A Visit from the King
O King of heaven and of earth,
Hear Thou our prayer and plea,
That we may soon in rapture be,
And our beloved King may see,
Creating, with His mighty hand,
For us a newer Fatherland.
Thy blessing on His noble reign,
And keep in Him the soul and nerve,
That blessed labour to sustain,
That draws the eyes of all the world:
Preservest Thou Him and his house,
Then hear our praise in
heart and voice.
1732 Salzburger Poem
The country was repopulated, with fields planted and trade established until  "it again possesses over
one half million inhabitants and counts more cities and cattle than in former times, has more
prosperity and fertility than possibly any area of Germany. And all of that thanks to the King, who
arranged the execution personally and also led it. He alone sketched the plans and he alone began
this; he spared nothing . They and their posterity owe their well-being being to him alone." By the
time young Friedrich ll took the throne, Prussia had 2,400,000 people, 600,000 of them exiles and or
their descendants. In his reign, he introduced another 300,000 immigrants. By 1786, one third of
Prussia's population was of non-Prussian birth or foreign descent.
He speaks of it as a "Creation of the King, my father," and he relates how the province was
devastated by the plague which killed 300,000 inhabitants had died and the misery that followed, the
farms and fields all being overgrown and deserted, and even the cattle dead: "Our most flowering
province had been transformed into the most terrible desert." He continues: "Greatly agitated by the
public misfortune, he went there on the spot and saw the great devastation which had followed the
epidemic, such as the famine. There were 400 to 500 uninhabited, depopulated villages,12 to 15 of
which were hopeless. The King spared no expense in order to carry out his  ideas and intentions to
rebuild everything that the plague had destroyed, and let thousands of families from all corners of
Europe come."
In Christian-Royal mercy and heartfelt sympathy
of Our Evangelical co-religionists...
since the aforesaid are being obliged to leave
their Fatherland purely and entirely on account
of their faith, We have decided to extend to them
a mild and helping Hand,
and to this end to receive them in Our Land,
and to preserve and to care for them in
certain districts of Our Prussian Kingdom.
The Archbishop is requested in friendship
to consider and treat them,
as many of them as wish and intend
to go to Our Lands, henceforth as Prussian subjects
Friedrich Wilhelm's Invitation to Salzburgers; 1732
As a crown prince, the future Friedrich the Great accompanied his father on a tour of East Prussia in
the summer following the arrival of the Salzburgers, and he was impressed at the success of his
father's settlement policies. He wrote Voltaire in 1739, describing the area as "Europe's little known
province, which deserves to be certainly more well-known."
THE SALZBURGERS: EAST PRUSSIA