Joshua P.Waterman

DANIEL CASPER VON LOHENSTEIN’S DIPLOMATIC MEMORIAL TO EMPEROR LEOPOLD I FOR THE ESTATES OF , , AND WOĐÓW*

Summary

After the death of the last Piast duke on 21 November 1675 the Silesian duchies of Legnica, Brzeg, and Wođów fell to Emperor Leopold I. The Protestant estates of the duchies soon commissioned Daniel Casper von Lohenstein to draft a memorial, or petition, on religious and political matters, which they submitted to the emperor on 12 December 1675. Based on hitherto unstudied archival sources, this article documents Lohenstein’s authorship of the memorial. Furthermore, it reconstructs the roles of two Brzeg and Legnica officials, Hans Adam von Posadowsky and Friedrich von Roth, in occasioning and editing Lohenstein’s draft. The conclusion focuses on this find’s significance to Lohenstein’s literary work. Four appendices offer transcriptions of the manuscript materials under discussion.

As Conrad Müller established in 1882, Daniel Casper von Lohen- stein’s (1635-1683) diplomatic mission to Vienna on behalf of the city of Wrocđaw () from late February to late April 1675 was the culmination of the career of the Silesian author and civic offi- cial.1 All studies of the political import of Lohenstein’s writings cite this episode.2 Conversely, Lohenstein’s subsequent activity as a

* Initial research for this article was generously funded by a fellowship from the Polish-U.S. Fulbright Commission during the acdemic year 2001-02. The topic grew out of work on my dissertation: Intersections of Art and Literature in Seventeenth-Century , soon to be completed for the Department of Art and Archeology, Princeton University. I thank the staff of the Archiwum Pan´st- wowe we Wrocđawiu and of the branch office in Legnica for granting access to the manuscript materials discussed here. Additional thanks go to Heather Shannon and Walter Lederer for suggesting improvements. 1 Conrad Müller: Beiträge zum Leben und Dichten Daniel Caspers von Lohen- stein. Breslau 1882 (= Germanistische Abhandlungen 1), pp. 43-61. In his account of the mission to Vienna, Müller published excerpts from Lohenstein’s no longer extant biweekly reports. 2 See as exemplars Elida Maria Szarota: Lohensteins Arminius als Zeitroman. Sichtweisen des Spätbarock. Bern and Munich 1970, pp. 11-54, esp. pp. 11-12;

Daphnis 35 2006 164 Joshua P. Waterman political consultant to the estates of the duchies of Legnica, Brzeg, and Wođów (/Brieg/Wohlau) has altogether escaped atten- tion. Records kept by the Brzeg Landeskasse (provincial treasury) now at the State Archive in Wrocđaw reveal this unknown aspect of Lohenstein’s career.3 The materials in question are two letters of instruction by the Brzeg estates to their agents in Vienna, Hans Adam von Posadowsky (1636-1708) and Friedrich von Roth (1628- 1695), and a receipt which records payments to Posadowsky, Roth, and Lohenstein for their diplomatic services (appendices A, B, and D). These items make possible the attribution to Lohenstein of the memorial, or petition,4 which Posadowsky submitted to Emperor Leopold I (1640-1705) on 12 December 1675 for the Protestant estates of Legnica, Brzeg, and Wođów (appendix C). The memorial offers homage to the emperor and requests maintenance of the religious and political status quo in the three duchies after the death of the final Piast duke, Georg Wilhelm (1660-1675). Besides aug- menting Lohenstein’s oeuvre, this find clarifies Lohenstein’s choice of dedicatees for his collected poems published in 1680. Also, Lohenstein’s authorship of the memorial shows him to have been closely engaged in the Protestant effort against re-Catholicization in Silesia. This is particularly relevant to the interpretation of Lohenstein’s stance toward Emperor Leopold as reflected in his late literary work.

Ilona Banet: Vom Trauerspieldichter zum Romanauthor. Lohensteins literari- sche Wende im Lichte der politischen Verhältnisse in Schlesien während des letzten Drittels des 17. Jahrhunderts. In: Daphnis 12 (1983), pp. 169-186, here pp. 181-185; and Pierre Béhar: Silesia Tragica. Epanouissement et fin de l’école dramatique silésienne dans l’œuvre tragique de Daniel Casper von Lohenstein (1635-1683). 2 vols. Wiesbaden 1988 (= Wolfenbütteler Arbeiten zur Barockforschung 18), vol. 1, pp. 53, 69. 3 Archiwum Pan´stwowe we Wrocđawiu (henceforth APWr): Akta miasta Wrocđawia (henceforth AMWr), 411. This volume’s leaves are unnumbered, so for the purpose of orientation I have devised a provisional foliation beginning with the first (blank) leaf. This provisional foliation is indicated parenthetically in my footnotes, except when a citation is from one of the items published here in appendices A-D, in which case the reader is referred to the appendices. For a description of the source, see the introduction to the appendices. 4 Following the primary sources, I will retain the term ‘memorial’ in reference to this diplomatic communication rather than use the more current ‘petition’ or ‘memorandum’.

Daphnis 35 2006