Frederick the Great, discussion post 6
Dec. 2nd, 2019 02:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cahn...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
Date: 2019-12-13 06:25 am (UTC)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
Date: 2019-12-14 05:24 am (UTC)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
Date: 2019-12-14 07:38 am (UTC)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
Date: 2019-12-14 09:15 am (UTC)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
Date: 2019-12-14 02:54 pm (UTC)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
Date: 2019-12-14 07:05 pm (UTC)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
Date: 2019-12-15 07:54 am (UTC)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
Date: 2019-12-15 04:50 pm (UTC)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
Date: 2019-12-19 03:54 am (UTC)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
Date: 2019-12-19 07:24 am (UTC)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
Date: 2019-12-19 07:58 am (UTC)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
Date: 2019-12-16 10:55 pm (UTC)Re: Kattes
Date: 2019-12-17 05:13 am (UTC)Re: Kattes
Date: 2019-12-17 07:25 am (UTC)Good point re Puritans.
Re: Kattes
Date: 2019-12-16 10:54 pm (UTC)Re: Kattes
Date: 2019-12-16 11:00 pm (UTC):(
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
Date: 2019-12-29 12:13 am (UTC):( 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. :(