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Hi. I'm Jesse Alexander and thank you for

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supporting this companion episode of Glory and Defeat.

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So far in the series,

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we've talked a lot about how diverse the armies of the German alliance were,

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with troops from multiple different states.

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But there were also non-German serving in the ranks, especially Poles.

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Let's take a closer look at one Polish Germans war.

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and ends up in hospital in the Garrison town of Ludwigsburg with a dangerous infection.

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He refuses to allow his leg to be

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amputated and dies of blood poisoning and exhaustion in September,

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1870, more than 1,000 kilometers away from his homeland.

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Martin Novak and 32 others are commemorated on the monument

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to German warriors in Ludwigsburg Old Cemetery.

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Five of the names are those of other Prussian Poles.

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Our researcher and co-writer, Catherine Pfauth,

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shot video with the monument where Martin is commemorated,

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so let's have a look.

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Thanks again for supporting Glory and Defeat,

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and I'll see you next week.

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Hi. My name is Catherine.

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If you've listened in to one of the podcasts on Glory and Defeat,

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you might have heard me say that one of the reasons why this war is still

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important today is because there's still so many leftovers to be found everywhere,

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for example, but not limited to street name statues and memorials.

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I'm currently standing in front of a memorial in Ludwigsburg in Germany.

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This big boy here was built in 1872,

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by the sanitates found at Ludwigsburg which build one of the hospitals for the war.

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Besides the many symbolic declarations,

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names are also engraved on this part of the monument.

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The soldiers were buried on this area what today the monument stands.

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One of the soldiers was named Martin Novak,

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and he was injured on this day,

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151 years ago during the Battle of Berg on August 6th,

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and he died here in September in Ludwigsburg after

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refusing a potentially life-saving amputation of one of his legs.

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It is interesting to note that the hospital in Ludwigsburg have very high death rate,

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it came out that the doctor search for splinters in the wounds with their fingers and

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Martin Novak was from the small town in the Province of Posen in Prussia.

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This region had become a part of Prussia when

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not with the probes intended for this because it

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was easier to find them with their fingers.
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the Kingdom of Poland was partitioned in 1772,

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and was mostly Polish speaking.

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In fact, 2/3 of the population only spoke Polish in 1870.

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Novak is a minority when he joins the 37th Westphalian Fusilier Regiment.

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The officers are all German speakers, and in general,

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the army drafts proportionately fewer Catholic Poles than Protestant Prussians.

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This was mostly because many had trouble understanding orders in German.

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For this reason, Polish was sometimes the second language of command in some units.

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We don't know if Martin spoke German,

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but we do know that he took a Polish Bible with him when he was sent to the front.

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Some Prussian Poles did see the army as a path to social mobility,

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but the Prussian authorities distrusted Polish speaking troops in

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spite of their good performance in the 1866 war against Austria.

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In July 1870, Martin's unit is filled out with

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German-speaking reservists from Berlin and Bladensburg.

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Martin's war ends in tragedy.

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He's badly wounded at the Battle of Verd with a compound fracture of his thigh,