Siege of Kolberg, 1807

Siege of Kolberg, 1807

Part of: Fourth Coalition War

date	March 14, 1807 to July 2, 1807
place	Kolberg
output	Withdrawal of the French
consequences	The fortress remained in Prussian hands
Peace treaty	Peace of Tilsit

Parties to the conflict
France	Prussia
Commander
Pietro Teuliè , from March 25, 1807 Louis Henri Loison	Ludwig Moritz von Lucadou , from April 29, 1807 August Neidhardt von Gneisenau
Troop strength
22,500 soldiers (deployed)	6,500 soldiers (deployed)
losses
A total of 8,000-10,000 men, including about 2,000 dead, 1,632 prisoners, 204 defectors, thousands of sick and wounded	Around 2,000 men, including 800 dead, around 500 invalid, over 800 prisoners, missing people and deserters. Over 20 civilians killed and 40 injured

The successful defense of the Prussian fortress Kolberg in Pomerania during the Fourth Coalition War against French troops in 1807 had a political and moral signal effect due to its accompanying circumstances and the names of some of the participants that far exceeded its military strategic importance. In view of the defeat of Prussia in this war, it became a myth for contemporaries that continued into the 20th century.

Kolberg Fortress

When it was handed over to Brandenburg in 1653, the Kolberg fortress on the Baltic Sea was the only overseas port in the core area of ​​the Brandenburg-Prussian state. Even after the annexations of Stettin in 1720 and Danzig in 1793 with their much more efficient ports, Kolberg remained fortified so that enemies could not serve as a supply port in the event of an invasion of Pomerania.

The main fortification consisted of an inner wall with six bastions and an outer wall around the city east of the Persante , supplemented by several entrenchments along a branch of the Persante in the west. Fort Münde dominated the mouth of the river with the Baltic Sea port . The 1.5 km long connection there was secured by a redoubt and another hill. The area to the left of the river was only fortified opposite Fort Münde. The fortress had no other external works.

Kolberg was surrounded by fields and meadows, which could be flooded as far as the outer wall in the event of a siege by a system of dams and sluices built in the city. The defenders operated on the inner line, while points of attack could only be connected deep in the hinterland by building dams. The largely watery soil made it difficult for the besiegers to create trenches and communication routes as well as drinking water wells, dry shelters and batteries .

Because of the shallow water depth of the Baltic Sea off Kolberg and dangerous sandbanks, large ships could only approach the coast within an effective range of fire at high risk. In contrast, the artillery of Fort Münde was superior to the equipping of smaller vehicles that could call into the port. A weakness of the fortress was the lack of casemates for the bomb-proof accommodation of men and supplies of all kinds. In the event of a blockade from the sea, Kolberg could be starved to death.

Since 1803, the Kolberg Fortress with its garrison of two third battalions , unfit for campaigns, was under the command of Colonel Lucadou . Because of many leave of absence, there were only around 600 to 700 soldiers on site in October 1806. The artillery had 64 usable cannons that were to be served by 97 veterans . This was only a fraction of the defense force required. Cavalry and pioneers were not part of the fortress garrison.

Prehistory from October 1806 to early March 1807

After the defeat of Prussia's army near Jena and Auerstedt on October 14, 1806, the state collapsed rapidly and politically. Napoleon marched with the Grande Armée directly to Berlin, while the remnants of the Prussian army disbanded and their still intact formations and the great fortresses capitulated within a few weeks. After Napoleon's entry into Berlin on October 27, Prussian ministers swore him the oath of allegiance. The great fortress of Stettin also surrendered without a fight on October 29, and the Pomeranian government submitted to French command. Napoleon's army advanced far south of Kolberg in the direction of East Prussia , where the Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm III. withdrew with the remains of his troops to await Russian support.

The news of the defeat reached Kolberg on October 23rd. Lucadou immediately ordered the fortress to be put in a state of defense and called back those on leave from the garrison. When a French colonel appeared in front of Kolberg on November 8th and asked the fortress to surrender, Lucadou turned him away. He responded to instructions from the government in Szczecin with explanations of their criminal liability. These decisions caused a wave of refugees and panic among the city's 4,400 residents, fueled by rumors that had spread from numerous refugees and the commandant's order that every family had to provide themselves with food for six months. When Count Götzen inspected the fortress on November 12th on behalf of the king, the magistrate assured them that the citizens would be loyal to their death , and the commander promised that he would defend the fortress to the last man . For the French warfare the possession of Kolberg was initially of no importance.

Since the end of October 1806, Kolberg was the destination for thousands of dispersed or rancied Prussian soldiers. Most of the influx, reinforced by newly drafted recruits , Lucadou sent to the army in East Prussia. In the fortress he kept the depot troops of two cuirassier regiments from Pomerania and Altmark , the latter of which went to Danzig in December. In addition to his battalions, which were now incompletely replenished, he set up new infantry and artillery units.

With the help of officials who had fled from Stettin, authorized by the king, taxes were collected from Kolberg and large supplies were brought into the fortress. In the winter of 1806/07 the area where the Kolberg troops were stationed extended from the Dievenow in the west via Greifenberg i. Pom. along the Rega to Schivelbein in the south and had contact with the advance troops from Danzig at Belgard and Köslin in the east. Forays into the air led to the capture of the enemy occupation of Swinoujscie and reached Neustettin , Arnswalde , Stargard , Stolp and the right bank of the Oder .

Independent of the fortress garrison, von Kolberg started the Little War in Central Pomerania from Hussar Lieutenant Eugen von Hirschfeld with his Freikorps Hirschfeld . Made up of rancied cavalrymen, mostly Blücher hussars , formed towards the end of 1806, his strength grew to 200 men. At the turn of the year 1806/07, Hirschfeld took it to Neumark and on to Silesia . His actions prompted the French high command to move large numbers of troops to the detriment of the main theater of war in East Prussia ,

At the beginning of March, the troops in the well- stocked and repaired fortress comprised around 3,700 infantry and hunters , around 200 horsemen and over 600 artillerymen with 106 guns. Around 600 armed citizens in five companies were available for security and security services. In addition, there was the Schill Freikorps operating abroad with (in February) over 960 infantrymen and hunters, 450 horsemen and 50 artillerymen with 11 light guns.

The Schill Freikorps

The dragoon lieutenant Ferdinand von Schill had reached Kolberg at the beginning of November, seriously injured, and was soon authorized by Lucadou to set up a small troop of horsemen. He had charismatic traits, bravado and tactical instinct, which he could use to cover up his lack of strategic talent. Schill's places of peace were Gartz and Naugard and he knew western Pomerania well. First his troops procured weapons, supplies, war supplies, horses and tax revenues for Kolberg and carried out reconnaissance . Schill was to avoid direct clashes with enemy troops who were roaming the country with the same intention for the fortress Stettin, in order not to provoke an attack on Kolberg. But with the conquest of Gülzow on December 7th, 1806, he made a name for himself in Pomerania in one fell swoop. The king immediately awarded him the order of Pour le Mérite . Lucadou allowed Schill to form an independent squadron . It quickly grew and became the core of an independently operating corps from all branches of service. The corps consisted exclusively of rancied or dispersed soldiers from the Prussian army. In the winter of 1806/07 it was the only large Prussian force operating in the open air west of the Vistula and received support from all over Pomerania.

Lucadou observed how the easy life in the Schill Corps undermined the discipline of his fortress troops and he moved it to Greifenberg. When reports of excesses of Schiller's soldiers against the civilian population increased and Schill's cash management became obscure, he called it back to Kolberg in December. The members of the Schill Corps had no uniform and only got good rifles in March 1807. Their salaries and meals were always bad and irregular. Both the men and officers tended to be indisciplined. In addition, alleged Schill troops have appeared in Pomerania , who have committed robberies and kidnappings for the purpose of extorting ransom. The French basically viewed Schill's soldiers as bandits and did not take them prisoners.

From January 1807 the corps operated again from Greifenberg i. Pom. out. Because of Schill's unclear subordination, conflicts arose with Lucadou, which weakened his authority and increased Schill's popularity. After the fighting with the advancing enemy began, Lucadou pushed three quarters of the Schill cavalry to Köslin while Schill was absent at the beginning of March 1807 and stationed the Schill infantry to the left of the Persante. At the end of March, the cavalry force returned to Kolberg, which had now been enclosed, in order to be shipped five weeks later to the newly established Blücher Corps in Swedish-Western Pomerania . Schill followed on May 12, 1807 and never returned to Kolberg. His infantry stayed in front of Kolberg.

The siege of the fortress from the beginning of March until the arrival of Gneisenau

In the winter of 1806/07 the politico-military situation had changed. Prussia had not given up. His small remaining army and a Russian army that had meanwhile marched on had asserted themselves against Napoleon in the Battle of Preussisch Eylau in February 1807 in East Prussia. The Vistula fortresses Danzig and Graudenz were still in Prussian hands. Great Britain and Sweden also formally made peace with Prussia in January. The formation of a joint invasion army in Swedish Western Pomerania became apparent. Kolberg gained importance as the only Prussian base in the newly emerging Pomeranian theater of war .

In January 1807 Napoleon ordered the capture of Danzig and a new supply line from Stettin via Gollnow , Körlin and Stolp was necessary. Parts of the troops moving to Danzig in February were to encircle Kolberg on the way. After the Battle of Preussisch Eylau, however, they had to be diverted towards Graudenz / Marienwerder . To encircle Kolberg, Napoleon had a force under the command of General Teuliès deployed east of the Oder with its point in Stargard in mid-February .

Without knowing who he was dealing with, Schill opened the fighting for Kolberg on February 16 with an attack on Stargard. Schill had to retreat to Naugard on the same day, where the French vanguard pushed on on February 17 and initially suffered heavy losses. Although Schill now knew that the entire Teuliè division was following him, he ordered part of his troops to entrench themselves in the Naugard office. There, the French taught on February 18 among the hundred defenders and about sixty of the farmers used for jumps and their wives and children a bloodbath on. In the next few days Schill withdrew from the overwhelming forces on the Kolberg troops, who kept the cautious approach of Teuliès behind ever new field fortifications. On March 8, 1807, Teuliè had reached a loose enclosure of the fortress in a 20 km long line from Kolberger Deep in the west to Altstadt-Kolberg in the south to the city forest about 3 km east of Kolberg.

At the beginning of the siege, Teuliè had one French infantry regiment and two from the Kingdom of Italy , 280 horsemen and two artillery companies with 10 guns. In addition there was a sapper and a trainee company . His around 5000 besiegers were numerically inferior to the fortress garrison and Schill's associations with around 5500 men and over 100 cannons. Teuliè was unable to initiate a systematic siege of the fortress. He was limited to positional battles, whereby the containment ring was shortened to about 10 km by the beginning of April. Lucadou had to give up several positions outside the flood area, including Altstadt-Kolberg, from where the city could be bombarded since March 14th. On March 19, the loss of the village of Sellnow forced the Schill Battalion to move back to the southern edge of the Maikuhle, a small wood between the Persante and the Baltic Sea opposite the port. There it laid strong field fortifications to protect the port and thus the sea connection.

The defeat at Sellnow had come because Lucadou had refused to support Schill as a result of a dispute. Now he had Schill arrested . After resentment against the commandant had already built up in the citizenship, individual officers were also dissatisfied with his conduct. That increased when Lucadou gave in to Schill and released him three days later.

On the side of the besiegers, apart from 80 French horsemen, only Italians stood before Kolberg. Teuliè was replaced by Napoleon on March 25th by General Loison , but remained there. At the beginning of April Marshal Mortier appeared outside Kolberg with reinforcements but without artillery to take the fortress. It remained with outpost fighting. At the same time a Swedish corps had advanced from Stralsund to Stettin, and Mortier went to meet him with his reinforcements and some of the siege troops. He defeated the Swedes and concluded an armistice with them on April 18 , in which they pledged not to give any support to Kolberg. Mortier's departure had reduced Loison's troops to 4,215 men. Schill immediately took advantage of this and attacked west of the Persante on April 12th. The enterprise could have led to the roll-up of the siege army, but it was only half a success because again there was no understanding with Lucadou. Loison gave up the enclosure of Kolberg and withdrew to the right bank of the Persante , with the exception of a detachment in Treptow . There he buried himself and sent calls for help to his superior.

The fortress under the command of Gneisenau

In Kolberg, however, the mood reached a low point because of the failure again attributed to Lucadou and the burning down of a suburb on his orders. From the beginning, a part of the citizenry followed Lucadou's actions with suspicion. It was headed by the citizen representative Joachim Nettelbeck , who was responsible for overseeing the fire extinguishing stations, the city wells, the pipe system and the water art , which was so important because of the floods . Lucadou was old, rarely appeared in public, spoke with a French accent and had had a stroke. Reason enough to see him as a model of the outdated, incompetent and ignorant Prussian officer type, on whose account the catastrophic campaign in Thuringia and the series of fortress surrenders went. Now officials and officers also discussed the replacement of Lucadou, who was indeed overwhelmed. On Nettelbeck's initiative, the king was able to use conspiratorial means to send a new commander to Kolberg. Advised by Rüchel , he selected Major Gneisenau , who arrived in Kolberg on April 29th. Gneisenau immediately took the initiative at a strategically important point and was successful. At the same time, his energetic demeanor inspired his soldiers and Nettelbeck. He recognized him as an expert and used him together with the Nettelbeck party in matters of registration and control within the citizenry.

Kolberg was strengthened by a Swedish frigate with 44 cannons on April 28th. She has since crossed the roadstead and intervened several times in the battles by means of long-range fire, despite the Swedish armistice with France.

In the days of the commander's replacement, Loison had received reinforcements since April 23. A regiment of insurgent Poles came under Colonel Antoni Paweł Sułkowski , the regiment of the Dukes of Saxony , with battalions from Weimar and Gotha , Altenburg and Meiningen , two Württemberg regiments, and the Italian battalion that Mortier had taken with them. Loison was not satisfied with his troops. The Italians failed in the night fighting and the Germans from the Rhine Confederation sympathized with the Prussians. Almost a third of the Thuringians had already deserted during the approach , and every fifth Württemberg resident had run away on the way. But on May 25th Loison had about 8,100 men, not counting the artillery, the engineers and the train, and had the numerical superiority. He formed four brigades , three of which stood to the right of the Persante. But at first he failed to restore containment.

Like Gneisenau, Loison had recognized that the only way to attack the fortress was to own the inland field, a plain about 2 × 2 km northeast of the city. It was ruled by the Wolfsberg . Gneisenau built a strong hill with gun shelters as the backbone of the defense. Meanwhile Loison was busy getting access to the inland field, which was surrounded in the south and east by a lower swamp and forest area and in the north merged into a dune area to the Baltic Sea beach.

In the weeks that followed, reinforcements arrived on both sides during frequent outpost battles and the construction of new field fortifications. With the arrival of two infantry battalions, several transports of ranciers from Usedom and Wollin by sea and about 20 ranciers daily, the troops in Kolberg maintained a strength of 5,500 men, including more than 200 horsemen and barely, until mid-May 1807, despite their losses and the withdrawal of the Schill cavalry 600 artillerymen. Loison received seven heavy artillery pieces on May 13th.

On May 18, the besiegers came in a major attack led by Teuliè over two dams, which they had built in the meantime, on the inland field in order to conquer the Wolfsbergschanze. They suffered a heavy defeat. Gneisenau's concept of mobile defense in advance, based on a system of field entrenchments and log houses , proved its worth . After he had gained a foothold on the edge of the inland field, Loison went over to the formal siege of Wolfsberg by driving trenches and parallels , with constant day and night fighting . The Swedish frigate and a British corvette intervened in these battles on May 26th . On May 20, she directed two transport ships with 10,000 rifles to Kolberg.

By mid-June, Gneisenau laid several defense lines and the new Ziegelschanze between the outer wall and Wolfsberg, 900 meters away , in order to be able to systematically withdraw from his stronger opponent in order to gain time. It was clear to him that after the fall of Danzig, which he learned about on June 9, he would soon have more heavy artillery at his disposal and that his field fortifications would only have a limited shelf life. Loison had already set up 20 guns in Redouten to bombard Wolfsberg. After the arrival of a transport of eleven heavy artillery pieces from Danzig, he attacked Wolfsberg again on June 11th. After hours of bombardment , Loison proposed to his ailing opponent to withdraw freely with the artillery still transportable, which he accepted. As a result of different interpretations of the armistice there was a bombardment of the hill in the evening, in which General Teuliè was fatally injured.

Loison was rebuilding the Wolfsbergschanze and was in the process of setting up long-range artillery with which he could bombard the port and Fort Münde when three British ships appeared in the Kolberger roadstead. To enable the unloading of 40 cannons with ammunition and 10,000 rifles with three million cartridges, the Prussians attacked Wolfsberg on the night of June 15, captured the entire crew and brought them to the fortress with a captured howitzer . After two unsuccessful counter-attacks, Loison managed to recapture the now demolished hill the following day. During this time the ships were able to unload their cargo undisturbed, and the artillery of the fortress had received the decisive increase.

In the days that followed, the crew made missions in all directions, which disrupted an enclosure in the west and Loison's preparations for attack on the monastery field in the south of the fortress. Another attempt to recapture Wolfsberg on June 19, where the dreaded artillery had been positioned, failed with heavy losses. On June 29, the Swedish frigate returned with four mortars bought by Kolberg , ammunition and a large amount of powder. While the fortifications were constantly being strengthened and, under the direction of Nettelbeck, a new flood narrowed the possible attack range to the outer wall to 250 meters, the besiegers moved closer and closer to the wall from Wolfsberg.

They had received significant reinforcements since June 19. A Dutch hussar regiment had already arrived at the end of May . By the end of the month the urgently required French line troops, two regiments, and three Nassau and two Dutch battalions had arrived . Loison now had a total of around 14,000 men, including 12,300 infantry, 400 hussars, 55 to 67 guns and 275 pioneers. He divided his troops into six brigades , five of which stood east of the Persante. He succeeded in closing the siege ring in the west on June 26th.

Bombardment and end of the fight

On July 1, 1807 at 3 o'clock in the morning the main attack on Kolberg began on all fronts with fire from all barrels. The entire city was bombed, but did not catch fire because of the calm and the well-organized fire brigade under Nettelbeck. In the morning hours the attackers on the left bank of the Persante had an unexpected success when the infantry of the Schill Corps fled demoralized from their fortified position at the Maikuhle to the right bank of the Persante after losing only eight men and thus abandoned the harbor. A sea connection was now only possible via the beach and the roadstead. On the eastern front, Gneisenau had to retreat to the next line of defense, but at no point did the attackers reach the outer wall.

At 10 o'clock Loison stopped the gunfire and offered Gneisenau an honorable surrender through a member of parliament . Otherwise he promised the complete destruction of the city and announced to Gneisenau that he would then have to pay with the blood of the garrison . Gneisenau refused and the bombardment of the city continued. It was only interrupted briefly during the night, the town hall went up in flames. On the morning of July 2, not all the sources of the fire could be extinguished. The defenders had buried themselves on the east bank of the Persante, while the French holed up on the west bank under the continuous fire of the fort Münde and the Swedish frigate with great losses. On the western edge of the inland field they had conquered two smaller entrenchments. Their attacks on the Ziegelschanze had failed bloody.

In the early afternoon of July 2, the Prussian officer Heinrich von Holleben crossed the French battle line with Loison's permission. He brought Gneisenau the news of the armistice, which had initiated the peace negotiations in Tilsit , and the promotion to lieutenant colonel. Gneisenau immediately stopped the fire and hoisted white flags on the walls. About an hour later, a French messenger reached Loison with news of the armistice. Now Loison stopped firing and fighting, and in the sudden silence the Kolbergers saw white flags rising over the enemy positions. The fight for Kolberg was over. Shortly afterwards, Gneisenau and Loison met to discuss details of the armistice. All fires in Kolberg had been extinguished by evening. Over the next few days, officers from both sides held joint peace suppers in the open air. On July 4th, the Kolberger inspected the positions of the besiegers. On July 5th, the French began to retreat to the wider area.

losses

The losses in the battle for Kolberg were unusually high and the destruction was heavy. On the Prussian side, 428 soldiers died in battle, and 288 died in the hospitals of wounds and illnesses. The crew lost 204 soldiers, 159 were missing and 334 had deserted. 405 soldiers had received their farewell due to disability , while 1,043 were temporarily absent due to an injury. The statistics lack information on Schill's cavalry as a whole and on Schill's infantry before March 19, 1807. The Prussian total numbers are therefore likely to be over 800 dead, around 500 invalid and over 800 prisoners, missing and deserters. That was a third of the approximately 6,000 soldiers deployed. At the end of the siege, Gneisenau had around 4,000 soldiers.

According to two reports, 69 and 63 of the Kolberg citizens were dead or injured. After one there were 27 deaths, including 15 women and children, after the other there were 22 deaths, including 8 women and children. This includes two members of the civil battalion who were injured on duty but not in front of the enemy. The citizen battalion did not get into a fight with the enemy.

One house in Kolberg was completely destroyed by shelling, another by fire. Almost every house was damaged by fire and water, and around half were temporarily uninhabitable. The town hall and the town courtyard were almost completely burned down, including most of the suburbs. In July 1807 the city had 2,000 homeless people. Gardens, paths, fields and forests were devastated in their vicinity.

The losses on the French side are only estimated, varying between 8,000 and 10,000 men. 1,632 prisoners and several hundred deserters were counted, including 204 from the Rhine Confederation contingents. Among the perhaps 2,000 dead were many soldiers who died because of the poor living conditions in the field camps around Kolberg. A total of over 22,000 men were deployed, but several important French forces withdrew after a short time or only appeared in the final phase. 9,200 French, almost 6,800 Italians, around 3,200 Germans, over 2,000 Dutch and 1,200 Poles were deployed. The losses of the besiegers thus reached about 40%.

consequences

After the Peace of Tilsit, Kolberg was one of the few fortresses that Prussia had left. A rain of awards poured out on those involved in the success. The king appointed Gneisenau to the commission for the reorganization of the Prussian army. He and another 40 officers received the order Pour le Mérite and were promoted with patents that were often outdated , while older officers were given higher salaries. Major von Steinmetz took command of the fortress . From the troops of the garrison, the king formed two new regiments: the Leib Infantry Regiment and the Colberg Infantry Regiment . The hunter and artillery formations of the fortress garrison were assigned to the guard and the Schill cavalry became the 2nd Brandenburg Hussar Regiment "von Schill" .

124 soldiers received the silver medal of honor . Citizen Nettelbeck received the gold medal of honor. As early as May, the king had given the civil battalion a uniform. He released the city of Kolberg from its share of the war contribution .

In the city itself, shortly after the end of the siege, disputes arose between the citizens and the military over the accommodation of the garrison, which had grown further, in bourgeois houses. The external works created by Gneisenau caused conflicts because of the land used for them. Their owners demanded that the buildings be returned and removed, with some resorting to self-help .

As at the time of the Great Elector, Kolberg was the only seaside town in the Prussian state, apart from the far-off Pillau . In the following years there was a secret diplomatic communication with Great Britain and Russia via Kolberg, and camouflaged consignments of British weapons arrived. In the late autumn of 1811, when a new conflict between Russia and France came to a head, large parts of the Prussian army marched under the command of Bluchers near Kolberg to find support at the sea connection with possible allies in a French attack on Prussia. Kolberg itself benefited for years from undermining the continental barrier and, despite its material damage, recovered faster than other places in Pomerania.

Myths and Legends

The Schill Corps acquired great fame during the fighting that preceded the siege. The legend, first in Pomerania, incorrectly attributed spectacular acts to him, such as the capture of General Victor . Not Gneisenau, but Schill was considered Kolberg's savior. When the Prussian troops returned to Berlin on December 10, 1808, Schill was the first to ride through the king's gate at the head of his hussar regiment to stormy cheers . The widely publicized event made him known throughout Germany. In the officer corps of the Prussian army, Schill was rather ridiculed, but for moral reasons Gneisenau refused a public correction of the heroic image.

After Schill's unsuccessful attempt at insurrection in 1809, it faded, and Gneisenau's decisive part became more prominent. The success in Kolberg was at the beginning of his rise to one of the most important generals of the Wars of Liberation . Since then, Gneisenau has been a traditional figure in all German armies up to the present day.

The metaphor of the star in the dark of night for the unconquered Kolberg was already a household name during the siege and Kolberg symbolized the successful resistance against Napoleon even more after the siege . Kolberg was not the only fortress that lasted until the end of the war. The difference to the events in Graudenz, Cosel , Pillau and Silberberg lay in the participation of the citizenry, which was also able to build on a tradition from the Seven Years War .

One of the reasons for the defeat of Prussia saw the public in the corporatist -induced seclusion of the aristocratic officer corps . According to the reformists , the development of the nation's forces of resistance in a society of estates was apparently impossible, and overcoming them was the order of the day. The success in Kolberg was due to the contribution of the citizens as proof of the efficiency of the desired social model. In this sense, numerous representations have appeared since 1807. Gneisenau first wrote or arranged for two newspaper articles that appeared in Königsberg on June 1st and 4th, 1807. There was to be read about the citizen Nettelbeck : So live long, your contemporaries an example of courage, activity, patriotism. Reflect on it, you Germans! A publication from the year celebrated Schill, Gneisenau and Nettelbeck as Kolberg's saviors.

Nettelbeck gained a great deal of publicity through the publication of his memoirs in the years 1820-23. In this work, too, the legend spread out of thin air that Loison had knowledge of the armistice and kept it secret from Gneisenau in order to receive the title Duke of Kolberg for the imminent conquest of the fortress from Napoleon . Nettelbeck's own merits and those of the citizen battalion were greatly exaggerated and those of Commander Lucadou were correspondingly falsified. As a patriot and navigator, Nettelbeck became the hero of countless patriotic works. In a large-scale publication in the Vormärz and during the revolution of 1848 he appeared alongside Friedrich Ludwig Weidig , Benjamin Franklin and Thaddäus Kosciuszko as a man of the people . The play Colberg 1807 or: Heroism and Loyalty to the Citizens by Paul Jaromar Wendt (1862) was first performed in Stettin in 1868. It fell into the shadow of the play Colberg by Paul Heyse (1868). This propagated the idea of ​​a people in arms , was at first regarded as not close to the state because of democratic tendencies , but was taught at Prussian high schools since 1901. Heyses play, with current references to the bombing war and the Volkssturm, changed as an endurance drama, served the director Veit Harlan in the years 1943–45 as a template for the historical film Kolberg .

Along with Prussia, its state tradition also went under. More than 80% of the Prussian state territory of 1807 with its historical locations is now in Poland, Russia and Lithuania and has not been inhabited by Germans since 1945. The history of the siege of Kolberg has therefore been forgotten in today's Germany. Meanwhile, a new Kolberg legend is emerging. It was based on the journalistic processing of the Kolberg film. His statement that Kolberg held up is often seen as Nazi propaganda and is therefore rejected. In German journalism, for example, there are more and more claims such as that, unlike in the film , the French occupied Kolberg , or the film fails to mention that Kolberg was finally conquered by the French or that the battle for Kolberg did not bring the Kolbergians victory, but the conquest by the French , it ended with the defeat of Prussia , or sometimes with the restriction after the peace of Tilsit , whereby the armistice had come about as a result of the peace treaty of Tilsit and nevertheless led to the entry of the French, so that the whole defense had brought nothing , or the French marched ... in reality into Kolberg , although Kolberg, conquered by the French after a long siege, ... English troops came to the aid . There was a historical defeat for the city of Kolberg , the defense of which was hopeless from the start. Kolberg surrendered after the armistice or gave up ... after the peace of Tilsit . The Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau Foundation's "working materials" for the film Kolberg as an example of Nazi propaganda also make the untrue claim of the subsequent move in the French continued in Kolberg after the siege was over.

In contrast to this, Polish research also begins in areas such as Pomerania, which did not belong to Poland between the High Middle Ages and 1945, to turn seriously to local history topics and thus also to the Prussian history of Kolberg.

Sources and literature

• Karl von Bagensky : History of the 9th Infantry Regiment called Colbergsches , Post, Kolberg 1842 ( full text, without folded terrain map ).
• Frank Bauer: Kolberg March 13 - July 2, 1807. A Prussian Myth (Small Series History of the Wars of Liberation 1813-1815, no. 18), Potsdam 2007.
• Hans-Jürgen Eitner: Kolberg. A Prussian Myth 1807/1945 , Berlin 1999, ISBN 3-86124-508-6 .
• Great General Staff, War History Department II (Ed.): Documentary contributions and research on the history of the Prussian Army, Vol. 4, Kolberg 1806/07 , Berlin 1912.
• Peter Jancke (Ed.): Joachim Nettelbeck , Hamburg 1988, with extensive bibliography.
• Hermann Klaje : Joachim Nettelbeck , Kolberg 1927.
• Hieronim Kroczyński: Twierdza Kołobrzeg. Kolberg Fortress , Warszawa 2000 (with a summary in German).
• Friedrich Maurer (publisher), Colberg besieged and defended in 1807. According to authentic reports from several eyewitnesses, Berlin 1808.
• Joachim Nettelbeck, citizen of Colberg. A biography recorded by himself and edited by JCL Haken. Third ribbon. With a plan of the area around Kolberg , Leipzig: FA Brockhaus. 1823.
• H. Riemann: History of the city of Kolberg, presented from the sources , Kolberg 1924.
• Eugenio De Rossi: Una divisione italiana all'assedio di Colberg (1807) . Enrico Voghera, Rome 1905.

Footnotes

1. ^ Number from Curt Jany: History of the Prussian Army from the 15th Century to 1914. Volume III. 1763-1807. Biblio, Osnabrück 1967, ISBN 3-7648-0414-9 , p. 623.
2. ↑ On the Freikorps Hirschfeld and the events in Neumerk and Silesia see Eduard von Höpfner : The war of 1806 and 1807. Second part. The campaign of 1807. Fourth volume , Simon Schropp, Berlin 1855, pp. 218–223.
3. ↑ The regiment did not survive Schill's move in 1809. Its remains were used in the newly established Uhlan regiment "Emperor Alexander II of Russia" (1st Brandenburg) No. 3 . See also documented articles and research (list of references), p. 187.
4. ^ FW Roth: Diary of the siege of the Colberg fortress in 1807. Along with an appendix, containing authentic news from the king. Prussia. Major von Schill and the citizen representative Nettelbeck zu Colberg. With the portrait of Major von Schill . Littfas, Germanien [Berlin] 1808 ( complete digitization )
5. ↑ Eduard Duller (Ed.): The men of the people represented by friends of the people [eight volumes], Meidinger, Frankfurt 1847-1850. therein Vol. VI. (Author: Duller) to Nettelbeck.
6. ↑ Kurt Fricke, Game on the Abyss. Heinrich George. A political biography , Halle (Saale), p. 244 u. P. 340, footnote 158.
7. ^ Friedemann Beyer , Gert Koshofer, Michael Krüger: Ufa in color. Technology, politics and star cult between 1936 and 1945. Collection Rolf Heyne, Munich 2010, ISBN 9783899104745 , p. 192.
8. ^ Walter Laufenberg in: http://www.netzine.de/kolberg/ .
9. ^ Rolf Aurich, "Kolberg", in: Michael Töteberg (Ed.): Metzler-Film-Lexikon. Second, updated and expanded edition , Metzler, Stuttgart, Weimar 2005, ISBN 978-3-476-02068-0 , p. 357359, here: p. 358.
10. ^ Ralf Georg Reuth , Goebbels. A biography , Munich, Zurich 2004, p. 579.
11. ^ Chr. Schalhorn: Veit Hatlan. Kolberg as a persistence film , p. 20
12. ↑ Erwin Leiser : Germany awake! Propaganda in the film of the German Reich , Hamburg 1978, p. 115.
13. ↑ This is reported by Friedemann Beyer: Women for Germany. Film idols in the Third Reich , Collection Rolf Heyne, Munich 2012, ISBN 978-3-89910-503-2 , p. 186.
14. ↑ Irmbert Schenk : Critical remarks on film studies suggestion of the identity of propaganda and effect (PDF) montage-av.de. Archived from the original on August 14, 2016. Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved December 10, 2016., p. 91 
15. ↑ Martin Loiperdinger (ed.): Martyr legends in Nazi films . Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, Wiesbaden 1991, ISBN 978-3-322-93739-1 , p. 38.
16. ^ Friedemann Needy : Third Reich and Second World War. Das Lexikon , Piper, Munich, Zurich 2002, p. 271 f.
17. ↑ Jan M. Piskorski : Pommern im Wandel der Zeiten , Szczecin 1999, p. 225 (a Polish-German joint publication in German).
18. ^ Contribution by Gehard Schoenberner, p. 122 in: Friedemann Beyer (Ed.): Working materials for the National Socialist propaganda film: Kolberg, compilation and text by Dr. Gerd Albrecht , Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau Foundation, Wiesbaden 2006 (Compactdisc).