Kaspar Wilhelm von Borcke

Kaspar Wilhelm von Borcke

Kaspar Wilhelm von Borcke (born August 30, 1704 in Gersdorf , Pomerania , † March 8, 1747 in Berlin ; also Casper Wilhelm von Borcke , Caspar Wilhelm von Borcke and Caspar Wilhelm von Borck ) was a German statesman in the Prussian service and literary translator .

Life

He was born in Gersdorf in Pomerania in 1704 as a member of the Pomeranian aristocratic Borcke family. His parents were Georg Matthias von Borcke (1671-1740), Chancellor of Neumark , and his wife Elisabeth Marie von Blankenburg (1685-1740). He was first by private tutors on the family estates in Gersdorf and Falkenburg educated, came in 1720 to the school Gdansk and then studied at the University of Königsberg and the University of Halle the law and cameralistics . After a cavalier journey , he entered the Prussian service as a diplomat in 1730 .

After diplomatic posts at the courts in Braunschweig , Dresden and London , he became ambassador ("plenipotentiary minister") in Vienna in 1738 . At the end of 1740 he and the special ambassador Gustav Adolf von Gotter , who was sent to Vienna for this purpose, had to demand the cession of Silesia on behalf of Frederick II , which Maria Theresa strictly refused. This seems to have been uncomfortable for the sensitive and obliging Borcke. After diplomatic relations between the courts of Vienna and Berlin were broken off during the Silesian Wars , Borcke became the Prussian Real Secretary of State, War and Cabinet Minister for Foreign Affairs in Berlin, where he worked in particular with Count Heinrich von Podewils , who was also from Pomerania .

Borcke was a friend and patron of science and was highly valued by King Friedrich II. When the Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences was reorganized in 1744, Borcke became one of its four curators and attended the academy meetings with interest. Borcke was particularly interested in the history of Pomerania . In this area, he encouraged research, so Friedrich von Dreger on the publication of the Codex diplomaticus Pomeranicus (1748), and maintained an exchange of letters with the Greifswald professor Albert Georg Schwartz , which was published in 1876.

Borcke also worked as a literary translator . His translation of Shakespeare's drama Julius Caesar , published in 1741, was the first published translation of a Shakespeare drama into German; Borcke used the Alexandrian meter for this . The translation was published a second time in 1929. In 1743 his translation of a Singspiel by the British Charles Coffey and John Mottley was given in Potsdam under the title Der Teufel ist los, or the transformed women . However, the success was only moderate and the translation was not published. His translation of Lukan was published in 1748 after his death. According to the judgment of the historian Martin Wehrmann , Borcke, along with Ewald Christian von Kleist (1715–1759) and Karl Wilhelm Ramler (1725–1798), stood out among the poets of the East Pomeranian of the 18th century.

The administration of his estates located in Pomerania - he was the heir to Labes , Regenwalde , Falkenburg , Gersdorf and Pansin - was mainly from Berlin.

Since 1735 he was a knight of the Order of St. John . The colorful board of evocation with his ancestral specimen down to the generation of his great-grandparents, which he submitted to apply for admission to the order, has been preserved to this day.

In 1745 Borcke married Sophie Charlotte von Schönaich (1725–1807), widowed von Buddenbrock , mistress and last member of the branch of her family on Karnitte . The marriage remained childless. Borcke died in 1747. He was buried in the family crypt in Falkenburg. The widow married Freiherr Bernhard Heinrich Schoultz von Ascheraden (1727–1797).

Works

• Attempt of a bound translation of the tragedy of the death of Julius Caesar. Berlin 1741. New edition: Weltgeist-Bücher Verlags-Gesellschaft, Berlin 1929.
• Attempt at a bound translation of Lukan. Hall 1748.
• H. Müller (Ed.): Correspondence between the Prussian Minister CW von Borcke and the Greifswald Professor AG von Schwartz. In: Journal for Prussian History and Regional Studies. Volume 13, 1876, pp. 39-156.

literature

• Wulf-Dietrich von Borcke: Caspar Wilhelm von Borcke. Diplomat and minister in the service of the Prussian kings Friedrich Wilhelm I and Friedrich II, poet, historian and Shakespeare translator . Thomas Helms Verlag Schwerin 2018, ISBN 978-3-944033-38-9
• Adalbert Elschenbroich:  Borcke, (Borck) Caspar Wilhelm von. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 2, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1955, ISBN 3-428-00183-4 , p. 461 ( digitized version ).
• Kurt Gassen : Caspar Wilhelm von Borcke . In: Pomeranian Life Pictures . Vol. IV, Cologne / Graz 1966, pp. 85-95.
• Rolf Straubel : Biographical manual of the Prussian administrative and judicial officials 1740–1806 / 15 . In: Historical Commission to Berlin (Ed.): Individual publications . 85. KG Saur Verlag, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-598-23229-9 , pp. 113 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
• Martin Wehrmann :  Borcke, Caspar Wilhelm von . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 47, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1903, p. 112 f.

Web links

• Literature by and about Kaspar Wilhelm von Borcke in the catalog of the German National Library
• Borcke, Caspar Wilhelm von . In: East German Biography (Kulturportal West-Ost)

Footnotes

1. ↑ Martin Wehrmann : History of Pomerania. Volume 2. 2nd edition. Verlag Friedrich Andreas Perthes, Gotha 1921, p. 229. (Reprint: Augsburg 1992, ISBN 3-89350-112-6 )
2. ^ Wulf-Dietrich von Borcke: Name, helmet and coat of arms - ancestral samples of the Pomeranian nobility in the premodern era. In: Pomerania. Journal of Culture and History. Issue 4/2013, ISSN  0032-4167 , pp. 4–12.