David from Splitgerber

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David von Splitgerber 1753; the picture shows David Splitgerber Senior on the left and David Splitgerber Junior on the right, copperplate engraving

David von Splitgerber (born December 31, 1741 in Berlin ; † March 2, 1826 ibid) was Jägermeister in the service of Prince Ferdinand of Prussia , the youngest brother of Frederick the Great , also a knight of the Order of St. John , senior of the collegiate monastery of Sancti Gangolphi and canon and canon in the cathedral chapter of the diocese of Cammin and owner of the Lichterfelde manor in the Ober-Barnim district. In 1789 he was raised to the hereditary nobility by King Friedrich Wilhelm II . In the literature the opinion is partly taken that David von Splitgerber was an illegitimate son of King Frederick the Great.

youth

As the official and only son of David Splitgerber senior, the most powerful banker and industrialist in Prussia at the time, David junior grew up in a highly sheltered environment, but was noticed at an early age as a cross-driver and a difficult-to-educate youth. He showed neither inclination nor talent to take on a role in his parents' industrial company and bank ( banking and trading house Splitgerber & Daum ), and was therefore soon after his adolescence, but especially because of the good reputation of his parents as a good-for-nothing and "playboy" Not being able to inflict arbitrary damage, moved away from Berlin to a parental estate in the provinces near Eberswalde, where, contrary to expectations, he developed into a capable lord of the manor and where he began a fantastic career as a result.

Ennoblement and career

Crown Prince Friedrich around 1739 (painting by Antoine Pesne )

In 1772 he was promoted by Prince Ferdinand of Prussia to "Maître de la Chasse", in German Jägermeister, and a few years later he was accredited to the Order of St. John, and he was also given clerical honors, for example the admission to the Sancti Gangolphi collegiate monastery , as well as into the cathedral chapter of the diocese of Cammin, until his career finally reached its zenith on January 24, 1789 with the elevation to the hereditary Prussian nobility by the successor of Frederick the Great , King Frederick William II .

Suspicion of descent from King Frederick the Great

The accumulation of honors given to a scion from the best bourgeois family, but without belonging to a noble family and also without having attracted attention through excessive merits in the course of his life, raised the suspicion that only a superordinate fact could be the cause of such a career. The philosopher and writer John Barnick gathered in his 2001 posthumously published book A silent Ahn minutely all the evidence that raise the suspicion that David Splitgerber no biological son of the royal house banker David Splitgerber could be senior, but rather an illegitimate child of Frederick the Great be must.

Evidence of royal ancestry

King Frederick II, who had been childless for eight years at that time , went into his first war of conquest against Silesia in December 1740 , in which, as in the following, he took part in all of his wars and always at risk of serious risks to life and limb. Between mid-January and mid-February of 1741, however, he stayed at home in the City Palace of Berlin on vacation, occasionally organizing a glamorous pompous ball night, where he may have noticed the lady-in-waiting Sophia von Alkun for the first time and with whom he was before returning to the battlefield in mid-February probably secretly wrong. At the beginning of November of the same year, after the end of his first campaign, he returned to Berlin, where tragic hardship soon befell him when his secret lover Sophia von Alkun, who was impregnated by him, died in childbirth while giving birth to her son and consequently left behind a half orphaned and illegitimate child , which should nevertheless grow up to some extent befitting and in orderly circumstances and also not too far from the biological father. An arrangement with the heavily wealthy banker and industrialist, as well as financier and confidante of the king, David Splitgerber senior, was the obvious choice . Carefully prepared and also taking into account the fact that David Splitgerber's wife Johanna Dorothea gave birth to a daughter in the same year, the fictitious official date of birth of December 31, 1741 was chosen with a correspondingly biologically necessary distance, so that under the name of his foster father David Splitgerber that Child could grow up in decency and dignity and then walk on its successful path in life.

Literature and Sources

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Ernst Heinrich Kneschke : New general German nobility lexicon . Volume 8, Leipzig 1868, p. 569 f.
  2. ↑ See letter of nobility from Friedrich Wilhelm of Prussia.
  3. ^ Franz Engel (Ed.): Publication of the Historical Commission for Pomerania. Issue 15, Pomeranian Life Pictures, Volume IV, p. 83.
  4. ↑ Handbook on the royal Prussian court and state for the year 1800. P. 305.
  5. ↑ Register of the flourishing and dead nobility in Germany. Volume 4, p. 6.
  6. ↑ Johannes Barnick: The silent ancestor, life and secret of the Jägermeister David von Splitgerber. P. 41.
personal data
SURNAME Splitgerber, David von
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Jägermeister in the service of Prince Ferdinand of Prussia
DATE OF BIRTH December 31, 1741
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH March 2, 1826
Place of death Berlin