Friedrich von der Trenck

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Friedrich Freiherr von der Trenck (contemporary copper engraving)

Friedrich Freiherr von der Trenck (born February 16, 1727 in Neuhaldensleben , † July 25, 1794 in Paris , France ) was a Prussian officer, adventurer and writer from the Prussian noble family Trenck .

His parents were Major General Christoph Ehrenreich von der Trenck and his wife Maria Charlotte von Derschau .

Life

Von der Trenck joined the Prussian army in 1740 and became an orderly officer of Frederick the Great in 1744 . A year later, in 1745, he was imprisoned. It is unclear whether this happened because of an affair with the princess Amalie of Prussia , the sister of the king, alleged only by Trenck himself in his memoirs and historiographically not provable . A letter from Trenck from 1787 found in 2008 seems at least to indicate a great deal of familiarity between him and the princess. Trenck's relationship with his cousin Franz Freiherr von der Trenck , who was in Austrian service, was assumed to be the more likely cause .

Title copper of the first edition of Trenck's memoirs from 1787. Title: Des Friedrich Freiherrn von der Trenck's remarkable life story.

Trenck managed to escape from Glatz Fortress in 1746 . In 1749 he got a job in Vienna as a cavalry master in an imperial cuirassier regiment in Hungary . But when he traveled to Danzig in 1753 on family matters, he was arrested again on the orders of Frederick II and imprisoned in the Magdeburg Citadel without a court judgment . After a failed attempt to escape, Trenck was relocated to Fort Berge , which belonged to the Magdeburg Fortress . There he was forged with heavy chains on his hands, feet and body. It was not until 1763 that he was released due to the intervention of Empress Maria Theresa .

He returned to Vienna via Prague, but after two years, with the permission of the emperor, moved to Aachen for permanent residence , where he married the daughter of the local mayor. In Aachen he operated a trade in Hungarian wines and edited the Aachener Zeitung ; The overly free language on the one hand, and business losses on the other, caused Trenck to move to his Hungarian estates in the early 1780s.

In the following years Trenck occupied himself with literary work and toured England and France. In some places he caused a sensation with extreme, unusual political statements; for example, he is said to have spoken out in public for the abolition of the privileges of the nobility , i.e. those of his own class.

Trenck later returned to Paris ; Whether it was an official mission on behalf of Austria as an observer of the events of the French Revolution is not clear. However, it is established that it in 1794 as an alleged spy in the prison of Saint-Lazare fixed before the Revolutionary Tribunal indicted and finally - just two days before the fall of Robespierre - on the guillotine executed was.

Post fame

Von der Trenck has entered world literature as the king of escapes through tunnel trenches. B. 1847 in the novel Vanity Fair ( Fair of Vanity ) by WM Thackeray (1811–1863) (Chapter LVII). Mark Twain's fictional character Tom Sawyer admires Baron Trenck as one of the great prison refugees he has read about. ( The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn , chap. XXXV).

Artistically, the topic was often addressed:

Works

  • Many of Trenck's writings are contained in All Poems and Writings (Leipzig 1786, 8 volumes).
  • The three-volume autobiography Des Friedrich Freyherrn von der Trenck's Strange Life Story, published in Berlin in 1787 (see title page on the right), is almost certainly not free from exaggerations and boasting.
  • In 1789 he wrote (translated from French according to the title page) with Trenk contra Mirabeau or Political-Critical Illumination of the Secret History of the Berlin Court along with several important state remarks, a reply to Mirabeau's Histoire secrete de la Cour de Berlin , ou Correspondence d'un Voyager Francais .

literature

  • Eberhard Cyran: Friedrich Freiherrn von der Trenck's strange life story. Memoirs and History. Arani-Verlag, 1996 (new edition), ISBN 376058666X .
  • Pallua-Gall:  Trenck, Friedrich Freiherr von der . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 38, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1894, p. 568 f.
  • Christopher Frey: The Prussian from Zwerbach. The restless life of Friedrich von der Trenck in the mirror of the family correspondence , St. Pölten: Association for Regional Studies of Lower Austria 2019 (Research on Regional Studies of Lower Austria; Volume 40), ISBN 978-3-901234-30-9 .

Web links

Wikisource: Friedrich von der Trenck  - Sources and full texts
Commons : Friedrich von der Trenck  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ According to the church book of Haldensleben. At the age of thirteen, Trenck forged his birth details in 1726 in Königsberg, East Prussia, because of the higher age required for the longed-for military career
  2. ↑ Christopher Frey: Friedrich von der Trenck's relationship with Princess Amalie of Prussia and a previously unknown letter from Trenck . In: Mitteilungen des Institut für Österreichische Geschichtsforschung , 116th volume, issue 1–2 (2008), pp. 146–158.
personal data
SURNAME Trenck, Friedrich von der
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Trenck, Friedrich Freiherr von der
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Prussian officer, adventurer and writer
DATE OF BIRTH February 16, 1727
PLACE OF BIRTH Neuhaldensleben
DATE OF DEATH July 25, 1794
Place of death Paris , France