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timeasmymeasure
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Re: A second Heinrich readthrough thread: Ch 10-11 and beyond
Date: 2020-05-19 02:24 am (UTC)January 6th. The same evening, I see my dear H. Oh, one is never completely happy! I am convinced he loves me, and still I am tormented by the thought I could lose this precious heart. I was invited at Herr von Bredow's, so I briefly went there. I find a big crowd, among others a Herr von Katt, who is not the most agreeable company to me.
From 1753, and that makes it sound as if he encountered this particular Katte at Bredow‘s, not Heinrich‘s. And no first name, either. In general, there‘s also the question of timing. As far as I recall, Heinrich couldn‘t make genuine appointments to his household until getting married - at which point Hans Herrmann‘s brothers and father are already dead, so any Katte given a job by him would have had to be a cousin from the other lines.
Incidentally, given Heinrich getting along with Thiébault: Henckel von Donnersmarck mentioning Heinrich and de Prades being friendly - as well as de Prades & AW, btw, which at least makes Lehndorff hearing from de Prades decades later that he was totally innocent of treason and only in trouble with Fritz for the AW friendliness not utterly out there - still wrong, since we do have Valory himself testifying to the fact de Prades was signalling readiness to provide Fritz intel to la patrie from 1756 onwards, but Lehndorff would have correctly recalled de Prades was indeed chummy with AW. Ziebura also provides letter quotes to show Heinrich was friends with Darget and remained so when Darget had left Berlin and its Palladion-writing King behind. And suddenly it struck me that this makes Heinrich and Henri de Catt NOT getting along more of an outlier than I had previously thought, my previous assumption going with Lehndorff‘s later life observation that if you‘re liked by the princes, you‘re not liked by the King, and vice versa.
(Can‘t have been all Heinrich‘s Francophilia, either - he remained friendly with Fritz bff Bielfeld beyond the later finishing his and Ferdinand‘s education, and got along well with James Keith, not to mention Mitchell from the later war years onwards till Mitchell’s death, neither of whom were French.)
But by the time FW dies, I think the birth order has already made a difference. When Fritz was 14, he was already suicidally depressed and desperately looking for a way out of this situation, which I could be wrong, but I haven't seen any evidence that Heinrich was.
On the one hand, because Heinrich is just a third son, he‘s not going to get any of the ambassadorial interest crown prince Fritz got, so it‘s possible we‘re just missing data. On the other, what little data we have does not indicate any depression, no. Mind you, said data as I recall is:
- kid AW writing „dear Papa“ letters mentioning kid brother Heinrich also being a good boy
- Big Bro Junior, in striking contrast, bitching to Mantteuffel who tells Nephew Seckendorff about his two youngest brothers having a bad character
- Grumbkow in his „tips on how to get along with your Dad“ letter from 1731 to Fritz including „maybe show some interest in your brothers“ as well as „establish boundaries with your sister“
- Heinrich possibly (not not definitely) being the brother Fritz complaints to Suhm about who‘s
raiding his lardershowing boring interest in meals instead of culture in the same year Fritz complaints to Mantteuffel about the two youngest brothers and their bad character, 1736- Heinrich decades later, when trying to get Fritz to join the Wusterhausen trip after all, talking about nostalgia for places where „we“ were yelled at, and even hit because when you‘re older even painful memories are good memories if you‘re a Hohenzollern sibling; given Fritz was mostly avoiding Wusterhausen through the 1730s courtesy of being in Neuruppin, then Rheinsberg during the summer months, and Heinrich‘s (baby and toddler) age during the late 1720s when Fritz was indeed yelled at and hit in Wusterhausen, I‘m asuming „we“ here means „I“ (as in Heinrich, not Fritz)
...and that leaves a wide room for interpretation. But my headcanon is that Heinrich did benefit from the relative lack of parental attention courtesy of being the thirteenth child and not important to the succession.
Just as a basis of contemporary comparison: we also have very little on MT as a child for as long as everyone still believed she‘d get a living brother and would only be one of the Habsburg princesses to be usefully married off later. There‘s just no reason for any envoy to be interested. Once it dawns to everyone there won‘t be any more boy kids coming whereas MT has made it out of early childhood healthy and likely to survive this starts to change, but there‘s no true data until she hits puberty and thus becomes of interest to the marriage market, and then you have envoys starting to report on what she‘s like etc.
Of course, every now and then historians luck out with some older relation or courtier including a remark on a child not a crown prince, as when Grandpa F1 in his letter about new grandson F including the fascinating intel that toddler Wilhelmine couldn‘t stand her previous two brothers but likes this one. (How DOES a baby dislike another baby, is what I want to know.) (And because of SD‘‘s obsession with her oldest daughter becoming queen of England, the British ambassadors later include reports on her as a child when none of the other envoys care about the kids other than the crown prince.) But generally, reliable data on what non-first born royal children are like is really thin on the ground.
Re: A second Heinrich readthrough thread: Ch 10-11 and beyond
Date: 2020-05-21 05:28 am (UTC)(How DOES a baby dislike another baby, is what I want to know.)
I forget the exact ages of everyone, but I could see this, actually, as just a normal developmental thing. Small kids, toddlers and even earlier, can sometimes highly disapprove of babies if they perceive that the baby is taking attention away from them (which is, of course, usually true). (Mom and I once babysitted my cousin's child at about 12 months? and while we were babysitting, a friend with a newborn dropped by. Cousin's child Did Not Like that baby!) But when kids get a little older, like 4 or 5, girls especially will tend to be see babies as cute rather than primarily rivals for adults' attention.
Re: A second Heinrich readthrough thread: Ch 10-11 and beyond
Date: 2020-05-21 06:31 am (UTC)Yeah, though as
But the fact that Heinrich was ignored by the envoys and the fact that FW referred to him and Ferdinand as "the princes" means FW was ignoring him to a certain degree, which means he likely escaped some of the worst, unless he had a particularly bad caretaker, like Wilhelmine and Letti.
That is really interesting about AW! I can totally buy FW drawing the "Heinrich hero-worships AW, ergo Heinrich is a chip off the old block too" conclusion. I mean, from the guy who draws "not into women, ergo a good supervisor of my sons' sex lives" kind of conclusions.
Small kids, toddlers and even earlier, can sometimes highly disapprove of babies if they perceive that the baby is taking attention away from them (which is, of course, usually true)...But when kids get a little older, like 4 or 5, girls especially will tend to be see babies as cute rather than primarily rivals for adults' attention.
Agreed. I seem to recall even Saint Augustine pointing out that babies, even before they have language, hate--i.e. throw tantrums clearly targeted at--younger siblings when they see Mom nursing their new rival. The context being original sin.
Wilhelmine was 2.5 years old when Fritz was born. Which is pretty good for not hating on the kid.
ETA: Oh, speaking of Wilhelmine and ages, one thing I noticed while helping construct her daughter's AO3 tag is that little Sophie was born August 30, 1732. Wilhelmine got married November 20, 1731. Do the math.
Between her and SD, I can see Fritz going, "Well, EC didn't get pregnant the first two times, must be barren! No point in trying again, clearly. Thanks for producing all the spares, Mom."
Re: A second Heinrich readthrough thread: Ch 10-11 and beyond
Date: 2020-05-21 09:18 am (UTC)Wilhelmine was 2.5 years old when Fritz was born. Which is pretty good for not hating on the kid.
Just to be absolutely precise, the relevant letter from Grandpa F1 which Wilhelmine's biographer Oster quotes is dated February 8th, 1712. Fritz had been born on January 24th that same year. The two dead brothers: Friedrich Ludwig, born November 23rd 1707, and Friedrich Wilhelm, August 16 1710. (Wilhelmine herself had arrived in between, 3rd July 1709.) Little FW the uncounted died not even a year later, July 31st 1711, so by the time Fritz was born, Wilhelmine had been a single child for half a year. Grandpa F1 writes: "Here our children are still all well, especially the Prince of Prussia (…), and it is to marvel at that the Princess does love him so much, for she could not like her first two brothers."
And while we're talking SD in a letter to her husband from September 1709, when Wilhelmine is barely two months old, and SD is visiting the Family in Hannover: "Little Fritz keeps asking me for news about his bride."
Yes, that's Fritz of Wales she's talking about. Though not yet, Queen Anne (Stuart) is still alive, which means none of the Hannover crowd is allowed to set foot on British soil yet. Thinking about this made me realise that SD never, ever, saw the country she grew so obsessed with. When she married FW, she was the daughter of the Prince Elector of Hannover, not yet the King of England.
One thing Heinrich was definitely spared was Mom obsessing about marrying him to someone as soon as he was born.
Re: A second Heinrich readthrough thread: Ch 10-11 and beyond
Date: 2020-05-23 03:22 am (UTC)HAHAHAHAHA true! Perceptive this guy wasn't.
ETA: Oh, speaking of Wilhelmine and ages, one thing I noticed while helping construct her daughter's AO3 tag is that little Sophie was born August 30, 1732. Wilhelmine got married November 20, 1731. Do the math.
Between her and SD, I can see Fritz going, "Well, EC didn't get pregnant the first two times, must be barren! No point in trying again, clearly. Thanks for producing all the spares, Mom."
LOL! Yup, that's always been my headcanon, that he did try, but... maybe only like twice so he could say he had. (And, uh, judging from the number (2, anyway) of male royalty around here who seem to have had trouble with the basic mechanics, maybe he didn't try all that hard either.)