I dug up the 1731 pamphlet! It's very interesting. It has the execution taking place November 9. It has letters from Katte to his stepmother, FW, grandfather, and father. No brother-in-law. The stepmother's letter is separate, not a postscript to the father's letter, the language is very slightly different from Fontane's version, and it has a closing line that's not in Fontane! Namely, a reference to Genesis 17.1, "I am God Almighty, walk before me and be pious."
There's a two page summary of events that I would love some help with when you have time, selenak; I'm struggling with the poor quality scan, the font (which I'm getting better at!), and the Rococo German.
It's got yet another variant on Katte's last words! This is the only one to mention FW that I've ever seen. (I'm not 100% confident of all the spelling, so please correct any errors.)
Mein gnädigster Cron-prinz sie haben nicht Ursach mich um Verzeihung zu bitten, wenn ich zehen Leben zu verliehren hätte, so wollte ich gern darum geben, wann nur Eu. Königliche Hoheit mit Dero Herrn Vater dem König dadurch könten versöhn et werden.
My most gracious Crown Prince, you have nothing to ask me for forgiveness for; if I had ten lives to lose, I would gladly give them up, if only Your Royal Highness could be reconciled with your Lord Father the King.
Wooow. You said this was printed in the Prussian-hating region of Cologne, and I wonder if the point of this is to emphasize that FW is the problem here.
It's also, interestingly, not the variant that Wilhelmine (and Pöllnitz) has, which involves a thousand lives and no reconciliation. So though this may be where she's getting her letter to Katte's grandfather, it's not where she's not getting the last words to Fritz. The pamphlet account's also got a sand heap and no scaffold, but it has Fritz watching. I can't quite tell, but I think he faints after seeing Katte beheaded, not before. It's got Katte's body lying out there until 2 pm, after which some townspeople put it in a coffin of four planks and bury it (in the soldiers' cemetery?).
It's super useful to know what account was floating around at the time with no reference to the horse's mouth!
Also, it looks like the letters were translated into English by 1734, but I can't seem to get my hands on a copy of that online without being Australian, sigh. We need an Australian royal patron now. :P
Okay, I‘ve read it now. It‘s really very short, the sole reason why it has 40 pages is that the last page is recopied endlessly.
Text before letters:
- in this version, Fritz learns Katte will be executed at 5 am, the execution itself doesn‘t take place until 10 am. He‘s informed by „two captains“ who also tell him they‘re ordered to force him to watch and will have to drag him to the window if he can‘t go on his own. He does faint after, not before the beheading. Katte keeps eye contact with him right until death. He‘s calm and undresses himself (i.e. removes his shirt), and, as described by Fontane, who quotes Major v. S on this, binds his own eyes via the sleeping cap. Before he does that, he makes one last Hand kiss gesture towards Fritz. (Pamphlet says Hand-Fuß, not „Hand-Kuß“, but I think that‘s simply a letter misprint, because a foot instead of a kiss makes no sense here.) Fritz faints as soon as the head rolls and is no more seen by anyone. Katte‘s body lies there until 2 pm.
Thoughts: there are enough accurate elements here - sand, not scaffold, Katte putting the cap over his eyes, the body lying until 2 pm, as specified by FW‘s orders, which the pamphleteer couldn‘t have known, and of course the big one, accurate letters - that I think there‘s an eyewitness report involved. The divergences - the hour of execution, Fritz watching and fainting after, not before, Katte keeping eye contact - can be simply yellow press need for even more drama. Because these kind of pamphlets are the 18th century equivalent of the Daily Mail/Bildzeitung in Germany/ Whatever rag preceeded the existence of Fox TV in the US). The more tearjerking, the better.
Now, FW mention in Katte‘s reply - yes, I do think this is for making FW look even worse. Though there is one alternate explanation, if the whole thing (the pamphlet) is intended as a moral lesson for disobedient sons to lead a more Christian life. But I think in that case, it would have ended on the Crown Prince praying with Pater Müller. That Fritz post fainting „isn‘t seen or heard of“ anymore is one of those details that make me believe someone did get an eyewitness account and then proceeded to juice it up. Pamphlets aren‘t meant for historians but for sensational gossip mongers paying for them, after all!
Yes, the copying job on this was terrible, and disappointing once I realized 80% of it was blank pages and that last page. But still really good to have!
He‘s informed by „two captains“ who also tell him they‘re ordered to force him to watch and will have to drag him to the window if he can‘t go on his own.
That's interesting, because it meas this story was floating around without coming from Fritz, and any memoirist who reports it isn't necessarily getting it from Fritz, or even from someone who was inside the room. *However*, Fritz fainting seems to be real, since he reports it to Mitchell. Since the fainting is in the pamphlet, that means word got out from inside that room pretty quickly. Seeing as how Fritz fainting isn't something an eyewitness of the execution could tell from outside. Since Wilhelmine says doctors were immediately sent for, that makes sense. That was probably known throughout the town by evening November 6.
Katte keeps eye contact with him right until death.
On the one hand, this is obviously something anyone in the history of ever would supply to spice up the narrative, but, on the other, if we trust the sources that say that Fritz couldn't see over the ones that say he could, it's possible that what really happened was that Katte kept looking in the direction of the Schloss where Fritz was. Which is what I always imagined, because I think he's clinging to every anchor he can grab in order to keep his calm exterior, and Fritz is going to be a major focal point. I think Katte's got a voice in the back--or front--of his mind chanting, "This is for Fritz, do it for Fritz, it's okay, it's worth it, Fritz is worth it."
Also, I agree the pamphlet is based largely off an eyewitness report, and if you consider that there were 150 eyewitnesses from the garrison, plus a handful of others, the source is most likely one or more of them. And as I said in another comment, since all contemporaries agree that Fritz could see the execution from where he was, it must not have been at all obvious to them that he couldn't. If nothing else, even if they can tell that Fritz's room isn't visible, they can't be certain that Fritz hasn't been moved to a room with a better view. So if Katte was staring at the Schloss or Weisskopf until the end, everyone outside is going to assume that Fritz is looking back.
And thus FW gets a report that Fritz *totally* watched, and fainted afterwards (I figured that's what Münchow/Schack/Lepel told him, and it's nice to see a contemporary account that says exactly that!).
Pamphlet says Hand-Fuß, not „Hand-Kuß“, but I think that‘s simply a letter misprint, because a foot instead of a kiss makes no sense here.
OOOHHH. Duh. I was wondering what that hand-foot gesture was, knew there were stories about final kiss-blowing, but was wondering if hand-foot was some kind of crazy German idiom like English "raining cats and dogs," and completely forgot the German word for kiss. Thanks!
The divergences - the hour of execution, Fritz watching and fainting after, not before, Katte keeping eye contact - can be simply yellow press need for even more drama.
Yes, and also inaccuracies that inevitably creep into any story through the course of transmission. If something happened at 7:45 am, I wouldn't necessarily expect everyone to remember it didn't happen at 10 am and for that number to be preserved two months later hundreds of miles away. Especially since the date is also wrong (Nov 9 instead of Nov 6), and I'm not entirely sure Nov 9 fits a yellow press need. Unless you can think of something.
And as for the story that Fritz watched and fainted afterward, as noted, that's not only the yellow press need, that's the "I, Münchow and Lepel, don't want my own head chopped off by FW for not making Fritz watch" need. Plus, any given eyewitness was either inside or outside, and the outside eyewitnesses couldn't see what happened inside and vice versa. And let's be real, even if the execution had taken place directly under Fritz's window, one, it's hard for people outside a building to see inside a room through the window anyway, and two, when Katte's head rolls directly in front of you, are you really staring at Fritz's window and timing the moment at which you don't see him any more vis-a-vis the moment the head falls? You're watching either the executioner or Katte. And then when you look up and see Fritz isn't there any more, you conclude that he fainted afterward. No conscious invention necessary.
And since everyone who was in the room is repeating that version of the story loudly, where FW can hear them...actually, much to my surprise, I'm backing myself into a corner where the only account according to which Fritz fainted *before* has to come from Fritz. First to Wilhelmine, presumably, who passes it on to Pöllnitz.
And the only other source that explicitly has Fritz fainting before, not after...is Catt. Who has Fritz saying that he avoided seeing the execution only by dint of fainting first.
Which, as I've pointed out, makes sense if Fritz hadn't been told he wasn't going to have to see the head fall, if afterward everyone is proclaiming to his father that he did, and if when he woke up, he wasn't surprised at not seeing the body because he assumed it was taken away (whereas outside perspectives know it was left until 2 pm), and if his accounts don't report a sand heap because he never saw one, because it was out of sight. Which is why the accounts that might come at least partly from him, Wilhelmine and Voltaire, supply scaffolds.
And you know, if the dominant narrative is that Fritz saw it, if very few people know he didn't, if Catt didn't have access to Wilhelmine (okay, darn, he had access to Pöllnitz, but their accounts are so radically different that I don't see a link), if the *obvious* and *sensationalist* account is that Fritz saw the execution and fainted afterwards, and two people independently making up something less obvious and less exciting would be very strange...
I think the Catt account is real, as in, comes from Fritz. I think the conversation happened after the diary ends in 1760, not remotely on the date that it's reported in the memoirs, where we've seen that Catt clumsily stitches together a bunch of disparate anecdotes and leaves his seams showing, but
1) We know Fritz talked about the execution with Mitchell.
2) We know Fritz talked about Küstrin with Catt.
When I started writing this post, I was 50/50 on Catt getting his Katte account from Fritz vs. fleshing out Voltaire with what he'd heard from other sources. Well, I still think he was reading Voltaire based on that one sentence I pasted earlier, but I'm now like 80/20 on Catt getting his account from Fritz. Which means I suspect Voltaire did too.
Thiébault, though, I think is getting his account from Pöllnitz (probably written rather than orally, or at least not solely orally), possibly Voltaire, and whatever else was floating around by 1804. T's account doesn't have any of the hallmarks of a Fritz account, and even his actual memoirs have more in common with Pöllnitz and Wilhelmine than with Catt, Voltaire, and Mitchell. No, one exception: T has Fritz calling simply "mon ami," and nothing from Katte, and doesn't report any of the variants of Fritz begging Katte's pardon and Katte's last words telling Fritz there's nothing to forgive. The absence of that dialogue is one element I think was probably a feature of Fritz's account, where I can easily imagine Fritz absolutely did not want to recount his last exchange with Katte with people he wasn't really that close to. I.e. I think Wilhelmine got a much more detailed and emotional account from him.
Well, leaving T aside, the important thing is I now think Catt's account is very likely to be real, based on Mitchell + the fainting taking place before rather than after.
Btw, Münchow, Jr. has Fritz *about* to faint, and, since he's the sole 18th century source so far who doesn't believe Fritz could see the execution site from his room, he obviously believes it was triggered by that last exchange with Katte and not by the sight of the execution itself. Which tells me that maybe after FW was dead, Münchow, Sr. started talking, at least with his family, about how Fritz didn't see the execution after all.
One more detail that varies: who informed Fritz of the upcoming execution? According to the pamphlet, two captains. According to Wilhelmine, Lepel and Münchow. According to Münchow fils, Lepel and Münchow. But according to Catt and Voltaire, "an old officer and four/several grenadiers."
So either Voltaire is making it up and Catt is copying him, which I now think is unlikely, or else there's this possible reconciliation: Münchow and Lepel as the two men of rank that are worth mentioning, plus several officers there to wrangle the reluctant boy to the window if necessary. Lepel, 73 years old, is the one who breaks the news to Fritz. Münchow is present, but Fritz is too busy freaking out at the time to remember all the details three decades later, or possibly just doesn't consider the presence of another officer important enough to be worth reporting, when there are much bigger deals going on, like the part where his boyfriend is about to die.
Though there is one alternate explanation, if the whole thing (the pamphlet) is intended as a moral lesson for disobedient sons to lead a more Christian life.
That did occur to me as well, but if you say there's nothing else to reinforce it...I, as a sensational gossip-monger who would have paid for this pamphlet (but thankfully didn't have to :P), am going with "Shame on FW!"
That Fritz post fainting „isn‘t seen or heard of“ anymore is one of those details that make me believe someone did get an eyewitness account and then proceeded to juice it up.
Now that sounds like yellow press to me! Wilhelmine's version has Fritz on the verge of death for three days, but I believe Müller's report to FW has him and Fritz chatting about predestination the next day, so I think Wilhelmine is juicing that part up herself, out of sympathy for Fritz, and general sensationalism.
Thanks so much for this write-up. It turned out to be surprisingly helpful in developing my thoughts about the reliability of the Catt account.
Okay, my write-up is posted, and well over 6,000 words. To spare you reading all of them, here are my conclusions, without presenting the evidence and the cases for and against:
FW definitely orders Lepel to make Fritz watch.
Presumably for reasons of compassion, Lepel and Münchow agree to stop just short of holding the execution where Fritz can see. In order to achieve plausible deniability for themselves, they do everything they can short of holding the execution in his line of view.
1) They position the execution site very close to his window. 2) They tell Fritz he's going to have to watch. 3) They have him dragged to the window when it's time. 4) They have Katte marched by his window.
Combining all those points, it wouldn't have been difficult to write a report afterward that conveyed to FW the impression that Fritz watched the execution, nor to convince everyone who was present that he had been watching.
Having made these plans, they come to Fritz's room, crying. He believes that this means he's going to die. Lepel breaks the news to him about Katte, and they have the accompanying grenadiers drag Fritz to the window.
While Fritz is being held there, Katte is marched past. Fritz begs for his forgiveness, and Katte replies there's nothing to forgive. Fritz thrusts his arm out the window (possibly to blow a kiss).
Fritz faints. Katte is marched to the execution site, out of Fritz's view. He stands in a circle of 150 men while the sentence is read. He may gaze the whole time in the direction of the building where Fritz is being held. He refuses a blindfold, takes off his wig, pulls a cap over his eyes, kneels in the sand. His head is removed with one stroke.
None of the 150 men can tell that Fritz can't see Katte from where he is.
Katte's body is covered with a black cloth, then left there until 2 pm, when the townspeople come to bury him, per FW's orders.
Meanwhile, Fritz is unconscious. Word spreads at Küstrin that he has fainted. Perhaps this happens when a doctor is sent for. When Fritz wakes, he can't see a body or any signs of an execution site, and he assumes it's all been removed. He spends the rest of his life believing that the only reason he didn't watch was that he fainted.
The official report from Lepel and co. to FW goes out stating that Fritz watched and was so impressed that he fainted afterwards. Eyewitnesses also report that he watched.
The pamphlet, from the perspective of someone watching the execution, believes that Fritz watched, and that he fainted after seeing the head roll.
Fritz somehow, perhaps through a smuggled letter, conveys to Wilhelmine that he thought he was going to be executed, that he was dragged to the window, that he saw Katte go by, and that he fainted before he could see the execution. He mentions nothing about the execution site or any body, because he never saw either.
Wilhelmine writes her memoirs on the basis of a long-since destroyed letter, a memory of a conversation many years ago, or both. She is not on speaking terms with Fritz at the time she's writing, she doesn't have access to the archives, and she can't let on that she's producing her memoirs. She compiles as many accounts of the November 6 events as she can and tries to make a coherent and exciting narrative out of them. Her perspective on what was happening outside the room is very inaccurate, and it informs her thinking on what was happening inside the room.
Pöllnitz, whom we know was in Bayreuth in 1744, when she was writing her memoirs, sits down and talks to her about what happened. They agree on an account and both render it in their respective memoirs, with something like 90% agreement on detail and overlap in wording, but not so much that I have reason to believe one was reading the draft of the other. She doesn't let on to him that she's writing memoirs (otherwise it would have become public knowledge, thanks to the notoriously talkative Pöllnitz).
In the 1750s, Fritz gives Voltaire a probably abbreviated account of what he told Wilhelmine. He also gives Mitchell an account in 1757. It's unclear how much Mitchell is summarizing or reporting everything he was told, but he writes down what he knows in 1757. Voltaire's memoirs aren't published until 1784, posthumously.
At some point after Catt's diary ends, Fritz also tells this story to Catt. It's unknown when Catt composed his memoirs or how late in the century he was still editing it, but at some point, he hears about Katte. In his memoirs, he assigns that anecdote to April 1758, in a conversation that also contains a lot of other stories that he's heard at various times from various people, including but not limited to Fritz.
Fritz may or may not tell this story to Thiébault during the 1760s or 70s. Thiébault almost certainly refers to Pöllnitz, published 1791, when writing his memoirs to be published in 1804, and quite likely to Voltaire, published in 1784.
At some point in the 1740s, Münchow the father tells his family about the Katte execution, with reference to the fact that Fritz did *not* have to watch. He also says that he and Lepel were in the room at the time, and they made Fritz sit down and drink something before he fainted.
In the 1790s, the son of Münchow writes the first account that we know of that states that Fritz was not in a position to watch. Until now, everyone has either said that he did watch it, or that he fainted just in time to avoid seeing it. Münchow was a child at the time, an eyewitness, and represents the outsider perspective, with a secondhand knowledge of the insider perspective through his father. He does not know about FW's order to make Fritz watch and concludes that there was none, because he can't imagine Lepel would engage in civil disobedience like that. He is probably our most reliable source on what the layout of Küstrin was like in the 1730s, since he lived there.
In 1804, Thiébault's memoirs are published.
In 1810, Wilhelmine's memoirs are published.
In 1860, Thiébault's memoirs are condensed and rewritten by someone else after his death, massively plagiarizing the Katte execution scene from Wilhelmine's memoirs.
In the 1860s, Theodor Hoffbauer publishes an investigation of two questions: Where was Katte executed? Did Fritz really watch? He concludes that Fritz couldn't see the execution site, and positions the execution site accordingly.
Thank you for this -- this all sounds very plausible and appears to explain all the evidence we have. (Amazing how much more we know than when you originally formulated the documentary hypothesis!)
Quick question as I do my rheinsberg write-up. The title of this pamphlet being "Wahre Nachricht von der scharffen Execution des mit dem Schwerdt hingerichteten Hernn Lieutenants von Katten," what's the best translation of "scharffen"? While I hope the sword was sharp, that's not a word we would use in English to describe an execution. Brutal? Is that what they're getting at here?
Also, thanks a million for indulging my obsessive detective work on what really happened on November 6, 1730, and who told whom what. :D
You wouldn‘t use „scharfen“ in modern German, either. While it literally means „sharp“, I think in the context it‘s simply meant as a doubling, „lethal execution“; to catch the sensationalistic sound, you could also make it „dreadful execution“.
By the way, given that the pamphlet includes both an eyewitness account and the letters, do you think that makes it any more likely that the letters were leaked from a sympathetic party at Küstrin?
Yes, that does make it look like our Whistleblower is most likely to be found in Küstrin. However: if we can figure it out, wouldn't FW? How come we don't have the tale of how a member of the Küstrin Garnison was gruesomely punished for leaking in 1731 at the latest?
(Good Lord, but FW would so be on twitter with angry tweets…)
Good question. It could just be that there are too many suspects, and they all have plausible deniability, especially with the presence of servants. 150 members of the garrison, two preachers, one major, two executioners, one president, one commandant, and probably at least one servant each for the major players and various servants shared by the 150. All someone had to do was leave the letters on/in their desk, they weren't sealed, and say, "Someone, idk who, must have gotten to them while I was out of the room."
Other thought: to what extent does FW care if letters in which Katte talks about how wrong he was, and how important it is to be a godly man, go public? Likewise, to what extent does he care if an eyewitness account of the execution is public, given that he made 150 people attend specifically because the execution was meant to serve as a salutary example for the rest of his army and subjects?
We may not need to look for a gruesome punishment. The execution was *supposed* to be widely advertised.
Like I was telling our royal patron on the phone today, if you want to hush something up, ordering 150 people to stand around in a circle and watch is not the way to do it. ;)
(I was in the middle of the rheinsberg write-up when he called, and so he ended up with a rundown of all the latest developments, including our belief that the pamphlet is based on an eyewitness account.)
I just noticed Koser mentions the 1731 pamphlet in one of his copious end notes. He thinks the Nov 9th and 10 am dates are printer errors. I think that's quite likely, as someone who made one myself, as selenak pointed out: I had Nov 9 in one place in my rheinsberg write-up!
More interesting, Koser says the pamphlet resembles the Danish embassy report and thus provides an important clue as to the provenance of the pamphlet.
Oh, wow, check out the translated excerpt from the Danish ambassador's report, dated Nov. 11:
Kattes Antwort lautet: „Dessen bedarf es nicht, gnädiger Herr. Wenn ich zehn Leben hätte, so würde ich sie gern hingeben, um Ew. Kon. Hoheit mit Ihrem Herrn Vater auszusöhnen." — „Man bemerkte, daß während ihm das Todesurtheil verlesen ward, er nicht einen Moment die Augen vom Prinzen verwandte. Beim Anblick des Todesstreichs sank der Kronprinz zurück und erschien nicht wieder."
Katte keeps his eyes on the Prince the whole time the sentence is read, Fritz faints and is not seen again (if this dates to Nov 11, that makes perfect sense; he is in prison, after all; also, am I right that that can be read as "did not reappear at the window on that occasion"?), and the last words, including the desired reconciliation with FW, are the same! Not verbatim, but they're two separate translations from French, so you wouldn't expect them to be. It would be interesting to check out the ambassador's report and see what he put down as the original French. But anyway, these are the *only* two versions of Katte's last words that I've ever seen agree. And they're the only two to mention FW. That counts as a shared innovation and gives me pretty high confidence that they're related. Especially if Koser's right about all the other similarities, like Fritz not being seen again. It looks like there's very little yellow journalism, if that pamphlet reflects an ambassador's official report.
Mes amies, we have ourselves a new suspect in the whistleblower mystery! Someone has access to both the letters and the Danish ambassador's report, and gets them circulating. I now have "track down Danish embassy report" on my to-do list. :P
Oh, and the Danish ambassador is the guy who supposedly warned Katte! Okay, now I have to track him down. That might be somewhat easier.
*some time later*
I had a difficult time with the one million spellings of his name, but Danish ambassador who warned Katte is evidently this guy, Poul Løvenørn, who Wikipedia says knew about the escape plan and didn't tell FW, so FW got mad at him.
Oh, interesting, he got recalled "after the death of Fredrik IV," which wikipedia tells me was October 12, 1730. On November 6, 1730, he was appointed chief war secretary, according to the Danish Biographical Dictionary...but Koser's report was sent from Berlin on November 11? Hmm.
Oh, Koser gives the name of the ambassador as John. Just "John." That's real Google-able, Koser, thanks. But anyway, possibly it was Løvenørn who was sympathetic to the royal children and Katte (Fritz and Wilhelmine both speak positively of him and agree that he was the one who warned Katte), and Løvenørn's successor who leaked the letters and his report. Wilhelmine says Løvenørn had spies on Grumbkow; maybe he had a spy at Küstrin and passed his spy network on to his successor?
It occurs to me that a sympathetic Danish ambassador in Berlin could maybe have gotten his hands on the letters Katte wrote in Berlin, the ones to his grandfather Wartensleben and FW, without Katte having had to take them to Küstrin, which was always a weak point of my argument.
But now the plot has thickened so much that we have two Danish ambassadors, omg. I need to figure out who the successor is.
*some time later*
Legationssekretæren Johnn! Who was apparently already in Berlin when Løvenørn arrived earlier in 1730 to help with England/Hanover - Prussia relations. (Løvenørn had been envoy previously, starting in 1719, and apparently was considered someone whom FW trusted and who could reason with FW. Right up until he didn't tell FW about his son's escape plans, I guess.)
We're now up to three highly sympathetic foreign envoys helping Fritz out: Suhm of course, French Rothenburg until 1727, and now Løvenørn. And possibly this Johnn, if he was indeed our letter leaker.
Anyway, we have continuity and overlap between Johnn, who'd been around for at least all of 1730 and probably more, and Løvenørn, and they presumably share a spy network and got someone at Küstrin who could pass on news about the Crown Prince. And copy Katte's last letters after Løvenørn was gone.
So this shadowy Legationssekretæren Johnn figure is our best suspect for a whistleblower now. I'll see what else I can find.
I've got given names! August Friedrich von Johnn.
Oh, right when things are going down in Fritz/Katte land (Oct 21, Dec 7), Løvenørn and Johnn are protesting FW's abduction of a Danish soldier. My German isn't up to this, but I'm betting he was over six feet? Also, my escape attempt chronology has the Danish court trying to intercede on Fritz's behalf with FW on September 19, so these guys were presumably involved.
Oh, of course he's also Friedrich August von Johnn, just to make things confusing. And there's a more famous Christian August von Johnn who was envoy to the Hanseatic cites at the time.
Aaand, that's all I've got for now. Super obscure guy and impossible to google effectively, even with German and Danish search terms for his various job titles.
You'll be the first to know if I turn up anything else, but I think I'm moving on to something else tonight.
Oh, one thing that occurred to me after thinking about the fact that the pamphlet apparently reflects not only an eyewitness account but an official diplomatic report...if my argument is that none of the outside witnesses of Katte's execution could tell that Fritz couldn't see Katte from where he was, there's a very good chance Katte couldn't either.
Now, Katte knew what window Fritz was in when he said goodbye, and unlike the 150 soldiers from the garrison, would actually have been paying attention. And presumably he would have noticed that it wasn't in view any more when he was listening to the sentence being read? But Fritz was on the second floor, and it's possible a third floor window was still visible. Especially since Münchow says the Weisskopf was higher than Fritz's room and *did* have a good view of the execution. So either Katte, in the stress of the moment and having been told Fritz was watching, was staring at a third floor window thinking that was the window Fritz had said goodbye from, or he thought Fritz had been moved to get a better view, or...he couldn't have mistaken young child Münchow for Fritz on the Weisskopf, could he? Surely, even three stories up, visibility is good enough you can tell an 18-yo from a 4-7 year old (I just noticed Fontane, like Carlyle, says 7*). But maybe because Katte saw someone up there, he thought Fritz was up there too, and that Fritz had a better view of him than he had of Fritz.
* I did turn up a bit of circumstantial evidence in Preuss that son of Münchow is the one Wikipedia thinks was born in 1726, but of course Preuss doesn't name names either.
Anyway, there's a very good chance Katte was looking at the place where he thought Fritz was (probably a third-floor window?) and thought Fritz was looking back.
I hope it brought him some comfort. I've always thought that making Fritz (almost) watch was torture for Fritz, but surely comforting for Katte.
Wow. You're not just a detective, you are the ONLY detective - die einzige Mildred! Seriously, this is brilliant, and yes, looks like Løvenørn and Johnn, together or apart, were most likely our whistleblowers. In tandem with whoever among the Küstrin staff supplied them with the eye witness information.
We're now up to three highly sympathetic foreign envoys helping Fritz out: Suhm of course, French Rothenburg until 1727, and now Løvenørn. And possibly this Johnn, if he was indeed our letter leaker.
Don't forget Charles Hotham & Guy Dickens from the British embassy. I mean, they were hardly uninterested and helping out of the goodness of their hearts alone, but they were certainly sympathetic. Dickens even gets scorned as a source for the doctor and midwife certifying Doris Ritter as a virgin by Klosterhuis because he's so Fritz sympathetic. (He's also a non-family source for FW beating up Wilhelmine and terrifying the rest of the family upon his return.
But anyway, possibly it was Løvenørn who was sympathetic to the royal children and Katte (Fritz and Wilhelmine both speak positively of him and agree that he was the one who warned Katte
If he was gone from Prussia after 1730, though, he can't have been the one whom Fritz spoke to upon his return (who according to Mitchell - as told by Fritz - also said Katte tarried because of a girl) - that would have been Johnn, right?
BTW, going through Koser's footnotes for you re: the Katte protocol info, I also spied an intriguing detail: we have a copy of FW's letter to his wife's lady in waiting (the one saying that Fritz tried to desert and she should prepare SD for this news) in AW's handwriting. (Marked as a copy by him, AW.) Which means at some point in his adult life Wilhelm got interested enough into the whole Katte/Küstrin affair to use his clout as Prince of Prussia to unseal those archives and have a look at that letter, since I very much doubt he made the copy at age 8. (Other possibiility: the lady-in-waiting kept the original and let him copy it.)
Instinctively, I'd bet on this happening in the spring of 1758, because that's when AW is alone in Berlin, Fritz is far away waging war, and he has little to do but brood on his disgrace and (not) fight his illness. He could either have persuaded someone in the state archive to let him have a look or persuaded the lady in waiting, if she was still alive and had kept the original letter. The reason why I doubt it happened earlier than that is that in peace time, any archivist would have asked his micromnaging boss (Eichel or Fritz) for permission first, even with the second highest ranking man of the Kingdom asking to have a look. But not with the 7 Years War raging, and Fritz not likely to be back in Berlin any time soon.
As to why AW made a copy for himself, and had a look at the material in the first place - welll, he'd just been told in no uncertain terms, repeatedly, that what he'd done was unforgivable and he wasn't worthy to be entrusted with military command ever again. So reading up on the event that was presented as his brother's greatest failing in the gospel according to FW might have made psychological sense.
Anyway, there's a very good chance Katte was looking at the place where he thought Fritz was (probably a third-floor window?) and thought Fritz was looking back.
I hope it brought him some comfort. I've always thought that making Fritz (almost) watch was torture for Fritz, but surely comforting for Katte.
Wow. You're not just a detective, you are the ONLY detective - die einzige Mildred!
Aww, high praise! It would be more impressive if I had found the embassy report myself and noticed the distinct similarities [ETA: If it wasn't clear, my translated excerpt was from Koser's notes]; as it is, all I can take credit for is passing on someone else's brilliance from 120 years ago--BUT. The one thing I am impressed with is something that would be trivial for you but that I wouldn't have been able to do even two months ago: I was scrolling through Koser looking for something else, and that note jumped out at me as highly relevant to our interests. I told you I was getting better at this font! And the language, a little bit.
Anyway, good job to Koser.
ETA: Oh, my original question, am I right that "und erschien nicht wieder" can be interpreted as "did not reappear at the window on that occasion"? As opposed to a yellow journalism interpretation "is still missing"?
Don't forget Charles Hotham & Guy Dickens from the British embassy. I mean, they were hardly uninterested and helping out of the goodness of their hearts alone
Yeah, I didn't include them because off the top of my head I don't have any examples of them going above and beyond out of a personal motive, but they were definitely sympathetic in a way that certain other envoys were not.
If he was gone from Prussia after 1730, though, he can't have been the one whom Fritz spoke to upon his return (who according to Mitchell - as told by Fritz - also said Katte tarried because of a girl) - that would have been Johnn, right?
I can't be sure how it all played out, or even how long ungoogleable Johnn was stationed in Berlin, but I'm guessing Fritz got his info from Wilhelmine, who reports Løvenørn (which she spells Leuvener) being told about the escape plan by Katte and in turn warning Katte of his impending arrest. So I think the info didn't necessarily have to come through Johnn, since Wilhelmine was in Berlin. All she says in her memoirs is "the particulars of the arrest, such as we learned them afterwards." "We" being she and SD and the ladies-in-waiting.
The only thing that makes me think Fritz must have had some source that Wilhelmine didn't was that Wilhelmine has Katte lingering to have a saddle made (which Fontane thought was only slightly less ridiculous than the "because of a girl" explanation).
But maybe both Wilhelmine and Fritz couldn't cope with Katte lingering to destroy evidence in order to protect Wilhelmine, and they both noped right out of that when talking/writing about this episode?
I feel like if Wilhelmine had heard the "because of a girl" story, she'd have recounted it.
ETA: Though since Wilhelmine says "we learned," it could be a lady-in-waiting or even SD who tells both her and Fritz, and it could be two different people as well, in which case you'd expect slightly different accounts. Look at how many variants on Katte's last words there were!
Back in my Classics-teaching days, when we were covering oral traditions (like Homer), we'd have the students do this exercise of playing a game of telephone. One student would write a paragraph and read it aloud to another student, who'd then have to tell another student what they remembered of it, and after a few iterations, the story was extremely different.
So I'm always wary of assuming differences in variants of an account transmitted orally are deliberate. I mean, even Catt writing his memoirs years after the fact could have forgotten about the girl, or never been told about the girl, and supplied "I couldn't warn Katte in time" as his reason for why Katte didn't escape. Especially if Catt had heard the story that Peter escaped in time because Fritz warned him (which may well be what Fritz believed, if he did get off a message a few days after Robert's confession and he didn't know that Peter was already in the Hague, looking for the Comte d'Alberville).
So reading up on the event that was presented as his brother's greatest failing in the gospel according to FW might have made psychological sense.
OMG, wow. Yeah, definitely!
I always thought it was a bit rich that in the gospel according to Fritz, Mollwitz was forgivable but not Zittau. I mean, really, Fritz? You get to learn from your mistakes, but other people don't?
But maybe both Wilhelmine and Fritz couldn't cope with Katte lingering to destroy evidence in order to protect Wilhelmine, and they both noped right out of that when talking/writing about this episode?
Yeah, this is my headcanon, although I will admit that it is partially because I had already adopted selenak's headcanon about Wilhelmine from the instant I read her fic :)
Danish envoy report uncovered! Because Koser is bad at opinions but good at facts, and he cited his source.
His source is a German translation, of course, sigh. Good news, though: it's not just one report, it's all the reports pertaining to the escape, from August through December! I can't tell if they're all Danish or if they're a collection of reports (I can't even tell where it says the Nov 11 one is Danish or from Johnn), but I have uploaded NeuesBerlinischeMonatsschrift9, and the relevant pages are 324-349. Whenever you have time. (German sources are both good and bad, in that one person can read them really well and at great length, but two people not at all or only a little bit, and French sources we can all read a little bit, but nobody very well or at great length. I still prefer to have at least access to the original whenever possible, whichever language that might be.)
Anyway, I spotted Katte's arrest, and it matches Wilhelmine's description that he was just about to mount the horse when he was arrested. She's not making that up for sensationalist purposes; she's reporting what she heard. Which is probably sensationalist, but could also be true. I'd think it would have come up in the trial documents, though?
Like Wilhelmine, the envoy report also has Keith being warned in Wesel that the plot was betrayed, and fleeing only when he was warned. That really was the account that went around in the 18th century, and as far as I can tell, the only one that was transmitted orally. Wilhelmine has it, Fritz has it, Peter's son has it...the only source I've seen with my own eyes that has him leaving before that is Seckendorff, who says that when FW arrived in Geldern, which was evidently on the 12th, he learned that Keith had left Wesel "several days" before. Since Seckendorff was with FW at the time, the event was fresh news and practically local, and it was the official report to the King, I trust it more than I trust the accounts of people in Berlin who are playing games of telephone on the 19th. Plus there seems to be some source I have't seen that specifies he disappeared on the 6th. Probably in Kloosterhuis.
Oh, wow, yes, Kloosterhuis has Keith's quarters being inspected on the 7th, but he has also two unrelated things I didn't notice. One, it's Rottembourg's wife who calls Katte "charmant mais étourdi," which means all my sources saying Rottembourg was never married are wrong (I was thinking they might be, but wasn't sure). Two, Kloosterhuis just cites Fritz's judgment of Keith and Katte as "aimable, mais aussi étourdis que moi" in Catt like you can totally trust that conversation in Catt to be real. Wow, people really haven't gotten the memo about Catt.
[ETA: No! I was wrong. I was thinking Eva Sophie looked like a very German name for French envoy Count Rottembourg's wife, and then I got suspicious we had the wrong one. It's not impossible he married a German woman, but I thought it might be more likely to be Prussian Count Rothenburg's wife. So I looked it up, and Wikipedia tells me that Prussian Count Rothenburg married an Eva Sophie, plus the name I have for the maybe-wife of French Count Rothenburg/Rottembourg is Jeanne-Madelene. So correction to your Kloosterhuis write-up: Katte is friends with French envoy Count Rothenburg/Rottembourg, but it's Fritz's friend Prussian Count Rothenburg whose wife writes to Katte's stepmom that he's "charmant mais étourdi." Rothenburgs, seriously, could you be any more confusing? Also, we still don't know whether the French envoy was married or not. I think I'm going with no for my fic, but I'd still like to know.]
Going back to the embassy report after that digression, yes, Katte blows Fritz a kiss with his hand, not a hand-foot. And the official report gets the time right: between 7 and 8 am, and obviously the date. It also says Fritz was informed at 5 am. Two hours of offering his crown and his life a thousand times, ouch.
Oh, man, Katte blew Fritz a final kiss thinking he could see it, and Fritz never knew. Oh, right, he opened the archives. Okay, he didn't know for ten years. Unless someone told him, I guess.
Wow, if the FW order in the archive said he was supposed to watch, and the reports based on eyewitnesses said he did watch, no wonder he spent the rest of his life thinking that only fainting just in time had spared him.
I keep going back and forth on whether Münchow could be wrong--he was only 7!--but I keep concluding probably not. I'm not 100% sure, but the balance of evidence seems to come down in his favor on this point.
I suppose it's possible that Katte knows perfectly well that Fritz can't see him, but it's all he's got of Fritz, so he's staring in that direction, knowing Fritz is inside the building that he can glimpse a corner of, and blowing a kiss because he wants to, and maybe in hopes someone will tell Fritz. Or there's a window in sight, and Katte really thinks Fritz is in it.
Lol at Kloosterhuis saying the age-old controversy on whether Fritz could watch is "obsolet." What do you mean, obsolete? It's extremely important! It's the only thing I've thought about all week!
Anyway, 25 pages of new reports in the library, and no rush, royal reader. :D
Oh, man, Katte blew Fritz a final kiss thinking he could see it, and Fritz never knew. Oh, right, he opened the archives. Okay, he didn't know for ten years. Unless someone told him, I guess.
:(
I keep going back and forth on whether Münchow could be wrong--he was only 7!--but I keep concluding probably not. I'm not 100% sure, but the balance of evidence seems to come down in his favor on this point.
...yeah, I think you've marshalled the evidence pretty convincingly in his direction. And also he would know the building.
I suppose it's possible that Katte knows perfectly well that Fritz can't see him, but it's all he's got of Fritz, so he's staring in that direction, knowing Fritz is inside the building that he can glimpse a corner of, and blowing a kiss because he wants to, and maybe in hopes someone will tell Fritz. Or there's a window in sight, and Katte really thinks Fritz is in it.
Poor Katte :( At least Fritz did find out, eventually :(
Poor Katte :( At least Fritz did find out, eventually :(
Yeah. I guess the best of ... FW's possible worlds is where they get to say goodbye, Fritz doesn't have to watch the sword fall, Katte gets the comfort of thinking he's looking at Fritz, and Fritz finds out about the kiss later, so...at least they (probably) got that?
Had a quick look at the reports. Definitely the same language and phrasing as the pamphlet, so, they either were written by the same person or draw on the same source.
The reports in general are reasonably good in terms of what they claim, but far from error free. The last but one report is sure Fritz has renounced his right to the succession post Katte's execution, for example, and the report writer says that while this isn't yet generally known, he himself has seen the conditions, and quotes from them. (They incliude the promise never to claim the crown of Prussia at a later point, either.)
Now, obviously this did not happen, and in fact the whole reeducation program was in a way a confirmation that FW had decided to keep Fritz as Crown Prince after all. But I think it's possible someone leaked the October FW demand for Fritz to renounce his place in the sucession to the envoy, and Fritz' survival as opposed to Katte's execution was first interpreted as a sign he'd given in.
Also: the writer earlier says for all that FW is pissed off at the Brits, in actual fact he owes them because he, the writer, happens to know they tried to discourage, not encourage Fritz.
Wow, people really haven't gotten the memo about Catt.
Which is really weird, the more I think about it. I mean, the preface to the 1884 edition of his diary really lays it out in point by point detail. This is not news, even though it was to us. And yet, no one ever doubts Catt. (As opposed to most of the other memoirists.) I can only conclude that even the biographers who did go to the trouble of reading the diary as well as the memoirs skipped the preface...
As to why AW made a copy for himself, and had a look at the material in the first place - welll, he'd just been told in no uncertain terms, repeatedly, that what he'd done was unforgivable and he wasn't worthy to be entrusted with military command ever again.
Wow, this is really interesting. And kind of heartbreaking :(
I hope it brought him some comfort. I've always thought that making Fritz (almost) watch was torture for Fritz, but surely comforting for Katte.
(Good Lord, but FW would so be on twitter with angry tweets…)
This is just to say that, omg, he so would. (I always want the fic that goes with one of these crack ideas, but here I think I might actually not want this one because they would be just depressingly angry tweets.)
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Re: Katte!
There's a two page summary of events that I would love some help with when you have time,
It's got yet another variant on Katte's last words! This is the only one to mention FW that I've ever seen. (I'm not 100% confident of all the spelling, so please correct any errors.)
Mein gnädigster Cron-prinz sie haben nicht Ursach mich um Verzeihung zu bitten, wenn ich zehen Leben zu verliehren hätte, so wollte ich gern darum geben, wann nur Eu. Königliche Hoheit mit Dero Herrn Vater dem König dadurch könten versöhn et werden.
My most gracious Crown Prince, you have nothing to ask me for forgiveness for; if I had ten lives to lose, I would gladly give them up, if only Your Royal Highness could be reconciled with your Lord Father the King.
Wooow. You said this was printed in the Prussian-hating region of Cologne, and I wonder if the point of this is to emphasize that FW is the problem here.
It's also, interestingly, not the variant that Wilhelmine (and Pöllnitz) has, which involves a thousand lives and no reconciliation. So though this may be where she's getting her letter to Katte's grandfather, it's not where she's not getting the last words to Fritz. The pamphlet account's also got a sand heap and no scaffold, but it has Fritz watching. I can't quite tell, but I think he faints after seeing Katte beheaded, not before. It's got Katte's body lying out there until 2 pm, after which some townspeople put it in a coffin of four planks and bury it (in the soldiers' cemetery?).
It's super useful to know what account was floating around at the time with no reference to the horse's mouth!
Also, it looks like the letters were translated into English by 1734, but I can't seem to get my hands on a copy of that online without being Australian, sigh. We need an Australian royal patron now. :P
Re: Katte!
Text before letters:
- in this version, Fritz learns Katte will be executed at 5 am, the execution itself doesn‘t take place until 10 am. He‘s informed by „two captains“ who also tell him they‘re ordered to force him to watch and will have to drag him to the window if he can‘t go on his own. He does faint after, not before the beheading. Katte keeps eye contact with him right until death. He‘s calm and undresses himself (i.e. removes his shirt), and, as described by Fontane, who quotes Major v. S on this, binds his own eyes via the sleeping cap. Before he does that, he makes one last Hand kiss gesture towards Fritz. (Pamphlet says Hand-Fuß, not „Hand-Kuß“, but I think that‘s simply a letter misprint, because a foot instead of a kiss makes no sense here.) Fritz faints as soon as the head rolls and is no more seen by anyone. Katte‘s body lies there until 2 pm.
Thoughts: there are enough accurate elements here - sand, not scaffold, Katte putting the cap over his eyes, the body lying until 2 pm, as specified by FW‘s orders, which the pamphleteer couldn‘t have known, and of course the big one, accurate letters - that I think there‘s an eyewitness report involved. The divergences - the hour of execution, Fritz watching and fainting after, not before, Katte keeping eye contact - can be simply yellow press need for even more drama. Because these kind of pamphlets are the 18th century equivalent of the Daily Mail/Bildzeitung in Germany/ Whatever rag preceeded the existence of Fox TV in the US). The more tearjerking, the better.
Now, FW mention in Katte‘s reply - yes, I do think this is for making FW look even worse. Though there is one alternate explanation, if the whole thing (the pamphlet) is intended as a moral lesson for disobedient sons to lead a more Christian life. But I think in that case, it would have ended on the Crown Prince praying with Pater Müller. That Fritz post fainting „isn‘t seen or heard of“ anymore is one of those details that make me believe someone did get an eyewitness account and then proceeded to juice it up. Pamphlets aren‘t meant for historians but for sensational gossip mongers paying for them, after all!
Re: Katte!
He‘s informed by „two captains“ who also tell him they‘re ordered to force him to watch and will have to drag him to the window if he can‘t go on his own.
That's interesting, because it meas this story was floating around without coming from Fritz, and any memoirist who reports it isn't necessarily getting it from Fritz, or even from someone who was inside the room. *However*, Fritz fainting seems to be real, since he reports it to Mitchell. Since the fainting is in the pamphlet, that means word got out from inside that room pretty quickly. Seeing as how Fritz fainting isn't something an eyewitness of the execution could tell from outside. Since Wilhelmine says doctors were immediately sent for, that makes sense. That was probably known throughout the town by evening November 6.
Katte keeps eye contact with him right until death.
On the one hand, this is obviously something anyone in the history of ever would supply to spice up the narrative, but, on the other, if we trust the sources that say that Fritz couldn't see over the ones that say he could, it's possible that what really happened was that Katte kept looking in the direction of the Schloss where Fritz was. Which is what I always imagined, because I think he's clinging to every anchor he can grab in order to keep his calm exterior, and Fritz is going to be a major focal point. I think Katte's got a voice in the back--or front--of his mind chanting, "This is for Fritz, do it for Fritz, it's okay, it's worth it, Fritz is worth it."
Also, I agree the pamphlet is based largely off an eyewitness report, and if you consider that there were 150 eyewitnesses from the garrison, plus a handful of others, the source is most likely one or more of them. And as I said in another comment, since all contemporaries agree that Fritz could see the execution from where he was, it must not have been at all obvious to them that he couldn't. If nothing else, even if they can tell that Fritz's room isn't visible, they can't be certain that Fritz hasn't been moved to a room with a better view. So if Katte was staring at the Schloss or Weisskopf until the end, everyone outside is going to assume that Fritz is looking back.
And thus FW gets a report that Fritz *totally* watched, and fainted afterwards (I figured that's what Münchow/Schack/Lepel told him, and it's nice to see a contemporary account that says exactly that!).
Pamphlet says Hand-Fuß, not „Hand-Kuß“, but I think that‘s simply a letter misprint, because a foot instead of a kiss makes no sense here.
OOOHHH. Duh. I was wondering what that hand-foot gesture was, knew there were stories about final kiss-blowing, but was wondering if hand-foot was some kind of crazy German idiom like English "raining cats and dogs," and completely forgot the German word for kiss. Thanks!
The divergences - the hour of execution, Fritz watching and fainting after, not before, Katte keeping eye contact - can be simply yellow press need for even more drama.
Yes, and also inaccuracies that inevitably creep into any story through the course of transmission. If something happened at 7:45 am, I wouldn't necessarily expect everyone to remember it didn't happen at 10 am and for that number to be preserved two months later hundreds of miles away. Especially since the date is also wrong (Nov 9 instead of Nov 6), and I'm not entirely sure Nov 9 fits a yellow press need. Unless you can think of something.
And as for the story that Fritz watched and fainted afterward, as noted, that's not only the yellow press need, that's the "I, Münchow and Lepel, don't want my own head chopped off by FW for not making Fritz watch" need. Plus, any given eyewitness was either inside or outside, and the outside eyewitnesses couldn't see what happened inside and vice versa. And let's be real, even if the execution had taken place directly under Fritz's window, one, it's hard for people outside a building to see inside a room through the window anyway, and two, when Katte's head rolls directly in front of you, are you really staring at Fritz's window and timing the moment at which you don't see him any more vis-a-vis the moment the head falls? You're watching either the executioner or Katte. And then when you look up and see Fritz isn't there any more, you conclude that he fainted afterward. No conscious invention necessary.
And since everyone who was in the room is repeating that version of the story loudly, where FW can hear them...actually, much to my surprise, I'm backing myself into a corner where the only account according to which Fritz fainted *before* has to come from Fritz. First to Wilhelmine, presumably, who passes it on to Pöllnitz.
And the only other source that explicitly has Fritz fainting before, not after...is Catt. Who has Fritz saying that he avoided seeing the execution only by dint of fainting first.
Which, as I've pointed out, makes sense if Fritz hadn't been told he wasn't going to have to see the head fall, if afterward everyone is proclaiming to his father that he did, and if when he woke up, he wasn't surprised at not seeing the body because he assumed it was taken away (whereas outside perspectives know it was left until 2 pm), and if his accounts don't report a sand heap because he never saw one, because it was out of sight. Which is why the accounts that might come at least partly from him, Wilhelmine and Voltaire, supply scaffolds.
And you know, if the dominant narrative is that Fritz saw it, if very few people know he didn't, if Catt didn't have access to Wilhelmine (okay, darn, he had access to Pöllnitz, but their accounts are so radically different that I don't see a link), if the *obvious* and *sensationalist* account is that Fritz saw the execution and fainted afterwards, and two people independently making up something less obvious and less exciting would be very strange...
I think the Catt account is real, as in, comes from Fritz. I think the conversation happened after the diary ends in 1760, not remotely on the date that it's reported in the memoirs, where we've seen that Catt clumsily stitches together a bunch of disparate anecdotes and leaves his seams showing, but
1) We know Fritz talked about the execution with Mitchell.
2) We know Fritz talked about Küstrin with Catt.
When I started writing this post, I was 50/50 on Catt getting his Katte account from Fritz vs. fleshing out Voltaire with what he'd heard from other sources. Well, I still think he was reading Voltaire based on that one sentence I pasted earlier, but I'm now like 80/20 on Catt getting his account from Fritz. Which means I suspect Voltaire did too.
Thiébault, though, I think is getting his account from Pöllnitz (probably written rather than orally, or at least not solely orally), possibly Voltaire, and whatever else was floating around by 1804. T's account doesn't have any of the hallmarks of a Fritz account, and even his actual memoirs have more in common with Pöllnitz and Wilhelmine than with Catt, Voltaire, and Mitchell. No, one exception: T has Fritz calling simply "mon ami," and nothing from Katte, and doesn't report any of the variants of Fritz begging Katte's pardon and Katte's last words telling Fritz there's nothing to forgive. The absence of that dialogue is one element I think was probably a feature of Fritz's account, where I can easily imagine Fritz absolutely did not want to recount his last exchange with Katte with people he wasn't really that close to. I.e. I think Wilhelmine got a much more detailed and emotional account from him.
Well, leaving T aside, the important thing is I now think Catt's account is very likely to be real, based on Mitchell + the fainting taking place before rather than after.
Btw, Münchow, Jr. has Fritz *about* to faint, and, since he's the sole 18th century source so far who doesn't believe Fritz could see the execution site from his room, he obviously believes it was triggered by that last exchange with Katte and not by the sight of the execution itself. Which tells me that maybe after FW was dead, Münchow, Sr. started talking, at least with his family, about how Fritz didn't see the execution after all.
One more detail that varies: who informed Fritz of the upcoming execution? According to the pamphlet, two captains. According to Wilhelmine, Lepel and Münchow. According to Münchow fils, Lepel and Münchow. But according to Catt and Voltaire, "an old officer and four/several grenadiers."
So either Voltaire is making it up and Catt is copying him, which I now think is unlikely, or else there's this possible reconciliation: Münchow and Lepel as the two men of rank that are worth mentioning, plus several officers there to wrangle the reluctant boy to the window if necessary. Lepel, 73 years old, is the one who breaks the news to Fritz. Münchow is present, but Fritz is too busy freaking out at the time to remember all the details three decades later, or possibly just doesn't consider the presence of another officer important enough to be worth reporting, when there are much bigger deals going on, like the part where his boyfriend is about to die.
Though there is one alternate explanation, if the whole thing (the pamphlet) is intended as a moral lesson for disobedient sons to lead a more Christian life.
That did occur to me as well, but if you say there's nothing else to reinforce it...I, as a sensational gossip-monger who would have paid for this pamphlet (but thankfully didn't have to :P), am going with "Shame on FW!"
That Fritz post fainting „isn‘t seen or heard of“ anymore is one of those details that make me believe someone did get an eyewitness account and then proceeded to juice it up.
Now that sounds like yellow press to me! Wilhelmine's version has Fritz on the verge of death for three days, but I believe Müller's report to FW has him and Fritz chatting about predestination the next day, so I think Wilhelmine is juicing that part up herself, out of sympathy for Fritz, and general sensationalism.
Thanks so much for this write-up. It turned out to be surprisingly helpful in developing my thoughts about the reliability of the Catt account.
Re: Katte!
FW definitely orders Lepel to make Fritz watch.
Presumably for reasons of compassion, Lepel and Münchow agree to stop just short of holding the execution where Fritz can see. In order to achieve plausible deniability for themselves, they do everything they can short of holding the execution in his line of view.
1) They position the execution site very close to his window.
2) They tell Fritz he's going to have to watch.
3) They have him dragged to the window when it's time.
4) They have Katte marched by his window.
Combining all those points, it wouldn't have been difficult to write a report afterward that conveyed to FW the impression that Fritz watched the execution, nor to convince everyone who was present that he had been watching.
Having made these plans, they come to Fritz's room, crying. He believes that this means he's going to die. Lepel breaks the news to him about Katte, and they have the accompanying grenadiers drag Fritz to the window.
While Fritz is being held there, Katte is marched past. Fritz begs for his forgiveness, and Katte replies there's nothing to forgive. Fritz thrusts his arm out the window (possibly to blow a kiss).
Fritz faints. Katte is marched to the execution site, out of Fritz's view. He stands in a circle of 150 men while the sentence is read. He may gaze the whole time in the direction of the building where Fritz is being held. He refuses a blindfold, takes off his wig, pulls a cap over his eyes, kneels in the sand. His head is removed with one stroke.
None of the 150 men can tell that Fritz can't see Katte from where he is.
Katte's body is covered with a black cloth, then left there until 2 pm, when the townspeople come to bury him, per FW's orders.
Meanwhile, Fritz is unconscious. Word spreads at Küstrin that he has fainted. Perhaps this happens when a doctor is sent for. When Fritz wakes, he can't see a body or any signs of an execution site, and he assumes it's all been removed. He spends the rest of his life believing that the only reason he didn't watch was that he fainted.
The official report from Lepel and co. to FW goes out stating that Fritz watched and was so impressed that he fainted afterwards. Eyewitnesses also report that he watched.
The pamphlet, from the perspective of someone watching the execution, believes that Fritz watched, and that he fainted after seeing the head roll.
Fritz somehow, perhaps through a smuggled letter, conveys to Wilhelmine that he thought he was going to be executed, that he was dragged to the window, that he saw Katte go by, and that he fainted before he could see the execution. He mentions nothing about the execution site or any body, because he never saw either.
Wilhelmine writes her memoirs on the basis of a long-since destroyed letter, a memory of a conversation many years ago, or both. She is not on speaking terms with Fritz at the time she's writing, she doesn't have access to the archives, and she can't let on that she's producing her memoirs. She compiles as many accounts of the November 6 events as she can and tries to make a coherent and exciting narrative out of them. Her perspective on what was happening outside the room is very inaccurate, and it informs her thinking on what was happening inside the room.
Pöllnitz, whom we know was in Bayreuth in 1744, when she was writing her memoirs, sits down and talks to her about what happened. They agree on an account and both render it in their respective memoirs, with something like 90% agreement on detail and overlap in wording, but not so much that I have reason to believe one was reading the draft of the other. She doesn't let on to him that she's writing memoirs (otherwise it would have become public knowledge, thanks to the notoriously talkative Pöllnitz).
In the 1750s, Fritz gives Voltaire a probably abbreviated account of what he told Wilhelmine. He also gives Mitchell an account in 1757. It's unclear how much Mitchell is summarizing or reporting everything he was told, but he writes down what he knows in 1757. Voltaire's memoirs aren't published until 1784, posthumously.
At some point after Catt's diary ends, Fritz also tells this story to Catt. It's unknown when Catt composed his memoirs or how late in the century he was still editing it, but at some point, he hears about Katte. In his memoirs, he assigns that anecdote to April 1758, in a conversation that also contains a lot of other stories that he's heard at various times from various people, including but not limited to Fritz.
Fritz may or may not tell this story to Thiébault during the 1760s or 70s. Thiébault almost certainly refers to Pöllnitz, published 1791, when writing his memoirs to be published in 1804, and quite likely to Voltaire, published in 1784.
At some point in the 1740s, Münchow the father tells his family about the Katte execution, with reference to the fact that Fritz did *not* have to watch. He also says that he and Lepel were in the room at the time, and they made Fritz sit down and drink something before he fainted.
In the 1790s, the son of Münchow writes the first account that we know of that states that Fritz was not in a position to watch. Until now, everyone has either said that he did watch it, or that he fainted just in time to avoid seeing it. Münchow was a child at the time, an eyewitness, and represents the outsider perspective, with a secondhand knowledge of the insider perspective through his father. He does not know about FW's order to make Fritz watch and concludes that there was none, because he can't imagine Lepel would engage in civil disobedience like that. He is probably our most reliable source on what the layout of Küstrin was like in the 1730s, since he lived there.
In 1804, Thiébault's memoirs are published.
In 1810, Wilhelmine's memoirs are published.
In 1860, Thiébault's memoirs are condensed and rewritten by someone else after his death, massively plagiarizing the Katte execution scene from Wilhelmine's memoirs.
In the 1860s, Theodor Hoffbauer publishes an investigation of two questions: Where was Katte executed? Did Fritz really watch? He concludes that Fritz couldn't see the execution site, and positions the execution site accordingly.
Reconciling the evidence
(And I did read your rheinsberg post! :) )
Re: Reconciling the evidence
(Aww! You're very dedicated.)
Re: Katte!
Also, thanks a million for indulging my obsessive detective work on what really happened on November 6, 1730, and who told whom what. :D
Re: Katte!
Re: Katte!
Write-up coming soon to a community near you. Extra, extra, read all about it!
Re: Katte!
Re: Katte!
(Good Lord, but FW would so be on twitter with angry tweets…)
Re: Katte!
Other thought: to what extent does FW care if letters in which Katte talks about how wrong he was, and how important it is to be a godly man, go public? Likewise, to what extent does he care if an eyewitness account of the execution is public, given that he made 150 people attend specifically because the execution was meant to serve as a salutary example for the rest of his army and subjects?
We may not need to look for a gruesome punishment. The execution was *supposed* to be widely advertised.
Re: Katte!
Re: Katte!
(I was in the middle of the
Re: Katte! - Pamphlet
More interesting, Koser says the pamphlet resembles the Danish embassy report and thus provides an important clue as to the provenance of the pamphlet.
Oh, wow, check out the translated excerpt from the Danish ambassador's report, dated Nov. 11:
Kattes Antwort lautet: „Dessen bedarf es nicht, gnädiger Herr. Wenn ich zehn Leben hätte, so würde ich sie gern hingeben, um Ew. Kon. Hoheit mit Ihrem Herrn Vater auszusöhnen." — „Man bemerkte, daß während ihm das Todesurtheil verlesen ward, er nicht einen Moment die Augen vom Prinzen verwandte. Beim Anblick des Todesstreichs sank der Kronprinz zurück und erschien nicht wieder."
Katte keeps his eyes on the Prince the whole time the sentence is read, Fritz faints and is not seen again (if this dates to Nov 11, that makes perfect sense; he is in prison, after all; also, am I right that that can be read as "did not reappear at the window on that occasion"?), and the last words, including the desired reconciliation with FW, are the same! Not verbatim, but they're two separate translations from French, so you wouldn't expect them to be. It would be interesting to check out the ambassador's report and see what he put down as the original French. But anyway, these are the *only* two versions of Katte's last words that I've ever seen agree. And they're the only two to mention FW. That counts as a shared innovation and gives me pretty high confidence that they're related. Especially if Koser's right about all the other similarities, like Fritz not being seen again. It looks like there's very little yellow journalism, if that pamphlet reflects an ambassador's official report.
Mes amies, we have ourselves a new suspect in the whistleblower mystery! Someone has access to both the letters and the Danish ambassador's report, and gets them circulating. I now have "track down Danish embassy report" on my to-do list. :P
Oh, and the Danish ambassador is the guy who supposedly warned Katte! Okay, now I have to track him down. That might be somewhat easier.
*some time later*
I had a difficult time with the one million spellings of his name, but Danish ambassador who warned Katte is evidently this guy, Poul Løvenørn, who Wikipedia says knew about the escape plan and didn't tell FW, so FW got mad at him.
Oh, interesting, he got recalled "after the death of Fredrik IV," which wikipedia tells me was October 12, 1730. On November 6, 1730, he was appointed chief war secretary, according to the Danish Biographical Dictionary...but Koser's report was sent from Berlin on November 11? Hmm.
Oh, Koser gives the name of the ambassador as John. Just "John." That's real Google-able, Koser, thanks. But anyway, possibly it was Løvenørn who was sympathetic to the royal children and Katte (Fritz and Wilhelmine both speak positively of him and agree that he was the one who warned Katte), and Løvenørn's successor who leaked the letters and his report. Wilhelmine says Løvenørn had spies on Grumbkow; maybe he had a spy at Küstrin and passed his spy network on to his successor?
It occurs to me that a sympathetic Danish ambassador in Berlin could maybe have gotten his hands on the letters Katte wrote in Berlin, the ones to his grandfather Wartensleben and FW, without Katte having had to take them to Küstrin, which was always a weak point of my argument.
But now the plot has thickened so much that we have two Danish ambassadors, omg. I need to figure out who the successor is.
*some time later*
Legationssekretæren Johnn! Who was apparently already in Berlin when Løvenørn arrived earlier in 1730 to help with England/Hanover - Prussia relations. (Løvenørn had been envoy previously, starting in 1719, and apparently was considered someone whom FW trusted and who could reason with FW. Right up until he didn't tell FW about his son's escape plans, I guess.)
We're now up to three highly sympathetic foreign envoys helping Fritz out: Suhm of course, French Rothenburg until 1727, and now Løvenørn. And possibly this Johnn, if he was indeed our letter leaker.
Anyway, we have continuity and overlap between Johnn, who'd been around for at least all of 1730 and probably more, and Løvenørn, and they presumably share a spy network and got someone at Küstrin who could pass on news about the Crown Prince. And copy Katte's last letters after Løvenørn was gone.
So this shadowy Legationssekretæren Johnn figure is our best suspect for a whistleblower now. I'll see what else I can find.
I've got given names! August Friedrich von Johnn.
Oh, right when things are going down in Fritz/Katte land (Oct 21, Dec 7), Løvenørn and Johnn are protesting FW's abduction of a Danish soldier. My German isn't up to this, but I'm betting he was over six feet? Also, my escape attempt chronology has the Danish court trying to intercede on Fritz's behalf with FW on September 19, so these guys were presumably involved.
Oh, of course he's also Friedrich August von Johnn, just to make things confusing. And there's a more famous Christian August von Johnn who was envoy to the Hanseatic cites at the time.
Aaand, that's all I've got for now. Super obscure guy and impossible to google effectively, even with German and Danish search terms for his various job titles.
You'll be the first to know if I turn up anything else, but I think I'm moving on to something else tonight.
Oh, one thing that occurred to me after thinking about the fact that the pamphlet apparently reflects not only an eyewitness account but an official diplomatic report...if my argument is that none of the outside witnesses of Katte's execution could tell that Fritz couldn't see Katte from where he was, there's a very good chance Katte couldn't either.
Now, Katte knew what window Fritz was in when he said goodbye, and unlike the 150 soldiers from the garrison, would actually have been paying attention. And presumably he would have noticed that it wasn't in view any more when he was listening to the sentence being read? But Fritz was on the second floor, and it's possible a third floor window was still visible. Especially since Münchow says the Weisskopf was higher than Fritz's room and *did* have a good view of the execution. So either Katte, in the stress of the moment and having been told Fritz was watching, was staring at a third floor window thinking that was the window Fritz had said goodbye from, or he thought Fritz had been moved to get a better view, or...he couldn't have mistaken young child Münchow for Fritz on the Weisskopf, could he? Surely, even three stories up, visibility is good enough you can tell an 18-yo from a 4-7 year old (I just noticed Fontane, like Carlyle, says 7*). But maybe because Katte saw someone up there, he thought Fritz was up there too, and that Fritz had a better view of him than he had of Fritz.
* I did turn up a bit of circumstantial evidence in Preuss that son of Münchow is the one Wikipedia thinks was born in 1726, but of course Preuss doesn't name names either.
Anyway, there's a very good chance Katte was looking at the place where he thought Fritz was (probably a third-floor window?) and thought Fritz was looking back.
I hope it brought him some comfort. I've always thought that making Fritz (almost) watch was torture for Fritz, but surely comforting for Katte.
Re: Katte! - Pamphlet
Løvenørn and Johnn, together or apart, were most likely our whistleblowers. In tandem with whoever among the Küstrin staff supplied them with the eye witness information.
We're now up to three highly sympathetic foreign envoys helping Fritz out: Suhm of course, French Rothenburg until 1727, and now Løvenørn. And possibly this Johnn, if he was indeed our letter leaker.
Don't forget Charles Hotham & Guy Dickens from the British embassy. I mean, they were hardly uninterested and helping out of the goodness of their hearts alone, but they were certainly sympathetic. Dickens even gets scorned as a source for the doctor and midwife certifying Doris Ritter as a virgin by Klosterhuis because he's so Fritz sympathetic. (He's also a non-family source for FW beating up Wilhelmine and terrifying the rest of the family upon his return.
But anyway, possibly it was Løvenørn who was sympathetic to the royal children and Katte (Fritz and Wilhelmine both speak positively of him and agree that he was the one who warned Katte
If he was gone from Prussia after 1730, though, he can't have been the one whom Fritz spoke to upon his return (who according to Mitchell - as told by Fritz - also said Katte tarried because of a girl) - that would have been Johnn, right?
BTW, going through Koser's footnotes for you re: the Katte protocol info, I also spied an intriguing detail: we have a copy of FW's letter to his wife's lady in waiting (the one saying that Fritz tried to desert and she should prepare SD for this news) in AW's handwriting. (Marked as a copy by him, AW.) Which means at some point in his adult life Wilhelm got interested enough into the whole Katte/Küstrin affair to use his clout as Prince of Prussia to unseal those archives and have a look at that letter, since I very much doubt he made the copy at age 8. (Other possibiility: the lady-in-waiting kept the original and let him copy it.)
Instinctively, I'd bet on this happening in the spring of 1758, because that's when AW is alone in Berlin, Fritz is far away waging war, and he has little to do but brood on his disgrace and (not) fight his illness. He could either have persuaded someone in the state archive to let him have a look or persuaded the lady in waiting, if she was still alive and had kept the original letter. The reason why I doubt it happened earlier than that is that in peace time, any archivist would have asked his micromnaging boss (Eichel or Fritz) for permission first, even with the second highest ranking man of the Kingdom asking to have a look. But not with the 7 Years War raging, and Fritz not likely to be back in Berlin any time soon.
As to why AW made a copy for himself, and had a look at the material in the first place - welll, he'd just been told in no uncertain terms, repeatedly, that what he'd done was unforgivable and he wasn't worthy to be entrusted with military command ever again. So reading up on the event that was presented as his brother's greatest failing in the gospel according to FW might have made psychological sense.
Anyway, there's a very good chance Katte was looking at the place where he thought Fritz was (probably a third-floor window?) and thought Fritz was looking back.
I hope it brought him some comfort. I've always thought that making Fritz (almost) watch was torture for Fritz, but surely comforting for Katte.
*nods* Yes. I hope so, too.
Re: Katte! - Pamphlet
Aww, high praise! It would be more impressive if I had found the embassy report myself and noticed the distinct similarities [ETA: If it wasn't clear, my translated excerpt was from Koser's notes]; as it is, all I can take credit for is passing on someone else's brilliance from 120 years ago--BUT. The one thing I am impressed with is something that would be trivial for you but that I wouldn't have been able to do even two months ago: I was scrolling through Koser looking for something else, and that note jumped out at me as highly relevant to our interests. I told you I was getting better at this font! And the language, a little bit.
Anyway, good job to Koser.
ETA: Oh, my original question, am I right that "und erschien nicht wieder" can be interpreted as "did not reappear at the window on that occasion"? As opposed to a yellow journalism interpretation "is still missing"?
Don't forget Charles Hotham & Guy Dickens from the British embassy. I mean, they were hardly uninterested and helping out of the goodness of their hearts alone
Yeah, I didn't include them because off the top of my head I don't have any examples of them going above and beyond out of a personal motive, but they were definitely sympathetic in a way that certain other envoys were not.
If he was gone from Prussia after 1730, though, he can't have been the one whom Fritz spoke to upon his return (who according to Mitchell - as told by Fritz - also said Katte tarried because of a girl) - that would have been Johnn, right?
I can't be sure how it all played out, or even how long ungoogleable Johnn was stationed in Berlin, but I'm guessing Fritz got his info from Wilhelmine, who reports Løvenørn (which she spells Leuvener) being told about the escape plan by Katte and in turn warning Katte of his impending arrest. So I think the info didn't necessarily have to come through Johnn, since Wilhelmine was in Berlin. All she says in her memoirs is "the particulars of the arrest, such as we learned them afterwards." "We" being she and SD and the ladies-in-waiting.
The only thing that makes me think Fritz must have had some source that Wilhelmine didn't was that Wilhelmine has Katte lingering to have a saddle made (which Fontane thought was only slightly less ridiculous than the "because of a girl" explanation).
But maybe both Wilhelmine and Fritz couldn't cope with Katte lingering to destroy evidence in order to protect Wilhelmine, and they both noped right out of that when talking/writing about this episode?
I feel like if Wilhelmine had heard the "because of a girl" story, she'd have recounted it.
ETA: Though since Wilhelmine says "we learned," it could be a lady-in-waiting or even SD who tells both her and Fritz, and it could be two different people as well, in which case you'd expect slightly different accounts. Look at how many variants on Katte's last words there were!
Back in my Classics-teaching days, when we were covering oral traditions (like Homer), we'd have the students do this exercise of playing a game of telephone. One student would write a paragraph and read it aloud to another student, who'd then have to tell another student what they remembered of it, and after a few iterations, the story was extremely different.
So I'm always wary of assuming differences in variants of an account transmitted orally are deliberate. I mean, even Catt writing his memoirs years after the fact could have forgotten about the girl, or never been told about the girl, and supplied "I couldn't warn Katte in time" as his reason for why Katte didn't escape. Especially if Catt had heard the story that Peter escaped in time because Fritz warned him (which may well be what Fritz believed, if he did get off a message a few days after Robert's confession and he didn't know that Peter was already in the Hague, looking for the Comte d'Alberville).
So reading up on the event that was presented as his brother's greatest failing in the gospel according to FW might have made psychological sense.
OMG, wow. Yeah, definitely!
I always thought it was a bit rich that in the gospel according to Fritz, Mollwitz was forgivable but not Zittau. I mean, really, Fritz? You get to learn from your mistakes, but other people don't?
I'd bet on this happening in the spring of 1758
I agree, your reasoning is very convincing.
Re: Katte! - Pamphlet
Yeah, this is my headcanon, although I will admit that it is partially because I had already adopted
Re: Katte! - Envoy reports
His source is a German translation, of course, sigh. Good news, though: it's not just one report, it's all the reports pertaining to the escape, from August through December! I can't tell if they're all Danish or if they're a collection of reports (I can't even tell where it says the Nov 11 one is Danish or from Johnn), but I have uploaded NeuesBerlinischeMonatsschrift9, and the relevant pages are 324-349. Whenever you have time. (German sources are both good and bad, in that one person can read them really well and at great length, but two people not at all or only a little bit, and French sources we can all read a little bit, but nobody very well or at great length. I still prefer to have at least access to the original whenever possible, whichever language that might be.)
Anyway, I spotted Katte's arrest, and it matches Wilhelmine's description that he was just about to mount the horse when he was arrested. She's not making that up for sensationalist purposes; she's reporting what she heard. Which is probably sensationalist, but could also be true. I'd think it would have come up in the trial documents, though?
Like Wilhelmine, the envoy report also has Keith being warned in Wesel that the plot was betrayed, and fleeing only when he was warned. That really was the account that went around in the 18th century, and as far as I can tell, the only one that was transmitted orally. Wilhelmine has it, Fritz has it, Peter's son has it...the only source I've seen with my own eyes that has him leaving before that is Seckendorff, who says that when FW arrived in Geldern, which was evidently on the 12th, he learned that Keith had left Wesel "several days" before. Since Seckendorff was with FW at the time, the event was fresh news and practically local, and it was the official report to the King, I trust it more than I trust the accounts of people in Berlin who are playing games of telephone on the 19th. Plus there seems to be some source I have't seen that specifies he disappeared on the 6th. Probably in Kloosterhuis.
Oh, wow, yes, Kloosterhuis has Keith's quarters being inspected on the 7th, but he has also two unrelated things I didn't notice. One, it's Rottembourg's wife who calls Katte "charmant mais étourdi," which means all my sources saying Rottembourg was never married are wrong (I was thinking they might be, but wasn't sure). Two, Kloosterhuis just cites Fritz's judgment of Keith and Katte as "aimable, mais aussi étourdis que moi" in Catt like you can totally trust that conversation in Catt to be real. Wow, people really haven't gotten the memo about Catt.
[ETA: No! I was wrong. I was thinking Eva Sophie looked like a very German name for French envoy Count Rottembourg's wife, and then I got suspicious we had the wrong one. It's not impossible he married a German woman, but I thought it might be more likely to be Prussian Count Rothenburg's wife. So I looked it up, and Wikipedia tells me that Prussian Count Rothenburg married an Eva Sophie, plus the name I have for the maybe-wife of French Count Rothenburg/Rottembourg is Jeanne-Madelene. So correction to your Kloosterhuis write-up: Katte is friends with French envoy Count Rothenburg/Rottembourg, but it's Fritz's friend Prussian Count Rothenburg whose wife writes to Katte's stepmom that he's "charmant mais étourdi." Rothenburgs, seriously, could you be any more confusing? Also, we still don't know whether the French envoy was married or not. I think I'm going with no for my fic, but I'd still like to know.]
Going back to the embassy report after that digression, yes, Katte blows Fritz a kiss with his hand, not a hand-foot. And the official report gets the time right: between 7 and 8 am, and obviously the date. It also says Fritz was informed at 5 am. Two hours of offering his crown and his life a thousand times, ouch.
Oh, man, Katte blew Fritz a final kiss thinking he could see it, and Fritz never knew. Oh, right, he opened the archives. Okay, he didn't know for ten years. Unless someone told him, I guess.
Wow, if the FW order in the archive said he was supposed to watch, and the reports based on eyewitnesses said he did watch, no wonder he spent the rest of his life thinking that only fainting just in time had spared him.
I keep going back and forth on whether Münchow could be wrong--he was only 7!--but I keep concluding probably not. I'm not 100% sure, but the balance of evidence seems to come down in his favor on this point.
I suppose it's possible that Katte knows perfectly well that Fritz can't see him, but it's all he's got of Fritz, so he's staring in that direction, knowing Fritz is inside the building that he can glimpse a corner of, and blowing a kiss because he wants to, and maybe in hopes someone will tell Fritz. Or there's a window in sight, and Katte really thinks Fritz is in it.
Lol at Kloosterhuis saying the age-old controversy on whether Fritz could watch is "obsolet." What do you mean, obsolete? It's extremely important! It's the only thing I've thought about all week!
Anyway, 25 pages of new reports in the library, and no rush, royal reader. :D
Re: Katte! - Envoy reports
:(
I keep going back and forth on whether Münchow could be wrong--he was only 7!--but I keep concluding probably not. I'm not 100% sure, but the balance of evidence seems to come down in his favor on this point.
...yeah, I think you've marshalled the evidence pretty convincingly in his direction. And also he would know the building.
I suppose it's possible that Katte knows perfectly well that Fritz can't see him, but it's all he's got of Fritz, so he's staring in that direction, knowing Fritz is inside the building that he can glimpse a corner of, and blowing a kiss because he wants to, and maybe in hopes someone will tell Fritz. Or there's a window in sight, and Katte really thinks Fritz is in it.
Poor Katte :( At least Fritz did find out, eventually :(
Re: Katte! - Envoy reports
Yeah. I guess the best of ... FW's possible worlds is where they get to say goodbye, Fritz doesn't have to watch the sword fall, Katte gets the comfort of thinking he's looking at Fritz, and Fritz finds out about the kiss later, so...at least they (probably) got that?
Re: Katte! - Envoy reports
The reports in general are reasonably good in terms of what they claim, but far from error free. The last but one report is sure Fritz has renounced his right to the succession post Katte's execution, for example, and the report writer says that while this isn't yet generally known, he himself has seen the conditions, and quotes from them. (They incliude the promise never to claim the crown of Prussia at a later point, either.)
Now, obviously this did not happen, and in fact the whole reeducation program was in a way a confirmation that FW had decided to keep Fritz as Crown Prince after all. But I think it's possible someone leaked the October FW demand for Fritz to renounce his place in the sucession to the envoy, and Fritz' survival as opposed to Katte's execution was first interpreted as a sign he'd given in.
Also: the writer earlier says for all that FW is pissed off at the Brits, in actual fact he owes them because he, the writer, happens to know they tried to discourage, not encourage Fritz.
Wow, people really haven't gotten the memo about Catt.
Which is really weird, the more I think about it. I mean, the preface to the 1884 edition of his diary really lays it out in point by point detail. This is not news, even though it was to us. And yet, no one ever doubts Catt. (As opposed to most of the other memoirists.) I can only conclude that even the biographers who did go to the trouble of reading the diary as well as the memoirs skipped the preface...
Re: Katte! - Envoy reports
Catt's reliability
Re: Catt's reliability
Re: Catt's reliability
Re: Catt's reliability
Re: Catt's reliability
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Re: Katte! - Envoy reports
Re: Katte! - Envoy reports
Re: Katte! - Pamphlet
As to why AW made a copy for himself, and had a look at the material in the first place - welll, he'd just been told in no uncertain terms, repeatedly, that what he'd done was unforgivable and he wasn't worthy to be entrusted with military command ever again.
Wow, this is really interesting. And kind of heartbreaking :(
I hope it brought him some comfort. I've always thought that making Fritz (almost) watch was torture for Fritz, but surely comforting for Katte.
I also agree :(
Re: Katte!
This is just to say that, omg, he so would. (I always want the fic that goes with one of these crack ideas, but here I think I might actually not want this one because they would be just depressingly angry tweets.)
Re: Katte!