cahn | Frederick the Great reveal post / discussion post 8

In the last several months, as anyone who reads this DW knows,

selenak and I have been part of this quite frankly amazing Frederick the Great fandom, and I sort of assumed that the two people in this fandom who actually knew anything, mildred and selenak, were going to write fics for Yuletide, and I (who know nothing except what they've told me in the last several months) was going to awesomely enjoy reading them. In fact, mildred wrote a Fredersdorf fic for selenak's prompt which I betaed, but then mildred's medical issues got bad enough to interfere with her writing fic (making the beta edits would have involved a substantial amount of rewrite), and she wrote a post lamenting she wasn't going to be able to produce any yuletide fic. Meanwhile, I had two fics that I was pretty sure were from

selenak, and I thought it would be a shame for her to write us fic and for her not to get any :(

So then mildred and I had this (very paraphrased) conversation (

mildred_of_midgard has her own account here, and she has promised to reproduce the actual conversation in comments to this post):

me: You know, we should really write something for selenak! Now that I've read what you wrote about Fredersdorf, I think I could take a stab at her Fredersdorf prompt, if you edited and otherwise helped me out with historical stuff and also if you don't mind it being way more about music than something you would write.
mildred: YES GOD YES ~~and also oh you sweet summer child thinking you know enough to write this~~. [Mildred was far FAR nicer than this in real life.] For starters, here are 3500 words [really!] of things I know for a fact you don't know about Fredersdorf.
me: ...I was clearly overoptimistic. But I can work with this. Um, also, all the creativity-generating bits of my brain are already being used for my assignment, so can you also come up with an idea for the fic and also answer all my historical questions?
mildred: Sure! While I'm thinking about this, have 2k more words of historical grounding! Ok, and here are some ideas too. In fact, here's a whole plot for you!
me: Great! *writes 4k words of the plot*
mildred and me, more-or-less in unison: You did all the hard parts!

Then mildred fixed all my extensive historical errors and was fortunately able in between various medical woes to add various parts like the entire Wilhelmine subtheme and the entire last scene, and we deleted some of my words, and then I wrote some more paragraphs about music at her request and edited some of her stuff. I estimate that I probably ended up writing ~4.5k of the final fic, and mildred ended up writing ~ 2k of it (does that sound about right?) Of course that does not count the... I have no idea how much historical consultantcy stuff mildred ended up writing in the end, but I imagine it was significantly upwards of 10k :P And of course she wrote the detailed endnotes :D It also does not count all the words written in comments to the google document where we argued things like that Fredersdorf should be more zen than mildred wanted to write him and less zen than I wanted to write him :)

Although mildred and I mostly agreed on things, I had final veto power (and I did wield it a couple of times), so any remaining problems should be thought of as mine :) I'm very curious, though, as to how evident the collaboration was, and how evident the seams were, as I think mildred and I have very different writing styles, but it went through enough editing passes and discussion that I suspect much of the differences got at least somewhat smoothed out?

Counterpoint for Two Flutes

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From:

mildred_of_midgard

AHAHAHAHAAA, omg, your post made me laugh so hard tears came to my eyes.

Meanwhile, I had two fics that I was pretty sure were from selenak, and I thought it would be a shame for her to write us fic and for her not to get any :(

I know, I really wanted to write her something! And now I know that the confusion over me having a gift/not having a gift was because one of the 2 big ones she wrote was supposed to be for me (probably the Katte lives one?), but then I wasn't signed up so I couldn't have a gift in the Main collection. (And then she went and wrote me a Madness treat, omg.) So I'm extra glad you decided to ask me if we could do the thing I'd secretly been wanting to do. :D

mind it being way more about music than something you would write.

Mind? MIND?!! I had spent the entire month of November telling myself that it would be completely unreasonable of me to ask you to write the hard parts of my fic for me--especially what with you having a family and a job and an actual Yuletide assignment--because I desperately wanted there to be more and better music than I was qualified to write! When I got your email, it was like the universe was looking out for me. "Here," says the universe, "I'll hold your hand."

and also oh you sweet summer child thinking you know enough to write this.

LOLOL, that was *your* reaction to me info-dumping a gazillion words at you; I never thought that! I wouldn't let you write a historical biography of him and market it as nonfiction, but I wouldn't let me do that yet either. :P I always believed you totally had this and you were gonna do great as long as you had a fact-checker, and I was just giving you data so you could pick and choose from, and hopefully get some inspiration. I am a big believer in creative license with historical fiction, anyway.

mildred and me, more-or-less in unison: You did all the hard parts!

Hahaha, look, any time you want info-dumping and plotting, I've got unlimited amounts of that in my brain! Writing scenes that people want to read is the hard part. :P

I estimate that I probably ended up writing ~4.5k of the final fic, and mildred ended up writing ~ 2k of it (does that sound about right?)

Yes, I added up the large chunks I wrote after we posted (of course I did :P), and mine came to about 1.8k, so yours would have been about 4.6k. I imagine the sentences and paragraphs I contributed to your chunks and the ones you contributed to my chunks about even out.

My chunks: Hille cutting their session off, the letter smuggling scene, Fredersdorf fretting over inadvertently implying that Fritz should move on and forget about Katte (lol, this was me making him less zen), and the second half of the last scene, i.e. after the coat.

cahn turned my rough final scene into a proper ending.

Oh, about Hille: a tiny amount of creative license was used, in that in late 1730, he was impatient with Fritz and his music and poetry, but seems to have warmed up to him at least a little bit by a year later. I'm not 100% sure he would have come down that hard on him in November 1731, but I still wanted to include it to show what Fritz had to put up with during his stay at Küstrin. And I'm not 100% sure it's wrong, either. (This was way too nitpicky to put into an author's note, even for me. ;) )

I have no idea how much historical consultantcy stuff mildred ended up writing in the end, but I imagine it was significantly upwards of 10k :P

What I'm about to post comes to about 19k, so yeah. :P

It also does not count all the words written in comments to the google document

Yeah, I feel like there were another 5-10k in there, plus later emails that don't really make sense without the working draft as context, so I'm not going to post them.

where we argued things like that Fredersdorf should be more zen than mildred wanted to write him and less zen than I wanted to write him :)

Hahaha, yeah, I still think it's hilarious we could produce like a thousand words of text with no substantial discussion, and had thousands of words of discussion around "his heart pounding." :P

so any remaining problems should be thought of as mine :)

I was planning on saying the opposite on this post! Namely, that you can't possibly be held accountable for any historical errors, seeing as how all your history came from me. So I take full responsibility for those, and my brain weasels are still whispering at me that I missed a huge and obvious one that

selenak has been too kind to point out, lol. I didn't have FW present at Katte's execution and didn't have him executed by axe, at least!

I also think it's totally hilarious that you came up with a workaround for making the flute solos available in November 1731 instead of 1732.

she has promised to reproduce the actual conversation in comments to this post)

Yes. Yes, I will. :) Everyone prepare for inbox flooding!

From:

cahn

I thought you'd enjoy the other POV on this! :)

Ha! I didn't mean to take blame for any history errors -- I will happily put all of that on you! :) -- but more any writing oddities :)

And hee, yes, you were far too kind to think something like "you sweet summer child," but that was definitely how I felt about myself, lol.

I also think it's totally hilarious that you came up with a workaround for making the flute solos available in November 1731 instead of 1732.

Lol, I am very protective of my flute solos!

selenak, I did play flute but only for a year as an adolescent and was really really bad at it, so everything specifically about flute was basically me googling about it :)

Re: Collaboration

From:

mildred_of_midgard - Date: 2020-01-04 07:40 am (UTC) - Expand

Re: Collaboration

From:

cahn - Date: 2020-01-06 05:23 am (UTC) - Expand

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Oh, btw, shouldn't this be discussion post 8? [ETA: I see it's discussion post 8 now. :) ]

Oh, and also, I forgot to wish everyone a (belated) happy Fritzmas! You both made my Fritzmas a sheer delight. <333

Edited Date: 2020-01-01 05:34 pm (UTC)

From:

mildred_of_midgard

cahn
Sent: Dec 1

Soooo.... I've been putting off this email for a while because my actual yuletide assignment has been making me panicky, but I *think* I'm seeing the end of it (I am not actually AT the end, but now I can at least see the end visible and have hope that I will get there by the deadline)

I feel like we should give selenak something for yuletide! I thought that (again if I have time) maybe given now that I know a little more about your take on Fredersdorf, I'd be able to write something, probably kind of short (and with a lot of flute-playing, probably), and then have you edit/rewrite the heck out of it. I suspect even in your current medical state you'd be able to edit and rewrite and fix historical errors :P

Or we could presumably do the reverse to your fic (I could mess with it and then you could edit my edits) but I suspect you'd prefer to keep it until you can look at it again yourself :)

:)

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Okay, that's all the email correspondence that's worth sharing! Enjoy!

From:

From:

mildred_of_midgard - Date: 2020-01-06 06:00 pm (UTC) - Expand

From:

mildred_of_midgard

I went looking for the evidence for Fredersdorf's dismissal on grounds of dishonesty, and of course couldn't find anyone citing their sources, omg. All I got was one book saying "According to one version, he was dismissed for dishonesty (and giving the same quote that's in Wikipedia, and probably using freaking Wikipedia as their source), and according to another version he was relieved of his responsibilities because he was so sick, which could be true because he died so soon after."

But then, this source (without of course, naming its own sources), says that it's much debated whether Fredersdorf might have been poisoned--accidentally poisoned, that is, by his alchemy experiments. And it was another one of those "Oh, duh, why didn't I think of that?" moments for me. Among other things, alchemy uses mercury. Which was also, of course, a medical treatment back in the day.

Interestingly, now that I refresh myself on the symptoms of mercury poisoning, they are neurological, and a surprising number of them are mental: impaired concentration, impaired memory, anxiety, depression, etc. I don't know if this is consistent with his apparent productivity even in his later years, but if it was gradual, it might have hit a tipping point in 1757. There are also the physical symptoms: numbness, weakness, tremors, nausea/vomiting, impaired coordination.

selenak, do you know any of Fredersdorf's symptoms from his correspondence? The only one I know of from quotes is difficulty urinating, which isn't on the mercury list, but god knows everyone in the 18th century had multiple conditions, and a good portion of them were caused by medical "treatment."

Continuing with some less sensationalistic gossip, this book (which is "Herrenhaus und Hütten: Sächsische Dörfer am Erzgebirgskamm von 1700 bis 1900") tells me that in 1743, some Saxon noblewoman decided to adopt [yes, adopt] 35-yo Fredersdorf and name him heir to her property in Saxony. He apparently accepted the offer, but said he was too busy with his job duties [I'll bet!] and his estate at Zernikow to administer it himself, so will leave it in the hands of agents. It's doubtful whether he ever set foot on the property.

The source for all this is apparently in the archives in Dresden.

So that's at least a couple new things about Fredersdorf, although still no hint of where the dishonesty accusation comes from, which I believe in less and less with each passing failure to turn up any evidence.

ETA: Forgot to mention, this book subscribes to the belief that Fritz was opposed to Fredersdorf's marriage, until Fredersdorf decides to present it as a nursing opportunity. Again, no sources given, but it does add the interesting (again unsourced) "fact" that the wedding took place less than 24 hours after Fritz gave permission. Of course, it dates the wedding to December 30, and Fritz's letter is dated to "etwa Anfang November" in the correspondence, so...

I'm dubious about all of this, except for the part where Fredersdorf was being cunning in his use of a nurse request, and other people started to catch onto this trick. Now I really want to know how many letters are lying around the archives that go like this:

Your Royal Majesty,

I have found a potential nurse and would like to marry her.

Your ~~eye-rolling~~ very loyal subject...

Like, Fredersdorf saying, "I'm extremely sick, and you know just how sick I am, and I need a nurse now so I don't die," is one thing. Seydlitz going, "I just recovered from my last wound and am returning to active duty, but, like, what if I get wounded again someday? I should get married now, just in case," is *hilarious*. In a tragic Fritzian way.

Edited Date: 2020-01-02 11:11 am (UTC)

From:

schneefink

I enjoyed the fic a lot! I had no idea that it was written by two people, but then I am generally bad at noticing these things. Thanks for the history notes :)

From:

cahn

:D Thank you! And the history notes were all

mildred_of_midgard :)

From:

iberiandoctor

... is it safe to delurk now, lol?

To say, I was very impressed by the seamlessness of your collab, and got very emotional over poor bereaved Fritz trying to Move On ;______; I was also super floored by Selenak’s two (two!) lengthy works! Take a bow, Fritz RPF Triumverate!

AND, I am somewhat disappoint at the lack of Fritz/Voltaire bc this was dying to be written. Maybe for next year, or perhaps one or more of you three will write it anyway XD

From:

mildred_of_midgard - Date: 2020-01-04 12:48 pm (UTC) - Expand

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Discuss!

I'm dying to know what you all think. Am I stretching the evidence? Am I onto something? Was this all figured out a hundred years ago and just nobody told the English language biographers?

What do people think is going on with P, W, and T, and for that matter, C and V. But especially W and T, since T isn't supposed to have had access to W!

From:

From:

selenak - Date: 2020-01-19 07:46 am (UTC) - Expand

Re: Katte Textual Criticism: Discussion (REPLY HERE)

From:

mildred_of_midgard - Date: 2020-01-19 02:37 pm (UTC) - Expand

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Okay, so what happened was that after doing a close reading of our textual sources for Katte's execution, I got curious about what the layout of Küstrin looked like visually. Then one thing led to another, as it does. ;)

[ETA: Just to be clear, not one of the pictures in these picspams is mine. I shamelessly stole them from all over the internet and collated them here.]

Note, this will all make much more sense if you've at least skimmed through the textual criticism.

Brief overview: FW gave the order that Fritz was to have a good view of Katte's head rolling. The dominant narrative, thanks primarily to Wilhelmine and Pöllnitz, has been that the execution took place below Fritz's window, and that only Fritz fainting in time spared him from having to see it.

But eyewitness accounts from people outside the fortress in which Fritz was imprisoned, people who accompanied Katte to his site of execution, contradict this. Putting these accounts together, we find that Katte was led past Fritz's window and they got to say their final farewells, but that while he was executed only about 30-50 paces away, the actual execution place was out of sight from the window.

So any story or imagery that has Katte's execution visible from Fritz's window is historically inaccurate. Furthermore, anything that has him executed on a scaffold is inaccurate; eyewitnesses agree there was no room for a scaffold and that he knelt on a pile of sand.

Now to the actual images. I've numbered each one, with its preceding commentary, for ease of reference.

1) In the later part of the nineteenth century, Fontane investigated the question of where Fritz was imprisoned, and where Katte's head fell. He is reasonably confident about Fritz being on the side of the building facing the Oder, on the far left, second floor. He's somewhat less confident about the site of execution, but deduces that it must be in the site marked "v.K." in the image below. Fritz's window is marked with an F.

If you've read the Münchow letter, you'll also notice the Weißkopf directly in front of Fritz's window. Münchow tells us that was a third-floor platform that had a good view over the wall to Katte's execution, from which Fritz could have watched the execution if his keepers had been dead set on following FW's orders to the letter, and from which he himself, young Münchow, watched Katte's blood spray high as a child.

2) So now that we have that picture in our minds, we're ready to take a look at the layout of the old Küstrin town. The first thing to know is that it was destroyed by the Russians in 1945. Wikipedia tells me the bricks were used to rebuild Polish towns elsewhere. It's now a ghost town with nothing but ruins. So when we look at pictures and plans of the town, we have to look at historical documents.

This is a layout of what it looked like in 1921.

3) Next, the same picture with some relevant sites marked. B, over on the left, is the Berliner Tor. Fontane quotes Schack saying that Katte was led in through this gate on the afternoon of the 5th, and that he was kept the rest of the day and the night in a room near this gate.

The next morning, Katte was led out toward his place of execution on a walk that was hundreds of paces long, along the walls. Since Münchow the younger tells us that Katte's execution site was 30-50 pages away from Fritz's window, a walk along the walls that was hundreds of paces must have meant Katte was not kept in the same building as Fritz (not something I had realized before looking at these images). So his last walk must have been an L shape, west along the wall toward the König/Krol bastion, then south toward the Brandenburg Bastion.

I've marked that walk on the map below. Then Fritz's window--last window to the left facing the Oder--as F and Katte's probable execution site as K. Note that this layout is from 1921, and there would have been more structures in 1730.

I've also noted the location of the third-floor (or higher?) Weißkopf platform (W) in front of and above Fritz's window.

4) Here is a closeup of the same, so you can see it more clearly.

5) Okay! Now it's time to look at historic pictures. Here's an old postcard showing the building that Friedrich was kept in, henceforth the Schloss. I can't quite read the annotation that someone else wrote on it: there's a "Quartier" and a "something[stube]", aka "something-room." Perhaps our German speaker can help us out.

Behind the Schloss, you can see the belfry of the church. Check out the layout on the preceding picture and you'll see the church indicated as number 32.

6) The same picture again, now with Fritz's window and Katte's approximate execution site marked. As you can see, the Weißkopf is gone by the early 20th century, as is the wall in front of the Schloss, and probably some other walls that would have made Katte's execution site even harder to see from the window. Also imagine fewer trees.

The large brick structure immediately to the right of Katte's execution site is the Brandenburg Bastion.

7) My impression is the next one is from the 1940s, and as you can see there are no trees. I included it solely for your viewing pleasure, because it's a much better quality picture than the postcard one.

8) Now a closeup of Fritz's window. The individual who captioned this and drew the arrows got Fritz's window correct, but was mistaken about the site of Katte's execution. This is not unusual: Wilhelmine's account has been the dominant one among posterity.

9) And, just to make it extra clear, I've marked Fritz's window, but not the execution site, which doesn't appear in this photo.

10) So that's what it looked like in the first half of the twentieth century. What does it look like today?

Well, first, a map. I've marked Fritz's approximate prison location as well as Katte's approximate execution location. "Zamek w Kostrzyne nad Odra" is "Ruins of Küstrin an der Oder", i.e. the ruins of the Schloss where Fritz was kept.

If you compare this map to the 1921 one, you'll see that the moat is gone.

11) Now here's the satellite view, unmarked.

12) And with Fritz and Katte's locations marked. You can see that despite the fact that everything is in ruins, enough remains that you can make out the old locations of buildings clearly, including the quadrangle of the Schloss that Fritz was kept in. Because he was kept in a corner, this means we can pinpoint his location with pretty high accuracy. (I am not actually sure where he was kept in Küstrin after he was removed from the Schloss, when he was under house arrest.)

13) Now we leave space and come down to Earth. Here's a head-on view of the site, standing out in the middle of the Oder, on the German-Polish border, and facing the old town of Kostrzyn on the Polish side.

The red brick structure is the Brandenburg Bastion. Immediately to the left of it, near those trees, is Katte's approximate execution site. A little further to the left and farther back are the ruins (not visible in this picture) of the Schloss where Fritz was near the execution site but not quite able to see it.

14) The placard in the next picture is Katte's approximate execution site. We're looking southwest, toward the Brandenburg Bastion and the Oder.

15) Now we're looking north toward the ruins of the Schloss, where Fritz would have been when all this was taking place. The Oder is on the left, and Fritz would have been facing it. (Whether the wall was high enough that he would have been able to see it, I do not know.)

16) Here's a closeup of the placard. You can see a big red dot indicating the location, as well as Fritz's window, which you should be able to locate by now, in a smaller red rectangle. This picture isn't high enough resolution to be able to read the text, but some months ago, I did find a picture that was (that I can no longer find) and ran it through Google translate, and it was basically talking about the debate around Katte's execution site. They follow Fontane in their final conclusions, as do I.

And now you don't need to go to Küstrin! ~~although I still do~~

Edited Date: 2020-01-05 04:02 pm (UTC)

From:

mildred_of_midgard

So as we all now know, after discussing last year's Yuletide fics, Katte was executed by sword. This sword is important enough to have its own Wikipedia article. Seriously.

And what it tells me is that there are two claimants to be the original sword that decapitated Katte. One is in Berlin, the other is in a museum in Brandenburg. Or rather, was--another article tells me it was since reclaimed by the Katte family and is back among their effects. Which also apparently include a 1729 oil painting by Hans Hermann, which I desperately want to find a picture of.

Anyway! The Brandenburg sword is the more famous of the two, and the only one I could find pictures of or details on. It's also apparently extremely suspicious. It's supposed to have belonged to an executioner named Carl Kühne. Except there's no documentary evidence of an executioner by this name, apparently.

The executioner whom the archives show getting paid for the execution is someone by the name of Heyl, the executioner in Küstrin at the time. Fontane gives the name as Coblentz, and Carl Hinrichs, author of the Kronprinzenprozeß (which I would like to get my hands on; I have a copy of the Katte counterpart if anyone wants to read and summarize it for us), adds that the name was Martin Coblentz and he was from Beeskow. Wikipedia tells me it was not unusual two have a local executioner and also an executioner from somewhere else who actually did the work.

This actually makes a lot of sense, especially combined with another article I found (Google translated from Polish, lol) that said that it wasn't unusual for there to be two swords at an execution, because executioners were often drunk, and not always up to the task of dispatching the accused quickly. So there'd be another one standing by just in case.

All our accounts agree that Katte's head went in one blow, but I am reminded that the guillotine was considered a humane invention in part because it removed this element of chance.

In any case, if you think about what it takes to wield a sword in cold blood, even in the name of the law (and especially if you don't agree with the law), executioners being 1) under the influence, 2) from out of town, i.e. less likely to know the person they're executing, makes perfect sense.

None of this explains why we have a third executioner whose name isn't attested, but okay. There's a good chance this sword has nothing to do with Katte.

But it's the one we know the most about. It was in the Katte family during the nineteenth century, Fontane saw it got sold, there's some story, probably apocryphal, about it being cursed on the guy who bought it (his entire family died), it ended up in the museum in Brandenburg for several decades, and then finally back to the Kattes as of the last couple of years.

In addition to a couple sayings that basically absolve the executioner from responsibility in what would otherwise be cold-blooded murder, it has the names of three victims inscribed on it: Ullrich, v. Catt, and Stelw. We apparently know nothing about the other two.

Now, I was very surprised when I learned this. Is it normal to inscribe the names of victims on the swords that execute them? Then I found Wikipedia, and Wikipedia says no, that's one of the things that makes this sword suspicious.

The final thing you'll notice about this sword is that it has no point; i.e. this is not a sword that will ever be used for stabbing, only cutting, which makes sense if it's not intended for use against anyone who will be fighting back.

At long last, these are the pictures I found, of the sword that may or may not have been used to cut off Katte's head (but the Katte family and the museum have certainly thought so for a good couple hundred years, so it has that history behind it if nothing else).

Attn whoever took the second photo: the sword is nice and all, but I need a head-on shot of the rest of the exhibit! With annotations! Seriously!

From:

From:

cahn - Date: 2020-01-06 05:58 am (UTC) - Expand

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Now that our trip through space and time has taken us to Katte's death, we're going to follow his mortal remains after death. He was temporarily buried in a paupers' grave at Küstrin (no, I haven't situated it on the map; I think it was outside the city walls, possibly on the east side), before his father got permission from FW to exhume his son's body and transport it 200 km west to the Katte holdings at Wust. One doesn't envy the person who had that job. Oh, Fontane does a bit of historical fiction of Katte's body's arrival in Wust and burial.

But now we're in the village of Wust, the Katte family seat, which is still standing today and about which we actually know stuff. So we're going to do a little walking tour, mostly of the Dorfkirche (village church) where Hans Hermann is buried. First, some pictures of the outside of the church.

1) The church itself dates to about 1200; the tower to 1727, only three years before Hans Hermann's death. This is the front of the church. The street runs north to south, and the church is on the east side.

2) Here we're standing in the church looking dead on at the front door. Note the carvings on the left and right side. We're going to zoom in on them in the next two pictures. (I'm pretty sure the sign on the door gives you the number of the people in charge of tourism to call if you want to go in on a weekend. Embarrassingly, I even have a copy of the number, although it's probably changed in the last few years. OH GOD I KNOW TOO MUCH.)

3) Ahem. Back to sober history, on the left side is a carving of Hans von Katte, who died in 1584. He had a son named Hans, who had a son named Heinrich Christoph, who had a son named Moritz Hans, who had a son named Hans Heinrich, who had a son named Hans Hermann, who was executed in 1730.

4) On the right side is his wife Anna von Wuthenau, who died in 1587.

5) Now we're going to walk around the right (south) side of the church, because we can. And also the internet is an amazing thing. Note the carving under the overhang.

6) The carving is another Hans von Katte, whom the photographer who took this picture tells us died in 1617. Wikipedia gives me a Hans von Katte who died in 1622, is the son of the guy on the front of the church, and is the great-grandfather of Hans Heinrich. Probably all the same guy.

7) Now we continue our walking tour along the south side of the church. We're approaching the crypt. You can see the 1727 tower on the far left, the small overhang lower down, toward the left, under which is that carving of Hans von Katte, and on the far right, an iron fence. That iron fence surrounds the entrance to the Katte family crypt.

8) On the far right is the Katte family crypt, attached to the east end of the church by Hans Heinrich in [I've seen dates from 1706 to 1708]. More on the history of this crypt later. First we're going to go inside and see the graves.

9) The crypt! Hans Hermann's tomb is on the far left as you go in the door. Which is both what Fontane tells us, and what the images we'll see shortly will show us. (Thus telling us that nothing's been moved since Fontane was there.)

10) We approach the entrance to the crypt. The gate is open because we have arranged a visit with the local volunteers in charge of tourism. (I.e., in most pictures, it's closed.)

11) Before entering, we read the legend over the door: Ruhestätte derer von Katte. "Resting place of the von Kattes."

12) Inside the crypt, facing the doors. Two long rows of stone sarcophagi, and one wooden coffin down at the end, on the right. You can see the top of the brown lid peeking over the sarcophagus in front of it, behind the candelabra. That's Hans Hermann's.

See the one in front of the candelabra, with the partial effigy? That's Hans Heinrich's. We'll get a better look at it in a bit.

13) Now we face Hans Hermann's brown wooden coffin down at the end, with the wreath in front of it.

14) Close-up of Hans Hermann's coffin.

15) Notice how everyone else gets fancy marble and sandstone sarcophagi.

16) But Hans Hermann gets the most wreaths!

17)

18) Also, for those of us who've read Fontane's visit to the crypt and opening of this tomb, remember when Fontane said his was a slanted wooden box inside a wooden box? You can just about make out the slanted wooden box under the wreaths in this one.

19) A peek inside the coffin, back when it was opened in the 1980s for restoration. Apparently everyone's body looked well preserved, except for poor Hans Hermann's, which I imagine is nothing but a skeleton by now.

20) Here we have a list of everyone buried in the crypt, including the brothers killed in a duel (1 & 5), Lehndorff's cousin's husband (11), "boot-Katte" (8) mentioned by Fontane as an obsessive collector of boots, and Hans Hermann's parents (3 and 4).

cahn, the guy in 10 was killed at Jena-Auerstedt, which is where an overconfident, out-of-date Prussian army got its butt kicked by Napoleon-making-Fritz-look-like-an-amateur. Holger Stephan was the guy who in 1981 decided to restore the church, which was on the verge of falling apart. This is also when the tombs were opened.

21) Hans Heinrich, Katte's dad.

I found this transcription of the inscription (i.e. I am not guaranteeing its accuracy): Hans Heinrich Graf Katt. Sr. Königl. Majest. in Preussen. Hochbestallter General Feldt Marechal. Des Schwartzen Adler und Johanniter Ordens Ritter. Gouverneur der Vestung Colberg. Obrister über ein Regiment Cuirassirer. Amtshauptmann der Aempter Zedenick u. Lieben Walde. Erbherr auf Wust, Malitz, Gotlin und Schonefeld. Ist geboren Ao MDCLXXXI, D. 16. Octobr. Gestorben im Feldlager bey Gettien D. 30. May MDCCXLI, seines Alters 59 Jahr 7 Monat 14 Tage

Fontane tells us Hans Heinrich's two wives are buried beside him, one on either side. Which on which side, I do not know, but will make an educated guess later on.

22) Now we'll go inside the church.

But first, let's orient ourselves. We enter by the street and beneath the tower. There's a long row of pews on either side of the nave running east, toward the crypt. And in the back is the white box, where the pulpit is.

23) That white box is the patrons' loge, the separate area reserved for the patrons of the church so they don't have to mingle with the rest of the villagers at church.

We see a picture of the inside of the Katteloge here.

24) Notice that relief carving on the wall? The photographer captions it with "Hans von Katte, d. 1716." Somewhere else on the internet I found a reference to him being 11 years old when he died. I'm not certain whether either of those facts is reliable, but we'll discuss him later.

25) And here we are pretending to be Kattes, standing in their loge, looking toward the the street. Behind us, on the other side of the loge wall and the pulpit, is the east crypt. Hans Hermann's little wooden coffin is right up against that wall.

And now you can say you've been inside the church and almost not be lying! If anyone wants more detailed pictures of the mid-17th century interior of the church, check out this guy's page, which is where I stole most (but not all) of my pictures.

26) Stepping away from the church, this is the manor built by Hans Heinrich in 1727, the same year as he commissioned the church tower. Where the Kattes lived before that in Wust, I do not know. Hans Hermann may or may not have had time to visit the new manor before he died, I don't know.

My sources say it's used as a primary school today, and also the location of the annual summer school for studying English (which

selenak also mentioned).

DW is complaining this comment is too long, so commentary and a few more pictures in the next comment.

Edited Date: 2020-01-05 03:35 pm (UTC)

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Now, a little bit on what we've learned from this visit to the Wust church and Katte family crypt. You may want to orient yourself with the family tree that I put together last month.

Wikipedia has Hans Heinrich dying May 31 (one-year anniversary of FW's death, for those of you for whom that date doesn't jump out at you) instead of May 30. But I went and dug up more info on Hans Heinrich's death, and found both corroborating evidence of the 30th, as well as new goodies.

In particular, I found a book entitled Briefe aus der zeit des ersten schlesischen kriege, "Letters from the time of the first Silesian War." Now, this is in fact the first Silesian War. FW died May 31, 1740, Fritz inherited, Fritz invaded Silesia in December 1740, he had his first real battle April 1741. Now it's May 1741, Hans Heinrich is in the camp at Gettien, and he's dying.

1) Where is Gettien? Near Brandenburg (so he's not far from home at all). Oh, you know what? We need a map showing everyone where Wust and Küstrin are wrt Berlin! Sorry, I take this information for granted by now.

Wust is too small to show at this resolution, so I put a W over it. Everything else I circled.

I've indicated Potsdam, Kostrzyn (Küstrin), and Genthin, which is the modern spelling of Gettien. I also circled Rheinsberg just so everyone can see where it is, even though it's not directly relevant to this discussion. Both Wust and Küstrin are about 100 km from Berlin, so 200 km from each other (the distance Hans Hermann's body had to travel).

Thus, you can see if Hans Heinrich is dying at Genthin, he's quite close to home. 20 km, it looks like.

Now, those letters from the first Silesian war give me two passages relevant to Hans Heinrich's death. On May 27, "Der General-Feld-Marschall Graf von Katte liegt nebst seiner Gemahlin im Lager bei Brandenburg tödlich krank damieder." "He's lying next to his wife, deathly ill, in the camp by Brandenburg."

Then on June 3, "sondern es ist auch aus dem Lager bey Brandenburg die Nachricht eingelaufen, daß daselbst am 30 passati Abends nach 6 Uhr S. Exc. der General-Feld-Marschall Graf von Katt aus dieser Zeit in die Ewigkeit verjetzt worden." "The news also came from the camp by Brandenburg that there on the evening of the 30th, after 6 o'clock, His Excellency Field Marshal von Katt passed into eternity."

Now, you may not realize it, but these letters contradict Wikipedia yet again! But they are consistent with the dates given in the crypt itself. Namely, that "next to his wife" bit. I had told

selenak that Hans Hermann's stepmother, who was Hans Heinrich's second wife, died in 1736, because that's what Wikipedia told me. But if you check the picture above with the list of inhabitants of the tombs, number 2, Katharina Elisabeth von Bredow, second wife, doesn't die until 1754!

Strike 2 for Wikipedia. So I guess she must have been at Wust or in Berlin or somewhere and come to be by her dying husband. He was 59, and judging by "krank," it sounds like he's dying of natural causes rather than a wound (can "krank" be used of a wound?), which also makes sense if he's near Brandenburg instead of in Silesia. Unless perhaps he was on his way home to recover from a bad wound and it got infected or something. But we do know that illnesses run rampant in army camps, especially in the days before the importance of hygiene was discovered, so illness makes perfect sense. Especially at his age.

Oh, Wikipedia also has Hans Heinrich dying at Reckahn (10 km south of Brandenburg, so at least the right general vicinity), and buried in the Garrison Church (where Fritz and FW were initially buried until the Nazis moved them for safekeeping), then removed to the Südwestkirchhof Stahnsdorf in Berlin after the bombing of the Garrison Church. Well, Fontane claims he saw Hans Heinrich buried here in the crypt at Wust, and the Wust people today seem pretty sure that's him, so...strike 3? 4? for Wikipedia.

Now onto his first wife. Hans Hermann's mother. Wikipedia has her dying November 5, 1707 (in Brussels). The image of the list of tombs above has her (4) dying in 1706. Now, this is interesting, because my sources are pretty consistent about the crypt itself being built by Hans Heinrich in 1706/1707, and one mentions that he had to commission it, because his wife died suddenly (she would have been maybe 21 or 22 in 1706) and the normal burial place (my source says tower crypt, but I'm not sure what tower, because the church tower was only built in 1727; unless they mean *under* the tower that's now there) of the Kattes was overcrowded. So that would make sense if she died in 1706. So strike 5 for Wikipedia, probably.

That means she prooobably didn't die of the plague. Also, if you believe Wikipedia (ahahaha), her last child was born October 5, 1706. Dying suddenly in late 1706 would make sense if she died from childbirth, although not so much if she died November 5 instead of October 5. If you assume an off-by-one error on both month and year, she died in childbed. Otherwise, I don't know. She could have fallen downstairs and broken her neck, Amy Robsart-style. It's looking less and less likely that she died of the plague in 1707, though.

There's also that mysterious Hans Katte whose image is carved is in the Katteloge inside the church. My sources say he died 1716, age 11. I can't find anyone in Wikipedia or the genealogy sites that fits that description. However, if you trust the Wikipedia dates for the other kids (ahahaha), there's just enough time for one kid to have been born between Hans Hermann (February 1704) and Luise Charlotte (November 30, 1705) and be 11 in 1716. That would mean that Hans Heinrich named his first and second-born sons, a year apart, Hans. Now, while the Habsburgs were naming all their daughters Maria [Something Else] and calling them "Something Else", this does not appear to have been the custom of the Kattes. They seem to go for one Hans per generation, often but not always the oldest son.

But the timing fits, especially since we know Hans Heinrich was commissioning a crypt in 1706/1707, a manor in 1727, and a church tower in 1727. A carving in 1716 would fit right in.

So did Hans Hermann have a brother close in age who died young? I do not know!

2) Finally, Detective Mildred would like to match up all the tombs to their occupants.

I can't quite get them all with perfect confidence, but I can come close. Using the list posted on the wall of the crypt, assuming it goes in some kind of order, and supplementing it with external sources, my best guess is that, starting with the left coffin on the far wall next to Hans Hermann, it goes: 1) Friedrich Wilhelm (Hans Hermann's half brother who died in a duel), then 2) the blue and white one is Hans Hermann's stepmother, then 3) Hans Heinrich with the effigy that we're sure of, then 4) Hans Hermann's mom, then 5) Friedrich Albrecht, the other half-brother who died in a duel against the right wall. Going back to the left, 6) Hans Hermann's is the brown wooden one.

3) Then against the near wall by the door, there are two tombs behind the group of visitors, whom I believe are 8) Boot-Katte and 9) Marie von Katte (last of the Wust Katte family). You can see a close-up here, though I don't know which is which. In the background is Hans Hermann's tomb and a wreath on the floor in front of it.

Then to the right of the door, 10) the guy who was killed at Jena-Auerstadt, and finally, 11) Ludolf August, Hans Hermann's first cousin who married Lehndorff's "one who got away".

Ludolf August became heir to the Wust holdings after Hans Hermann was executed (1730), Hans Heinrich died in camp (1741), and the two brothers killed each other (1748), at which point (or shortly thereafter, 1751) Fritz started arranging a marriage of an heiress (Lehndorff's cousin) into the Katte family, without caring which Katte she married.

4) Here's a close-up of Ludolf August's tomb, and a glimpse of the one in front of it, Jena-Auerstadt guy's.

5) If you're curious about the 11th tomb, the one inside the church behind the altar, which belongs to Hans Heinrich's dad's first wife, who is not related to any of our Kattes and died before Hans Heinrich was born, it looks like this:

Outstanding questions I would ask and things I would do if I went there/dubconned someone else into going ;):
1. What did Hans Heinrich die of? Why was he at camp near Brandenburg? Did he go to Silesia? Was he on his way back because he was sick? Was he wounded?
2. When exactly did Dorothee Sophie von Katte die? 1706 or 1707? Do we know of what?
3. Where are the previous generations of von Kattes buried? CAN I SEE THEM.
4. Who's Hans Katte, d. 1716? When was he born? Was he the son of Hans Heinrich and Dorothee Sophie? Where is he buried? Do we know what he died of?
5. Match up all the tombs for sure, and get the writing on each one, especially the one on the far right that I think is the brother who died in the duel. He seems to have a lengthy inscription. Do we know any more details on this duel? One of my sources says "over a woman" and another says "over the inheritance."
6. Get good-quality close-up photos of all the info on the walls, including the pictures of the opened tombs.
7. What are all the documentary sources for all this information?? Do they have any other information that is of interest to gossipy sensationalists?
8. Can I kind of maybe just get a glimpse of the 1729 Hans Hermann painting, or even a picture of the same? I just want to know what it looks like, I don't need to see the original or anything. Pleeeeeaaase??

In conclusion, if you ever feel the urge to comment on "all the detail" in a fic, I might have had a hand in that fic. :D

From:

From:

mildred_of_midgard - Date: 2020-01-13 09:51 pm (UTC) - Expand

From:

mildred_of_midgard

1) Now for some tributes to Hans Hermann von Katte. First, a commemorative plaque at Küstrin. I would need to double-check, but I think it dates to something like 2015.

2) Close up:

3) Now, where is this thing, you ask? For when you're wandering around the ruins, like you've *totally* spent the last several months looking forward to being able to do someday? *cough* Well, I can't get a direct shot of it in Google maps, but by obsessively comparing the angles on every image at Küstrin that anyone's taken and uploaded, I managed to figure out where it is. The actual picture that allowed me to match a Google maps location to the picture in (1), with the red brick wall surrounded by concrete and a bunch of steps in front, isn't useful in helping you locate it when you visit, but the following picture, which we've seen before, is.

Remember this one? Look at the Bastion Brandenburg, and go to the right. You'll see a little arch-shaped dark spot on the wall. On the opposite side of that, on the inside of the wall, is the plaque. So now you can find it when you go there! (And by you I mean I, because thanks to this post, everyone else has gotten all the benefits of going to this remote ghost town, without any of the plane or driving time or costs. :D)

Now, that whole wall on which you see the arch in the preceding picture, the wall running south of the Bastion Brandenburg to the Bastion Filip? The defensive wall was torn down in 1928/1929 and a park put in its place. It was called the Promenada Kattego* in Polish, Kattewall in German. Katte never set foot on that side of the Bastion Brandenburg, but he is commemorated there, and his plaque is on his promenade.

* -ego is a genitive suffix in Polish, which I was excited to recognize after I studied Russian grammar for all of one week, two at most, back in 2007.

The promenade is one of the few elements at Küstrin that's been restored.

4) Here's a picture from space. I've outlined the Brandenburg Bastion in blue, the Kattewall/Promenada Kattego in yellow, and put a red P where his plaque is on the wall. By now, you should be able to pick out Fritz and Katte's respective locations on November 6 on your own!

5) And a picture of the promenade from Earth.

6) Now a different kind of tribute: some artwork, mostly 19th century, imagining Fritz and Katte's last encounter. You should now be qualified to comment on historical inaccuracies. For example, in this one, they're walking the wrong direction, and Fritz isn't in the last window on the right.

7) Still walking in the wrong direction. But notice the guy behind Fritz, who looks like he's holding Fritz's head to the window.

8) Fritz is not in the last window, and the execution is taking place outside the window.

9) Execution on a scaffold visible from Fritz's window, just as Wilhelmine and Pöllnitz have it.

10) Lovely and moving piece of art, but observe that the execution is happening just outside the window, and that the window is on the first floor. Wilhelmine does describe him being moved to a room on the level at which the scaffold had been erected, for optimum viewing purposes, but we have no reason to believe this is true.

11) Fritz is in the last window, they're walking in the right direction, and there's no sign of a scaffold! Woohoo! Unlike in most of them, though, he's not thrusting his arm out, which we do find in all the accounts. (Interestingly, C & V agree he was prevented from thrusting his arm out, and M, P, & T that he was prevented from throwing himself out. Fontane simply reports that he blew a kiss, no mention of anyone preventing him.)

12) Now, here's the original Antinous/Praying Boy statue, in the Altes Museum in Berlin.

iberiandoctor, had you done your Museum Island visit this March instead of last March, I would have made sure you knew what you what you were looking at when you saw it. Since apparently (unless this changed in the last few years), the museum makes no mention of Antinous or Katte.

13) Saving the best for last, here's a breathtakingly gorgeous shot (for which I am not responsible) of the modern copy that now stands in situ as Fritz would have seen it in his day. Fritz's grave is a few steps straight ahead and to the left; the statue is facing the library.

He never forgot you, Katte. <3 And we're still setting up plaques and restoring promenades 300 years later.

Edited Date: 2020-01-05 12:51 pm (UTC)

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Okay, I'm done spamming everyone with images (for now)! This is how I spent the bulk of the last two days and part of today. It was fun!

Also this.

selenak, you were ahead of me for a while, while I was busy infodumping at

cahn by email for your Fredersdorf fic and you were summarizing Lehndorff and Fredersdorf for us, but then I pasted the emails here, and that caught me up. :D

From:

selenak

Since there are 18th century Prussian romances with attempted trips to England which don't end in bloodshed, I decided to give you Hotham Jr. Saga in quotes, only the relevent bits excerpted. Cameo appearance by Eichel, complete with mini portrait:

31st December 1755: At the King's court in the morning. I had a very long conversation with the Chevalier Hotham. Even among the English, he is an exceptional mind. But then, this nation is superior to all the others! Rich and free - the true medium through which one can make a mediocre head into someone with ésprit - they enjoy the additional advantage of being taught well in their youth and being allowed to see the world as soon as they leave school. Hotham, for example, is 21 and has alreaedy seen nearly all of Europe. He just comes from having travelled through the entire north. I am amazed how rightly he judges the charactes of the various princes he has encountered.

January 3rd 1756: A very interesting book about astronomy keeps me captivated until the evening. Then in order to practice English I join a society of ten equally minded men.

January 4th: Again at home until the evening. Then I visit the Chevalier Hotham, whom I like very much. Our conversation is very vivacious, and I skip the dinner at Puebla's in order to remain with him alone. I do love him, and he confirms the positive opinion I have formed of his nation.

January 9th. Our princes have a new friend every winter; now it is Herr Bastiani, a former footman, the son of a tailor from Venice. They believe him to be a genius. (...) They favour certain qualities whom they ascribe to whoever has caught their fancy and don't see in those out of favor, and it is not rare that those virtues end up being ascribed to those who show physical advantages at best. I take my dinner much more comfortably with my dear friend Hotham.

January 12th. My reconciliation with Prince Heinrich happens; good reasons cause it. I have been noticing for a while that he's suffering as much from the silence between us as I do.

January 16h. After having escorted the Queen to the opera, I visit Count Reuß. I am here because I find all the ministers from the King's cabinet here, especially Mr. Eichel, our country's Mazarin. Mr. Eichel is a man who connects an immense mind with an agreeable exterior. He works as much as ten m en do, and despite his great power he has kept his modesty. You can see his kindness and benevolence from his face. His way of life is very strange. He works from 4 am in the morning till 2 in the afternoon, then he sits with his friends until 8 pm at a table, and drinks one small glass without ever getting drunk. Afterwards, he works again until mightnight, and then sleeps. I'm spending the evening with my friend Hotham.

January 30th: At Prince Heinrich's, afterwards with my dear Chevalier Hotham. We talk about all manner of things; suddenly we get the idea to ask the King for permission so I can join the Chevalier upon his return to England. This plan keeps me up at night.

February 3rd: My letters go to the King. God may bless them! I am in a state which makes me unfit to go into society. My God, but freedom is a beauitiful thing!

February 4th: I live half in a dream. Chevalier Hotham visits me in the morning, and we inspect four seat carriages. My God, how happy I would be if I could go with him! I'm at Prince Ferdinand's for dinner. Prince Heinrich is very tender towards me. But this does not stop me from feeling a vivid desire to get out of here!

February 5th: I find my dear Hotham delighted by the treaty which the King has made with England. Thus, the peace in Europe is made secure, the King's fame grows even more, and the French get their mouths stuffed.

(This actually was not an minority opinion at the time, since no one not involved in the negotiations saw the Diplomatic Revolution - i.e. the France/Austria alliance MT and the Marquise de Pompadour were working on - coming.)

February 7th. I'm busy writing a second letter to the King. God may bless this enterprise! My state of heart is indiscribable.

February 9th: After I have walked for quite a while with my Englishman and laughed about his qualities that come from a brave heart, I go to dine with Prince Heinrich.

February 11th: I spend a restless night without comfort. But suffering and joy always change places in life, and likewise here I spend a very agreeable evening with my Englishman.

February 12th: I find the most distressful news of the world: Eichel writes to me thath he doesn't believe the King will permit my journey to England and advises me to give up my intention. In the deepest pain, I go to Prince Heinrich for dinner but then quickly return home and ask for my worthy Hotham's company to tell him the terrible news. I must admit that if my heart were receptive for the least joy, it would have felt it faced with the evident sincere pain which this news has caused him.

February 15th: I write a third letter to the King. I have no hope, but I want to do everything possible to me in order not to accuse myself later of not having done so. (...) I am convinced I will never have such an opportunity again to visit strange countries. Oh freedom, freedom, you will always remain the sole true happiness!

February 18th: My dear Chevalier decides to write to the King as well. He does it with the most touching expressions. This gives me some hope back, and puts me ina good mood for the evening.

February 19th. Still between fear and hope. I feel in my heart very special emotions for the King. If he gives me the permission, I will worship him, if not, I will only be able to call him harsh, because all impediments to such a journey could be easily removed.

February 20th: The closer the hour in which the mail arrives, the greater my uneasiness grows. I no longer have the courage to remain with the Chevalier with whom I have been staying, and withdraw to my house. Then the decision about my fate arrives, which will be an eternal source of grief for me. The King lists only bad reasons for his refusal; I feel it, it only happens to hurt me. My God, how easily could the King make himself loved! When I arrived in this world, my heart was full of love for my sovereign, and since then, he has done nothing but cause me pain. He ruined a very good marriage for me, he made me part of the Queen's court against my will, in short, all my plans were spoiled by him. I always kept up a son's devotion to him, I have always hoped he would, in the end, become a father to me, since he's been solely the King for such a long time. But now all hopes leave me, and I fall into the abyss. I cannot describe my position, it is terrible. To give up the journey from which I could draw so many good uses, and, what is worse: to lose such a faithful, sincere, estimable friend as Hotham! No, one dies not out of heartbreak. I spend a terrible night.

February 21st: I hurry to the Chevalier. He is as distressed as I am and decides to leave Berlin immediately. My pain is so visceral when I hear this that I stand as stone next to him, unable to move. With despair in my heart, I watch him leave, lock myself in my room and cry and cry and cry. I feel so lonely in a town in which I have lived for ten years. All whom I once have called my friends appear to me now that I have experienced this English friendship so heartless that I will never trust them again. The sole comfort which remains to me are my books.

Lehndorff makes a short trip to Dresden (with EC's permission) to distract himself. When he returns, he visits AW to catch up with the news.

March 6th: I restart my disagreeable and useless duties. In the evening, I go to the Prince of Prussia where I learn what happened in my absence. Princess Heinrich - i.e. Mina - has gotten permission to visit her uncle in Kassel. It seems this lady is blessed with happiness, and she's won all the world through her behavior. Colonel v. Keith - i.e. Peter - escorts Princess Amalie to Quedlinburg at the orderes of the King. Prince Heinrich is at his country seat. I fear this prince will withdraw from the world altogether; his temper is a melancholic one.

July 8th. Prince Heinrich comes from Potsdam.

July 9th: I had firmly decided not to visit Prince Heinrich unless he explicitly asks me to. Only if one makes oneself into a rarity it's possible to live with princes, it seems. Then, he sends for me three times in a row, and I am mostly content with the way he receives me when I do arrive. My God, why is he so charming! And he would be much more so if only his temper were as constant as his actions are, which do testify to his kindness. These are strange times, we are currently arming up for war without truly knowing our enemies. According to public opinion, with the exception of England all of Europe has become our enemy.

Edited Date: 2020-01-06 04:06 pm (UTC)

selenak

Overall: Klosterhuis comes to the conclusion that FW acted according to law and had no other choice, though with one additional reason Fontane and grumpy 1980 speaker do not name, which is indeed an important one. As opposed to everyone else, he's terrific with source citations and delivers footnotes for (nearly) all. He also uses material the others I've read do not, from the Katte family. Bear in mind here that all the original family correspondance was destroyed in 1945 for war reasons. However, one Martin von Katte (deceased by now) repeatedly wrote about his famous ancestor (well, relation), the first time in 1934 in an unpublished manuscript. Most of Klosterhuis' Katte family correspondance quotes are from an unpublished Martin von Katte manuscript and one published essay: to wit: Martin von Katte: Hans Herrmann von Katte, Eine biographische Skizze aus dem späten Barock, in: Das Lerchennest, Dezember 1975, 2 - 8. (That's the citation in the footnote.) The unpublished manuscript is: "Hans Herrmann", Manuscript from 1934, transcription by Martin's daughter Maria von Katte in 1997 for the author. No, still not published.

Most (to me) interesting bits - and btw, clearly Klosterhuis was Michael Roes' main source for his "Zeithain" novel though they come to radically different conclusions about FW:

Eichel was the one FW dictated the various angry missives in 1730 to. (Should have figured this out, did not.) When Fritz ordered to the tribunal material in 1740, Eichel provided him with it and suggested burning it afterwards; Fritz said no and just had it sealed up again. Our author then does a Tacitean insinuation by observingt that of course we don't know whether Fritz returned all the material to the archives or destroyed some of it which was embarrassing to him. We do know he looked up the material repeatedly in his life, though.

FW2 had it looked up once when he came to the throne, then resealed.

The first non Hohenzollern (or Eichel) to see the Katte and Crown Prince material was Johannes von Müller in 1806; he was the official historian of FW3 and was supposed to write a biography of the great national hero, but then Napoleon, etc.

Preuß also had access to the entire material for his bio.

Mildred, since you asked: Hans Heinrich prä Wust lived in Angerburg.

Our author, based on Martin von Katte, claims Han Herrmann mostly grew up with Granddad Wartensleben in the later's palace in Berlin and that the big life style there influenced him more than Dad's more modest one in Angerburg. Klosterhuis draws attention to the fact that Granddad was an F1 era Prussian nobleman with baroque splendour whereas Dad Hans Heinrich was a good example of FW's remaking of the Prussian nobility into army men and servants to the crown, military first and foremost.

He also says Hans Herrman was most impressed by Great Uncle Balthasar Friedrich zu Vieritz who'd served with the Danes and who when called to serve by FW in 1724 gave him a proud declining of the invitation. (Source citation M v. Katte, Entwurf - like I said, all the Katte family stuff comes from Martin.)

Aunt Melusine the Mistress of G1 was indeed aunt Melusine to Hans Herrmann; her brother Friedrich Wilhelm von der Schulenburg visited him in Halle an der Saale in in 1717 and in 1719. We also have quotes from her on Hans Herrmann, more in a moment.

HH was in school in Halle from age 13 to four years later.

We have teachers remarks, all quoted by Martin von Katte in his 1934 manuscript.

"Katte has followed orders and is eager. But he strives more for his father's sake than due to a proper reason" (here author adds "meaning a religious motivation") - 1718

"Ingersleben wants to be a soldier; Katte tends to poetry and dreaming" ("Poeterey und Träumerei") - 1719

"Katte is in all his matters not eager enough so does not make real progress" (1720)

Hans Herrmann goes to Königsberg for study in 1721, then one year in Utrecht 1722, then back to Königsberg 1723/24 (lectures attended to are law, but also music and painting)

1722/23 Grand Tour. Aunt Melusine compliments him on his elegant French.

Author quotes M. v. Katte quoting letters of Hans Heinrich to his father-in-law (gGandpa Wartensleben) about Hans Herrmann on the Grand Tour: "Freedom does not agree with him, and he's made dangerous aquaintances."

Could have gone either the judges career or diplomatic career like Schulenburg, but joins regiment gens d'armes in the winter of 1726 because of his father's urgings

Later, his regiment commander's judgment on him: "I can't make heads or tails off Katte; sans reproche - i.e. without fail - he seems to be only on horseback or playing the flute".

Eva Sophie Countess the Routtembourg, with to the French envoy: "charmant mais etourdi" - from a letter from her to Hans Herrmann's stepmom, quoted in M. v. Katte.

HH made another big journey abroad in October 1728. Started as a mission for his father to Paris, then on his own initiative to Madrid where he met de Rottembourg (who'd been transfered there), then to London, where he had a fling with cousin Petronella von der Schulenburg. (Roes did not make that up! Which means Hans Herrmann did it with a Hannover cousin, albeit an illegitimate one.)

(Source citation again M v. Katte, who quotes Hans Heinrich telling this to brother Hans Christoph.)

Now, Mildred, you said tumblr said this book claims Hans Herrman wanted to already desert on this journey. This is not true. The exact statement by our author : "Finally, Katte Junior seems to have been inclined to quit the Prussian service and remain at the British court, so his father in the spring of 1729 saw the need to give him a strict order to return to Berlin."

(I.e. he didn't want to desert, he wanted to offficially quit Prussian service and enter the Hannover/British one.)

Author says it's possible that Fritz met Katte as early as spring 1727 in Monbijou when the regiment Gens D'Armes was there a couple of times and noticed his flute playing, according to Rittmeister Christoph Werner von der Asseburg quoted in M. v. Katte, but says there were no close relations betwen them until spring 1729.

Spring 29: there's a possible war with Braunschweig and HH, returned as ordered from England, writes to Dad he's glad to be back and prefers a Prussian war to a French peace. (No war happened, btw.)

Yes, Katte was in Zeithain (he was part of the escort of Margrave Schwedt the Mad, future brother-in-law to Fritz though thankfully not through marriage to Wilhelmine, instead through poor Sophie). According to a Katte family anecdote, they talked about a mistress of Moritz von Sachsen who'd been killed for his sake, Fritz asks "but does loyalty deserve death?", HH replies, "But yes, death is the fruit of loyalty" - Author is sceptical of htis story but quotes the Italian saying: si non e vero si ben trovato.

In addition to the famous FW reply to Hans Heinrich's petition for mercy - "his son is a villain, so is mine; it's not the fathers's fault" , author quotes a later reply (September 24th to renewed petition) saying: "We are both of us to pity, but if all this blood is no good, one opens a vein. It is not our fault."

Brother-in-law Rochow got promoted to Lieutenant Colonel, Hans Friedrich von Katte to Major, both in October 1730, as a reward of their faithful reporting.

Something that made me go "I knew it!" - Absalom comparisons about on the part of FW. Especially Absalom turning the hearts of the men of Israel from David. Because, and here Klosterhuis delivers some indeed fascinating context for 1730:

FW was extra paranoid before Fritz ever tried to escape. Iin January in Potsdam there was actually a desertation conspiracy among 40 (!) members of the Regiment Gens d'Armes - i.e. Katte's regiment. Author says were were religious fanatics. (?) FW had the three leaders of the conspiracy punished as follows: one after being pinched with hot iron hanged; one got hot iron, as well as his nose and ears cut off and was brought back into prison where he died; one was slapped, then whipped by the executioner.

Klosterhuis therefore makes a case that FW did fear a military coup with foreign help come August.

Seckendorff reports to Vienna that the King complains after the first judgment that he thought he'd chosen honest officers for the tribunal but they seek to please "the rising sun" and is still convinced of a military foreign (read: England and France) supported conspiracy against him. The judgment for Hans Herrmann is very much informed by this. (And the earlier precedent from January of the three who were punished as see above.)

FW's letters to Hans Heinrich get kinder in November. "I am heartily sorry, but both justice and necessity demand for your son's crime to be properly punished. As the later was an officer of a regiment which is especially attached to my house and still did not hesitate to conspire in plots directed against the country and its people, I was forced to punish him in order that others may not follow his example and commmit similar crimes. I commiserate with you as a father, but hope you will collect yourself as a reasonable man, and will not prefer compassion to justce, to the welfare of the entire country, and to my quiet state of mind."

The three letters from Hans Herrmann (to dad and granddad and the king) from October and November 1730 - which Wilhelmine quotes form in her memoirs - were quoted in the 1731 anonymous pamphlet about Hans Herrmann's execution and our author says they were already making the rounds in Berlin in November 1730. Who copied and circulated them is unknown.

Klosterhuis does mention Doris Ritter but says that the files themselves do not say whether or not she was a virgin, that's what Guy Dickens the English secretary reports the midwife and Doctor said, and since he's clearly pro-crown prince/anti King partisan, he's not to be trusted and it's more likely she wasn't a virgin. (?) The "not a virgin, I don't think" insinuation seems mostly there so the case of FW the law believer remains intact.

Hans Heinrich asks for four week leave to bury his son and mourn, FW grants it.

Hans Heinrich gets elevated to count and family gets a new emblem granted on 6. August 1740, i.e. exact day of Fritz desertation attempt.

Among the appendices, there are lists of goods found in Fritz' rooms in the palace page (page 120 onwards. These include among the letters seven by SD, twelve by Wilhelmine, but none incriminating. The appendices also include the lists of goods found in Peter Keith's quarters, btw.

And that's it for me. Certainly a very informative book, but I do wish Martin von Katte had published his manuscript, and even more that the original letters survived, because as it is we have transcriptions of transcriptions of transcriptions (and some not even direct quotes but paraphrasings by Martin, then Klosterhuis.) Still, this is far more than we knew before.

Edited Date: 2020-01-09 08:35 am (UTC)

From:

mildred_of_midgard

This is wonderful, thank you! I could tell just from the heavily-footnoted sample and from various reports (however inaccurate) by people who'd read it that it had the goods.

The unpublished manuscript is: "Hans Herrmann", Manuscript from 1934, transcription by Martin's daughter Maria von Katte in 1997 for the author. No, still not published.

ARGH WHYYY? Come on, Katte family!

clearly Klosterhuis was Michael Roes' main source for his "Zeithain" novel

I had figured that out, based on the large number of things that were in Zeithain and also in this book but that I hadn't found outside this book.

When Fritz ordered to the tribunal material in 1740, Eichel provided him with it and suggested burning it afterwards; Fritz said no and just had it sealed up again. Our author then does a Tacitean insinuation by observingt that of course we don't know whether Fritz returned all the material to the archives or destroyed some of it which was embarrassing to him. We do know he looked up the material repeatedly in his life, though.

Oh, interesting. Our oh-so-reliable Catt says (p. 64 of the translated memoirs, vol. 1) that Fritz says that he *did* destroy a few pages, and sealed up the rest.

Preuß also had access to the entire material for his bio.

That is useful to know!

Our author, based on Martin von Katte, claims Han Herrmann mostly grew up with Granddad Wartensleben in the later's palace in Berlin and that the big life style there influenced him more than Dad's more modest one in Angerburg.

Aha! No mention of spending time in the Netherlands, I take it? I haven't seen that claim outside of Wikipedia.

Klosterhuis draws attention to the fact that Granddad was an F1 era Prussian nobleman with baroque splendour whereas Dad Hans Heinrich was a good example of FW's remaking of the Prussian nobility into army men and servants to the crown, military first and foremost.

I wasn't certain of Grandpa Wartensleben, but this does fit my view of Hans Heinrich. Good to know!

Aunt Melusine the Mistress of G1 was indeed aunt Melusine to Hans Herrmann;

Do we know how she was genealogically related? She can't have been "aunt" in its strict sense of "daughter of grandparents."

"Katte has followed orders and is eager. But he strives more for his father's sake than due to a proper reason" (here author adds "meaning a religious motivation") - 1718

Had seen this quote, consider it evidence (not definitive, obviously) that his final playing by the religious rules at his execution was partly for Dad et al.

then on his own initiative to Madrid where he met de Rottembourg (who'd been transfered there)

Can you tell if they mean "met" as in "made the acquaintance of" or "ran into again"? Because Wilhelmine says that spending so much time with Rottembourg was part of the reason Katte had such elegant French manners, and the 1728 Madrid encounter would not have been enough time for that him to be a major influence. I got the impression from her that Katte spent time with him when he was posted in Berlin.

he had a fling with cousin Petronella von der Schulenburg. (Roes did not make that up! Which means Hans Herrmann did it with a Hannover cousin, albeit an illegitimate one.)

OMMGG, that's hilarious! Wow, that novel is even less fictional than I thought. I gather Klosterhuis is the source for the anecdote about Hans Hermann and his riding a horse into his cousin's (Petronella?) living room. Is there any more detail on that? Gossipy sensationalists need to know!

Also, we now have Trenck, Marwitz, Voltaire, and Katte starting family collections. Which raises the very important question: which sibling was Glasow after? :P

ETA: Also, what does the evidence for the affair look like? Letter from Hans Hermann? Other?

Later, his regiment commander's judgment on him: "I can't make heads or tails off Katte; sans reproche - i.e. without fail - he seems to be only on horseback or playing the flute".

Do we have a date for this? I saw something that said that Katte spent 5 years as a cornet, instead of 3, which is unexplained, but that source also says he joined 8 November 1724, instead of winter 1726. If it was 26, then he spent a normal amount of time as a cornet.

Also, "only on horseback" is consistent with being on horseback even in ladies' drawing rooms. :P Katte: it's nice to be a dedicated cavalry officer and all, but sometimes you are meant to get off the horse.

(I.e. he didn't want to desert, he wanted to offficially quit Prussian service and enter the Hannover/British one.)

Indeed, that was the conclusion I came to after encountering this passage in the wild (i.e. not a paraphrase by someone else) and getting the gist of it from my limited German: "I haven't Google translated the passage closely enough to see if it says he's planning to *desert*, or if maybe he just wants to ask FW nicely if he can leave the service honorably and move to England."

Thank you for confirming it was the latter. 1) That makes infinitely more sense, 2) wow, that has implications for his later attitude toward the escape plan.

Author says it's possible that Fritz met Katte as early as spring 1727 in Monbijou when the regiment Gens D'Armes was there a couple of times and noticed his flute playing, according to Rittmeister Christoph Werner von der Asseburg quoted in M. v. Katte, but says there were no close relations betwen them until spring 1729.

Wikipedia says Fritz & Katte shared lessons. Does Klosterhuis support that? I have found no sources outside Wikipedia.

Yes, Katte was in Zeithain

Yet again, novel is less fictional than thought! (I could tell it was drawing heavily on this monograph, but I couldn't tell *how* heavily.)

"We are both of us to pity, but if all this blood is no good, one opens a vein. It is not our fault."

Hadn't seen that quote, thanks!

Brother-in-law Rochow got promoted to Lieutenant Colonel, Hans Friedrich von Katte to Major, both in October 1730, as a reward of their faithful ~~reporting~~ throwing of Hans Hermann to the wolves.

FTFY. :P

FW was extra paranoid before Fritz ever tried to escape. Iin January in Potsdam there was actually a desertation conspiracy among 40 (!) members of the Regiment Gens d'Armes - i.e. Katte's regiment.

Had seen this claim, hadn't seen a source for it. Good to know! What is Klosterhuis's source, btw?

The three letters from Hans Herrmann (to dad and granddad and the king) from October and November 1730 - which Wilhelmine quotes form in her memoirs - were quoted in the 1731 anonymous pamphlet about Hans Herrmann's execution and our author says they were already making the rounds in Berlin in November 1730. Who copied and circulated them is unknown.

OOOOHHH, I was wondering where she got those from, in Bayreuth circa 1745! See, I knew this pamphlet was relevant to our extremely serious scholarly interests and they should let us inspect it. :P

Klosterhuis does mention Doris Ritter but says that the files themselves do not say whether or not she was a virgin, that's what Guy Dickens the English secretary reports the midwife and Doctor said, and since he's clearly pro-crown prince/anti King partisan, he's not to be trusted and it's more likely she wasn't a virgin. (?) The "not a virgin, I don't think" insinuation seems mostly there so the case of FW the law believer remains intact.

Oh, FFS.

Hans Heinrich gets elevated to count and family gets a new emblem granted on 6. August 1740, i.e. exact day of Fritz desertation attempt.

OOOHHH I had missed this! I know it was August and about a month after the military promotion, but I had missed the August 6 date. Probably mostly because I usually see the escape attempt date given as August 5 or August 4/5, but of course it was a kind of complicated escape attempt.

I do wish Martin von Katte had published his manuscript, and even more that the original letters survived, because as it is we have transcriptions of transcriptions of transcriptions (and some not even direct quotes but paraphrasings by Martin, then Klosterhuis.)

SAME!

Still, this is far more than we knew before.

Indeed! And all thanks to you! You know, if I do ever manage to write any Katte fanfic, it's going to have a serious amount of oddly specific detail in it. :D

Once again, you have delivered, and you are the very best royal reader. \o/

Martin von Katte: Hans Herrmann von Katte, Eine biographische Skizze aus dem späten Barock, in: Das Lerchennest

Footnote for

cahn: Lerchennest is the name of the place where Fritz and FW were camping out in a barn in modern-day Sinsheim (near Stuttgart) when Fritz tried to make a break for it. Basically, the farmer was named Lerch (Lark), and when 18-yo Fritz learned their's host's name, he's supposed to have quipped, "I'm staying in a lark's nest (Lerchennest)."

Today, the original barn, still standing, is a Fritz museum (heavily geared toward his battles, it seems), and on the side of the building is a plaque (that as I suspected and

mildred_of_midgard

AKA resources for gossipy sensationalists with scholarly instincts!

A couple weeks ago, I moved all my Fritz PDFs from Dropbox (where they were causing me to run out of space, lol) to Google Drive, and shared the folder with

selenak. It should now be shared with

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From:

cahn

Dec 20 1732
Arrived at court. Princess W. seems nice.

Dec 21
OMG. I thought Queen SD was OK, Fritz never talks about her, but last night at dinner she let loose with this random rambling diatribe against Fritz's fiancee. All us servants were trying really hard not to react. Apparently she didn't know the instant dinner was over we were all gonna go gossip?? She then proceeded to yell at Wilhelmine, who was all "OK, mom," and "If you say so, mom."

I asked later in the servants' quarters if she was always like that. "Yeah," they said. "Sometimes worse."

Dec 22
When Fritz talks to King FW he's always either manic or depressed afterwards. Sometimes both! I wasn't aware it was possible to be both. I thought FW hated Fritz, but now I think he hates everyone. He yells at SD, he yells at Fritz, and he alternates between ignoring and kicking Wilhelmine. He mostly just ignores the younger kids, who have also learned to get the hell out of everyone's way. Good job kids.

Dec 23
Okay, now I really think FW hates everyone. Possibly including himself. We all had to watch some random comedians for FOUR HOURS. OUTSIDE. Have I mentioned it's DECEMBER?? FW yelled at anyone who even moved, so it wasn't like he was having a great time either. Wilhelmine was coughing. Every time she coughed she either got yelled at or a death glare. Fritz tried to give her his coat, but of course he got yelled at too. Finally I managed to rustle up a blanket and drape it over her shoulders, and because I'm only a servant I only got half the death glare.

I talked to the comedians afterwards and they weren't very happy about all this either, especially since the King stiffed them on their fee on the grounds that engaging them was "good advertising."

Dec 24
Fritz and Wilhelmine are engaged in something with Seckendorff and Grumkow and borrowing money. I don't even want to know. Oh God. I did talk briefly to Seckendorff. He was all "Well, Wilhelmine will be all right once her father-in-law kicks the bucket." EVERYONE IS CRAZY HERE.

Speaking of crazy... FW came up to me. I'd hoped he hadn't noticed me at all. Maybe I shouldn't have given that blanket to Wilhelmine the other night, but she was really cold. He was all "So... err... you're my son's valet, I hear."

"Er, yes, sire, your Majesty," I said, trying to unobtrusively move away from him.

He stared at me. It was really uncomfortable. "Could be a little taller," he mumbled. (So weird! I'm a lot taller than him.) "But for the boy's first valet hire, not bad, not bad at all. Boy, if you ever want a job here, just let me know."

"Your Majesty. Very much obliged, sire," I said, which was better than "OMG NO" which was obviously what I was thinking.

He stared at me some more, sort of patted me awkwardly on the shoulder, and left.

...now that I write that down, was the King hitting on me???? EW.

Dec 25
Christmas. At this point I wasn't surprised that the Christmas Day service was four hours, also outside. Also, I'm used to the service being about, you know, Christ's birth, but apparently the text the guy was given was all about honoring your father and mother. Fritz spent the whole time passing notes to Wilhelmine. I found one. It said "'Fathers, provoke not your children to wrath.'"

Once we all trooped inside and warmed up, FW and SD passed out presents. From FW, Fritz got an old sock. From SD, Wilhelmine got a dirty handkerchief. Then we had dinner. Apparently FW is experimenting with boiled pudding diets now. It wasn't very appetizing.

FW looked at me once in a while but I pretended to be very very busy with all my valet duties.

Maybe I should invite Fritz to MY house for Christmas next year. It would be more cramped but at least we're not ALL CRAZY.

Dec 26
We are leaving!! Yay!! As we left, FW and Seckendorff were pulling Wilhelmine's husband out the door. FW was going "Come ON, Friedrich, who doesn't like drinking all day?!" and Wilhelmine's husband was all, "ME. THAT'S WHO. I DON'T LIKE DRINKING ALL DAY."

I felt sorry for him, but at least we're outta here!

[if anyone reads this who isn't selenak or mildred, I made up the FW-F convo and Christmas but scarily little of the rest of it is made up]

From:

selenak

You absolutely win at very secret diaries. OMG. I'm still laughing. And snorting. And giggling. And all the synonyms!

she let loose with this random rambling diatribe against Fritz's fiancee

Count the days free of Hohenzollern crazy you still have, EC, because there won't be many left!

We all had to watch some random comedians for FOUR HOURS. OUTSIDE.

(not to Mildred: In German. Extra burden to F, W and SD.)

Loved Fredersdorf learning from the comedians later that they were stiffed, because FW so would.

FW's awkward coming on to Fredersdorf: GOLDEN. (But so is everything, really!)

Also, poor Fredersdorf, with eight more years of this to come. (Although as we know, Fritz managed to stay happily away in Neuruppin and Rheinsberg most of the time.) Truly, among "getting to know your new boyfriend's family", this has to outdo most other examples, even among royals. (Hephaistion meeting Philip and Olympias, Maybe? But I dimly seem to recall he grew up at least in part at the Macedonian court, so...)

FW might be the worst, Cahn, but you're the best!