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Thursday, February 13, 2025

Wallenstein’s death: German Historical Museum acquires unique Pilsener Reverse from the Thirty Years’ War

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12 January 2025 marks the anniversary of the signing of the first Pilsener Revers, which went down in German history as the trigger for the assassination of Albrecht von Wallenstein. The German Historical Museum has acquired a document from Field Marshal Christian Freiherr von Ilow (1585 – 1634) with an address of surrender and oath of allegiance to Generalissimo Albrecht von Wallenstein, which was signed by 47 imperial regiment owners and officers – famous as the first Pilsen lapel of 12 January 1634.

Image above: Urkunde des Feldmarschalls Christian von Ilow mit Ergebenheitsadresse und Treueschwur an den Generalissimus Albrecht von Wallenstein und Unterschriften von 47 kaiserlichen Regimentsinhabern und Offizieren, 12. Januar 1634 © Deutsches Historisches Museum.

In the process, two further important documents with original manuscripts from the time of the Thirty Years’ War were acquired: the so-called second Pilsener Revers of 20 February 1634 (a document by Albrecht von Wallenstein with an oath of allegiance to Emperor Ferdinand II and signatures of 32 regiment holders and officers) and the so-called Vota of 19 February 1634 (a protocol to the so-called second Pilsener Revers with oath formulas of 32 regiment holders and officers of the imperial army). Thanks to the generous support of its museum association, the DHM was able to secure three unique original documents from the 17th century for its collection. In future, the manuscripts will be preserved for the first time by a public institution as a national cultural asset.

Raphael Gross, President of the Deutsches Historisches Museum Foundation: ‘We are very grateful to our museum association that we were able to jointly purchase these outstanding documents of national importance for the DHM collection. This also enables us to carry out the urgently needed restoration of these unique documents so that we can present them to our public in the best possible condition. In our future permanent exhibition on German history, which we are currently developing, they may become of central importance for the period of the Thirty Years’ War.’

Ulrich Deppendorf, Chairman of the Museum Association: ‘The famous Pilsen lapel was previously privately owned. We are proud that – thanks in part to a generous donation from Berliner Sparkasse – we have succeeded in securing this cultural heritage item for public ownership together with the DHM. And just in time. Thanks to the museum’s expertise, the urgently needed restoration of the documents can now begin. In this way, these testimonies to history will be preserved for future generations.’

Albrecht von Wallenstein (1583-1634) is still regarded today as a special historical figure in German and Czech history. Friedrich Schiller dedicated a trilogy of plays to him (1799), and the first Pilsener Revers (or Pilsener Schluss) of 12 January 1634 – called ‘the prescription’ by Schiller – is an important fixed point in it. Wallenstein came from the lower nobility and had the highest personal ambitions, skill and expertise. With the support of the Austrian Emperor Ferdinand II, he enjoyed a meteoric rise to become one of the de facto most powerful men in Central Europe. As a general, Wallenstein experienced fame and victories, but also disgrace, fall and recall, and ultimately lost his life through his own and, even more so, others’ disloyalty and betrayal.

Wallenstein’s downfall is closely linked to the first Pilsen Reversal: in 1633, Wallenstein came into opposition to his employer through evasive warfare and overly unauthorised peace diplomacy with Saxony, Sweden and France. When Emperor Ferdinand II ordered the army to launch a winter campaign against Regensburg and to escort a Spanish contingent of troops to Holland at the end of the year, while at the same time withholding pay, the Generalissimo threatened to resign. This threat worried not so much the emperor, who wanted to put his son in Wallenstein’s place, but rather a number of generals and colonels in the army, some of whom had run up huge debts to mobilise and equip their regiments. They wanted to prevent the abdication of their commander, with whom they hoped to bring in compensatory spoils of war, with all their might. On the evening of 12 January 1634, 47 high-ranking Wallenstein officers in the Bohemian city of Pilsen signed the pledge drawn up by Field Marshal Christian von Ilow, in which they swore allegiance to Wallenstein and not to the Emperor. In order to publicise the ‘alliance’ to the troops, a total of five identical copies were signed. Vienna was only too happy to see treason in the document and imposed the imperial ban on its highest authorised representative. Shortly before fleeing to Eger on 20 February 1634, Wallenstein wrote a second reversal, again with numerous signatures of high-ranking officers, in which he declared his loyalty to the emperor. However, almost completely isolated, it was no longer of any use to him and so Wallenstein was killed on 25 February 1634 by a captain loyal to the emperor from his own ranks, which had now disintegrated.

Ferdinand II ordered a search to be made for the copies of the first Revers, four of which were presumably destroyed. Their contents were life-threatening: on 18 February 1635, Hans Ulrich von Schaffgotsch, one of the signatories, was executed. Schaffgotsch had previously taken the fifth copy of the first revers to the troops in Silesia. This copy was kept in the Schaffgotsch Majorate Library in Warmbrunn in Lower Silesia (today: Cieplice Śląskie-Zdrój) from the middle of the 19th century. In 1945, the count’s family fled westwards to escape the Red Army and took the most important papers from the family archive with them, including the two reverses and another document by Christian von Ilow for Wallenstein. With the purchase by the DHM, these have now entered the holdings of a public museum for the first time.

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