Christian Ludwig von Kalckstein
German noble
Christian Ludwig von Kalckstein (1630 – 8 November 1672) was a Prussian count, colonel, and politician who was executed for treason.
Biography
Kalckstein was the son of Count Albrecht von Kalckstein, a strong critic of Frederick William, Elector and Duke of Brandenburg-Prussia. During his youth Kalckstein had served in the French army under Turenne, but was dismissed as being disorderly. He entered the Polish army in 1654, but fought for Duke Frederick William at the 1656 Battle of Warsaw, for which he was rewarded with a captaincy in the district of Oletzko (Olecko). In 1659 the duke dismissed Kalckstein after the clerk of Oletzko accused the young noble of embezzlement and maltreatment of his subjects.
The Kalckstein family were staunch defenders of the Prussian estates and opposed the centralizing absolutism of Frederick William; Prussia had been a fief of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth until Frederick William achieved sovereignty in the 1660 Treaty of Oliva. After being dismissed from Oletzko, Kalckstein reentered the Polish army and plotted against Frederick William from the Polish capital, Warsaw. After Albrecht's 1667 death, his sons disputed the inheritance; Christian Ludwig was accused by his siblings of conspiring to murder Frederick William and invite Polish troops into Prussia. Although his siblings' evidence was dubious, Kalckstein contrived the idea of asking his servants to perjure on his behalf in the case. When this was found out, Kalckstein was convicted of lèse majesté and sentenced to life imprisonment.
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This entry incorporates text from “Christian Ludwig von Kalckstein” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.