and the latter had me requested to step in to him for a short while. I was good-natured enough to follow this invitation, but upon my entering the living-room Triebenfeld, with the Commissarius Neumann called in, opened to me:

That the burgher body now present demanded of me that a settlement already drafted by the said Neumann in the manner

[p. 160]

of a composition be signed by me. The Breslau Chamber has already exhibited the same to Your Royal Majesty under the name of a deed of renunciation (Revers); for closer review I therefore most humbly append a copy of it. Without engaging further in negotiations upon this, I wanted to leave the room at once, when 2 Poles present seized me by the arm and prevented me. Thereupon I declared that I would never willingly consent to sign the composition, and at the same time demanded once more that I be permitted to betake myself to my room. After much tumult, insults, and clamour from the Poles present, this was at last indeed allowed to happen; but the assembly followed me at my heels, and in the lower storey of the castle, which I inhabited, I found both house-doors already locked, and even from outside all the windows and entrances were manned with guards. Four fellows provided with

[p. 161]

cudgels followed me into my living-room, positioned themselves at the exit, and declared that they merely wished to await whether I would sign amicably. Every one of my servants and household members withdrew and hid themselves, out of fear of being maltreated. At last Herr Commissarius Neumann too appeared, brought me his drafted composition, and remarked thereupon with great anxiety that he himself was no longer safe of his life and could no longer protect me from maltreatment if I still further wished to refuse to sign amicably.

I was thus brought to the utmost extremity, and therefore signed that settlement, on the basis of which the exmission was actually completed, while I was compelled, with the loss of the most considerable part of my property, to leave the leasehold possession of the lordship of Krotoszyn.

The grounds which the Breslau War and Domains Chamber in its Memorial adduces for

[p. 162]

the dismissal of my suit per Decretum thus for the most part dispose of themselves; for, if it does not accord with the truth that my exmission was executed on the basis of a Polish decree that had entered into legal force, then the Chamber had no authority to enter further into it, still less to undertake such on the basis of a settlement whose executors had not the slightest authority to make, through contracts, other arrangements contrary to prior dispositions of the Seehandlung.

But how, moreover, could the Breslau War and Domains Chamber, which in a certain respect was itself to be regarded as a party, set itself up as the executor of a Polish decree (even if the matter had rested there), when, according to §§ 38 and 39 of my lease contract, the Polish courts alone had been accepted as the competent forum

[p. 163]

with respect to all disputes over the lease — the execution of legal decisions, as is well known, belonging only to the adjudicating judge. The Breslau Chamber would have itself held entitled thereto because Your Royal Majesty had, some years earlier, entrusted to it the administration of the estates. This administration — however little it can reasonably be applied to the present case at all — necessarily also lapsed through the subsequent leasing, since lease and administration cannot possibly coexist, nor even be conceived together. The Chamber had itself, according to the content of Appendix No. 2, come to an agreement with the Society to the effect:

that the estates should henceforth rather be leased than administered, and could therefore (once the lease had actually come into being) permit itself no further pretensions whatever on the ground of the administration formerly entrusted to it.

How, therefore, upon entering upon

[p. 164]

my lease, could I have even suspected that it was in fact the Chamber which in this affair was to be regarded as the lessor.

Your Royal Majesty appears, according to the content of the All-Highest ordinance of 12 July of this year, to hold in person that this circumstance was well known to me. —

The letters of His Excellency Minister v. Struensee and of Privy Councillor v. Hoym, Nos. 1 and 3 of the appendices, which contain the preliminary rulings of the Breslau Chamber preceding the lease itself, of 12 May 1791 and 20 July of the same year, however contain the exact opposite, since according to the content of all these ordinances it was at all times only the Seehandlung that was made known to me as lessor, while the Chamber has always conducted itself only as its agent. Nor would I ever have resolved to undertake this enterprise, had I known anything beforehand of the subsequent interferences.

There is therefore also surely no offence

[p. 165]

in my ground of complaint, when I proceed against the Society fundamentally as my lessor, because the said Chamber, as a tertius, has dispossessed me of the enjoyment of the leased property, while the Society, upon the settlement of the lease contract, made itself bound to warranty in this case. The facta specialia which I have hereby most humbly laid before Your Royal Majesty with respect to the alleged coercion in the execution of the supposed agreement of 13 August 1792 are contained just as completely in the plaint submitted by me to the Regierung here. If, however, the Regierung may perhaps, for moving reasons, not have communicated this libel to the defendants, then the possible case arises that Your Royal Majesty, according to the content of the All-Highest ordinance of 12 July of this year, entertained the presumption as though those facta specialia had not been indicated by me at all.

But if His Majesty in person will graciously deign to judge, from the

[p. 166]

most humbly submitted statement of facts, to what unforeseeable protractedness the instruction of the affair would be subject, if the ground of complaint of coercion first intended by me were to be elicited by the examination of a multitude of witnesses; then the circumstance may be justified, that I have relinquished that objection before this instance, and seek to defend my rights on other grounds. The adduced agreement can, namely, already in this respect be of no legal effect whatever, because no legitimate authority of the contracting parties existed for the execution of this contract, and to none of them could the least right of disposition over its subject-matter appertain.

Even on the part of the leasing Society it has never at any time been ratified and accepted; but I myself will not and cannot be bound by it, and consequently all its effect must of itself

[p. 167]

fall away. Besides, I have set forth the antecedent conduct of the Breslau Chamber with the vouchers required for the justification of my submission. Justice and equitable presumptions arising therefrom will have to give the adjudicating judge determination enough to decide the matter in accordance with truth. No reproach will be able to strike me, that by suppressing such circumstances as alter the state of the affair I have sought to cloak my submission.

If, moreover, I have also demonstrated that the allegedly res-judicata decision of the Polish court has been annulled by the later ordinance of the same court brought forward, and consequently that no objection stands against my complaint which — as Your Royal Majesty held, according to the incorrect submission of the Breslau Chamber — could annul my whole right, then I may expect from the just discernment of Your Royal Majesty that legal hearing may be granted to me as a citizen in the State.

[p. 168]

May Your Royal Majesty accordingly deign most graciously to enjoin upon the Regierung here the continuation of the instruction of my lawsuit against the Seehandlung and its litis-denunciates, according to the state of the proceedings hitherto.

For which grace I remain unto death in deepest fidelity

Your Royal Majesty’s

most humble
Früson.

[p. 169]

The Grand Chancellor v. Goldbeck to Früson.

His Royal Majesty of Prussia etc. Our etc. hereby give the Ober-Amtmann Früson to understand, upon the representation he submitted against the Seehandlung on the 21st of last month, that nothing can be altered in the resolution of 12 July of this year. The supplicant must even now concede that, ad protocollum of 13 August 1794 [sic, 1792], he submitted himself to the surrender of the lease and renounced all claims to be advanced on that account by way of law.

[p. 170]

There is thus a clear exception here, one not contradicted by him in fact, whereby the suit is entirely annulled.

The supplicant even now declares that he does not wish to make any use of the Replica vis et metus which he supposes he might set up against the above agreement. It would therefore be superfluous to instruct him at any greater length concerning the inadmissibility of such a reply, even if all the circumstances he adduces were correct in fact.

The Breslau Chamber was authorized by His Royal Majesty to conduct the administration of the Krotoszyn estates and consequently also the leasing matters pertaining thereto. In that capacity it was fully entitled, by executing the Polish decrees, to avert the detriment otherwise threatening its administration, and to compound with the supplicant thereupon. This

[p. 171]

transaction concluded by him therefore doubtless also enures to the benefit of the Seehandlung (whose agent the supplicant himself acknowledges the Chamber to be); and it can set up the objection in question against the suit just as well as the Chamber.

It must therefore remain the case that neither the one nor the other fiscal station can be troubled with such a manifestly frivolous lawsuit.

Berlin, 17 October 1795.

By His Royal Majesty’s etc. special command.

v. Goldbeck.

After this ruling nothing remained but to await better times and a juster government, to which not only Früson but also other men made unhappy by Hoym and Goldbeck then looked forward longingly in the person of the noble Crown Prince.

— Ed.

[p. 172]

The Justice Commissioner Früson at Posen to His Majesty the King Frederick William III at Berlin, soon after his accession to the throne.

Most Serene
Most Mighty King!
Most Gracious King and Lord!

I make bold to interrupt Your Royal Majesty amid His most heavily burdened affairs of government with a representation which

[p. 173]

may nonetheless, both in itself and in view of the persons concerned in it, perhaps deserve some attention even in the eyes of His Majesty.

For my father had, in the year 1791, taken over from the Seehandlung at Berlin the lordship of Krotoszyn on a nine-year general lease, which until then had been administered by War Councillor von Triebenfeld under the direction of the Breslau Chamber for the account of the Seehandlung. The reasons why the Seehandlung found this leasing more suited to its interest than the previous administration are not for me to judge, and I may only most humbly observe that this leasing seemed to suit neither the Minister of State Count von Hoym nor the said von Triebenfeld; for after one and a half years of my father’s tenure of the lease, he was, through a most arbitrary and unlawful ordinance of the Minister of State Count

[p. 174]

von Hoym himself, without the consent of the Seehandlung, driven from the leasehold possession of the lordship of Krotoszyn with the loss of a considerable part of his fortune, and the administration of these estates was continued, under conditions unknown to me, by the said von Triebenfeld,18 but after

[p. 175]

some time was transferred by the latter to a certain starosta von Gajewsky, who possesses them still at present. In the lease contract established between my father and the Seehandlung

[p. 176]

there was, moreover, contained the stipulation by which the Society had bound itself to guarantee him the quiet possession and enjoyment of the leased

[p. 177]

estates, and to protect him against the encroachments and disturbances of any third party. On the ground of this stipulation of the lease contract he therefore brought suit against the Seehandlung before Your Royal Majesty’s Regierung at Posen qua forum contractus, and demanded to be reinstated in the possession of those estates unlawfully taken from him, and to be compensated for the injury suffered from that dispossession. The latter contended, on the other hand, that since it had contributed nothing to his eviction, my father must for that reason hold solely to the Minister Count von Hoym or

[p. 178]

to those who had effected or occasioned his ejection.

For that reason the Seehandlung, on 8 September 1794, applied to the then Directing Minister of State von Dankelmann and demanded that I should not even be heard with my suit, but should at once be dismissed from it per decretum. The said Minister, however, ruled: that it was to be gathered from the Society’s own representation that legal hearing could not be denied to my father in the present case, but rather that the Society would not be able to escape answering his suit and leaving the decision thereof to judicial cognizance.

The investigation of the already commenced lawsuit was thereupon continued by the Regierung at Posen, and in the course of it the Seehandlung found itself moved to denounce the suit both to the Minister Count von Hoym and to the Breslau Chamber, in order to establish

[p. 179]

the recourse to be taken against them. The former was accordingly summoned to safeguard his rights, but he notified the Regierung, in expressions that were in part very offensive, that he would not engage in the matter at all, but would apply on that account to His late Majesty the King. Soon thereafter the Minister von Dankelmann was dismissed, and the first rescript which his successor, the Minister of Justice and Grand Chancellor Herr von Goldbeck, directing until now in South Prussia, issued to the local Regierung on 12 July 1795, ordered, on the occasion of a one-sided representation by the Minister of State Count von Hoym, the complete quashing of that lawsuit; and in such manner all legal hearing has been denied to my father to the present day.

I am too well convinced that Your Royal Majesty holds sacred the first fundamental law of a

[p. 180]

civilized constitution of the state, and that it accords with His will, that legal hearing and justice shall be dealt to every one of His subjects without respect of person; and when the First Minister of Justice of the Prussian States acts against this, then I, as a subject, have the most just cause to lay a complaint on that account before the throne of Your Majesty. If the suit brought by my father had been so inadmissible that, according to the prescriptions of the laws, it could not be deemed worthy of any investigation, the college of the local Regierung would certainly have dismissed it at once, and would not have occasioned us any costly ordinances upon it; and just as certainly the Minister von Dankelmann would already, upon the similar application of the Seehandlung, have ordered the requested dismissal of the suit.

Meanwhile I sought to move the Grand Chancellor von Goldbeck, through a detailed representation of my father’s just claims,

[p. 181]

and by a thorough refutation of the facts adduced by the Minister von Hoym in his representation, to convince him of the most unjust quashing of that lawsuit; yet in this too I received as answer that the matter must remain irrevocably as it stood. Nothing therefore remained for me but to keep silence until, at present, I may first venture, in reliance upon the grace and love of justice acknowledged by every one of Your Majesty’s subjects, most humbly to dedicate my present representation to Your Most Exalted Majesty. I take the liberty at the same time of appending to it those documents to which I have referred, partly in my present representation and partly in the report submitted to His Excellency the Grand Chancellor von Goldbeck. Could I but presume to ask Your Majesty to pass over those documents with a fleeting eye, His Majesty would gather from them facts such as can scarcely be thought possible of servants of state

[p. 182]

in a Prussian government. The proofs thereof, however, lie for the most part open to the day, and filial duties command me to censure the maltreatment then inflicted upon my father, since he himself, with his advancing age, lacks the strength and knowledge to do so.

May it therefore please Your Royal Majesty most graciously

to command the Regierung at Posen, by His Majesty’s most exalted immediate order, to continue the investigation of the lawsuit brought by my father against the Seehandlung at Berlin, and at the same time most graciously to enjoin upon it the expediting of this lawsuit.

I remain unto death in deepest reverence and fidelity

Posen, 6 December 1797.

Your Royal Majesty’s

most humble

Früson.

Justice Commissioner.

[p. 183]

Frederick William III to the Justice Commissioner Früson at Posen.

His Royal Majesty of Prussia etc. has, in view of the circumstances set forth in the representation of the Justice Commissioner Früson of the 6th of this month, taken no exception to charging the Department of Justice that it authorize the Regierung at Posen to reopen that lawsuit which the father of the supplicant had brought in the year 1794 for compensation of damages on account of his allegedly unlawful ejection from the lease of Krotoszyn; and this is hereby made known to the said Früson by way of resolution.

Berlin, 17 December 1797.

Frederick William.

[p. 184]

The Grand Chancellor von Goldbeck at Berlin to the Regierung at Posen.

By the Grace of God Frederick William, King of Prussia, etc. Our gracious greeting first, Well-born, trusty, and highly learned Councillors; beloved faithful. Whereas Our Most Exalted Person, upon the petition of the justice commissioner Früson, has, by a cabinet order issued hither under the 17th of this month, granted the continuation of the suit brought in the year 1795 by the Ober-Amtmann Früson against the Seehandlung and the Breslau War and Domains Chamber;

[p. 185]

We therefore hereby graciously command you, when the said Früson shall present himself concerning the reassumption of this suit, to make the requisite lawful disposition therein, and to expedite the matter as much as possible. That is Our will. We remain graciously inclined toward you. Given at Berlin, 19 December 1797.

By His Royal Majesty’s most gracious special command.

v. Goldbeck.

[p. 186]

The Ober-Amtmann Früson, through his son the Justice Commissioner Früson in Posen, to the Regierung at Posen.

Most Serene and Most Mighty King, Most Gracious King and Lord!

Posen, 16 February 1798.

Renewed report of complaint of the Ober-Amtmann Früson, to the Regierung at Posen,

against

the Seehandlung at Berlin and its litis-denunciates, concerning compensation to be claimed arising out of the lease of Krotoszyn.

In my notice of complaint of 28 December 1793 I have already reported how I

[p. 187]

came to the general lease of the lordship of Krotoszyn in the year 1791; and I remarked already at that time by what means, partly the Minister of State Count Hoym, partly the War Councillor v. Triebenfeld, mediately and immediately employed, to drive me in the most unlawful manner out of the leasehold possession of those estates, and how finally the Seehandlung as lessor, contrary to the obligation stipulated in §. 5 of the lease-contract concluded with it, not only did not protect me at all in the possession and enjoyment of the realities leased to me, but calmly allowed both my expulsion and all the preceding undertakings against me directed to that end to take place.

The statement of all this was, however, made at that time partly only quite generally, and partly also without the giving and furnishing of the requisite proofs; and likewise sundry facts, notwithstanding that they may be reckoned among the essentials of the matter, were entirely passed over by me

[p. 188]

as well. On account of the loss of time arising for me through the quashing of the lawsuit hitherto, I find myself finally moved also to redirect the object of my complaint, previously aimed at reinstatement into the leasehold possession of the lordship of Krotoszyn, so that it now aims merely at a compensation for the enjoyment of the realities leased to me, of which I was unlawfully deprived; all of which therefore prompts me to renew the entire statement of my report of complaint of 28 December 1793 under sundry additions and alterations, and I accordingly note the following: From my present statement it will hereafter sufficiently appear and be proved that it was of concern to the Minister Count von Hoym and to the then administrator of those estates, the War Councillor von Triebenfeld, to reverse the leasing-out of the estates by my expulsion from the leasehold possession thereof.

Initially, to that end, chicaneries

[p. 189]

were attempted, and when these did not lead to the object, open violence was employed. I reckon among the former still the following occurrences.

Soon after I had taken over the estates, Triebenfeld informed me,

that the hitherto castle-brewer did not wish to serve me!

A natural consequence, then, was for me to hire a new one. This indeed came to pass, and after I had had the customary brewer’s dwelling assigned to him, I soon afterwards noticed that masons and carpenters were at work in the brewhouse. I betook myself thither and find:

First. That the passage through the house to the front door is blocked by the erection of a cross-wall.

Second. That the connection of the whole brewery itself with the malt-house was walled up, and thereby also the connection of the brewer’s dwelling with the brew-house and malt-house

[p. 190]

was cut off in such a manner that if the brewer was to attend to his business, this could absolutely not be done otherwise than if he made, through the back door, a detour around the whole brewery in order to reach the front entrance of the house.

I thereupon asked the Building Inspector von Bertrand there who had made this absurd arrangement in my brewery? and he replied that this had been done by All-Highest order.

The proof of this fact will, moreover, appear from the examination of the Building Inspector and present Forest Councillor von Bertrand at Krotoszyn.

Still further, they sought to restrict, and finally to render wholly impossible, my exploitation of the most valuable branches of the economy there, in that Triebenfeld, qua disposer over the forests, allowed

[p. 191]

neither the cord-wood stipulated by contract for the brewery and distillery, nor the timber-wood required for the estate’s needs, to be delivered, and moreover also incited the subjects to refuse me their services. I prove this:

a) By the report of my then Amtmann Hertzog of 8 January 1792.

b) By the report of my estate inspector Rosteiski of 13 January 1792.

c) By the official notice of the Amtmann Schwartz of 28 January 1792.

d) By the attestation of the brandy-clerk Weigelt of 11 March 1792.

e) By the estate reports of the Amtmann Hertzog of 11 March and 22 April 1792.

Thereupon brewery and distillery were set entirely out of activity; I therefore lodged urgent complaints, which, however, remained without answer and without result. —

During this time I had already several times made application concerning the delivery of my lease-contract,

[p. 192]

both to the Minister von Struensee and to the Breslau Chamber; from the former, however, I received the reply that this contract had been delivered to the Chamber for its extradition to me, while the latter several times gave me no answer at all, until at length, under date of 26 June 1792, I received as resolution:

that it was open to me to apply for that purpose to His Excellency the Minister Count von Hoym.

By this delayed surrender of my lease-contract they again sought to establish a new chicanery, which came down to this: that at the Polish courts of justice a denunciation was made against me, as though I had set myself into possession of the estates by force, and were therefore also not in a position to legitimate myself by a contract. They even, in the name of the Seehandlung, under date of 13 July 1792 brought forth yet another similar accusation against me, according to which I was moreover to render account for the

[p. 193]

revenues received from the estates.

These circumstances now made the procurement of my contract into the most pressing necessity, but for that very reason it seemed to me that it was being withheld. This moved me once more to render to the Minister von Struensee a circumstantial report, while to Breslau I betook myself in person in order to bring about the surrender of my contract.

The Minister Count von Hoym was accordingly presented with a remonstrance on the matter by the War and Domains Councillor von Wägern when my petition was laid before him; but he received in reply:

For all I care the fellow may lie about here as long as he likes — the contract he shall not have! —

For proof of this I appeal to the testimony of the said von Wägern. At length the Chamber sent me an attested copy of the contract, but with it the peculiar condition was once again disclosed to me:

[p. 194]

that this contract should have no force or validity until I had been recognized by the Polish courts of justice as a lessee conformable to the constitution of that land.

Meanwhile, at the Polish courts a fresh accusation had once again been lodged against me, which consisted in this:

that I made use of false measures. For this they sought a pretext in the following circumstance.

For the Republic of Poland had, one year before I entered upon my lease, ordered a change of measures. On the lordship this had not been so strictly observed, and at the handover several measures were therefore delivered over to me which, in conformity with that ordinance, were in fact not correct. Meanwhile none of all this had yet become known to me at the time, and my people made use of these old measures, to my effective disadvantage, for it was afterwards found

[p. 195]

that they were larger than they ought properly to have been. This, then, they took as the pretext for that denunciation, and I was sentenced to pay a fine of 200 Polish guilders.

In the meantime there had also followed the ordinance of the Minister Count von Hoym of 26 April 1792, already degenerating into an act of violence, by which he,

through the seizure — arbitrarily ordered by him — of the monies held in my rent office (Rent-Casse), took possession of my property, but withdrew the estate officials in my employ (in my bread, as the phrase was) from my orders and service, and in this manner already at that time so far deprived me of the use of all the real properties leased to me that my subsequent eviction would scarcely have been needed any longer.

I did indeed now attempt to obtain redress of that ordinance most urgently, both from the Minister of State von Struensee and from the Minister

[p. 196]

Count von Hoym.

Of the former, however, I can recall no answer whatsoever; but the latter gave me for reply that I could not yet regard the revenues of the lordship as my property, because I had not yet satisfied the reservation made upon the delivery of the lease-contract and noted under Litt. C. I thereupon sent the Minister Polish ordinances and decrees, according to which the Polish courts had in fact recognized me as general lessee of the lordship of Krotoszyn, and believed thereby to have remedied that peculiar ordinance; but this too was without success — I received neither an answer nor my monies back.

Thereupon at length came the preliminary ruling of the Minister of State Count von Hoym of 12 July 1792, by which he made known to me that the War and Police Commission at Kalisch had ordered my eviction from the lease of Krotoszyn, and

[p. 197]

that accordingly this business was shortly to be carried out by a Chamber Commission from Breslau. At that time nothing had become known to me either of any such ordinance of that court, nor any the more of an occasion for it. All this I first came to learn only when the Breslau Chamber Commissioner, the said Neumann, present War and Domains Councillor at Breslau, appointed for my expulsion, came to Krotoszyn with this commission; he produced to me that eviction ordinance of the Police Court at Kalisch, from which I could at the same time gather that the emigration of some subjects had been taken as the pretext for that ordinance, in that it was alleged that these people had been forced to emigrate by my oppressions. Here I must now relate a further remarkable fact, which has the most essential bearing on the matter.

For at that court

[p. 198]

they had, among other things, denounced me on the ground that various subjects had emigrated on account of the oppressions inflicted upon them by me and my people; and I received on this account a citation dated 16 April 1792, summoning me ad terminum the 4th of May of the same year to Kalisch.

On that day, however, there followed only the examination of the witnesses proposed by the informers, who had attested: that the departure of the subjects listed in the resolution of the 18th had taken place only on the 20th, 21st, 27th, and 30th of April; the denunciation lodged on that account already before the 16th of April, as appears from Enclosure 18, had therefore taken place far earlier, even before the denounced fact existed, and my conjecture that the people had merely been talked into running away by bribery and incitement was therefore not unfounded, and was confirmed by proof, as appears from the following.

For the result of the whole investigation was, according to the contents of Enclosure No. 19, that

[p. 199]

I should within 4 weeks bring back the subjects who had departed. I therefore took pains to get hold of them again, and this I succeeded in doing in the following manner:

Those people were roaming about in the border places in the neighbourhood of Krotoszyn, and came on one occasion to the estate of Kamarzewo, which belongs to a certain von Domsky.

To him that instigation had already become known by report, and he therefore found himself moved to have these emigrants detained by his foresters and domestics. They themselves excused themselves, saying that they had been talked into going away, and that in return they had been maintained during their absence.

Von Domsky thereupon had the people delivered up to me, and I call for proof of this fact upon 1) the examination of the same, 2) of his huntsman Andreas, and 3) of the steward Sliwinsky, all at Kunarzewo

[p. 200]

near Krotoszyn. After the aforesaid people had been brought in to me, I provided in the meantime for their keeping in a suitable place of confinement and handed over the key thereof to a certain v. Koszicki, who at that time acted as justiciary on the estates and now resides at Gross-Schunkawe near Freyhahn; nevertheless, that very same night the people were set at liberty without my knowledge and once more persuaded to run away, which can be proved by the examination of the said von Koszicki. Now I was indeed unable to bring these subjects back again before the determination of the court set down in the contents of No. 19; in the meantime, however, I received no further demand to do so, until the Commissioner Neumann, appointed for my exmission, produced to me the decree issued by the wholly incompetent authority of the War and Police Commission at Kalisch, from which I first learned that the described departure of the subjects had been alleged as the

[p. 201]

cause of the exmission ordered.

Until then, however, this had been prudently concealed from me, since it was readily to be foreseen that if it became known to me sooner, the remedy against the exmission ordinance could easily be procured by me before its execution.

Yet even the latter I still succeeded in achieving, for if I may most humbly note here at once that all the subjects who had run away, weary of vagabonding about, had already returned voluntarily to their holdings, I now had the means in hand to clear myself of all the accusations and charges made in this regard by their examination. On 7 August 1792, therefore, I presented to that War and Police Commission a memorial, in which I asked for the rescinding of the exmission ordinance, and at the same time demanded a fresh investigation: whereupon, as early as the 11th of the same month, I received the ordinance according to which

[p. 202]

Triebenfeld, together with the whole Krotoszyn estate administration (Gubernium), was to answer for himself, and the subjects who had run away were to present themselves for examination. By this ordinance, indeed, the operations of the exmission commissioner, the said Neumann, were interrupted; and since accordingly all the chicaneries hitherto set forth seemed after all not likely to lead to their end, a new plan had to be forged, whose execution, under the then Polish constitution of the land, was likewise subject to no particular difficulty, and, in view of my circumstances at that time — when I saw every enterprise against me, however unheard of, powerfully enough supported — was very much facilitated.

For a considerable number of Polish townsmen and other rabble were assembled in the dwelling of the herdsman Dobrowolski at Krotoszyn. These were given brandy and, through some subaltern officials of the forest administration, were persuaded that the entire townsfolk of that place had been

[p. 203]

summoned to Kalisch by me, and that I would embroil them in a lawsuit that would cripple their whole livelihood and in the end reduce them all to beggary. This misfortune, they were told, could now be forestalled in no other way than by their compelling me, through a settlement, to renounce both this lawsuit and my whole lease.

In proof of this fact I call for the examination of the following witnesses, namely

First. The herdsman Dobrowolski at Krotoszyn.
Second. The former Bürgermeister Herrmann of the same place.
Third. The Vice-Bürgermeister Rudolph Girwoski.
Fourth. The townsman Thomas Chmielik.
Fifth. The smith Bartel.
Sixth. The shoemaker Hago.
Seventh. The saddler Ulrich.
Eighth. The furrier Opelinski.

[p. 204]

Ninth. The shoemaker Gunsorek, all at Krotoszyn.

Several of the persons assembled in the manner described, especially those who understood some German and knew me, would not let themselves be convinced at once of those pretences, and this led them to inquire of me what it was I actually wanted from the townsfolk, and why I had had them summoned?

However much these inquiries were bound to astonish me, I nevertheless could not suspect the plan concealed behind them, and therefore told the people that I had never thought of suing the townsfolk, and that this untruth conveyed to them had probably arisen through an error, since in fact only Triebenfeld and the subjects who had run away were being drawn into the investigation.

Upon this they departed quite reassured, but soon afterward there followed them a

[p. 205]

swarm of more than 40 townsmen and Polish noblemen, in part drunk.

These all betook themselves to the chamber of the said Triebenfeld, and the latter had me requested to step in with him for a short while. I was good-natured enough to follow this invitation, but on my entry into his room I found the aforesaid assembly, and Triebenfeld, with the participation of the said Neumann, disclosed to me:

that the townsfolk now present demanded of me that an agreement, in the manner of a settlement, already drafted by the said Neumann, should be signed by me.

Without entering into any further negotiations upon this, I wished to leave the room at once, when two Poles present seized me by the arm and held me back.

Upon this I declared that I would never willingly consent to sign the settlement;

[p. 206]

but Paul von Sokolnicki, likewise present, grasped me by the breast and thereupon expressed, in broken German:

What? be in Poland! not want to sign!

This treatment made me all the more embarrassed, and I asked that I be permitted to withdraw to my room.

After much tumult, insults, and threats from the Poles present, this was at last indeed allowed, but the whole assembly followed me at my heels, and in the lower storey of the castle, which I inhabited, all the doors and exits were manned with guards. Four fellows, provided with cudgels, followed me into my living-room, stationed themselves at the exit, and expressed that they only wished to wait and see whether I would sign of my own accord.

Every one of my household servants withdrew and hid himself, for fear of being maltreated. —

[p. 207]

To that extent the nine witnesses last named can likewise attest this fact; but beyond these I call for the examination of the following.

First. The Chamber Calculator Lachmund at Breslau.

Second. The War and Domains Councillor Neumann at Breslau, who, however, would be examined only informationis causa (for information’s sake).

Third. The von Koczicki at Schunkawe near Freyhahn.

Fourth. The wife of Amtmann Kerner on the starosty near Meseritz.

Fifth. The huntsman Kupka at Löwen in Silesia.

At last the said Neumann too appeared in my room, brought me his drafted composition for signature, and remarked thereupon, with great anxiety, that he himself was no longer safe of his own life and could protect me no further from maltreatment, if

[p. 208]

I persisted in refusing to sign.

By this, and amid the wailing of my children who were present, I was driven to the utmost, and therefore signed that agreement, upon the ground of which my eviction was in fact completed, while I was compelled, with the loss of the most considerable part of my fortune, to relinquish the leasehold possession of the lordship of Krotoszyn.

In proof of the fact last complained of I call, moreover, for the examination of the aforenamed

Lachmund,

Neumann

and v. Koszicki,

as also of the above-proposed

Herrmann,

Girwoski

and Chmielik,

and Amtmann Kerner on the starosty of Meseritz will also give information concerning these facts, and will be able still more specifically to attest,

[p. 209]

that Paul von Sokolnicki, immediately after that signature had been extorted from me, came to him in his room and said:

now give me a pipe of tobacco — it will taste good after that piece of work; it was devilish hard going! but sign he had to.

All that I could thereafter do in any essential way for the conservation of my rights consisted in this: that I extracted the recognition of the judicial office at Freyhahn, submitted in the original as Lit. B. ad ante Acta, concerning the protestation made against the validity of the aforesaid composition, and made known to the Minister von Struensee, as head of the leasing Seehandlung, the occurrence of 13 August 1792, at the same time requesting of him his protection and assistance, to which he has expressly bound himself according to the content of §. 5 of the lease contract already submitted ad ante Acta! The cover-letters appended in copy under lit. a. b. c. d. e. f.

[p. 210]

prove that this was moreover done very often and urgently besides, on every occasion when I was disturbed in the enjoyment of the properties leased to me, or when they were also wholly withdrawn from me. But just as many letters of reply from the Minister von Struensee, which I exhibit in the original under lit. A. B. C. D. F. G., also demonstrate that these contain nothing but empty reassurances, references to the Chamber, etc., but that upon all my requests, proposals, and reminders, as good as nothing was done for my protection; that rather I was left to my fate, and that they seemed already content if, through all of this, I only duly rendered up my lease payments. The latter has indeed been done, and I have accordingly for my part fulfilled the principal obligation of the contract incumbent upon me as lessee.

But no one will wish to dispute that the quiet possession and enjoyment of the

[p. 211]

leased thing constitutes the principal obligation of the lessor, which he has to render and to warrant to his lessee; this lies so entirely in the nature of a lease contract that it does not even require a special stipulation to that end, but must rather be understood of itself. Nevertheless the leasing Seehandlung has, according to §. 5 of the contract, further expressly bound itself thereto; this obligation therefore lay upon it throughout nine years, as being the term for which the duration of the contract is fixed. It has, however, granted me the possession and enjoyment of the leased properties only until 30 April 1792, at which time I was already deprived thereof by the ministerial rescript of the Minister Count von Hoym of the 6th of the same month; it left me to my fate before that time, but after that point it also would give no hearing to my petition to procure me the leasehold possession again. The obligation of the same to indemnify me for the withdrawn use

[p. 212]

of the aforesaid properties is therefore the natural and legally founded consequence of that unfulfilled principal obligation of the contract; but it also rests in part upon the stipulation expressly contained in §. 5 of the same, where it is said:

that nothing of the leased properties shall be taken from me without compensation.

The Society will indeed wish to object to this that it itself contributed nothing to my expulsion from the leasehold possession; but if it is true that it bound itself without reservation to grant me the possession and enjoyment of the leased estates for 9 years, then it was its business also to see to it that no third party might withdraw this possession and enjoyment from me; but if it has omitted to do this, and if the same has undertaken nothing whatever to protect me against the encroachments and presumptions of this third party, or at least to defend me,

[p. 213]

then the same acted contrary to its contractual obligation by omission, and therefore remains principaliter liable to me, notwithstanding that I am willing to concede that it may be entitled to assert its recourse contra quemcumque (against whomsoever).

Perhaps the same might further wish to object to me that it did not lie within its power, or that it was afraid, to take me under its protection against this third party, or to defend me. But even if this had been the case, the Society must nevertheless necessarily have known already, before the entering-in of the lease, that this tertius (third party) had the power, or otherwise might allow itself, to annul its leasing again in some way; it therefore ought not to have presumed to make it at all, and would consequently have to attribute to itself if disadvantage should accrue to it through such an unwarranted presumption. If, on the other hand, it is

[p. 214]

convinced of a right on the part of the third party, then means and ways enough stood open to her to put a stop to his encroachments; I, by contrast, could not act effectively against it, for my own hands were tied by the provisions of the contract in this case, because, according to §. 38. seqq. of my lease contract, all disputes touching the lease belonged to the decision of the Polish courts, before which, however, I could sue neither the Minister Count von Hoym nor the Breslau Chamber.

Finally, in preliminary rebuttal of the objections to be raised against me by the defendants, I will also make mention of the notice which they submitted ad ante Acta on 27 March 1794, and of which, for a briefer overview, I append a copy.

This representation contains the sole objection which the defendants at that time

[p. 215]

set against my suit for remission.

The defendant Society, namely, wishes according to this to disavow on its part the whole leasing transaction, and pretends that it never had anything to do with these estates, and in specie with the leasing of them, apart from taking the money; that it was rather the Chamber which undertook this leasing to me as well as my ejectment, and that I could therefore not be entitled to seek recourse against the Society, but against the latter.

Now as to the leasing, and that it was not done, as they wish to maintain, by the Breslau Chamber, but principaliter by the Society, this I prove:

a) by the written notice of the Minister von Struensee, dated Elbing, 23 May 1791, in which he informed me that the Chamber had received the commission for the leasing; that the lease propositions

[p. 216]

of a certain Bausemer were more advantageous for the Society than mine, and that the Chamber was to report its opinion on the further lease propositions to the Seehandlung.

b) On 12 May 1791 the Breslau Chamber notified me that my lease offers regarding Krotoszyn had not been accepted by the Seehandlung, because another had bid higher.

c) The Privy Councillor v. Hoym informed me on 3 July 1791 that he could presume that the Seehandlung would consider me in leasing Krotoszyn, because the Chamber had recommended me.

d) On 20 July the Chamber made known to me:

that the Direction of the Seehandlung had declared it would grant me the general lease, and that I should come to Breslau in order to have the lease contract drawn up with me.

[p. 217]

and finally, the execution of the lease contract by the Society alone, as well as the entire content of it, also proves that the preceding negotiations, as well as the leasing itself, proceeded only from the Society, and that in all this the Breslau Chamber concurred not qua lessor, but merely as agent of the Society.

After this stringent proof of the contrary of that assertion, the defendants’ inference founded upon it must therefore fall away of itself, and I refer here once more to the grounds presented above, for which the Chamber must not, but the Society principaliter must remain liable to me on account of the withdrawn use of the leased properties.

As, finally, to the objections to be brought forward against my suit by the litis-denunciates in assistance of the defendant, the Society will be able to make

[p. 218]

no particular use of these for its defence.

For if these exceptiones should chiefly amount to a justification of my ejectment, but the Society has already often and repeatedly declared that it neither wishes to approve this ejectment nor has given anyone a commission for it, then it likewise cannot possibly employ a justification of this act for its own defence, since such a thing would establish a manifest ratihabition of that fact, and consequently the Seehandlung would manifestly forfeit the recourse to be taken against its litis-denunciates; for the rest, I will here only give the defendants so much to understand, that it will be all one to me whether they accede to that justification of the litis-denunciate Seehandlung, or wish to make no use of it for their own defence.

For in the former case the proof of the contrary of the litis-denunciate objections,

[p. 219]

in so far as they, as is to be expected, amount to the assertion of a validity of the so-called settlement of 13 August 1792 etc., must also hold good against the defendant Society.

But in the latter case I would gain only so much, that an extensive taking of evidence would not become necessary at all, since in my view such can in general take place only concerning such assertions of the litis-denunciates as aim at the defence of the defendants or litis-denunciants, and are acknowledged and accepted as such by the latter. The defendants will therefore have to declare themselves particularly on this circumstance, since the necessity of the time-consuming and costly taking of evidence indicated by me above might depend solely upon it. In view of which I will finally only remark further, that that taking of evidence can also very properly be set aside for this reason too, because still other causes prevail, on account of which the

[p. 220]

non-obligatory character of the instrument of 13 August 1792 can be legally asserted, without there being any need first for a proof of the exception vis et metus opposed by me against it.

The adduced settlement, namely, can in this respect already be of no legal effect and validity whatsoever, because no legitimate authority of the contracting parties for its execution was present. Here, namely, the natural question must arise:

First. With whom this contract was concluded?

Second. To whom I made myself bound thereby?

Ad 1. the signature of it proves that v. Triebenfeld, second the Bürgermeister Herrmann, third the Vice-Bürgermeister Girwoski, and fourth the Polish citizen Thomas Chmielik set themselves up as contractants, but the then Ejectment-Commissioner etc. Neumann only found it necessary

[p. 221]

found it necessary to sign only as a witness. No one, then, could well venture the assertion that a right of disposition over the estates leased to me belonged to any single one of the persons named; and the question ad 2 thus answers itself of its own accord, in so far as I could not, even in the case that I had wished to do so, bind myself to them for the surrender of my lease without the consent of my lessors. But this consent was never given; the leasing Society at no time chose to ratify and accept that agreement, and consequently the same is eo ipso already destitute of all legal effect in respect of the surrender of my general lease; and thus that costly taking of evidence will not be needed at all, upon which point, however, I submit myself entirely to the judgment of the court.

A second objection, which in particular the litis-denunciate of the defendants, Minister of State Count v. Hoym, raises against this suit by justifying my ejectment,

[p. 222]

rests upon the execution of the ejectment protocol of 6 August 1792. With regard to this proceeding it stands first of all to be remarked generaliter:

that the same was drawn up on 6 August, and thus five days earlier, before I could, through the decree of the War and Police Commission of 11 August, effect the remedy of the ejectment decree referred to therein and laid at the foundation of this proceeding.

From this circumstance I believe I may lawfully conclude that, after I had effected that remedy, all effects of this proceeding likewise had at least to be suspended, until it were legally established either through a further finding of the court or aliunde that the decreed ejectment was to stand.

The defendants and litis-denunciates, however, will be able to demonstrate neither the one nor the other in law. For a further

[p. 223]

ejectment decree did not follow; and if they should be permitted for that end to invoke the instrument of 13 August, then the non-binding character of the same has, I believe, already been sufficiently demonstrated by me. The declaration written into that protocol by the said Neumann,

that I must indeed comply with the lawful ordinances of the Chamber and of that decree of the Police Commission —

is therefore so insignificant that it could scarcely bear the weight with which the litis-denunciates would rest upon it. Moreover, at that time, in the very moment when this declaration was being written down, the knife was already at my throat (if I may use the expression); for publication and execution of the Polish decree were carried out uno actu, and what then remained to me but for the present to let everything pass over me,

[p. 224]

for the averting of which I had as yet no permitted means in hand. Here I could relate many more extraordinary occurrences which took place even after the ejectment had followed, when I was locked up by night and my horses shut away, and by day even set under guard, etc. — Yet this remarkable period of my life is already past, and I believe I have sufficiently established my suit through this detailed account. That, moreover, the same at present is to have as its object not my reinstatement but the compensation which I am entitled to demand of the Seehandlung as my lessor on the ground of the cited stipulation of the lease contract, because the same did not grant me the possession and enjoyment of the leased properties stipulated for 9 years throughout 8 years — all this has already been set forth in detail by me above. If, however, the same denies its obligation in this matter altogether, and believes itself in no

[p. 225]

manner bound to give me satisfaction for the withdrawn use of the leased estates, then I must indeed of my own accord be content that first of all there be a legal finding upon the obligation to compensate which I have asserted against the defendants; but I reserve to myself thereafter, in the case that I should obtain a victorious judgment with regard to the present legal dispute, to liquidate and assert this my compensation against the defendants. I therefore most humbly move:

that a terminus instructionis be most graciously appointed forthwith, but that, cognita causa, the defendant Seehandlung be condemned to compensate me for the leasehold use of these estates unlawfully withdrawn from me after the expiry of the first lease-year of the lordship of Krotoszyn and not granted for the following 8 lease-years, and to bear alone all

[p. 226]

the costs of this suit, and, as the case may be, to refund them.

I remain unto death in deepest fidelity

Your Royal Majesty’s

most humble

the Ober-Amtmann Früson
p. J. C. Früson.

Now, during the nine months from March to November 1798, a very extensive correspondence was conducted concerning the renewed litis-denunciation of the Seehandlung against the Minister von Hoym — who this time, in the circumstances that had arisen, had to submit to the insinuation of the same — concerning the proper forum, concerning the final appointment of various terms before the Regierung at Posen, between the Regierung at Posen and that at Breslau, the Kammergericht at Berlin, and the mandatary of the Seehandlung, named Rothe at Posen, whom it had in the meantime taken on and empowered in place of Mosqua, who had formerly served it there; which

[p. 227]

correspondence, however, being entirely inessential for the reader, is not furnished here. Enough: by November 1798 the state of the matter had advanced so far that it was just about to come to judgment, when — without any legal occasion, since the anxiety and embarrassment of Hoym and Goldbeck had presumably risen to their highest pitch — the following rescript of the Grand Chancellor v. Goldbeck arrived at the Regierung in Posen, whereby the progress of the process was once more obstructed.

— Ed.

[p. 228]

The Grand Chancellor v. Goldbeck in Berlin to the Regierung at Posen.

By the Grace of God Frederick William, King of Prussia, etc. Our gracious greeting and favourable will first: High-well-born, Well-born, trusty, and highly learned Councillors: especially beloved faithful! We find occasion to inspect here the records taken in the matter of the suit of the Amtmann Früson concerning his eviction from the lordship of Krotoszyn, and

[p. 229]

therefore hereby most graciously command you to send these records in full without delay by the next post to Our Grand Chancellor. That is Our gracious will. We remain well disposed toward you in grace and favourable will. Given at Berlin, 27 November 1798.

By His Royal Majesty’s most gracious special command.

Goldbeck.

The Posen Regierung accordingly dispatched all the records with all speed to the Grand Chancellor Goldbeck. What use was made of them in Berlin by the young King, who was overwhelmed with business, is shown by the following cabinet order.

— Ed.

[p. 230]

Frederick William III to the Grand Chancellor von Goldbeck.

My dear Grand Chancellor von Goldbeck. From the records herewith returned, submitted by you at My command, concerning the suit which the Amtmann Früson has brought against the Seehandlung on account of the lordship of Krotoszyn, I have seen that the matter hangs together quite otherwise than the said Früson represented in his immediate petition of 6 December of last year. He was not, namely, removed from the lease through an unlawful ordinance of the Minister of State Count v. Hoym, but upon the requisition of the then Polish

[p. 231] courts, which the petitioner himself had acknowledged as competent, and which had declared him, on account of proven oppression of the subjects, to have forfeited the disposition over the estates and insisted on his removal from them, after he himself had acknowledged that he must comply with these lawful ordinances. He has moreover renounced all claims to compensation by a formally executed deed of renunciation (Revers). Under these circumstances you, with perfect right, on 12 July 1795 directed the Regierung at Posen to dismiss the suit for compensation brought against the Seehandlung Company on account of this ousting. This had all the more to happen, since, if the suit had gone forward, the Ministers of State Count v. Hoym and v. Struensee, together with all the members of the Breslau Chamber, would thereby have been compelled to answer for their conduct in office before an entirely foreign authority, whereas they could with at least as much right

[p. 232]

as the meanest subject reclaim the protection of the laws against wanton suits. The said Früson does indeed maintain that the War Councillor v. Triebenfeld procured that decree of the Polish courts by impermissible means, and that this same man and the War Councillor Neumann prevailed upon him, by cunning and threats, both to vacate the lease and to execute the deed of renunciation; but even if these assertions, hitherto rendered probable by nothing, should be well founded, he would thereby only be entitled to bring suit against these two persons. On this head I will not deny him the legal hearing, but the reopening of the suit which I ordered on 17 December of last year must also be applied to this alone, while the suit against the Seehandlung Company, against the Minister of State Count v. Hoym, and against the Breslau Chamber must, in conformity with your ordinance of 12 July 1795, be stayed forthwith.

[p. 233]

In accordance with which I leave the further disposition to you, your well-affectioned King.

Berlin, 24 December 1798.

Frederick William.

[p. 234]

The Ministry of Justice to the Regierung at Posen.

By the Grace of God Frederick William, King of Prussia, etc. Our gracious greeting and favourable will first. High-well-born, trusty, and highly learned Councillors; especially beloved faithful! After Our Most Exalted Person, by perusal of the 3 vols. of records herewith returned to you, concerning the suit of the Amtmann Früson respecting his ejectment from the lease of the lordship of Krotoszyn,

[p. 235]

took precise cognizance of the circumstances of this matter, We have been pleased to make known Our further intention thereon by means of the cabinet order of the 24th of this month, addressed to Our Grand Chancellor and enclosed in copy. The disposition thereby made you are now to make known to all the interested parties, to let it serve you as the most precise guideline, and, in conformity therewith, to make the further necessary dispositions. We remain well disposed toward you in grace and favourable will.

Berlin, 31 December 1798.

By His Royal Majesty’s most gracious special command.

Reck. Goldbeck. Thulemeier. Massow.

[p. 236]

Thus shamefully and impudently was Frederick William the Third deceived, even by the first and highest guardian of the laws in the state — He who of all kings now living most certainly possesses the best will. Every commentary is superfluous; the matter cries out loudly enough for itself.

Concerning its actual end no records were transacted; the conclusion took place entirely in silence, and it is therefore needful to relate it in brief.

Hoym perceived that this time it was no laughing matter and sensed a scandalous outcome. Accordingly, already in October 1798 he entered into friendly negotiations with the Früson family regarding compensation, so that he softened the further inflaming of tempers in the progress of the lawsuit, which was almost at its goal; on the other side

[p. 237]

his accomplice the Grand Chancellor, for the salvation of outward honour, had to call in the records and persuade the present King to a new quashing of the lawsuit, though only half executed in the cabinet, whereby — as Hoym examined it by daylight — he was by no means yet sufficiently in salvo; for the good genius of the just King, as the readers will have observed, still left the Früsons their recourse against Neumann and Triebenfeld open, whom Hoym could in no case leave in the lurch, since they had at that time acted under his authority. The Früsons, weary of so much grief and torment over the years, meanwhile promise, by means of a convention secretly concluded between Hoym and them, to set nothing in opposition to that conjuring-trick of a quashing of the lawsuit out of the Royal Cabinet, of which they were informed beforehand, and also to leave Neumann and Triebenfeld in peace, insofar as Früson senior should receive from Hoym real compensation for his many sufferings and losses;

[p. 238]

and so at last peace was brought about.

In Silesia there is an excellent great Royal domain castle-office of Brieg, beside the well-known town and fortress of the same name. This, whose rental valuation was set at 32,400 reichsthalers, had for two years been held in lease by the Amtmann Galinsky, now living at Sophienthal near Köben in Lower Silesia. Hoym drove Galinsky out of this lease and conferred the office of Brieg upon Früson for 12 years, against an annual lease-sum of 29,000 Rthlr. The Silesian domains treasury thus had to atone, with a loss of forty thousand eight hundred reichsthalers, for the stupid and wicked tricks that Hoym and Triebenfeld had committed at Krotoszyn, and Früson was compensated not out of Hoym’s purse, but at the expense of the state. Again two base acts at one stroke, one against the King, the other

[p. 239]

against Galinsky. Früson senior died in February of the present year 1800. His son-in-law Reinhard obtained Hoym’s confirmation for the long remaining series of lease-years, and, with Hoym’s counsel and cash assistance — which was likewise advanced from Royal coffers — paid out to his brother-in-law, the justice commissioner Früson at Posen, who had borne himself so chivalrously in this struggle, twenty-eight thousand reichsthalers in cash, so that this man too was settled with and forever set at rest.

It will, it is hoped, be interesting to the readers to learn more nearly the manner in which Hoym carried out this whole scarcely credible manoeuvre. Here it is, and indeed documented from the records.

The Ober-Amtmann Galinsky had in the year 1790 leased the domain office of Rothschloss in Silesia for six years, on the condition that the leasing Breslau Chamber should at once put in order, at Royal expense, the dyke-management that had fallen into decay,

[p. 240]

But this undertaken condition the Chamber did not fulfil, on account of the gross confusion of business prevailing there. On this account Galinsky suffered considerable damage. This damage was ascertained in the sixth, that is, the last lease-year, found correct, and promised to Galinsky by Hoym and the Chamber, in the end orally and in writing, that as compensation he should have the preference at the new lease of the domain castle-office of Brieg, then impending in the year 1797, on the basis of a tolerable valuation. The valuation of Brieg was set at 32,400 reichsthalers and appropriate to the object.

At the auction of Brieg, however, new confusion arose. Poor bidders, not capable of furnishing security, and foolish ones, were admitted, and these drove Galinsky up to 37,100 Rthlr., which sum exceeded the valuation by 4,700 Rthlr.

Meanwhile Galinsky nonetheless took over this

[p. 241]

lease of Brieg, as highest bidder. But he could not subsist under it, and the less so since the Breslau Chamber once again did not hold to several principal conditions which it had promised Galinsky.

On this account Galinsky, after he had sat in this lease for two years, petitioned the King directly for release. The King ordered an investigation, and at this investigation on 8 April 1789 [sic, 1799] it was found that in truth only the valuation quantity of 32,400 Rthlr. was possible to work out.

Just now, unfortunately for Galinsky, the necessity arose for the Minister Count von Hoym to indemnify Früson for the shameful eviction inflicted upon him from the lease of Krotoszyn. This necessity was, given the state of affairs, more pressing than the indemnification of Galinsky on account of Rothschloss. The office of Brieg offered a convenient opportunity to appease Früson. Galinsky

[p. 242]

therefore had to make way for Früson in Hoym’s mind and on the lease of Brieg. It was now only a matter of getting Galinsky out of Brieg again as quickly as possible. Hoym accordingly reported to the King, with all haste and in order, as he always does, to give himself air for the moment, that Galinsky was incapable of managing any lease, invented all manner of things about Galinsky’s bad conduct, and thus it came about that the King ordered that Galinsky should not keep Brieg and should henceforth be excluded from all further leases.

In vain did Galinsky offer gladly to pay the annual rental valuation sum of 32,400 reichsthalers. The lease of Brieg was taken from him as from an incapable man, in June 1799, and at the newly ordered auction it was this time made over to the lowest bidder Früson, an old man of 65 years, for 12 years, on strikingly mild terms — drawn up by himself after the public auction — which

[p. 243]

deviate entirely from those publicly announced and from those which Galinsky, two years earlier, had been obliged to accept over and above the then exaggerated rental sum, for 29,000 reichsthalers annually. This sum is less by 3,400 reichsthalers than the valuation, and by 8,100 reichsthalers than the former Galinsky lease.

What a disgusting mixture of shallow, muddled conduct of office and lack of character, of embarrassments and indemnifications of the one through the harm done to the other, of advances and retreats and impudent lies!

Galinsky, like a host of others already through Hoym, became in this way a poor man, for he had frittered away his fortune in these evil leases on all manner of improvements, buildings, etc., and received nothing in reimbursement.

It seems, however, as though this reflection struck Hoym’s heart afterwards, and only once the scandal

[p. 244]

with Früson had been got through, for after the lapse of a few months he issued the following epistle of consolation to Galinsky, which chimes ill with his earlier depiction of Galinsky to the King:

“I am glad that the Ober-Amtmann Galinsky has, according to his report of the 29th of last month, duly informed himself on the spot of the condition of the office of Proskau. In the meantime, the separation of the two offices of Proskau and Chrzelitz must stand.”

“It will now be a matter of bringing about the lifting of the All-Highest Royal prohibition against admitting the said Galinsky to any lease.”

“In this I shall put in a word for the said Galinsky so far as possible, and in general lend a hand with all good will to help him out of his labyrinth and to a better fate:

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“only he too must contribute his part through caution and moderation. Breslau, 1 November 1799.”

v. Hoym.

To the Ober-Amtmann Galinsky at Sophienthal.

“If the Ober-Amtmann Galinsky, according to his representation of yesterday’s date, hesitates to enter upon the lease of Chrzelitz by way of auction, then I cannot be of assistance to him in any other way. My intention was that he should acquaint himself precisely with the condition of this office and then conduct himself at the auction in accordance with this knowledge. I would thereupon have applied to His Majesty the King for the lifting of the prohibition against admitting Galinsky to a lease.”

“The negotiation with the Früson

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heirs, (for Früson had in the meantime died, and Hoym had now actually offered the lease of Brieg to Galinsky once more) is a private matter, between the interested parties. If Galinsky could come to an agreement with the heirs about it, then I shall likewise put in a word with His Majesty concerning his admission, but he can under no circumstances obtain any monetary support for this enterprise. Dyhrrnfurth, 11 May 1800.”

v. Hoym.

To the Ober-Amtmann Galinsky

at Sophienthal.

Yet, sheer swindles and palliative cures! For Hoym himself frustrated Galinsky’s agreement with the Früson heirs, and the intercession with the King concerning admission to other leases was left undone. The decisions which Galinsky received from the King run, word for word:

[p. 247]

“His Majesty of Prussia grants the said Galinsky, upon his representation of the 28th of last month, this resolution: that the requested reduction of the Brieg office-lease can no more take place than he can, on account of his former bad conduct, be admitted to any other lease. Berlin, 6 January 1800.”

Frederick William.

“His Majesty of Prussia has once and for all taken the resolution that the said Galinsky shall receive no domain lease, and is therefore content to make this known to him once more, upon his petition of the 23rd of last month, the enclosures of which are all herewith returned. Charlottenburg, 12 June 1800.”

Frederick William.

When thereupon Galinsky came in once more at the cabinet with a representation dated Sophienthal,

[p. 248]

8 July 1800, reporting his impoverishment and begging on his knees for a commission of inquiry and not for mercy, but only for justice, he received his petition back. Upon it stood:

to be returned, since the supplicant has been answered once and for all. Charlottenburg, 12 July 1800.

(Without signature.)

Galinsky now brought a formal suit at law against Hoym before the Breslau Oberamtsregierung; the two answers given him by this court are far too remarkable to be omitted here:

“By the Grace of God, etc. Upon that which you laid before Us here under the 29th of this month concerning a suit to be brought against Our Minister of State Count von Hoym, We hereby grant you this resolution: that this suit does not belong to the cognizance of Our Oberamtsregierung here

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“Regierung, since it originates from facts which concern the Office of the accused; and that you therefore cannot be heard with the announced suit before Our Oberamtsregierung here. We remain graciously inclined toward you. Given at Breslau, 31 July 1800.”

Royal Prussian Oberamtsregierung at Breslau.

v. Schlechtenthal. G. v. Haugwiz.

To the Ober-Amtmann Galinsky.

“By the Grace of God, etc. Upon your inquiry made to Us of the 18th of last month, concerning the naming of the competent forum of Our Minister of State and War and Directing Minister Count von Hoym, We hereby grant you as Our resolution that, according to a

[p. 250]

“preliminary ruling obtained from Our Department of Justice at Ber-lin, from the facts alleged by you against Our above-mentioned Minister of State Count von Hoym, plainly no suit whatever is admissible. Wherefore you are to govern yourself accordingly. We remain graciously inclined toward you. Given at Bress-lau, 30 September 1800.”

Royal Prussian Oberamtsregierung.

To the said Galinsky.

Poor Galinsky! Drolly, like Scherasmin, you ask: How is one to get at such a man? — against whom, by Goldbeck’s declaration, plainly no suit whatever is admissible? At such a warlock who practises the black art with rare luck, forever slipping his infamies into other men’s hands and dividing up his accountability, so as to multiply his defenders? At such an independent Pasha, brazenly revolting against all natural feeling of honour and duty,

[p. 251]

for whom — do what he will — no law, no judge, no taskmaster seems to exist? In dreadful horror at such proceedings, the discoverer, recoiling from them, may cross and bless himself and cry out as much as he likes: All good spirits praise the Lord God! The fiend nevertheless departs not hence.

And he will not depart, he remains! This bungling Minister Hoym, grown malicious out of his very bungling. All of you who trusted his promises, and were deceived; all of you who through his fault have been plunged into grief and tears and dispatched forever without hope of rescue; and you who even now have to struggle with his hopelessly tangled swindles, hidden now behind a silly philanthropy, now behind a Spanish grandezza; and finally you good, gentle, industrious Silesians, browbeaten at every turn by your Landvogt (provincial governor)! Do not hope for deliverance from this

[p. 252]

mighty windbag (Saalbader) any sooner than when death shall deliver him over to the devils, and, in freeing you from him, shall at the same time avenge you upon him. In the Cabinet at Potsdam and Berlin — although the shallow villain is very well known there, and although, despite the many adherents he has won for himself in that place, he has already several times during the reign of Frederick William III been very roundly dressed down — they have now, once and for all, adopted the system of tolerating him and keeping him on to the end of his life; for it is believed better to let the man himself, now sorely frightened as he is, quietly set right again what he has spoiled over the years, than to bring him down and to charge some perhaps costly commission with drawing the veil from his misdeeds. These are frugal times, and interventions against state-robbing ministers, especially when they seem inclined to become endless, require great expenditure; and the resolve to

[p. 253]

order them becomes the harder, the more it is to be feared that their then loudly proclaimed results might bring on the necessity of granting a host of indemnities to the sufferers who, in the name of the innocent sovereign, were deprived of what was theirs. But where such a system — one that dissolves the respect and love of the people, that ever lays plaster upon plaster without ever drawing the pus from the wound — is likely to lead, the near future will teach. Every worthy patriot meanwhile wishes that Nemesis may not draw near to cure such maladies of state, and, despite all chicaneries, follows the splendid, manly admonition which, according to Tacitus’s account, Thrasea, his veins already opened, spoke to the quaestor who was watching him die: In ea tempora nati sumus, quibus firmare animum expediat constantibus exemplis. (We are born into times in which it is expedient to steel the mind with examples of constancy.)

Very quietly it has been said that the present King knows of that lower rental yield of the domain castle-office of Brieg,

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that he sanctioned it, and that Hoym has secured himself by cabinet determinations and rulings to that effect. But how could it be possible that any sovereign should knowingly allow the state to be robbed of 40,800 reichsthalers in ready money, merely so that the disgrace of a bad minister — one who harms the sovereign himself in every way — might be quietly covered up and he, as the phrase goes, preserved? If an indemnity were needed for the Früson family, then Hoym was bound to give it to them — the family he had prejudiced for Triebenfeld’s sake — out of his own fortune; and quite surely Frederick William III would have concluded and decided just so, had he really attained a clear insight into this matter.

Such was the end of this famous and tangled affair, which has heaped disgrace upon nearly all the parties entangled in it, and which proves the lamentable lot of kings in our own days too, close about us. — And why did it happen, whence arose

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all this happen? — Because the soul-worn and hollow Hoym, whose inner baseness and incapacity came, in a manner of speaking, to their long-pent-up eruption and were discovered only after the day of the great Frederick’s death, was obliged to serve the will and self-interest of Triebenfeld, who outmatched him; and because Goldbeck, for his part, later pulled Hoym out of this stinking affair for the reason that Hoym had seen to it that the son of Goldbeck, a wretched, foolish, wholly undeserving lout, was made a present of the splendid estates of Russow, Dykallow, and Klokinie, lying one mile from Kalisch — estates which the Baron von Seld, soon after the gift, bought from Goldbeck junior for sixty-two thousand reichsthalers. Thus does a state suffer on every side under the virtueless swindler’s hands of egoistic and wicked administrators, and to portray these in all their nakedness is the natural right of every one of their fellow citizens. Though custom may have granted to the evil principle in this world, as it were,

[p. 256]

the right always to strike the first blow, yet to the good principle there has at least remained the right of self-defence; and if it is permitted to do evil publicly, then it must also be permitted to point publicly with the finger at that same evil.

Written in the year 1800.

Hope.

From all who bore witness against you, you have taken their honour,
but to the martyr it returns, late and twofold.

Schiller’s Almanac for 1797.

  1. In how many a truly patriotic heart may there not now often arise, at the sight of our good King, the blunt wish of that blacksmith in the Thuringian Forest in the days of Landgrave Louis the Iron: O Landgrave, grow hard! etc. etc. See Stolberg’s Romances. ↩

  2. The town and lordship of Krotoszyn lie in the former Great Poland, now South Prussia, hard on the Silesian border, about 12 German miles east of Breslau. — Ed. ↩

  3. Frederick the Great, of course, when he issued this uneconomical command, did not know with certainty in advance that already eleven years later the lordship of Krotoszyn would come under Prussian sovereignty and state administration. — Ed. ↩

  4. The present Minister, and unquestionably the one among all the Prussian statesmen of that time who as a man of affairs and as a thinker deserves the greatest respect of his contemporaries and of posterity. He already stood as Privy Finance Councillor at the head of the Seehandlung. — Ed. ↩

  5. The Privy Councillor von Hoym, who handled this affair and clearly foresaw that the Seehandlung would carry through its intention of wresting the lordship of Krotoszyn from the hitherto unrestricted Triebenfeld administration and handing it over to a more lucrative lease, and that the solid Ober-Amtmann Früson would obtain the latter from the Seehandlung, in this letter is merely currying favour. Already beforehand he had made an arrangement with the still-living preacher Matthiae at Zduny, in the then Great Poland, now South Prussia, that if the latter obtained the lease of Krotoszyn, on which he too had bid, he was to give him a thousand thalers cash annually and to supply his kitchen in Breslau with all manner of victuals. Rothland is a Silesian village where the said Privy Councillor v. Hoym was staying at the time — who knows now, moreover, why. His post he held at the Breslau Chamber. Now he is President of the Chamber at Warsaw. — Ed. ↩

  6. The War and Forest Councillor von Triebenfeld, who, God knows how, comes under the jurisdiction of the Breslau Chamber, but is always absent and travelling, partly on his own and partly on other people’s dirty business, is the chief favourite of the Minister von Hoym, and through the latter’s advancement was by the late King Frederick William II not only ennobled but also later presented with such a quantity of South Prussian estates that their value by judicial assessment amounts to over seven hundred thousand thalers. By origin he is a huntsman’s lad, and without any real culture — coarse, crude, and brash. When the Ober-Amtmann Früson leased the lordship of Krotoszyn, the very considerable forests were not leased along with it to him; these rather remained under the special administration of Triebenfeld as Chief Forest Overseer, and for that reason Triebenfeld retained a free residence in the castle at Krotoszyn, in which Früson as general lessee naturally also resided. The two therefore soon fell into conflict with one another, if only on account of this domestic proximity, and all the more so because Triebenfeld, at the very beginning of the Früson lease, was brooding over the plan not only of dislodging Früson again, but rather of driving him out of the lease entirely, so that he himself might, as in the end also happened, obtain the administration back. Was it, on the other side, to be held against the said Früson if he wished to be rid of his not merely most burdensome but truly devilish adversary, and to have sole disposition over the castle, as belonged to him as general lessee? — Ed. ↩

  7. This clean piece of work is at the same time a proof of what a stylist Triebenfeld is, for he is the author. — Ed. ↩

  8. This Neumann was formerly Assessor at the Breslau Chamber, then in the year 1793, when South Prussia became Prussian, became War and Domains Councillor at the Chamber in Posen, and now stands again in that same capacity at the Chamber in Breslau, in the sphere of his high patron and friend the Minister von Hoym. — Ed. ↩

  9. Now Government Councillor at Kalisch. In the present affair he conducted himself, if not indeed badly, then at least very weakly and timidly. — Ed. ↩

  10. Früson, father and son, thereupon kept silent, until in the following year, when Great Poland and consequently Krotoszyn too fell under Prussian sovereignty, an apparently greater possibility of reproving the wrong they had suffered arose for them. This possibility they used through the ensuing judicial suit. The correspondence that meanwhile occurred between Früson and the Ministers von Hoym and von Struensee is here omitted, partly because it is too prolix, partly because it is wholly unessential and also had no success whatever, so as not to weary the reader. Struensee would gladly have helped, but he neither dared nor could, and, as a judge of men, remained by the simple view of the matter, the correctness of which the outcome has proven. — Ed. ↩

  11. The lease contract, which is signed by Früson dated Krotoszyn 4 September 1791 and by the Minister Struensee dated Berlin 2 December of the same year, has here, on account of its great length and diffuseness, been omitted. The essential part of it, insofar as it bears on the present case, is everywhere correctly and clearly alleged in these documents, and the allegations have nowhere and never been contradicted by the opposing party. — Ed. ↩

  12. These impudent and stupid machinations of Triebenfeld are described still more circumstantially further on. Among such silly, drunken, and self-serving people as the Poles on average are, they were of course very easy to bring about with a little wine, brandy, and money. — Ed. ↩

  13. Freyhahn is a small little town in Silesia. It belongs to a Count von Zedlitz, and lies hard on the formerly Polish, now South Prussian border, opposite Krotoszyn. — Ed. ↩

  14. Früson junior had given up his referendaryship in Breslau, had gone with the Minister of Justice Dankelmann to Posen in the spring of 1793, had remained there and become justice commissioner. He now finds himself in person in quite good circumstances, and regards this struggle as a game that the world has played with him and he reciprocally with it. — Ed. ↩

  15. About this time the hitherto — and to this very hour perfectly well — Silesian Minister of Justice von Dankelmann at Breslau, under whose supervision the organization of the judicial system in South Prussia had stood since the acquisition, and thus for two years, and who discharged this laborious business with the most praiseworthy zeal, was suddenly dismissed from his offices by a courier from Berlin that reached him just at Posen; and since the hitherto Grand Chancellor von Carmer, on account of genuine infirmity of age, likewise quit his post about this time, the Berlin Kammergericht President von Goldbeck — although in more than one respect he had assuredly the least claim to it — attained the dignity of the Grand Chancellorship, which he still holds even now, to the great astonishment of both the foreign and the domestic public. Truly, a peculiar and very suspicious concurrence of striking circumstances! It seems almost as though, in order to draw the Minister von Hoym out of the embarrassment in question, one had wished to remove a man burdensome through his uprightness, and as though Dankelmann had drawn enemies upon himself and made himself disagreeable because, to keep up the course of this Früson lawsuit, he had several times exerted his authority; for in the natural course of things he must, both by his rank and still more by his merits, have succeeded Carmer. Since the day that courier arrived, which brought him at the same time the news of Goldbeck’s elevation, the ex-Minister von Dankelmann has lived in philosophical seclusion on his estate Peterwiz, four miles from Breslau, and studies the ancient classics. The English give their Grand Chancellor the fine name: Keeper of the King’s Conscience. What the Prussian state had to expect of the new Keeper of the Conscience of its Kings is taught by the following rescript, which Goldbeck let go off to the Regierung at Posen as speedily as possible and in the very first days of his exalted Grand Chancellorship. — Ed. ↩

  16. How could Goldbeck quash this lawsuit without at least first calling for the opinion of the Regierung at Posen upon the memorial of the Breslau Chamber, and even without informing himself from the records of what Früson had actually brought forward on his side, which had hitherto remained unknown to him, Goldbeck? For surely the maxim holds: Audiatur et altera pars. And was Früson’s suit really so frivolous as it is here called — did it then require a violent quashing, since in that case, if it had been left to the ordinary course of law, it must indisputably already have been lost for Früson before the Regierung at Posen? Or was the whole Regierung at Posen perhaps so incompetent or so bad that it could not, or would not, distinguish frivolities from very serious matters, so that the Grand Chancellor was needed as a Deus ex machina to instruct it on the point? Of fatigue there could reasonably be no question, for a Regierung before which five and a half thousand lawsuits are pending is not fatigued by one more or less. — Ed. ↩

  17. Namely to the War and Police Commission at Kalisch. One sees from this what confusion, if nothing worse, prevailed among the Polish judicial authorities, and how easily in the same matter a sentence pro et contra was to be obtained from them. — Ed. ↩

  18. This administration of the lordship of Krotoszyn was continued by the said Triebenfeld, after the expulsion of Früson from the lease in August 1792 — not for long, however. Tossed about by many diversions, journeys, and affairs (which, be it well noted, were not official business) amid the occupation of South Prussia that soon set in at that time in the year 1793, he came to see that his constant absence from Krotoszyn must damage his purse. He therefore gave the lordship of Krotoszyn to a certain starosta Gajewsky (owner of the South Prussian little town of Storchnest, and — until his ill star brought him together with Triebenfeld — a rich but simple man) for 10 years in a kind of sub-lease, on the condition that Gajewsky should hand over to him yearly 5,000 thalers of the profit to be made. Gajewsky entered into the bargain. Soon afterward Triebenfeld persuaded Gajewsky, under all manner of dangled advantages, to pay him the five thousand thalers ten times over, and thus fifty thousand thalers in advance; but Gajewsky did not have so much ready money, and now Hoym advanced it to Gajewsky out of one of the great Silesian treasuries, so that the latter could pay Triebenfeld, whereupon Gajewsky pledged his entire fortune, the lordship of Storchnest and the starosty of Powidz, to the treasury that furnished the loan at Breslau. Meanwhile the case arose that Hoym, through the first Früson lawsuit conducted under Dankelmann’s supervision, before Goldbeck could quash it in July 1795, was already so alarmed at the beginning of the year 1795 that, as the best means of forever bolting the door against all Früson’s pretensions, he obtained from Frederick William II a cabinet order dated 4 March 1795, pursuant to which the Seehandlung had, from Trinity 1795, to sell the lordship of Krotoszyn for one million thalers to the South Prussian domains treasury. Krotoszyn thus became a South Prussian domain, and now Gajewsky saw himself compelled, at Trinity 1795, to migrate out of Krotoszyn much as Früson had done 3 years before. Notwithstanding this, Triebenfeld did not pay back the advance he had received to Gajewsky, while Hoym covered the treasury with Gajewsky’s fortune, and in this way Gajewsky was made a poor man, who goes about in South Prussia as a living monument to Hoym’s weakness and wickedness and tells his lamentable story to everyone who will but hear him. Whoever can dispute the truth of this piece of knavery, committed as it were merely in passing, and can refute the many witnesses who know of it at the Chambers in Posen and Breslau — why, let him step forward! — Ed. ↩