Hanauer Journale und Briefe aus dem Amerikanischen Unabhangigkeitskrieg 1776-1783 der Offiziere Wilhelm Rudolph von Gall, Friedrich Wilhelm von Geismar, dessen Burschen (anonym), Jakob Heerwagen, Georg Paeusch sowie anderer Beteiligter (review)

Reviewed by: Hanauer Journale und Briefe aus dem Amerikanischen Unabhängigkeitskrieg 1776–1783 der Offiziere Wilhelm Rudolph von Gall, Friedrich Wilhelm von Geismar, dessen Burschen (anonym), Jakob Heerwagen, Georg Paeusch sowie anderer Beteiligter Thomas M. Barker Hanauer Journale und Briefe aus dem Amerikanischen Unabhängigkeitskrieg 1776–1783 der Offiziere Wilhelm Rudolph von Gall, Friedrich Wilhelm von Geismar, dessen Burschen (anonym), Jakob Heerwagen, Georg Paeusch sowie anderer Beteiligter. By Manfred von Gall. Hanauer Geschichtsblätter. Band 41 (2005). ISBN 3-935395. Photographs. Illustrations. Charts. Maps. Notes. Bibliography. Indexes. Pp. xlviii, 333. Euro 25.50. Manfred Freiherr von Gall, M.D., is a practicing psychiatrist and neurologist in Hanau, a small city located a bit east of Frankfurt but belonging to the current German Bundesland Hessen. The latter political entity encompasses all the separate Hessian states of the past plus various other territorial oddments of the quondam First Reich. Dr. von Gall's special objective has been to publish the longhand epistles of his great-great-great-grandfather, Colonel Wilhelm Rudolph von Gall (1734–99) who led the Hessen-Hanau Erbprinz (Hereditary Prince) infantry regiment that, after a perilous Atlantic crossing and a strenuous stay in frigid winter quarters, took part in Major General John Burgoyne's 1777, Canadian-based invasion of New York. (Wilhelm Rudolph's Hessians should not be confused with the identically labeled, auxiliary or "rental" regiment of Hessen-Cassel's Colonel Carl Wilhelm von Hachenberg.) Wilhelm Rudolph also served as the British-appointed brigadier in charge of the second segment of the army's left wing that was otherwise composed exclusively of Braunschweigers, i.e., the left being altogether the 47.7% German portion of Burgoyne's attacking force of regulars. Remarkably, Dr. von Gall's research skills, thoroughly demonstrated by his intensive labors at the Hessisches Staatsarchiv Marburg—an institution that preserves his ancestor's missives in old German script, further crucial Hessian data as well as invaluable maps of American Revolutionary Era provenance—are fully equivalent to those of any tenured, major university professor. Dr. von Gall has also incorporated into his book the writings of Major Georg Paeusch (also spelled Päusch but not "Pausch"), the famous chief of the—for all practical purposes—autonomously operating Hessen-Hanau artillery company that performed so well at both battles of Saratoga, plus letters of Major von Geismar. It was the latter Hessen-Hanauer who, during the "internment" of the Convention Army in Virginia, played his violin in the chamber music parlor of Thomas Jefferson's Monticello mansion as the accompanist of Baroque songstress "Generalin" Friederike von Riedesel, the celebrated consort of the German warriors' overall Braunschweig commander, Reichsfreiherr Friedrich Adolph von Riedesel zu Eisenbach. Second Lieutenant Jakob Heerwagen, like most Hessen-Hanau cannoneers including Paeusch, was a consummate cartographer as was von Riedesel's quartermaster-general, Captain Heinrich Daniel Gerlach. The first half of Dr. von Gall's 333-page-long tome contains the increasingly tardy, sea-borne communication (correspondence) between Wilhelm Rudolph and his liege lord, Erbprinz Wilhelm X (1743–1821), a territorial potentate who succeeded his father as landgrave of Hessen-Cassel in 1785 and finally became elector of Hessia in 1803. Wilhelm X, although regarded historiographically as a genuine Enlightened Despot, maltreated both Wilhelm Rudolph and Paeusch upon their ultimate return home, wrongly accusing both officers in turn of dishonesty in keeping financial accounts but failing to recognize the impossibility of their doing so properly under unusually trying circumstances. [End Page 1207] (The much delayed replies of the Erbprinz have not survived.) The second half of the volume, transcribed from the original documents and not from copies, is the first definitive publication of Paeusch materials. The two existing English translations of Paeusch by William L. Stone and Bruce B. Burgoyne, as Dr. von Gall repeatedly emphasizes, are defective in important respects. The reviewer himself has noted such lapses especially in regard to weaponry. That Americans, whether career historians of the War for Independence or military buffs, rely so heavily upon often faulty translations is most infelicitous. Ironically, Dr. von Gall himself has linguistically altered the pristine texts on occasion so that present-day Germans may better understand archaic, late-eighteenth-century phraseology, sometimes, it...

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