La Bataille de Prusse 1809

Musician First General Second Louis Ferdinand Saalfeld Death Makes His Music Almost Mythical But His Military Reputation Not Close To Uncle

Louis Ferdinand was a Hohenzollern prince, a Prussian soldier and a great musician and composer whose exploits a soldier were dwarfed by his accomplishments at the keyboard and as a first rate composer writing in the years just before the War of the Fourth Coalition. Louis Ferdinand was the son of Frederick the Great’s brother, Prince August Ferdinand and therefore the nephew of the great Prussian King. Louis Ferdinand was also the great-grandson of King George I of Great Britain. But then, he probably had any number of cousins; aunts and other relations who were sitting on thrones or running duchies or earldoms throughout Europe.

A nephew of a deceased ruler or a cousin of a ruling monarch had a limited career line in 18 th Century Europe, so most of them either became marriage fodder or cannon fodder in the wars of the Age of Reason. Louis Ferdinand was no different. He entered the Prussian army at a very young age and by the age of 20 was serving as a young officer at the Coalition Siege of Mainz the summer of 1793. He would be wounded during those battles and had no exposure to the dramatic changes coming about to warfare during that time. Prussia had no appetite for continued warfare with the French and discreetly and in some parts of the treaty, secretly signed the Peace of Basel in 1795. Prussia instead preferred to dine on Polish cuisine with the two last partitions of Poland. Thus Louis would not face Bonaparte or Desaix or Moreau. He never understood what the Revolution had become. For more than a decade, Louis Ferdinand became a creature of the Hohenzollern court. However, he quickly discovered that he had extensive musical gifts and was recognized as a great pianist, playing frequently in the salons of Potsdam and Berlin. Ludwig van Beethoven dedicated his Third Piano Concerto to Louis in recognition of the Prince’s great keyboard skills. A lesser known composer today, Anton Reich wrote a massive variation cycle, L’art de varier for Louis Ferdinand.

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