This sparse information was both baffling and a dead giveaway of our hero’s character. Technically, by the autumn of 1878, Ludwig Karlovich really was a widower and had outlived nearly all the participants of the Vladimir drama: his lawful wife Praskovya had died in 1868 in Colonel Volotsky’s almshouse, their daughter Elizaveta had died of consumption in 1875 in the house of the priest Sokolov, and both of his stepdaughters by Second Lieutenant Pyotr Lyalin – Ekaterina Vzmetneva and Countess Maria Derionzini – had also passed away. But in quiet Weißenstein, hardly anyone could have known this. Clearly, the retired hussar lived in such isolation that even to the local community his past remained a mystery.

The Warsaw episode of his biography came to light thanks to a file from the National Archives of Estonia (EAA.29.3.4503) bearing an eloquent German title: “File concerning the expulsion of retired Lieutenant Ludwig-Karl von Strahlborn from Warsaw to his homeland, in Reval” (Akte betreffend die Ausweisung des verabschiedeten Leutnants Ludwig-Karl von Strahlborn aus Warschau in seine Heimat, in Reval). There were no direct genealogical certificates inside, yet from the very first lines of the dispatch from the Chancellery of the Warsaw Military Governor-General dated September 12, 1857, No. 4793, our old acquaintance deserved a standing ovation.

Even when faced with compulsory deportation for idleness and destitution, Ludwig Karlovich did not lose his composure and presented the police with an unfinished lawsuit! The story of this litigation, which we managed to piece together across Russian reports, digitized ledgers of Warsaw notaries, and old Polish newspapers, is worthy of Balzac’s pen.

In Warsaw, our cash-strapped hussar struck up an acquaintance with a 39-year-old day laborer from the suburban commune of Powązki, Franciszek (Franz) Wardak, who was blind in his left eye. This humble laborer had a far more prosperous relative (likely his brother), Andrzej Wardak, who owned a lucrative property with houses, outbuildings, and a smithy in the right-bank Warsaw suburb of Praga at No. 151 Targowa Street (Nr 151 na Pradze, przy ulicy Targowej). Back in February 1844, in the newspaper “Kurjer Warszawski” (No. 43 of February 14, 1844), this Andrzej was modestly referred to as “Mr. Andrzej Wardak” (JP. Wardak Andrzej) when he donated 200 zlotys toward the construction of the Church of St. Charles Borromeo in memory of his late wife Katarzyna Szankiewicz (Katarzyna Szankiewiczów). However, as his wealth grew, the common peasant surname Wardak began to transform in official documents into a noble-sounding gentry name – Wardziński or Wardyński (Andrzej Wardziński).

The bone of contention was the inheritance of their deceased female relative (most likely their mother or aunt) – Eleonora, née Raczyńska, married name Wardyńska (Eleonora Raczyńska/Wardzińska), which included rights to that very plot No. 151. Ludwig von Strahlborn realized that a poor relative’s resentment toward a wealthy one offered a chance to play for high stakes.

Left without his key witness, Ludwig switched to delaying tactics and began firing off angry complaints to the Warsaw authorities, accusing his court-appointed lawyer Rakowski and the bailiff Pawłowski of colluding with the defendants and demanding the appointment of a “more reliable defender.”

Sorting out the retired lieutenant’s complaints about dilatory bailiffs and dividing the ill-fated Praga plot fell personally to Privy Councilor Count Fryderyk Florian Skarbek (1792–1866), who from 1854 to 1858 served as Chief Director Presiding in the Government Commission of Justice (effectively the Minister of Justice of the Kingdom of Poland). Count Skarbek was a figure of European stature – a brilliant economist, writer, and reformer, and, to top it all off, the godfather of the great composer Frédéric Chopin (the musician’s father, Nicolas Chopin, had served in his youth as a tutor at the Skarbek family estate in Żelazowa Wola, and the future musical genius was named Fryderyk in honor of the young count).

In 1857, papers landed on the desk of Chopin’s godfather detailing how the fugitive Vladimir landowner Ludwig von Strahlborn and the day laborer Franz Wardak, who had vanished dead drunk under a fence, were trying to sue for a smithy and sheds in the suburb of Praga.

Count Skarbek carefully reviewed the dossier and delivered a cold verdict: the lawyer Rakowski and the bailiff Pawłowski had acted impeccably, and Strahlborn himself was to blame for stalling the proceedings by withholding the court copies. Since the lieutenant had a court-appointed defender with whom he could easily correspond by mail, his personal presence in Warsaw was no longer “deemed necessary.” By order of the Warsaw Chief of Police, Major General Anichkov (and a report by General Spichkov), in June 1857 Ludwig Karlovich was finally sent out of the Kingdom of Poland.

But let us return to the summer of 1857. Expelled from Warsaw for leading an “idle life” – much as his spiritual twin Alexander Yunich had been expelled from Gavrilov Posad three years earlier for endless pettifoggery – Ludwig Karlovich traveled to Estonia by the cheapest and most convenient route of the time: via St. Petersburg. In the arriving passengers chronicle of the “Estonian Governorate Gazette” (No. 28 of July 15, 1857, section Angekommene Reisende), it is recorded that on July 6, 1857, aboard the steamship “Prince Menshikov” (Dampfschiff Fürst Menschikoff) from St. Petersburg to Reval, “Lieutenant von Strahlborn” disembarked among 87 passengers.

He spent the rest of the summer and early autumn of 1857 in Reval (Tallinn). When, on September 28, 1857, the Chancellery of the Governor of Estonia received (under incoming No. 5457) the final report of the Warsaw Military Governor-General, Adjutant General Fyodor Sergeyevich Panyutin, and Chancellery Director Zmigrodsky containing Count Skarbek’s explanations, Ludwig was summoned to officially review it. On the last page of the file (EAA.29.3.4503, fol. 4), his handwritten receipt in Russian has been preserved: “Read by Lieutenant von Strahlborn” (“Читалъ Поручикъ фонъ Штральборнъ”). The road back to temptation-filled Warsaw was closed forever.

To conclusively prove that the recluse from House No. 23 in Weißenstein and the fugitive hussar from the Vladimir province were one and the same person, it remained for me to look into the judicial chronicles of 1878. Starting with the digitized journals of the Weißenstein Bailiff’s Court (Weissensteinsches Vogteigericht, fond EAA.991.1.705), presided over by Judicial Bailiff E. Silsky (Gerichtsvogt E. Silsky) with the participation of Town Hall aldermen R. Ottenberg, D. Müller, and Notary H. Neumann, I began leafing through the autumn protocols for 1878. After working with the old German cursive of Sophie von Knorring’s diary, Baltic handwriting already felt almost like second nature – in other words, I had learned to make out a few capital letters 🙂 Under November 4, 1878 (entry No. 314), my eye immediately caught the familiar surname: L. v. Strahlborn.

The entry stated that the local court, pursuant to an order from Reval under No. 3929, directed that the property left by the deceased be inventoried and handed over to the local co-curator W. Hoffmann. Next, in entry No. 331 of November 18, the court recorded a new order from above under No. 4218, scheduling the public sale of the estate.

And on the protocol page dated December 15, 1878 (entry No. 107), the scene of the public auction itself (sub hasta publica) unfolded. Ludwig’s wooden residential house at police No. 23 on municipal land, together with its outbuildings and plot (Wohnhaus nebst Nebengebäude und Grundstück), was put up for sale at a modest starting price of 500 silver rubles. A fierce bidding war broke out among six buyers for the former “nobleman’s nest”: bids were raised in turn by Daniel Müller (500 rub.), the estate curator and merchant Wilhelm Hoffmann (800, 1,050, 1,070 rub.), Johannes Anysohn (950 rub.), Jaan Limberg (1,000 rub.), and M. Saarm (1,095 and 1,115 rub.). In the end, outbidding all competitors, the final bid of 1,120 silver rubles in cash was placed by an ordinary Estonian peasant, Jaan Sion (Bauer Jaan Sion), to whom the court immediately awarded ownership. After deducting 24 rubles and 90 kopecks in court costs, the net proceeds from the retired hussar’s house amounted to 1,095 rubles and 10 kopecks.

While the auction protocol provided a wealth of everyday details, it still kept silent about the identity of the deceased owner himself. However, incoming reference numbers of orders from a higher authority – the Imperial Estonian Supreme Court (Oberlandgericht) in Reval – appeared throughout the Weißenstein minutes. Moving over to the digitized fonds of this supreme provincial court (EAA.858.1.394, civil protocols for 1878) and opening its convenient alphabetical index, I immediately found four detailed entries (dated November 2, 16, and 28, 1878) that dotted all the “i”s.

It turned out that the guardianship proceedings over the estate of the Weißenstein recluse were initiated in Reval on November 2, 1878, by his closest blood relatives: his sister Maria Theresia von Hueck, née von Strahlborn (Therese v. Hueck, geb. v. Strahlborn), and his brother-in-law, First Lieutenant Carl Eduard Koch (Oberlieutenant C. E. Koch, husband of Ludwig’s other sister, Karoline Elisabeth von Strahlborn / Karoline Elisabeth Koch). This document confirmed the identity of our hero with one hundred percent certainty!

It was his Reval relatives who petitioned the court to place the estate of their brother and brother-in-law under trusteeship “on account of the absence of several heirs from here” (wegen Abwesenheit mehrerer Erben von hier) – referring to his Russian children from his marriage to Praskovya Tregubova. The Reval relatives themselves clearly had no desire to travel to Weißenstein for the funeral or sort through the deceased’s belongings, delegating all local arrangements to the merchant Wilhelm Hoffmann. Moreover, in the minutes of an extraordinary session on November 16, 1878 (No. 4217–4218), First Lieutenant Koch, with disarming bluntness, described the late hussar’s personal belongings as “his paltry movable estate” (seines geringfügigen Mobiliar-Nachlasses):

And on November 28, 1878, the Oberlandgericht ordered that official summonses regarding the estate of retired Lieutenant Ludwig von Strahlborn be forwarded to St. Petersburg for publication in the “Senate Announcements” (Senatsbekanntmachungen) – in case his lawful heirs or old creditors should be found deep within the empire.

As we recall, Praskovya and their daughter Elizaveta were already resting in Russian churchyards by that time, but Ludwig still had three sons – Fyodor, Lev, and Konstantin, whom their mother had gone to such lengths to enroll in Part 2 of the noble genealogical book of the Vladimir province back in 1849. Their subsequent fate remains a blank spot, and for over six months no one ever responded to the Reval summons.

Thus ended the earthly odyssey of Ludwig Karlovich von Strahlborn – a man who began his journey on Baltic estates, turned the heads of provincial young ladies at balls in Gavrilov Posad, litigated in Warsaw under the eye of Chopin’s godfather, and met a quiet old age in his own house across from a church he preferred not to enter.