Friedrich Wilhelm of the East (Chamberlain)

Friedrich Wilhelm von der Osten (born February 23, 1721 in Stargard in Pomerania , † February 27, 1786 in Plathe ) was a Prussian chamberlain , district administrator and private scholar .

Life

Friedrich Wilhelm von der Osten came from the Pomeranian noble family von der Osten . His father Matthias Conrad von der Osten (1691–1748) was a Prussian chamber official and rose to the position of chief president of the Kurmärkische war and domain chamber in Berlin. His mother Clara Sophie (1700–1721) was born from Blücher from the Plathe family. He was enrolled at the Albertus University in Königsberg as early as 1732 , in 1740 he went to the Brandenburg University in Frankfurt , two years later to the University of Leipzig and returned home via the Friedrichs University in Halle .

Because of his father's good relations with the Prussian court, Friedrich Wilhelm von der Osten joined the court and became chamberlain in 1745 . After the death of his father, however, he resigned from court service and went to his property. In 1752 he married Charlotte Henriette (1734–1791), the daughter of the Szczecin Mayor Matthäus Heinrich von Liebeherr . Their daughter Charlotte Wilhelmine Juliane (1759–1800) married the future Prussian major general Otto Leopold Ehrenreich von Gloeden (1731–1801) in 1784 .

In 1764 von der Osten became a knight of the Order of St. John in Sonnenburg and designated commander of the Lietzen commandery .

In the Ostenschen Kreis he was active as a district deputy and as such also represented District Administrator Christoph Friedrich von der Osten in his absence. After his death in 1777 he was elected District Administrator of the Ostenschen Kreis and held the office until his death; he was succeeded by George Julius Felix von der Osten .

Von der Ost's father-in-law Liebherr was a great collector of books and coins related to Pomerania. The "Liebeherrsche Sammlung" was in the Szczecin City Library until 1945.

Probably stimulated by this, Friedrich Wilhelm von der Osten began collecting documents and testimonies from Pomeranian history. He was in lively exchange with Amandus Karl Vanselow . He was also one of the editors of Albrecht Elzow's Pomeranian Adelsspiegel , whose signature in the Greifswald State Archives still bears his name today.

Johann III Bernoulli also visited Plathe Castle on his “travels through Brandenburg, Pomerania, Prussia, Curland, Russia and Pohlen in the years 1777 and 1778” and reports in the second volume of the travel description on 12 pages about his impressions of the collections from the East . These included:

1. the collection of Pomeranian pamphlets,
2. the manuscripts pertaining to this country, among others by Johannes Bugenhagen , Thomas Kantzow , Valentin von Eickstedt , Günther Heiler , Cosmus von Simmer , Nicolaus von Klemptzen and Lupold von Wedel ,
3. the maps of Pomerania,
4. the topographic maps of Pomeranian cities,
5. the Pomeranian coin collection,
6. the portraits of the Pomeranian dukes,
7. a large collection of copper engravings by Pomeranian princes, statesmen, scholars, etc.,
8. various other antiquities.

Friedrich Wilhelm von der Osten determined in his will that his Pomeranian collections were to be bequeathed undivided and should never be sold. This requirement was met by 1945. In the spring of 1945 his descendant and then owner, Karl Graf von Bismarck-Osten, was only able to evacuate part of the Plathe Castle library . Larger parts of the library are therefore now in the University Library in Łódź and the Polish National Library in Warsaw, part of the manuscript collection in the Greifswald State Archives (Rep. 42 Plathe) and parts of the other art collections, e.g. B. the portraits of the Pomeranian dukes in the Pomeranian State Museum in Greifswald.

Fonts

• Attempt of a list of all the prelatorum and canonicorum of the chapter to Camin . Manuscript 1770.
• Alphabetical register of all noble families that were resident in Western and Western Pomerania, Rügen, Lauenburg and Bütow and have flourished there . Manuscript 1770.
• Villare Pomeranicum, alphabetical index of all villages, farms and their current owners in Pomerania, Rügen, Lauenburg and Bütow under both Swedish and Prussian sovereignty . Manuscript 1772–1775.
• Brief news on Pomeranian coin science . Greifswald 1782.
• Directory of the Swedish Pomeranian and Rügian maps . 1784.

literature

• Bismarck East: Friedrich Wilhelm of the East . In: Pommersche Lebensbilder , Vol. IV, pp. 143–152.
• Gottfried von Bülow :  Friedrich Wilhelm of the East . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 24, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1887, p. 502.
• Karl Graf von Bismarck-Osten :  Friedrich Wilhelm von der Osten . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 55, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1910, p. 890 f.
• 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. 708 f . ( limited preview in Google Book search).
• Hans Wätjen: Von der Osten, a Pomeranian family through the ages. Georg Westermann, Braunschweig, 1960, p. 125.
• Ferdinand von Bismarck-Osten: The collections at Schloss Plathe and their founder Friedrich Wilhelm von der Osten (1721-1786) . In: Baltic Studies 62 (1976), pp. 63–72. ( Digitized version )
• Torsten Fried: Regional history and numismatics - Friedrich Wilhelm von der Osten and his "Pomerania Numismatica" . In: Baltic Studies 105 (2019), pp. 167–181.

Web links

• Portrait of the East

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Rep.41 vdOsten-Plathe East 11 / I.