Gmunden magnificent work
The Gmundener Prachtwerk or Gmunden Prachtwerk is a manuscript with colored uniform depictions of the Chur-Braunschweig-Lüneburg Army and is located in the Guelf archive in Gmunden . It was not until around 1914 that this manuscript was called a magnificent work from Gmunden . Some of these representations were made around 1760, the other in the 1780s. The work was published in two volumes in 1976 and 1981.
The first volume
The first volume contains 47 uniform panels from the time of the Seven Years' War , classified into Infantry , Artillery and Train, Cavalry and Light Troops and Legion Britannique. The representations are artistically very carefully executed and, with the exception of a few later sheets on dragoons and militias , were made around 1761.
In the 1976 edition, three infantry regiments are presented on a double page. Each regiment is represented by a musketeer , with the exception of the guard, with which a grenadier and a grenadier of the light troops are shown. The figures are all shown in the same posture and with equipment.
In the cavalry, the Reuter regiments are each represented by one illustration, the dragoon regiments by two, one of which shows the grenadiers. The soldiers are shown on horseback with equipment and the elaborately decorated saddlecloths .
The second volume
During the period under consideration of this volume, Hanoverian troops were deployed in Minorca and Gibraltar during the American War of Independence, in India, in the campaign in Flanders in 1794 and the surrender in 1803.
The 19 sheets with uniform images date from around 1781-1791. Since the infantry had straw-yellow (paille-colored) underclothes before 1787, but then white and the uniforms show the latter, the illustrations were probably made after 1787.
Compared to the first volume, the second volume shows the army after a fundamental reduction, which explains the lower number of images. The younger series of the "magnificent work" may not be as artistic as the older one, but it is certainly of higher quality compared to other contemporary works. JGF Ronnenberg's "Illustration of the Chur-Hanoverian Army Uniforms", published in 1791, shows the uniforms far less precisely, but has the advantage of depicting an officer in addition to a man.
Gallery (selection)
Infantry Regiment v. Hardenberg (left) and Fußgarde (middle and right), around 1761.
Grenadier à cheval (Guard on Horseback B) 1761.
Veltheim (DI) dragoon regiment , grenadier 1760.
Walthausen Dragoon Regiment, 1760.
See also
literature
- Joachim Niemeyer and Georg Ortenburg (eds.): The Chur-Braunschweig-Lüneburg Army in the Seven Years War . The "Gmunden magnificent work". Publishing house Bernh. Vogel, Beckum 1976 (on behalf of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Heereskunde eV and KLIO).
- The Hanoverian Army 1780-1803 - The "Gmundener Magnificent Work" Part II. (Ed. By Joachim Niemeyer and Georg Ortenburg i. A. of the German Society for Heereskunde eV and the KLIO. Verlag Bernh. Vogel, Beckum 1981.)
