Johann Friedrich Domhardt

Johann Friedrich Domhardt (18 September 1712 – 20 November 1781), was one of the most important and successful administrative officials of Frederick the Great's Prussia. He was the first President of East and West Prussia. Under his leadership, Frederick's royal stud farm was secured from Russian invasion and he developed and organized profitable settlement and agriculture in East Prussia. Family and education Domhardt was the son of a domain tenant who immigrated from the Anhalt in 1724 to the north-east of Prussia. His parents were Justus Heinrich Domhardt († 1736) and his wife Katharina Gertrud Trüstedt, who came from a family of civic leaders in Gardelegen, Saxony-Anhalt. He attended the Martineum (Halberstadt) and the Royal Litvian Provincial School and acquired a good school education. His father died when he was 19 years old. Subsequently, he took over his father's lease of the property in Ragnit. His efforts to improve farming drew the attention of Frederick William I. From 1732, Frederick William had resettled the area with Protestant refugees from the Archbishopric of Salzburg, who had been exiled by Prince-Archbishop Count Leopold Anton von Firmian. In addition, the King's son, the crown prince and later King Frederick II, became acquainted with Domhardt by 1735. When Frederick's father gave him control of the Trakehner stud farm, the Crown Prince entrusted Domhardt with the sole supervision of the royal stables, which provided much of the blood stock for the Prussian cavalry. Upon his own ascension to the throne, Frederick remembered Domhardt's ability to grasp difficult tasks, to recognize and appropriately use the given circumstances, to maintain a firmness of judgment, to exercise power and diligence; these attributes, Frederick thought, made Domhardt an ideal of a Prussian state official. Consequently, after his accession to the throne, Frederick appointed him as a royal counselor and eventually president of the Gumbinnen Chamberin 1746. By improving local roads and rivers, and harnessing the energies of the Protestant refugees, Domhardt helped the region emerge as a critical "breadbasket" for the rest of Prussia.