Tag Archives: berlin

Der Hauptmann von Köpenick

03 Saturday Mar 2018

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The Hauptmann von Köpenick was a petty crook who in 1906 dressed up as a prussian officer, commandeered some passing troops and used them to imprison the treasurer and the mayor in  Köpenick Rathaus while he escaped with the contents of the safe. Somewhat surprisingly many people, including (angeblich) the King, found this amusing and when caught he was sentenced to only four years and pardoned by the King after two. Hardly the harsh militaristic Prussian state one expects.
The small exhibition and statue at Rathaus Köpenick is one of the few things left to see that would drag me back to the post-German horror that is modern Berlin.

Anyway, the story is better explained here, and the Heinz Rühmann film from 1956 is quite amusing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’ve always liked the story, and finally last week found a first edition of his memoirs from 1909. 120 Euros or so, but it makes me happy.

Johann Christian Friedrich Kühnau

10 Friday Nov 2017

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Johann Kühnau, Lieutenant in the Landwehr, fell in the battle of Hagelsberg, bei Lübnitz, on the 27th August 1813, just one of many civilians who joined up to drive the French (and others) from their homeland. According to v. d. Marwitz (Nachlasse, Band. 2 S. 84):

So wie das rechts neben der Batterie vorrückende Bataillon Bornstedt angetreten war, wurde der Lieutenant Kühnau (Doctor der Philosophie und Lehrer am Friedrich-Wilhelms-Gymnasium zu Berlin) durch eine Kanonenkugel getödtet; es fielen auch schon mehrere Landwehrmänner.

I like the little obscure connections. Kühnau was a teacher at the Berlin Friedrich-Wilhelms-Gymnasium, where Otto von Bismarck, whose uncle also took part in the battle at Hagelsberg, was later educated. It was a small world. Perhaps both of them handled the book I now possess.

Berliner Husarenstreich

16 Monday Oct 2017

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Today is the 260th anniversary of the Berliner Husarenstreich in 1757, when Austro-Hungarian forces briefly occupied Berlin whilst Frederick the Great was licking his wounds after the battle of Kolin (Kerle, wollt ihr ewig leben?).

It seems a little surreal that they were paid a ransom (gloves for the empress?) and then disappeared before the cavalry (excuse the pun) turned up. In our much more enlightened times they would have declared the Prussians to be irredeemably evil and demolished the city, as it was the Austrians suffered only 10 dead, the Prussians a few more.

In celebration I watched Husaren in Berlin, an amusing enough film but far from a documentary.