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: 2019-12-14 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.)