Duchy of Friedland
The Duchy of Friedland ( Frýdlantské vévodství in Czech ) was a short-lived domain during the Thirty Years' War . The territory in northeastern Bohemia was a creation of the imperial generalissimo Albrecht von Wallenstein , who had also been named Duke of Friedland since 1625 .
From 1621 onwards, Wallenstein built Friedland into a model state with tight administration within a few years, increased production in agriculture, mining and trade and used this income to supply his army. It was named after the city of Friedland in northern Bohemia ; The in was home Bohemian Paradise located Jičín (Gitschin).
location
The Duchy of Friedland was northeast of Prague . It comprised most of the area that is framed by the arched course of the Elbe in Bohemia. In the north the duchy bordered Silesia and Upper Lusatia . The Jizera Mountains and parts of the Giant Mountains with the headwaters of the Elbe belonged to the dominion . In total, the duchy covered an area of around 9,000 square kilometers and thus almost a fifth of the Kingdom of Bohemia .
Emergence
The emergence of the duchy is directly related to the suppression of the Bohemian uprising by imperial-Catholic troops. After the decisive battle on the White Mountain and the flight of the “winter king” Friedrich V of the Palatinate, elected by the Bohemian estates, from Prague, a Habsburg criminal court began against the rebels, which in June 1621 resulted in the public execution of 27 rebels on the Old Town Ring culminated in Prague. The rebels' goods were confiscated by the crown on a large scale and redistributed to lords loyal to the emperor.
One of these was Wallenstein, who was appointed military commander in Bohemia in January 1622. He took advantage of this position of power and the insider information that came with it to purposefully advance his land acquisition. Wallenstein's rise to the rank of magnate was also favored by the fact that he had become a creditor to Emperor Ferdinand II as a regimental commander because of the military service he had previously performed . Due to a lack of liquidity in his war chest, Ferdinand went over to settle these debts provisionally by pledging lands. Finally, Wallenstein was also a partner in the coin consortium from 1622 around Hans de Witte , which leased the coin shelf from the emperor and deliberately inflated the guilder by reducing the silver content . Wallenstein used this opportunity to buy land holdings that were far below value.
The nucleus of the later duchy were the dominions of Friedland and Reichenberg , which Ferdinand II pledged to Wallenstein in June 1621 and left him a year later as an eternal inheritance . In a “frenzy of bartering, buying and reselling”, 49 more goods and possessions were added by the beginning of 1624. These included the cities of Horschitz and Böhmisch Leipa , the lordships of Arnau , Neuschloß mit Hühnerwasser , Weißwasser , Münchengrätz (1627 resold to the nephew Maximilian von Waldstein, owned by the family until 1945), Hohenelbe , Hirschberg , Bösig , Altperstein with Neuperstein Castle , Houska castle with ten villages, Vidim castle with sixteen villages, Kopidlno , Chomutice and Pecka (which Wallenstein donated to the Carthusian monastery, which he founded, Karthaus ).
In doing so, Wallenstein successfully pursued the goal of merging his acquisitions into a closed territory and securing permanent legal protection: After he had confirmed Wallenstein and his descendants as a Fideikommiss in 1622 , Ferdinand II elevated the territory to a principality in March 1624 and then in June In 1625 it finally became a duchy . Personally, Wallenstein, the Duke of Friedland, was promoted to the imperial prince status, but did not belong to the imperial estates , since the Duchy of Friedland remained a Bohemian fiefdom and did not become an imperial fiefdom . In addition, Ferdinand II transferred the Duchy of Sagan to him in 1628 .
City palace in Gitschin
Weißwasser Castle
administration
Wallenstein established his rule in Friedland with the establishment of a tight administrative structure, which was supported by an apparatus of officials committed to him by oath of office . The official language was German, which predominated in the north of the duchy, while Czech predominated in the south. At the top of the hierarchy stood the governor, as it were as the deputy of the often absent duke. From 1624 to 1631 this office was held by Gerhard von Taxis . Two central authorities were subordinate to the governor: the chamber responsible for economic and financial administration and the law firm for the legal and administrative area. The two branches of administration were united at the regional and local levels. The duchy was divided into districts, each subordinate to a captain, above that there were circles with chief captains at the head. The chamber property also belonged to Wallenstein and was administered centrally by the 24 captains.
Some cities gradually achieved the status of a free ducal city with autonomous administration, in addition to Friedland and Gitschin also Reichenberg, Böhmisch-Leipa , Aicha , Weißwasser, Turnau and Arnau . Gitschin , located in the Bohemian Paradise , enjoyed special support from Wallenstein , which he elevated to the seat of the duchy: Here the sovereign unleashed a building boom, so that the previously insignificant area developed into a center of handicrafts and trade as well as a representative one within a few years Baroque city. The new ducal palace was intended to be the centerpiece, but it remained unfinished. The Duke preferred the Waldstein Palace in Prague as his residence .
Wallenstein took as part of the Counter-Reformation religious orders in the Duchy, he founded the Jesuit -Kolleg to Gitschin also took Dominicans and Carthusians in the city, handed over the Franciscans , the castle Welisch , founded the Augustinian monastery Česká Lípa and - in memory of his first wife Lucretia - the Carthusian monastery in Walditz , to which he also donated the castles Radim and Pecka with numerous villages. However, he turned against violent measures in the re-Catholicization of the population as they were otherwise used in Bohemia, because he wanted neither disorder nor economic loss through emigration.
War economy
From 1625 the duchy was dominated by the war economy . The aim was to ensure that the imperial army led by Wallenstein was supplied with food, clothing, weapons and ammunition as far as possible from peaceful production. Many agricultural goods and industrial production facilities as well as mines were in the hands of the tax authorities. Where this was not the case, Wallenstein secured access to the income through trade monopolies . He drew the right to brew beer, previously exercised by cities and the nobility, and had a dispensing monopoly for his beers; He taxed distilleries that did not belong to him. The peaceful system can therefore be characterized as a state economy or a planned economy .
With extremely detailed instructions, which were also given to his officials in large numbers during his campaigns, Wallenstein ensured that the yields in almost all branches of the economy could be increased significantly and previously unused potentials were exploited.
In 1628 he issued an economic regulation with 24 detailed articles. The most important trades were the cloth makers, weavers, tailors (also for uniforms), tanners and shoemakers (including for soldiers' boots) as well as the breweries. In the vicinity of the Raspenau ironworks , armaments (weapons, powder and lead) were mass-produced. Innovations such as rusk as a long-life staple food for soldiers or the introduction of fast mail on horseback characterize the peaceful boom. Wallenstein had customs stations set up at the borders, roads built and dimensions and weights standardized. Numerous specialists were brought in from abroad and Jewish traders were promoted. The main buyer of goods from the duchy was Wallenstein himself, not only for the equipment of his army, but also for his court, which consisted of 899 people, at the head of the Obersthofmeister, a Count of Liechtenstein, the chief treasurer, Count Harrach, the chief stableman, Count Hardegg and the Vicestallmeister von Breunner, furthermore 24 noble chamberlain; The civilian expenditure alone was hardly less than half a million thalers a year. The general took a large part of this court with him to his headquarters on his campaigns and financed it through contributions from the occupied countries.
Model state
In Friedland, for example, it became clear "... that war can make a country richer if it is not its own scene". Especially since the imperial general was anxious that his duchy was spared from billeting his army. With this prosperous, integrated economy, with its loyal, permanently paid civil servants who are therefore comparatively less susceptible to corruption, with its uniform measures and weights, because of the establishment of numerous institutions for education and poor welfare, and because of the rational, moderate and non-fanatical Counter-Reformation Friedland can be described as a model state of the early modern period. Friedland's title is known as "terra felix" ( happy land ) in contrast to "terra deserta" ( abandoned land ), which meant the rest of Bohemia, which was mainly caused by the confiscations and the sale of municipal businesses (farms, mills, Ponds etc.), but also became impoverished as a result of denominational emigration.
Even formally, Wallenstein had largely succeeded in detaching the Duchy of Friedland from the Bohemian state association , despite the continued legal feudal relationship , and thus to achieve a status similar to that of the duchies in Silesia , a neighboring country of the Bohemian crown, of which he held the Duchy of Sagan from 1628 to 1634 also ruled. He minted his own coins since 1625 and was confirmed by Ferdinand II in 1627 as the supreme court lord and the last court of appeal in his territory. In 1632 he gave the order to draw up a state order with a state representative body.
resolution
In connection with the murder of Wallenstein in February 1634, the Duchy of Friedland was occupied and broken up by imperial troops. The economic boom in the area came to an end. Since Wallenstein was considered a traitor , the claims of his family to the inheritance of Ferdinand II were not recognized. The officers involved in the conspiracy against Wallenstein benefited in particular from the redistribution of goods. Wallenstein was buried in the Karthaus Walditz monastery church, which he founded, and after it was secularized in 1782, transferred to the convent chapel of Schloss Münchengrätz , which belonged to Count Waldstein until 1945.
literature
- Hellmut Diwald : Wallenstein. A biography , Munich / Esslingen 1969.
- Anton Ernstberger (historian) : Wallenstein as an economist in the Duchy of Friedland , Reichenberg 1929.
- Golo Mann : Wallenstein. His life , Frankfurt am Main 1997 (first 1971).
- Robert Rebitsch : Wallenstein. Biography of a power man , Vienna / Cologne / Weimar 2010.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Mann, p. 257 (map)
- ↑ Diwald, p. 193
- ↑ Diwald, p. 170
- ↑ Rebitsch, p. 99
- ^ Mann, p. 203
- ↑ Quotation from Mann, p. 204
- ↑ Rebitsch, p. 99 ff.
- ↑ Rebitsch, p. 102
- ↑ Diwald, p. 231 f.
- ^ Mann, p. 259
- ↑ Diwald, p. 235; Rebitsch, p. 114 f.
- ^ Mann, pp. 313-323
- ↑ Ernstberger, p. 13
- ^ Mann, p. 264
- ↑ Ernstberger, p. 101
- ^ Mann, p. 264
- ^ Mann, p. 287
- ^ Mann, p. 413
- ↑ cit. n. Mann, p. 255
- ↑ Ernstberger, p. 10
- ^ Mann, p. 255
- ^ So Diwald, p. 227
- ^ Mann, p. 254
- ↑ Mann, p. 256
- ^ Mann, p. 298
- ^ Mann, p. 968 ff .; Ernstberger, p. 14