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Concept
Leopold of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel
Summary
Maximilian Julius Leopold of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, Prince of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel and nominal Duke of Brunswick and Lüneburg (12 October 1752, Wolfenbüttel - 27 April 1785, Frankfurt (Oder)) was a Prussian major general and one of the few high officers in the armies of the late European Enlightenment , for whom the subordinate soldier was more than an expendable tool in the hands of the commanding officer. Princely charity towards soldiers and citizens and the circumstances of his death made Leopold famous.
Leopold was the 13th child and the youngest son of Duke Karl I of Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel and his wife Philippine Charlotte of Prussia, a sister of the Prussian King Frederick II. He received his education from Enlightenment educators such as Johann Friedrich Wilhelm Jerusalem , Karl Christian Gärtner and Johann Arnold Ebert who influenced him greatly. His teachers brought Leopold to a simple religious piety that demanded an action-determined love for all humanity. The foundations of this belief lay in the broad field between neology and Lutheran orthodoxy.
During the great flood of the Oder in 1785, Leopold, who eagerly wanted to take part in the municipal authorities' aid measures, drowned at the age of 32.
The legend that the Duke tried to rescue citizens trapped by the flood from mortal danger and died in the process, was born immediately after the accident in Frankfurt and spread at lightning speed. Its originator was the pastor of the French Reformed Congregation in Frankfurt, Jacques Papin, who hastily published it in the Berlin journals and also communicated it to his father-in-law, the engraver Daniel Chodowiecki , in Berlin. Out of pity for the flood victims and in honor of the heroically sunk duke, Chodowiecki created an engraving in good faith, in which he incorporated the essential statements of the legend and dramatized them: a person fighting for his life in the raging Oder; the debris floating on the water; Duke Leopold am Ufer in a final dispute with citizens who wanted to prevent him from taking a boat trip, among others.
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