| 31. |
Electoral Saxony: Report of the Official Thomas Baron von Fritsch to Saxon Prime Minister Heinrich von Brühl on Administrative Reforms and Appointments (April 4, 1762)
Thomas Baron von Fritsch (1700-75) headed the Saxon Restoration Commission [Restaurationskommission] (1762-63), which recommended reforms aimed at healing the country from the deep wounds,....
|
| 32. |
Archduke Joseph II, "Political Daydreams" [Rêveries politiques] (1763)
Originally written in French, the following is an early confidential essay by the future Emperor Joseph....
|
| 33. |
"Edict of Potsdam," issued by Frederick William ("the Great Elector") (October 29, 1685)
French king Louis XIV’s 1684 revocation of the 1598 Edict of Nantes, which had guaranteed the French Calvinists’ (i.e. Huguenots’) religious practice and autonomy, drove some half-million of them....
|
| 34. |
Count Johann Anton Pergen's Memorandum to Austrian Co-Regent Joseph II on "the Value of the Imperial Crown" to the House of Austria (1766)
Johann Anton Pergen, a seasoned diplomat and high official in the Austrian service, responds to Joseph....
|
| 35. |
Emperor Joseph II on the Structure and Political Condition of the Austrian Monarchy and the Holy Roman Empire (1767/68)
The following memorandum was written in French and addressed to the emperor’s brother Leopold, Grand....
|
| 36. |
Moses Mendelssohn, Reply to Johann Caspar Lavater (1769)
Moses Mendelssohn (1729-1786) achieved fame and distinction as the father of the Jewish Haskalah....
|
| 37. |
Prussian King Frederick II ("the Great"), Correspondence preceding the First Partition of Poland (1770-71)
These exchanges display Frederick’s caution in the face of an international situation in Eastern Europe in which a Russian war with the Ottoman Empire, accompanied by civil war in Poland, threatened....
|
| 38. |
Wenzel Anton Kaunitz-Rietberg, "Most Graciously Commissioned Report on the Improvement of the Domestic System" for Maria Theresa (April 14, 1773)
The following is an excerpt from an unpublished manuscript of nearly 250 pages. Chancellor Wenzel Anton....
|
| 39. |
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Excerpts from The Sorrows of Young Werther [Die Leiden des jungen Werthers] (1774)
The son of a prosperous, educated family, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), was a towering....
|
| 40. |
Westphalian Nobleman Clemens August Droste zu Vischering Provides Instructions on the Duties of his Children's Tutor (1776)
Children in upper-class households were entrusted to the care of servants and tutors, whose own behavior and manners often did not conform to aristocratic standards. Here, the nobleman Clemens August....
|
