Eduard Prätorius
Eduard Prätorius – period of service: 1840–1846
Eduard Prätorius (1807-1855) was a young scholar who had already earned the Prince’s respect while in Albert’s service in Coburg. Born in 1807 in Coburg, he studied history and philosophy in Jena from 1826, and later in Heidelberg and Munich. He received his doctorate in Tübingen. After this, he tried in vain to obtain the position of “Professor of History” at the gymnasium Casimirianum in Coburg. In 1832 he met Baron Stockmar, who took him under his wings, lent him books and also taught him modern history and politics. In 1834, Prätorius was introduced to the young princes Ernest and Albert by the Oberhofmarschall von Wagenheim. Beginning in October 1834 and all through 1835 he lectured the princes on modern history . Stockmar had planned to send Prätorius with the princes to Bonn University, but this was prevented by their tutor Christoph Florschütz. According to Prätorius, Florschütz “always regarded my teaching suspiciously and jealously.” In 1839, after another unsuccessful attempt to obtain a professorship at the gymnasium in Coburg, Prätorius took over the supervision of the Kupferstichkabinett in Coburg. In addition, he was tasked with sorting the old State Archive.
After Prince Albert had announced his engagement to Queen Victoria, he engaged Prätorius as his private secretary to England. One of his first duties in Prince Albert’s service was to write an essay on the protestant credentials of the House of Saxony. The essay was intended for English newspapers in order to counter rumours that Prince Albert might be catholic.
In the 1841 English census, the young private secretary is listed as a resident of Buckingham Palace under the name Edward Praetorius and the age of 30. Since they had met relatively young, came from the same hometown and worked closely together, Prince Albert and Prätorius developed a close relationship. After Stockmar’s departure from London in the summer of 1840, Albert wrote to him:
“I talk a lot with Prätor about you, because we both feel our loss equally deeply. Every day at 5pm I think you should come through the door. Though you must not think that all your good teachings, advice and principles have left with you. I hope to have kept a great deal of them here….”
The German secretaries had a variety of tasks, but above all, they had to look after the prince’s financial interests at home in Coburg and Gotha. Therefore, there is a substantial amount of correspondence between the private secretaries in England and Eduard Fischer, Albert’s financial advisor in Coburg. On 14th August 1840 Prince Albert wrote to Stockmar that he had translated Prätorius’s “pretty essay on the Oriental question into English”. Thus, the private secretaries were also encouraged by Albert to write academic texts. In addition, Prätorius and his successors were instructed to organise shipments to Coburg sending objects for the ducal collections there, The secretary also had to suggest and procure German books, and to conduct all business-related German correspondence.
On 1st November 1847 Prince Albert wrote to his brother, “I give these lines to Dr Meyer who is going to Koburg to talk to Stockmar about some things, hopefully to persuade him to come over before the bad season starts. He [Dr Meyer] is Prätor’s successor. This poor man has just lived through the agony of seeing his beloved wife rotting alive in front of his eyes. …” Albert’s grandmother from Gotha had expressed in a letter to Albert how very sorry she was “that your poor Praetorius has the prospect of losing his poor sick wife soon…”.
About three years later Prätorius seemed to have married again as Albert wrote to Stockmar:
“What do you say to Prätor’s new marriage? He announced it to me as a decision to return to an active life. I rejected his request to promise his wife part of his pension; I referred him to you for advice on his wish to receive a title of some sort. Victoria promised him continued payment of his pension in the event of my death….”
However, Eduard Prätorius died before Prince Albert in 1855. It has not yet been possible to determine if Prätorius had any children. His bequest is located in the archive of the Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nuremberg. It was acquired by his brother Max Ludwig Prätorius (1813-1887), who was a painter of horses and hunting scenes.
