Jacob Paul von Gundling

Jacob Paul Freiherr von Gundling (19 August 1673, Hersbruck – 11 April 1731, Potsdam) was a German historian.

Court Historiographer to King Frederick I of Prussia, he became a figure of ridicule in the "Tobacco Cabinet" (Tabakskollegium) of Frederick William I.

Gundling came from a Franconian family. His father Wolfgang Gundling, who died in 1689, was a pastor at St Sebold in Kirchensittenbach near Nuremberg. Shortly before his birth the family fled to Hersbruck from marauding imperial soldiers. From 1690 to 1693, Gundling attended the Pforta county school in Naumburg, later studying law and history at the universities of Altdorf, Helmstedt and Jena as well as Halle. In 1699 he accompanied the Nuremberg patrician Jacobus von Tetzell on his travels to Holland and England. King Frederick I of Prussia appointed him Professor of History and Law at the Berlin Knights' Academy in 1705, and as historian at the Chief Herald's Office in 1706. The Chief Herald's Office was responsible for verifying the genealogical credentials of nobles seeking public office.

Gundling's position was, at first, an enviable one. Like many other foreign intellectuals he was attracted to Potsdam by Frederick I's lavish patronage and enlightenment ideas. He accompanied the king wherever he went, to supply him with erudite conversation, and was served food from his table. The king's dining room had had a sort of pulpit erected in it, from which Gundling, as royal newspaper reader, would expound on the topics in the news while the guests were eating.

After the death of the king in 1713, his son, the 'soldier king' Friedrich Wilhelm I dispensed with all of his father's cultured ways and abolished the Knights' Academy, but appointed Gundling to be his Councilor and historian. However his role at the Prussian court came more to resemble that of court jester, as he became the butt of many cruel taunts and practical jokes perpetrated by the King's rowdy and sometimes violent associates in the so-called 'Tobacco Cabinet'. Under the late King Frederick I, the Tobacco Cabinet had been a relaxed and informal social circle, including women, which ran on a convivial basis. His son Frederick William I maintained the institution, but fundamentally changed its character. It became an all-male society, whose members were mostly military men who gathered in sparsely-furnished rooms to smoke, hold discussions and drink to excess.

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