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Royal Prussian Particular-Historie never ignored the larger dimension
of the wider commonwealth’ (p. 78). Also characteristic of this was
the harsh dislike with which, after the Chmielnicki revolt of 1648,
scholarly Prussian historians criticized the disloyalty of the Cossacks
and their rejection of the Polish-Lithuanian state.
No less characteristic is the fact that the Prussian historiography
of the early modern period (or the history of Prussia in general) has
no examples of attempts to place the history of the large Prussian
towns into a Hanseatic context, let alone into the political context of
the empire. The strengthening of a feeling of belonging together in
political and historical terms—an awareness of a Land identity interpreted
by �riedrich as national awareness—was served in particular
by the ius indigenatus (the rights and immunities connected with citizenship),
which topped the hierarchy of the fundamental rights of
Royal Prussia. In �riedrich’s opinion, this was where the essence of
the identity of Royal Prussia lay, not in the ethnicity of its inhabitants,
and she provides detailed evidence for her thesis from a large body
of political and historical writings. Thus �riedrich extensively analyses
Land histories as identity-creating elements, outlines the rise of
histories of the origins of Royal Prussia, and explains why the Sarmatian
origin myth in particular was so popular among a large number
of influential historians and scholars. �or example, Christoph
Hartknoch, a professor of history who was born in Allstein, wrote in
his Alt- und Neues Preußen, published in Danzig in 1648: ‘It is certain
that Poles, Lithuanians and Prussians have venerated the same mother,
Sarmatian Europe’ (p. 96). However, in the eighteenth century,
when increasing centralization under the Saxon kings posed a real
threat to its own claims to autonomy, Hartknoch’s Prussian myth
was no longer enough. Now historical-legalistic arguments came to
the fore. Their aim was to renegotiate the constitutional special status
of Royal Prussia within the framework of the Commonwealth.
Ultimately, this led to a radicalization of Prussian national awareness,
and towards the end of the century, to a tangibly more positive
approach to the past before the union with Poland.
In her book about the ‘other Prussia’, which is neither a purely
legal and constitutional history nor just a history of ideas and history
of historiography, Karin �riedrich touches on a large number of
individual issues and debates. On the whole, this study makes an
important contribution to our understanding of the difficult process
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Royal Prussia, 1569–1772