They lost all court cases that considered the matter, but when the couple turned to Frederick II, the king inter alia quashed the decisions of the Prussian courts, imprisoned some of the deciding judges, dismissed Maximilian von Fürst und Kupferberg [de], a leading figure in the administration of justice, and restored the mill and its water supply to the Arnolds.
The water miller Christian Arnold operated a water-powered grain mill (the Krebsmühle)[1] near Pommerzig in the Oderbruch, in what is now Pomorsko, Zielona Góra County, Lubusz Voivodeship, in western Poland.
[3] Under the original leasehold contract of 1710, Arnold and his wife, Rosine, owed an annual payment of three Malter [de] of grain and 10 taler to their landlord von Schmettau.
In June 1773, the court – assessor Johann Friedrich Schlecker (the Justitiarius of von Schmettau) – upheld the action and instructed the Arnolds to pay up or face expulsion.
[3] This person resold the grain mill to Georg Samuel Wilhelm von Gersdorf, the nobleman, who, according to the Arnolds, had originally caused the issue by diverting the water supply upstream.
[3] In February 1779, von Gersdorf resold the water mill for a profit of 200 taler to "Widow Poelchen", who – according to David M. Luebke – was "in all likelihood [...] Christian Arnold's sister, Anna Maria.
The king gave the reasons for his intervention in a protocol dated 11 December 1779[11] that was to be printed in the newspapers: Darnach mögen sich die Justiz-Collegia in allen Provinzen nur zu richten haben, und wo sie nicht mit der Justiz ohne alles Ansehen der Person und des Standes gerade durch gehen, sondern die natürliche Billigkeit bei Seite setzen, so sollen sie es mit Sr. Königl.
The judicial colleges in all provinces may only be guided by this, and if they do not go straight through with justice without regard to person and rank, but set aside natural equity, they shall have to deal with HRH.
For a judicial college that practices injustice is more dangerous and worse than a gang of thieves, from whom one can protect oneself, but from rogues who use the cloak of justice to carry out their evil passions, from whom no man can beware.
After their audience with Frederick II, the three Kammergericht judges (Friedel, Gaun and Ransleben) were arrested on the king's order and imprisoned at Spandau prison.
[16] Also on 11 December 1779, the Prussian Minister of Justice, Karl Abraham Zedlitz, received the following cabinet decree (Kabinettsordre) from the king: So gebe Euch hierdurch auf, daß von Seiten des Criminal-Collegii über diese 3 Leute nach der Schärfe der Gesetze gesprochen und zum mindesten auf Cassation und Festungsarrest erkannt wird, wobey ich Euch auch zugleich zu erkennen gebe, daß, wenn das nicht mit aller Strenge geschieht, Ihr sowohl als auch das Criminalkollegium es mit mir zu thun kriegen werdet.
[19] Frederick II nevertheless commanded von Zedlitz on 27 December 1779[20] to order that all judges involved be sentenced according to the severity of the law.
When von Zedlitz refused, the king himself sentenced the judges (but not the judges of the criminal panel who refused to sentence their colleagues)[21] by cabinet decree (Kabinettsordre) on 1 January 1780: He acquitted Scheibler (Neumark provincial court) and Ransleben (Kammergericht) but convicted all the six other judges (Buch, Bandel, Neumann [Neumark provincial court], Friedel, Gaun [Kammergericht] and Schlecker [patrimonial court]) involved in the case and sentenced them each to one year imprisonment ("Festungshaft [de]") in Spandau prison.
[25] The case of Christian and Rosine Arnold was finally resolved when Frederick II ordered the restoration of the grain mill to them and sentenced the judges he had convicted to indemnify the couple fully for their incurred costs ("völlig in integrum restituirt").
[22] The Italian engraver Vincenzio Vangelisti positively immortalised the case and the king's interventions with his copperplate etching "Balance de Frederic".
[28] Concerning the legality of the interventions by Frederick II, the general view is that the actions of the king were lawful in a formal constitutional sense as they were consistent with the jurisprudential powers of an absolutist monarch.
[24] The more important, higher, scholarly debate concerns how the interventions of the king in a specific court case should be viewed.
A classic view (held, e.g., by Eberhard Schmidt [de]) is that the intervention of Frederick II in the Arnolds' case was illegitimate and constituted a "judicial catastrophe" ("Justizkatastrophe").