This is what I meant by "possibly not the most comforting thing ever."
Yeeeeah. Ouch. I... it's definitely not surprising to me that Fritz may have had a lot of kind of awful emotional stuff going on *even on top* of the expected awful stuff.
Also, possible theory: in addition originally advising against the escape plan, Katte might have said something to Fritz that he now reminds Fritz off under the disguise of telling him to obey his father. After all, to FW this would sound as pleasingly conformist, but who knows what they have said to each other on those occasions?
I was thinking that too when reading it! That it's plausible deniability about "oh of course we talked about how it was a dumb idea," but if no one else was there, maybe it's supposed to be a code reminder of something else. (Though I was thinking along more romantic lines, myself: that he said something along the lines of, "Remember that I told you that night I'll always love you, whatever happens." Maybe that's too much, but I may just quietly file it in my headcanon anyway :P )
maybe it's supposed to be a code reminder of something else. (Though I was thinking along more romantic lines, myself: that he said something along the lines of, "Remember that I told you that night I'll always love you, whatever happens." Maybe that's too much, but I may just quietly file it in my headcanon anyway :P )
Yeeeeah. Ouch. I... it's definitely not surprising to me that Fritz may have had a lot of kind of awful emotional stuff going on *even on top* of the expected awful stuff.
Plus, new awful stuff keeps popping up. I mean, we all know about Katte's beheading, and I had read the letter before, but then Grumbkow's "How about being aloof with the ONLY confidant and support system you have left??" comes along to match Wilhelmine's account in her memoirs, and then my heart has to break for Fritz (and Wilhelmine) all over again.
Same here. I mean, all the other tips are actually useful in a "how to survive FW and keep on his good side" manner, but "erect boundaries with Wilhelmine" from Grumbkow has to come either from FW or be caused by direct observation that FW is displeased by sibling closeness and wishes them apart. Which, if you think about it, makes coldblooded sense: with her marriage, Wilhelmine loses her value as a hostage. She's in Bayreuth, FW can't threaten her anymore with anything but cut her and her husband off from money. Certainly not with shutting her away from the world. So Fritz and Wilhelmine remaining close has no more plus, and only a minus, because a tyrant always wants to remain the sole focus of emotional attention.
If I find more time, I might to cheer you up get some quotes from 1730s letters from Fritz to Wilhelmine proving that despite what he says to Outsiders like Mitchell or Catt about FW, this did not work, because towards Wilhelmine, he sounds as jaundiced about dear old Dad as ever. Which is presumably yet another reason why Grumbkow (and/or FW) want them apart. Note that Wilhelmine in her memoirs also mentions people keep telling her through the 1730s Fritz has cooled off on her and later that he doesn't love her anymore. At a guess, that might courtiers in Grumbkow/ other FW employees as well.
And that's leaving aside SD as testified by Seckendorff Jr. badmouthing her daughter to her Father. That family...
this did not work, because towards Wilhelmine, he sounds as jaundiced about dear old Dad as ever.
"One can compel by force some poor wretch to utter a certain form of words, yet he will deny to it his inner consent; thus the persecutor has gained nothing" doesn't just apply to religion! It also works for messed-up family dynamics.
By the way, MacDonogh gives the siblings a hard time for their letters that make it clear they're hoping FW dies soon:
During the period of the king’s illness, the tone of Frederick’s correspondence with Wilhelmina took on a sinister, anticipatory air as they waited for the not so old man to die. The letters read like a couple of Hollywood villains planning to murder a rich relative.
And this just makes me so angry. He tried running away from his abuser and things just got a million times worse! Death is the only hope of escape he's got now. I cannot blame either of them for looking forward to it.
Note that Wilhelmine in her memoirs also mentions people keep telling her through the 1730s Fritz has cooled off on her and later that he doesn't love her anymore.
Fritz's letters to her also reflect this: "Stop believing I don't love you! Have some more faith in me!"
And that's leaving aside SD as testified by Seckendorff Jr. badmouthing her daughter to her Father. That family...
:-(
No wonder Fritz turned into the very model of a modern Hohenzollern therapist.
McDonogh: The letters read like a couple of Hollywood villains planning to murder a rich relative.
And this just makes me so angry. He tried running away from his abuser and things just got a million times worse! Death is the only hope of escape he's got now. I cannot blame either of them for looking forward to it
Same here. I see the fact they still had mixed feelings about their parents (in Wilhelmine's case)/father at all instead of wanting FW dead all the time as a minor miracle. Though mixed feelings are more typical for abused children than not. Btw, here are the promised quotes from the Fritz and Wilhelmine correspondance proving Fritz didn't really go "Dad was right, I was wrong" in the 1730s. Noteworthy for including the sole occasion when Fritz voices criticism of SD as well as FW.
He dates a letter "September 1733, Wusterhausen, for my sins" and writes: "The King is bittersweet. Frankly, he's displeased by your departure, but you do well not to worry about that. We hope to leave in eight days, but I ask you to pray for our souls in purgatory..."
March 19th 1734: Dearest sister, I envy you for not being here, for our gracious sovereign and queen have agreed on alternating being in a terrible mood. One doesn't know how one stands with them; today, one gets overwhelmed with tendernesses, tomorrow, there are only sore faces and unfriendly words. In short, their mood switches from one day to the next. (...)
The King's mood has become unbearable, he hates me like sin, and the crownn princess' credit with him is nearly gone. Still, I mock everything and am in a good mood. I'm not grieving and solely feel sorry for the King who finds himself unable to show affection to his children.
In chronology terms, this after he finally got permission to go campaigning with Eugene:
June 14th, 1734: I bothered the King long enough till he has permitted me to travel via Bayreuth upon my return, but not via Ansbach, which doesn't make me too sad. (So much for sister Friederike Luise.) The Queen was very angry with me, but I have found ways and means of mollifying her. I've made peace with the King at the cost of a calf which has been made the scapegoat. You know yourself what is is like to try and get along with two people of such different characters. This is more than serving two masters. I often experience great distress through it, but the respect I owe to my parents shuts me up. The King isn't doing too well. You know I'm not superstitious, so you can rely on me all the more when I say: it's either gout or...
No wonder Fritz turned into the very model of a modern Hohenzollern therapist.
On that note, Fritz to Grumbkow, apropos EC:
The King should consider that he's marrying me (off) and not himself! He will have a thousand times the displeasure if he puts two people together who hate each other, if he sees the most miserable marriage of the world and listens to the mutual complaints which will be accusations against him for creating the yoke that ties us together.(...) Hasn't he seen enough in his own life what a miserable marriage is like?
*Heinrich and Mina: start coughing* *FW2 & both his wives: nearly choke*
So, wait. I'm reading the Puncta again (mildred, want to put it on rheinsberg?) while in the throes of trying to reply to stuff (I agree, of course, that he's totally writing with an eye to FW, and maybe his dad), and I got stuck here:
I acknowledge that, for wise reasons, Divine Providence has decreed that these misfortunes should fall upon me, to bring me to true repentance, and to enable me to work out my salvation.
Which... looks... if you squint sideways at it... kind of like predestination, to me. I know point 2 assigns an actual Katte-cause making it not!predestination, and I mean, obviously you (by which I mean FW) are supposed to read the whole letter and say "Yeah! You screwed up and God is making all this revenge fall upon you" but I do kind of wonder if there was a reason he did the points like that, where you can read point 1 in a certain way if you don't then go on to read point 2, whereas I feel kind of like it would have been more natural to say as point 1, "The prince royal didn't cause my death, my own ambition and neglect of the Almighty did."
Okay, I know, I am just grasping at straws here to give Fritz as much comfort from this letter as I can wring out of any line of it :P
I'm reading the Puncta again (mildred, want to put it on rheinsberg?)
I've added it to my to-do list. :)
Along with: finish trying to track down Katte's Species Facti and interrogation protocols, write up tonight's Katte findings from Koser, finish outlining Catt's memoirs and do a write-up, and reread Blanning as concentration allows, and keep chipping away at a big Rheinsberg write-up in the works.
I'd also like to get Katte's letters to his father and grandfather in the same Rheinsberg post, and maybe his grandfather's letter to FW and FW's reply.
Meant to add: I'm no kind of theologian, but I feel like "repentance + work out salvation" is the opposite of predestination, where your salvation is decided before you're born and can't be worked toward.
However, it's possible that the mention of Providence doubled as a private nod from Katte toward Fritz and their mutual interest in fatalist doctrines.
Hm - I don't know what an 18th-C theologian would have said; I think a 21st-century one would say that predestination doesn't rule out repentance and even working out salvation (which is a Pauline quote in any case), but it does say that whether you had been chosen to be one of the ones who was able to truly repent and work out salvation had been already chosen. But I'm sure I'm reaching too far with this anyway :)
I'm reading the Puncta again (mildred, want to put it on rheinsberg?)
It's up! Along with several related items. Poor Katte. *hugs*
Totally unrelated Katte comments:
1) Reddit (of all places, lol), says that the part about Katte's stepbrothers killing themselves in a duel, one dying immediately and one dying of wounds afterward, comes from Martin von Katte's manuscript. I'm not excessively optimistic about getting a copy, but I've put in an ILL request, because it can't hurt. WorldCat turns up 4 copies for me, in Frankfurt am Main, Stuttgart, Karlsruhe, and Wolfenbüttel.
2) Lol, I ran across a picture of the moment of unveiling of Katte's commemorative plaque at Küstrin, in April 2015. I didn't realize it involved cosplay!
3) Found the Kattes and von Arnims intermarrying in the 1530s, although I don't think it involves a shared ancestry for Achim and Hans Hermann. If I cared enough, I think I could put together a family tree linking them, although possibly not.
I swear I was looking for Martin von Katte's document when I ran across (2) and (3)!
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Re: Katte!
I'm with you.
Me too. Also, from the last post:
This is what I meant by "possibly not the most comforting thing ever."
Yeeeeah. Ouch. I... it's definitely not surprising to me that Fritz may have had a lot of kind of awful emotional stuff going on *even on top* of the expected awful stuff.
Also, possible theory: in addition originally advising against the escape plan, Katte might have said something to Fritz that he now reminds Fritz off under the disguise of telling him to obey his father. After all, to FW this would sound as pleasingly conformist, but who knows what they have said to each other on those occasions?
I was thinking that too when reading it! That it's plausible deniability about "oh of course we talked about how it was a dumb idea," but if no one else was there, maybe it's supposed to be a code reminder of something else. (Though I was thinking along more romantic lines, myself: that he said something along the lines of, "Remember that I told you that night I'll always love you, whatever happens." Maybe that's too much, but I may just quietly file it in my headcanon anyway :P )
Re: Katte!
<3333
YES PLEASE
Re: Katte!
Plus, new awful stuff keeps popping up. I mean, we all know about Katte's beheading, and I had read the letter before, but then Grumbkow's "How about being aloof with the ONLY confidant and support system you have left??" comes along to match Wilhelmine's account in her memoirs, and then my heart has to break for Fritz (and Wilhelmine) all over again.
Re: Katte!
If I find more time, I might to cheer you up get some quotes from 1730s letters from Fritz to Wilhelmine proving that despite what he says to Outsiders like Mitchell or Catt about FW, this did not work, because towards Wilhelmine, he sounds as jaundiced about dear old Dad as ever. Which is presumably yet another reason why Grumbkow (and/or FW) want them apart. Note that Wilhelmine in her memoirs also mentions people keep telling her through the 1730s Fritz has cooled off on her and later that he doesn't love her anymore. At a guess, that might courtiers in Grumbkow/ other FW employees as well.
And that's leaving aside SD as testified by Seckendorff Jr. badmouthing her daughter to her Father. That family...
Re: Katte!
"One can compel by force some poor wretch to utter a certain form of words, yet he will deny to it his inner consent; thus the persecutor has gained nothing" doesn't just apply to religion! It also works for messed-up family dynamics.
By the way, MacDonogh gives the siblings a hard time for their letters that make it clear they're hoping FW dies soon:
During the period of the king’s illness, the tone of Frederick’s correspondence with Wilhelmina took on a sinister, anticipatory air as they waited for the not so old man to die. The letters read like a couple of Hollywood villains planning to murder a rich relative.
And this just makes me so angry. He tried running away from his abuser and things just got a million times worse! Death is the only hope of escape he's got now. I cannot blame either of them for looking forward to it.
Note that Wilhelmine in her memoirs also mentions people keep telling her through the 1730s Fritz has cooled off on her and later that he doesn't love her anymore.
Fritz's letters to her also reflect this: "Stop believing I don't love you! Have some more faith in me!"
And that's leaving aside SD as testified by Seckendorff Jr. badmouthing her daughter to her Father. That family...
:-(
No wonder Fritz turned into the very model of a modern Hohenzollern therapist.
Re: Katte!
And this just makes me so angry. He tried running away from his abuser and things just got a million times worse! Death is the only hope of escape he's got now. I cannot blame either of them for looking forward to it
Same here. I see the fact they still had mixed feelings about their parents (in Wilhelmine's case)/father at all instead of wanting FW dead all the time as a minor miracle. Though mixed feelings are more typical for abused children than not. Btw, here are the promised quotes from the Fritz and Wilhelmine correspondance proving Fritz didn't really go "Dad was right, I was wrong" in the 1730s. Noteworthy for including the sole occasion when Fritz voices criticism of SD as well as FW.
He dates a letter "September 1733, Wusterhausen, for my sins" and writes: "The King is bittersweet. Frankly, he's displeased by your departure, but you do well not to worry about that. We hope to leave in eight days, but I ask you to pray for our souls in purgatory..."
March 19th 1734: Dearest sister, I envy you for not being here, for our gracious sovereign and queen have agreed on alternating being in a terrible mood. One doesn't know how one stands with them; today, one gets overwhelmed with tendernesses, tomorrow, there are only sore faces and unfriendly words. In short, their mood switches from one day to the next. (...)
The King's mood has become unbearable, he hates me like sin, and the crownn princess' credit with him is nearly gone. Still, I mock everything and am in a good mood. I'm not grieving and solely feel sorry for the King who finds himself unable to show affection to his children.
In chronology terms, this after he finally got permission to go campaigning with Eugene:
June 14th, 1734: I bothered the King long enough till he has permitted me to travel via Bayreuth upon my return, but not via Ansbach, which doesn't make me too sad. (So much for sister Friederike Luise.) The Queen was very angry with me, but I have found ways and means of mollifying her. I've made peace with the King at the cost of a calf which has been made the scapegoat. You know yourself what is is like to try and get along with two people of such different characters. This is more than serving two masters. I often experience great distress through it, but the respect I owe to my parents shuts me up. The King isn't doing too well. You know I'm not superstitious, so you can rely on me all the more when I say: it's either gout or...
No wonder Fritz turned into the very model of a modern Hohenzollern therapist.
On that note, Fritz to Grumbkow, apropos EC:
The King should consider that he's marrying me (off) and not himself! He will have a thousand times the displeasure if he puts two people together who hate each other, if he sees the most miserable marriage of the world and listens to the mutual complaints which will be accusations against him for creating the yoke that ties us together.(...) Hasn't he seen enough in his own life what a miserable marriage is like?
*Heinrich and Mina: start coughing*
*FW2 & both his wives: nearly choke*
Re: Katte!
Re: Katte!
I acknowledge that, for wise reasons, Divine Providence has decreed that these misfortunes should fall upon me, to bring me to true repentance, and to enable me to work out my salvation.
Which... looks... if you squint sideways at it... kind of like predestination, to me. I know point 2 assigns an actual Katte-cause making it not!predestination, and I mean, obviously you (by which I mean FW) are supposed to read the whole letter and say "Yeah! You screwed up and God is making all this revenge fall upon you" but I do kind of wonder if there was a reason he did the points like that, where you can read point 1 in a certain way if you don't then go on to read point 2, whereas I feel kind of like it would have been more natural to say as point 1, "The prince royal didn't cause my death, my own ambition and neglect of the Almighty did."
Okay, I know, I am just grasping at straws here to give Fritz as much comfort from this letter as I can wring out of any line of it :P
Re: Katte!
I've added it to my to-do list. :)
Along with: finish trying to track down Katte's Species Facti and interrogation protocols, write up tonight's Katte findings from Koser, finish outlining Catt's memoirs and do a write-up, and reread Blanning as concentration allows, and keep chipping away at a big Rheinsberg write-up in the works.
I'd also like to get Katte's letters to his father and grandfather in the same Rheinsberg post, and maybe his grandfather's letter to FW and FW's reply.
Meant to add: I'm no kind of theologian, but I feel like "repentance + work out salvation" is the opposite of predestination, where your salvation is decided before you're born and can't be worked toward.
However, it's possible that the mention of Providence doubled as a private nod from Katte toward Fritz and their mutual interest in fatalist doctrines.
Re: Katte!
Thank you for putting the Puncta up!
Re: Katte!
It's up! Along with several related items. Poor Katte. *hugs*
Totally unrelated Katte comments:
1) Reddit (of all places, lol), says that the part about Katte's stepbrothers killing themselves in a duel, one dying immediately and one dying of wounds afterward, comes from Martin von Katte's manuscript. I'm not excessively optimistic about getting a copy, but I've put in an ILL request, because it can't hurt. WorldCat turns up 4 copies for me, in Frankfurt am Main, Stuttgart, Karlsruhe, and Wolfenbüttel.
2) Lol, I ran across a picture of the moment of unveiling of Katte's commemorative plaque at Küstrin, in April 2015. I didn't realize it involved cosplay!
3) Found the Kattes and von Arnims intermarrying in the 1530s, although I don't think it involves a shared ancestry for Achim and Hans Hermann. If I cared enough, I think I could put together a family tree linking them, although possibly not.
I swear I was looking for Martin von Katte's document when I ran across (2) and (3)!
Oh, Martin also wrote a somewhat easier to get a hold of book called Schwarz auf Weiss: Erinnerungen eines Neunzigjährigen, which might or might not be cool.