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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)
Frederick the Great masterpost
(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)
Frederick the Great masterpost
Re: 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!
Re: Kattes
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.
Re: Kattes
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*
Re: Kattes
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!
Re: Kattes
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?
Re: Kattes
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.
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!
Re: Kattes
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.
Re: Kattes
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?
Re: Kattes
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
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.
Re: Kattes
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!
Re: Kattes
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.)
Re: Kattes and Bismarcks
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.
Re: Kattes and Bismarcks
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?
That's kind of what I was thinking. I mean, she was clearly no more than 16 when she got married, and he would have been 9 at that time. (As noted, may also have happened a couple years earlier, probably--hopefully--not much more than that.)
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.
Agreed, I was thinking staff. Relations is an interesting possibility I hadn't thought of. And yes, I would be curious to know who raised him. We are slowly closing in the Katte family! (I've acquired a couple more facts, which I'm going to include in my next write-up.)
Bismarck famously quipped "the next war will start with some trouble in the Balkans" years before it happened.
Oh, I know that quote! It's something like "some damn foolish thing in the Balkans."
Re: Kattes and Bismarcks
Watch me go!
Okay, I have no real data. But Wikipedia, giving no source, says that after his mother died, he went to live with relatives in Doorth near Deventer, and also spent time in Berlin and Wust.
Well, Doorth (henceforth Dorth, as all my other sources give it) and Deventer are in the Netherlands, and we know Hans Hermann went to university in Utrecht. (I had been wondering why Utrecht.)
So that seems reasonable. So then I went looking for which relatives might have been living in Dorth at the time.
I found one uncle on his mother's side, Karl Sophronius Philipp van Flodrop-Wartensleben (1680-1751), who died at Dorth bei Deventer. He was married to a Jeannette Marguerite Margarita Huyssen van Kattendijke (1691-1724).
Now assuming I have the right relatives, they might not have been married yet when little Hans Hermann, aged 3 or 4, showed up in probably 1708. Jeannette was only 16, and their first child isn't born until 1710. But they were probably married and having kids by the time Hans Hermann had memories.
Oh, and they have titles like Graf and Gräfin and die in a Schloss, so staff is probably still doing quite a bit of the raising. But Hans Hermann might have been closer to the Wartensleben side, cousins and aunts and uncles, than his Katte relatives, if it's true he spent substantial time in Dorth. And that might account for the "siblings" in the final letter (plus of course the age difference with the younger ones). Did little sister Sophie Henriette, only 1 year old when her mother died, get sent to Dorth as well? Or were they split up? I have no idea.
Anyway, it's good enough for fanfic, if not for scholarship. ;)
Also for fanfic purposes, I'd been wondering how much Dutch he picked up during his university time. If he spent time in Dorth as a kid, he's presumably anywhere from conversational to (near-?)native, depending on the sociolinguistic situation there.
Slowly we start to fill in the blanks...
Re: Kattes and Bismarcks
Also: ties between Prussia and the Netherlands were strong ever since the Great Prince Elector, lots of intermarriage from the royal family downwards, Dutch merchants in Prussia, Prussians in the Netherlands etc., Protestants unite, etc., so studying in Utrecht by itself isn't that unusual for a Prussian nobleman. But in context, it furthers the idea of him having spend a part of his childhood in the Netherlands. Mind you: Katte going to the university at all instead of directly to the army also says something about his likes and dislikes.
(None of the Hohenzollern princes of that and for a few more generations got to have a university education, though the later Hannovers did, being primary patrons of the university of Göttingen, which a great many of the British male royals went to in the 19th century. Oh, and Wilhelmine's husband the Margrave, Other Friedrich, went to the university of Geneva, not least because his father was a Calvin Forever! guy but also because Your Mother is an Adulturous Whore I Locked Up, Be Educated Elsewhere!)
Re: Kattes and Bismarcks
Right, she went to relations, but did she go to "the" relations? What I was thinking when I said "split up" was that they might have been sent to different relations. That happens sometimes when kids are orphaned. And late Mom had quite a few siblings. Some apparently hadn't even been born yet: Grandpa von Wartensleben married a second time and was still having kids when his kids were having kids, meaning Hans Hermann had aunts and uncles who were younger than he was. Grandpa had 17 kids in all, if the genealogies can be trusted (in one case, the same wife is giving birth in January and July of the same year, and the July kid lives long enough that I kind of doubt he was born that prematurely), ranging from 1678-1710.
I was thinking maybe if younger sister went to a different aunt or uncle, that would explain Hans Hermann's failure to single her out in the letter over the siblings from the second marriage whom he hardly knew, or maybe was just being nice and not wanting to single anyone out, or he was pressed for time. Or maybe they did grow up together and just weren't super close.
But in context, it furthers the idea of him having spend a part of his childhood in the Netherlands.
Agreed.
Mind you: Katte going to the university at all instead of directly to the army also says something about his likes and dislikes.
Indeed, Wilhelmine says he was intended for civil service, and FW directly or indirectly pressured him into the army, and he didn't like it. :/ And apparently there *is* some kind of a letter from Dad to Uncle indicating that even after Katte joined the army, he went to England and kind of just wanted to stay there as a civilian. (Then he's talked/pressured into going back to Prussia, meets Fritz or at least gets to know him better, and falls in love, then Fritz wants to go to England with him, and Katte's like, "That's a terrible idea!"
And the cycle of Prussian subjects wanting to go to England is off to a good start. At least I think Katte was only objecting to the proposed execution and its likelihood of success, not to the idea itself.)
Re: Kattes
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Good point re Puritans.
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:(
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. :'-(
Re: Kattes
:( Ah, okay, I think I missed that it was too late at that point, and the level to which their mail was subject to getting read. Brrrrr.
Well, yeah, they wouldn't probably have been mocking him exactly because of all the PTSD, but... I could totally see FW imagining them doing so. I'm with you, biographer. :(