cahn | Frederick the Great, discussion post 6

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frederick the great

Frederick the Great, discussion post 6

...I think we need another one (seriously, you guys, this is THE BEST) and I'd better make it now before I disappear into the wilds of music performance.

(also, as of this week there are two Frederician fics in the yuletide archive and eeeeeeeeeee)
(huh, only one of them is actually tagged with Frederick the Great even though two with Maria Theresia and Wilhelmine, eeeeeee this is awesome I CAN'T WAIT)

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As opposed to volume 2 - which had all the Seven Years War stuff in addition to Lehndorff's love agonies and his familiy relationships, which help flesh him out beyond the court, volume 3 is where I can understand why the Editor cut a lot of this for the original one volume edition, only excerpting the drama around future FW2's first marriage. Once the dust from the war settles down, we're in for a lot of court intrigue, this courtier versus that courtier, and it's just not very interesting to posterity (or even from a fanfiction pov), with a few exceptions:

1. the death of Lehndorff's fourth born child and just half a year or later his poor first wife. Whom he does care for; he had gotten finally permission by Fritz to travel abroad - remember, Prussian nobles have to ask the King for this - and because she is so sick, he abandons this longed for goal and instead goes with her to a spa in the vain hope she might recover. When she dies, Heinrich proves their relationship isn't one sided as a friendship and is there for comfort, visiting, taking him to Rheinsberg and then on a trip to the Netherlands.

2. the Swedish visits, both of Gustav en route and of Ulrike later. As I guessed, Lehndorff was Ziebura's source for much of her description of these visits from her Heinrich bio, with the notable exceptions of the shared Fritz 'n Heinrich concern about both Gustav and his mother wanting to otherthrow the Swedish constitution; her quotes there were directly from Fritz' letters to Heinrich and vice versa. Heinrich in general tells Lehndorff about political stuff such as the partitioning of Poland only after it has happened - Lehndorff thought Heinrich going first to Sweden to visit his sister (when the later's husband was still alive) and then from there to visit Russia for a long time was a pleasure cruise until news got out, and even then, there are more stories about Russia per se and Catherine (Heinrich definitely was a fan). While being treated to travelogues isn't bad, it's also part of Lehndorff's general frustration, more on a moment. Anyway, while Lehndorff when in Rheinsberg of course notices whenever the fraternal correspondance intensifies to more than one letter per week, he doesn't get told why, he's just worried it means war because it's clear this must be politics.

(Lehndorff marries a second time and has a living child and another dying shortly after birth within the time frame of the journals, but second Mrs. Lehndorff mostly gets general terms of "pleased with my beautiful wife, and thank God my mother in law isn't as awful as the last one), with understandable fretting whenever she's in labor.)

There are also the various Heinrich boyfriends, Kalkreuther, Mara and Kaphengst, and while Lehndorff devotes considerable page time to just how much they suck and how unworthy they are, this also increases his bitterness. He tries to console himself on general "these guys come and go, but I, who met Heinrich in 1746, am still around as a friend in the 1770s, and he's never dumped me!", but only a year later, that line of thinking has rather reversed: why is Heinrich willing to go to such lengths for these guys, spend lots of money on them, gets them what they want, takes them blatantly taking advantage of him and screwing other people while with him - and is "less generous to his friends"? Why does Lehndorff STILL have the same dead end job he had at 19! (Yes, he was 19 when he started as EC's chamberlain.) And he can't even tell himself the King only promotes foreigners anymore, because other Prussians, nobles and non nobles alike, do get promoted.

All of which eventually leads to him resigning his post and withdrawing to his family seat in the countryside with his family as a private citizen. In the previous year, he's found a new bff in the form of the premiere Polish poet and thinker of the age... who also happens to be a Catholic Prince Bishop. This guy, whose bishop seat is in the neighbourhood, and who is now "my wonderful Ermland", "my dearest Ermland", etc. Never let it be said Lehndorff doesn't know how to pick them: the Prince Bishop is both a great mind, evidently charming, and ultimately unavailable (or is he? Wiki doesn't say how serious he took his vows). This is in 1775, and that's how far the printed diaries go, although Ziebura in her book on the trio of unwanted wives quotes a later entry from when Lehndorff and second Mrs. Lehndorff are visiting Berlin and see the widowed EC taking pleasure strolling through the Tiergarten. As far as I remember from the Heinrich bio, they keep in contact via correspondance and the occasional visit as well, but you can't blame Lehndorff for finally doing what, from his own emotional pov, he should have done eons earlier - quit a dead end job he doesn't like and end the cycle of "I love you, why don't you love me the way I love you?"

(Though: even if he had ever been one of Heinrich's favourites, he'd never been involved in the political goings on. Heinrich may have thrown money at his guys lilke you wouldn't believe, but the most he ever got them, position wise, were commissions in the army, and not on a command level. Certainly nothing involving secret negotiations, about which he kept mum. I think one key to the hateship of his life was that Fritz really could trust him. Heinrich might have wanted to strangle him a lot of the time, but he'd never ever betrayed his brother's confidence.)

General trivia: Lehndorff the Prussian patriot and Francophile, when he's finally making it to Paris, loves it there, but, he'll have you know, he thinks Sanssouci is every bit as beautiful as Versailles, so there.

Poor Peter III's public image in Prussia goes really down. In 1762/63, he's of course wonderful, a savior of the fatherland and worthy admirer of our noble king who reforms like Fritz does, and whose cruel murder is just shocking and horrible. Fast forward to the 1770s, and Lehndorff - who met Peter's mistress when she was visiting Prussia and also met Poniatowski's brother - jots down gossip about Peter's drunken fits of temper and playing with tin soldiers, and when he's narrating a story he's heard about the Catherine/Poniatowski affair from when she was crown princess, it's with admiration for Catherine for getting away with it despite Peter nearly catching and divorcing her. Notably, Catherine escapes the fate of being called MESSALINA, possibly because Heinrich is a fan and won't hear of it, as opposed to poor Elisabeth (first wife of FW2) and even poorer Caroline of Hannover, the Queen of Denmark, whose lover the reformer Struensee is brought down in the ghastly manner I linked in an earlier post in the early 1770s. Lehndorff definitely believes a version of events where Caroline, age 20, is MESSALINA and clearly planned on killing her husband and ruling for her son.

Otoh, when he's in Stettin he actually visits the previous MESSALINA Elisabeth and softens a bit. I'll have the quote for you. I can understand his partisonship here a bit better because future FW2 is Son of beloved dead AW and to Lehndorff just a nice guy whom he can't understand the King being so harsh on. (When you read the entry where Fritz "absolutely wants to make a soldier out of the Crown Prince" and is "incensed at all the French fashion he wears" , you do have an odd sense of deja vu...) More than I can understand Charlotte, who apropos the big family reunion when Ulrike comes to town inevitably meets her former son-in-law for the first time since her daughter got sent to Küstrin, then Stettin for adultery - and embraces him, telling him she loves him dearly and curses the moment she gave life to such a despicable daughter.

(Anna Amalia, also Charlotte's daughter: and this, dear future readers, is why I count myself lucky as Dowager Duchess - after a brief marriage - in Weimar, ruling the state, and raising my kid Carl August on a general "not like a Hohenzollern" principle.)

So, Lehndorff is in Stettin (which he is an increasing amount in the last years of his diary because it's en route to his country house), when lo, he spots Elisabeth the former Messalina strolling by:

With some pity, I see the former Princess of Prussia, who now lives as Princess Elisabeth banished in Stettin. She has the permission to stroll around as she pleases, which she uses amply. (...) The whole distraction the Princess Elisabeth can take is visiting two or three ladies of Stettin society who can hardly be called charming. No gentleman dares to talk to her, other than the fat Duke of Bevern. She dresses in a strange manner, but as she is beautiful, everything suits her well, wherereas the ladies of Stettin who try to imitate her look absurd - two short skirts so one could confuse them with bad ballet dangers, and the heads full of curls so that they look like Medusa from afar. Whereas when I look at the Princess form afar while she strolls down the promenade, she appears like Diana to me. Her pretty little foot is visible, and her legs well above her ankle; she wears a pink corset which suits her beautifully. (...) My wife pays her respect to Princess Elisabeth and returns delighted by her, singing her praises. She claims the Princess is well content, but I can't help but think she must be unhappy.

You know, Lehndorff, I rather doubt that. You go, Elisabeth.

Heinrich is back from the mysterious Russia trip, which might not have been a pleasure cruise after all!

My long awaited dear Prince has returned in the evening. I run at once to him and am full of joy at seeing him again; as he's as normal and kind as if he had never been near the famous Czarina. At first, there are so many people around him that one gets constantly interrupted and loses the thread of one's conversation, but after a while, I remain alone with ihm and Prince Ferdinand. My greatest joy is to find him healthy and well, having put up with the incredibly long journey without a scratch. (...) At nine, I leave my dear prince, delighted to have seen him and talked to him again. He leaves early the next morning for Potsdam.

(...) Was a list of presents Heinrich received from Catherine and other souvenirs he brought from Russia for his friends. He's mum about why he actually was there, though.

When the Margrave of Schwedt - yes, that one, horrid husband of poor Sophie, father of Ferdinand's wife - finally dies not too long after Heinrich is back from partitioning Poland, Lehndorff, who understably couldn't stand the man ("a terrible husband, a terrible father and a terrible ruler") notes the only nice thing you could say about him is that he timed his death right, because the court is already wearing mourning for the King of Sweden (Ulrike's husband), which means they don't have to go to extra morning cloth expenses for the bloody Margrave.

A word on mourning etiquette: not only does the Prussian court wear mourning for people directly related to the royal family - which both the King of Sweden and the Margrave are as brothers-in-law to Fritz - but they also wear mourning when Isabella (of Parma, Joseph's first wife) dies, which did surprise me. (Ditto when FS dies, of course.) But she's the wife if the future Emperor, and it seems even after having just fought the Seven Years War, at least technically Prussia still considers itself part of the Holy Roman Empire?

Gustav, future Verdi tenor, makes his Berlin debut visiting his uncles - again, Lehndorff is not in the know that Fritz has asked Heinrich to team up to talk some sense into nephew, he just think it's splendid the brothers seem to get along currently - , and the rain, it pours. Err, the literal rain, not the metaphorical one.

I see both Kings return, wet to their skin. It is for us a very unusual event to see someone seated at the right of the great Friedrich. Both Kings separate, and the one from Sweden returns to his rooms. A moment later, he bids me enter. I find him leaning at a table and pay my compliments to him, which he returns om am amiable manner and with a charming tone of voice. He is of middle height, has very beautiful eyes, bad skin color, and a natural eloquence. After he has paid me some personalized compliments, he bids me farewell, and I go to his younger brother, the Prince Friedrich Adolf. The later is a delightful apperance, youth itself. I find him with my dear Prince Heinrich, who introduces me with the words: "But I must present you to Lehnsdorff, whom you'll meet again in Rheinsberg", and thus I don't have to say my compliments.

Some months later, Ulrike shows up for her state visit, and we get this exchange upon her first reunion with littlest sister, which totally cracks me up:

"When the Queen embraced her fiercely, she told her: "My dear sister, who fortunate you are to live with our family always!" Whereupon the Princess Amalie did not reply. Thus one can see that what is regarded by one as happiness is of no worth to the other."

So what does Lehndorff think about Ulrike in general, after having been exposed to her for some weeks? Well, first of all, unlike certain Queens who shall remain his boss, she's never boring. But:

I have rarely met a woman with more knowledge and more wit. But alas, these brilliant qualities only bring her misfortune. For she has not learned to make her life agreeable to herself, as she could in her high position. On the contrary, this position contributes to making her unhappy. She knows no higher happiness than despotic rule while living in a country where the very phrase is a crime. In religious matters, she's a free thinker while the higher clergy of Sweden clutches to the letter of the bible. She openly admits to not being able to disguise herself, and since she does not love Sweden, she uses the most terrible phrases for this country. She is a deist, scorns priests and praises despotism, all of which in mockery of her Swedish entourage, who of course hasten to report all of this back home. She is arrogant, though she is kind on a personal level, as long as she doesn't believe one is lacking in the proper respect towards her. And the later is true for the entire diplomatic corps in Berlin in her eyes. (...) A for me, I lunch with her daily and I have to say, she's incredibly amiable on these occasions. But it does annoy people she rarely talks to women. She does treat her ladies rather haughtily. When the poor Countess Sinclair wanted to sit down opposite of her a few days ago, her majesty told her: "My dear, you are my daily bread, sit elsehwere."

In Ulrike's favour (for us, not for Lehndorff): Lehndorff notes she tries to reconcile Heinrich to Mina. Fat chance, alas. I should say something about Lehndorff & the wife of his dearest prince: for obvious reasons, he's never jealous and speaks only positively about her until Heinrich starts to ostracize her for real, and then our courtier basically shrugs and thinks, well, tough, but c'est la vie.

Lehndorff is the source for the big sibling "who was worse?" argument, which it turns out Ziebura rendered almost verbatim, only slightly paraphrased, in her biography, so I shan't repeat it here again (you already know my own paraphrase and have the upload from Ziebura). However, what she doesn't include are two direct sentences, one from Amalie, one from Heinrich, both in German. (Again, Lehndorff's diary itself is written in French, so when he suddenly goes into German, it means people are actually using German.) Given Heinrich pretended not to speak it at all, it is, of course, telling that when things heat up in dear old Wusterhausen, he and Amalie switch to German to really have a go at each other. It's also noteworthy that they use "du", whereas otherwise Fritz & siblings are vous-ing each other in their French correspondance. The sentences are:

Amalie: "Min mutter hät mi einmal so geärgert, det ich fast the schwere Rothe von gekriegt!"
Heinrich: "Ich wollte dass du sie noch hättest weil du so übel von deiner Mutter sprichst!"

(Amalie - in nothern German dialect, btw - "My mother once so upset me that I nearly got smallpox!"
Heinrich : I wish you did if you talk so badly about your mother!")

But that exchange is the only thing Ziebura did not quote. Oh, and Mildred, you wondered whether Fritz heard about the big argument, and whether he had anything to say to Amalie about her stand: Lehndorff doesn't tell, but he does mention being bewildered Fritz gives Amalie another 5000 Taler as a present about a week later. (In general, one gets the impression that after Wilhelmine's death, Amalie got promoted to favourite sister, much to Charlotte's and Ulrike's Frustration.)

Re: Ulrike's visit in Rheinsberg, things are relaxed enough that she shows up in her morning gown instead of in full regal robes all of the time. Lehndorff reports on the festivities (including that Mara and Schmeling to a lot of musical numbers together), but doesn't clue into the budding Mara/Schmeling affair until afterwards. Last but one quote, representative of Lehndorff's takes on Heinrich's boyfriends in general:

Another matter which amazed me was that Prince Heinrich finally decided to fire the infamous Mara, who had such influence on him. He was the son of a local poor musician and was educated as a boy through the benevolence of the late Prince of Prussia who financed his study of music, at which he soon made great progress. After the death of this prince, Prince Heinrich took him into his service. Despite Mara playing pranks all the time, but Prince Heinrich in consideration of his great talents was lenient. Mara possesses a vivacious, passionate temper, and not fourteen days passed without him arguing with the Prince who nonetheless treated him leniently, which spoiled him completely. Four years ago, he already left the Prince once already and went to Paris, and the Prince not only paid for his journey but allowed him to come back upon his return. Last winter, Mara left him once already, and in order to win him back, the Prince had to concede him the greatest privileges. Thus Mara was allowed to get as many meals as he wanted and for as many people as he wanted from the kitchen, he had a courtly equipage, he had a large apartment in the Prince's town residence, in which he was allowed to install Fräulein Schmeling, our first singer, of whom he is enamored. This still wasn't enough for him, and he behaved so badly that the prince finally sent him away.

One can see why Fritz was able to predict Mara was not great husband material....On the bright side, Lehndorff considers the Mara news as a signal he should visit Rheinsberg again, for:

I travel to Rheinsberg. The joy of coming to such a beautiful place and to the amiable lord of it make the long tedious journey bearable. (...) Here, I lead a delicious life. No one on earth can make himself so agreable in day to day living with him as the Prince. Despite us usually being only four at the table - the Prince, myself, Lodwig Wreech and Baron Knyphausen - time flies and we rarely separate before one in the morning. At always spirited conversation, music, painting and reading time flies so pleasantly that one is full of regret to find it did, finally, end.

I hear you, Lehndorff. And thus I conclude, too, my write ups from your diaries. You probably did the right thing at finally calling it quits with the Hohenzollern court, but I must say, I shall miss you!

Edited 2019-12-12 10:32 (UTC)

ZOMG. So I was looking for the red-headed Staatsminister, found yet another son of Heinrich Christoph (chamber president at Magdeburg), Ludolph August, who was still alive when Lehndorff reported the Staatsminister having died, so, idk. Was there a fifth son? Is my source saying that the Staatsminister is the brother of Carl Aemilius wrong?

But then I found interesting findings, including things we had been wondering about.

1) A letter from Hans Heinrich to his brother Heinrich Christoph when Hans Hermann's involvement in the escape attempt was revealed. Hans Heinrich apparently says that he's decided he has to abandon his son and prefer his oath and his duty, and leave his son to the mercy of the King and God. It's obviously not his private thoughts about how justified his son might or might not have been, and we already knew he kept his oath (there was reeeeally no point in doing otherwise at this late date even if he'd been so inclined, which I doubt) and only interceded to try to got the death sentence verdict changed, but it is a little bit revealing of what he's thinking.

2) And remember when I said I had read in a very unreliable source about Hans Hermann's cervical vertebrae and teeth were taken by souvenir hunters? I found our source.

And guess what? Both of those are from the same chapter in Fontane! Who has all the good stuff. Man, if *he* had been chamberlain of EC, he would have given us the gossip of our wildest sensationalist dreams. :P

It looks from this page like he went to Wust and actually opened the coffin and looked at it, saw the missing vertebra, and is generally responsible for the description of the blue silk coat and the ribbon that tied his hair and such that I've seen floating around the internet. Oh, and he's also responsible for the description of Katte's reburial that I've seen (though I can't tell from Google how much of that is imaginative?).

Also, that letter. Would you like to translate it for us? I got the gist from my friend Google, but it looks like there's more gossip involving one of Heinrich Christoph's sons, and a letter that Hans Heinrich forwarded to the king? I would like to have this one correct.

Also, the dates Fontane gives are radically different from the dates in Wikipedia (as was the case with Fredersdorf's marriage): he has Heinrich Christoph dying in 1760; Wikipedia in 1743. He has Ludolf August as the oldest son and heir; Wikipedia as the youngest of the four I've found so far. So idk.

Oh, I also discovered the Katte: Ordre und Kriegsartikel volume I've mentioned before, the one that supposedly has Hans Hermann trying to escape to England in 1729 (but who even knows what's really going on), is available on Google Books for only $9.99, which is cheaper than the 14 euros at the other link I'd found. Hmmm.

So digging for Katte family gossip continues!

Oh, and Wikipedia has Hans Heinrich buried in a church in Berlin that got destroyed during the war, but both Fontane and an actual picture of the inside of the Katte mausoleum have him buried in Wust, alongside both his wives and the sons who killed each other in a duel, so I trust that over Wikipedia.

Oh, the picture of the mausoleum confirms Fontane's account of the presence of Ferdinand von Katte (1761-1845), who was *obsessed* with collecting boots and was called Stiefelkatte (boot-Katte) as a result, lol. (Although Fontane seems to present Ferdinand as the younger son of Ludolf, and the picture I'm looking at as the nephew.)

Onward and upward!

We shall all miss you, Lehndorff. :D

Thank you SO much, again and again, for your lovely, informative, and entertaining write-ups!

"When the Queen embraced her fiercely, she told her: "My dear sister, who fortunate you are to live with our family always!" Whereupon the Princess Amalie did not reply. Thus one can see that what is regarded by one as happiness is of no worth to the other."

Hahahahaaa. Family therapy for everyone, seriously.

In religious matters, she's a free thinker

Are *any* of FW's kids not? He really seems to have failed signally in Operation Piety, even worse than he failed in Operation Compulsory Heterosexuality.

they also wear mourning when Isabella (of Parma, Joseph's first wife) dies, which did surprise me. (Ditto when FS dies, of course.) But she's the wife if the future Emperor, and it seems even after having just fought the Seven Years War, at least technically Prussia still considers itself part of the Holy Roman Empire?

That's super interesting!

(When you read the entry where Fritz "absolutely wants to make a soldier out of the Crown Prince" and is "incensed at all the French fashion he wears" , you do have an odd sense of deja vu...)

You do. Yet another passage I've seen that turns out to be from Lehndorff...

I guess you're only supposed to wear French fashion in the late afternoons and evenings, after you get back from reviewing the troops in uniform. What was it Voltaire said, Fritz's court was "Sparta in the morning, Athens in the afternoon"? Fritz, you're being very specific about your requirements here. :P Stop traumatizing the next generation.

Okay, the Fontane chapter about Wust contains two imagined scenes - one of Hans Heinrich coming home from the wars and meeting child!Hans Herrmann for the first time since the later was a baby, and the other of Hans Hermann's funeral. I guess Theo F. could not reign in his inner novelist entirely. The rest of the text seems to be based on what he found out through the sources available to an interested layman at the time, which didn't include Lehndorff's diaries. Fascinatingly, they do provide some background on Lehndorff's cousin, because as I recall Lehndorff mentions (in his report on the odious Katte wedding party) that her maiden name was du Rosey. Well, according to Fontane the following happened

Fritz: *gets to the throne, starts to marry people off (he did this a lot for financial and political reasons, his own opinion on marriage not withstanding*

Kattes: *get offered Demoiselle Rolas du Rosey, rich heiress and cousin to one Lehndorff, for Heinrich Christoph's second son*

Ludolf August, oldest son of Heinrich Christoph: *checks out rich bride, decides to have her for himself*

Another miserable marriage: *gets made*

Not that Fontane says it was miserable; as I said, he didn't have Lehndorff's diaries. Not that Lehndorff was unbiased, given his backstory with her, but I doubt that if his cousin had been wonderfully happy, he'd have invented a bad marriage for her. So anyway, Ludolf August is the husband of Frau von Katte my amiable cousin ("We were meant for each other!"). Fontane says Fritz didn't care which Katte got the rich bride, as long as the family profited. He also assumes it was a happy marriage, but, well, see above.

Re: Hans Heinrich's letter, Fontane says that later letters (which he doesn't quote) prove that it had never occured to Hans Heinrich that the King would go for the death penalty when he wrote the first one, that he had assumed it would be prison. Now for the text - in rokoko German:

My dear brother!

With what sadness I grab my quill, God knows. You will have regretfully heard from your son in the Empire how our godless children have put themselves into the greatest labyrinth, and thus has your son written to the Major von Rochau. The later has forwarded this letter to me with the batman, as I am currently in Königsberg and must stay here. I have regarded it as my duty to abandon my son, to keep my oath and my obligation, and have sent your son's letter to the King with a messenger. If my son hasn't succeeded in his desertion, the King will probably arrest him. I cannot do more than sigh and leave him to God and the King's mercy. Adieu, my dear brother. God give us strength in our misery. I am your loyal brother, H.H. Katt.

Fontane says the letter is dated Königsberg, 25th August. If I recall my dates correctly, Fritz gets arrested on the 12th, Willhelmine hears about it on the 15th or 16th of August at the ball in Monbiijou, with Katte being arrested that same day. So how does this timeline work - if Cousin Katte sent the letter first to Dad Katte and Dad Katte to the King?

ETA: also, is Cousin Johann Friedrich the unfortunate General maybe identical with the letter forwarder? If so, has Fritz a second motive for the court martial?

Edited 2019-12-12 14:40 (UTC)

Just to make matters more confusing: Lehndorff mentions - post 7 Years War, so definitely not identical with Quartermaster Marwitz - both a (described as fat) "Colonel Marwitz" whom he visits Paris with - "der dicke Marwitz" - , and a "Chevalier Marwitz" whom gossip suspects of having an affair with Ferdinand's wife/niece. What is it with Marwitz/Hohenzollern pairings? And if Chevalier Marwitz is identical with former page and guardsman Marwitz, does he want to start a family collection? That truly would amount to a Trenck Level of madness.

Emilie du Chatelet sounds absolutely fascinating, and I look forward to your report. Mind you, from a distance it looks to me as if Voltaire might have gotten along better with women in general? Including those with more social power than him (Madame du Pompadour, Wilhelmine, Catherine), all of whom didn't have the drama going on with him that Fritz did. But then they wouldn't have wanted to elope with him, either. (Yes, that includes Wilhelmine, 1926!Editor. I've read her letters about and to Voltaire, and she's not "ihm hopelessly verfallen", that's her brother.) Another noble woman on friendly footing with Voltaire: one Countess Bentinck (yes, that one), whom he met when getting Fritz' "Anti-Machiavel" to the printing press. Supposedly, she beta-read somewhat, which is one of the reasons she showed up in Berlin later hoping for support for her claim to her inherited principality. (Talk about deja vue: her father had no male heir and tried to get a, yes, really, pragmatic sanction from the Emperor in order to be able for her to inherit regardless while her husband, Reichsgraf Bentinck, was supposed to rule. Alas for her, that guy was no Franz Stephan. They hated each other, she left him after two legal sons and had two illegitimate kids with the cousin she'd been in love with before, then met and befriended Voltaire, then decided new King Frederick sounded like a swell guy to support her claim on Oldenburg and went to Berlin upon Voltaire's reccomendation. Supposedly, the character of Cunegonde in Candide is based on her. As mentioned, Lehndorff started off in an "scandalous woman, paws off my Heinrich!!!!" vein and then found himself climbing the tower of Charlottenburg with her, so she must have been something. After seeing she didn't get anywhere with either brother, she went to Vienna for a while (fellow female Pragmatic Sanction rulers unite) and MT was amazingly cool with her despite the scandalous reputation, but as the principality was firmly in the claws of her husband and the husband was Protestant, there wasn't much to be done. The Countess then went to Hamburg and lived there with her illegitimate kids for the remaining 30 years of her life.

Mimi: look, if the Earl of Rochester could keep a monkey, whom he definitely did not feed and water himself, I'm sure Fritz find the staff. That is, Fredersdorf found them for him. :) But yes, she made it to Sanssouci. I haven't seen mention of another monkey anywhere, so I suppose she was the only one.

Voltaire-Fredersdorf: 1926 Editor claims Voltaire did write him another letter, in (bad) German, as an example of how low Voltaire could sink in attempted flattery, but doesn't quote the other letter. Maybe that one is yours? Anyway, yes, Fredersdorf seems to have just passed it on to Fritz with no comment. Wise man, Fredersdorf. Voltaire of course sounds a bit sniffily about him in the quotes I've seen ("managed everything at Frederick's court and behaved like it, too").

Edited 2019-12-12 16:15 (UTC)

OMG. I don't know how I got it into my head that it was a General Katte forwarding the letters. I was going from memory, but I went from memory because I felt pretty confident about it. Maybe one of my sources used his final rank, but now that I bother to look it up, my two actual biographers say he was a captain/Rittmeister, and one names him as Hans Friedrich von Katte.

So yes, it's him. Unfortunate General is the letter forwarder, and he's the brother of the General Katte whose marriage Lehndorff attends. We were closer than we thought! (By dint of my memory being way off the mark about which generation this would be.)

Chronology: both biographers agree Johann Friedrich Katte contacted Rochow directly to warn him that something was up, because there was all this back-and-forth between Fritz and cousin Hans Hermann. I have a memory of Fritz writing a letter to Hans Hermann in Berlin, but it ending up in the hands of Johann Friedrich because Fritz didn't specify the city. However, neither of my biographers mention this, and my memory sure won't tell me, so I'm not sure where I got this anecdote.

Anyway, it doesn't matter, because Johann Friedrich contacted Rochow directly before the escape attempt even happened, and if he was forwarding an actual letter, he did it directly to the royal party. My interpretation is that he separately wrote to uncle Hans Heinrich, Hans Hermann's dad, to say, "Hey, your son seems to be Up To No Good." Hans Heinrich, all the way over in Königsberg, way behind the times, doesn't realize nephew Johann Friedrich has already informed the king and that his son has already been arrested in Berlin. It's the 18th century, and news travels slowly.

Not knowing all this, Hans Heinrich decides to abandon his son, not engage in a cover-up, and pass Johann Friedrich's message over to the King, just in case FW doesn't already know. Hans Heinrich also writes to his brother Heinrich Christoph to let him know (assuming that he's already been informed by his son Johann Friedrich). Hans Hermann has now been thrown to the wolves by his entire family.

So I think that makes the most sense of the data and chronology we have.

Whether this played a role in Fritz's motives in court-martialing Johann Friedrich the letter forwarder...I want to say no. At most, I don't think it was so much a motive for court-martialing him as perhaps predisposing his paranoid self to go, "Aha! I always knew this guy was no good." But as for motives, we've got the following facts to account for.

- It's been 30 years since it happened and 20 since Fritz had the power to do something about it.
- Fritz made a point of not punishing anyone involved, in or after 1740.
- Fritz court-martialed the other guy involved in the surrender.
- Fritz was so scapegoat-happy that it would be more surprising if he *didn't* cashier the guy who surrendered the capital of Silesia. I think Occam's Razor kicks in here.

I guess Theo F. could not reign in his inner novelist entirely.

Haha. I could tell immediately that bb!Hans Hermann was pure fiction, but I wasn't sure how much of the funeral scene might have been based on actual sources. Not the dialogue, obviously, but maybe things like the servant's name? Anyway. Hi, Fontane, I write Hans Hermann RPF too! *high fives*

later letters (which he doesn't quote) prove that it had never occured to Hans Heinrich that the King would go for the death penalty when he wrote the first one, that he had assumed it would be prison.

I wonder if he's referring to the appeals for clemency? If you're going to write a "Please don't kill my son" letter to the King after throwing him onto the King's mercy in the first place, presumably you weren't expecting the King's mercy to take the form of killing your son by sword instead of torture. But if Fontane also had more letters from Hans Heinrich to family that he didn't pass on to us readers...well, I forgive you, Fontane, you're still doing a better job of passing on the Katte gossip than Lehndorff.

That is very fascinating re Lehndorff's cousin! It's awesome how we're getting all these stories viewed from different angles. So when Lehndorff said that "Familienintriguen" prevented him from marrying his cousins, this business with Fritz and Ludolf is what he was referring to.

Interesting if Fritz was still trying to do the extended Katte family favors in 1751, long after the immediate family was all dead. Well, long after his parents and grandparents were dead, but I guess only shortly after his brothers were dead.

Actually, Katte's two younger brothers had just died fighting a duel over "one and the same lady" in 1748, thus extinguishing the male line descending from Hans Heinrich. I'm guessing Rolas du Rosey wasn't the lady in question, because if she'd already been promised to the Kattes, she presumably wouldn't have been getting engaged to Lehndorff 3 years later? But maybe Fritz noticed the direct male line of his BFF's father going extinct and decided to help out the cousins?

Also, I really want to know who the "second" son is. (Also want to know who the elusive Staatsminister is.) As noted, my sources are very confused on the number and order of the sons. But Wikipedia does agree Ludolf was the heir and that he married Katharina Marie Rollaz du Rosey in 1755. She died 1776 per Wikipedia, which gives as its source that Katte: Ordre und Kriegsartikel volume that keeps cropping up.

Oh wait, I found the red-headed insufferable Staatsminister. It's Heinrich Christoph, Katte's first cousin, eponymous son of Heinrich Christoph the uncle.

Okay! Looks like we got us some Katte family gossip. Keep in mind all dates are subject to significant error margins.

Hans Heinrich (1681-1741) and Heinrich Christoph (1675-1743) are brothers.

Hans Heinrich, the younger, has two marriages.

Hans Hermann (1704-1730), BFF of Fritz, is the first surviving child of the first marriage. His mother dies when he's only three. I read in some online, probably Google-translated source, that he loved his stepmother like a mother, but have no idea where I read that or whether it's reliable. But, you know. It makes sense.

OMG. Remember when I said Rochow was with the royal party during the escape attempt, that cousin Johann Friedrich was contacting him and that Rochow was trying to prevent Fritz from escaping? Rochow is married to Hans Hermann's sister. I can see the escape attempt was a Katte family affair.

Also, this appears to be the same Rochow who, along with Keyserlingk, was appointed by FW to keep an eye on teenage Fritz years before the escape attempt.

Okay, so Hans Hermann's cousin talks to Hans Hermann's brother-in-law, who writes to Hans Hermann's father, who writes to Hans Hermann's uncle, who all unite in casting him to the wolves. I wasn't kidding about that, apparently.

All right, so now I know who this Rochow fellow is whose name kept cropping up but I didn't make all the connections. Katte's younger sister's husband. His full sister, son of his mother.

Then Hans Heinrich marries again. They have two daughters, two sons. At least one daughter gets mentioned by Lehndorff, Elisabeth Katharina, who was haughty when she was younger but all humble as a married woman. I got the impression her marriage to Johann Gebhard von Winterfeld was unhappy.

selenak, can you check page 318 of volume 2 and get us the gossip?

Then there's Luise Charlotte, who married a Bismarck. A number of the women in this family marry Bismarcks, one of whom (not her) will be the direct ancestress of *the* Bismarck.

Then Hans Hermann's got two younger brothers, who were 9 and 4 when the escape attempt happened. They killed each other in 1748 in a duel over a woman. The Wust holdings then revert to Heinrich Christoph's line. He's the elder brother of Hans Heinrich, and Hans Hermann's uncle. He's the recipient of that letter from Hans Heinrich about Hans Hermann's desertion.

Heinrich Christoph has some number of sons, five that I've come across in all my sources; no one source I can find names all of them, and one daughter.

I can't find anything about the daughter except a name: Dorothea Elisabeth.

Ludolf August is supposedly the eldest son, but his birth date is given by Wikipedia as 1711, which makes no sense, since he seems to end up with the titles. He ends up with Lehndorff's One Who Got Away in 1755, and they have an unhappy marriage, per Lehndorff. Major in the Prussian army. Dies 1779.

Four other sons are:

Johann Friedrich: 1699-1764. Letter forwarder in 1730 and court-martialed lieutenant general in 1757. Married to Henriette Catherine von Truchseß, who attends her brother-in-law's (see Bernhard below) wedding in 1760 and is one of the only people who makes the event bearable for Lehndorff.

Heinrich Christoph: 1699-1760. Yes, Wikipedia gives him the same birth date as Johann Friedrich. Twins, or fast turnaround time? Ah, one source gives 1698 as Johann Friedrich's birth. Anyway, he's the red-headed Staatsminister Lehndorff can't stand.

Bernhard Christian: 1700-1778. Man, that is some turnaround time. 3 surviving kids in 2-3 years. (3 pregnancies would not be surprising. 3 kids who lived into their 60 and 70s is.) Major general in the Prussian army. He marries his mother's half-niece in 1760, at the advanced age of 60, apparently sleeps through his wedding night, and Lehndorff did not have a good time at his wedding.

Karl Aemilius: 1706-1757. Major in the Prussian army.

If Ludolf is really the eldest, but the other dates are correct, that implies Johann is the intended recipient of Fritz's heiress to benefit the family. If that's correct, Fritz really can't be holding a grudge, surely. But the dates are so mixed up I can't tell. Fontane, you could have given us a name!

Anyway. Look at us gossipy sensationalists with scholarly instincts go!

cahn, this is quite a bit of research that you never imagined would happen in your blog, but which we deeply appreciate you facilitating. :D

she's not "ihm hopelessly verfallen", that's her brother.

Indeed, Fritz would have eloped with him to London in a heartbeat if that had been an option. His only really bad judgment when it came to picking a serious partner. (I'm not saying it was sexual, but...something pretty intense there from an intensely homoromantic man.)

Thanks for the Countess Bentinck scoop! Pragmatic Sanction rulers unite!

Mimi: I wasn't wondering who took care of the monkey! Obviously she has staff. The dogs have staff. I was wondering why none of our sources *comment* on the monkey! Monkeys are lively creatures that set manuscripts on fire and do a victory dance over the fiery ashes; they're the sort of thing I'd think you'd notice if you were meeting Fritz and there was one in the vicinity. Especially since his dogs get mentioned all the time. And like you suggested here, how did the dogs and monkey interact? Again, there should be anecdotes!

Gossipy sensationalist wants the gossip, is what I'm saying. :P

1926 Editor claims Voltaire did write him another letter, in (bad) German, as an example of how low Voltaire could sink in attempted flattery

That is low! So Voltaire *did* pick up some German, interesting. I tongue-in-cheek wonder if Fritz thought it contaminated the purity of his French. :P

Fredersdorf is wise, indeed.

Okay, so my most unreliable source has a quote that he says is "almost certainly Voltaire," whatever that means. It's definitely a hilarious quote no matter who said it.

"There is a chancellor, who never speaks, a master of the hunt who wouldn’t dare harm a quail, a grand master who does nothing, a steward who would he hard pressed to tell you whether there is any wine in the cellars, a grand equerry who hasn’t the power to have a horse saddled, a chamberlain, who has never handed him a shirt, a grand master of the wardrobe, who doesn’t know the identity of the court tailor; the functions of all these high-faluting offices are exercised by one man, who is called Fredersdorf."

/snark

Edited 2019-12-13 02:00 (UTC)

Okay, translation incoming. Context: it's war time, war's not looking too good, the court is one the move, mainly, but not exclusively, transferred to Magdeburg. While the court is in progress, of course all the provincial ladies (and whatever gentlemen aren't serving in the army) are going to pay their respects to the Queen. Since there isn't much about Hans' sister but more gossip but a bit about Wust (currently only with female Kattes, since the men are far away, getting casheered and what not), I'm adding that, too.

August 18th. Among others, a Frau v. Winterfeld arrives, whom I had gotten to know in my youth as a high and mighty lady. She is a daughter of the Field Marshal Katte. Now, she's humble and modest, has barely enough to live on and a numerous ugly family around her throat - another example of how changeable human fortune is to me. All these ladies are in a great panic of not being able to see the Queen before she leaves, since they were told that she wanted to withdraw to her rooms after her arrival.
August 19th. Before I leave Lenzen, I must take the time to listen to the terrible complaints of our lady post mistress, a Frau v. Lossow, who tells me how unhappy she was about her sickly husband. As I hear he's been an officer, I ask her whether he was wounded at the arm. She replies: No! At his foot? Again: no! Finally she signals to me through a gesture that it was at a much more unfortunate place for an honorable woman. (...)
September 6th: In three days, I arrive at Wust and Frau v. Katt's, where I have left my wife. Wust is a splendid place, and our hostess does her all to provide her visitors with a good reception. We form a very good society, among others also Fräulein v. Bredow, who was to have married my late brother. But circumstance does not allow us to remain at this pretty place; we must return to godawful Magdeburg. We leave Wust in the morning. Frau v. Katt comes with us as far as Tangermünde.

Lehndorff: if you like Wust, surely you could have visited Hans Herrmann's grave for us when it's still undisturbed? Hint? Hint? But noooo….

Lehndorff hates Magdeburg mainly because he and his wife have to stay with her mother there, and his (mutual) loathing of his mother-in-law runs deep; it's every cliché ever, though he will get along with his second mother-in-law years latler.) Anyway, not much about the sister: is the Winterfeld she's married to identical with the Fritz-favored General who had to give AW the "the reason you suck!" speech in front of everyone? If so, surely she'd have more money, even in war time? Then again: Mina doesn't, having to repeatedly ask Heinrich for her budget, and she's a princess.

In any event, the Katte clan takes human shape, due to our detective work. Re: Hans Herrmann loving his stepmother as his mother, that's in Fontane's Küstrin chapter as far as I recall, but here I seem to recall back up by source - i.e. didn't he write to her a separate letter, or included special greetings in the letter to his father? Something like that.

Rochow: if he's also put in charge by FW to keep an eye on teenage Fritz, he presumably has a pretty good idea what this something had to be, given he'd had a first row seat to FW's educational methods. It also shows why FW, as opposed to Wilhelmine, seems to have had no beef with Hans Herrmann as his son's bff before the desertion attempt - he's of good officer stock, reliable family, etc.

Man, everyone throwing Hans Herrmann to the dogs: obeying the military code, survival pragmatism (so that FW can't possibly blame them as co-conspirators) or both? (Mind you, whatever the motive, it probably was saving their skins. I mean, given FW had no problem having a girl whipped in public several times and putting her into the workhouse for the crime of taking a few walks and playing music with his son, and accuses his daughter of having known all and having slept with her brother's bff to boot, then he'd absoutely have been capable of taking out his ire on the other Kattes if he'd had the slightest reason to assume they were somehow sympathetic to Hans Herrmann & Fritz.) Also, since Hans Heinrich is writing "if my son hasn't succeeded in his desertion" , I'm hoping he's hoping Hans Herrmann has. Given so many others were, and were stumped to find him still in Berlin to be arrested.

Anyway, Fritz doesn't seem to have held the abandonment against them, given all these signs of favour even in 1751, and I agree Cousin Katte would have been court martialed even if he'd been totally uninvolved in the whole sorry tale because that's what Fritz did at this point in these situations. (Unless you were Heinrich and somehow managed not to give him a single opening to.)

Lastly: thank you, cousin Frau von Katte, for being called Katharina Maria - at least you're not another Wilhelmine, Sophia, Dorothea or Amalie! Someone not sharing names with the royal family is really fanfic friendly.

Edited 2019-12-13 06:35 (UTC)

Well, if 1926!Editor, he who swears Fritz did not have a gay bone in his manly fatherly body, finds no other words to describe his hero's feelings for Voltaire than "intellectually in love" - and no, not "loved him spiritually", I know what I'm translating, "intellektuell in ihn verliebt" is the original expression, I think we're all clear that something major was going on.

I sympathize on the frustration of the lack of Mimi anecdotes. Though I sympathize also with whoever was in charge of keeping both Mimi and the dogs happy!

(Lehndorff: this is one job in the Royal household I wold NOT have wanted. Even to be near the King.)

Voltaire picking up some German: he strikes me as a practical man. If you're spending years in Germany where, yes, a great many people speak French, but not necessarily the ones in charge of your well being (servants, cooks etc.), you learn at least enough of the language to say "I like my steak medium, please" or "where do I find the bathroom?". If you additionally are involved in some shady dealings and have ambitions to learn spicy gossip, then knowing the local language is even more useful - at least enough to pick up whether someone is talking about you and/or the King, and whether it's good or bad.

So I doubt whether Voltaire ever cracked a German (untranslated) book, until I'm told otherwise, but I'm not surprised he learned a bit of the language phonetically.

(Since "Candide" actually starts in a German principality and the titular hero as well as his beloved are German, I suppose it also counts as research for a book? And of course Candide is a satire on Leipniz, but I bet, see above, Voltaire read Leipniz in a French translation.)

That is a good quote. :) Though clearly an imperfect list, given that "master of the hunt" is in it and "Spy handler" is not!

Are *any* of FW's kids not?

Well, I don't know whether or not the two daughters with the worst husbands were, Sophie and Luise Friederike, because they were being depressed and sick and bullied, which makes for less certified opinions on anything other than "life sucks". Also Lehndorff reports Ferdinand gets a case of religion in the later phase of the Seven-Years-War, but also that he comes off it again in the mid 1760s, so. Other than that, though: Operation Piety was a bust, even with AW who was exposed to Dad's (positive) influence the most and ended up taking a "religion is okay for the masses if it gives them comfort, but other than baptisms, and weddings, I'm not attending anything" attitude. Probably the inevitable result of a) religion being rammed down everyone's throats when they were children, b) Fritz instead of FW becoming the key influence when they were teens, and c) living in the Age of Enlightenment, when more and more fashionable and/or interesting people (that they interacted with) stopped seeing religion (either Catholic or Protestant) as formative.

(Wilhelmine and Fritz were the two of whom it is really amazingly rebellious, though, since there was no precedent in their lives, and FW was in charge well into their adulthood.)

Glad to see you had the same reaction to the Ulrike-Amalie exchange (or lack of same) as i did. :)

That's super interesting!

And it's not like the Prussian court is wearing mourning for any other (unrelated) royals. When Heinrich does so for Catherine, it's a personal choice, no one else does, despite the fact there's a sort of family relationship since her son is married to future FW3's sister-in-law. And yet, just a short time after fighting the Austrians, it's mourning cloth time because MT's daughter-in-law is dead. Go figure.

Today I had to return my Ziebura biographies and the unreliable Burgdorf to the library. Looked up Ziebura's judgment on the Lehndorff before I did so, and she writes: What exactly Heinrich felt for the Count is hard to say. The Count, however, had found in Heinrich the great love of his life. "I will never be able to love more than right now", he wrote in June 1753 in the diary from which we've already quoted repeatedly. Consequently, he had to endure all the torments of jealousy, the grief of being never put first. But "my passion is stronger than my reason, always" and so he kept his tender affection for the Prince for the next 50 years, despite two marriages and lengthy separations. For his part, Heinrich may have been an unreliable lover, but he was a loyal friend. He kept drawing Lehndorff to his side again and again. Consequently, the diaries of the Chamberlain are the most important source for Heinrich's private life and besides, they are an interesting chronicle of the Prussian Court at the time of Frederick II."

I think we're all clear that something major was going on.

Oh yeah.

Though I sympathize also with whoever was in charge of keeping both Mimi and the dogs happy!

I hope they were separate people! At least at times, they must have been, because Fritz took his dogs on campaign with him, and surely didn't take Mimi or we would have anecdotes. "And then there was the time Mimi fought off the Pandurs single-handedly..." :-P

(Lehndorff: this is one job in the Royal household I wold NOT have wanted. Even to be near the King.)

But Lehndorff! It's not boring! Man, now that you mention it, I wish Lehndorff *had* had this job. Surely, we would have gotten the anecdotes somewhere in those three volumes!

Voltaire: Agreed.

Though clearly an imperfect list, given that "master of the hunt" is in it and "Spy handler" is not!

Ha! Perhaps "spy handler" wasn't common knowledge yet? I don't have a date for this quote, but my impression is that it dates to shortly after Fritz became king, and foreigners are doing their "hot or not?" and "what is the court like?" reports back to their paymasters.

besides, they are an interesting chronicle of the Prussian Court at the time of Frederick II.

Yes. Yes, they are.

(Which Italian poet, Mildred?)

Current evidence points toward Giampetro Tagliazucchi. I found Voltaire's quote in full, and it included a little extra identifying information, namely "His Italian poet, who was obliged to put the operas into verse, of which the King himself gave the plan had little more than a thirtieth part of this sum." So I went and asked Wikipedia who wrote the Italian libretto for Montezuma, and it was Tagliazucchi. I wasn't able to find much more on him; even Italian Wiki doesn't have an entry.

No sooner do I say that than I continue reading, and Voltaire never fails to deliver the gossip aka shade-throwing.

"As for the Italian poet, he one day took care to pay himself with his own hands, for he stript off the gold from the ornaments in an old chapel of the first King of Prussia's; on which occasion Frederick remarked, that as he never went to the chapel he had lost nothing. Besides, he had lately written a dissertation in favour of thieves, which is printed in the collections of his academy; and he did not think proper this time to contradict his writings by his actions."

"This time" aka unlike with the Anti-Machiavel, obviously.

Ouch.

(I'm currently reading Voltaire's memoirs and taking notes. Sensationalist gossip coming soon.)

Lehndorff: if you like Wust, surely you could have visited Hans Herrmann's grave for us when it's still undisturbed? Hint? Hint? But noooo….

This is where I have to defend Lehndorff. Visit, maybe; open, as Fontane did, no. If Fritz were alive at all, and most especially if I wanted a job with him, that's one grave I wouldn't open for love or money. At most, I would pay my respects respectfully, once, and then back away slowly. But mostly, I would just stay far, far away, especially if I wasn't on the best of terms with the family, and he was still favoring them. And after 1786...didn't he end his diary well before then?

is the Winterfeld she's married to identical with the Fritz-favored General who had to give AW the "the reason you suck!" speech in front of everyone?

Different first names, so no, not the same guy. And I'm not sure how they may be related. Besides which, I can think of numerous reasons a family could be short on money, besides being in a kingdom at war with a frugal king: large family = many expenses, gambling debts, etc.

didn't he write to her a separate letter, or included special greetings in the letter to his father? Something like that.

You have an excellent memory! "Nachschrift. Was soll ich aber Ihnen, liebwertheste Mama, die ich so sehr, als hätte uns das Band der Natur verbunden (sie war seine Stiefmutter) geliebet, und Euch, liebwertheste Geschwister, wie soll ich mein Andenken bei Euch stiften?"

It also shows why FW, as opposed to Wilhelmine, seems to have had no beef with Hans Herrmann as his son's bff before the desertion attempt - he's of good officer stock, reliable family, etc.

Oh, indeed, and his father especially: Hans Heinrich stood high in FW's regard. Somewhere in my WIPs is a fic in which FW specifically thinks Hans Hermann will make a good influence for young rascal Fritz: he used to be into learning, the arts, French, etc., but he shaped up and conformed to the King's will, and is now an upstanding officer in his most prestigious regiment. "Resistance is futile" being the message. (Fritz and Katte share a good laugh in private over FW's unerring instinct for gay men as good influences for his son.)

Man, everyone throwing Hans Herrmann to the dogs: obeying the military code, survival pragmatism (so that FW can't possibly blame them as co-conspirators) or both? (Mind you, whatever the motive, it probably was saving their skins.

Military code probably, but skin-saving, DEFINITELY. I am not blaming anyone involved (you may notice I exonerated even Robert Keith). Whatever their private thoughts, there was no point in resistance once word had gotten out.

I have this quote from FW to the British envoy protesting Katte's execution: "[his envoy] should say that if there were still any Kattes I would tell them all that it was enough[,] that he was a perjuring rogue [ — ] fiad justiecia aut pereat mundo [sic — ] as long as God gives me Life and sustains me as a despotic lord I will have[,] and when I please[,] 1,000 of the grandest heads chopped off."

So yeah, FW's vengeance ranged far and wide on that one (Duhan was banished just for being close to Fritz; as far as I know, he had nothing to do with the actual escape attempt), and it could easily have caught the extended Katte family in its net.

Also, since Hans Heinrich is writing "if my son hasn't succeeded in his desertion" , I'm hoping he's hoping Hans Herrmann has.

Exactly what I thought when I read that line!

Anyway, Fritz doesn't seem to have held the abandonment against them, given all these signs of favour even in 1751

Agreed; he didn't pursue vengeance even for those who voted for his and Katte's executions (and he did look up who did, after becoming King), and I certainly think he could distinguish between "actively wanted us dead" and "didn't want to die themselves."

Lastly: thank you, cousin Frau von Katte, for being called Katharina Maria - at least you're not another Wilhelmine, Sophia, Dorothea or Amalie!

Indeed! And that reminds me, I forgot to include the names of some of the Katte women.

Hans Hermann's mother: Dorothea Sophie (of course).
Hans Hermann's stepmother: Katharina Elisabeth.
Sophie Henriette: married to Rochow.
Elisabeth Katharina: married to Winterfeldt.
Luise Charlotte: married to a Bismarck.

Someone not sharing names with the royal family is really fanfic friendly.

Ooh, do you have any plot bunnies in mind? Or just speaking in general?

Good lord, I didn't mean he should have opened the grave! Just left a wreath, and told us how the surroundings looked thirty years later.

And no, he couldn't have gone back post- Fritz' death; if the life dates you gave me earlier are correct, his cousin died in the late 1770s, and as she was his connection to the Kattes, I assume he stayed clear of the clan thereafter.

(BTW, remember how I checked out the footnotes in volume 1 and found Lehndorff evidently went through his diaries again in his old age and made sometimes little notes like "I was wrong, both in our 60s, still firm friends, but back then I was ragingly jealous of everyone he favored" re: the first of his "It's over between Heinrich and me, I just know it!" entries? He also has a later one not specific to the Kattes, but he does say he may have been "unfair to some people" in his description because he was he was unhappy in his position, and now that he's happily retired, he's far more zen about everyone". The footnotes - by the editor, not Lehndorff - also tell me that some of his descendants, living in an non-Rokoko age, must have taken a look at those diaries and started an attempt to censor and rewrite, changing "il" und "lui" for "elle" a couple of times, before giving up. (We don't know who, just that the handwriting wasn't Lehndorff's own. Now I'm imagining some 19th century guy thinking "aha, historical document giving us a close up view of The Greatest Prussian Hero and his family, maybe we can publish!", then starting to actually read it and going "um; err; must change that; no, can't, that would mean having to rewrite all volumes, and besides, who's AU Female Heinrich supposed to be? nope, not publishing that!").

Good to know I remembered correctly about the greetings to his (step)mother. It does sound like he loved her, and also his siblings, though the fact he doesn't single one particular sibling out tells me it's more a general fondness than any specifically close relationship?

re: names, just speaking in general, I'm afraid. Those are a lot of Katharinas and Elisabeths, though. It's really one of the curses of historical writing that the selection of first names is so very very repetitive in so many eras. I remember a historical blogger observing that for all the bad press he used to get (until the last 50 or so years when opinion turned around at least among historians), John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland deserves praise for calling his sons not Thomas, which so many important people in Tudor England were called, and limiting himself to just one Henry, who dies early, whereas the sons important for future novelists have the distinguishable names of Robert, Ambrose, and Guildford.

Back to the 18th century: of course, among the Catholics you have everyone and their daughter including "Maria" in their names, especially the Habsburgs, but it's also a safe bet this was the one name not used in personal communication (so MT in a letter to her ex lady in waiting jokes about her weight calling herself Therese la Grosse), which is why I frown at fiction, either pro or fanfic, that has Marie Antoinette call herself "Marie" to anyone, btw.

(Lehndorff, btw, has the first names of Ernst Ahasverus, which no one else in this saga is called, and at one point even writes "unhappy Ahasversus!" so that must have been the one his family used - but you can bet his friends didn't. Definitely not the royal ones; in the diaries there are AW quotes calling him "Lehndorffchen" and the Heinrich quote to Swedish nephew calling him "Lehndorff". ) (And as mentioned earlier, in Fontane novels Prussian noble bffs and married couples call each other - well, the men - "last name" all the time.)

Henriette the married to Rochow sister: do we think her husband ever told her stories about the crown prince when he was supposed to keep an eye on him? Did they talk about the letter forwarding business later?

I wonder whether Bismarck ever mentioned his connection to the Katte family in his memoirs, and whether there were any family anecdotes. It's the kind of thing a 19th century noble Prussian would do - they never can seem to start their memoirs without going through an ancestor list - , but those memoirs are looooong, I've never read them, and it's a long shot anyway.

You win at detecting. Well, if Tagliazucchi didn't even make it into Italian wiki, I assume he wasn't much of a poet. Whereas Barbarina was much of a dancer, so the difference in salary seems amply justified. :)

(I also admit I find it not a little satisfying that she and Schmeling-Mara were able to negotiate such top salaries out of frugal Fritz the misogynist. Go girls!)

Looking forward to your take on the memoirs, listed, of course, by 1926 Editor among the "few hints on the King's path of suffering" that was the Fritz/Voltaire relationship in Editor's eyes. "Leidensweg" will never fail to crack me up as a description, I must admit.

(Ziebura in her description of Mirabeau coming to Prussia, hitting it off with Heinrich (so Heinrich thinks) and returning to France to write a trashy bestseller declaring the entire Hohenzollern clan, including Heinrich, rubbish, was no less partisan, but she put it as "cheap homophobic slander", being a 21st century writer. As Heinrich had liked Mirabeau but hadn't been into him on a Fritz/Voltaire level, we didn't get a tempestous aftermath out of it, either, not even a letter-long rant, just a fatalistic "c'est la vie" shrugging. Heinrich: reserving all the obsessiveness for Big Bro.)

In case you're wondering who actually called him Fritz,

cahn: the German - not just the Prussians, but also fans like Hessian Goethe - people, plus it seems to have been a family nickname when he was younger; for example, when FW has his rant about his two oldest children in Wilhelmine's memoirs, he talks, err, shouts about "the villain of a Fritz and the English canaille of a Wilhelmine" in my edition. (Also Heinrich in the remark about young Napoleon which Ziebura quotes actually uses "Fritz", not Frederic or Friedrich, though he otherwise when not writing "the King" writes "Frederic".)

"Der Thronfolger" lets Wilhelmine use "Fritz" when they talk to each other without anyone else present. Films that take place when he's already King usually go with "your majesty" even when there's a sibling around, though I noticed that in the one scene where after all the psychological power play they bare their souls to each other, Bach (J.S.) calls him Friedrich in this exchange that comes in their improvised jam session:

Bach: I regret my sons cannot see this.

Fritz (hurt): I am here.

Bach: Forgive me, your majesty. Friedrich. You would have been a wonderful son. You as well." (Subtitles here say "even you", making Bach sound insulting, which I assure is not the case in the original. The German phrase implies "you, like my sons".

Fritz (turning away): To be a wonderful son it would have required a wonderful father.

Bach: Don't believe that, your majesty. I thought I had been a model father, but what am I to my sons? A shadow. A gigantic shadow. If one could start again, I'd have been a wine merchant. But one can never begin again.

Fritz (still with his back to him): As long as I can remember, my father was only shouting orders. He told everyone I was a guttersnipe" - subtitles here say "sissy", which probably comes closer to FW's actual words, but the German dialogue says "Schmutzfink", which is a bird dirtying itself, hence my different choice of equivalent - "and that I walked on tiptoe and pulled idiotic faces." (Cahn, this is all from an actual FW letter to his son.) "I played the lute in secret to comfort myself. He'd get terribly angry. He spat in my soup and forced me to eat it. And to kiss his feet. My older sister, Wilhelmine, and I, we loved each other. He forced her to marry to separate her from me. From then on, I was alone. A hostile father, that is the worst thing there is.

Bach (who had listened and come closer throughout this monologue), now silently hugs him).

(End of scene, we then switch to Friedemann and Amalie having their nightly rendezvous in the stables)

Edited 2019-12-14 08:26 (UTC)

Okay, sorry! I didn't see (and still don't see?) any disturbance other than the pulling of teeth and taking of a vertebra. The only decay I can find him mentioning (but I am reading in Google translation) is natural: cobwebs and the whitewash turning gray, for which I wasn't sure why we'd need Lehndorff. But for sure he should have left a wreath! And a report to posterity of leaving a wreath.

Now I'm imagining some 19th century guy thinking "aha, historical document giving us a close up view of The Greatest Prussian Hero and his family, maybe we can publish!", then starting to actually read it and going "um; err; must change that; no, can't, that would mean having to rewrite all volumes, and besides, who's AU Female Heinrich supposed to be? nope, not publishing that!"

AHAHAHAHAAAA, this is too good. Yeah, this one would be hard to convert to compulsory heterosexuality!

It does sound like he loved her, and also his siblings, though the fact he doesn't single one particular sibling out tells me it's more a general fondness than any specifically close relationship?

Yes, seems like it. Given the age difference with the ones from the second marriage, and the fact that he had been living abroad going to university, then hanging out with the Hohenzollerns, that makes sense. Rochow-marrying sister was only a couple years younger, but everyone else is 10-20 years younger. The youngest one isn't even 5 yet, so they may have only seen each other a couple of times, while Hans Hermann was on leave.

Huh. I just noticed the age gap. Youngest first marriage child is born 1706; oldest second marriage child is 1714. That kind of suggests Hans Heinrich took a while to remarry? So I guess Hans Hermann (b. 1704) was most likely just motherless for several years, though it's possible it just took Katharina Elisabeth a while to get pregnant. Her other children are born almost reliably 4 years apart.

which is why I frown at fiction, either pro or fanfic, that has Marie Antoinette call herself "Marie" to anyone, btw.

Oh, that's super interesting!

Okay, so while we're here, I have something to consult with you on for purposes of fanfic. How would a noblewoman most likely refer to her son-in-law, who (of course) is an officer in the military, 1) when talking to her daughter about daughter's husband, 2) when addressing the son-in-law directly? First name? Last name? Military rank? Military rank + last name? Herr last name? (Since apparently Lehndorff is referring to cousin's husband as Herr von Katte, notwithstanding that he was a major.)

Ditto for the daughter when talking to and about her husband.

Henriette the married to Rochow sister: do we think her husband ever told her stories about the crown prince when he was supposed to keep an eye on him? Did they talk about the letter forwarding business later?

Super interesting question! They were evidently already married when the escape attempt happened, so it probably came up? I don't know what kind of marriage they had, though. One with 10 kids, per Wikipedia, but SD and FW have shown us how much that means re marital closeness.

I wonder whether Bismarck ever mentioned his connection to the Katte family in his memoirs, and whether there were any family anecdotes.

Interesting! As I recall, the direct Katte connection is several generations back (I think it was Hans Heinrich's sister), but, the two families did live nearby and there were several intermarriages, and also the Katte family arms on the lintel or something to the front door of the house where Bismarck was born and/or raised, so maybe some anecdotes were preserved.

(I also admit I find it not a little satisfying that she and Schmeling-Mara were able to negotiate such top salaries out of frugal Fritz the misogynist. Go girls!)

Indeed! And both ended up trying to flee to London with their lovers/husbands, said husband being arrested, and eventually the Maras make it to Prague. I have this quote re the successful Mara escape:

"In 1780 she fell ill, but Frederick refused to allow her to go to a Bohemian spa for a cure. 'But now I began to feel the weight of slavery,' she wrote in her autobiography. 'Not only was I having to bury my fame and fortune with him [Frederick] but also now my health,' so this time she and her husband planned their flight carefully. Describing her emotions on waking up for the first time in the safety of Bohemia, she wrote: 'A magnificent morning awaited my awakening, there was a lawn in front of the house, so I had my tea served there and felt completely happy— O Liberté!'"

"Leidensweg" will never fail to crack me up as a description, I must admit.

Indeed! The Passion of Fritz.

You know, for not having an army at your disposal, Editor, you're doing quite well in the life-or-death fanboying competition with Peter III.

Heinrich: reserving all the obsessiveness for Big Bro.

Yeah, Heinrich/Fritz and Fritz/Voltaire have a lot in common.

How would a noblewoman most likely refer to her son-in-law, who (of course) is an officer in the military, 1) when talking to her daughter about daughter's husband, 2) when addressing the son-in-law directly?

Theodor Fontane to the rescue again! The opening of the third chapter of Effi Briest deals with this. Players: Luise von Briest (Effi's mother) and Geert von Innstetten (Effi's future husband). Additionally complicated by the fact that actually Luise/Geert used to be a thing (and are exactly the same age now, 38) when they were young, then she took the older Herr von Briest instead, and now that Innstetten has made career she wants to marry her 16 years old daughter to him. What, you thought only the Hohenzollern were messed up in Prussia? Anyway, at the official engagement, Effi's dad has to make a speech and clear up how he & the wife are to be addressed by their future son-in-law, and how they will address him. Employ your google:

Noch an demselben Tage hatte sich Baron Innstetten mit Effi Briest verlobt. Der joviale Brautvater, der sich nicht leicht in seiner Feierlichkeitsrolle zurechtfand, hatte bei dem Verlobungsmahl, das folgte, das junge Paar leben lassen, was auf Frau von Briest, die dabei der nun um kaum achtzehn Jahre zurückliegenden Zeit gedenken mochte, nicht ohne herzbeweglichen Eindruck geblieben war. Aber nicht auf lange; sie hatte es nicht sein können, nun war es statt ihrer die Tochter – alles in allem ebensogut oder vielleicht noch besser. Denn mit Briest ließ sich leben, trotzdem er ein wenig prosaisch war und dann und wann einen kleinen frivolen Zug hatte. Gegen Ende der Tafel, das Eis wurde schon herumgereicht, nahm der alte Ritterschaftsrat noch einmal das Wort, um in einer zweiten Ansprache das allgemeine Familien-Du zu proponieren. Er umarmte dabei Innstetten und gab ihm einen Kuß auf die linke Backe. Hiermit war aber die Sache für ihn noch nicht abgeschlossen, vielmehr fuhr er fort, außer dem »Du« zugleich intimere Namen und Titel für den Hausverkehr zu empfehlen, eine Art Gemütlichkeitsrangliste aufzustellen, natürlich unter Wahrung berechtigter, weil wohlerworbener Eigentümlichkeiten. Für seine Frau, so hieß es, würde der Fortbestand von »Mama« (denn es gäbe auch junge Mamas) wohl das beste sein, während er für seine Person, unter Verzicht auf den Ehrentitel »Papa«, das einfache Briest entschieden bevorzugen müsse, schon weil es so hübsch kurz sei. Und was nun die Kinder angehe – bei welchem Wort er sich, Aug in Auge mit dem nur etwa um ein Dutzend Jahre jüngeren Innstetten, einen Ruck geben mußte –, nun, so sei Effi eben Effi und Geert Geert. Geert, wenn er nicht irre, habe die Bedeutung von einem schlank aufgeschossenen Stamm, und Effi sei dann also der Efeu, der sich darumzuranken habe. Das Brautpaar sah sich bei diesen Worten etwas verlegen an. Effi zugleich mit einem Ausdruck kindlicher Heiterkeit, Frau von Briest aber sagte: »Briest, sprich, was du willst, und formuliere deine Toaste nach Gefallen, nur poetische Bilder, wenn ich bitten darf, laß beiseite, das liegt jenseits deiner Sphäre.« Zurechtweisende Worte, die bei Briest mehr Zustimmung als Ablehnung gefunden hatten. »Es ist möglich, daß du recht hast, Luise.«

Anyway, when later talking with Effi about the man, or when she mentions him to her own husband, Luise von Briest refers to him as "Innstetten"; direct address is "Geert". (Whether he actually calls her "Mama", as old Briest suggests in this passage, though, the novel never shows.) When mentioning her son-in-law to a servant, she mentions him as "Herr von Innstetten".

AHAHAHAHAAAA, this is too good. Yeah, this one would be hard to convert to compulsory heterosexuality!

Mind you, German Amazon has at least one indignant review of the Ziebura biography going "all lies!" re: Heinrich and Fritz being gay; said reviewer does not, however, say how he explains all the stuff from Lehndorff's diary, which makes me believe he didn't actually read the biography itself, just the blurb.

I also have to wonder, given that the Gutenberg edition of Trenck's memoirs has an editor who frankly admits he cut down all the Rokoko emo as to make one volume out of three, whether "cutting all the emo" ("gefühlsselige Ergüsse") means just "woe is me" or actually Trenck coming across as less than 100% straight as well. Mind you - wouldn't have worked with Lehndorff. Even in one volume, he remains gloriously smitten.

though it's possible it just took Katharina Elisabeth a while to get pregnant.

There's also the question of opportunity. Her husband is a career military, after all, and if she remained at home in Wust...

(Then again: FW going off to fight for the Emperor now and then and having a catastrophic relationship with SD didn't stop him from getting her pregnant 13 times. And Ferdinand was born in 1730, even, long after there was any need to have sex for dynastic reasons.)

It's probably not likely that Hans Herrmann saw much of the younger kids, but as the (surviving) oldest he might have felt a special responsibility?

Found an online edition of Bismarck's memoirs, glanced at the first chapter, and lo, he doesn't start with his ancestors, he starts with his starting college, and how he always distrusted revolutionaries and sympathized with the authority, except for Fritz versus MT (nominally the authority above Fritz), then it was clearly Prussia all the way. But no Katte mention anywhere!

selenak and Fontane to the rescue, as always! \o/

I also have to wonder, given that the Gutenberg edition of Trenck's memoirs has an editor who frankly admits he cut down all the Rokoko emo as to make one volume out of three, whether "cutting all the emo" ("gefühlsselige Ergüsse") means just "woe is me" or actually Trenck coming across as less than 100% straight as well.

Good question! There seems to be a 2-volume 1788 English translation available online. Perhaps that would clear it up?

Lol, he opens with a dedication to the ghost of Frederick the Great! That's awesome. (You may have mentioned this, but if so, I forgot.)

There's also the question of opportunity. Her husband is a career military, after all, and if she remained at home in Wust...

That had occurred to me too. Mind you, I only just now checked her *birthdate* and...she's 7 years and 10 months older than Hans Hermann. So when his mother died, she was 11 years old. She was 17 when she gave birth for the first time. So Hans Heinrich must have waited 3-5 years to get married again.

It's probably not likely that Hans Herrmann saw much of the younger kids, but as the (surviving) oldest he might have felt a special responsibility?

Agreed. It would explain the no special closeness among the siblings, but general wish to be remembered by them. It is interesting that he doesn't single out the Rochow sister, but as he says in the next sentence, he doesn't have a lot of time. Or maybe they weren't especially close. Or maybe they were as kids but drifted apart due to time and distance.

Bismarck! While I sympathize with starting with your own life, Katte gossip, please! (I had also downloaded a copy and searched for "Katte", but my copy was only one volume, so I wasn't sure it was the "loooong" one you were referring to.)

Lol, he opens with a dedication to the ghost of Frederick the Great! That's awesome. (You may have mentioned this, but if so, I forgot.)

Nope, German late 19th century edition (that German Gutenberg used) is lacking that dedication. 1788, of course, Trenck was still alive (though Fritz and Amalie were not) and with his head, if not exactly using it more sensibly than he did the rest of his life. But never let it be said he dd not use entertainingly!

Good grief, if stepmother Katte was only seven years older than Hans Herrmann, she might have had more of a big sister than mother relationship with him? Anyway, I'm assuming motherless child Hans Herrman was raised either by staff and/or relations until the remarriage - given that Wilhelmine and MT were closer to their governesses than their mothers, and Fritz had Keyserlinkg, it would be of interest who did the raising in Katte's case.

Bismarck's memoirs: are in the original three volumes.

Volume 1: Me as a student up to me as Prussian Ambassador in St. Petersburg and Paris. Yes, I was a diplomat.

Volume 2. Me as Ministerpräsident of Prussia, duking it out with the liberal opposition, and then as Reichskanzler. Watch me found an Empire!

Volume 3: Oh for God's sake, Willy! Or: how the latest Hohenzollern dismissed me from my job. I think there's trouble in the Balkans.

As you can imagine, Volume 3, supposedly scathing about Wilhelm II, did not get published in Bismarck's life time, but as soon as WWI was over, it was printing time! I wasn't entirely kidding with the Balkans; while I have no idea whether or not he included that in volume 3, not having read the memoirs beyond checking their beginning, Bismarck famously quipped "the next war will start with some trouble in the Balkans" years before it happened.

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Page 10 of 18

Frederick the Great, discussion post 6

Lehndorff: This is the end, my friend - I

Re: Lehndorff: This is the end, my friend - II

Re: Kattes

Re: Lehndorff: This is the end, my friend - II

Re: Kattes

Re: Lehndorff: The Bitter Years - It's Marwitz Time!

Re: Fredersdorf letters

Re: Kattes

Re: Fredersdorf letters

Re: Kattes

Re: Fredersdorf letters

Re: Lehndorff: This is the end, my friend - II

Re: Fredersdorf letters

Re: Lehndorff: This is the end, my friend - II

Re: Barbarina

Re: Barbarina

Re: Kattes

Re: Kattes

Re: Barbarina

Re: Fredersdorf letters

Re: Kattes

Re: Barbarina

Re: Kattes

Re: Kattes

Re: Kattes and Bismarcks