details on 9th Co, 5th Regiment of 4th East Prussian Grenadiers

[LynJohn]

Hi everyone

Not sure if this is the correct place to put this request- my apologies if it isn't.

I am searching for some information in regard to the Franco Prussian war, in particular the 9th Co, 5th Regiment of the 4th East Prussian grenadiers.
Where could I get some information on where they fought?
Any chance of finding any photographs of that Regiment?

I am particularly interested in a Private Peter von Sznarski who was awarded a medal in Ortelsburg in August 1871.
Thanks in anticipation.

[Hoplophile]

As a rule, the first place to look for information of this sort is the regimental history of the unit in question. So, I did a little search for such a book.
Unfortunately, the volume of the three-volume history of the regiment that deals with the Franco-Prussian War was never published. (The attachment is the relevant page from Eike Mohr's catalog of German regimental histories.)

Mohr Page 86.pdf

(27.76 KiB) Downloaded 54 times

The next place to look is in the official history of the German armies in the Franco-Prussian War. This should include appendices that lay out of the orders of battle of various German armies. I will go looking for these at some point in the near future and, soon thereafter, will let you know what I find.

[Hoplophile]

It turns out that the entirety of the German official history of the Franco-Prussian War was translated into English and published in the UK in the 1880s.

You can find the whole thing on the website of the Hathi Trust.

https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/006298289

You can get a good sense of the service of the regiment in question [Grenadier-Regiment König Friedrich  I.
(4. Ostpreußisches) Nr. 5] by looking at the casualty tables for particular battles that are appended to each volume.