You may recall that I didn't feel I had a good enough grasp on the subject of Pfeiffer's culpability in the matter of Kiekemal to publish on it, and so I started tracking down some documentary sources.
I have come to report that it is *immensely* more complicated than we realized, and it's a good thing I went to the sources.
So first we need a brief refresher on how the Kiekemal fiasco went down according to Emmi Wegfraß. As summarized by Selena (post in rheinsberg):
The commission in charge of investigating the entire affair delivered their report to Fritz on March 31st 1756, declaring that Pfeiffer was guilty, which results in Fritz ordering Pfeiffer's possessions were to be liquidated to compensate for the damage. She also quotes a cabinet order from June 4th 1756 by Fritz in which it says "Pfeiffer has executed the commission entrusted to him badly and derelict of duty and brought everything in great confusion". She then claims that Pfeiffer spent four years under arrest while the commission was investigating, then in 1758 when the "Berliner Kriminal Senat" sent a confirming judgment he got condemned to a further two years imprisonment, and then banished from Prussia.
In somewhat more detail:
- the mulberry trees and silk spinning houses which Pfeiffer was supposed to plant and build, respectively, haven't yet been done or finished
- on November 23rd, 1754, Colonel von Ingersleben (tea cup guy or a relation?) reports to the King that Pfeiffer has mishandled the situation and has personally enriched himself
- on November 25th, 1754, Pfeiffer gets arrested under this charge; a commission is supposed to investigate the actual state of things at Kiekemal
- On March 31st, 1756, the investigating commission sends its concluding report to Fritz. Now here Emmy Wegfraß writes: "Johann Pfeiffer must admit he has taken 8061 Reichstaler 3 Groschen from the King's money" - which I found confusing since the money for the original investment into Kiekemal hadn't come from the state, as she herself said, but presumably this refers to Pfeiffer taking that much salary and writing off expenses - and broken broken his oath not to buy any of the colonist's stuff (when his cousin bought lands next to the Müggelsee) .
Having sifted through the 2000 pages of the Berliner Kriminal Senat's judgment, this is what I've found:
1) Wegfraß is correct that Pfeiffer was arrested in 1754. I have the November 30, 1754 report to Fritz summarizing Pfeiffer's recent arrest, and I have read it and it does say that.
2) Wegfraß is correct that the original investigating commission sent its concluding report to Fritz and argued that Pfeiffer was guilty as hell.
3) Wegfraß is correct that Pfeiffer was still in prison 1758. The Kriminal Senat report, written in 1758, says he's been in prison for 4 years to date.
4) Wegfraß is correct that the Berliner Kriminal Senat found Pfeiffer guilty of 32 counts of negligence and embezzlement and recommended a sentence of 2 more years of prison, as well as removing him from his position, plus paying back the money they found him guilty of embezzling (either that, or demonstrate more successfully where the money went).
5) I haven't found anything about Pfeiffer being banished, but given the guilty verdict, Fritz may well have banished him from the country after the 2-year supplementary sentence was over. I don't have the document with the final sentence, and the Berliner Kriminal Senat does conclude that they leave the ultimate decision to Fritz.
6) Where what I found diverges from what Wegfraß says is that none of the 32 counts Pfeiffer's found guilty of have anything to do with Kiekemal.
Some background on the Berliner Kriminal Senat report: It's 2000 pages long because it contains a lot of charges. The original investigation by the commission, led by a Vice Director Fiedler, who appears to have it out for Pfeiffer, went over every colony Pfeiffer was responsible for with a fine-toothed comb, and nitpicked every detail to death. The original commission report covered hundreds of "Why did you do this?" "Why did you do that?" questions. Then Pfeiffer wrote a defense responding to these questions, which I assume was also very long. Then the poor members of the Kriminal Senat had to go over both documents line by line in a compare-and-contrast contrast, and write up their own judgment on each individual point.
As a side note, the Kriminal Senat did the kind of really good job of citing their sources that you'd expect from a legal document: if I got my hands on Fiedler's and Pfeiffer's respective documents, I think I could track everything down. (Don't worry, I don't plan to.)
And if you read the 2000 pages by the Kriminal Senat, most of it consists of them taking each individual claim and saying, "Pfeiffer's defense on this one is convincing to us." Or, "Fiedler didn't provide enough evidence for us to decide either way." Or, "Pfeiffer messed up, yeah, but in a way that looks like an honest mistake." RARELY, "Pfeiffer is guilty."
At the very end, what you find is that while he gets exonerated of most of the accusations, there are enough left where he appears guilty of malfeasance or negligence that he gets a guilty verdict overall. The Kriminal Senat says they can't account for about 19,000 talers that he's either going to have to prove where it went or else pay it back, and they ultimately recommend 2 more years of imprisonment (saying that the 4 years he's already suffered mitigates their desire to punish him more).
But none of the charges listed at the end for which he's found guilty mention Kiekemal. This is because, in the passage in the main text where Kiekemal's discussed specifically, the Kriminal Senat actually exonerated him on the Kiekemal-related charges! Here's the passage in question:
It is noted in the Acts that Colonel von Drachenberg took over the Kieckemahl establishment on the desolate Mahlsdorff field from the Köpenick magistrate on the basis of inheritance and interest, and committed himself to the construction of a silk-making house for three colonists, for which he was given free building wood free of charge. Not less than some time later, according to a contract concluded with the Chamber on October 19, 1752, in return for free building wood and other benefits, he committed himself to employing six foreign spinning families within the next two years, but the Commission did not find any of these during the on-site inspection, nor a silk-making house or a mulberry plantation, which the Commission also requested.
Now because the Commission took into consideration that Pfeiffer had been entrusted by Your Royal Majesty with the revision of the placement of the colonists, it confronted him in Question 44 about the deficiencies mentioned.
Pfeiffer's excuses are that, first of all, Your Royal Majesty had not ordered him to report on the placement of the colonists taken over by the entrepreneurs of the establishments; nevertheless, in the spring of 1754 he had the Kieckemahl establishment inspected by the Commissary Ockel, and when he saw from his report the lack of the families to be placed, in the erroneous opinion that the entrepreneur had not been given a specific deadline, he indicated to him that the colony would have to be complete in the spring of 1755, or that he would report this to Your Royal Majesty.
Since the commission has not made any inquiries about this supposedly happened, has not made any statements, nor has it been given to Pfeiffer to confirm it, and Pfeiffer could not be held to be at fault if he had either granted the specified deadline or postponed the inspection of the establishments by a few months beyond the specified time due to his overload of business, as the latter would be his fault if the information he has mentioned was not correct, we do not believe that he can be accused of negligence contrary to his duty.
Pfeiffer also stated that he did not know how the entrepreneur in Kieckemahl had engaged in silk production, and that he had never read what had been written about it at the Chamber. However, silk production could also be carried out without the establishment of a mulberry plantation, since the leaves could be purchased elsewhere, and in any case the supervision of the mulberry plantations was never committed to him, but rather they belonged to the department of the Chamber Director von Schmettau.
This last circumstance has never been contradicted, although we believe that it fully justifies Pfeiffer, since it appears that the entrepreneur took over the silk factory in Kieckemahl purely on his own initiative, or without regard to the contract concluded with the magistrate in Köpenick, and consequently it cannot be counted as a condition of the establishment, the fulfillment of which Pfeiffer had to ensure in his capacity as establishment commissioner.
In Streitberg, however, Pfeiffer, in response to question 281, could not deny such negligence or carelessness, but when it was pointed out to him that neither the number of colonists there was complete, nor was a single one of the colonists appointed a spinner or weaver, in accordance with the commitment, although the establishment should have been completed by the end of January 1754, he believed that he had forgotten to revisit this establishment, especially since other entrepreneurs, like the one in Streitberg, had been given a two-year period for establishing the colonies, not a one-year period.
But this very forgetfulness contains a carelessness and negligence, although if it were the only thing that could be rightly accused of Pfeiffer, it would easily be forgiven in view of the variety and size of his official duties.
Now, looking closely at Wegfraß's language, she never actually (afaict) says that the Kriminal Senat found Pfeiffer guilty in the matter of Kiekemal; she says only that he was found guilty on 32 counts. Which he was...but the whole thrust of her presentation leads you to believe he was found guilty of the Kiekemal-related charges she's been complaining about for the last 20 pages in a book on Kiekemal! I wouldn't be surprised if she thought the Senat was too soft on Pfeiffer, and that anyone who would commit 32 counts of embezzlement and negligence was obviously at fault in Kiekemal too.
But what the Senat actually says is that they agree with Pfeiffer that the Kiekemal entrepreneur was at fault. They seem to be acting like this entrepreneur is Trachenberg, but my understanding from Wegfraß plus the catalog of the Brandenburg archives is that there was a lot of changing of hands between Trachenberg, Fredersdorf, and Frau von Marschall. Frau von Marschall is supposed to have gotten the land in March/June (it's complicated) 1753 from Fredersdorf, who got it from Colonel Trachenberg in July 1752. So if Pfeiffer was conducting an investigation in 1754, you'd think it would be Frau von Marschall who the Kriminal Senat thinks is responsible, but it could have been Colonel Trachenberg, or even Fredersdorf. (The Kriminal Senat document is not really good about naming entrepreneurs.) At any rate, it's not Pfeiffer.
So! Who knew Pfeiffer would be found both guilty and innocent of what Wegfraß claims?
Kiekemal, redux
I have come to report that it is *immensely* more complicated than we realized, and it's a good thing I went to the sources.
So first we need a brief refresher on how the Kiekemal fiasco went down according to Emmi Wegfraß. As summarized by Selena (post in
The commission in charge of investigating the entire affair delivered their report to Fritz on March 31st 1756, declaring that Pfeiffer was guilty, which results in Fritz ordering Pfeiffer's possessions were to be liquidated to compensate for the damage. She also quotes a cabinet order from June 4th 1756 by Fritz in which it says "Pfeiffer has executed the commission entrusted to him badly and derelict of duty and brought everything in great confusion". She then claims that Pfeiffer spent four years under arrest while the commission was investigating, then in 1758 when the "Berliner Kriminal Senat" sent a confirming judgment he got condemned to a further two years imprisonment, and then banished from Prussia.
In somewhat more detail:
- the mulberry trees and silk spinning houses which Pfeiffer was supposed to plant and build, respectively, haven't yet been done or finished
- on November 23rd, 1754, Colonel von Ingersleben (tea cup guy or a relation?) reports to the King that Pfeiffer has mishandled the situation and has personally enriched himself
- on November 25th, 1754, Pfeiffer gets arrested under this charge; a commission is supposed to investigate the actual state of things at Kiekemal
- On March 31st, 1756, the investigating commission sends its concluding report to Fritz. Now here Emmy Wegfraß writes: "Johann Pfeiffer must admit he has taken 8061 Reichstaler 3 Groschen from the King's money" - which I found confusing since the money for the original investment into Kiekemal hadn't come from the state, as she herself said, but presumably this refers to Pfeiffer taking that much salary and writing off expenses - and broken broken his oath not to buy any of the colonist's stuff (when his cousin bought lands next to the Müggelsee) .
Having sifted through the 2000 pages of the Berliner Kriminal Senat's judgment, this is what I've found:
1) Wegfraß is correct that Pfeiffer was arrested in 1754. I have the November 30, 1754 report to Fritz summarizing Pfeiffer's recent arrest, and I have read it and it does say that.
2) Wegfraß is correct that the original investigating commission sent its concluding report to Fritz and argued that Pfeiffer was guilty as hell.
3) Wegfraß is correct that Pfeiffer was still in prison 1758. The Kriminal Senat report, written in 1758, says he's been in prison for 4 years to date.
4) Wegfraß is correct that the Berliner Kriminal Senat found Pfeiffer guilty of 32 counts of negligence and embezzlement and recommended a sentence of 2 more years of prison, as well as removing him from his position, plus paying back the money they found him guilty of embezzling (either that, or demonstrate more successfully where the money went).
5) I haven't found anything about Pfeiffer being banished, but given the guilty verdict, Fritz may well have banished him from the country after the 2-year supplementary sentence was over. I don't have the document with the final sentence, and the Berliner Kriminal Senat does conclude that they leave the ultimate decision to Fritz.
6) Where what I found diverges from what Wegfraß says is that none of the 32 counts Pfeiffer's found guilty of have anything to do with Kiekemal.
Some background on the Berliner Kriminal Senat report: It's 2000 pages long because it contains a lot of charges. The original investigation by the commission, led by a Vice Director Fiedler, who appears to have it out for Pfeiffer, went over every colony Pfeiffer was responsible for with a fine-toothed comb, and nitpicked every detail to death. The original commission report covered hundreds of "Why did you do this?" "Why did you do that?" questions. Then Pfeiffer wrote a defense responding to these questions, which I assume was also very long. Then the poor members of the Kriminal Senat had to go over both documents line by line in a compare-and-contrast contrast, and write up their own judgment on each individual point.
As a side note, the Kriminal Senat did the kind of really good job of citing their sources that you'd expect from a legal document: if I got my hands on Fiedler's and Pfeiffer's respective documents, I think I could track everything down. (Don't worry, I don't plan to.)
And if you read the 2000 pages by the Kriminal Senat, most of it consists of them taking each individual claim and saying, "Pfeiffer's defense on this one is convincing to us." Or, "Fiedler didn't provide enough evidence for us to decide either way." Or, "Pfeiffer messed up, yeah, but in a way that looks like an honest mistake." RARELY, "Pfeiffer is guilty."
At the very end, what you find is that while he gets exonerated of most of the accusations, there are enough left where he appears guilty of malfeasance or negligence that he gets a guilty verdict overall. The Kriminal Senat says they can't account for about 19,000 talers that he's either going to have to prove where it went or else pay it back, and they ultimately recommend 2 more years of imprisonment (saying that the 4 years he's already suffered mitigates their desire to punish him more).
But none of the charges listed at the end for which he's found guilty mention Kiekemal. This is because, in the passage in the main text where Kiekemal's discussed specifically, the Kriminal Senat actually exonerated him on the Kiekemal-related charges! Here's the passage in question:
It is noted in the Acts that Colonel von Drachenberg took over the Kieckemahl establishment on the desolate Mahlsdorff field from the Köpenick magistrate on the basis of inheritance and interest, and committed himself to the construction of a silk-making house for three colonists, for which he was given free building wood free of charge. Not less than some time later, according to a contract concluded with the Chamber on October 19, 1752, in return for free building wood and other benefits, he committed himself to employing six foreign spinning families within the next two years, but the Commission did not find any of these during the on-site inspection, nor a silk-making house or a mulberry plantation, which the Commission also requested.
Now because the Commission took into consideration that Pfeiffer had been entrusted by Your Royal Majesty with the revision of the placement of the colonists, it confronted him in Question 44 about the deficiencies mentioned.
Pfeiffer's excuses are that, first of all, Your Royal Majesty had not ordered him to report on the placement of the colonists taken over by the entrepreneurs of the establishments; nevertheless, in the spring of 1754 he had the Kieckemahl establishment inspected by the Commissary Ockel, and when he saw from his report the lack of the families to be placed, in the erroneous opinion that the entrepreneur had not been given a specific deadline, he indicated to him that the colony would have to be complete in the spring of 1755, or that he would report this to Your Royal Majesty.
Since the commission has not made any inquiries about this supposedly happened, has not made any statements, nor has it been given to Pfeiffer to confirm it, and Pfeiffer could not be held to be at fault if he had either granted the specified deadline or postponed the inspection of the establishments by a few months beyond the specified time due to his overload of business, as the latter would be his fault if the information he has mentioned was not correct, we do not believe that he can be accused of negligence contrary to his duty.
Pfeiffer also stated that he did not know how the entrepreneur in Kieckemahl had engaged in silk production, and that he had never read what had been written about it at the Chamber. However, silk production could also be carried out without the establishment of a mulberry plantation, since the leaves could be purchased elsewhere, and in any case the supervision of the mulberry plantations was never committed to him, but rather they belonged to the department of the Chamber Director von Schmettau.
This last circumstance has never been contradicted, although we believe that it fully justifies Pfeiffer, since it appears that the entrepreneur took over the silk factory in Kieckemahl purely on his own initiative, or without regard to the contract concluded with the magistrate in Köpenick, and consequently it cannot be counted as a condition of the establishment, the fulfillment of which Pfeiffer had to ensure in his capacity as establishment commissioner.
In Streitberg, however, Pfeiffer, in response to question 281, could not deny such negligence or carelessness, but when it was pointed out to him that neither the number of colonists there was complete, nor was a single one of the colonists appointed a spinner or weaver, in accordance with the commitment, although the establishment should have been completed by the end of January 1754, he believed that he had forgotten to revisit this establishment, especially since other entrepreneurs, like the one in Streitberg, had been given a two-year period for establishing the colonies, not a one-year period.
But this very forgetfulness contains a carelessness and negligence, although if it were the only thing that could be rightly accused of Pfeiffer, it would easily be forgiven in view of the variety and size of his official duties.
Now, looking closely at Wegfraß's language, she never actually (afaict) says that the Kriminal Senat found Pfeiffer guilty in the matter of Kiekemal; she says only that he was found guilty on 32 counts. Which he was...but the whole thrust of her presentation leads you to believe he was found guilty of the Kiekemal-related charges she's been complaining about for the last 20 pages in a book on Kiekemal! I wouldn't be surprised if she thought the Senat was too soft on Pfeiffer, and that anyone who would commit 32 counts of embezzlement and negligence was obviously at fault in Kiekemal too.
But what the Senat actually says is that they agree with Pfeiffer that the Kiekemal entrepreneur was at fault. They seem to be acting like this entrepreneur is Trachenberg, but my understanding from Wegfraß plus the catalog of the Brandenburg archives is that there was a lot of changing of hands between Trachenberg, Fredersdorf, and Frau von Marschall. Frau von Marschall is supposed to have gotten the land in March/June (it's complicated) 1753 from Fredersdorf, who got it from Colonel Trachenberg in July 1752. So if Pfeiffer was conducting an investigation in 1754, you'd think it would be Frau von Marschall who the Kriminal Senat thinks is responsible, but it could have been Colonel Trachenberg, or even Fredersdorf. (The Kriminal Senat document is not really good about naming entrepreneurs.) At any rate, it's not Pfeiffer.
So! Who knew Pfeiffer would be found both guilty and innocent of what Wegfraß claims?