Dear family members and relatives,

At the beginning of 2024, after years of research, the 5-volume work on our ancestor Rudolf Graf v. Stillfried, which is particularly important for our family, will be published. It can already be ordered from the publisher or any bookshop and also online. So you can already put a voucher for it on your Christmas table. Each volume is illustrated, has between 726 and 820 pages and costs approx. 80 euros, the complete work 399.90 euros. It contains the 32 diaries of this historically significant family member, which Prof. Bahlcke and his colleagues have painstakingly deciphered, transcribed, researched and historically analysed and annotated over many years. The majority of the diaries were provided by our "cousins" Benedikt and Nikolaus Count Praschma, both of whom have unfortunately passed away, from their inheritance. Some of the paperbacks were already in the Secret State Archives of Prussian Cultural Heritage. In future, all the original paperbacks will be kept there in conjunction with the family archive of the Counts and Barons v. Stilllfried.

Rudolf Count von Stillfried-Alcántara, born in Hirschberg in 1804 and died on his Silbitz estate in Lower Silesia in 1882, came from an old Bohemian-Silesian noble family. The change of throne in Prussia in 1840 opened up an illustrious career for him at the Berlin court. King Frederick William IV, who had a keen sense of traditional monarchical and dynastic ceremonial, appointed his confidant first as court master of ceremonies, then as chief master of ceremonies in 1853, as well as head of the newly created Heralds' Office (1855), which dealt with all kinds of aristocratic matters, and as director of the Royal House Archives (1856). In these functions, Stillfried, a Catholic, was a central figure in dynastic historiography, the cultivation of tradition and the politics of remembrance for decades, even under his successor Wilhelm I. The work of the Berlin court and state official is documented not least in his diaries, which he kept with extraordinary meticulousness and continuity until just a few weeks before his death. With their daily, sometimes very intimate observations, reflections and thoughts, Stillfried's diaries provide a wide range of insights into the courtly and aristocratic world of the 19th century. They represent a source of exceptional value for cultural-historical research.

Kind regards
from your Norbert

The diaries of the Prussian court and state official
Rudolf von Stillfried-Alcántara 1827 to 1882
A historical-critical edition. 5 part volumes
Publications from the Archives of Prussian Cultural Heritage
Sources, Volume 75 / I-V
I: frontispiece, numerous illustrations, 752 pages
II: illustrations, 818 pages;
III: illus., 814 pages, IV: illus., 780 pages;
V: illus., 726 pages, 2023
ISBN 978-3-428-19014-0, hardcover, € 399,90*

Pre-orders are possible here www.duncker-humblot.de/9783428190140