Remember Katte's interrogation, which greatly emphasizes how he tried to talk Fritz out of it and throw up lots of obstacles, and never ever actually encouraged it except in order to prevent it from happening? And how none of us actually believe that's the whole story? Especially given that 1) he wanted to stay in England permanently just a year before, 2) he totally admitted he would have gone if Fritz had gone?
And you know how Oster is constantly emphasizing the ways in which Wilhelmine's memoirs were written with the benefit of hindsight and attribute a lot of correct opinions and emotions to her that the contemporary documentary evidence at least partially contradicts?
And how Oster is highly skeptical that Fritz's closest confidante knew that he wanted to escape in general, but had nooo idea about the concrete details of this particular plan?
And how Fritz was pawning jewelry that Wilhelmine and SD had given him, supposedly without telling them why he wanted it?
And how Wilhelmine claims she and SD had to destroy a bunch of letters, and Katte may have risked his life to make sure they got destroyed, NOT because they showed her personal involvement in the escape plan, but because of double-marriage scheming and trash-talking of FW? But now that the letters are destroyed, we don't know *what* they contained?
...Yeah.
Now, I'm willing to believe both Katte and Wilhelmine were reluctant conspirators. Especially Wilhelmine, who didn't have any prospect of escaping with him, and who would be punished, and, most of all, left behind, notwithstanding Fritz's optimism that the Hannovers will help make everything work out for her in the long run. And both Wilhelmine and Katte could probably see that this wasn't the most well-thought-out plan ever.
But did Wilhelmine try to help make it happen, give him her jewelry, etc? We'll never know, but none of the evidence we have is exactly inconsistent with that. It's not like I think she'd admit it in her memoirs, even after Fritz is king (and even if she wasn't writing under threat of torture, like Katte, her memoirs were started when FW was still king, remember), not after the plan failed catastrophically and even Fritz is regretting it.
Oh, and speaking of Katte risking his life over those letters, I meant to point out in the Oster thread that Oster reports that Katte stayed behind because he didn't think there was any danger of Fritz fleeing when he, Katte, had the money--and adds that this was a disastrous miscalculation that cost him his life, *and* that his reasoning was incomprehensible, since Fritz was telling Katte to meet up with him in the Hague, so Katte should have known lack of money wouldn't be an obstacle.
To which I'm like, "Yeah, so MAYBE that wasn't Katte's real reason??" This kind of thing is what I mean by not being impressed with Oster's scholarship: there are so many other reasons given in our sources, even in Wilhelmine's memoirs, for Katte's lingering that you can't just take the one from his interrogation (under threat of torture! where he has to deny that he had any reason to believe he knew his arrest was impending!), announce that his reasoning doesn't make any sense, and stop there.
Like, just out of sheer psychology, even if we had no other sources, I could come up with other reasons someone might choose to stay. Not least that if you stay, you at least haven't committed desertion and can hope to insist on your innocence (an argument that carried some weight during the trial and would have gotten him a ten-year imprisonment if not for FW), whereas if you flee, you *have* committed desertion, and you're in Berlin, not Wesel, and you might GET CAUGHT.
Seriously. That's not even taking into account the actual reasons given by Fritz and Wilhelmine for why he lingered, both of which are plausible if you consider the evidence external to them that Katte did know his arrest was coming and had to deny it.
That's *also* not taking into account the documentary evidence that he requested leave to go into the countryside and received it, but didn't get to use it in time to get out of Berlin before his arrest.
Oh, and Oster does something that I've seen other biographers do: quote Wilhelmine saying Katte was so indiscreet as to go around telling "the whole city" about the escape plan, and implicitly chide Katte for it, without recounting that the actual episode in her memoirs went like this:
Some courtiers: Hey, Wilhelmine, you know that Katte is telling everyone your brother wants to escape? Wilhelmine: Katte, how could you?! Katte: I never did! I only told Lovenorn, who's totally on our side. [He will later be the one who supposedly tells Katte his arrest is coming and he'd better get the hell out of Dodge, and Fritz will still be remembering him fondly and wanting to know how he's doing nine years later.]
Now, maybe Katte *was* indiscreet! I'm not absolving him just on his own word. But nobody, when citing this passage, ever seems to point out that even Wilhlelmine says he denied it. We simply have no way of knowing.
And if you think, well, obviously some people know Fritz is planning an escape and it involves Katte, so someone must have told someone something!...remember, Rottembourg in Madrid 2 years earlier knew Fritz planned to escape, and I totally believe Wilhelmine's account that Katte was running around telling everyone that the Crown Prince loved him and confided in him. That's how you act whether you're genuinely head over heels in reciprocated love or just exploiting a royal for all the favor you can get out of him while pretending to be in love with him.
It wouldn't have been that hard to put two and two together, even if Katte had kept totally mum about the escape (and I'm not saying he did).
So, yeah. I feel like a lot of reading between the lines needs to be done for this whole episode, given how everyone after the fact wants to disclaim any connection with the catastrophe.
Lol, I'm reminded of what I was reading immediately before I switched to Fritz: 4th century Athenian oratory, where as soon as the Peace of Philocrates was seen to have failed miserably, Athenian politicians were falling all over themselves to announce that they knew it was a bad idea from the beginning.
Yes, and it works both ways: when Kennedy was killed and for years became a shining idol, way more Americans recalled voting for him than ever did. Also, when I talked with my AP about the battle of Hochkirch he at first refused to believe everyone except for Fritz said making camp there was a terrible idea and that the Austrians would attack and cited just this phenomenon. My counter argument was that the early historians invested in the legend of Fritz the genius general had to resort to the story of the double agent spy giving Fritz false intel to explain his misjudgment there, and that it was far less popular to write "the King had made a mistake, and we pointed this out to him before the fact", not to mention risky in an absolute monarchy.
re: did Wilhelmine know more about the escape plan than she later admitted, given how it turned: FW certainly believed she did, and it would work with the need to destroy those letters and her giving Fritz jewelry to pawn. It would even work with the later "I sacrificed myself for his freedom" without mentioning Fritz told her not to re: the marriage, because while she can talk about the marriage, she wouldn't be able to talk about the earlier escape attempt, if she was involved - and if she helped him there, she certainly would have been willing to risk FW making her pay in the worst way for his, had Fritz succeeded, and it would have been a sacrifice. (Honestly, there's no way I can see FW allowing Wilhelmine to marry a Hannover afterwards. She'd have been extremely lucky if he married her to anyone at all, as opposed to do what he claimed he'd have done in the 1731 submission scene - shut her into into the worst prison he could find.)
This prospect is why I'm also not 100% sure she'd have done it. If she believed Fritz would otherwise die or commit suicide out of desperation over FW's treatment of him, then yes. But give up the brother who was her main source of affection, possibly forever, and face a future of becoming Dad's favourite punishment target, when there's still a chance that if Fritz holds out some years more, FW dies and Fritz becomes King? Not sure.
Re: why Katte remained in Berlin, Fontane is with you, as you might recall. He thinks Katte remained because of his knightly instincts and because he was just too busy to make a getaway in time.
Katte boasting of Fritz' favor: also ties with the part in his letter to his father about having had ambitions etc. Not to say this is what it was about for him with Fritz, but I doubt he was immune to the fact that this was the future King when they first became friends.
This prospect is why I'm also not 100% sure she'd have done it. If she believed Fritz would otherwise die or commit suicide out of desperation over FW's treatment of him, then yes. But give up the brother who was her main source of affection, possibly forever, and face a future of becoming Dad's favourite punishment target, when there's still a chance that if Fritz holds out some years more, FW dies and Fritz becomes King? Not sure.
Yeah, that's also why I'm not sure, and why I am sure she was a very reluctant conspirator. (I think I've said this before: his willingness to leave and her reluctance to let him go, I think *must* have fed into some kind of repressed and even subconscious mutual resentment after the fact, no matter how much they understood the other's motives.)
But as for dying: she does record that scene where Fritz tells her FW was trying to strangle him with a cord and had to be pried off him by (invisible and very brave) servants). So maybe?
Re: why Katte remained in Berlin, Fontane is with you, as you might recall. He thinks Katte remained because of his knightly instincts and because he was just too busy to make a getaway in time.
I absolutely remember. :) He was a victim of his knightly disposition. Fontane also thinks Mitchell's "on account of some girl he was fond of" can't be right, because it hasn't occurred to Fontane that "some girl" might be Wilhelmine. ;)
Katte boasting of Fritz' favor: also ties with the part in his letter to his father about having had ambitions etc.
Yep, I always connect those two things too. And while those letters can't be trusted, I have always believed, like you, that he was in no way immune to Fritz being the Crown Prince. Plus that other letter (the Puncta one, written by Müller), where Katte says Fritz had promised him great things someday when he was king (and thus Katte's death shows the vanity of human plans, etc., etc.).
Now, that letter *really* can't be trusted, but given who Katte's father and grandfather were, I imagine he would expect some kind of preferment as a matter of course, and that's not mutually exclusive with him having real feelings for Fritz. (Which I'm sure he did: the fact that he was repeatedly asking to talk to Fritz at Küstrin and was reassuring him that he didn't blame him tells me that, motives for religion and pleasing Dad and going to a "good death" aside, he actually cared about Fritz's feelings after his death.)
Btw, now that I've seen the exchanges between Fritz and AW in the 1730s, I'm more willing to believe in the existence of that letter that Peter Keith is supposed to have carried with him for 10 years, saying that Fritz will always be grateful and stating or implying that there will be rewards someday.
This is all fascinating! I do think Wilhelmine must have been a reluctant conspirator, if she was a conspirator. And I can totally see how, if she was, that could easily have turned into her memoir-as-therapy saying "It was totally a bad idea, see??"
Now, that letter *really* can't be trusted, but given who Katte's father and grandfather were, I imagine he would expect some kind of preferment as a matter of course, and that's not mutually exclusive with him having real feelings for Fritz.
Yeah, I mean, it's a pretty common thing with humans. It's hard or impossible to turn off what you know of someone's external situation, but you can fall in love with someone at the same time as you are perfectly aware that person is the Crown Prince and will someday be King.
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timeasmymeasure
Re: Wilhelmine's Memoirs
Date: 2020-09-27 03:42 pm (UTC)Remember Katte's interrogation, which greatly emphasizes how he tried to talk Fritz out of it and throw up lots of obstacles, and never ever actually encouraged it except in order to prevent it from happening? And how none of us actually believe that's the whole story? Especially given that 1) he wanted to stay in England permanently just a year before, 2) he totally admitted he would have gone if Fritz had gone?
And you know how Oster is constantly emphasizing the ways in which Wilhelmine's memoirs were written with the benefit of hindsight and attribute a lot of correct opinions and emotions to her that the contemporary documentary evidence at least partially contradicts?
And how Oster is highly skeptical that Fritz's closest confidante knew that he wanted to escape in general, but had nooo idea about the concrete details of this particular plan?
And how Fritz was pawning jewelry that Wilhelmine and SD had given him, supposedly without telling them why he wanted it?
And how Wilhelmine claims she and SD had to destroy a bunch of letters, and Katte may have risked his life to make sure they got destroyed, NOT because they showed her personal involvement in the escape plan, but because of double-marriage scheming and trash-talking of FW? But now that the letters are destroyed, we don't know *what* they contained?
...Yeah.
Now, I'm willing to believe both Katte and Wilhelmine were reluctant conspirators. Especially Wilhelmine, who didn't have any prospect of escaping with him, and who would be punished, and, most of all, left behind, notwithstanding Fritz's optimism that the Hannovers will help make everything work out for her in the long run. And both Wilhelmine and Katte could probably see that this wasn't the most well-thought-out plan ever.
But did Wilhelmine try to help make it happen, give him her jewelry, etc? We'll never know, but none of the evidence we have is exactly inconsistent with that. It's not like I think she'd admit it in her memoirs, even after Fritz is king (and even if she wasn't writing under threat of torture, like Katte, her memoirs were started when FW was still king, remember), not after the plan failed catastrophically and even Fritz is regretting it.
Oh, and speaking of Katte risking his life over those letters, I meant to point out in the Oster thread that Oster reports that Katte stayed behind because he didn't think there was any danger of Fritz fleeing when he, Katte, had the money--and adds that this was a disastrous miscalculation that cost him his life, *and* that his reasoning was incomprehensible, since Fritz was telling Katte to meet up with him in the Hague, so Katte should have known lack of money wouldn't be an obstacle.
To which I'm like, "Yeah, so MAYBE that wasn't Katte's real reason??" This kind of thing is what I mean by not being impressed with Oster's scholarship: there are so many other reasons given in our sources, even in Wilhelmine's memoirs, for Katte's lingering that you can't just take the one from his interrogation (under threat of torture! where he has to deny that he had any reason to believe he knew his arrest was impending!), announce that his reasoning doesn't make any sense, and stop there.
Like, just out of sheer psychology, even if we had no other sources, I could come up with other reasons someone might choose to stay. Not least that if you stay, you at least haven't committed desertion and can hope to insist on your innocence (an argument that carried some weight during the trial and would have gotten him a ten-year imprisonment if not for FW), whereas if you flee, you *have* committed desertion, and you're in Berlin, not Wesel, and you might GET CAUGHT.
Seriously. That's not even taking into account the actual reasons given by Fritz and Wilhelmine for why he lingered, both of which are plausible if you consider the evidence external to them that Katte did know his arrest was coming and had to deny it.
That's *also* not taking into account the documentary evidence that he requested leave to go into the countryside and received it, but didn't get to use it in time to get out of Berlin before his arrest.
Oh, and Oster does something that I've seen other biographers do: quote Wilhelmine saying Katte was so indiscreet as to go around telling "the whole city" about the escape plan, and implicitly chide Katte for it, without recounting that the actual episode in her memoirs went like this:
Some courtiers: Hey, Wilhelmine, you know that Katte is telling everyone your brother wants to escape?
Wilhelmine: Katte, how could you?!
Katte: I never did! I only told Lovenorn, who's totally on our side. [He will later be the one who supposedly tells Katte his arrest is coming and he'd better get the hell out of Dodge, and Fritz will still be remembering him fondly and wanting to know how he's doing nine years later.]
Now, maybe Katte *was* indiscreet! I'm not absolving him just on his own word. But nobody, when citing this passage, ever seems to point out that even Wilhlelmine says he denied it. We simply have no way of knowing.
And if you think, well, obviously some people know Fritz is planning an escape and it involves Katte, so someone must have told someone something!...remember, Rottembourg in Madrid 2 years earlier knew Fritz planned to escape, and I totally believe Wilhelmine's account that Katte was running around telling everyone that the Crown Prince loved him and confided in him. That's how you act whether you're genuinely head over heels in reciprocated love or just exploiting a royal for all the favor you can get out of him while pretending to be in love with him.
It wouldn't have been that hard to put two and two together, even if Katte had kept totally mum about the escape (and I'm not saying he did).
So, yeah. I feel like a lot of reading between the lines needs to be done for this whole episode, given how everyone after the fact wants to disclaim any connection with the catastrophe.
Lol, I'm reminded of what I was reading immediately before I switched to Fritz: 4th century Athenian oratory, where as soon as the Peace of Philocrates was seen to have failed miserably, Athenian politicians were falling all over themselves to announce that they knew it was a bad idea from the beginning.
Re: Wilhelmine's Memoirs
Date: 2020-09-28 01:54 pm (UTC)re: did Wilhelmine know more about the escape plan than she later admitted, given how it turned: FW certainly believed she did, and it would work with the need to destroy those letters and her giving Fritz jewelry to pawn. It would even work with the later "I sacrificed myself for his freedom" without mentioning Fritz told her not to re: the marriage, because while she can talk about the marriage, she wouldn't be able to talk about the earlier escape attempt, if she was involved - and if she helped him there, she certainly would have been willing to risk FW making her pay in the worst way for his, had Fritz succeeded, and it would have been a sacrifice. (Honestly, there's no way I can see FW allowing Wilhelmine to marry a Hannover afterwards. She'd have been extremely lucky if he married her to anyone at all, as opposed to do what he claimed he'd have done in the 1731 submission scene - shut her into into the worst prison he could find.)
This prospect is why I'm also not 100% sure she'd have done it. If she believed Fritz would otherwise die or commit suicide out of desperation over FW's treatment of him, then yes. But give up the brother who was her main source of affection, possibly forever, and face a future of becoming Dad's favourite punishment target, when there's still a chance that if Fritz holds out some years more, FW dies and Fritz becomes King? Not sure.
Re: why Katte remained in Berlin, Fontane is with you, as you might recall. He thinks Katte remained because of his knightly instincts and because he was just too busy to make a getaway in time.
Katte boasting of Fritz' favor: also ties with the part in his letter to his father about having had ambitions etc. Not to say this is what it was about for him with Fritz, but I doubt he was immune to the fact that this was the future King when they first became friends.
Re: Wilhelmine's Memoirs
Date: 2020-09-28 03:28 pm (UTC)Yeah, that's also why I'm not sure, and why I am sure she was a very reluctant conspirator. (I think I've said this before: his willingness to leave and her reluctance to let him go, I think *must* have fed into some kind of repressed and even subconscious mutual resentment after the fact, no matter how much they understood the other's motives.)
But as for dying: she does record that scene where Fritz tells her FW was trying to strangle him with a cord and had to be pried off him by (invisible and very brave) servants). So maybe?
Re: why Katte remained in Berlin, Fontane is with you, as you might recall. He thinks Katte remained because of his knightly instincts and because he was just too busy to make a getaway in time.
I absolutely remember. :) He was a victim of his knightly disposition. Fontane also thinks Mitchell's "on account of some girl he was fond of" can't be right, because it hasn't occurred to Fontane that "some girl" might be Wilhelmine. ;)
Katte boasting of Fritz' favor: also ties with the part in his letter to his father about having had ambitions etc.
Yep, I always connect those two things too. And while those letters can't be trusted, I have always believed, like you, that he was in no way immune to Fritz being the Crown Prince. Plus that other letter (the Puncta one, written by Müller), where Katte says Fritz had promised him great things someday when he was king (and thus Katte's death shows the vanity of human plans, etc., etc.).
Now, that letter *really* can't be trusted, but given who Katte's father and grandfather were, I imagine he would expect some kind of preferment as a matter of course, and that's not mutually exclusive with him having real feelings for Fritz. (Which I'm sure he did: the fact that he was repeatedly asking to talk to Fritz at Küstrin and was reassuring him that he didn't blame him tells me that, motives for religion and pleasing Dad and going to a "good death" aside, he actually cared about Fritz's feelings after his death.)
Btw, now that I've seen the exchanges between Fritz and AW in the 1730s, I'm more willing to believe in the existence of that letter that Peter Keith is supposed to have carried with him for 10 years, saying that Fritz will always be grateful and stating or implying that there will be rewards someday.
Re: Wilhelmine's Memoirs
Date: 2020-10-02 04:46 am (UTC)Now, that letter *really* can't be trusted, but given who Katte's father and grandfather were, I imagine he would expect some kind of preferment as a matter of course, and that's not mutually exclusive with him having real feelings for Fritz.
Yeah, I mean, it's a pretty common thing with humans. It's hard or impossible to turn off what you know of someone's external situation, but you can fall in love with someone at the same time as you are perfectly aware that person is the Crown Prince and will someday be King.