It has a cheerful note when things are in the Lichtenfels event calendar, but happen in the vastness of the Internet due to Corona. So basically completely different than in Lichtenfels. In this Elsewhere, a few days ago, those interested in history met for an event organized by the history association CHW. The subject: Frankish soldiers in the American War of Independence.
If it weren’t for Corona, Marcus Mühlnikel would have been in the former synagogue, the Lichtenfels CHW event location. He would have been welcomed by the local CHW director Ulrich Sünkel and then? Then Barbara Edelmann would probably not have been there. At 7:03 p.m., shortly after district home nurse Günter Dippold from Bayreuth began to moderate the evening and introduce Marcus Mühlnikel, the woman from Pittsburgh in the USA announced her participation via the Internet. This is also a consequence of Corona.
210 interested people join in
At that time, Barbara Edelmann was a participant of 188. 16 minutes later, 210 devices were switched on and the people sitting behind them now knew that Mühlnikel was doing a doctorate in history, was a teacher in Wuhan and was also studying literature. A top class. Academic senior counselor at the Institute for Franconian Regional History at the Universities of Bamberg and Bayreuth. But the audience was also interesting and what made the lecture somehow comfortably intimate despite all the vastness of the Internet was the view into the living room of the participants who were connected by camera. So somehow you were in the good rooms of the others, with a view of interested faces in front of book walls.
The subject itself was tough. Mühlnikel was already captivating at the start and he made use of the 1999 film “Sleepy Hollow” shot by Tim Burton. There an eerie “Hesse” (Christopher Walken) rides swinging the sword as a revenant through the film. He is said to have had a preference for cutting off heads in the War of Independence. Mühlnikel showed that and wherever in the American culture of remembrance regarding the War of Independence, Germans also left their mark. In picture books, for example. However, that thins out when you visit the two museums in the United States that deal specifically with the subject of the Revolutionary War. According to Mühlnikel, this is astonishing because 5,000 German soldiers were involved in the decisive battle of Yorktown in 1781 on the British, American and French sides. “Obviously, the German soldiers do not fit into the overall narrative of revolution and war that lead to the birth of the American nation.”
One of Mühlnikel’s revealing observations was the one that spoke of the fact that German soldiers were often generally referred to as “Hessen”, meaning that there was no differentiation. Because there were actually considerable troops from Hesse. However, soldiers from Ansbach-Bayreuth were also active. But how did they get into this conflict? In fact, there was trade in soldiers, and German princes “lent out” troops in so-called subsidy contracts. But at this point Mühlnikel should not only deal with the subject as a historian, but also approach it as a literary scholar. He showed how the image of the soldier trade was discussed by Friedrich Schiller in the drama “Kabale und Liebe”, but also referred to a Franconian poet: Johann Christoph Krauseneck, born in Zell in 1738, was chamber secretary in Bayreuth and wrote the play ” with certainty “before his Margrave Karl Alexander signed such a subsidy contract.
Mühlnikel approached an unusual topic from different directions, rummaged through the diary notes of German soldiers, made their reality of life tangible and also their astonishment at this country beyond their homeland, described the daily routine in combat or their experiences on the crossing across the Atlantic. First hand history, written 250 years ago. In the process, Mühlnikel also managed a small literary trick in telling the story. During his research he came across field medic Johann David Schoepf, who was also sent to America by the Bayreuth margrave and did not want to return home as early as possible. He asked for a longer stay in America, also for the purpose of scientific studies. Years after he returned home, he prepared the autopsy report for the wife of the margrave who had sent him to North America in 1777. Moments like this made the original presentation stand out. Then followed what always follows at CHW: the conversation, the exchange, the questions to the speaker. 178 participants should still be online at around 8:09 p.m. long after the lecture itself.
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