Kurt Bertram von Pfuel

Kurt Bertram von Pfuel

Kurt Bertram von Pfuel (* 1590 ; † 1649 ) was an electoral Brandenburg statesman and military politician .

Life

Pfuel came from the old to Jahnsfelde in the Brandenburg Switzerland -based noble family of Pfuel . He was chamberlain of the Elector Georg Wilhelm and General War Commissioner and highest Privy the Great Elector Friedrich Wilhelm of Brandenburg in the later phase of the Thirty Years' War .

Pfuel served in his younger years as a chamberlain to Elector Georg Wilhelm. During the Thirty Years' War, Georg Wilhelm used Pfuel several times for confidential diplomatic broadcasts to Wallenstein when he appeared at the borders of the Mark. In spring 1626 Georg commissioned Wilhelm Pfuel on his first mission. When Pfuel met Wallenstein in Halberstadt and asked him, on behalf of the elector, not to enter the march, Wallenstein replied: “As I am an honest man, I don't want to do the elector any harm, I just ask him for God's will to deport the Mansfeld army (which lived in Priegnitz) , otherwise I have to move up to look for the enemy where I meet him. ” In August, Wallenstein arrived in Cottbus with 16 regiments . Pfuel had to arrange the reception preparations beforehand. He later met Wallenstein several times under rather awkward circumstances. When he later had a performance to hand over to Wallenstein in his new mission, the latter snapped at him: “I get stratified when I see such writings” , and in June 1628 Pfuel reported from Frankfurt a. O. to Berlin: “He could not speak to the general, because he had just had his slate, and not only had the secretary, the valet and noble boy beaten up shortly beforehand, but also forbade the ringing of bells and at the same time ordered all dogs from the To create alley. "

Kurt Bertram, whose brother Adam and nephew Georg Adam were in the Swedish service, belonged to the anti-Schwarzenberg party. Schwarzenberg's influence finally got Curt Bertram removed from his office and his property confiscated. In 1637, among other things, the village of Biesdorf, which had been owned by the Pfuel family for many years, was confiscated. Shortly after the death of Elector Georg Wilhelm, he received his goods back from the new Elector Friedrich Wilhelm (later called "the Great Elector") (Biesdorf, 1643).

Brandenburg was in a completely desolate state due to the actions of the Thirty Years' War, but also the establishment of foreign troops. Three quarters of the population had died or fled. The young elector came into a difficult inheritance.

Pfuel wrote a memorandum in March 1644 that dealt with the army constitution. In his deliberations he included ancient ideas of the state, in which he saw the apprenticeship (education), nutritional (agriculture) and military (military) positions as the basis of the state. Especially at this time, under the term Neostoicism , ancient ideas were popular again and were associated with the current conceptions of rule. Pfuel was of the opinion that the creation of a standing army would also help the other two estates, now at the end of the looming Thirty Years' War, again. In the Swedish service he had become acquainted with the common duty in Sweden and now tried to combine it with the advertising system and general conscription. He suggested that the population be recorded by name and that the soldiers be dug in an economically viable manner. His army should consist of foot soldiers and cavalry as a field army, as well as barracked fortress soldiers. The officers should come from the nobility. He also provided that the army should be supplied by the village population according to fair rules - tax exemption for the farm that fed soldiers. His suggestion pointed far into the future.

The current situation in Brandenburg with epidemics, plague and soldiers still wandering around did not allow a census of this kind. Your data would already be obsolete after it was collected.

In May 1647 the Elector Friedrich Wilhelm appointed him to the Privy Council . During this time he made suggestions for a fairer distribution of taxes, based on a census . However, the colleagues in the Privy Council in Berlin did not recognize the scope of his ideas and countered with foreign and domestic objections: The Swedes, who were still occupying Pomerania, could understand this as an act of war; the population could revolt and be afraid that everything would be taken away from them; the tax procedures between cities and rural areas are very different and, after all, old privileges should not be touched. But all of his opponents had apparently forgotten that a very similar property assessment had been carried out a hundred years earlier.

Today we can say that Kurt Bertram von Pfuel " as the first pioneer of modern reasons of state in the market and as a pioneer of later domestic politics can claim recognition from posterity ".

He later bought himself in Saxony and, through further branching, became the progenitor of the Württemberg line. Pfuel died in 1649.

literature

• Gerhard Oestreich: Kurt Bertram v.Pfuel 1590–1649. Life and world of ideas of a Brandenburg statesman and military politician , in: Research on Brandenburg and Prussian History , Volume 50, Page 201, Association for the History of the Mark Brandenburg (ed.), Verlag G. Kunze, 1938 ( limited preview in Google book search)
• Diplomatic Messages from Noble Families , Volume 2, pp. 101ff ( limited preview in Google book search)

Web links

• Kurt Bertram von Pfuel on 30jaehrigerkrieg.de

Individual evidence

1. ^ Theodor Fontane: Walks through the Mark Brandenburg. Volume 2, 1868, pp. 488-492.
2. ^ Theodor Fontane: Walks through the Mark Brandenburg. Hertz, 1868 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
3. ^ Carl Eduard Geppert: Chronicle of Berlin from the creation of the city to today: Berlin under King Friedrich Wilhelm the First . Chronicle of Berlin from the creation of the city until today: Berlin under King Friedrich Wilhelm the First. tape 2 . Rubach, 1840, p. 285 ( https://books.google.at/books?id=Bd0AAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA285 Digitized, page 285).
4. ^ Ludwig Hüttl: The great elector. Heyne Biographien, Süddeutscher Verlag GmbH, 1981, ISBN 3-453-55119-2 .
5. ^ ^{A b} Johannes Schultze: The Mark Brandenburg, Volume IV - From the Reformation to the Peace of Westphalia (1535-1648), Berlin, 1964, ISBN 978-3428114382 ; P. 305.