cahn | Frederick the Great discussion post 13

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frederick the great

Frederick the Great discussion post 13

mildred_of_midgard once said, every day is like Christmas in this fandom! It's true!

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The books by Sirs Hoffbauer and Berg have arrived at the Stabi. Now, I first picked Hofbauer, which might have in a mistake in that he argues against Berg in it, so Berg probably should have been first. But limited time is limited.

So, Theodor Hoffbauer: Was Garnissonspfarrer in Küstrin from 1858 to 1870.

Published about the place of Katte’s death first in 1867 in a magazine published in Frankfurt an der Oder, but at that point had not had insight into the inquisition files which weren‘t made accessible to most people not Preuss until 1870.

Quoth Hofbauer, only slightly paraphrased, from this point onwards:

In 1886, Koser published most of the crown prince and Katte files in his own book, and right at the start, he said I was right, because of the quote: „Gestern früh gleich nach sieben Uhr ist die Exekution bei der Wache auf dem Walle über der Mühlenpforte vollzogen.“ This is the only positive menton of the execution place in the files as far as I know, for even Governor von Lepel does not name the precise execution spot in his report of November 8th.

So I gave my little 1867 essay to Crown Prince Friedrich in the hope I‘d get full access, but did I? I did not, not until 1901. I was right, as I found.

Poet Gustav zu Putlitz, related to the Katte Clan, has in his „Brandenburgische Geschichten“ from 1862 the Sergeant of the Commando Gendarmes who brought Katte to Küstrin tell Wilhelmine the tale, and that‘s where the „death is sweet for such an amiable prince“ version hails from for many a subsequent version, though there is an additional truly primary source as well.

While Gustav zu Pulitz’ story is fiction, zu Pulitz told Fontane when Fontane was researching Wanderungen: „Katte‘s half sister was my great grandmother, and from the inheritance of one of her daughters (my great aunt), this painting“ - a painting showing Katte mentioned in Wanderungen, subsection Oderland - „came into our house. I vividly remember the day when we unpacked it together with a lot of other old things. It impressed me a lot, despite me being a child, for I knew Katte‘s story, which had been told my by my great aunt as a family tradition often.“

Fontane died in 1898. In the same year, the place of the Katte tragedy was completely altered by the removal of the wall on the Oder side between the bastions König and Brandenburg as well as Weiskopf and MÜhlenpforte, most of it destroyed. So the public can’t see I was right anymore.

Henri de Catt was a lying liar who lies. All hail Koser!

Here are the only reliable primary sources on Katte‘s execution:
- report of von Münchow to the King, unsolicited, from November 7th
- Report to Hans Heinrich by Major v. Schack, dated December 2nd.
- Report to Hans Heinrich by Garnisonsprediger Besser who had been with Müller during the execution, dated January 1731.
- Fragmentary Report by an unnamed eye witness, possibly Müller, also adressed to Hans Heinrich, first published by Preuss

All these reporters are more trustable than the report made due the explicit ungracious order of the King by Governor v. Lepel and Commander v. Reichmann on November 8th, the fifth document. More about this in a moment. All other reports seem to derive from these five documents.

Young von Münchow: was only four, but lived in Küstrin until August 1738, i.e. eight years, so really knew the place.

Now quoting all the reports.

Von Münchow Senior‘s report: mentions Kattes bravery, mentions Mühlenpforte as said, mentions Fritz learning about the execution only an hour earlier, upon being woken up, says Fritz fainted three times (but the phrasing is ambigous - „has been so distraught about this that he fainted three times“ - with „this“ meaning either Katte‘s death or being woken up with execution news. Report says he‘s still in a terrible state.

I‘m noting v. Schack does not mention Fritz at all.

Garnisonspfarrer Besser has been asked for by Müller for assistance. Your faithful transcriper of Hofbauer‘s arguments notices this time that Besser doesn’t just say „seinen geliebten Jonathan“ but „seinen geliebtesten Jonathan“ (beloved versus most beloved) and „nach langem, sehnlichen Umhersehen“.

Aha! Fragmentary anonymous report by possibly Müller has this exchange „Mon cher Katte, je vous demande mille pardons, au nom de Dieu, pardon, pardon.“ Hand kiss, and „Point de pardon, mon prince, je meurs avec mille plaisirs pour vous.“

This fragment is archived with Preuss, „Friedrich d. Gr. Mit seinen Verwandten und Freunden“.

Speaking as Hofbauer again: I‘m quoting FW‘s entire order and point out there would been several possible execution places where Fritz could have watched the execution without a doubt - on the wall in the spoot between Wallflügel and Weißkopf, where the last verbal exchange took place, for one. Also if Fritz had been brought on the Weißkopf. Why not? Care for Fritz. Ditto for putting a black cloth on the body, which isn‘t in the order but was done so the body would not be seen afterwards.

The first unsolicited report to FW by Lepel really just says that FW‘s orders have been followed, execution happened, and where should Katte‘s Johanniter medal which Katte gave von Schack be sent to ,the grand master of the order or elswhere, and where should the bills for the execution go to? Yours truly, Lepel.

Next, Lepel writes a longer letter on November 7th about the aftermath, which mentions Fritz being in a bad state and the sentence „The King believes he‘s taken Katte from me, but I see him with my own eyes standing there“.

FW then writes an angry letter in which he is surprised Lepel didn‘t report anything about how Fritz responded to all this before and while it happened. FW wants a thorough description of Fritz‘ reaction from the moment he was told about the execution. Only then, Lepel writes on November 8th that when Fritz was woken up at 5 am with the Katte news:

„(...) the crown prince was deeply shocked and asked „What bad news are you bringing me? Lord Jesus, rather kill me instead!“ Till the execution took place, he lamented that this was to happen in front of his eyes, wrung his hands, cried, asked, whether it wasn’t possible to delay the execution , so he could send an urgent message to your royal majesty. When this was not permitted, he has spoken to the Colonel: If your royal majesty demanded of him to die, to renounce the succession or to remain an eternal prisoner, he would gladly give an assurance of this, now his conscience was guilty forever. He asked about three times whether it was not possible to get a pardon, and has had Katte been told to forgive him.
Before the sentence was read at the spot of the execution, he has called out loudly to Katte: Je vous demande mille pardons! And Katte has replied something like - „ungefähr“ is the German word used, approximately - „Monseigneur vous n‘avez rien à me demander!“

The Execution has taken place in front of him and when after Katte had removed his clothing turned his face towards him, the Crown Prince fainted and so the Captain had to step towards him and hold him. After such execution the Crown Prince kept his eyes traced on the body and has observed it till the removal and it being put into the coffin at noon. When he was left the day before yesterday and yesterday alone, he has kept looking at the execution place and demanded to remove the sand.
This night he has not slept much, after he has eaten little in the evening, this morning has lamented towards the footman that he has bad fantasies and that Katte was always in front of his eyes, which frightened him a lot. He is still often crying, and one hears him sigh and moan, if one stands in front of his room. Yesterday he has told to the preacher and to others: He believes he himself will be executed, and that he was to die in eight or fourteen days. More, the preacher will report.“

Hoffbauer: This was the source for all „Fritz did see it“ versions, with people overlooking how it came to be and that it was the result of FW explicitly demanding a description of how Fritz reacted. Lepel was covering his backside with FW. Who was satisfied with this report.

Hans Heinrich to FW post execution: „Most gracious King and lord, I ask for this one mercy to avoid the reasoning of my neighbours and friends to bring the body of my son to my estate in all quietness. May your majesty not deny this only mercy to a father grieved to his death.“ (handwritten agreeing note by FW „Well. Compliment!“)

Hoffbauer: Finally, I shall also tell you where Fritz lived once he was allowed to live in town. Local tradition has him living in House Nr. 14 in the Langendamm (= Berliner) Straße, the second from the corner of the Predigerasse after hte gate, which looks with half its facade to the Renneplatz. But I already said this tradition could only be roughly right in my 1901 essay and told my theory that Fritz was staying in the former court preacher‘s house directly after No.14, while the Preacher moved into the house Fritz should have had at the market.

Reasons: the house should be comfortable and allow Fritz access to the wall. When they wanted to rent the house owned by Frau General von Bismarck, she said it was very decrepit. Hence the court preacher‘s house. Because in the one originally intended - market place - he could have seen the execution spot all the time. And von Lepel mentions that the preacher moved into the originally destined for Fritz house on November 21.

People living with Fritz then: Not Hofmarschall von Wolden, he was a married man living elswhere with his wife, but the two cavaliers von Natzmer and von Rohwedel.

The Cook: Jakob Heinrich Hellmund (mentioned on November 22nd 1731 in the city protocol of Cüstrin) and the three footmen: Johann Theodorus Ulffert, JOhann Conrad Volbrecht, Stephan Heinrich Dörgen. All seven had to swear an oath on November 16th in Wusterhausen in front of FW, which was read to them by Thulemeier.

Concluding chapter: on to my enemies. Think what you want, other people, except you, Dr. G. Berg, I‘ll skewer you! En garde! On page 35 of his work, he has the gall to lecture me about how to conduct an investigation when he himself shows total disregard of how to do it. He quotes Münchow Jr. and claims Jr. and I had claimed the wall was running across the fortress wall. Which we did not, we said it was a wall running along where the Schloßgraben connected to the fortress wall. Strawmen arguments, Berg! You suck.

Also, Berg is still quoting Koser’s original verdict on Münchow JR. when Koser himself has revised his judgment in his second edition of his book in 1901.

AND Berg in order to bash Jr. quotes the 15000 Taler cost claim which was clearly a printing error with one 0 too many. Of course Berg is right to point out Münchow‘s wrong claim about his age in 1730, but I pointed this out, Fontane pointed this out, and Preuß pointed this out. Still doesn’t change the undeniable fact Jr. remained in Küstrin till he was 12.

And then Berg has the gall of accusing me of disloyalty to Fritz for not believing Fritz as quoted by Mitchell. When the Mitchell quote explicitly has him fainting before the death. Even bloody de Catt did pay attention to that!

Oh, and I have an explanation of Münchow’s earlier „man musste es tun“ versus his later view: he’s been reading Pöllnitz’ memoirs which were published in 1791, containing the phrase „il devait etre exécuté“.

Pöllnitz: quand Katte fut assez proche, le prince lui cria“ v Münchow - „Der Prinz rufte laut, als die Prozession nahe war, diese Worte.“

Conclusion: Jr. reliable for location, otherwise influenced by reading. As you would - doubt he could have heard and understood a French sentence in detail from the top of the Weißkopf.

In conclusion: I‘m right, Berg‘s wrong, now check out my maps!

K�strin photo Kuumlstrin Map_zpsr839le0u.jpg

K�strin Legend photo Kuumlstrin Legend_zpsmgoje7e9.jpg

Edited 2020-03-07 15:35 (UTC)

Re: Katte at Küstrin: The Theodor Hoffbauer Version

selenak - 2020-03-08 18:10 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Katte at Küstrin: The Theodor Hoffbauer Version

mildred_of_midgard - 2020-03-08 18:15 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Katte at Küstrin: The Theodor Hoffbauer Version

mildred_of_midgard - 2020-03-08 15:11 (UTC) - Expand

Since

selenak asked about Wartensleben genealogy, here goes!

Alexander Hermann von Wartensleben
Hans Hermann von Katte's maternal grandfather. Prussian field marshal (the highest rank in the army).

Under F1, a member of the Three-Counts Cabinet, also called the Three-Ws (Die Drei Wehs), consisting of a Count von Wartenberg, Count von Wittgenstein, and Count von Wartensleben (Hans Hermann's grandfather). They were very politically influential until 1710, and raised tons of taxes to pay for F1's expenses. Including this little gem: "Young girls had to pay a 2 groschen maiden tax per month on their virginity."

Finally, plagues and famines and such hit, and there was no more money, and the cabinet had to be disbanded three years before FW became king. Wittgenstein was arrested for dishonesty, and apparently Wartenberg also saw his position as a way to line his pockets. Either the only honest man among the three, or the only one smart enough not to get caught, was Grandpa Wartensleben. Who continued to enjoy royal favor, if not the same level of political influence, under FW (notwithstanding having to pay for the executioner of the grandson he practically raised).

Friedrich Ludwig von Wartensleben
Son of Alexander and thereby half maternal uncle of Hans Hermann. (Different mother than Katte's mother.) Born in 1707, making him 3 years younger than his nephew Hans Hermann, because Grandpa Alexander was procreating until he was 60 years old.

Died on January 5, 1782.

Title: oberhofmeister/grand-maître. One source says he was the grand-maître of the house of the dowager queen, widow of Frederick the Great, but if both Wikipedia and Lehndorff have him dying in early 1782, and Fritz didn't die until 1786, that must be wrong.

Anyway, all evidence points toward him being sugar-hoarder. If Kloosterhuis is right that Hans Hermann spent most of his time growing up with his grandfather, and Friedrich Ludwig was only three years younger, I would say this argues for Hans Hermann and sugar-hoarder knowing each other quite well!

Friedrich Sophus von Wartensleben
Alexander's other son named Friedrich, born in 1709, so only two years after the previous son named Friedrich, who seems to have gone by Ludwig/Louis to reduce confusion. Ended up as envoy to Copenhagen and Stockholm under Fritz.

Shows up in other Seckendorff's journal as 1) the guy who keeps saying Fritz is totally fucking EC and thinks she has a hot ass, 2) the guy Fritz can't stand. Are those two facts related? You decide!

Leopold Alexander von Wartensleben
Youngest son of Alexander, born 1710. Part of the Rheinsberg circle, made it onto Fritz's "6 most loved" list, and apparently, the only person in 1739 whom Fritz liked whom FW didn't immediately hate on those grounds.

I have this description of him:

The King has extreme jealousy against his son, making German quarrels (querelles d'Allemand) with anyone he believes in any particular connection with him. There is only one person who is excepted from the rule; and it's a very rare phenomenon. This person is the youngest of the Counts of Wartensleben, a tall, well-made man, discreet, modest, wise, honest, with very good sense, but who speaks little, and who, moreover, has no place of brilliance. With all this he found the secret of becoming an almost declared favorite, both of the father and the son, although in a much more marked degree with the latter, without the King, who is aware of it, taking umbrage. Finally, it is this honest man, who is the Prince's sole confidant in matters of some consequence, and who dares to speak to him frankly. Wartensleben is like (comme) the friend of his heart.

ETA: This means you should ignore any previous comments I made about one of the uncle Friedrichs being on the 6 most loved list. Clearly my past self was confused by ALL THE FREAKING WARTENSLEBENS.

Heinrich's favorite
I can't tell! All of Alexander's sons are dead by 1782, and we're probably looking for someone of the next generation anyway, rather than someone a generation older than Heinrich.

selenak, would you be so kind as to check the Lehndorff index next time and see if there's a first name given? One of the Lehdnorff volumes is really good about naming first names and relationships in the index, so hopefully this one is as well.

My best guess at present is the son of Fritz's favorite by the same name, Leopold Alexander (1745-1822). He's a lieutenant general by the end of his life, joins the Prince Heinrich regiment at Spandau in 1790, and as far as my clunky German can tell, he gets a pension left to him in Heinrich's will, which is then passed on to his wife and daughter after he himself dies.

Would be fun and totally in character if Fritz and Heinrich had favorites who were a father-son pair with the same name. :P

Edited 2020-03-08 03:20 (UTC)

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“...

selenak has spoken highly of in the past. No idea, of course, if Blanning is misrepresenting what she says. But I thought it was interesting.

Especially since he continues,

Indulging both his anti-imperial and anti-Christian prejudices, Frederick also put a stop to the saying of prayers for the emperor in Prussian churches—“ an old and silly custom” he called it. His most celebrated symbolic rejection of the Holy Roman Empire was performed by proxy by his representative at Regensburg, Erich Christoph von Plotho, on 14 October 1757, when the imperial notary Georg Mathias Joseph Aprill arrived at the Brandenburg residence to deliver the Reichstag’s condemnation of Frederick’s invasion of Saxony. Plotho seized the document, shoved it down Aprill’s shirt front “with all possible violence” and summoned his servants to throw the messenger down the stairs and out into the street. This they did not actually accomplish, although the pro-Prussians chose to believe they had. By his own account, Aprill went home in tears. Needless to say, this episode soon made the rounds and grew with the telling. To pun the name of the unfortunate notary, it was later claimed that it had happened on April Fool’s Day. Lurid accounts in the press were supported with visual illustrations. According to Goethe, when Plotho traveled to Frankfurt am Main in 1764 he was lionized by the local people as the personification of Frederick’s victory over Catholic Austria.

The reason this was interesting, aside from the inherent drama, was that Blanning's footnote to the Reichstag's condemnation reads:

Despite contemporary use of the word Acht (“ outlawry”), this was not what was imposed on Prussia, despite the best efforts of the Austrians. Had they succeeded, they would have gained a legal justification for dismembering Prussia, for Frederick’s lands would have been forfeit— Wilson, “Prussia’s Relations with the Holy Roman Empire, 1740– 1786,” p. 350.

Now, way back when, I reported MacDonogh claiming that Prussia was kicked out of the HRE, and we side-eyed him. Now I think this must be what he's getting at. If Blanning's correct--and I suspect he is, because neither

selenak nor I have heard of anything as dramatic as Prussia getting kicked out, and as she pointed out, it's contradicted by later events--then MacDonogh was relying too heavily on this use of "outlawry." But as usual, he's not making things up out of wholecloth.

So it's good to have that (probably) cleared up. I'm also now curious whether Fritz would have had to kneel in our hypothetical summit, to a non-newly-elected emperor. Do you have any additional information on this side,

selenak? You're our HRE person.

Re: the kneeling - I have my info also from Stollberg-Rilinger's biography, who said that MT's Dad had introduced the three genuflections from his time as King of (Northern) Spain.

Cahn: MT's Dad had been the brother of the previous Emperor. This was just when the last Spanish Habsburg King, Charles of the minimal number of ancestors, died, and the Bourbons went after the Spanish Throne while the Austrian Habsburgs tried to hold on to it. Hence MT's dad for a while being King of Spain while his brother was HRE. Eventually, Louis XIV succeeded in putting a Bourbon on the Spanish Throne for good and MT's Dad went home, but not without Spanish Court Etiquette in his luggage, and since he became the next HRE, this meant he could inflict said protocol on all the German princes, to much resentment. MT upon her own ascension reduced it to one kneefall again, which I think it remained for a first encounter between FS, her and someone who hadn't been introduced before to them. In an encounter with her on her own, it was additionally helpful that she was a woman, because kissing a princess' hand was the polite thing to do in any case, even if she hadn't outranked everyone else.

re: what Fritz got out of the Wittelsbach Emperor - well, remember, MT didn't recognize the guy as Emperor. She pointed out that he hadn't been voted for by all the princes elector. Which was true but a bit of legal haggling (as was Fritz wanting his cake and eat it, i.e. claiming more independence from the HRE and saying he, he was warring againt MT only in the service of his Emperor, as a loyal Prince of the HRE), given there had been any number of cases in the middle ages where the Emperor hadn't been elected by all the princes. In any case, cousin Karl Albrecht was just "the Ursurper" to her, she never accepted him as HRE, so I suppose it's possible she also ignored all legal changes he made re: Prussia. Not sure about this, though. It's equally likely her pragmatic self accepted them after his son Max, Maria Antonia's brother, agreed to her terms (Bavaria back against dropping of all Wittelsbach claims to the HRE and vote for FS as Emperor in his capacity as the Prince Elector of Bavaria).

In any event, since Prussia voting for FS as Emperor after the fact had been part of the peace conditions post second Silesian War, and Fritz voted for Joseph post 7 Years War, again in his capacity as Elector of Brandenburg, as part of the peace conditions there, you have a mutual recognition by deed that a) Brandenburg-Prussia isn't an outlaw anymore, and b) it still recognizes the HRE as the supreme organization, headed by the Habsburgs for the foreseeable future, and Joseph as the next Emperor.

Re: Fritz cancelling the prayers for the Emperor in the 1750s: ironically enough, as we know from Lehndorff's diaries, he apparantly didn't think to cancel prayers and mourning for the Emperor's relations. I still can't get over the fact the entire Prussian Court wears full mourning when Isabella dies in 1763. (And I think Lehndorff also mentions prayers said for her.) Directly after the 7 Years War. For Isabella, who isn't related to the Hohenzollern at all, and whose only claim to said mourning is that she's the wife of the future Emperor. (The Court also wears mourning for Franzl in 1765, but that's a bit less strange - two years later, and he was the Emperor.)

Hypophetical summit: firstly, in the real summit, Volz has the complete version of Joseph's letter to Mom about meeting Fritz at Neisse in "Gespräche", as opposed to Jessen's shorter version which I had translated for you, and in it, Joseph does mention he encountered Fritz on the stairs (as depicted in Menzel's painting) and embraced him, Heinrich and future FW2 (whom Fritz had brought along); they then went upstairs and he and Fritz had a one and one chat (starting their 16 hours per day talks) alone in a room. This stairs thing, and Fritz coming down, solves of course the problem of protocol, as Fritz can't very well kneel when his Emperor is already embracing him, plus Joseph as the younger man can play it as politenesss. This is not an option for an MT-Fritz encounter where Joseph is still an Archduke. Now of course in theory FS - who is the actual Emperor, renember, MT officially is only Empress as the consort of the Emperor, hence "Queen-Empress" if the Prussians want to be polite and "Queen of Hungary" if they don't - could do what Joseph did and go for a monarchical embrace before Fritz can either refuse to kneel down or kneel. Especially if he plays on the fact they already met. But that doesn't solve the MT and Fritz question, and Franzl being loyal, I don't think he'd do anything to sabotage whatever line she chooses to take.

I don't think she'd stick to protocol over common sense, if she agreed to peace negotiations to begin with, so no, she wouldn't insist on the kneeling, but hand kissing is still on. It does have the advantage of being an expected male noble to female noble gesture on the one hand, but on the other, from a prince of the HRE to the de facto head of the HRE, is a submissive gesture. (During the 30 years war, several Protestant princes made a great deal of refusing to kiss the Catholic Emperor's hand.)

Re: Prussia and the Holy Roman Empire

cahn - 2020-03-09 20:55 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Prussia and the Holy Roman Empire

mildred_of_midgard - 2020-03-09 21:07 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Prussia and the Holy Roman Empire

cahn - 2020-03-09 21:11 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Prussia and the Holy Roman Empire

mildred_of_midgard - 2020-03-09 21:17 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Prussia and the Holy Roman Empire

selenak - 2020-03-10 06:22 (UTC) - Expand

Recently, we were exploring the possibility of an AU where Fritz is captured by the Austrians, put on trial, and defended by Voltaire after attempts by Heinrich to recapture him failed.

selenak asked: "And would it be plausible that he starts an argument when the secret prisoner exchange is on, which is why it doesn't work out, which is why Voltaire can still do the rescue via publicity campaign?"

I replied: "I wish I could find the source, and I will keep an eye out because I feel like it's a letter and not just a novel, I mean biography, but I have a memory of Fritz saying something like, 'If I'm captured, you're not to make any concessions to get me back; the welfare of the state comes first.'"

Well, I found it! Asprey cites the letter, and though he doesn't give me a page number or a date or anything (other than shortly before Mollwitz), he narrowed it down enough that I was able to track it down in the Political Correspondence.

Translation mine:

By the way, I have twice escaped the designs of the Austrian hussars [viz, to capture him]. If I suffer the misfortune of being taken alive, I absolutely order you, and you will answer for it with your head, that in my absence you will not respect my orders, that you will serve as counselor to my brother, and that the state will not take any unworthy action to gain my freedom. On the contrary, I wish and I order that, in this event, the state act even more vigorously than ever.

If I'm killed, I want my body burned and placed in an urn at Rheinsberg [this is 1741, several years before Sanssouci is built]. Knobelsdorff [his architect] should in this case make a monument like that of Horace at Tusculum.

Either Fritz's memory or mine is faulty here: help me out,

selenak? I only remember Cicero living at Tusculum (hence the Tusculan Disputations), but I'm more of a Hellenist than a Romanist. I do remember that Horace's villa had turned up by Fritz's time, but not in Tusculum. I also remember that Algarotti's monument later commissioned by Fritz has a phrase from Horace that was popular to put on graves: "non omnis"--meaning the body of the individual is buried here, but their spirit or the memory of them or their works or whatever you consider most important, lives on.

But I am drawing a blank on what specific monument Fritz may be thinking of here.

Anyway! It's quite possible that if there's a prisoner exchange, Fritz is torn between wanting to go free and wanting the state to demand major concessions in return for Joseph.

It's also interesting that there's the "you will not follow any orders I give in captivity" line in there. Clearly he believes that he would cave under pressure and sign orders that as a free man he wouldn't want followed, no matter what the cost to him. His experience caving in Küstrin might be informing this decision. At any rate, it's very psychologically revealing.

I still think that ~1760!Fritz, used to being in command and with 100% control issues, most likely jumps at the chance to get out of prison and back into the saddle, especially if it's a prisoner exchange instead of territorial concessions--long precedent for honorable exchanges of prisoners in warfare. But we at least have this passage to point to if you want him to be torn.

Oh, here's an idea. Maybe Fritz can't imagine that they have Joseph, so when the Austrians are willingly if unofficially letting him go, he imagines that the only reason they would do that is if they got major concessions out of Prussia. So he starts yelling like a maniac at his would-be rescuers, ordering them to go away and hang onto Silesia, or at least pre-1740 Prussia, at all costs, and he'll commit suicide if that's what it takes. And because Fritz has never been the world's greatest listener once he gets an idea into his head, they never have the chance to explain that it's an unofficial prisoner exchange.

So the Prussian officers shrug and decide, "Okay, the king wants us to trade Joseph for Silesia. Makes sense, if you're an amazing Roman Stoic monarch who puts the state first. Heinrich, you'd better build a hell of a monument to commemorate our king's glorious sacrifice!"

Heinrich: Oh, I've got a monument at Rheinsberg in mind. It may not be what you're expecting.

Edited 2020-03-08 19:24 (UTC)

Pretty sure this is where Lavisse is getting the idea that Fritz was unhappy because Wilhelmine wasn't going to be a queen and that was the beginning of his lifelong coolness toward her.

That, and there's actually an early letter in Volz (No.7, dated Küstrin 1731, no more definite than that) where Fritz writes to Wilhelmine: As you want to hear my opinion about your marriage, I have to tell you: It pains me deeply that your beautiful qualities shan't be able to sparkle in front of Europe, for only in England you can be who you were meant to be. HOWEVER, the letter then continues: But if the Heriditary Prince is good looking, as you write, you may be able to live more peaceful there than elsewhere, and I can see you whenever I want, without having to ask for the agreement of an haughty and proud parliament.

(Mantteufel reports later that Fritz has a higher opinion of his Braunschweig brother-in-law (the one married to Charlotte, not EC's other brothers) than of his Bayreuth one, but that's in 1737, years after having gotten to know both. (Though a Braunschweig Duke certainly outranks a Bayreuth Margrave by far.) Anyway, aside of everything else, it would be surprising if Fritz had escaped the constant SD doctrine as given to both her oldest children, that only the Hannover cousins and the British throne are worthy, and a minor German noble is really below par. (Btw, completley wrong, this is not, from a contemporary pov - both Wilhelmine and sisters Sophie & Friedrike Louise, all of whom ended up with Margraves, were married off below rank and cheaply, even taking into account the Hohenzollern were upstarts as royalty.)

OMG, FW and Grumbkow, make up your mind! "Have boundaries!" "Not that many boundaries!"

Oh, I think their minds are completely made up. To "separate those two by any means, ensure they both look to the King, not each other, for validation", so Fritz gets told the King will be displeased if he doesn't keep a distance to Wilhelmine, and Wilhelmine gets told it's all due to Fritz and the King is really rooting for her.

Which also fits with FW writing in the autumn of 1730 already that Fritz is to be told no one in Berlin asks about him or cares what happens to him, including his mother, and that Wihelmine is locked in her rooms and won't be let go (apparantly at this point "Wilhelmine doesn't ask, either" is not yet deemed credible), and in their big reunion scene with Fritz completley submitting in the August of 1731 says himself (according to Grumbkow's protocol of the event as written for Seckendorff) "no one in Berlin asked for you or cares whether you live or die". It's a very deliberate policy to isolate those two, who have been each other's closest person, emotionally, especially from each other and make them question each other, at least till Wilhelmine is away in Bayreuth, at which point Grumbkow and FW probably figure that marriage and motherhood will do the rest.

In terms of contemporary documents: this is also where the letter from Fritz which I quoted in the last post from December 1731 comes in, where he says he noticed she's doubting him but swears he loves her and the Queen alone.

Even within the memoirs, written at a point where Wilhelmine is constructing for herself a narrative of post-Küstrin progressive enstrangement, do contain the description of their reunion the following year, though (during her disastrous visit home post birth of child), in which Fritz gets described as a loving brother again, and their letters from the mid 30s certainly sound like they're back to complete frankness (they include Fritz' only criticial references to SD ever), and to joking with each other. (One big difference between memoir writer Wilhelmine and letter writer Wilhelmine is that the letters showcase her sense of humor far more, which is due to the nature of the genre, I suppose.)

So: I think the best one can say is that Grumbkow & FW temporarily succeeded in that they did introduce some emotional enstrangement, but they never managed complete separation, and eventually the two found each other again.

Re: Fritz and Wilhelmine

mildred_of_midgard - 2020-03-09 15:20 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Fritz and Wilhelmine

cahn - 2020-03-09 21:09 (UTC) - Expand

Okay, cancelled Leipzig book fair meets library time this week means I finish the retirement volume of Lehndorff. BTW, Schmidt-Lötzen never managed another, but the estimable Ms Ziebura has edited Lehndorff's 1799 diary.

So, when last we heard of our retired Chamberlain at the start of 1783, he'd been taken by the Marchese di Lucchesini, and so was Fritz, whose mood and health has improved to no end. It also put him into a fraternal mood, for:

18. Januar 1783: The King celebrates the birthday of Prince Heinrich through a big feast using the golden table wear. He himself has put on the Order of the Black Eagle and sends a box ornamented with diamonds made of Chrysopras, which costs at least 10 000 Taler, as a gift to his royal highness, together with a charming letter. The letter says, among other things: I wanted to throw you a ball, but neither you nor myself are up to dancing anymore. The Prince agrees with this, but the public would have very much liked to dance.

(

cahn, the order of the Black Eagle was the highest that Prussia had to offer. Upon being saved by his fanboy, Fritz gave it to Peter, but being a pragmatist, he gave it to Catherine as well once Peter had met his demise at the hands of her minions. Hohenzollern princes got that medal pinned on them before they could deserve it, as kids, which is why you see Crown Prince Fritz wear it in Der Thronfolger and on portraits, for example.)

Prince Heinrich sends me a message to tell me that he’s alone and hopes I would spend the evening with him. I had a migraine through the entire day, so I get dressed only at 6 pm and am on my way to the Prince. We are midway through a most beautiful conversation when the door opens, and the Prince of Prussia enters. With the greatest amiability he says that he didn’t want to miss out of the pleasure to spend such a meaningful day with his royal highness.

Oh fortune why did it happen thus! one is tempted to say. But Lehndorff is loyally fond of his Crown Prince Jr. as well and so bids him welcome. Meanwhile, Fritz is still remarkably mellow:

January 20th: Our Carnival is coming to an end, and the King leaves well and content. The Master of the Horses Schwerin, who plays a kind of court jester to the King, tells him: „You‘ve behaved pretty well this winter; everyone is content with you.“. It is true that his majesty hasn‘t indulged in as many sarcasms this time as he used to. However, I am quite sure we owe this solely to the Marchese di Luchesini, who is always near him and knows how to captivate him through witty conversation. The men who used to surround the King were lacking in wit; their conversation was only gossip revolving around people the King didn’t even know.
During the party Prince Ferdinand throws on the occasion of Prince Heinrich’s birthday, Luchesini told me: „If one can’t do any good, one should at least try to prevent evil, and if one believes that the daily news could cause damage, one has to talk about Greece or Egypt, especially when dealing with a prince who is receptive to such subjects.

Speaking of fraternal feelings: Ulrike is dead, Gustav keeps pissing off his nobility, and Heinrich is in a rare mood about the Swedish relations. The Duke of Södermanland is Charles, the second son who first used Mom to spread the word about Gustav's heir's illegitimacy and then blamed her when Gustav called him out on this.

I often talk with Prince Heinrich about the late Queen of Sweden, his sister, of all the grief she has had in her life, and especially of the terrible quarrel with her son, the current King of Sweden, which has eventually led to her death. The Prince is very bitter about the King and against the King’s brother, the Duke of Södermanland. As often as he talks about this subject, he is unforgiving. He often has had long arguments with Count Hordt, who takes the King’s party. It is indisputable that the late Queen of Sweden had extraordinarily much esprit, but she was very despotic, too, and passionate, and these two qualities have been her misfortune.

ETA: re Heinrich taking Ulrike‘s part - not surprising considering the combination of dead sibling who died heartbroken and sent away by despotic monarch. Otoh, it is interesting that Lehndorff is able to see the situation as more complex than that. / ETA.

Lehndorff's conversation with Heinrich on this subject leads him into musing about the Hohenzollern clan in totem. He's travelled a long road from the young man who was all "our princes are the best and all the others should be like them":

The main flaw of our royal family is jealousy. Their highnesesses are, it has to be admitted, jealous of everything, especially of the people who are devoted to one of them. This goes so far that the King hates those who love his brothers, and his brothers hate those who enjoy his majesty’s favour. Which creates a bad situation for us mere mortals. I can sing a song; I have had some experiences in this regard.

I‘ve heard a story which is hardly believable. The Abbé Prades had been banished by his majesty, but with a light sentence, to Glogau. The reason for his disgrace has been declared to be the fact that he‘d been a confidant of the Prince of Prussia during the time when the later after the misfortune of Zittau had been in disgrace with the King. Thus he’s spent 24 years in exile, when near the end of his life a clerical position got available which had been promised to him during the time when he’d still been enjoying the King’s favour. Now he’s written to his majesty and asked for the position. The answer was, according to rumor, that he should rather approach the manes of those whose favour he had courted. To carry such a grudge for twentyfour years is incomprehensible to me.

(Our editor keeps reminding us that de Prades so was a traitor and his being banished had nothing to do with AW. I believe him, but otoh I'm not entirely sure that supposed Fritz quote was made up from thin air, because "the manes" is a Roman mythology allusion which does sound like Fritz.

Main topics of the day in the spring of 1783 for conversation are the Austro-Russian alliance (everyone's worried) and the Miller Arnold business from last year. Mildred already summarized it briefly elsehwere: in short, Fritz overruled his own judges, twice, on the matter of the Miller Arnold, which got him a reputation of standing up for the little man against the bureaucrats and nobles, except that the "honest miller" wasn't so honest after all, and historians pretty much agree the judges were in the right, and Fritz in the wrong. Lehndorff's sympathies are entirely NOT with the Miller, as in this story, which provides us with some Fritz quotes in German (our editor as well as the spelling point out Lehndorff here switches from French to German in the original manuscript):

Februar to March 1783: One afternoon I spend with the great chancellor Fürst who‘d lost his office. What he tells me of his story raises my hair. When the famous Miller Arnold brought his suit to the King, the later commanded the Großkanzler and the three Gerichtsräte to him. He began to dictate the judgment himself. When he confused the tribunal with the Kammergericht, the chancellor wanted to point this out to him. Then his majesty yelled: „Halt er das Maul!“ (Shut up!) and shortly afterwards, pointing to the door, „Marsch, ich habe seinen Posten schon vergeben“ - „out, I’ve already given his office to someone else!“ And the three councillors were brought to the Kalandshof, the prison for villains and thieves.

That's what we call populism these days, Fritz. Meanwhile, Lehndorff is far more sceptical towards another bit of gossip:

(..) Something else occupies the public. There are rumors that the King will celebrate his golden wedding anniversary. Which certainly won’t happen.

Spoiler: it did not. Although the court painter actually did a golden anniversary painting for which neither of the two marrieds posed. Poor painted EC has to hold a fertlity symbol in her hand, too. On to more fun subjects, to wit: it's time for Lehndorff's annual Rheinsberg visit:

March 16th: I leave for Rheinsberg in the most despicable weather and find the Prince alone with young Tauentzien. I still experience five pleasant weeks there. When Tauentzien leaves, I am completely alone with my Prince. He‘s never more charming than when he‘s able to talk about all kind of subjects without having to restrain himself, and then he talks with a fire, a clarity and a logic that one is dazzled. The morning, I spend in my room with reading. At 10, the Prince comes, and we chat. Then I get dressed in order to lunch with his Royal Highness. After lunch, we drive through the countryside. At 4 pm I’m back at home and read, till the Prince calls me at 6. Then I enter his gallery, which he calls his atelier, where he sits down behind his painting and I sit down behind mine. Toussaint reads out loud the journeys to India. Around 10 pm, we sit down for supper, and we never part before midnight. When the weather is nice, I walk a lot through the lovely gardens of Rheinsberg. (...)

Sounds lovely. However, you might remember who lives nearby?

On our way back,l we stop for a moment at Meseberg. This beautiful estate which the Prince has bought for 150 000 and given to Kaphengst as a present has been nearly run down completely by the creature already. I still marvel at this favour. Never have there been two men less fitting with each other than the Prince and Kaphengst. The former, all mind, passion and fire, loves a debauched, ignorant man who only loves women and gambling. When they are together, they bore each other. And still of all the men who‘ve enjoyed his favour, this one has evoked the most passion from him, and if the good Prince weren‘t in debts himself now, he‘d probably give as much to Kaphengst as he‘s already given him. I have so often pondered the human mind; my own stands still eavery time when I see he won‘t be led to reason. From now on, life at Rheinsberg isn‘t as cozy anymore, despite the Prince being doubly as kind to me. I often see him sad, and that grieves me. (...) Finally, I receive a letter and a messenger from my niece Schlieben with the news that her husband is in a very bad way. This causes me to return to Berlin. .

Lehndorff hears bad things in Berlin about the health and nature of Schlieben the no good husband of his niece, no big surprise there, who after some weeks of lingering on dies. Even Lehndorff finds it hard to be sorry about this. Otoh, he does feel sorry for one of Catherine's lovers whom he met just two years earlier:

May 1783: The famous Orlov has died in madness. He had owed everything to fortune. High favour has changed him from a small lieutenant to the Emperor of Russia and to the lord over all the riches of that country. I knew him. He was never happier than when drinking his beer together with the citizens of Königsberg. And he had to die with a disturbed mind!

In October, young Tauentzien, son of the Fritzian general of the same name, part of Heinrich's circle and about to finally topple Kaphengst there, causes a big scandal by getting one Fräulein von Marschall pregnant and hadtily marrying her without parental consent. Fräulein von Marschall is a lady-in-waiting to Mina, so everyone is upset - her parents, his parents, Mina and Heinrich. By December, however, Lehndorff writes:

I must report a noble action on the part of my splendid Prince Heinrich. He adopts the cause of Tauentzien and his young wife’s, arranges their reconciliation with General Tauentzien and provides the young couple both in Berlin and in Spandau with a free apartment and food, and with an equipage of their own.“

Next, we get a glimpse of Prussian recruiting practices in peace time many years after FW's death:

December 1783: I am in great distress because suddenly my carpenter gets drafted to the army. He’s five feet seven inches; consequently, it would be only a favour on the General‘s side that could allow me to free him. For now, I’m sending him to Königsberg, but give him a letter for General Anhalt. The later is indeed kind enough to return my carpenter to me.

Good for the carpenter, I guess. Lehndorff’s mother-in-law dies in March 1784 unexpectedly (a stroke and a very quick death), and since as opposed to his first mother-in-law, he liked this one, he's sad. Hers is not the only unexpected death:

On the occasion of my mother-in-law‘s death, I receive a lot of condolence letters, among them one by our dear Prince of Prussia, who shows again what an excellent heart he has. Prince Heinrich writes: „Your mother-in-law has taken everyone‘s respect with her in her grave. Her passing has been a quick and easy one. However, I have had to witness a painful dying.“ For Fräulein Marschall, whose surprising quick marriage to Tauentzien a few months ago I have noted down, has given birth and died nine days later in the most terrible torment. The Prince had provided her with rooms in his palace, and she believed herself the happiest of mortals, adored her husband and was adored by him. Now she had to die in her 20th year of life.

Edited 2020-03-13 03:46 (UTC)

but the estimable Ms Ziebura has edited Lehndorff's 1799 diary.

She really is a treasure :D I wonder if she's going to edit them all? (How many more of them are there?)

Upon being saved by his fanboy, Fritz gave it to Peter, but being a pragmatist, he gave it to Catherine as well once Peter had met his demise at the hands of her minions.

HAHAHAHA oh Fritz, never stop being pragmatic.

But Lehndorff is loyally fond of his Crown Prince Jr. as well

Aww, of course he is, the sweetie.

Otoh, it is interesting that Lehndorff is able to see the situation as more complex than that.

*nods* Lehndorff is so perceptive! (I get on his case, especially in the earlier journals, for being unselfaware, but he's also really quite perceptive and sometimes I forget that.)

I can sing a song; I have had some experiences in this regard.

Aw Lehndorff, you have at that.

To carry such a grudge for twentyfour years is incomprehensible to me.

I can totally see that it's incomprehensible to him, he's so nice <3

Poor painted EC has to hold a fertlity symbol in her hand, too.

Oh, poor EC :(

However, you might remember who lives nearby?

AHAHAHA, I wouldn't have, only the way you phrased it I immediately leaped to the correct conclusion :D

For Fräulein Marschall, whose surprising quick marriage to Tauentzien a few months ago I have noted down

Oh no! Truly it sucked to be a woman in the 18th C. :(

Re: The Lehndorff Report: 1783

selenak - 2020-03-14 06:44 (UTC) - Expand

Re: The Lehndorff Report: 1783

mildred_of_midgard - 2020-03-21 18:38 (UTC) - Expand

So I realized I hadn't made the translation of Katte's first interrogation protocol that Mildred had asked me for a post or two ago yet. Here it is. Bear in mind: Katte was threatened by torture if he didn't confess all, and of course he knew the punishment for desertion under FW if this was what it was judged to be and wanted to live, so with that caveat, here's what he said happened:

"It has been probably now a year ago that his highness did for the first time honor me with conversation, and did so repeatedly during the Parade and the parole giving. (...)
In Cosdorf, his highness the Crown Prince had me called just after his arrival and told me I should go recruiting-" guys, I am a bit lost, "auf Werbung gehen" could mean going to woo, or going to recruit, or going to advertise, but I'm going with "recruit because when in doubt, assume a military context in Prussia - and then I should do him a favor, which he believed I wouldn't refuse him. Whereupon I replied to him that I had already registered regarding the recruitment, but as for the other, his highness had only to order, if it was within my power and I could do it, he only needed to order and I would be ready to do anything.'I do believe it of you,' he returned.

Sidenote: Fritz here as quoted by Katte uses the most formal personal address from a higher ranking to a lower ranking person, calling Katte "Er" - the literal translation would have been "I do believe it of Him". This is true for the entire document, which never once has him use the more familiar versions of "you". (No "Sie" or "Ihr", and most definitely no "Du".) Continuing with Fritz as quoted by Katte:

"'In the camp I want to talk further with you about this, just come this evening, when I'm returning from the King.' Whereupon he left me and went to dine with his highness. Here I must remind you that before I even knew I'd join the trip to Saxony, his highness the Crown Prince had told me that he wanted to pay a debt to someone he was owing something to, without, however, mentioning who that person was, and had asked me whether I could get him some money. Whereupon I promised to do all I could, and did sent him 1000 Reichstaler, which the Chamberlain Montolieu had lend to me, to Potsdam through his page. The page had met me at Zehlendorf and I had given him the money sealed in a box so he wouldn't know what was inside. (The Prince) duly received this, and wrote to me the next day through one of his servants demanding that I should get him more money after the Saxon journey, which the preserved letter will prove. When his royal highness withdrew for the night at Cosdorf, he told me, oh my God, I can't stand it anymore, my father treats me so harshly, he is always so lacking all mercy towards me, I don't know anymore what I should do.

I was surprised that he thought of this only now, and said he shouldn't be so impatient, besides, one shouldn't be alarmed by what a father said, he should just sleep over it, tomorrow everything would look different, whereupon he said good night to me and fell asleep. Some days later, three or four days after the arrival at the camp, his highness called me one evening and told me he had decided to leave, and I needed to help him in this enterprise.

I then told him that I couldn't believe him to be serious about it, and so I didn't know what to reply. But when he assured me that it was not a joke at all, that he was entirely serious, I couldn't other but tell him that I was very surprised by such thoughts, he should consider what he was planning. Leaving all other considerations aside, this would be a matter not only very difficult to do but something which the entire world would blame him for. I hoped and believed he would change his mind. (...)

The next day, his highness asked me during the exercises why I didn't believe the matter could be accomplished ; once he had horses and a headstart of several hours, he thought that he would not only be able to make a clean getaway but not to be overtaken by anyone. I replied to him that I did believe all this, but that there was the difficulty of getting horses in the first place, and then it would be important to know what plans he had, where he wanted to go to, that wanting to do something wasn't enough but that in order to be sure of a happy ending one needed to know whether the place one had chosen to be one's retreat would be capable of offering safe and sound sanctuary, and as long as he didn't give me any details in this regard, I was bound to see all his designs as empty projects, something he would like to do but would never accomplish.

When he then named France as the place of his refuge to me and assured me intently that he would be accepted with joy there, and that he would not only be offered safety but as much money as he wanted to have. I asked him to tell me on which basis he made this claim, what kind of assurances he had received and how, and discovered it was only based on assumptions because the two courts, the Prussian and the French court, were not having a good relationship right now and thus he would inevitably have credit there. (...)

I did everything in the world to decline this commission, and pointed out what the Duke if he learned of the entire affair would think of the matter, and what kind of opinion he'd hold if he found that one wanted to take his domestic servants away, especially at a time when he needed them. (...) Without furthering his highness the Prince's longing in the slightest and without making the least suggestion, I did reply to his highness that I didn't believe we'd get far with this man who as I noticed was very attached to his lord. The Prince wasn't satisfied with this and told me I should look for him again and investigate whether he couldn't be persuaded, but without talking to the page I brought again the reply that one couldn't do anything with him, that he didn't want to leave his lord, since he'd been raised in the household of the princess his sister. This his highness applauded and said that he hadn't believed this man had it in him, and now had an even higher opinion of him and wanted to have with him all the more. One afternoon, his highness the Crown Prince returned in a very bad mood from his majesty and gave the order to call me as soon as he'd entered his tent. (...)

Meanwhile the prince had called me and said that he couldn't bear it any longer, there had to be evil people who sought to put him in a bad light with his majesty. At just this day, he'd been mortified by the later; among other things, his majesty had told him that he was a coward, that he didn't have heart, and more things like that; he wanted to prove the opposite was true, and when his majesty would see that he was capable of pulling such an enterprise off, then (his majesty) would love him, and would be merciful again. He had no other design to escape his majesty's view but that he didn't want to irritate the later by his presence anymore, and no one should keep him from doing this anymore, I should and must help him, I had to promise him this.

As I didn't want to do this, I now seriously pointed out to him in how tricky and difficult circumstances he'd throw himself, how much he would irritate his majesty the king and sadden her majesty the queen, and moreover, that he didn't know yet where to go to. (...) Meanwhile, I begged him to temper his energy and to await the courier he'd mentioned to me, whereupon he revealed to me that this courier was secretary Guy Dickens, who after his return wanted to bring him definite news as to whether he should come to England or not. He wanted to talk to Count Hoym as well about a journey I should make to Leipzig incognito, which happened the next day in the pavillon, when his highness the prince came to me and told me that he'd talked to the count, it would work out, I should just go to him. However, I'd earlier gone to him already and had asked him that if his highness the crown prince would talk a journey I was to make to Leipzig, he should make as many difficulties as he possibly could. Which I asked for a second time when I approached him at the orders of the prince, with the argument that for various reasons I didn't want to make this journey, nor could I, and couldn't explain this to him any further. He promised me to do this and wanted to indicate to the prince that it wasn't so easy as he imagined it would be, and further say that when one imagined such projects one thought them easy, but when they were to be executed there were not only obstacles one hadn't considered but on most occasions, they were never accomplished at all, which was for the best, especially if they were of a kind to cause more damage and distress than use.

I told the Prince that I'd found much more difficulties with Count Hoym than I had expected to, so it couldn't happen that quickly, and if he could just talk to him himself, he'd find out the truth. Then he gave me the key to his box, I should go to his tent and take his things along with the money which I would find. Instead of doing so, I remained down there at the Pavillon until the exercises were over, and then I made myself known again and said that I couldn't succeed since I had met his servants at the tent and they had stopped me, which I accepted. (...)

He then asked me whether Count Hoym had talked to me about this, and I said yes, he'd indicated to me that his highness had many supervisors. I should ride to him straight away, he said, and ask the Count to reveal who the supervisors were and in which way they were keeping an eye on him. IN order to get away I promised to do this, but instead of going to Count Hoym, I remained in the camp with Colonel Katte - this would be his cousin, who'd later forward the letter to FW - until 8 pm, when I returned to headquarters, with some officers who'd been expecting me there in order to ride to Riesa. Meanwhile, his highness was riding away from his majesty and immediately asked me what answer Count Hoym had given. When I told him that I hadn't met the Count and that his people hadn't known where he was, his highness seemed to be displeased and said that I probably hadn't been there. When I assured him of the contrary, he pretended to believe me, and said nothing further than this, that it was my fault that he didn't get away, that he had had the best opportunity here, but that he didn't know yet whether he wouldn't dare it anyway since it was impossible for him to endure the way he was treated any longer. (...)

guys, I am a bit lost, "auf Werbung gehen" could mean going to woo, or going to recruit, or going to advertise, but I'm going with "recruit because when in doubt, assume a military context in Prussia

In numerous secondary sources, I've seen references to Katte trying and failing to get leave to go recruiting in the western domains, as a ploy to get himself close to the French or Dutch border, so I think you're spot on here.

before I even knew I'd join the trip to Saxony

cahn, this is the "pleasure camp" at Zeithain (also called the camp of Mühlberg), where Augustus the Strong showed that he knew how to throw a party. It lasted the entire month of June 1730, and the purpose was to do a review of the troops to show off the military prowess of Saxony, while simultaneously throwing a really, really big party (think entire opera house built for the purpose) to show off the wealth and high culture of Saxony.

Remember that Saxony, like Prussia, had started out a third-rate power that had only recently become a second-rate one, with Augustus and F1 getting royal titles. Conspicuous consumption played just as big a role in Augustus's plans to get taken seriously by the first-rate powers like France as it had for spendthrift F1 (despised by son FW and grandson Fritz for just this reason). If you're aware that Saxony was one of Prussia's biggest rivals, as well as next-door neighbor, it puts both FW's actions in the War of the Polish Succession as well as Fritz's war crimes into context.

He wanted to talk to Count Hoym

cahn, this is a different Count Hoym than the one you'll see in Blanning as the corrupt minister of Silesia. Wikipedia tells me this was the Saxon ambassador to Versailles, who had recently returned to Saxony. He apparently had many enemies there and in other courts (including Berlin and Vienna), and was imprisoned three times, before finally committing suicide in prison in 1736. Wikipedia tells me one of the charges, which it believes is trumped-up, was impregnating his niece--which goes some way toward answering my question as to how scandalous Voltaire and (the non-impregnated) Madame Denis would have been to contemporaries!

about a journey I should make to Leipzig incognito

Geography is important here: Leipzig is in Saxony, so outside FW's domains and in the domains of the somewhat-friendlier-to-Fritz Elector-King Augustus, and located due west of the pleasure camp, so on the way to France.

Chronology is also important:

June 1730: month-long extravagant military-review-cum-pleasure-camp in Saxony, where FW gives Fritz his most public humiliation. Katte recounts in the species facti how Fritz was already making plans to escape via Leipzig.
July 12, 1730: Hotham gives up on the double marriage project and goes back to England.
August 5, 1730: Fritz snaps and makes his escape attempt near the French border (but not near enough), while he and FW are on a royal tour in the west.
August 15, 1731: FW tells Fritz he abused him especially badly in the camp at Saxony to get him to love him! As recounted in the Grumbkow-Seckendorff submission protocol recently given in full by

selenak.

I remained in the camp with Colonel Katte - this would be his cousin, who'd later forward the letter to FW

Would it? Everyone gives letter-forwarder's rank as Rittmeister (captain), not Oberst (colonel), in the secondary biographies, and Wikipedia agrees that he wasn't an Oberst until 1743, or even an Oberstleutnant (which is sometimes called Oberst for short by contemporaries) until 1739.

But I can't find any of the other cousins being that highly ranked in 1730; they're all much too young. And Hans Heinrich got promoted from Oberst to Generalmajor in 1718, so it can't be him. I'm not sure who this is. One more distant cousin, David Levin von Katte, will join the Danish service as a major in 1739, then become a colonel, but that's too late. Okay, his older brother, Christoph Friedrich, is also in the Danish service and makes it as far as Obristleutnant, but my source doesn't say when he gets that rank. He may be old enough, born in 1678.

Oh, wait. There's a Saxon-Polish Obrist Hans Christoph von Katte, who's doing something (without using Google Translate, my guess is completing the building of some baroque manor?) in 1727. I wish I could be certain they're using his rank of 1727 and not his final rank, because a Saxon colonel would definitely be on site at the pleasure camp.

Ooh, I think it's him. Kloosterhuis has a mention of him, also gives him the title Obrist, and he's the guy who later recounts the anecdote that at the pleasure camp, Fritz and Katte were talking about the mistress of the Saxon officer who was murdered for his sake, and that's when Fritz and Katte have the "Se non fu vero, fu bene trovato" exchange where Katte says, "Of course, death is the fruit of loyalty."

Okay, if he was both on site and hanging out with Fritz and Katte during the camp, and both my sources give him as an Obrist, I'm going with: it was Hans Christoph von Katte, the Saxon colonel, not Johann Friedrich von Katte, the Prussian captain, that Katte was staying with that evening.

Now the obvious question: how does this guy fit into the Katte family tree? And sadly, I haven't yet found that out. There are apparently 5 Hans Christophs in Martin Katte's family tree, of which he only carries over 3 that I can see in his memoirs.

Hmm. There's one genealogy site that gives me a Hans Christoph von Katte who dies in Berlin in 1766. He is a...5th cousin once removed of Hans Hermann. But I have no way of knowing if it's the same guy.

Okay, I've done what I can! Moving on.

Katte was threatened by torture if he didn't confess all, and of course he knew the punishment for desertion under FW if this was what it was judged to be and wanted to live, so with that caveat, here's what he said happened:

Yeah, he protests his innocence about as much as Trenck. :P When I was tracking this down, some 19th or 20th historian said it seemed basically accurate, except for overstating the extent to which Katte wanted NO PART in all this, no sir, no part at all.

Poor Katte. :(

Edited 2020-03-20 03:40 (UTC)

Re: Katte - Species Facti 1

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Re: Katte - Species Facti 1

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Re: Katte - Species Facti 1

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Re: Katte - Species Facti 1

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Re: Fritzian library

selenak - 2020-03-19 11:23 (UTC) - Expand

One thing I knew about the memoirs which is still true is that they, even at their fullest, do not reach the time of the coup against Peter and Catherine's ascension to the throne. (Or if they ever did, that part didn't survive.) She never finished them. She wrote them in several stages, and this was a headache for any editor because she kept rewriting some scenes, such as her first meeting with (P)Russian Pete, for which there are three versions, one from the 1750s, one from the 1770s, and one from the late 1780s. The editor tells us here, and with other scenes, he had to make a choice as to what to use. Anyway, since the memoirs only cover her youth and Grand Duchess days, the "meeting the Hohenzollern" scenes are limited, I guess. I've now reached the point where Sophie reaches Russia, i.e. where the bowlderised memoirs start, and here are the Hohenzollern-related scenes so far:

First, the one I already excerpted for Mildred.

On the way from Stettin to Braunschweig or on the way back my mother usually made a stop at Berlin or Zerbst, depending on where my father was at the time. I remember how I was presented at age 8 for the first time to the late Queen Sophia Dorothea, the mother of King Frederick the Great; the King her husband was still alive then. Her four children, eleven years old Prince Heinrich, seven years old Prince Ferdinand, Princess Ulrike, the later Queen of Sweden, and Princess Amalie, both of a marriagable age, were with her. The King was absent. On that occasion, my friendship with Prince Heinrich of Prussia began during playing with each other; at least I could not name an earlier occasion. We have agreed repeatedly that the origin of our friendship goes back to that first meeting.

Young Sophie: not a fan of FW:

But before I describe this journey, I shall mention that in this year, King Friedrich Wilhelm died. I think no people has ever greeted the news of a death with more joy than this one. Passers-by on the street embraced and congratulated each other to the death of the King, whom they gave various nicknames; in short, young and old despised and hated him. He was strict, rude, miserly and passionate; still, he certainly possessed great attributes as a King, but he had nothing in him that could be loved, neither in his personal nor in his public life.
His son, crown prince Friedrich, who succeeded him and to whom even his contemporaries gave the name Frederick the Gerat was beloved and respected, and there was much joy about his ascension.

Young Sophie: definitely a fan of the Countess Bentinck! (Whom she meets at that lady's mothers, who is also related to Sophie's Mom.)

Frau von Bentinck approached us on horseback. I had never seen a woman ride before and was delighted. She rode like a master of the horses. Once we'd arrived in Varel, I made friends with her; which displeased my mother and even more my father. We did start oddly. Frau von Bentick had hardly changed her clothes when she went upstairs. I was with her while she changed, and didn't leave her. She didn't play coy, showed herself for a moment in her mother's room, where my mother was as well, and we immediately started to dance a Steiermärker together. This made everyone look at us, and I got scolded for my behaviour. The next day, I still went and used an excuse to visit the Countess, for I found her delightful. How else she was supposed to appear to me? I was fourteen, she rode, she danced when she felt like it, she sang, joked, jumped around like a child, though she had to be around thirty years at this point. (Edtitor: She was 28.) She already lived separated from her husband. (...) In one of of the room, there was a portrait of Count Bentinck, who had to have been a very beautiful man. The Countess saw it and said: "If I hadn't been married to him, I'd have been madly in love with him!"

Heinrich & Sophie = bff is still a thing:

I think Prince August Wilhelm of Prussia got married in 1741 with Princess Louise of Braunschweig-Bevern. I was a guest at that wedding, where Duke Karl Eugen of Württemberg and his two brothers were present as well. The Duke was one year older than I was, his brothers were still little boys. Prince Heinrich of Prussia made me feel very distinguished back then, since we danced at every ball either a menuet or a contradanse together.

Footnote from editor with excerpts of Catherine's later correspondance with her Hamburg friend Frau von Bielcke (another childhood friend), who wrote to Catherine on October 7th, 1766 (date is interesting, since this is BEFORE Heinrich made his first trip to Russia):

I ask your majesty's permission to mention that about two years ago, I had the honor to encounter Prince Heinrich (of Prussia). He was kind enough to visit me and talk with me for about two hours. He spoke of your majesty with so much vivid admiration to me, with such great interest, that I couldn't help but think that if he had the happiness of being united with the charming Princess Sophie, he might not have made himself guilty of the terrible things which today darken his fame; but Pope says that all, that happens, is good!

To which Catherine replied on November 5th, 1766: The conversation you had with Prince Heinrich which you mentioned and the interest he showed in his old friend do delight me. It is not the first time I've heard about it, but like Pope, I agree that all happening as it did is well; so I don't regret more didn't come of our contredanses.

(Frau von Bielcke, if you you mean Heinrich wouldn't have been gay when married with Catherine, you don't know Heinrich. Methinks Catherine would agree. Also, just think of what would have happened if they'd fallen for the same guy!)

Incidentally, Catherine is slightly wrong about the date here; AW married Louise on January 6th 1742, right in the middle of Berlin's Carneval season.

Young Sophie, still 14, next gets romanced by Uncle Georg Ludwig, because Uncle/Niece is a thing in this century, it seems. Old Catherine thinks her mother knew (it was her brother) and didn't say anything. Old Catherine is rather jaundiced about her mother in general, says she prefered Sophie's brothers and had not much interest at all in Sophie until the possibility of marrying the Czarina's heir became a thing. Like Wilhelmine with Sonsine and MT with the Countess Fuchs, Catherine had a governess she loved very much, though, named Babet. Anyway, Uncle Georg Ludwig uses his uncle privileges for caressing and love declarations, says one day they'll make it official, and can't stand bff Heinrich's very name because he's not sure that might not be competition. He may or may not have proposed in the end, given they were Protestants and just needed Fritz' permission, but then the future Peter III match became a distinct possibility, provided they'd come to Russia for inspection.

And here's the passage about meeting Fritz, en route to Russia.

In Berlin, my mother didn't think it suitable for me to present myself at court or otherwise in public; but it happened otherwise. THe King of Prussia, through whose hands all incoming letters from Russia for my mother went first, knew exactly why my parents were in Berlin. (...) When the King of Prusisa who knew exactly where the journey was headed learned that I had arrived in Berlin, he wanted to see me in any case. My mother claimed I was sick. Two days later he invited her to dinner at the Queen's, his wife's, and asked her personally to bring me with her. My mother promised him, but on the day in question she went alone anyway. When the King saw her, he asked her about my condition. She replied that I was sick. Whereupon he replied that he knew this wasn't true. She then said I wasn't wearing any gala dress right now, to which he returned he would wait to see me at dinner the next day. At last, my mother said I didn't have any suitable court wardrobe. He ordered that one of his sisters should send me a dress. Finally my mother realised that no excuse would be accepted and sent a message to me that I was to get dressed and come to the palace. Thus I had to throw myself into gala robes an get ready, and was finished approximately at 3 pm. Finally I arrived at the palace. The King was waiting for me in the antechambre of the Queen. He drew me into a conversation and escorted me to the rooms of the Queen.

I was shy and embarassed. At last, we sat down at the table from which we were to rise again only very late. When we did get up, Prince Ferdinand of Braunschweig, the Queen's brother, whom I knew very well and had known for a long time and who back then was always around the King of Prussia approached me. He told me: "Tonight you'll be my lady at the King's table during the Redoute in the Opera House." (The Redoute was a big public masque ball.) I replied to him that it would be my pleasure. Back at our residence, I told my mother about the Prince of Braunschweig's invitation, and she said: "That is strange, for I've been invited to the Queen's table."

One of the tables had been given to my father, wo was to receive people there, which meant I sat alone at the King's table. My mother first drove to the Princess of Prussia, and then together with her to the Redoute. I spent the entire evening in conversation with the older Countess Henkel, who was lady-in-waiting to the Princess of Prussia, and when I had told her that I would have to sit at the King's table for the souper, she guided me to the room where dinner would be served. No sooner had I entered but that the Prince of Braunschweig approached me and took my hand. He pulled me to the end of the table, and because the other couples were coming, too, he pushed ahead so smoothly that he ended up sitting me right next to the King. When I saw the later was my neighbor, I wanted to withdraw, but he told me to stay, and through the entire evening he kept talking to me and said a lot of pleasantries. I tried to handle the conversation as good as I could; but I did direct some accusations at the Prince of Braunschweig for sitting me right next to the King. He turned it into a jest. At last, the dinner was finished, and we left Berlin supposedly for Stettin. Near Stettin my father said goodbye to me with much tenderness. It was the last time I was ever to see him, and I cried bitterly.

he certainly possessed great attributes as a King, but he had nothing in him that could be loved, neither in his personal nor in his public life.

Sophie, I cannot say I disagree with a word of this.

The Countess saw it and said: "If I hadn't been married to him, I'd have been madly in love with him!"

ahahaha, okay, I'm a fan too :)

Prince Heinrich of Prussia made me feel very distinguished back then, since we danced at every ball either a menuet or a contradanse together.

sooooo cuuuuute now I want the story where Heinrich is her gay BFF

It is not the first time I've heard about it, but like Pope, I agree that all happening as it did is well; so I don't regret more didn't come of our contredanses.

Catherine: That is to say, Frau von Bielcke, have you not noticed that my old friend Heinrich is GAY GAY GAY? I'd prefer to be married to someone het, thanks! ~~also someone I don't mind organizing a coup to get rid of~~

And I remain amazed that Fritz can be so charming :) Fritz, it's not that hard!

Re: Anhalt Sophie: Portrait of the Czarina as a young girl

selenak - 2020-03-17 07:31 (UTC) - Expand

Catherine and Heinrich BFF <3

cahn - 2020-03-19 04:41 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Catherine and Heinrich BFF <3

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Re: Catherine and Heinrich BFF <3

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Re: Catherine and Heinrich BFF <3

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Re: Anhalt Sophie: Portrait of the Czarina as a young girl

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FW: Love of the Loveless

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Re: FW: Love of the Loveless

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Re: Anhalt Sophie: Portrait of the Czarina as a young girl

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Re: Anhalt Sophie: Portrait of the Czarina as a young girl

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Re: Anhalt Sophie: Portrait of the Czarina as a young girl

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Re: Anhalt Sophie: Portrait of the Czarina as a young girl

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Re: Anhalt Sophie: Portrait of the Czarina as a young girl

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Re: Anhalt Sophie: Portrait of the Czarina as a young girl

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Since this is a time for cheering up, here's another hilarious story from someone's memoirs - Poniatowski's, about how his affair with Catherine was finally busted by Peter. Which turned out to be a French farce instead of a Russian drama. For:

Since everything previously had gone well, and I had gotten used to the disguises and all the details that enabled these excursions, any danger seemed passed to me, and on July 6th I dared an excursion without having made arrangements with the Grand Duchess first, as we'd always had done it previously. I rented, as usual, a small covered carriage, which was driven by a Russian Iwokotchik, who didn't know me; on the backside of the carriage, the same disguised footman who'd come with me previously was there as well. In this night - which wasn't a night in Russia - we unfortunately encountered in the forest of Oranienbaum the Grand Duke with his entire entourage, all half drunk. The Iwokotchik was asked whom he was driving. He replied that he didn't know. My footman answered that I was a tailor. They let us pass, though Elisaveta Woronzowa, a lady-in-waiting to the Grand Duchess and the mistress of the Grand Duke, voiced suspicions about the supposed tailor which put the Grand Duke into the worst mood.

After I had spent a few hours with the Grand Duchess and left the secluded pavillon in which she then lived under the pretense of taking the baths, I was attacked after a few steps by three riders with their swords unsheathed, who took me by the collor and brought me to the Grand Duke; when he recognized me, he just ordered his companions to follow him. We went a path leading to the sea. I thought my ending was near; but on the shore, we turned right and went to another pavillon, where the Grand Duke asked me with unmistakable words whether I had relations with his wife.
I denied it.

He: "Tell the truth, for if you tell the truth, everything can still be arranged, but if you deny it, you'll suffer."

I: "I can't admit having done something which I haven't done."

Now he went to the nearby room where he seemed to be in conversation with the people from his entourage; shortly afterwards, he returned and said:

He: "Well, since you won't talk, you'll have to remain here until further notice."
And he left me. AT the door there was a guard, with me in the room there remained only General Brockdorf. (Brockdorf: childhood friend of Peter, Fritz and Prussia fan, too, mutual loathing between him and Poniatowski as well as between him and Catherine.) We remained in deepest silence for two hours, after which Count Alexander Schuvalov entered, the cousin of the (Empress') favourite. He was the Great Inquisitor, the head of the terrible department known in Russia as "the Secret Chancellory". As if nature wanted to widen the horror which the naming of his office alone produced, it had equipped him with nervous twitches which distorted his already ugly face whenever he was occupied with something.

HIs appearance let me be certain that the Czarina knew everything. He muttered a few words with an embarrassed face which seemed to signify he wanted an explanation from me about all that had happened.

Instead of indulging him with details, I said: "I think you'll understand that the honor of your court demand that this matter gets ended with the least possible attention, and that you set me free immediately."

He, still stammering, since he stuttered, too: "You're right, I'll get it sorted."
He left, and in less than an hour was back in order to tell me that my carriage was ready, and that I could return to Peterhof.

It was a miserable carriage, made entirely of glass, like a lantern. in this supposed incognito i had to make my way at six in the morning, in bright daylight with two horses slowly across the deep sand, and this trip seemed to last a life time to me.

At some distance to Peterhof, I ordered the carriage to stop; I sent the carriage back, and went on foot for the rest of the way, in my big collar and my grey cap which I had pulled deep down my ears. One could have taken me for a robber, but at least I drew less attention from the curious than I would have done in that carriage.

When I had arrived at the wooden building where I was staying along with some other gentlemen belonging to the entourage of Prince Karl (of Saxony) in the ground floor rooms, the windows of which had all been opened, I didn't want to enter through the doors in order to avoid meeting anyone. God knows, I thought I was being smart by entering my room through the window; but I mistook the window and with one movement jumped right into my neighbour's room, General Roniker, who just then was getting shaved. He believed that he was facing a phantom. For some moments we were facing each other silently, and then we both burst into laughter. I said:

"Don't ask me where I'm coming from, and not why I jumped through that window, but as my loyal countryman you have to give me your word of honor not to mention anything to anyone."

He did give me his word, and I went to bed, but I couldn't sleep.

Two days I spent in the most horrible uncertainty. I saw on everyone's face that my adventure had become public, but no one mentioned it to me. At last, the Grand Duchess found a way to slip a billet to me, and I saw that she'd undertaken steps to win over the Grand Duke's mistress. Two days later, the Grand Duke came with his wife and his entire court to Peterhof, in order to celebrate St. Peter's Day, a holiday for the court in honor of the founder of this place.

That same evening, there was a court ball; I danced with Elizaveta Woronzova, a menuet, and told her on that occasion: "You could make a few people very happy." She replied: "It is as good as done. Just come an our after midnight with Lev Alexandrovich to the Pavillon Montplaisir where their imperial highnesses are lodging, in the lower gardens."

I pressed her hand; I talked to Lev Alexandrovitch Narishkin. He said: "Just go, you'll meet the Grand Duke there."

I mulled on this for a moment, then I said to Branicki: "Do you want to risk it to stroll with me tonight through the lower gardens? God knows where that stroll will lead us to, bu tit m ight take a good enging." He agreed without hesitation, and we go at the arranged hour to the arranged place. About twenty steps from the salon, I met Elisaveta Woronzova, who told me: "You need to wait somewhat, the Grand Duke is still smoking pipes with some people, and he first wants to get rid of them before talking to you." She left a few times to deduce the opportune moment. At last she said: "You may enter." And the Grand Duke approaches me with a joyful look and says: "You're a big fool for not confiding in me in time! If you'd done so we wouldn't have had this scandal!"

I agreed to everything, as you may well believe, and at once started to praise the deep wisdom in the military arrangments of his imperial highness which I couldn't possibly escape from. This flattered him extraordinarily, and put him into an excellent mood, so he said after fifteen minutes of this: "Since we're such good friends now, there's still someone missing."

Consequently, he went into his wife's room, pulled her out of her bed, left her only time to put on some stockings and a dressing gown - but she wasn't allowed to put on shoes or even an underskirt -, leads her into the room in this outfit and tells her while pointing at me:

"Well, here she is. I hope one will be content with me."

She used the opportunity and replied at once: "It only needs a few lines from your hand to the Vice Chancellor Woronzov to ask him that he should request the immediate return of our friend to our court from Warsaw."

The Grand Duke demanded a table in order to write. The only thing that could be found was a tablet which was put on his knees, and he writes an urgent billet to Woronzov in this matter; to me, he handed another paper, signed by his mistress as well, which I still possess in the original:

"You can be assured that I will do everything so that you may return. I will talk to everyone about this and will prove to you I will not forget you. I ask you not to forget me and to believe that I shall remain your friend and that I will do that is in my power to serve you. I remain your very affectionate servant Elisaveta Woronzova. "

Afterwards, the six of us chatted, joked around with a little fountain which was in the salon, as if we hadn't the slightest worries, and only left each other at four in the morning.

As crazy as all of this may sound - I swear it is nothing but the truth. This was the beginning of my intimacy with Branicki.

Exit Poniatowski to Poland a short time later.

cahn - 2020-03-29 05:16 (UTC) - Expand

selenak - 2020-03-27 06:45 (UTC) - Expand

...

cahn - 2020-03-31 05:13 (UTC) - Expand

Okay, I've done my level best with the German of our Katte execution texts, and for the rest I need help. The 1731 pamphlet was hard!

1) Near the end of the "[s]eine Augen star..." "Starck?" For "stark"? Or what? If so, I was going with "he cast his gaze intensely on the lieutenant," but help me out here.

2) Bottom of the first page: "Stimme-... zu" I think I can make out "so" at the end of that word, but whatever comes before that is a truncated-in-the-margin blur to my eyes.

3) Next line: "verletzte." I want it to mean "replied," but all I can find is "injured."

From the Lepel report:

4) You were kind enough to anticipate most of my translation difficulties in your write-up, but I'm still wondering about the meaning of "Revers" in "so hätte er gern einen Revers geben wollen." You translated it "assurance," which makes far more sense than any of the translations I'm finding, which are "reverse" and "lapel" (as in underside or reverse of the bottom of a coat). What is with the semantics there?

5) Finally,

Er hat...gefraget...Katte sagen lassen, er möchte es ihm doch vergeben.

Is that "He asked for Katte to be told that he [Fritz] wished him [Katte] to forgive him," or "He asked for Katte to say that he [Katte] wished to forgive him [Fritz]"? I kind of want it to be the second one, because "Katte" looks like a nominative, but you tell me.

Thanks!

All right! Pending those final corrections, I have updated several existing posts under the "katte execution" tag and added several more. :D The tag now has 24 posts, oh my goodness.

I still need to do one final post outlining our latest findings, but I will do that some other time, as I'm tired and have a week's worth of comments I'm looking forward to catching up on.

Oh, and because it's impossible to scan a book cleanly unless you unbind it, I'm working on a cleanup of the Hoffbauer file to adjust for things like page tilt and fingernails, to make it easier to read. Some people have German skills, others technology skills. ;)

Re: German help

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Re: German help

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Re: Fredersdorf: Prime Suspect? (or: By Jove, I've found it!)

mildred_of_midgard - 2020-03-25 05:44 (UTC) - Expand

Volz also has a lot of Voltaire quotes, from the early "he's the best, adores me, and btw, if the King and Madame de Pompadour would have treated me like that, I'd still be in Versailles!" to the late "I'm outta here, Frederick-Alcina!" . It is, of course, noticable that he selected more of the gushings than of the diatribes (Volz, this is the wrong emphasis; one reads Voltaire for the snark, not for the gushings), and several of these quotes were familiar, but still: grreat fun, and as ever, they ship themselves.

Berlin, September 23rd, 1750 (to Madame de Fontaine): I wish I could sacrifice the King of Prussia for your benefit, but I can't. He's a King, but it's a sixteen-years-long passion that connects us; he's swept me away. I imagine nature has created me for him. Our taste is so eerily alike that I forgot he's master over half of Germany. And that the other half trembles in front of him, that he's won five battles and is the greatest general of Europe, that he's surrounded by six foot tall professional killers. All of this should have caused me to run a thousand miles in the other direction, but the philosopher in him has reconciled me with the monarch, and I have only found him to be a great man who is good and sociable.

Voltaire the beta reader, as described in a letter to Madame Denis:

I'm currently correcting the second edition the King wants to publish of the "History of the House of Brandenburg". An author like himself doesn't have to go into exile in order to tell the truth. He's using that privilege aplenty. Just imagine, in order to come across as impartial, he's bashing his grandfather like no one's business. I have softened the blows as much as I could. I do love this grandfather a bit: for he loved splendour, and has left behind beautiful monuments. With some effort, I've toned down the accusations the grandson made at the grandfather regarding the later's vanity that made him put a royal crown on his head. Said vanity has produced solid advantages for the descendants, after all, and a royal title is nothing to sneeze at. Finally I said to him: "It's your grandfather, not mine. Do whatever you want." Afterwards I only complained about expressions. That's all very entertaining and fills out my day.

Do we detect some exasparation in the idyll already?

Potsdam, November 6th 1750 (still to Madame Denis): So people in Paris know that we've produced "La Rome Sauvée" in Potsdam, that Prince Henri is a good actor without any accent and very charming, and that there's a lot of entertainment here? That's all true, but -. The soupers of the King are delicious. One talks with reason, esprit and knowledge; freedom rules; he's the soul of everything; there's no bad mood, no clouds, well, at least no thunder and lightning. My life is free and fully occupied, but - but. Operas, comedies, carousels. Soupers in Sanssouci. Military manouvres. Concerts. Studies. Reading; - but - but -. The town of Berlin is large, with wider streets than Paris. Palaces, theatres, gracious Queens, charming princesses, beautiful, well dressed ladies-in-waiting. Our envoy's house is always full of guests, sometimes too many, - but - but - the cold season approaches.

Not just the cold season. The percentages of male versus female people around Fritz is starting to annoy Voltaire:

We're three or four foreigners here and live like monks in a monastery. Hopefully our high born abbot is just laughing at us! Still, there's a solid quantum jealousy here. Where does envy creep towards when it isn't here? Ah, I swear to you, there's nothing to be envious about. One would only have to live in peace, but Kings are like female coquettes; their very glances inspire jealousy. And Friedrich is very much of a coquette. Then again, there are a hundred social circles in Paris which are even more infected with that vice. The most cruel "but" I can see is that this country isn't for you. As far as I can see, ten months of the year are spent in Potsdam. This isn't a court, but a quiet place from which the ladies have been banished, even if we're not in a monastery. Thinking this through: expect me in Paris (...)!

Not so fast, Voltaire. You still have two and a half years in Prussia to go, and besides, has the charm of the main attraction already faded?

Nature has created Frederick the Great for me. It would have to be the work of the devil if my final years won't be happy ones, consorting with a prince who shares my thoughts in everything, and who loves me as much as a King is able to love.

Then the "squeezes like an orange"/"dirty laundry" quote exchange happens. Also Voltaire hears about the Palladion and is less than impressed, presumably wondering whether he'll guest star in the next poem.

Guess what, his majesty has equipped his secretary Darget with several qualities in his jests which the later was severely insulted by. He gave him a vigorous role in his poem "The Palladion". And this poetry has been printed, though just with a few copies. What shall one say? If it's true, one has to console oneself by assuming the great ones love the little people they jest about. But what to do if they don't love? Why, to ridicule them right back and to leave them in the same spirit. It will take some time to make the means I'd had transfered here solvent. This time I'll dedicate to patience and work. The rest of my life will be dedicated to you.

Maupertuis vs König becomes Maupertuis vs Voltaire becomes Fritz vs Voltaire.

Since I don't have a hundred and fifty thousand villains in my service, I won't conduct war. I'm just contemplating a proper desertion, to look after my health, to see you again and to forget this three-years-long dream.
I can see now, one has... squeezed the orange dry; now let's save the peel, shall we? I shall put together a dictionary for Kings as my entertainment. "My friend" means "my slave". "My dear friend" means "I'm more than indifferent to you". "I shall make you happy" means: "I'll tolerate you for as long as I need you." "Dine with me today" means: "I'll have a go at you this evening." This dictionary may expand for quite a while; it's worth an article in the Encyclopedia. (The famous "Encyclopedia by Diderot and D'Alembert".) Seriously, all that I've experienced here makes my heart burst.

There, there, Voltaire. As Mildred put it, celebrity break-ups are hard.

Edited 2020-03-22 17:27 (UTC)

This is amazing. I'm here for the gushing and the snark! The gushing context makes the snark so much better.

"It's your grandfather, not mine."

Are you quite sure about that? Your father, maybe. :P Uncle Voltaire, Wilhelmine?

Nature has created Frederick the Great for me.

Small correction: she has created Frederick *like* you. Frederick, meanwhile, is bad at recognizing his own reflection in a mirror, be it named Heinrich (lovely fic!) or Voltaire.

Also Voltaire hears about the Palladion and is less than impressed, presumably wondering whether he'll guest star in the next poem.

Algarotti: Join the club. I'm plotting my own desertion so I can get away while it's *just* an orgasm poem.

Since I don't have a hundred and fifty thousand villains in my service, I won't conduct war.

Fritz, quite accurately: If you did, you would TOTALLY be making war on all your many enemies. Don't get so high-and-mighty about my invasions.

(I agree with Fritz completely. The mirror works both ways.)

This dictionary may expand for quite a while; it's worth an article in the Encyclopedia.

This was awesome. I had seen a short excerpt of this quote but not the full thing. Thank you for this!

Re: From our Parisian Correspondant in Sanssouci: Extra, extra!

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The second and third "Im Spiegel seiner Zeitgenossen" volumes by Volz often overlap with Jessen, who clearly has used them as a key source, though Volz is unsurprisingly even more Prussia-centric (with the very occasional MT quote). There are a lot of "Yay Fritz! Der Einzige!" fannish letters from all sides in volume 2, often by the same people (read: German writers) who in volume 3, subcategory "literature" go "...but why doesn't he love us back?" I also find it, shall we say, interesting that Volz manages to quote quite a lot of Lehndorff, and not just the passages dealing with Fritz directly but the pen portraits of other people, like the Fredersdorff one, the Eichel one, the James Keith one, even several entries on Amalie... but not a single entry about Heinrich. Not one. (He does say in his footnote as to who Lehndorff was the first time he quotes from the diaries that "he was almost adoringly attached to Prince August Wilhelm and Prince Heinrich". Volz, my man, while it's true Lehndorff adored AW, too, there is a significant difference in tone in his entries about either Prince. I know your volumes are Fritz focused, but if you take the time to round the portrait by including pen portraits of other significant figures in his life by Lehndorff, it stumps me that you go for the Amalie quotes over any Heinrich at all. Can it be a case of "no straight explanation"?)

Anyway, what Volz does include are letters from AW and Ferdinand about the AW catastrophe to Mina, letters from Ulrike to AW on the same subject, and letters from Wilhelmine to AW which I'd seen partially quoted in the biographies. They're still not completely reprinted here, but far longer than in either the Oster Wilhelmine biography or the Ziebura AW biography, and thus I found out that AW offering to rejoin the army as a simple volunteer (to counteract the idea that he was deserting in the hour of need - bear in mind he couldn't have rejoined as an officer, due to Fritz being "I'll never entrust you with another command in my life!") was actually Wilhelmine's idea, among other things. (Reminder: Fritz said this was nuts and didn't permit it.)

So, key quotes with new to us stuff:

Ferdinand to Mina, July 31st 1757: The situation of my brother August Wilhelm causes unspeakable sadness to me. You know how much I love him, and you will easily deduce how much I am affected by the misfortune that still ies ahead for him. I know that he got blamed entirely for the disaster at Lausitz. I know one will go as far as destroy his reputation. If the public one day learns which kind of orders he's received, it would understand that he simply was following them, and that he's not to blame. My heart is bleeding when I think of it, and I sense that this affair will have the most evil consequences. I've just learned that my brother August Wilhelm has arrived in Dresden. You'll understand what this means. I don't dare to say anything further.

AW to Mina, August 1st 1757: You will be surprised, dear sister-in-law, to find me here. (...) As things stand now, one wants to blame me for everything. One writes honor-destroying letters to me, glowers at me at the first encounter and gives me and all the generals under my command the compliment that by law, we'd all have deserved to lose our head. Following this, I've left the army, went to Bautzen and wrote. I got a despicable letter in reply. (...) My one consolation is that all the generals have been fair to me; they had tears in their eyes when I left and agreed with my behavior. My brother Heinrich has done something which I won't be able to thank him enough for for as long as I shall live. He has refused the command of the army I had left; for he did not want to build his glory on my downfall (AW's command after Heinrich's refusal went to Ferd(inand) the brother of EC. I will never forget this.

AW to Mina, 13th August 1757: Our great man is so enthralled with himself, doesn't ask anyone for advice, acts hastily in his rashness, and in his temper he doesn't believe true reports. If luck turns against him, he pulls out of the game and blames the innocent. That's why he wants the public to blame Moritz for the loss of the battle (of Kolin) and me for the misfortune of Zittau. Anyone who can leave this galley is in luck. The danger of losing life and health, arms and legs, that's nothing; any soldier is threatened by this in any war. But losing honor and reputation, that's too much, and in no army in the world a commander is threatened by this without being guilty. Anyone who is guilty should be punished by the laws of war. Forgive me rambling, but anyone whose heart is full will spill over in words.

Wilhelmine to AW, 24th August 1757: Your information makes me desperate. But three things may comfort you. Firstly, your experience is still completely unknown. Secondly, the reports to Berlin which the King has written himself name you as the liberator of the garnison of Zittau. And finally, you haven't done anything without asking for advice first. That you are mortified by what happened is only natural. But given the misery all of you are in, you must forget all of this and do everything for a reconciliation. You have no idea what an evil effect the enstrangement between the two of will have. I could tell you things in this regard which would greatly surprise you. But most of all, don't confide into many people, dear brother. They do you ill service, some out of foolishness, some out of recklessness, some out of selfishness. I speak with comlete frankness and with the sincerity I owe to you, and which you have demanded from me.

Ulrike to AW, September 13th 1757: Your letter from August 13th has touched me deeply. I'm deeply affected by anything concerning you, and sincerely share your grief. May heaven grant me the ability to lighten it somehow! Tell me frankly whether I can be of service to you. I can't hide from you that there is much talk about this affair, but you don't get blamed. This would be a natural cause to write to the King about what kind of rumors are making the rounds regarding this quarrel. One would have to declare them as evidently false, and make some pretty strong remarks, in order to pave the way to reconciliation. But I won't do anyting without your wish so I don't make things even worse. God give you patience and the ability not to give into your distress! You mean too much for me not to do all I can for you.

Wihlelmine to AW, September 29th 1757: Despite being half dead, dear brother, I get up to write you. I hope you've received the letter I'd previously written. Oh, dear brother, how miserable we all are! (..) But you don't know how your indifference comes across in a time where we all need to help and comfort each other, instead of remaining hurt. Dear God, please show in this time of misfortune your kindness of heart with which you've always won the devotion of anyone who knows you. Please, consider, it is your brother, your blood and more against whom you feel such bitterness. Forget what has happened! I am convinced that he will do the same. Oh, if you'd know how much honor you would win with such a high minded behavior, how much it would touch him in these difficult times! Forgive me for talking to you in this way. I'd give my life to see you all reconciled again. And I probably will have only a short span left to live. I shall use this little time to act and figure out anything that could help all of you. My fate will be that of my family, if death won't cut my thread of life off sooner. Be convinced that I do love you tenderly and sincerely, that I do you the justice you deserve, and that I would do the impossible to make you happy. Please remain alive, restore your health, which does worry me alot, and forgive my eagerness and the loyalty in which I may talk too frankly.

Wilhelmine to AW, November 19th 1757: Only yesterday, your letter has arrived, which has made me infinitely happy, for I take it as a proof for your recovery. You do me justice by counting on my friendship. Be convinced no one shares your joys and grievances more sincerely than I. (...) Allow me to talk openly about your current situation, as a true friend and tenderly loving sister. I won't speak about the quarrell with the King. His first bouts of anger were too violent. The letters which you have forwarded to me bear witness to this, and I am convinced that he has repented his behaviour too late. But what I have to tell you now isn't about him. I will only talk about what affects you, personally, as a loving sister. You say you want to give up your regiments and withdraw into private life. The first may work, but regarding the second, I must tell you something which you have to see as the greatest effort my love for you produces, for I say it only with the greatest reluctance. If we were at peace, your decision could not be faulted. But in times of war, when the entire state is overwhelmed with enemies and close to its downfall, your reputation would be endangered if you as the successor to the throne would settle down in Berlin and would only observe the miseries of a country which you should defend. Will not this behavior hurt your fame and enstrange the hearts of your future subjects from you? Your quarrel with the King is well known, but not its cause. The letters which you received are surely hidden by silence. Consider how your plan will come across to the public. I can only repeat, dear brother: the best which you could do for your restoration is to write to the King and ask to join the war as a simple volunteer. If he declines this, no one can blame you. If he allows it, no one can accuse you of having shirked your duty. Your argument cuts me to the heart; and in any quarrel, someone has to make the first step. But as things are now, I don't hope for a reconciliation. I am convinced, though, that he would be happy about such a turn of events, and sooner or later, everything would get into balance again. This is my sincere conviction; you may follow her, if you wish.

Wilhelmine to AW, December 14th 1757:

My valet says he's found you well. I thus hope your current sickness is only political in nature. As he said, he's found you alone with your books. Your letter has touched me deeply. Honestly, I can't reply to you. When I wrote to you, I hadn't known the latest letters which you have received. But what you say about hatred, I can swear to you on my life to be wrong. You are mistaken. I can prove the opposite to you by letters I have received; in them, he shows himself extremely distressed at your indifference.

Wilhelmine to AW, January 5th 1758: I was full of joy to receive your dear letter today. I understand your current situation has to be very embarrassing to you. I don't want to touch this chord anymore, otherwise you might scold me as biased and partial, and regard me as stubborn. Still, I wish you'd find means and ways to make peace. If you could bring yourself to return to the army, I am utterl convinced that you would receive satisfaction sooner or later. But your behavior is believed to be defiance and indifference. As a monarch, he demands the first step from the other party. Please put yourself in his shoes. He regards himself as the injured party.
"Why," you will reply to me, "doesn't he let my conduct be examined by a war tribunal then?" "Should I," he would answer, "expose my brother and successor in this way? Such a procedure wreck terrible havoc. I have contented myself with confronting him with his mistakes, though this I did harshly, but among ourselves, and regarded the public, I have preserved his honor. Why does he cause things which should remain secret to become public through his own subsequent behavior? I shall never give anything when pressured: for I must retain my authority."
This is how the King thinks. He knows you too well to despise you. I repeat: if the affair happened again and he'd act in cold blood, he would surely express himself more thoughtfully. But what has happened has happened; there is no remedy for the past, just, maybe, for the future. I assure you, people talk about your adventure. In vain I swear that you're just ill; one doesn't believe me. Currently, the winter quarters serve as an excuse. But if this is over, I fear you will wrong yourself if you don't find means and ways for a reconciliaton. I speak as a sister and true friend. Your well being, your happiness are as close to my heart as my own. But as much as your situation distresses me, I can look at it more coldbloodedly than you can, and I assure you, I am not the only one feeling this way. If you could hear what people say you'd see many feel similarly. Frankness is an important part of friendship, and I owe you both. I am not lecturing you; I don't reject your point of view, I try to do it justice, and will gladly use any insight of yours you care to tell me. But when grief attacks the mind, one often can't judge freely. I feel your entire distress and suffer with you. Measured ambition is the inspiration of virtue. Yours is laudable; it has to move you to action. Your philosophy must guide you to self discipline. Dear brother, I demand much of you. But I know what you are capable of, because I know your heart.

Ulrike to AW, April 1758: It deeply distresses me that this argument continues. God knows how much I love and esteem you, and how gladly I would sacrifice any of my life's conveniences for you. But I fear the public will not judge your inaction well at a time when glory calls all heroes to action, and when possibly even the King himself wishes that you could forget the past. There is nothing shameful or low about giving in to one's King and lord. Blood and friendship are good advocates with a brother. He is energetic, rash, and the distress he's had heighten his impulsiveness even more. You know, this is our family flaw, but your heart and his are worth each other's. Often the heart proves to be a lie what we might have said in our first rashness. God knows only tender friendship lets me talk like this, and that I am acting on my own here! I'd give my life for your happiness and would find no comfort if you were to take what I have to say ill.

AW to Mina, Oranienburg, May 1758 (he's now dying, with just a few more weeks to live): My sister Ulrike who doesn't know my cause very well, or the character of the one whom I am dealing with, has sent me a long letter. She says that my reputation will suffer through my inaction and that I should forget the impulsivities of a brother who loves me. I know she means well. (...) But if I am inactive, it is not through my fault; gods be my witness. I can't possible humiliate myself so much that I forget what I owe to myself. This isn't an argument between brothers, nor is it a family matter. I have no claims on the King, but I don't wish anything more than never to see him again. (...) As long as he lives, I have no honor, no distinction and no opportunity to restore my reputation. Forgive my ramblings about my affairs.

Edited 2020-03-24 07:59 (UTC)

And on a lighter note, there's a play about Èmilie which seems to get performed a lot in the US, so when and if things go back to normal again, one of you might get to check it out: Émilie: La Marquise du Chatelet defends her life tonight

Great excerpt with Émilie doing science and sparking with Voltaire

A trailer for a different production

another trailer yet another production

Eeeeee this looks great, thank you for the trailers!

(That first one... I saw that very company do Much Ado About Nothing a rather long time ago now, when I was in grad school, and it was quite good.)

Richter (our 1926!Editor of Fredersdorf correspondence) gives an unsourced account of Biche's return from captivity after Soor. Fritz was sitting and writing at his desk. Count Rothenburg (the Prussian one who was a close friend of Fritz) snuck in behind him and released her in the room. She jumped up on the desk and put her paws on his neck. He was so happy that tears came to his eyes.

Rödenbeck also tells us that Fritz kept Biche's descendants around him until he died. Since I recall from the exchange of dog letters with Wilhelmine that Biche had littered once, this checks out!

I was able to find these and other anecdotes about his dogs in a work by a historian named Rödenbeck, who in the 1830s wrote a 2-volume biography and a 3-volume "diary and calendar history" of Fritz, i.e. a day-by-day account of what Fritz was (supposedly) up to on any given day. German wiki tells me that Rödenbeck was a colleague of Preuss.

The Biche anecdote is in volume one of the Tagebuch, page 126. There, Rödenbeck says that a historian named Büsching denies the "Biche jumping on desk" anecdote as well as a related anecdote (that Fritz was hiding under a bridge while Austrian pandurs rode above, and Biche was a good dog who did not bark and thereby saved him). But, Rödenbeck says that both anecdotes are defended and well supported in yet another collection of anecdotes.

I was able to track down Büsching's 1788 character sketch, but I was stymied in my efforts to find the other source by the fact that starting in 1787, i.e. shortly after Fritz died, there was a general flurry of collections of anecdotes, many of them anonymous, in which everyone (including Zimmermann) rushed to get their favorite Old Fritz stories in print. I can't tell which one Rödenbeck is referring to, because they all have various names.

Looking at Büsching without using Google translate, I can't tell if he's actually arguing against both anecdotes, as Rödenbeck seems to be saying, or just the bridge one, which is what it looks like to me. Furthermore, I don't see anything about the detailed account of Biche's return, just that she was returned. But our royal reader can tell us: page 23 and surrounding.

Büsching also has the anecdote I've seen about Alcmene, where Fritz returned from Silesian maneuvers to find that she'd died, and he had her body exhumed and brought inside so he could look at her one last time and have a good cry.

It also looks like Büsching's saying that Fritz, after tearing himself away from her rotting body, had it laid in the same place where he himself was planning to lie. Since I've seen claims that Alcmene was the most special-est dog and got to lie in the same crypt with him, but there are also 2 doggy gravestones labeled Alcmene...so I wonder if that claim is based on a misunderstanding of Büsching. I.e. maybe Büsching is saying that she was buried where all the other dogs are, in the same place where Fritz was planning to be buried, but people have taken that to mean she was actually laid inside the vault intended for Fritz. (If she really was, I wonder how that went down in 1991.) This is, btw, why I used her as the dog who wakes him up in "Temple of Friendship."

Is it clear to you,

selenak, whether Büsching is unambiguously saying that she's being set apart from the other dogs, or could she just be one of the 11 dogs next to Fritz? (In any case, Büsching himself could be operating under a misunderstanding.)

The 11 dogs, by the way, are Alcmene, Thisbe, Diane, Phillis, Thisbe, Alcmene, Biche, Diane, Pax, Superbe, Amourette. According to somebody who wrote them down in the 19th century when the headstones, now greatly weathered, were still easily read.

Looking at Büsching without using Google translate, I can't tell if he's actually arguing against both anecdotes, as Rödenbeck seems to be saying, or just the bridge one, which is what it looks like to me. Furthermore, I don't see anything about the detailed account of Biche's return, just that she was returned. But our royal reader can tell us: page 23 and surrounding.

Just against the bridge anecdote. He says in his footnote that "Herr Geheimer Kriegsrat Schöning doubts with good reason the truth of this anecdote" which was on page 22 of the first edition of his book. (Meaning: the copy - which is from the Stabi, as I see - that you uploaded is the revised second edition.) Presumably Büsching got a lot of letters after the original publication and edited accordingly? And yes, he's saying that Fritz first ordered Alcmene (in a coffin) be put in his library study in Sanssouci, and then after his return indulged in his grief for her. Then, tearing himself from her remains, he ordered her buried in his own vault (it does say his own vault, where he wanted to be buried but wasn't, not where all the other dogs are. Mind you, Büsching does not name any source for this, and remember what we agreed on re: rumors? I still think it's more likely Alcmene lies with the other dogs.

f she really was, I wonder how that went down in 1991.

Ha. Well, if anything was left of her by then. I doubt that dog coffin was made of stone, after all. I don't think any dog skeletons in the vault got mentioned in the 1991 media reports.

Speaking of reports, being me, I also looked up what Büsching writes in the chapter "His behavior towards his family". And it's telling on what was and wasn't known in 1788. Büsching is the second contemporary who uses the name "Friederike Sophie" for Wilhelmine. Of course, in 1788, her memoirs were still unpublished, and I think those memoirs, and later the letters between her and Fritz, made it clear to all and sunder which of her first names she used. Büsching also claims that FW pressured Fritz to resign the succession before the escape attempt and wanted to make AW his successor all through AW's childhood. He tells the "FW beats Wilhelmine, including punching her with his fist in her face, upon his return until a stewardess intervenes" story, which is remarkable given, again, the memoirs are unpublished, the Dickens dispatch is unavailable, and Henri de Catt hasn't published, either. So where does he get that (correct) story from? He also reports correctly FW overriding Katte's tribunal, but incorrectly that Fritz' own tribunal would have gone for a death sentence for the crown prince if by then FW hadn't cooled down a bit. Re: Fritz' Küstrin conditions, here we have fantasy again with Münchow having to cut a hole into the door of Fritz' cell in order to be able to talk to him at all. It also has Fritz, AFTER Katte's execution, being willing to resign his succession rights so he could go and live abroad once he's released, and Münchow talking him out of this.

Büsching's footnote to the supposed death sentence for Fritz also contains the "the King later looked it up at the archives, and resealed it, but did not take any revenge" tale. Again, Catt hadn't published yet, but it makes me wonder whether Büsching talked to him and that's where all this is from. His summing up of Fritz & sibs relationships: "He liked the oldest sister best, but was great to the others as well. Doesn't seem to have held any grudge due to FW constantly trying to make AW crown prince through his life, because he was just noble like that. There was that fallout before AW's death, of course, but that was for military reasons. Younger brothers and Fritz: Um. Here's what I heard he left them in his last will! No further comment on the younger brothers from me." Büsching is also regretting that the EC/Fritz golden wedding anniversary hasn't been properly celebrated in 1783, because she'd have deserved it, being a fabulous Queen through the decades, and he's very glad FW2 honors her and is kind to her.

ETA: Good grief. Büsching claims Fritz never needed any foreign subsidies. Ever. I mean: look, Büsching, him getting money from the Brits was no state secret? Even if I don't expect you to know about what Poniatowski writes re: Fritz counterfeiting coins and devalueing money, or about the sugar daddies in crown prince times, the British subsidies at least were common knowledge. He bitched enough about it when they stopped, even in the Histoire de mon temps, or so biographies say. What the hell?/ETA

So basically, his reliability: some things he's amazingly accurate about, some are really wildly inaccurate, see above. When mentioning many European monarchs pleaded for Crown Prince Fritz, he quotes, entirely, the letter from Sweden, which could be another hint as to which sources he does have. What all of this says about the reliability of his dog stories: make up your own mind.

Rödenbeck: looking for the part you name, I come across about Rödenbeck, correctly, naming AW as a member of the Straßburg trip! (He lists AW, Algarotti, Fredersdorf, Colonels v. Borck and v. Stille and one of the Münchows as aide - presumably the older brother Jr. mentions as Fritz having favored? - as making up the group in totem. So now we know.) He also lists the following pseudonyms:

Fritz: Count Dufour
AW: Count Schafgotsch.
Algarotti: Count von Pfuhl.

(Algarotti: none of you could convincingly play a non-noble, so don't even try, highnessess. I, on the other hand, can play a German.)

Also, he says Fritz upon arriving in Straßburg lodged in the inn "Holy Cross" whereas AW lodged in the inn "Raven". So if you want to imagine Fritz and Algarotti getting it on, note he took care of not sharing rooms with younger bro for the night. Of course, that was before they were arrested. Arrival in Straßburg was on the 23, ignominious departure on the 26th.

Now, about page 126 - first of all, guess what the previous page says about the Pandur raid on the camp? Whom it names as a source? AUSTRIAN TRENCK! I first thought maybe Rödenbeck had his Trenck confused when saying "From Austrian Trenck's descripton of his life", but the quote is actually in first person and speaking as Franz von der Trenck, not Friedrich von der Trenck. Mind you, I'm sideeying the veracity of any Trenck, but apparantly Austrian Trenck has written his life down somewhere, too? Anyway. Rödenbeck doesn't quite make clear where his Austrian Trenck quote ends, but at a guess, when Biche is returned. (He also says that the wife of General Nadasty had taken to Biche, wanted to keep her and had to be asked repeatedly till she was ready to hand over the dog.)

Rödenbeck says that both anecdotes are defended and well supported in yet another collection of anecdotes.

So he does, but he says they were defended by "glaubwürdige Gewährsmänner", "credible sources" (literally "credible men vowing for it"), without naming the gentlemen in question. Again, if any of said gentlemen was named Trenck (Prussian Trenck was still alive and well and publishing memoirs at that point, don't forget)...

Edited 2020-03-25 12:33 (UTC)

Re: Italian greyhounds

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This is of interest probably only to me, but I though I would post my fic research findings here, since one of them was so hard to dig up, and one was an unexpected finding.

The Man
Also spelled Rottembourg (in French), or Rothembourg, or some combination thereof. Sigh. Still not as bad as Lövenörn in terms of name spellings.

French envoy to Berlin off and on during the 1710s and 1720s. Very cultured. BFFs with Katte. Hated FW. Was petitioning Versailles for his recall as early as 1719. According to one of my sources, he claimed it was the climate in 1719, but I'm betting he also just didn't like the court. :P Tried to support a coup in Prussia to have FW declared insane and Fritz put on the throne. He and 14-yo Fritz used to pass information to each other via an intermediary, while pretending to have no interest in each other.

Successfully got recalled in 1727. It was supposed to be to take care of his domestic affairs, and he was supposed to go back as soon as possible. Sauveterre, his secretary, was left behind. (This explains my confusion over why there was no French envoy to replace him and yet Sauveterre was there, and also possibly explains why Sauveterre is apparently dependent on Dickens for his info in November 1730, and why my sources say Sauveterre was kind of lackadaisical.)

However, Rothenburg then got sent on a mission to Spain in 1727-1728, which then turned into a more permanent station, when he was sent back in 1730. He helped negotiate the Family Compact between the Bourbon monarchs of France and Spain (1733). He was recalled to Paris on May 25, 1734 because of bad health. He died in April 1735 childless, very rich, and either never married or married to Jeanne-Madelene d'Helmstat on April 10, 1721 (depending on who you believe). He's the subject of my extremely specific question about legal inheritance on little_details.

His father was from Brandenburg, and he was made a field marshal by Louis XIV.

The Estates
When Fritz made his escape attempt and was trying to hide the fact that he had been having dealings with the English, he confessed "that he was planning to flee to Strasbourg (where he seemed to have his eyes on a stay on the Alsatian estate of the French envoy, comte Rothenbourg)." Quote MacDonogh. I've also seen other sources state that Katte had suggested Rothenburg's estate as a safe haven, and that this was one of the pieces of evidence used to convict of Katte of being up to his ears in this plot and helping advance it further than it would have without him.

Being me, I've been wanting and wanting to track down this estate, just like I did with Peter Keith's.

Well, I finally turned it up, and one reason it took so long is that it's not nearly as close to Strasbourg as that sentence had led me to believe. Comte Rothenburg/Rottembourg (however you want to spell his name) was feudal lord of the seigneury of Masevaux, 120 km south and east of Strasbourg in Alsace, and about 40 km from the modern French border.

It also gets a bit more complicated than this. Rothenburg was descended from Conrad de Rosen, who was a field marshal and a member of a prominent family. Conrad bought this property from the Fuggers (famous German banking family), then sold it in 1684 to his son-in-law, who was our Comte Rothenburg's father.

Conrad meanwhile hung on to the Dettwiller, Herrenstein, and Bollwiller estates, though Bollwiller had been pawned to the Fuggers by his father-in-law, and Conrad had to pay that debt. These estates were passed down the Rosen line.

Comte Rothenburg, during his lifetime, acquired the nearby estate of Rougemont. I also see some other estates, of which I do not know the history, listed as belonging to him at the time of his death: Keivenheim, Seintein, and Oberbruck. On his death, his estates went to one of his sisters.

Now, I had thought both his sisters were childless, but it turns out not, because sister had a daughter. Daughter inherited the Rothenburg estates, and married the Rosen heir of Conrad's estates. Thus the Rosen family became one of the largest landowners in Alsace.

Here are Bollwiller, Masevaux, and Rougemont situated on the map in relation to each other and Strasbourg. I hadn't yet found the other estates when I took this snapshot, but Oberbruck is just northeast of Masevaux, so that checks out. Keivenheim looks like a German name, and the only thing I can find remotely similar, Kaifenheim, is near Bonn. And Seintein is right on the Spanish border.

Parts of the original manor house in Masevaux remain standing and are protected as a historic monument. I couldn't get any good pictures because of its location and obscurity, but I've found it on the map and looked at what I can.

The Library
I also ran across a cool piece of information that I wasn't looking for, namely that our Comte Rothenburg's library was assessed after his death. I thus know that it contained 156 books, most of which were in French, and, amazingly, I know the distribution of these books as well:

Religion: 5%
Law: 8%
History: 22%
Belles-lettres: 43%
Sciences & arts: 13%
Various: 9%

Now, this is only the books of value, because smaller books were not recorded, but even so, I have to say...this is not going to be enough for Fritz in my AU. That library's going to have to be expanded once he decides he's moving in permanently. :P

The Plot
Speaking of which, we hash out plots for

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As Ulrike put it. Or, as Fritz and Wilhelmine would say, the hellhole. As a reminder of the history, this started out as one of F1's hunting palaces, which is also when his wife Sophie Charlotte installed a beautiful Renaissance garden. Tiny Terror FW was given it while still a kid and stunned his parents by taking to it with a vengeance, complete with bookkeeping (what kind of a kid takes up bookkeeping as a hobby, groaned they) and organizing it into a self-sustaining country estate. As an adult, it was his favourite place ever (love how the website puts it: he spent "for him happy days with his family there" from August to November each year. Wilhelmine and Fritz made no bones about loathing it. The younger sibs were Wusterhausen-neutral, it seemed, while Dad was still alive, or at least we have no documented statements. Fritz never visited as King. The sibs didn't either for decades. Until that one famous occasion together with Pöllnitz as anecdote provider and plenty of arguments. The whole estate remained without anyone living there until Heinrich in his last two years moved in because it was far closer to Berlin, though in the end he moved back to Rheinsberg to die there.

The tobacco collegium

SD's bedroom

Ballroom (yes, there was one)

After Heinrich, no one else lived there until FW4 and W1 used it as a hunting palace again. Today, you can visit both the palace and the gardens. The palace has 38 of FW's paintings of his Long Fellows.

Edited 2020-04-04 11:34 (UTC)

Fantastic, thank you for sharing! Wow, SD's bedroom. I can see why she hated it, omg. Imagine coming to that from a baroque world!

As an adult, it was his favourite place ever (love how the website puts it: he spent "for him happy days with his family there"

Ahahaha, facepalm.

cahn, I should point out that the big painting on the wall in the tobacco collegium (also translated tobacco parliament or tobacco college by some authors), is a painting *of* the tobacco collegium, with AW seated and Heinrich and Ferdinand walking in, with Fritz thanking God he's in Rheinsberg, because it's 1737.

I wasn't planning to visit this, but...oh, all right, I might. :P

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This biography was reccommended to me by

shezan after she commented on my Voltaire tale, as "opinionated but never bettered" as far as French Voltaire biographies go. It has nearly a thousand pages, and does qualify as a magnum opus. It's stylish by itself; Jean Orieux can tell a tale. It's also visibly a product of its time; Jean Orieux was born in 1907, lived through two world wars, and while providing narrative room for the women in this tale hardly qualifies as a feminist. (For example, he adores Émilie, and defends her against various often quoted malicious gossip - including one description of her which I had indeed encountered in the "Day to Day in the life of Fritz" book Mildred recently added to the library which basically goes "thin, little green eyes, bad legs, way too many beauty spots and jewelry, bad hairstyle, and that was the woman Voltaire kept raving about!" and the accusation that Maupertuis and König wrote her articles and books for her. (Orieux: Émiliie was worth ten of these small-minded gossip mongers!) But it doesn't occur to him to do a bit more research to find out what was so particular about her take on Newton and on Leipzig, or why it was sensational that she could unite the two, so he describes her as a really smart amateur rather than a scientist. Granted, this is a Voltaire biography, not a "Voltaire and Émilie biography", but I do think a more current biographer would take the trouble to find out more about what a two decades life partner of their subject was working so hard on.

A similar thing is noticable with Fritz. When I after finishing the book had a look at the - gigantic - biblography - I wasn't surprised that a) it' s all in French (including Boswell's diaries - Orieux does quote the hilarious Voltaire-Boswell - "he's a wise man" encounter, and thus I learned André Maurois has done a French translation of Boswell's diaries, go Maurois!), and b) the letters aside, the Fritzian titles are all "...and Fritz", i.e. "Voltaire and Fritz", or "Louis XV: political relationshiips with Fritz" and so forth. No individual biography. Which means you get glitches like "Marie Christine" instead of "Elisabeth Christine" (and yes, Voltaire did meet her, but he didn't see her often, unsurprisingly; basically, he was curious enough to ask to be presented, but that was that, one or two more occasions aside). Or, when quoting from a Fritz to Wilhelmine letter written early after Voltaire's arrival about Voltaire being brilliant and "my brothers doing histrionics/histrionisizing" (meaning the court performance of "La Rome Sauvée" where Heinrich played Catiline and Ferdinand the imaginary naiv young male ingenue to Amalie's young female ingenue), Orieux adds "as long as they were acting, at least they couldn't scheme". (Without making clear whether he thinks that's what Fritz thought or whether that's what he assumes; either way, I suspect it's most likely that Orieux, well familiar with French history where most of the royal brothers of the various Louises did indeed scheme day in and day out, made an automatic conclusion without bothering to look up what Fritz' brothers were doing in 1750. (Without looking it up and based on memory: AW, who didn't take part in the Voltairian play-acting, was busy trying to talk Ulrike out of organizing a coup d' etat, Heinrich dealt with the joyful prospect of getting married as per his submission to Fritz the previous year by ~~a 50 tweets thread~~ publishing anonymous pamphlets about all the mistakes he thought Fritz made in the Silesian wars, and Ferdinand did his drilling service and otherwise partied with Lehndorff. Heinrich's pamphlets aside, for which playing Catiline on stage left him ample time, there's not a single anti Fritz action detectable.

Similarly, when we get to Frankfurt, Orieux writes "Fredersdorf, the King's secretary, who hated Voltaire" sent word to Freytag the Prussian Resident in Frankfurt etc. At which point of course yours truly rolls her eyes, because not only is the job description wrong (and while the English word "secretary" can be used for "minister", the German word "Sekretär" can not, and I was reading a German translation of a French book, so I doubt the mistake was in the translation) but we simply have no idea how Fredersdorf felt about Voltaire. Maybe he hated him. Maybe he was indifferent. Maybe he had even liked him once upon a time, though I seriously doubt it, because people charmed by Voltaire usually needed to talk to him first. But since no personal letter of Fredersdorf's mentioning his feelings re: Voltaire exists, this is guess work, and in a non-fiction work I want my speculation indicated as such.

Then again, Orieux writes an old school biographee romancée, which reminds me of Stefan Zweig's masterpieces of the type fron the 1920s and 1930s, when Orieux was young,, i.e. biographies unabashedly using novelistic language "her beautiful eyes shed tender tears" etc. He also is indeed opinionated, and not in the sense of Bodanis' romantisizing. His take on Voltaire includes all the pettiness and shadiness and vengefulness and vanity and histrionics - good lord, all the histrionics. (By which I don't mean the occasional acting in private performances. Btw, Cahn: Émilie could and did indeed sing very well, including in operas privately performed, whereas Voltaire only acted in speaking roles on such occasions, so I suspect it's safe to assume he couldn't sing.) It also provides the heroics and kindnesses and amazingly modern cosmopolitism (indeed Orieux more than once feels a bit uneasy about that, though he's also admiring, but let's just say he is stretching things a bit when speculating that Voltaire's thing for Germans might be connected in a German grandmaman he never met, and keeps reassuring his French readers that Voltaire being impressed by French defeats such as Roßbach instead of being crushed in patriotic gloom is not comparable to 20th century type of situations). No, Orieux' being opinionated translates, for example, into his unabashedly declaring Voltaire's stage plays (a considerable part of his ouevre) as boring, the products of the dead end phase of French classical drama which deserved to die and be revolutionized not long after Voltaire's death. The only useful things these plays did, for Orieux, was making Voltaire famous, because no one would have read his essays, pamphlets, letters and of course Candide later if he hadn't already become famous via the plays. (Orieux is a big fan of Voltaire's prose, though. Candide being his favourite, but he also adores the letters and tremendously enjoyed the trashy tell all about Fritz.) He's equally opionated on the literary works of other writers. Saint-Lambert's poems, for example, are also deemed both drippy and boring (and the one reason Saint-Lambert made it into literary history, twice, is a) his affair with Émilie and b) his later relationship with the woman Rousseau was after, leaving Orieux to conclude that well, if you can't score via your literary talents...), Fritz' Maupertuis-defending, Voltaire-attacking pamphlets are mediocre. And Orieux is opinionated about characters - Madame Denis is a stupid, greedy cow (German translation uses "eine dumme Pute", but English doesn't go for the fowl to convey the same idea, I don't think - "a goose" is even affectionate and doesn't contain the contempt of the German phrase), Monsieur Arouet didn't deserve his son's hostility, he was doing his best with the enfant terrible he was given under the circumstances, Voltaire's older brother Armand otoh was nuts and a self flaggelating pious fanatic thoroughly deserving of being disliked and ignored by younger brother, etc.

And Fritz? As opposed to Bodanis, he doesn't present this as Machiavellian Fritz luring poor naive idealistic Voltaire to him and says if Voltaire wanted to have a clue that young Crown Prince Fritz was maybe not quite the ideal phiilosopher king in the making after all, he could have gotten it, that they both wanted to use each other while also both being highly receptive to each other's praise - and that they started to get addicted to each other which they couldn't break of. While describing the betrayals on both sides early on before they ever moved in with each other (Voltaire's repeated spy offers, Fritz not only writing that supposedly Voltairian poem but also making sure a letter by Voltaire congratulating Fritz to his separate peace with MT - which was regarded as a betrayal of his ally France in Paris - was copied and spread all over Paris by Fritz' agents there, all to get Voltaire into enough trouble with the French authories so he'd be forced to flee to Prussia - he still thinks Fritz was the more cruel of the two. Not least because Fritz had less to lose. Voltaire was, when it came down to it, a non-noble citizen with whom an absolute King could do whatever he wanted, with no legal protection in the modern sense whatsoever. All that getting Voltaire into trouble could have resulted not with Voltaire in Prussia but with Voltaire in prison (again), or worse. (The laws in France being terrible, of which this book has a lot of demonstrations, not least because of Voltaire's big justice for other people campaigns in his later life.) And of course Frankfurt demonstrated what Fritz could do even outside his own kingdom, if he wanted to. Overall, Orieux' take on Fritz is "cruel, brilliant and unique among the kings of his century" (der Einzige strikes again!), and indeed far too similar to Voltaire for them to ever be at peace with another.

New-to-me stuff:

Voltaire and Richelieu - (grandnephew of the Cardinal, temporary lover of Émilie, life long friend of them both, provider of opium in Voltaire's last painful week of life) - actually were at school together, both a Louis-le-Grand, the famous Jesuit school. Orieux, when describing Voltaire returning from his three years in Prussia where most of France actually was still sulking that he'd left in the first place, says Richelieu was an exception: "Voltaire, like Punch in the puppet show, showed up and cried "here I am again, who still loves me?" and Richelieu replied "I love you as ever".

Fritz as early as 1740 (!!!) writes to Jordan complaining that Voltaire wanted him to pay Voltaire's travel expenses and actually says "no court jester was ever so expensive"; this at the same time as writing other letters raving about Voltaire havingt the eloquence of Cicero, the sweetness of Pliny (when he means Ovid) etc." (See, this kind of son-of-FW thing is why I had Voltaire being determined he wouldn't end up as the French Gundling.) Conversely, Orieux also notes that as late as the 1770s, when Fritz was already a living legend and had been for decades, his fame assured in every way, he kept writing wistfull that if only Voltaire was still present in Sanssouci, "one could have become something". (Orieux wonders what else Fritz thinks he could have become with Voltaire at his side that he didn't become already, and finds this remark oddly touching.)

Orieux about Voltaire and Fritz taking leave of each other after their 1740 encounter: "They were cooing like pigeons. We will later see that they had beaks like eagles."

Jealous Fritz, still writing to Jordan in 1740: "The poet's mind is as smooth as the style of his works, and I flatter myself that Berlin seduces him enough to bring him back soon, especially since the Marquise's purse isn't as well equipped as mine."

(As Orieux points out, actually Voltaire invested more of his money - an entire fortune, in fact - into Cirey than Émilie did, not least because as a man he had money of his own. But still, one thing no one can accuse Voltaire of is profiting from Émilie financially.)

Jealous Émilie, writing to D'Argental, also in 1740, re: Fritz: "I think he's indignant about me, but he should only try whether he can hate me more than I have hated him these last two months. You will admit this is a pretty rivalry we have."

(In Ferney, Voltaire had a portrait of Émilie and one of Fritz. They're both still there, or were as of the writing of that biography, in the Voltaire museum there.) (No mention whether the Fritz one shows traces of darts.)

Orieux regrets that Émilie didn't come with Voltaire in 1743. True, Fritz still hadn't invited her, but Voltaire was visiting Bayreuth as well, and Orieux thinks Wilhelmine would have been glad to host Émilie as well. Re: Voltaire finding German aristos nicer than French ones at this point:

He found in these exquisit courts a charm he didn't know from France; they loved him there more. The aristocracy was less stiff, less intellectual than ours, but more sensitive and simpler, despite being just as well educated and hospitable. Voltaire had loved England, but he'd been bored there. He was never bored in Germany. This, Émilie knew and was afraid of. She was jealous of Friedrich, of Ulrike and the Margravine, and of all of Germany. Why didn't she come with her poet? She would have certainly been received. Her scientific studies would not have been ridiculed, au contraire; she would have been spared the Parisian mockery and the poisonous darts of du Deffand. (Madame du Deffand was the one who ridiculed Émilie's looks and claimed Maupertuis and König had written her scientitic writings.) But alas! Germany loved Voltaire too much for Émilie to love Germany - jealousy is relentless. Which is a pity, for Germany would have loved them both.

Sidenote by me: Germany might have, Orieux, but Fritz surely would not, and he really did not want to have her there. Otoh, I'm with you that Wilhelmine - who was always on the look out for interesting people and minds to draw to Bayreuth, and was a big supporter of the university at Erlangen, where she'd even given a speech - would have hosted Émilie.

Edited 2020-04-05 05:43 (UTC)

Man, I LOVE your book reports.

Heinrich dealt with the joyful prospect of getting married as per his submission to Fritz the previous year by a 50 tweets thread publishing anonymous pamphlets about all the mistakes he thought Fritz made in the Silesian wars,

I... kind of need this sequel to "Very Secret Chat" now :P

but we simply have no idea how Fredersdorf felt about Voltaire. Maybe he hated him. Maybe he was indifferent. Maybe he had even liked him once upon a time, though I seriously doubt it

My headcanon is that he was amused and/or exasperated by Voltaire, depending on how much he had to calm Fritz down at any given time, and that's where I'm staying :D But I'm also not writing nonfiction :P

so I suspect it's safe to assume he couldn't sing.

Or that he couldn't sing well enough not to look foolish next to Émilie, which I am also happy to be the case :D

but also making sure a letter by Voltaire congratulating Fritz to his separate peace with MT - which was regarded as a betrayal of his ally France in Paris - was copied and spread all over Paris by Fritz' agents there, all to get Voltaire into enough trouble with the French authories so he'd be forced to flee to Prussia

...waaaaait, what! I didn't realize this!

(der Einzige strikes again!)

heeee!

As Orieux points out, actually Voltaire invested more of his money - an entire fortune, in fact - into Cirey than Émilie did, not least because as a man he had money of his own. But still, one thing no one can accuse Voltaire of is profiting from Émilie financially.

*nods* Zinsser and Bodanis both pointed out, I think, that Voltaire had a ton of money. Did Orieux go into any detail regarding his government bonds thing?

Otoh, I'm with you that Wilhelmine - who was always on the look out for interesting people and minds to draw to Bayreuth, and was a big supporter of the university at Erlangen, where she'd even given a speech - would have hosted Émilie.

(1) ...now I want Wilhelmine & Émilie! mildred, I exepect this from your fix-it :)
(2) but can you imagine the letters?
Fritz: Wilhelmine, I heard you were hosting THAT WOMAN. How could you??
Wilhelmine: Huh? The Queen of Hungary isn't anywhere near here --
Fritz: I mean EMILIE, of course.
Wilhelmine: Oh. Well, I figured since you were hosting Voltaire --
Fritz: WHAT DOES THAT HAVE TO DO WITH IT.

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Also new to me: Voltaire actually kept in contact with Saint-Lambert over the years after Émilie's death. The two of them teamed up against Rousseau on one occasion involving a Rousseau protegé named Clement (like the big implosion of 1753, this started out as two middleweights, Clement vs Saint-Lambert, and escalated to two heavy weights, Rousseau vs Voltaire by the two heavy weights getting involved rushing to their respective mate's aide.)

While Orieux at some point just throws up his hands and admits the whole Fritz/Voltaire thing going on and on and on despite all the awful things they keep saying about each other is not explainable by anything but love, he is chiding Voltaire for his other royal correspondant, to wit, Catherine. Not so much because Catherine was an absolute monarch and Voltaire should have been over trying to flatter monarchs in his old age, no, because Catherine had killed her husband, and Voltaire was willing to praise her as an enlightened ruler to all of Europe despite this. (There's even a quote to the effect that nothing he's heard about the late Peter made him sound anywhere as interesting and efficient as "my Catherine" and hence he finds it hard to regret his demise.) Orieux then quotes several contemporaries being indignant about this as well - i.e. Catherine the husband killer - and registers his own dissapproval. Which made me go, huh. I must admit I'm somewhat with Voltaire there. I mean, yes, Peter didn't deserve two centuries of relentless bad press ensuing, but - I haven't heard anything that didn't make Catherine sound as both more interesting and a more efficient monarch. And frankly, in an age where royal wives, if they don't die in childbirth, are sometimes locked up for life, ignored at best, mistreated in body and mind at worst, and no one does anything to protest, I find it hard to qualify Catherine having Peter killed as the crime of the century.

"Sister Wilhelmine" was indeed a mode of adress Voltaire in the 1750s used occasionally, just as she uses "Brother Voltaire". #CanonVindication! (I was speculating in my story, based on her using the "Brother" address. I had read some of her letters to Voltaire, but from him to her only some sentences quoted in the Oster biography, not a direct mode of address. But yes indeed. Orieux is also with me in finding the ode just formulaic, not the immortal poetry Fritz demanded. As I said: Orieux makes no bones of his opinions on Voltaire's gigantic literary oeuvre, and has a clear preference of his prose over anything that's rhymed. )

From the preface, Orieux summing up Voltaire and why he devoted six years of his life to writing this biography:

This glittering creature managed his affairs in a continuity without weakness. With fifteen, young Arouet knew what he wanted to become, and he knew it with a deciveness and an ambition which are incredible. He had understood that he needed to become both a very rich man and a very great poet. He achieved both aims. HIs social success is achieved in tandem with his literary success. Even as a schoolboy he had concluded that talent without money meant only misery, and money without talent stupidity. He didn't feel himself meant for either variation.

Some say he wasn't "serious". Indeed. He did all not to appear so, but his importance is far greater. We tend to forget a bit that we all in the core of our being are marked by the encounter with Candide. Voltaire was the embodiment of a mentality which had doubtlessly existed in France before him, but which only by his pen has been given its definite form. When he gave to this mentality and this humanism, which had been already known to Molière and La Fontaine, Marot and Montaigne, the splendid form of "Micromegas" and the "Lettres", we became more French than we'd ever been before him. Even those of ous who turn against this revelation, think, write and speak in a way that shows the Voltairian imprint. Mallarmé has said: The world was made in order to end up in a book. Can't one also say that a Frenchman ever since the farces of the middle ages has only been made to end up in a beautiful narration named "Candide"?
While Voltaire made his genius - and the French genius - sparkle in all of Europe, he didn't care about national propaganda. There isn't a trace of patriotic bragging in him. He's above such particularism. (...) For him and those who understood him, there has been a Europe: the Europe of the Enlightenment, the most civilised and most human of mother countries. HIs borders were those of the mind. In this society, which consisted of the elites of the various nations, he saw the triumph of civilisation: we can say it was a triumph of Voltaire.

(...) Voltaire is a man for fighting, the daily struggle for happiness. Not a mythical but an earthly happiness reachable by all. The point is to free man of tyranny and misery. Humans can only be happy if they use all the possibilities of a human being, and that means if they live in freedom and wealth. Fanaticism, stupidity, poverty result in ignorance, slavery and war. (...) The greatness of Voltaire manifests itself in his sense of human solidarity. This man without a God believed in human beings - without too many illusions. To him, man was the masterpiece of creation. Any attack on freedom and justice he found therefore unbearable. When Calas was hanged, drawn and quartered in Toulouse, you could here in Geneva the cry of Voltaire who felt the torture as well. Not Calas alone was concerned, but all humanity has been violated in him: Voltaire, you and I. And thus you and I are the ones Voltaire then defended. (...)

Voltaire is always fascinating: in the good sense... and in the bad sense. He had countless flaws, and some true vices, dancing, whirling, fluttering vices, vices like lightnings and vices like reptiles: an odd assembly. These flaws, we've left a respectful place in the story of his life. As his friend Bolingbroke once said of Marlborough: "He was such a great man that I have forgotten his flaws." One can forget Voltaire's flaws, but only after knowing them first. We have uncovered them with the same dedication as his virtues, and will leave the reader the satisfaction to either forget them or, according to their taste, to enjoy them.

Edited 2020-04-05 05:54 (UTC)

(There's even a quote to the effect that nothing he's heard about the late Peter made him sound anywhere as interesting and efficient as "my Catherine" and hence he finds it hard to regret his demise.)

hee, that sounds just like Voltaire :P But your point is taken.

"Sister Wilhelmine" was indeed a mode of adress Voltaire in the 1750s used occasionally, just as she uses "Brother Voltaire". #CanonVindication!

:D

Thank you for this book review! This was fascinating. And, okay, I'm being won over to Voltaire :P I actually started reading Candide last month, but my copy is without any footnotes whatsoever and I think I would get rather more out of it with footnotes that give historical/philosphical context.