Academic literature on the topic 'Prussia (Germany). Staatsarchiv, Hanover'

In summer 1866 the Austro-Prussian struggle for supremacy in Germany erupted into open conflict. King Georg V of Hanover sided with other governments loyal to the German Confederation against Prussia, but after initially defeating Prussian forces at Langensalza, he was forced to capitulate. Two days after the battle, on June 29, 1866, the widow of the Hanoverian general Sir Georg Julius von Hartmann told her daughter in no uncertain terms how she felt about the Prussian government and its allies. In her opinion they were nothing more than “robber states” that cloaked their disregard for the Ten Commandments in sanctimonious public displays of piety. “These Protestant Jesuits,” she continued, “offend me more than the Catholic ones. You know that I amGermanwith all my heart and love my Germany, but I cannot consider them genuine Germans anymore because they only want to make Germany Prussian.”

The leading earl-modern German states were warfare states, spending their revenues on princely display and their war machines, but few could dispose of sufficient revenue to fund the establishment and education of a military engineering corps. Prussia and Saxony were the main potential powers in the north and Prussia had established a corps in 1729 which distinguished itself under the Dutchman Gerhard Walrawe, but his behaviour led to his cashiering by Frederick the Great. Prussian engineers never quite recovered. Saxon ones were better paid and promoted but the state wasted the resources they needed. Hanover and Bavaria were too small to sustain adequate education facilities. It was more sensible to hire qualified foreigners.

Abstract Within the confines of the straggling kingdom of Prussia, which in the eight eenth century extended from the Meuse to the Memel throughout northern Germany, lay the small electorate of Braunschweig-Lüneberg, or Hanover, the continental possession of the English Georges. This small state, which in 1795 had an area about equal to the states of Massachusetts and Connecticut and a population of almost one million, lay between the Weser and the Elbe for a distance of about one hundred twenty-five miles from their mouths in a position which cut the Prussian monarchy into two unequal parts. To the west of it lay the small Westphalian and Rhine provinces of Prussia, comparatively prosper ous and advanced in their economic organization; to the east lay the larger provinces of central and eastern Prussia, with their more primitive and more unified feudal organization. Thus Hanover, with its control over the commer cial ports of Hamburg, Bremen and Lubeck, at the same time a state of the Holy Roman Empire and in the possession of an independent power. was in a peculiarly strategic position in respect not only to the political, but also to the cultural interests of Prussia.

Abstract This chapter provides a detailed case-study of the Hanoverian-led military intervention in the duchy of Mecklenburg-Schwerin on behalf of the local nobility which was being oppressed by the tyrannical duke in alliance with Russian tsar Peter the Great. This gave the case a greater degree of diplomatic and geopolitical salience than the other cases investigated so far. This was largely due to the broader context of the Great Northern War, the related alliance between the duke of Mecklenburg and Russia, the fact that the elector of Hanover as the chief intervener was simultaneously King George I of Great Britain, and the rivalry of Hanover and Brandenburg-Prussia in northern Germany. The Emperor’s political stance towards developments in the north also affected Vienna’s approach to the crisis and added a further set of relationships which influenced the case. The analysis will try to discern the normative basis of the motivations, aims, perceptions, and reactions of the involved and uninvolved parties in the case.