Friedrich August Ludwig von der Marwitz

Friedrich August Ludwig von der Marwitz (born May 29, 1777 in Berlin ; † December 6, 1837 in Friedersdorf , Küstrin district ) was a Prussian lieutenant general and politician .

origin

Friedrich August Ludwig von der Marwitz

Friedrich August Ludwig von der Marwitz came from the von der Marwitz family , a nobility of the Neumark family . This was first mentioned in a document in 1259 and came from the village of Marwitz (now in Polish: Marwice and district of Lubiszyn ) near Landsberg an der Warthe . For centuries, many male descendants of this family chose a military career: Hundreds of them became officers in the Prussian army, 14 of them achieved the rank of general. Besides Friedrich August Ludwig, two of his uncles became well known: Gustav Ludwig von der Marwitz and Johann Friedrich Adolf von der Marwitz , who fell out of favor because he refused to plunder the captured hunting lodge at Hubertusburg. The Prussian Infantry Regiment No. 61 carried the family's name until 1918.

Friedrich August Ludwig von der Marwitz was one of five children of the royal chamberlain and later court marshal Behrendt Friedrich August von der Marwitz (1740–1793) and his wife Susanne Sophie Marie Louise nee. of Dorville (1756-1808).

Life

Born in the family's own palace on Wilhelmstrasse in Berlin, Friedrich August joined the Prussian Gensdarmes regiment in 1790 - at the age of 13 . A year later he was already a cornet and in 1802 resigned with the rank of prime lieutenant . But already in 1805 and 1806, he resigned as captain and adjutant of Prince Hohenlohe back into the regiment. In this position he played an important role in the Napoleonic wars. B. 1806 in the battle of Jena and Auerstedt . After the surrender of the Prenzlau Fortress , he and Hohenlohe were captured by the French. But he managed to escape via Denmark and Sweden to Memel in East Prussia . There he initially tried in vain to obtain the permission of King Friedrich Wilhelm III, who had also fled there. to get a volunteer corps founded.

1807 Marwitz finally received the longed-for permit and founded a volunteer corps that should participate in the fight against Napoleon. This consisted of 300 infantrymen and 500 riders, which was quite large for the conditions at the time. With this he came to Rügen and planned to take part in the advance of the Prussians, English and Swedes against the French and Saxons to the Mark Brandenburg . When it came to the peace of Tilsit , however, he had to dissolve his corps, since the Prussian army was considerably reduced by the conditions of the peace. Now he retired as a private person to the devastated Friedersdorf, where he settled.

In view of the defeats against Napoleon, Prussia tried in the following years to improve its internal stability through a number of comprehensive administrative, educational and military reforms and to catch up with the changed modern warfare. The initiators were the politically independent Imperial Knight vom Stein and - in a weakened form - the later Karl August Prince von Hardenberg . However, their measures, especially the abolition of the hereditary subordination of the peasants, met with bitter resistance from the Brandenburg aristocracy. As Land Marshal of the landowners in Lebus, Marwitz was one of the leaders of this opposition. In 1811 Hardenberg had him arrested together with Friedrich Ludwig Karl Graf Finck von Finckenstein as a Frondeure and detained at the Spandau fortress, but after five weeks and afterwards. a. due to interventions by the Crown Prince, later Friedrich Wilhelm IV. , dismissed.

In 1813 Marwitz rejoined the Prussian army and now participated in the training of a Landwehr . He successfully led one of their brigades in the battle of Wittenberg on June 7, 1813. After the fighting near Magdeburg he was awarded the Iron Cross 1st Class. Promoted to colonel in 1815 , he now commanded a cavalry brigade and fought with the 8th Uhlan Regiment in the battles near Ligny , Wavre and Waterloo and in the battle near Namur against the Napoleonic army of the " 100 days ", for which he was awarded the Pour le Mérite order received with oak leaves . After the end of the Napoleonic Wars, he became the commander of the 5th Cavalry Brigade. In 1817 he was promoted to major general and held that post for ten years. In 1827 he retired from the army as a lieutenant general .

Until his death in 1837, Marwitz managed his Gut Friedersdorf. In addition, he was politically active as the state marshal of the Brandenburg provincial parliament . In old age he was given attentions and honors by the Crown Prince, who later became King Friedrich Wilhelm IV.

Marwitz was afraid of being buried alive and so left very precise instructions regarding his burial. The corpse was supposed to lie “in an airy room” until “clear traces of putrefaction showed”, only then could it be buried. He wanted to be buried in his “full general mouth and medal”, his saber was to lie on a pillow next to the coffin during the funeral service. There were also meticulous rules for the funeral ceremony, the processional order in the funeral procession, and so on. His ancestors were buried in the von Marwitz family crypt in the Friedersdorfer Church; he himself, his two wives, his brothers and sons are lying in the family cemetery that he created by the church wall. The oldest gravestone is that of his first wife, who received the following epitaph from him : “Here lies my happiness. Caroline Franziska Countess Brühl was born in 1783 on March 23rd, wed 1803 on May 12th to Friedrich August Ludwig von der Marwitz heir to Friedersdorf. He left her healthy on March 14, 1804. Fourteen days after a happy delivery, returned on the 16th and found her dead! She was the joy of everyone who knew her. "

Political stance

As a politician, Marwitz represented the old Prussian nobility. Like most of these aristocrats, he was a vehement opponent of the reform policy of the ministers Freiherrn vom Stein and Fürst Hardenberg , in whom he - like Ludwig Yorck von Wartenburg - saw a threat to the privileges of the nobility and the Prussian state supported by the nobility. In his opinion, the kingdom must remain dominated by the nobility.

In 1811 he wrote the Lubusz memorandum. In it, he left the estates of the Lubusz Region to ask the king whether "our old, venerable Brandenburg-Prussia was to be a newfangled Jewish state?" . Marwitz turned against the serfdom relieve the farmers from the landlord by money payments and indemnify noble estates for commoners to acquire. Marwitz feared that the then up-and-coming urban bourgeoisie or banks - hence the polemical formulation of the “Jewish state” - would displace the poorly financed aristocrats by buying up real estate from their ancestral properties.

On the other hand, he agitated for his legal position that the aristocratic landed property was also the inalienable power base of the ruling Hohenzollern . In Marwitz's opinion, the innovations broke old unwritten contracts (including with Friedrich Wilhelm III. When he took office), which the nobility once concluded with the Prussian king and with which he delegated his claims to power to the king.

Marwitz was convinced that the nobility should hold all officer positions in the army, as always in the old Prussian tradition, and that this supremacy in the social structure of the state must be maintained. This corresponded to the interests of many aristocratic families: in Prussia, dividing up estates was uneconomical because of the barren, sterile soil. In the aristocratic families, the younger brothers of the heirs often only had an officer career as a career path.

Even after the reforms were implemented, Marwitz remained true to these positions into old age. Even in the last years of his life he tirelessly fought against the results of Stein-Hardenberg's reforms . Therefore Theodor Fontane said about him:

“The Marwitze have given the country some good soldiers, some solid character, but none more good and solid than Friedrich August Ludwig von der Marwitz, whose appearance marks a turning point in our state life. Only from the time of Marwitz did a political conflict of opinion exist in Prussia. "

Marwitten's contemporary, Friedrich Erhardt von Röder , wrote about him in his 1807 memoir:

" He was an unusual person and soldier, strong in body and soul, chivalrous, full of understanding and discernment, witty, lively, endowed with thorough knowledge, a true Christian" .

Heinrich von Treitschke , well-known historian, characterized Marwitz around 1880 as follows:

"The archetype of the Brandenburg Junker , one of the bravest officers and the greatest rider in the army, coarse, rugged and gnarled, (...) full of fiery patriotism, but also full of harsh prejudices, so naive in his pride of class that he thinks of the could hardly ever believe the legal opinion of his opponent ” .

The prejudices and pride of class mentioned were precisely those old legal positions that Marwitz held, although they no longer corresponded to social reality. The fatherland he loved remained the nobility-dominated Prussia , not a German nation-state that the bourgeois national movement was striving for before 1848 - although both fought side by side against Napoleon.

The historian Gordon A. Craig sees Marwitz as a typical representative of territorial feudalism against bourgeois liberalism and rates its effect as follows:

Even in the defeat (if one can call the only partial realization of his hopes that) Stein remained a dominant figure on the political stage in Germany, a symbol of hope that Prussia would still take the path that the countries of Western Europe had taken. He was the founding father of a new German liberalism , the man whose “testament” was invoked and published every time the forces of the movement in Germany began to stir again. But maybe Marwitz was the more important of the two, at least in the context of a book entitled “The End of Prussia”.

The fact that the later King of Prussia, Friedrich Wilhelm IV. , So strongly honored Marwitz in the latter's life, already pointed to the future role of the agrarian nobility in the Empire of 1871. Since 1890, the interests of the nobility were organized in the “ Federation of Farmers ”. Even after 1918, the Central German aristocratic landowners whom Marwitz represented at the time retained political influence, especially in the last few years of Reich President Paul von Hindenburg .

family

He married Caroline Francisca Countess von Brühl (* March 23, 1783; † March 28, 1804), a daughter of General Carl Adolph von Brühl and granddaughter of the Minister Count Heinrich von Brühl . The couple had a daughter.

With the second wife, Charlotte geb. Countess of Moltke (1780-1848), whom he married in 1809, he seems in no such happy marriage to have lived, but got her nine children, eight of which the postpartum survived. The youngest of his three sons, Bernhard (1824–1880), became majorate in Friedersdorf, the second was a student at the Brandenburg Knights' Academy and died 15 years old, the oldest died as a child. In addition, four daughters survived. The eldest daughter Karoline Franziska (* February 28, 1804; † 1888) married the then Rittmeister Albert von Arnstedt (1794–1875, a grandson of Adam Friedrich von Arnstedt ) in 1824 . The daughter Maria (* March 5, 1821) married Hermann Rochus zu Lynar (* February 4, 1797, † December 31, 1878).

Works

• From the estate of Friedrich August Ludwig von der Marwitz auf Friedersdorf, Royal Prussian General-Lieutenants a. D. Mittler, Berlin 1852.
  • Volume 1: biography ( full text )
• A Brandenburg nobleman in the era of the Wars of Liberation, Collected Writings , edited by Dr. Meusel, 1–3, Berlin 1908 to 1913.
• Jena 1806. From simultaneous diary entries , Berlin: Junker and Dünnhaupt 1937.
• News from my life 1777–1808 (Märkischer Dichtergarten). Edited and with an afterward by Günter de Bruyn . 1st edition. Book publisher Der Morgen, Berlin 1989, ISBN 3-371-00243-8 .

literature

• Report by Major vd Marwitz, adjutant to General d.Inf. Fürsten zu Hohenlohe-Ingelfingen to the Immediate Investigation Commission. Historical account of the events that occurred from October 12 to 14, 1806 near Jena and the battle of October 14, In: Großer Generalstab, Kriegsgeschichtliche Abt. II (Ed.): 1806. The Prussian officer corps and the investigation of the war events , 2. Edition. Berlin, 1906, pp. 151-181.
• Berlin-Brandenburgische Geschichtswerkstatt eV (Hrsg.): Noble returnees in the state of Brandenburg. Your current commitment and the work of your ancestors 1806-2000 . Metropol-Verlag, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-932482-74-3 .
• Karl Erich Born:  Marwitz, Ludwig von der. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 16, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1990, ISBN 3-428-00197-4 , pp. 318-320 ( digitized version ).
• Peter Brandt u. a. (Ed.): Prussia, attempt to take stock . Rowohlt, Reinbek, 1981
  • Volume 1: Gottfried Korff: Exhibition guide. ISBN 3-499-34001-1 .
  • Volume 2: Manfred Schlenke: Prussia, contributions to a political culture. ISBN 3-499-34002-X .
  • Volume 3: Peter Brandt: Prussia, on the social history of a state. ISBN 3-499-34003-8 .
  • Volume 4: Hellmuth Kühn: Prussia, Prussia, Your Spree-Athens. ISBN 3-499-34004-6 .
  • Volume 5: Axel Marquardt: Prussia in Film. ISBN 3-499-34005-4 .
• Günter de Bruyn : shouts of jubilation, songs of mourning. German sensitivities . Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1994, ISBN 3-596-12154-X .
• Günter de Bruyn: My Brandenburg . Nicolai, Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-87584-649-4 .
• Günter de Bruyn: The Finckensteins. A family in the service of Prussia . Siedler, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-88680-613-8 (contains a number of references to Friedrich August Ludwig and his brother Alexander).
• Madelaine von Buttlar : The political ideas of Friedrich August Ludwig von der Marwitz. A contribution to the genesis and shape of conservative thought in Prussia . Lang, Frankfurt am Main 1980, ISBN 3-8204-6441-7 .
• Gordon A. Craig : The end of Prussia. Eight portraits . Beck, Munich 2001, ISBN 3-406-45964-1 (therein Chapter I "Failure of Reform: Stein and Marwitz").
• Walther von Diest : History of the family von der Marwitz . Self-published, Kolberg 1929.
• André Espiau de la Maïstre : Claudel et Bernhard von der Marwitz. In: Romanesque research. Volume 75, 1964, issue 3/4, p. 400f.
• Karl Feldmeyer : Difficult homecoming. New settlers on old soil . Siedler, Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-88680-615-4 .
• Olga Fienbork : A burning and shining light. About the life and service of Adelheid von der Marwitz . Oranien-Verlag, Herborn 1962.
• Theodor Fontane : Walks through the Mark Brandenburg . Phaidon-Verlag, Essen 2001, ISBN 3-88851-278-6 .
• Ewald Frie : Friedrich August Ludwig von der Marwitz. 1777-1837. Biographies of a Prussian . Schöningh, Paderborn 2001, ISBN 3-506-72730-3 (also habilitation thesis, University of Essen, 2000).
• Ewald Frie: Political Generations in the Early 19th Century? Reflections on Ludwig von der Marwitz 1777-1837. In: Ewald Grothe (Hrsg.): Conservative German politicians in the 19th century. Effect - Effect - Perception (= publications of the Historical Commission for Hesse, 75). Marburg 2010, ISBN 978-3-942225-09-0 , pp. 21-34.
• Georg F. Goltz : History of the Royal Prussian Third Uhlan Regiment . Schubert, Fürstenwalde 1841 digitized .
• Bernhard Gölz : Old-class conservatism and Prussian reforms, Ludwig von der Marwitz. In: Political quarterly journal (PVS). Volume 25, 1984, pp. 359-377.
• Harald von Koenigswald : Duty and Faith. Portrait of a Prussian life . Hesse & Becker, Leipzig 1936.
• Christian Graf von Krockow : Portraits of famous German men. From Martin Luther to the present . List, Munich 2002, ISBN 3-471-79446-8 , pp. 147-188.
• Georg Maercker : The von der Marwitz in the Brandenburg-Prussian army . Mittler, Berlin 1891.
• Ludwig von der Marwitz : A Brandenburg nobleman in the age of the Wars of Liberation . Mittler, Berlin
  • Volume 1: biography. 1908.
  • Volume 2: Diaries, Political Writings and Letters. 1913.
  • Volume 3: Political Writings and Letters. 1913.
• Heinrich von Minnigerode : Ludwig von der Marwitz and the essential unity of politics and war. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 1941.
• Hans-Günter v. Neree: Friedrich August Ludwig v. der Marwitz: His ancestors and all of his descendants until 1966. 1966.
• Wolfgang Neugebauer : The school reform of Junkers Marwitz. Reform efforts in the Brandenburg-Prussian landed gentry before 1806. In: Peter Albrecht , Ernst Hinrichs (Ed.): The lower school system in the transition from the 18th to the 19th century . Niemeyer, Tübingen 1995, ISBN 3-484-17520-6 .
• Bernhard von Poten :  Marwitz, Ludwig von der . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 20, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1884, p. 530 f.
• Kurt von Priesdorff : Soldier leadership . Volume 4, Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt Hamburg, undated [Hamburg], undated [1937], DNB 367632799 , p. 323, no. 1335.
• Hermann von Redern : On the history of the von der Marwitz family. Regesta, family tables and other materials . Heymann, Berlin 1879.
• Friedrich Schinkel (ed.): Prussian nobility. From the posthumous writings of Friedrich August Ludwig von der Marwitz . Korn, Breslau 1932.
• Friedrich Schnapp : The binding illegal order or: Did Johann Friedrich Adolph von der Marwitz behave lawfully? In: Klaus Anderbrügge u. a. (Ed.): Service at the university. Festschrift for Dieter Leuze on his 70th birthday . Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2003, ISBN 3-428-10695-4 , pp. 469-485.
• Hans-Joachim Schoeps : Prussia. History of a state . Olms, Hildesheim 2001, ISBN 3-487-11421-6 (reprint of the Berlin 1968 edition) 1997.
• Joachim Siegert : Freedom or Commitment in the Age of Reforms. Stein and Hardenberg - Marwitz and Adam Müller. An economic and social science study . Dissertation, University of Munich, 1951.
• Heinrich von Treitschke : German history in the 19th century . Phaidon-Verlag, Essen 1997, ISBN 3-88851-224-7 .
• Peter Wruck : Which Prussia? Fontane's argument with his darling Friedrich August Ludwig von der Marwitz.
• Gerd Zuchold : Castles and mansions. Building history and family history for Theodor Fontane's “Walks through the Mark Brandenburg” . FO Edition, Berlin 1998, ISBN 3-930842-41-6 .

Web links

• Literature by and about Friedrich August Ludwig von der Marwitz in the catalog of the German National Library
• Family tree at geneagraphie.com
• Friedrich August Ludwig von der Marwitz (1777–1837) on the official homepage of the von der Marwitz family