Preparing for the summer warfare, when my nephew arrives from the US, we plan to enrich the gameboard with some new buildings and civilians. As a difference to the Silesian farmhouses in stone, the West-Prussian villages were more rough, smaller and poorer than the Silesian ones. Dued to a hard and sandy soil, Prussian villagers shared a hard destiny with their neighbours in the Eastern countries. The "Kartoffelbefehl"of Frederick the Great in march 1756, the order to plant the potato, was a watershed for the rural population:
„Circulare an sämtliche Landräte und Beamte wegen Anbauung der Tartoffeln“: „Es ist von uns in höchster Person in unseren anderen Provinzen die Anpflanzung der sog. Tartoffeln, als ein sehr nützliches und sowohl für Menschen als Vieh auf sehr vielfache Weise dienliches Erd-Gewächse, ernstlich anbefohlen.(...)"
(source: Wikipedia).
Building this scenarios, I tried to catch the atmosphere of this epoch a little bit. The farmhouses are mostly in cardboard and wooden sticks, the figures are from the marvellous medieval serie of Peipp in 40mm and from Sash+Saber, serie "AWI civilians".
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| A Sash&Saber-boy with a Peipp-donkey |
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| Peipp-mum with children beside her timbered house in clay and wood... |
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| ...and her small garden for vegetables and herbage... |
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| a dusty image |
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| the second building in wood construction. The Milk Maid sitting and milking a cow is a jewel of the Trident villagers serie. |
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| behind the house, the Peipp-girls are playing with the dog... |
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| The "Kartoffelbefehl" by her Majesty, the King |
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| a good source: Bernhard SCHMID; Das Bauernhaus der nördlichen Grenzmark. Bäuerliche Architektur in der ehemaligen deutschen Provinz Grenzmark-Posen-Westpreußen. http://bauernhofarchiv-literatur.blogspot.de/2012/03/das-bauernhaus-der-nordlichen-grenzmark.html |
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| Das Isergebirge. Bad Flinsberg – Bad Schwarzbach – Marklissa, 1933. source: http://ekologia.yum.pl |
