Johann Conrad Wilhelm Mensing

Johann Conrad Wilhelm Mensing (born November 9, 1765 in Rinteln , † November 12, 1837 in Friemen ) was a staff officer in the service of Prince Elector Wilhelm I of Hesse-Kassel and savior of the Hessian state treasure in 1806 before Napoleon seized it .

biography

Wilhelm Mensing was born in 1765 as the sixth of seven children in the university and garrison town of Rinteln an der Weser, which was then part of the Landgraviate of Hessen-Kassel . He had two older brothers, three older and one younger sister. The house where he was born in today's Schulstrasse 2 is still standing.

His ancestors, who had been based in Rinteln for over 100 years, included locksmiths, gunsmiths and blacksmiths. Of the seven blacksmiths that existed in Rinteln in 1750, two had such a low income that they could not raise taxes. It is not known whether the father, Johann Conrad Mensing, who, according to the church register, operated “strong iron trade”, is one of the latter.

Mensing became a soldier at the age of 13. At first he was a baggage handler, a kind of servant. As the son of a craftsman, he was actually exempt from military service. While others had to be forced into military service, he volunteered. Nothing is known about the background to this decision. Nor do we know whether he was in America with the von Lossberg regiment from Rinteln.

Mensing moved to Flanders with Hessian troops in 1793 because the landgrave had "loaned" them to the English crown. There he accomplished a number of hussar acts: During the siege of Dunkirk on August 24, 1793, Mensing saved the life of the wounded General d'Alton . During the siege of Ypres he was used as a courier and was taken prisoner by the French. The peace treaty of Basel in 1795 made it possible for the captured Hessian soldiers of the campaign in Flanders to return home . Mensing was free again and got (after a long stay in Paris , where he learned the French language) home leave to visit his parents in Rinteln . Transferred to the Hereditary Prince Regiment in Kassel , he was now a well-known personality. His fatherly friend Strieder had publicized both his rescue of D'Alton and his repeated successful reporting rides.

Around 1798, the estate manager wanted to adopt Mercker Mensing, if he were ready to quit his job and help him manage his property - in addition to Harmuthsachsen, in particular Stölzingen. After Mensing had been refused several times by his commander, he turned directly to the Landgrave, but was not heard there either.

In 1806 Mensing brought the Hessian state treasure in the forester's house Stölzingen (near Stolzhausen ) from Napoleon's access to safety.

“When the French troops occupied Kassel and the Landgrave had fled, the Regency Council who stayed behind was looking for someone to bring the state treasure to a safe place. This was done by Mensing, who evacuated the treasure from Kassel-Wilhelmshöhe in an adventurous way with various horse-drawn carriages and servants . That was a dangerous matter, because as soon as the French arrived, the first thing they did was to confiscate all the money and valuables and give the clear order: Anyone who had knowledge of the elector's treasures had to show where they were hidden, and he would receive a third in return as a reward. However, anyone who has such knowledge and does not report it would be punished with death. Mensing finally managed to bring the treasure to Frankfurt am Main , which was not occupied by the French. The transport consisted of 46 boxes, including papers worth 3.5 million thalers. Everything together was finally delivered to Mayer Amschel Rothschild in Frankfurt and was thus at least temporarily saved. The matter had consequences for Mensing because he had to fight for years to get reimbursement of the considerable transport costs and the promised reward as well as the transport. In the military he made it to the rank of colonel , but economically he could not keep up so well that his widow later had to leave the estate on which he had spent his old age. "

Mensing also played an important role in the first Hessian insurrection in the winter of 1806/1807 by ensuring, together with the Minister of Waitz , that the weapons seized by citizens and soldiers were laid down. In 1814 he fell out with the elector because of Stölzingen and resigned from service in the Hessian army in the middle of the advance on France .

Mensing acquired the estate in Friemen in 1816 and died there in 1837. A stone cross behind the church in Friemen reminds of him.

Military career

• 1778: delivery assistant
• 1785: NCO in the Loßberg Grenadier Regiment
• November 29, 1793: Ensign
• June 11, 1796: Second Lieutenant in the Hereditary Prince Regiment
• December 1, 1800: Premier-Lieutenant in the Kassel Landregiment
• March 19, 1802: Staff captain in the Landregiment Kassel, which later bore the name "Regiment Schenck"
• 1806: Captain in the Schenck Regiment
• March 15, 1807: Major , raised to the personal nobility, knight of the Electoral Order Pour la vertu militaire
• March 19, 1808: Dismissed from active service in the Hessian army; the elector promised Mensing 600 Reichstaler annually in a "pension rescript".
• 1813: Brigademajor "in the suite of His Elector Highness"
• 1814: Lieutenant Colonel à la suite

family

On November 8, 1789, on the eve of his 24th birthday, Mensing was married to the 44-year-old translator Antoinette la Porte, who was seriously ill.

Antoinette la Porte's father was the Geneva-born Professor of Eloquence Jakob (Jacques) Andreas (la) Porte, who had been teaching French at the Ernestina in Rinteln since 1762 , and her late mother was the Swiss pastor's daughter Louise Claudine Curchod.

Jakob la Porte was a fatherly friend of Mensing until his death on July 8, 1787. The mutual friend of both Mensings and la Portes Friedrich Wilhelm Strieder mentions some of the circumstances of Mensing's first marriage with clear respect for the courage of this woman in his "Hessian Scholarly History". Although he does not grant Antoinette (la) Porte an independent article, he does at least refer to her only major literary work in a footnote: She translated the obituary written by “ Abbot Jerusalem ” in 1762 for Prince Albrecht Heinrich of Braunschweig and Lüneburg into French and had it printed that same year in Burg , where she grew up. At this point, Mensing was not yet born and Antoinette la Porte was a teenager of 17 years. Strieder writes:

"... This daughter just mentioned was already in the 44th year of her age when it was very special circumstances (which cannot be discussed here) that she was assigned to the then Fourier of the regiment of Lossberg Joh Conr. Wilh. Mensing and, moreover, on her sickbed, was married by hand. This, completely true to the chosen military rank, wanted to leave Porte out of the worry that he should have to promise himself the necessary requirements from him when his position as an officer, which was in his wishes and also in his hopes, would meet him. Porte died over it. In the sentiments of his daughter Herr Mensing found a still greater charitable source. What the father wanted to do only partly to promote the happiness of the young man whom he loved fatherly, the daughter now did entirely. Namely, knowing him, without harassment, as the rightful, unrestricted owner of her, albeit mediocre property, - because she too, like her father, was touched and taken with his righteous behavior - granted her satisfaction, and she therefore overcame the bitterness of the judgment of the audience, who, unknown with their kindness of heart, could not blame such a step in their condition as an irregular virginal outburst, but at least mock them. From the hour of the wedding she declared herself mother to her lover, and he, too, honored her as such, until her in 1793 d. 9. May followed death. "

Around 1790 Mensing was transferred to Nenndorf and began an extramarital relationship there. On September 16, 1792, the unmarried Marianne Brigitte Therese Heinrich from Rotenburg an der Fulda gave birth to a son who was baptized Catholic the following day in the name of Johann Gottlieb Wilhelm Mensing. Wilhelm Mensing jun. lived with his mother in Nenndorf until he was 7 years old, then he came to Hanover to visit a Catholic school with a family in Logis.

Mensing married Dorothea Mercker for the second time on November 4, 1813, who died in Bückeburg in 1863 . He had a daughter with her in 1815. and in 1816 a son.

His grandson Adolf Mensing (1845–1929) was a Prussian naval officer and hydrograph. In 1906 (for the centenary) he researched the role his grandfather had played in the "Hessian Insurrection" in the winter of 1806/1807. There were all kinds of rumors, including bad ones, in circulation, which Adolf Mensing investigated with scientific accuracy. The result is the re-publication of the anonymous article "The Hessian Insurrection in Winter 1806 to 1807", which he carefully notes, is interesting in this article about the Hessian soldier uprising and Major Mensing's role in the bloodless termination of it in Spangenberg and the surrounding area The matter with the state treasure is not yet known: The Stölzinger Gut is mentioned as if it already belonged to Mensing. Mensing's trip to Frankfurt in December 1806 is also mentioned in passing, but the anonymous author misinterprets it, which Adolf Mensing carefully corrects 100 years later:

“Mensing… did not travel to Frankfurt to avoid the rebels. Rather, he had brought the rest of the rescued electoral treasure there. "

Wilhelm Mensing's great-granddaughter Cornelia Osius, née Wilhelm Mensing's great-granddaughter Cornelia Osius, used the extensive material that was available to Adolf Mensing in addition to the archives of the Hessian State Archives in Marburg and the State Library and Murhard Library in Kassel . Mensing, to commemorate Mensing's historic act in two articles in regional daily newspapers.

“The fact that this happened in 1936 and that both texts only say that 'Captain Mensing could deliver the boxes to the Frankfurt banker' without naming him suggests the erroneous assumption that this is the name of the Jewish Bankers Rothschild is kept secret, although both newspaper reports otherwise factually and precisely follow historical facts. In interested circles it was well known what role the Frankfurt banking house Rothschild played for Elector Wilhelm I, especially in his exile from 1806 to 1813, but Mensing did not have said boxes in December 1806 with Rothschild, but with his competitor Carl Jordis Brought to Frankfurt from the Jordis- Brentano bank . This emerges from Mensing's diary entries from November 12, 1807, which Baron Heinrich von Troschke, Mensings great-great-grandson, copied with a typewriter in 1978/79, copied for his family and also made available to the Marburg State Archives . "

Rumors

The almost fairytale wealth of Prince Elector Wilhelm I, who fled into exile in Denmark on November 1, 1806, and the policy of secrecy - both from the French and German sides - encouraged the emergence of rumors.

“One of the most stubborn is that Mensing received the Friemen manor as a gift in gratitude for his loyal service. It is true that Mensing was made a major in 1807 and made a knight of the electoral order Pour la vertu militaire , raised to the personal nobility , but he duly bought the Friemen estate in 1816. The fact that the sense of justice of those who knew some of the facts may have contributed to the emergence of this rumor, which was positive for the sovereign, does not change the fact that the matter of the estate is much more complicated and, as far as Stölzingen is concerned, also much more dramatic, as it is popularly rumored. Mensing fell out with the elector in 1814 because of Stölzingen and resigned from the Hessian army in the middle of the advance on France . "

“Another rumor, and this time not only of local importance, is that of the elector's personal handover of the state treasure to the Frankfurt banker Rothschild . There is even a painting which is often shown and copied and subsequently captures this supposedly historical moment in the picture and thus helped to consolidate the myth of the reliability of the Rothschild banking house . On top of that, the counterpart was created, which represents the return of the treasure entrusted to Wilhelm I by the sons of the founder of the empire, who has since died. But not only the scene of the delivery, designed with great attention to detail by the Frankfurt painter Oppenheimer , is staged, the personal encounter at this location and on this occasion is fictitious and an early example of the skillful use of images in advertising. The two paintings mentioned by Oppenheimer are actually considered early examples of a corporate identity of a large company that has become a picture . If the elector had actually given the boxes to Rothschild's safekeeping with wise foresight, as can be seen in the first of the two paintings, Mensing would not have had to hide them at the risk of his life in Stölzingen. "

The rescue of the state treasure of the state of Hesse

The one from Rolf Hocke, as pastor in Waldkappel responsible for the Ev. Parish Friemen , on the occasion of Friemer Mensing festival in 2006 published description comes from Mensings own pen. It is not a private diary, but a report requested by Elector Wilhelm I , which Mensing wrote in November 1807 in Wilster , where he has been under the code name "Brückmann, Kaufmann zu Coldingen " prescribed by the Elector since March of the same year. had to stop. Although this compulsory retreat far from home seems to him as an “active man” like a kind of house arrest, as he shows towards the end of his report, he occasionally seems to have a great deal of pleasure in remembering. However, he does not write an adventure novel, but focuses on facts, events, places and people that were important to him to mention. The report is always accompanied by letters, short messages, even real cashiers from Mensings and other people involved in carrying out this secret operation. Beyond the mere facts, it is precisely these enclosed letters that illuminate the friendly, cordial tone that prevailed between the conspirators, despite considerable differences in class.

“It is significant that the name Rothschild is not mentioned anywhere. Mensing brought the treasure hidden in Stölzingen in several partial transports from there to various recipients: Some boxes went to Thorbecke and were intended for onward transport to the Elector. The transport of the "Reichsgräfin" v. Valuables destined for Schlotheim fell into the hands of the French , as did the treasures hidden in the Sababurg , mentioned at the beginning of the report . But even the hurry to Frankfurt did not lead Mensing to Rothschild, but to Jordis.

Mensing does not seem to know anything about the secret negotiations between the regional directorate and Lagrange: Waitz and other initiates skilfully use Lagrange's self-interest to deceive Napoleon about the actual wealth of the Kassel Elector to the mutual benefit .

Lagrange delayed the occupation of Wilhelmshöhe Castle for a few days so that the treasure can be removed. If Mensing were caught, Lagrange would have lost out and Napoleon would have got everything. But since Napoleon has to be satisfied in any case, something of the treasure must reappear: Chests with receipts are specifically selected, which together with the jewelry of the Elector's mistress fall into French hands. Lagrange kept the jewelry and other things for himself - and kept them even after 1814 - he had the boxes with the elector's balance sheets hairdressed and then handed over to Napoleon, so that he could set the contribution that the neutral Electorate of Hesse made for them on the basis of these falsified documents has to pay for it to be occupied by its troops.

Among the boxes that Napoleon received must have been Wilhelm I's collection of coins and medals, which fell into French hands on the Sababurg . Rothschild had the passionate coin collector when he was still Landgrave Wilhelm IX. was bought and sold some particularly beautiful pieces. During a stay in Paris , Rothschild succeeds in acquiring this coin collection, which he instantly recognizes, at his own expense and in sending it to Wilhelm I in exile in Denmark. He made a note of it in his diary with great joy, but 'forgets' to reimburse Rothschild for the not insignificant expenses. Buderus , Wilhelm I's financial advisor, first has to remind his electoral highness to reimburse 'the Jew Rothschild' for his not inconsiderable expenses. Buderus has been a 'silent partner' of Rothschild since 1809.

Wilhelm I had to leave Kassel on November 1st, 1806 without money or clothes to change. He was actually one of the richest men in Europe in his time. Many who had rank and name were in his chalk: at the head of the German Kaiser with almost 2 million and the Prince of Waldeck with a little more than 1 million thalers. Above all, promissory notes and mortgage letters with an estimated total volume of almost 7 million thalers were the really valuable contents of the treasure chests that Mensing had to transport. But he didn't know anything about all of this when he dared his life to save the state treasure of the State of Hesse ... "

Pictorial representations

• Ernst Metz (1955): Lieutenant Colonel Wilhelm Mensing 1814 on the Werra Bridge in Eschwege (Eschwege City Museum)

literature

• Friedrich Wilhelm Strieder : Porte (Jakob Andreas) . In: ders .: Basis for a Hessian history of scholars and writers, from the Reformation to the present day ; 11th volume. Kassel 1797, pp. 123-129, books.google.de . With further notes in: Friedrich Wilhelm Strieder, Ludwig Wachler, Karl Wilhelm Justi, Otto Gerland: Basis for a Hessian Scholar and Writer History , 21 volumes. Kassel and Marburg 1781–1868. ( The writers and scholars' encyclopedias of the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries .) Hildesheim 1983.
• Wilhelm Mensing: Relation about the removal of the effects from Hessen , Wilster 1807. In: Rolf Hocke (Hrsg.): The rescue of the Hessian state treasure 1806. Diary of the captain Wilhelm Mensing . Friemen 2006, pp. 6–15 pkgodzik.de (PDF; 1.5 MB)
• Anonymous: The Hessian insurrection in the winter of 1806 to 1807 . In: extinguishing bucket. A journal in casual notebooks . Second volume. Fourth to sixth issues, edited by H. v. L.-n, Kiel 1808, p. 50 ff., Books.google.de
• August Friedrich Christian Vilmar : Hessische Chronik , Marburg 1855
• Adolf Mensing : The Hessian soldier uprising 1806/07 . In: Wilhelm Hopf (Ed.): Hessische Blätter , 42nd volume, No. 4005, Melsungen , Wednesday, September 17, 1913, and No. 4006, Saturday, September 20, 1913.
• Georg Gisselbach: 1000 years of the community of Schemmern . Self-published, Waldkappel-Schemmern 1991
• Rainer Prince of Hesse (ed.): We Wilhelm by God's grace. The memoirs of Elector Wilhelm I of Hesse 1743–1821 . Campus, Frankfurt / Main 1996, ISBN 3-593-35555-8
• Rüdiger Fikentscher: Between König and Bebel. German stories from two centuries . Hohenheim, Stuttgart / Leipzig 2006, ISBN 3-89850-139-6
• Rolf Hocke (Hrsg.): The rescue of the Hessian state treasure 1806. Diary of Captain Wilhelm Mensing , Friemen 2006, pkgodzik.de (PDF; 1.5 MB)

Web links

• Portrait of Johann Wilhelm Mensing

References and comments

1. ↑ The year of birth 1771 given by Strieder has often been copied, but has been proven to be incorrect. (Information: Rinteln City Archives, 2005)
2. ↑ The father, master locksmith Johann Conrad Mensing, was initially married to Margarethe Struckmeyer. Mensing's biological mother is his father's second wife. Both die in 1799, just two days in a row. The Mensing family lived at Brennerstrasse 281. Mensing's grandfather, master locksmith Gottfried Mensing, was also married a second time apart from his first wife Anna Marie Bombeck. It is not certain whether she is Mensing's biological grandmother. The great-grandfather, blacksmith Arend Mensing, probably born on November 15, 1633, lived in Mensing's birthplace. Presumably on November 7, 1681, he married Marie Elise Clausing. Mensing's great-great-grandfather was the gunsmith Gert Mensching, about whom nothing else is known. (Information: Rinteln City Archives, 2005)
3. ↑ Fikentscher: "He had ... entered the Hessian military with the prospect of being able to make it to an officer. To achieve that, he wanted to excel in war. This also succeeded after he moved to Flanders with Hessian troops because the elector had "loaned" them to the English crown. There he performed a few hussar acts until the whole troop was finally captured by the French revolutionary army. She was actually supposed to be sentenced to death for not fighting for her own fatherland. After Robespierre's execution , it turned into only mild imprisonment. ”(Fikentscher: Between König and Bebel , 2006, p. 238)
4. ^ Wilhelm IX. von Hessen-Kassel rented Hessian soldiers to his cousin, King Georg III. of England to fight the insurgent colonies in North America. For the landgrave, the subsidy money transferred in bills of exchange was a profitable business and a never-ending source of money even in turbulent times.
5. ↑ ^{a b} Fikentscher: Between King and Bebel . 2006, p. 238 f.
6. ↑ lagis-hessen.de
7. ↑ regiowiki.hna.de
8. ↑ Unknown chronicler: “In this way it happened that the soil of Hesse was not tainted by any citizen's blood, which would have flowed in rivers if no Mensing had been found. The Elector , who is too noble to want to see one of the noblest of Tuiskon's peoples unhappy for his sake, which was inevitable because of the situation, and Lagrange have thanked the unselfish Mensing, and it can be expected that even the current ruler , who is praised in the ruler's virtues as the imprint of his sublime brother , will recognize in his heart this great service rendered to the country, which will forever remain unforgettable in the yearbooks of mankind. ”(Anonymous: The Hessian Insurrection in Winter 1806 to 1807. In: Löscheimer. A journal in informal booklets . Volume two. Fourth to sixth booklet, edited by H. v. L.-n, Kiel 1808, p. 60 f.)
9. ↑ kirchenkreis-eschwege.de
10. ↑ ^{a b} Strieder: Basis ..., Volume 11, p. 127
11. ↑ ^{a b} D. Ludwig Wachler: Joh. Conr. Wilh. Mensing, comments on Ms. W. Strieders "Basics for a Hessian Scholar-Writer-Story" , Volume 11, p. 126.
12. ↑ ^{a b c} Handwritten index card in the catalog of the Hessian reading room of the Murhard library.
13. ↑ ^{a b} Rolf Hocke: The Rescue ... Friemen 2006, p. 4.
14. ↑ On April 14, 1789, Mensing acquired the town charter in Rinteln for himself and his wife Antoinette la Porte. Apartment: Kirchplatz 374 (information: Rinteln City Archives 2005)
15. ^ Richard Hoche:  Porte, Jakob Andreas . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 26, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1888, p. 446.
16. ^ The French finance minister Jacques Necker (1732-1804), who under Louis XVI. published a national budget for the first time in the history of France, had taken French lessons from Jacques la Porte at a young age and later married a niece of his wife, Suzanne Curchod . Necker's only daughter Germaine (1766-1817) became known as Madame de Staël after her marriage to the Swedish ambassador Baron Eric Magnus de Staël-Holstein (d. 1802). As a writer, she actively represented her unusual views and impressed many men with her esprit - among them Talleyrand , Louis Vicomte de Narbonne-Lara , an illegitimate son of Louis XV. and August Wilhelm Schlegel  - only Napoleon couldn't get along with her. (Stefan Gläser: Women around Napoleon . Munich 2004)
17. ^ Strieder: Basis ..., Volume 11, p. 126 ff., Books.google.de
18. ↑ Brigitte Heinrich is initially an assistant and partner, later the successor to Countess Schumann zu Nenndorf. The office of castle countess is not a title of nobility, but a kind of spa director in the bathing establishment of the sulfur springs in Bad Nenndorf . She dies in Nenndorf in 1809. It is not known whether Mensing was still in contact with her at the time.
19. ↑ Rüdiger Fikentscher: “In addition to two children with his wife, he also had a premarital son who was adopted by him and studied in Göttingen. That was Wilhelm Mensing (1792–1864), my great-grandmother's father. He was a mathematician, had taught for some time at the Francke Foundations in Halle and then as a professor in Erfurt . ”(Fikentscher: Between König and Bebel . 2006, p. 239 f.)
20. ^ Mensings 2nd wife Dorothea (called Dorette) Catherina born. Mercker (June 2, 1780 - February 24, 1863), daughter of Johann Philipp Mercker (d. Zu Dankelshausen on February 24, 1806) and Rosine Margarethe, b. Ude.
21. ↑ On August 12, 1835, the daughter Friederike married the doctor Dr. med. John Benjamin Theodor Wehr and finally emigrates with him to South Africa , where her father-in-law Dr. med. Johann Heinrich Friedrich Karl Leopold Wehr is a member of the Royal British Medical College at the Cape of Good Hope. A son and a daughter are born but die unmarried. In 1840 (after the death of her father) Friederike Wehr tried to sell Friemen to Countess Schaumburg for 60,000 thalers.
22. ↑ On May 10, 1816, the son Ernst Friedrich Ludwig Wilhelm Karl Ferdinand was baptized in Friemen . This son from Mensing's 2nd marriage bears all the first names of his godfather, the Hereditary Prince of Hesse-Philippsthal-Barchfeld . The child died at the age of 9 months on February 15, 1817.
23. ↑ In: Löscheimer. A journal in casual notebooks . Second volume. Fourth to sixth issues, edited by H. v. L.-n, Kiel 1808, p. 50 ff. Books.google.de .
24. ^ ^{A b} Adolf Mensing : The Hessian Soldiers' Uprising 1806/07 . In: Wilhelm Hopf (Ed.): Hessische Blätter , 42nd volume, No. 4005, Melsungen , Wednesday, September 17, 1913, and No. 4006, Saturday, September 20, 1913.
25. ^ Rolf Hocke: The Rescue ..., Friemen 2006, p. 2.
26. ↑ Both of Joseph Oppenheimer's paintings are in the Rothschild archive in London: https://www.rothschildarchive.org/archive/about_us/
27. ↑ Rolf Hocke: The rescue ... Friemen 2006, p. 2 f.
28. ↑ kassel-zeitung.de
29. ^ Wilhelm Mensing: Relation over the removal of the effects from Hessen , Wilster 1807. In: Rolf Hocke (Hrsg.): The rescue of the Kurhessischen Staatsschatzes 1806. Diary of the captain Wilhelm Mensing . Friemen 2006, pp. 6–15 pkgodzik.de (PDF; 1.5 MB). The abbreviations that Mensing used in the event that letters were intercepted are always spelled out in the reproduced text to make them easier to read. Personal names are always printed in bold, place names in bold italics.
30. ↑ Andreas Heinrich Thorbecke, a native Dutchman, tobacco trader, had failed with the attempt to do big business as a monopoly in Karlshafen because of the resistance of the long-established merchants, who obtained the elector's withdrawal of the trading license that had already been granted to him. Nevertheless, Thorbecke made sure that the boxes entrusted to him did not fall into French hands. (Rolf Hocke: The Rescue ... Friemen 2006, p. 5)
31. ^ Joseph Lagrange (1763–1836) Napoleon's comrade in arms : Brigade general in the Italian campaign, division general in the Egypt campaign ; Member of the Chamber of Deputies 1817, the Chambre des Pairs 1831. - According to Konnivenz (secret negotiation) with Lagrange, in addition to the 47 boxes of silverware, jewelry and porcelain that had fallen into the hands of the French at Sababurg , another 24 boxes, which were hidden in the frontón of Wilhelmshöhe Castle , are left to the French. These contained catalogs of the library, Voyages pittoresques Piranesi, Journaux Militaires and secret files of the Secret Cabinet Archives of Bellevue. Furthermore, 5 of the boxes hidden in the north wing of the castle with war payment office bills from the 2nd half of the 18th century and the like. Lagrange only kept the treasures and used the documents to make Napoleon credible with the amount of 2,332,000 thalers as the basis for the contribution he demanded. For a further payment of 700,000 livres, he later returned all documents, as well as the correspondence found in Bellevue Palace . Furthermore, he undertook not to make any further inquiries and further that the interest and piece payments of the hidden capital should only be made against the elector's own receipt. Finally, Lagrange was given a box from the hiding place in the Löwenburg : 1 package from the secret cabinet archive, 2 golden goblets with lids and 3 golden bowls, 1 Communion chalice, 3 woodcuts and 1 inventory of the items in the knight's hall buffets . (Rolf Hocke: The rescue ... Friemen 2006, p. 5) See also: Joseph Lagrange in the French-language Wikipedia.
32. ↑ Rolf Hocke: The rescue ... Friemen 2006, p. 5 f.
33. ↑ eschwege.de ( Memento of the original from February 3, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
34. ↑ Vilmar mentions Mensing in his chronicle with the telling remark about his " Münchhausiaden ", but due to the sparse sources it remains unclear what is meant by this in detail.