Major Heinrich Gottlieb von Klee, Founder of the Klee line in Denmark,
April 14, 1784-
February, 26, 1829
Please see Genealogical Tables I and II for genealogy.
Klee Coat of Arms
Every family wants a hero in its family tree, preferably a military hero. We can be proud of having an ancestor (Heinrich von Klee) whose military heroism was based on saving lives and property, as well as on bravery in combat.
To learn about his award for bravery in combat, click on http://www.letreb.com/historyandgenealogy/heinrich_v_klee_awarded_the_cros.htm
Heinrich emigrated to Denmark from Riga, Latvia in the early 19th century. In addition to serving in the Danish military, he also served in the Napoleonic wars against the Germans. The details of how he came to be involved are complicated and I will add what we know of those details later.
For now, I will display an English translation of a document that illustrates his honorable behavior as Commandant of the forces occupying a defeated German city. It was common for a victorious army to loot, rape and pillage in those days (and even now). But H. Klee, at the time a Captain, prevented that from happening under his command.* In my opinion, that is a unique form of heroic behavior. The following tribute from the citizens of Neumünster expresses their gratitude. I think this is a wonderful way to remember an ancestor.
*At the time of this event, I believe that he was commanding Russian troops.
The original document was translated from German by my brother Raymond Barry Klee and his son Terence Klee. The translation follows directly below. (GDKlee)
FALKENSKJÖLD (a place name??)
Upon request of the widow of the late Captain von Klee, we the undersigned hereby testify to the accuracy of what follows:
Namely, that in 1813, during the war, Captain von Klee, as Commandant of the borough of Neumünster, acted again and again in a very laudable manner to protect our persons and our property. We have only him to thank for the preservation of our expensive machinery--at the time newly acquired through the Economics and Trade Association--inasmuch as our factories, which were considered by the enemy to be the property of the King, had been converted into a hospital, with the exception of one room to house our machinery; and even the evacuation of this room had been demanded. It was only thanks to the intervention of a Commandant who knew how to bring his full authority to bear that it became possible to prevent the complete ruin of this very expensive machinery which, since it had not yet been paid for, was still, so to speak, State property. The Commandant’s main concerns were to maintain public order and to protect the property of citizens. He knew how to back up his orders with the necessary strength and to bring recalcitrants around through exemplary punitive measures. As a result he earned the respect and thanks of all the residents of this town, and especially of the undersigned. Furthermore, my delegation had the honor to express its appreciation to him for what he has done for our Borough.
Neumünster, December l, 1830
D. F. Renck, Jhs. Renck
The personal signatures of the local cloth manufacturers, Detlev Renck and Hans Renck are hereby certified by competent authority.
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We don't know as much as we would like about Heinrich Klee. I learned most of what I know about him from Mogens Klee. Below is information Mogens sent me in a letter in August 2000, along with genealogical information. I have made only a few minor additions. Mogens' letter also contained information about Heinrich's son (and only child) Frederik AG Klee, which I have included. GDK
Heinrich Gottlieb von Klee and Fredrik Alexander Gottlieb Klee
The information and the wording in this narrative are taken largely from a letter written to me by Mogens Klee of Denmark in August 2000. (Editor, Gerald D Klee)
Our ancestor Heinrich von Klee (1784-1829) was born in Riga, Latvia in a family of German ancestry. Riga was an old city that had been part of the Hanseatic League. The League was a mercantile federation of medieval German towns across northern Europe. By the time Heinrich was born, Latvia belonged to Russia, making Heinrich a Russian citizen and a subject of the Tsar. He seems to have emigrated to Denmark in the early 19th century, where he served as a commissioned officer under King Frederik VI. He married Anna Elisabeth Fabritius (1781-1848, who was a descendant of a family of silversmiths and jewelers that served the Royal Danish Court for generations. The date of their wedding is unknown. They had one child, Frederik Alexander Gottlieb Klee (1808-1864).
The following two paragraphs are from the same letter by Mogens Klee in the year 2000. The narrative starts with the battle of Copenhagen of 1801. (Editor, G D Klee)
“When the English (Admiral Nelson) entered Copenhagen harbor and destroyed our Navy without declaration of war, Denmark was forced from a position of neutrality to that of a war participant on the side of Napoleon. As Major Klee was a Russian and Russia was at war with Napoleon, he felt that he could not fight his own compatriots. So he asked King Frederik for permission to leave the Danish army to join the Russians. Respecting the young officer’s sense of duty, the King granted his permission. A proof of the King’s sympathy is that he decorated Major Klee with the Danish cross of the Order of Chivalry. (It is not clear when this occurred.)
Editor’s Note-G D Klee-- The British attacks on
The King also supported Heinrich’s only son, Frederik Alexander Klee during his study of law. “Frederik Alexander was a universal genius. He became chief of a sector of the Danish Post authorities and he introduced the use of stamps to Denmark in 1854. He wrote important works on history, geography, geology and other subjects.” (The Royal Danish Library has over thirty listings of publications that can be seen online. GDK) As a young student he won a gold medal from the University of Copenhagen for a historical treatise about the Wends in the middle ages.* The Wends were the Slavic people that occupied the Baltic region of Europe (now known as Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia)
He was also a member of the parliament.**
* “ Mogens son Henning describes the award as follows:
“We know, that during his law studies before he graduated, he delivered a dissertation about the history of the German island in the Baltic called Ruegen, which was under Danish administration for several centuries in the Middle Ages, and for which he was rewarded with the Gold Medal of the University of Copenhagen”.
** Henning also informed me that “Frederik Klee was member of the Danish Parliament from 1856-1864 when he died. He represented the National Liberal Party, which wanted to dissolve the old Dano-German state consisting of Lauenburg, Holstein , Slesvig and the Kingdom of Denmark including Iceland, Faroe Islands and Greenland, by separating Slesvig from Holstein and Lauenburg, which were German speaking provinces.
As you know Denmark lost Slesvig and Holstein in a war with Prussia and Austria in 1864 and in 1920 only the Northern Part of Slesvig was reunited with Denmark.”
The genealogical record of Heinrich's Baltic German heritage goes back to the 1400's http://www.letreb.com/historyandgenealogy/Genealogy%20Table%201.htm
The Baltic Germans in history---Some highlights
(The Baltic German heritage of the Klee family-)
The Klee line in Denmark was founded by Heinrich von Klee, whose German ancestors settled in Riga, Latvia during the middle ages. Latvia is one of the three Baltic countries. The Germans who first entered the Baltic countries came in 1200 as crusading knights to convert the pagan population to Christianity. The descendants of those early German settlers came to be known as Baltic Germans. Heinrich emigrated from Riga to Denmark somewhere around 1800. Latvia had become a Russian territory before Heinrich was born. As a result, he was a Russian citizen by birth.
Heinrich’s heritage was unique.
“From the time of Peter the Great, Baltic Germans were a significant proportion of the Russian Empire's total professional manpower. They filled many important scientific, scholarly, diplomatic, military and other high level positions”. Sowell, See below
While other Baltic Germans were contributing their talents to Russia, Heinrich emigrated to Denmark. Although Heinrich had settled in Denmark, the Napoleonic wars drew him into military service for the Russian Tsar. When the war ended he returned to Denmark. Thus, both Denmark and Russia benefited from his services.
The following excerpt gives a broader picture of Heinrich’s heritage.
“Baltic Germans”
From Migrations and Cultures, A World View
pages 56 and 57,
Thomas Sowell,
Basic Books, 1996
“Germans in the Baltic were a small proportion of all the Germans in Russia, and were less than one-tenth of the local population, even in the small Baltic states. There were about 100,000 Germans in the Baltic at the end of the eighteenth century and about 130,000 at the end of the nineteenth century-8 percent of the total population of the Baltic in the first period and 6 percent in the second.'° However, the importance of the Baltic Germans to the local-and national -economies was out of all proportion to their numbers.
Germans in the Baltic were a dominant socioeconomic class rather than a disadvantaged minority. In 1900, for example, Germans owned 60 percent of the arable land in Estonia. In 1908, German landowners held more land throughout the Baltic than the indigenous Baltic peasants and the Russian domain and church lands combined. The Baltic port of Riga had one of the oldest entrepreneurial traditions in Russia. The fifth-largest city in the Russian Empire, Riga was founded by Germans during the middle Ages and remained culturally a German city for centuries thereafter. Its founding in 1201 A.D. was part of a long process of conquest of Latvia by German nobles, and it became part of the Hanseatic League of German commercial cities." Despite successive conquests by Poland, Sweden, and Russia over the centuries, Riga remained culturally German, though the city's population at the end of the nineteenth century was less than one-fourth German. Most of Riga's technology and capital came from Germany, even after it was incorporated into the Russian Empire in 1721. Merchants, artisans, and industrialists in Riga were overwhelmingly German.' Riga German males had a 94 percent literacy rate as early as 1883-higher than that of Estonians, Latvians, Russians, or Jews in the same city," and far higher than that in the Russian Empire as a whole.
From the time of Peter the Great, Germans were a significant proportion of the Russian Empire's total professional manpower. They filled many important scientific, scholarly, diplomatic, military and other high level positions. In the 1880s, about 40 percent of the Russian army’s high command was German, as were 57 percent of the Russian foreign ministry and 62 percent of those in the highest ranks of the Ministry of Posts and Commerce.
At one time, nearly all members of the Academy of Sciences were German. In short, Germans were over-represented in high level positions out of all proportion to their one percent of the total Russian Empire population. Moreover, these were mostly Baltic Germans.
In the first half of the nineteenth century, Baltic Germans outnumbered all other Germans in Russia in high level civil and military positions, even though they were a minority within the German minority in the Russian Empire.
Germans in Russia were noted for traditional German orderliness, and calculation. Germans in high government positions were noted for their efficiency and incorruptibility, both characteristics in sharp contrast with Russian officials.
Germans were also noted for their loyalty to Russia, even in the war against Germany in 1914. During the Napoleonic wars, German generals were prominent in the leadership of the Russian army. It was one of these German generals (who was also partly Scottish) who devised the painful but successful strategy of a scorched-earth policy in retreat, which broke the back of Napoleon's invasion of Russia. He later led the triumphant procession of the Russian army into Paris and was made a field marshal and a prince by the czar. Most of these German generals in the Russian army were from the Baltic region….”