(1785-1813)
The fusilier, Renz, is supposed to have cried out, "Mister Lieutenant, I’m a girl!", when he was hit and severely wounded by grapeshot in the battle of the Göhrde in 1813. On October 5, Maria Christiane Eleonore Prochaska died in Dannenberg "under unspeakable suffering", as Lieutenant Förster wrote in his report.
Born as the daughter of a Prussian sergeant in 1785, Eleonore grew up in the Great Military Orphanage in Potsdam. In 1813 she decided to participate in the fight for liberation against Napoleon and joined the Lützow Free Corps taking the name August Renz.
Today a monument on the Old Cemetery in Potsdam (1889) and a plaque in the Great Orphanage stand as memorials to her.
