Thank you so much for the very tasty genealogy update!
Thoughts:
„Die drei Wehs“ - this isn‘t only a play on their names all starting with W, which is indeed pronounced Weh in German as a single letter, but with the German word for „Woe“, which is also Weh! So basically, the three Woes in English.
Sugar Hoarder‘s title: Schmidt-Lötzen translates this as Oberhofmarschall, not Oberhofmeister.
Lehndorff might not have been interested in Hans Herrmann, but he sure delivers on gossip about Hans Herrmann‘s family, doesn‘t he?
I will check out the volume register, if there is one, but it might be a while - I‘m on the road pretty much the entire next week.
Leopold Alexander the Younger as likely candidate for Heinrich‘s fave: *reads wiki entry* *reads Allgemeine Biographie entry*: Ouch. Poor guy. Poor, poor guy.
Entry says that his career and family life in middle age were going fine until the disastrous Prussian defeat at Jena/Auerstädt (where Napoleon kicked Prussia‘s butts and everyone kept muttering „would have never happened if Fritz was still alive“ forever after to get over it) where he was wounded. He went to Magdeburg, where the supreme commander hightailed it out of there when the French came, leaving this particular Wartensleben as the oldest officer in town, which meant that along with Governor von Kleist, whom he‘d never gotten along well, he was by default in charge. Wartensleben judged the Magdeburg walls which hadn‘t been renewed for ages a disaster not up to a siege with modern weapons and so the entire garnison surrendered when Marshal Ney, favourite Napoleonic Marshal of one Louis Fontane and his son Theodor, showed up. Guess who got blamed for this after Napoleon‘s defeat a few years later, got casheed, locked up and had his estates confiscated? The imprisonment was the only thing ended after a while but otherwise Leopold Alexander the Younger had to spend the end of his life living only from the pension granted to him in Heinrich‘s last will, along with his family, broken-hearted.
The other thing I found interesting was that wiki and Allgemeine Biographie say he actually started out as a pal of future FW2‘s until Fritz deigned him a bad influence and separated them in the mid 60s, though since young Wartensleben‘s career otherwise went on well and he got promoted by Fritz, it can‘t have been that much of a bad influence. I suspect more of general Fritz paranoia and/or spite re: his nephew. I mean, he told even Lehnsdorff not to hang out with future FW2 so much around the same time (or rather had a flunky tell Lehndorff) in the aftermath of the Borck firing. What Lehndorff and Wartensleben the younger have in common is Heinrich, but not really, since Lehndorff only notices this Wartensleben (if it is the same guy) in Heinrich‘s circle in 1782, whereas the „back off from nephew!“ orders were issued in the mid 1760s. (I guess Fritz may have believed his own propaganda about AW being influenced by „evil advisors“ and didn‘t want a repetition with Crown Prince Jr., and anyone who ever was a pal of AW‘s - which Lehndorff was - qualified? Though that wouldn‘t explain young Wartensleben, and he fell under the category „Fritz roleplays FW with nephew“...
Re: Wartenslebens
Thoughts:
„Die drei Wehs“ - this isn‘t only a play on their names all starting with W, which is indeed pronounced Weh in German as a single letter, but with the German word for „Woe“, which is also Weh! So basically, the three Woes in English.
Sugar Hoarder‘s title: Schmidt-Lötzen translates this as Oberhofmarschall, not Oberhofmeister.
Lehndorff might not have been interested in Hans Herrmann, but he sure delivers on gossip about Hans Herrmann‘s family, doesn‘t he?
I will check out the volume register, if there is one, but it might be a while - I‘m on the road pretty much the entire next week.
Leopold Alexander the Younger as likely candidate for Heinrich‘s fave: *reads wiki entry* *reads Allgemeine Biographie entry*: Ouch. Poor guy. Poor, poor guy.
Entry says that his career and family life in middle age were going fine until the disastrous Prussian defeat at Jena/Auerstädt (where Napoleon kicked Prussia‘s butts and everyone kept muttering „would have never happened if Fritz was still alive“ forever after to get over it) where he was wounded. He went to Magdeburg, where the supreme commander hightailed it out of there when the French came, leaving this particular Wartensleben as the oldest officer in town, which meant that along with Governor von Kleist, whom he‘d never gotten along well, he was by default in charge. Wartensleben judged the Magdeburg walls which hadn‘t been renewed for ages a disaster not up to a siege with modern weapons and so the entire garnison surrendered when Marshal Ney, favourite Napoleonic Marshal of one Louis Fontane and his son Theodor, showed up. Guess who got blamed for this after Napoleon‘s defeat a few years later, got casheed, locked up and had his estates confiscated? The imprisonment was the only thing ended after a while but otherwise Leopold Alexander the Younger had to spend the end of his life living only from the pension granted to him in Heinrich‘s last will, along with his family, broken-hearted.
The other thing I found interesting was that wiki and Allgemeine Biographie say he actually started out as a pal of future FW2‘s until Fritz deigned him a bad influence and separated them in the mid 60s, though since young Wartensleben‘s career otherwise went on well and he got promoted by Fritz, it can‘t have been that much of a bad influence. I suspect more of general Fritz paranoia and/or spite re: his nephew. I mean, he told even Lehnsdorff not to hang out with future FW2 so much around the same time (or rather had a flunky tell Lehndorff) in the aftermath of the Borck firing. What Lehndorff and Wartensleben the younger have in common is Heinrich, but not really, since Lehndorff only notices this Wartensleben (if it is the same guy) in Heinrich‘s circle in 1782, whereas the „back off from nephew!“ orders were issued in the mid 1760s. (I guess Fritz may have believed his own propaganda about AW being influenced by „evil advisors“ and didn‘t want a repetition with Crown Prince Jr., and anyone who ever was a pal of AW‘s - which Lehndorff was - qualified? Though that wouldn‘t explain young Wartensleben, and he fell under the category „Fritz roleplays FW with nephew“...