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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Also, lol, General Katte is so forgettable. It took both of us this long to remember his existence. And pretty much the only thing I know about him off the top of my head is him going, "I find all this correspondence between my cousin and the Crown Prince suspicious; why don't I forward this letter and get my cousin killed?"

Man, I wonder what the rest of the family thought about General Katte's move there. Of course, I still wonder how they felt about Lieutenant Katte's treason. Lehndorff, YOU MISSED YOUR CHANCE TO TELL US.

Oh, wait, maybe it's in the supplemental volumes.

OMG, he goes to Küstrin in volume 2! Okay, not much, but Katte gets a whole sentence this time...Oh, *Lehndorff's* our source for the anecdote about Fritz's candles getting extinguished in the evening and then relit by the officer--yet another example of FW's orders getting followed in the letter but not the spirit. I've been wondering.

Omg, am I reading this right? Frau von Katte is his cousin, to whom he was engaged, but she had to marry a Herr v. Katte who did not suit her at all, and Lehndorff's unhappy about this? Both for financial and personal reasons? So they became friends instead? That explains why they're always hanging out! Also, I've been thinking all along that she's way too young to be the *wife* of the General in question, who's a generation older than our Hans Hermann, but she might be the wife of his son or something. And if I'm right (and there seems to be a second reference to this elsewhere), Lehndorff was disappointed in marriage, and seems to be fitting right in with the Hohenzollerns in ignoring his wife.

Okay, ima send you this page for your advance inspection. ;)

Also, one of Katte's half sisters makes an appearance. He says he knew her in his youth as a "hochfahrende, mächtige Dame". Haughty and overbearing? "Powerful" seems a bit off. But now she's humble and modest. Ugh, I would finish this paragraph but for the font. SMH. Anyway, she seems unhappy.

The index shows another of Katte's half-sisters, Frau v. Rochow. Dude, you know the whole family, how are you not interested in telling us everything you know about Hans Hermann? Maybe you've known it for so long it's not gossip any more, it's old news. But won't somebody think of us 2019 readers!

You got the gist of it. Translation follows:

I renew my aquaintance with Frau von Katte, my Cousin, whom I was supposed to marry in 1751;family intrigues caused her to give her hand to Herr von Katte instead, a man who does not suit this young and charming woman at all. Consequently, she soon bitterly repented this, as did I, who never had more than 200 000 Taler" - he doesn't say per annum or at all - "which would have been the amount she'd have brought into the marriage. She possesses a cheerful temper and many other estimable qualities, which would have made us suit each other completely. As it is impossible for us now to marry, we swear eternal friendship to each other.

29th birthday of the Princess of Prussia." (I.e. Louise, wife of AW.) "All the nobility shows up in gala dress at court. Frau von Katte getes officially presented to the Queen. She is a very charming woman, and I am even more sorry because of her person than I am because of the money. Have dined at the Danish Ambassador's..."

Etc. The rest of the page: This must be when some of the captured officers partly hang out with the royal family, and Lehndorf thinks the French prisoners are way cooler and more interesting than the Austrian ones; he goes on about that in volume 1 as well. He does, however, mention writing "to my amiable little one in Magdeburg" and the little one in question is definitely female - "meiner liebenswürdigen Kleinen" - a male little one would be "meinem" - so this in connection to his feelings about his cousin make me mentally reclassifying him from gay to bi.

Seriously though, Lehndorff, if you hat such in with the Katte clan, how come you didn't use it more for history's sake, and that of fanfiction? Or did you and we just haven't read it yet?

Also - since he writes his cousin is "a young woman" in the sentence where he declares her husband ill suited to her, I'm assuming that means the guy is considerably older. Just saying.

Edited 2019-12-07 09:58 (UTC)

Yeah, I''m getting a bi vibe from him too.

Seriously though, Lehndorff, if you hat such in with the Katte clan, how come you didn't use it more for history's sake, and that of fanfiction?

So say we all!

Or did you and we just haven't read it yet?

Not from what I've seen, at least from searching "Katte" in volumes 2 and 3. I listed the non-Frau von Katte bits that I found.

But I've heard from my friend that volumes 2 and 3 should be on their way in a few hours. Then I'll pass them on, and you can tell us if there's something that didn't show up in the snippets the search engine gave me.

Also - since he writes his cousin is "a young woman" in the sentence where he declares her husband ill suited to her, I'm assuming that means the guy is considerably older. Just saying.

Indeed, and young women did marry older men all the time and were thereby made unhappy, and I did consider that. But, looking at the chronology, I still think it's more likely to be the son or someone else in the son's generation. To wit:

Hans Heinrich, our Katte's dad, is born 1681.

He's not made a general until 1736.

Promotions are almost entirely by seniority in the Prussian army.

Ergo, anyone with the rank of general in 1730 is probably born not much later than 1681, and most likely earlier. Meaning General Katte of letter-forwarding infamy would almost certainly be in his 70s when he was supposed to marry this charming cousin of Lehndorff's in 1751. I also gathered that he was still alive in Lehndorff's later entries, meaning he'd most likely be in his 80s in the 1760s. (I could be wrong about him still being alive, let me know if I am.)

So it's not impossible Frau von Katte is married to General Katte. But since the son would be approximately in his 50s when he got married and in his 60s in the 1760s, he strikes me as somewhat more likely.

Furthermore, would Lehndorff be referring to General von Katte as Herr von Katte in his one and only reference to him? Or would he give him his military title? I'm not actually sure what the conventions are, especially if he's retired. (Out of curiosity, I'm also not sure when people use "von" and when they drop it--most other references I've seen by contemporaries are to "Katte/Katt". I've been wondering about this for a while. Is that a class thing? A "how formal are you being?" thing? Are the two forms interchangeable? The song Fontane reports the children singing about the Kattes refers to "Ritter Katt", so...what are the conventions, O German Speaker?)

True about the lack of title in "Herr von Katte", and yes, son of General in his 50s would still be way too old.

Conventions: good grief. Sadly I never read the legendary "Knigge", aka the Prussian etiquette book spelling this out, and have to go by what various letters and novels (written in past centuries, not in the 20th or 21st!) tell me. Good old Fontane comes in handy again, what with being THE Prussian novelist, even if, as one critic memorably put it, he's sunset Prussia, while FW is Dawn Prussia and Fritz of course is sunrise and Prussia: High Noon.

Anyway. If you were a fellow noble, you might introduce someone as "von X" to someone else, but thereafter you only use the last name. (You do this with non-nobles, too, btw.) So in Fontane's most famous novel "Effi Briest", the heroine is actually born "Effi von Briest". She later marries Geert von Instetten and has an affair with one Major von Crampas. Throughout the novel, Effi's father is "old Briest", no one, including the narrator, says "von Briest", whereas her mother is always "Frau von Briest", just as Lehndorff refers to his cousin as "Frau von Katte". Her husband and her lover, who have served in the same regiment back in the day, call each other "Instetten" and "Crampas", and Effi before her affair with him calls Crampas "Crampas", too, when they start to be on friendly terms - when she's first introduced to him, she calls him by his military title of "Major". (Much later, when the affair is long over but gets discovered by accident, Instetten tells his bff (von) Wüllersdorf to go and challenge "Major Crampas" in his name to a duel; the lack of "von" isn't meant as an insult, it's the habit. Effi's only friend in the small town her husband is the chief Prussian official of is a non noble excentric apothocary by the name of Alonso Gieshübler. (Yes, he had an Italian mother.) Everyone, including Effi, calls him "Gieshübler".

I would say "Prussians are really into last names", but it's actually not much different for the Austrians. MT in her letters to her former lady-in-waiting and friend calls her "my dear *last name* and "dearest *last name*", not "Sophie". (No "von" at all.) Basically, if you're not the monarch or one their siblings, your first name doesn't get used by anyone ever. At least not if you're a man. (Effi's mother adresses her father with "Briest" consistently, while he calls his wife "Luise". )

All right, this pretty much matches what I've seen. I was struck by Lehndorff being "von"-happy when I skimmed through him; did you get that impression from actually reading him? Maybe I'm just seeing him introduce a lot of names for the first time. Or a lot of women? I had picked up on his consistent use of "Frau von Katte" and was wondering if it was different for women; greater formality by men towards women isn't unusual in a strictly sex-divided society.

Also, you say, "If you were a fellow noble." Are you saying it's different if you weren't? That's something I've been wondering about too and trying to keep an eye out for, but of course I have fewer primary sources to go by. I've seen Fredersdorf omitting some "von"s in the few letters of his I've seen, but I gather we don't know whether he'd been officially ennobled or not. And he was certainly rubbing shoulders with nobility a lot more than most non-nobles. Anyway, if you weren't a noble, would you be more consistent about "von"-ing someone when talking to a third party about them? I brought up the "Ritter Katt" song because it strikes me as not a strictly noble context.

"If you were a fellow noble" was me being cautious, because I can't say for sure what non-nobles were and weren't allowed. For example: in Fontane's book about his childhood, "Meine Kinderjahre", he describes among other things the interactions his parents (apothocary & wife, non noble) had in both Neuruppin (where Theo was born) and Swinemünde (small town at the coast where Dad had a pharmacy for a while) with the local Society ca. 1820. And I don't know how typical or atypical his father was, but Louis Fontane when later reminiscing talks about "dear *last name of noble*" to his adult son; meanwhile, when actually talking to the man in the Swinemünde days, he uses the "von".

(Telling anecdote: the Fontanes tried to form a reading & concert intellectual circle with some of the locals. Since these were nobles, the first time it was time to eat something and everyone had to go from one salon to the dining room, all the noble men automatically offered their arm to noble ladies (not their wives, just other noble ladies), so that Louis F. had to shrug, tell his wife "eh bien, Madame" and offer her his arm to escort her to the dining room. Basically, the class divide might at times have been invisible but was always there.

(Gieshübler adresses Effi throughout their friendship as "gnädige Frau". So does Crampas before their affair starts. Conclusion: definitely extra formality towards a woman unless you were related to her. The only males calling Effi "Effi" are her husband, her father and her cousin.)

Lehndorf: yep, it's the women, I'd say. He is more in female society than your avarage Prussian noble due to his job. He definitely doesn't use "von" with most of the men once he's introduced them.

but Louis Fontane when later reminiscing talks about "dear *last name of noble*" to his adult son; meanwhile, when actually talking to the man in the Swinemünde days, he uses the "von".

I was actually totally wondering if they might signal deference when talking *to* the noble in question, but not when talking to a fellow non-noble.

Lehndorf: yep, it's the women, I'd say. He is more in female society than your avarage Prussian noble due to his job. He definitely doesn't use "von" with most of the men once he's introduced them.

That makes perfect sense. Thanks for clarifying!

Aha! Volume 2: Lehndorff Unplugged has revealed to me why he didn't use his inside connection to the Katte clan to gossip about Hans. At least I think I've found the reason. Because yes, he mentions both his cousin and other Kattes far more often, only he spells the name "Katt" most of the time. (But yes, it's the tribe from Wust.) He simply can't stand the lot, other than his cousin. Her husband Herr von Katte is horrid, old General von Katte is, well, quote will follow, Marshall von Katte, ugh, and my poor poor poor cousin to have landed with this sorry lot! All a bunch of arrogant jerks. Must attend some parties for the sake of meeting my beloved cousin, but am cutting the social interaction with anyone of that awful clan otherwise as short as I can.

Mind you: Lehndorff at this point manages the triple feat of: a) being now married and a father, b) pining for his cousin ("every time I see her I think of how we were meant to be!"), c) pining for Heinrich ("Will he, too, leave me, I wondered" - when not getting letters for eight weeks in the middle of the war, only to discover that the homefront vacationing guy whom Heinrich had entrusted his mail with kept Lehndorff's letter for a while, so no, "the dearest of princes has not forgotten me!").

So: (not Hans Herrmann) Katte gossip from our man Lehndorff:

"I travel with my wife to Wolmirstedt where we've been invited by Obermarschall Wallenrodt. There is a great celebration apropos the wedding of one old General Katt with a Fräulein v. Möllendorf. I mention the age of the newly wedded because his wife the day after the wedding told him: "You haven't heard me come up last night, you were too soundly asleep." All in all, we were thirty. The provincial splendour in their precious old cloths, and the bowings wouldn't end. My sole consolation were one Mrs. General Katt, born v. Truchseß, and my amiable cousin Frau v. Katt, born v. Roey, who gave us a concert after dinner. We remained dining until 7 pm, then came the concert and the ball. Young Podewils, whom I've brought along, enjoyed himself so thoroughly with Frau v. Angern that he stayed the night. At 2 am, we were happily back home."

And then there's "Staatsminister Katt":

Some time ago, Staatsminister Katt died in Berlin. He headed the Generalproviantamt - ministry responsible for supplying the army with food - in Berlin, a man whose character fit with his physiognomy. Iskariot must have looked like him; at least they had the same hair colour. (Judas Iskariot was traditionally imagined red-haired.) After he had been in charge of supplying the army in the previous war, the King made him a Staatsminister during the peace. He also was a Deutschordendsritter (= Teutonic Knight; think Templars, just German) , and he kept boasting about the fact he'd been at the Prince Elector of Cologne's court. He was the most insufferable man I've ever met in my life, an unbearable chatterbox and as arrogant as the rest of his family. He even chose a mistress as ridiculous as himself, one Frau von Kessel. It's enough to name her name.

And that, mes amies, is why Lehndorff foregoes his duty to posterity and never ever gossips about dead Hans Herrmann!

...Why did I not search for "Katt"? *headdesk* I know it's spelled like that more often than "Katte" in the 18th century! Historical researcher fail.

Anyway, thank you for passing on what goodies there are!

Mind you: Lehndorff at this point manages the triple feat of: a) being now married and a father, b) pining for his cousin ("every time I see her I think of how we were meant to be!"), c) pining for Heinrich

LOLOLOL. Busy times! No time for Hans Hermann!

Also, what year is General Katt getting married? I'm less surprised that he's getting married at an advanced age (as you noted and as had occurred to me, it happened), and more surprised he's still alive!

1760! Of course, there could be more than one General in the family, I assume...

Okay, if it's that late, I'm thinking it's more likely someone else. Besides, if it's 1760, that means a bunch of wartime promotions, including "everyone's gotten killed at Hochkirch and Kunersdorf" promotions, have happened. I hear Fritz had high officer turnover due to his high casualties intersecting with his insistence that his officers all fight from the front lines (like himself).

Oh, there were! Look at this:

"the wedding of one old General Katt with a Fräulein v. Möllendorf...My sole consolation were one Mrs. General Katt, born v. Truchseß"

Yeah, they're churning out the generals there. Like I said, high turnover. (I can't find any of these people in online genealogies, but big family.)

Edited 2019-12-11 16:49 (UTC)

Interesting: Hans Heinrich has a brother, Heinrich Christoph, who marries a Möllendorf woman, but said brother dies in 1743, aged 68.

OH WAIT I found them! Or at least one and probably the other.

They're both brothers, sons of Hans Heinrich's brother who married the Möllendorf woman (oh dear, I need to see how closely wife and Mom are related). So they would be Hans Hermann's first cousins. One is five years older than him and CLEARLY has all the gossip, OMG Lehndorff.

Johann Friedrich von Katte: 1699-1764, married Henriette Katharina Truchseß.

Bernhard Christian von Katte: estimated birth between 1684 and 1744 (lol, genealogists, you have no idea), death in 1778. Married Henriette Wilhelmine von Möllendorff after his first wife, Katharina Sophie von Kröcher, died in 1758. "Prussian Generalmajor, Head of the Dragoon Regiment No. 1 as well as heir to Wuest, Scharlibbe and Lütgen-Mangelsdorf."

The Möllendorff-marrying General Katt married his mother's half brother's daughter, so his half first cousin. Could be worse.

Also, lol, thanks to Lehndorff, I'm now imagining our Hans Hermann going, "I can't stand my family; think I'll hang out with the Hohenzollerns." :P

But Holmes, how did you manage this! Seriously though, awesome detective work tracking down the right Kattes.

One is five years older than him and CLEARLY has all the gossip, OMG Lehndorff.

So close, yet so far! Dammit, Lehndorff! Did you manage to discover who the red-haired Staatsminister was as well?

Also, lol, thanks to Lehndorff, I'm now imagining our Hans Hermann going, "I can't stand my family; think I'll hang out with the Hohenzollerns."

:) At least now we have some gossip about his family. They were utter blanks before!

Edited 2019-12-11 20:49 (UTC)

But Holmes, how did you manage this!

Same way I put together a map of 18th century German place names translated into modern Czech and Polish place names: mad googling skills! (Seriously, when I asked you about Keith's Jägerhof, it's because it was ungoogle-able: either you knew from Lehndorff, or else all hope should be abandoned.)

Did you manage to discover who the red-haired Staatsminister was as well?

I have not, but admittedly I haven't looked (aside from not spotting an obvious candidate in my General Katte searches).

:) At least now we have some gossip about his family. They were utter blanks before!

I know! I was thinking: this is good for me as a fanfic writer. :D Because I'm bad at inventing characters out of wholecloth, but given a starting point, I can flesh existing ones out.

Staatsminster: Not a hundred percent sure. What I have is a third brother I've uncovered, Carl Aemilius, who died in 1757, and a source saying that the Staatsminister von Katt is his "second" brother. Now, both the aforementioned general brothers were alive in 1760 (they are a Generalleutnant and a Generalmajor, so I'm guessing Lehndorff can just say "General" in his diary and be done with it), so there must be a fourth brother who is the red-headed Staatsminister.

Meanwhile, more gossip! This time from German Wikipedia. After having distinguished himself, Johann Friedrich von Katte, first cousin of Hans Hermann, was made interim commander at Breslau (modern-day Wrocław--see, I know these things!) when it was besieged by the Austrians in late 1757. He negotiated the surrender of the city, for which Fritz had him court-martialed, imprisoned for one year, and kicked out of the army. This is approximately five months after AW's cashiering. And about two years before he does the same thing to Finck for surrendering not long after Kunersdorf.

...Yeah, his generals were a bit nervous. No wonder this turned into a war of attrition.

Heinrich: *does not make a mistake*

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!

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)

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

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)

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.

Re: Kattes

mildred_of_midgard - 2019-12-14 09:15 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Kattes

selenak - 2019-12-14 14:54 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Kattes

mildred_of_midgard - 2019-12-14 19:05 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Kattes and Bismarcks

selenak - 2019-12-15 07:54 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Kattes and Bismarcks

mildred_of_midgard - 2019-12-15 16:50 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Kattes and Bismarcks

mildred_of_midgard - 2019-12-19 03:54 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Kattes and Bismarcks

selenak - 2019-12-19 07:24 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Kattes and Bismarcks

mildred_of_midgard - 2019-12-19 07:58 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Kattes

cahn - 2019-12-16 22:55 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Kattes

selenak - 2019-12-17 05:13 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Kattes

mildred_of_midgard - 2019-12-17 07:25 (UTC) - Expand

:( I must say when I first read the letter I was like "man, that sounds kinda cold, could you maybe have said more nice things about your son?" but... maybe he really actually couldn't. I like your hypothesis.

Oh, I feel like his agony absolutely comes through, and I am totally with him. All of these letters were subject to being passed on to FW and being read, plus it was too late at this point to do anything but save his own skin. And plead for mercy for his son. Dad and Grandpa (maternal) did unite in "Um, maybe life imprisonment like the court martial said?" pleas, but, of course, to no avail.

:(

ETA: I should specify that everyone was really clear on the fact that "life" imprisonment meant either Katte's life or FW's life, whichever came first. In the event, that would have been just under 10 years (1730-1740), although FW died on the younger side (51), so nobody at the time, of course, could have known it wouldn't be another 30 years. (FW was in bad health, but so was Fritz most of his life, and he made it to 74. I credit luck plus all that fruit.)

A memorable quote from a biographer, imagining FW deliberating over Katte's fate: "It is no longer the impartial judge [i.e. FW] that speaks of the schemes plotted with the 'Rising Sun;' [future king Fritz] it is Frederick William, with his passions, uneasiness and jealousy. He represents to himself what will come to pass at the 'Rising' of the 'Sun:' The doors of the fortress will open for Katte, and King Frederick, second of the name, and Katte, his favorite, will mock him when he will be resting in his tomb."

That passage, incidentally, is precisely what inspired my AU WIP where Fritz's first act as king is to pardon and free Katte. Though I have to say, there's a lot more PTSD and a lot less mocking. It's still better than what they got. :'-(

Edited 2019-12-16 23:57 (UTC)

Re: Kattes

cahn - 2019-12-29 00:13 (UTC) - Expand

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