a) Kloosterhuis - or Martin von Katte, whom he's after all using as a main source - is simply wrong about the marriage date. As far as I know, marriages are not easy to track down to in that era because unlike deaths and births, they aren't usually entered in the church registry. Either Martin or Kloosterhuis could be basing this simply on the birth date of the first child. (BTW, one reason why I think Lehndorff isn't just talking out of his own bias when saying his cousin is unhappily married is that he writes down that one of her two children dies, she's in despair and doubly so because she despises her husband too much to have another child with him. And Ludolf von K. indeed had only two children, which Lehndorff, writing this in the middle of the 7 Years War, can't have known.
b) Or: Lehndorff was quite young (for the era, and his station) to propose in 1749, 22. He was also a youngest son without land of his own. Yes, he had a job that sounded great - chamberlain of the Queen's is nothing to sneeze at if you're provincial nobility - but it hardly paid huge sums. (By comparison, when he does marry almost a decade later, he's 30, and his older brother has died, which means he's inherited the family estate. It could be that Grandma fron Trettau said he was too young for a marriage, and maybe so was Catharine (since I'm assuming she's definitely younger than him, perhaps only 16 or 17), and they should wait some years until Lehndorff has secured another source of income and has become somewhat older. And then, ca. 1751-ish at the latest and probably earlier, the Katte clan strikes.
(I'm again Fontane the novelist influenced here, not by the Wanderungen. Effi's husband Geert von Innstetten in Effie Briest first proposed to her mother when they were both 20 and was declined in favour of Herr von Briest who is way older and the owner of an estate. When Innstetten is proposing to Effi - who is 16 - 17 yars later, in his late 30s and working in the Prussian administration, he's considered an excellent match.)
Re: The Lehndorff Report: 1776
a) Kloosterhuis - or Martin von Katte, whom he's after all using as a main source - is simply wrong about the marriage date. As far as I know, marriages are not easy to track down to in that era because unlike deaths and births, they aren't usually entered in the church registry. Either Martin or Kloosterhuis could be basing this simply on the birth date of the first child. (BTW, one reason why I think Lehndorff isn't just talking out of his own bias when saying his cousin is unhappily married is that he writes down that one of her two children dies, she's in despair and doubly so because she despises her husband too much to have another child with him. And Ludolf von K. indeed had only two children, which Lehndorff, writing this in the middle of the 7 Years War, can't have known.
b) Or: Lehndorff was quite young (for the era, and his station) to propose in 1749, 22. He was also a youngest son without land of his own. Yes, he had a job that sounded great - chamberlain of the Queen's is nothing to sneeze at if you're provincial nobility - but it hardly paid huge sums. (By comparison, when he does marry almost a decade later, he's 30, and his older brother has died, which means he's inherited the family estate. It could be that Grandma fron Trettau said he was too young for a marriage, and maybe so was Catharine (since I'm assuming she's definitely younger than him, perhaps only 16 or 17), and they should wait some years until Lehndorff has secured another source of income and has become somewhat older. And then, ca. 1751-ish at the latest and probably earlier, the Katte clan strikes.
(I'm again Fontane the novelist influenced here, not by the Wanderungen. Effi's husband Geert von Innstetten in Effie Briest first proposed to her mother when they were both 20 and was declined in favour of Herr von Briest who is way older and the owner of an estate. When Innstetten is proposing to Effi - who is 16 - 17 yars later, in his late 30s and working in the Prussian administration, he's considered an excellent match.)