18 Monday Jun 2018
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brandenburg, fritz, geschichte, heroes, history, hohenzollern, prussia, schlacht
Heute vor 343 Jahren, die (erste) Schlacht bei Fehrbellin. Ein großer Sieg des Großen Kurfürst und Generalfeldmarschall Georg von Derfflinger.
Wir sind Bauern von geringem Gut
Und schützen unsern Kurfürsten mit Leib und Blut.
Heute vor 261 Jahren, die Schlacht bei Kolin. Sie ist nicht so gut gegangen.
31 Thursday May 2018
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Today is the anniversary of the death of Friedrich WIlhelm I and therefore the ascension to the throne of Friedrich II. Commiserations and congratulations respectively.
Also, take a look at Kartenmeister for some excellent maps of Prussia.
10 Tuesday Apr 2018
Heute vor 277 Jahren fand die Schlacht bei Mollwitz statt.
Die Schlacht war eine der denkwürdigsten des Jahrhunderts, weil hier zwei kleine Heere das Schicksal von Schlesien entschieden, und weil die Truppen des Königs sich dabei einen Ruhm erwarben, den weder Zeit noch Neid ihnen entreißen können.
— Ausgewählte Werke Friedrichs des Großen, Erster Band.
24 Wednesday Jan 2018
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06 Monday Nov 2017
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Heute vor 287 (1730) Jahren wurde Hans Hermann von Katte im Festung Küstrin enthauptet.
The court martial judgement makes for interesting reading, the silly sod nearly got away with his life. I feel sorry for his father.
27 Friday Oct 2017
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.
31 Thursday Aug 2017
Purely by coincidence I just started reading about the Battle of Mollwitz in “Ausgewählte Werke Friedrichs des Großen“, Erster Band, on the same day that I was repairing one of my editions of Thomas Carlyle’s History of Frederick the Great ready for rebinding and came across the following map. So I scanned it before it all goes back together.
12 Saturday Aug 2017
Tags
fritz, german, geschichte, heroes, history, hohenzollern, prussia, schlacht
Today is the 258th anniversary of the battle of Kunersdorf, not Frederick the Great’s greatest moment. The king himself lost 3 horses, 1 shot from under him, and was saved from a musket ball by the snuff box in his coat pocket, after the battle he said:
It is a cruel failure that I will not survive. The consequences of the battle will be worse than the battle itself. I do not have any more resources, and—frankly confessed—I believe that everything is lost. I will not survive the doom of my fatherland. Farewell forever!
The battle itself is covered in far more detail than I can manage here and here, amongst other places.
As the date happens to fall on my birthday I treated myself to a small book: Die Schlacht von Kunersdorf by von Eberhardt from 1903, which contains some good sketches and a map of the battle.
13 Thursday Jul 2017
Posted in Books
Tags
Books, fritz, german, geschichte, history, hohenzollern, prussia
A cutting from a magazine, 1950’s maybe?, found in “Ausgewählte Werke Friedrichs des Großen”, Erster Band.
