Oooh, I did not know this. Interesting! Given how complicated the actual story is (Fritz in Sinsheim, Keith in Wesel, Katte in Berlin, I can see why it got simplified over time).
Same here, especially given how much of the retelling must have been by word of mouth, and without any ability to look up sources.
Unless there is a big successful coverup here, I have to assume Nicolai, Peter Keith's son, Wilhelmine, and Catt are all wrong, and that a story was going around to the effect that Peter was warned. After all, it's possible Fritz did send the letter; it's just that Peter was already gone when he did..
The fascinating thing is that they must have at least two different sources.
Nicolai: v. Hertefeld, who has it from his father, who says he has it from Peter. Keith Jr: Peter (and/or his mother, given he was a boy when Peter died, so possibly like with the Hertefelds a retelling of a retelling.
Wilhelmine: Can't be Peter, certainly not in a document written from 1739 - 1744, thus must be Fritz, possibly also Pöllnitz providing court gossip.
Catt: probably Fritz. Though possibly also other people, see his habit of putting stories into Fritz' mouth he heard elsewhere.
Voltaire: most likely Fritz, possibly also some gossip among his fellow table-rounders, and yes, I'm sure you're right and he's confusing the two Keith brothers recalling the story decades later. (Am also reminded how the "Sachsens Glanz und Preußens Gloria" scriptwriters and/or their nineteenth century Polish novel source simplified their lives by making Katte and both Keith brothers into the same character.)
I don't believe in a massive cover-up for the simple reason that Mylius must know that FW is on his way to Wesel and will be there in furious person, and it's just too risky. What if random soldier X mentions Lieutenant Keith left on a different date?
Is it possible Peter told the story this way? To make it look like, "I only left because Fritz said to! To save my life!"
Very plausible, since he was likely feeling defensive for not having become a dead lion, but that doesn't explain Wilhelmine whom he certainly hasn't talked to at the point of her writing since the late 1720s. (If they talked then at all.)
Current speculation: Fritz did write a note, and since Peter managed to escaped, he naturally assumed this note saved Peter's life, was glad about it, and mentioned this in his own retellings to Wilhelmine etc. By the time Peter returned to Berlin, the story was firmly established, and he was both touched that Fritz wrote to begin with (since that proved at least in the past, Fritz had cared), and wise enough not to contradict the King, especially if he was also feeling defensive due to the implicit Katte comparison everyone must have been making. So he included the note into his own version.
I don't believe in a massive cover-up for the simple reason that Mylius must know that FW is on his way to Wesel and will be there in furious person, and it's just too risky. What if random soldier X mentions Lieutenant Keith left on a different date?
Exactly my thinking.
Am also reminded how the "Sachsens Glanz und Preußens Gloria" scriptwriters and/or their nineteenth century Polish novel source simplified their lives by making Katte and both Keith brothers into the same character.
Yep, I was thinking of that too. It's a pretty complex story. (I still want to know where the name Robert for the brother originated. felis? ;) )
Keith Jr: Peter (and/or his mother, given he was a boy when Peter died, so possibly like with the Hertefelds a retelling of a retelling.
Agreed, I've always assumed that even if Peter told the story when the kids were young, their actual memories of it (in 1820!) were based on variants they heard later. It's a PITY a certain Academy secretary felt the need to gloss over the account in the memoirs!
Current speculation: Fritz did write a note, and since Peter managed to escaped, he naturally assumed this note saved Peter's life, was glad about it, and mentioned this in his own retellings to Wilhelmine etc.
This has been my theory for a long time (it might even be in the Rheinsberg textual criticism posts), and this...
By the time Peter returned to Berlin, the story was firmly established, and he was both touched that Fritz wrote to begin with (since that proved at least in the past, Fritz had cared), and wise enough not to contradict the King, especially if he was also feeling defensive due to the implicit Katte comparison everyone must have been making. So he included the note into his own version.
...is a perfect explanation for the rest! SOLD. :)
ETA: Fritz did write a note, and since Peter managed to escaped, he naturally assumed this note saved Peter's life, was glad about it, and mentioned this in his own retellings to Wilhelmine etc.
It occurs to me that Fritz might have spent 10 years believing his note saved Peter, telling everyone that, only found out otherwise in 1740 when he went through the archives, and didn't want to change his story.
Speaking of people being only human, I've always assumed that even if Peter was just following Fritz's orders when he deserted, and even if Fritz *didn't* want him executed in addition to, or even instead of, Katte, Fritz would only be human if he had some resentment after hearing about Peter living for ten years in freedom (even with FW after him) while he was put through the Küstrin regimen and Katte was killed. Of course, I think the bigger problem is Fritz drank the Prussian kool-aid in the 1730s, but I think we have to assume everyone resents everyone at least a little in this story. :(
It's a PITY a certain Academy secretary felt the need to gloss over the account in the memoirs!
It's a pity we don't have the memoirs themselves. Along with a print out of AW's account of his youthful life. :)
It occurs to me that Fritz might have spent 10 years believing his note saved Peter, telling everyone that, only found out otherwise in 1740 when he went through the archives, and didn't want to change his story.
Two words: Quintus Icilius.
I think we have to assume everyone resents everyone at least a little in this story.
Well, yes. Which is why I nominated them at [Bad username or unknown identity: unsent letters]; letters are good for venting. :) More seriously, it must have been extra hard on them because having mixed feelings about a loved one was so not the done thing in this era. It's funny if it's contemporaries wondering how Voltaire and Fritz can cure and praise each other within two breaths, but it's heartbreaking if it's Fritz and Wilhelmine, or Fritz and Peter Keith, unable to to admit that they have these particular resentments. (I think that's why Wilhelmine pounces so on the "he doesn't love me anymore!" theory in her memoirs. That, she can complain about. "I resent that he was able to leave me in hell with Mom and Dad", otoh? Not so much. And Fritz can complain about Erlangen journalists, Austrian marriages for female Marwitzes and lunch with MT, but he can't say "you should have supported my wish to escape, you who knew better than anyone how terrible every day there was for me". As for Peter, he has the additional problem that he's a subject and Fritz is a King and he can't say anything to anyone other than his wife without having to be aware it could get back to Fritz sooner or later.
And poor Katte is dead, so he can't resent or not resent anyone, and while he was alive he evidently tried to repress resentment sensations by falling back on the faith of his childhood and by telling himself at least Fritz would live. But if FW hadn't intervened and he had spent those ten years in prison, well....
It's a pity we don't have the memoirs themselves. Along with a print out of AW's account of his youthful life. :)
Well, yes! But the second one we still might get someday, and the first one is presumably lost forever...but Formey's work survives and the author made a choice for which I reserve the right to hold a grudge!
So one thing that occurs to me is that I've been assuming Peter's memoirs disappeared before 1820 and the son didn't have access to them. I *think* Koser also comments that this letter is not worth anything as evidence, and I suspect he's thinking primarily of the "Sauvez-vous" part, since he calls that out in his text as a oft-repeated historical impossibility. Yeah, he calls it "unerheblich"--insignificant, unimportant.
But...what if Peter stuck to the "Sauvez-vous" story even in his memoirs?
Oh, no, wait, son says Peter was warned that Fritz had been arrested, nothing about a note from Fritz. That's also the story in Wilhelmine: specifically that a page from the house of Anhalt (wonder where she got that detail) warned Peter. Nothing about a note. Hmm. Fritz warning Peter is in Nicolai (via Hertefeld) and Catt (via who knows).
So you know what I'm thinking? I'm thinking we have another simplification here. See, after Peter spent several days in the Hague, someone must have warned him that FW was after him, and that was when he fled to Chesterfield's house. Yeah, Seckendorff, writing August 30, says Peter first went to the guy who used to be an envoy to Berlin (someone Peter presumably knew when the guy was stationed in Berlin), and then Peter got a report that the Prussians were after him, and then he fled to Chesterfield. And I think Wilhelmine and the son are conflating that story with his escape from Wesel, and having him go straight from Wesel to Chesterfield.
So possibly the memoirs are still lost by 1820, but there is a story going around, possibly put forth by Peter himself, according to which Peter left Prussia only because he was warned that someone was after him. And his son and Wilhelmine might have conflated the two escapes (interestingly, she doesn't mention her brother's role in warning him, suggesting that maybe he *didn't* tell her this story after all, and thus maybe not Catt).
Btw, Wilhelmine has Peter pretending to go after a deserter; the son has him trying out his new horse. Nicolai's story of a leisurely ride matches Peter's son's more closely, so maybe that was the story Peter told, and Wilhelmine misremembered or got a slightly different variant.
Okay, so I had been wondering when Seckendorff reports Peter missing. On August 14, Seckendorf's in Wesel with FW, and he has a several-page write-up in Forster (volume 3. starting on page 1) that I don't have time to plod through, but he mentions "Katt und Keith" as accomplices, and says--and this is odd--that of the "letzteren" know one knows anything about where he might be, but the "der erste" has gone to Nijmegen and Colonel Moulin has been sent after him to try to arrest him. Now Wilhelmine, Peter's son, *and* the official Mylius report to FW during the trial (the most reliable of all sources) all say Moulin went after Peter in the Hague, thus causing him to flee to Chesterfield. And Nijmegen is just across the Dutch border from Wesel (man, I am learning so much geography in this fandom). So Seckendorff must be swapping Katt and Keith (and remember, cahn, that these would have been pronounced much more similarly in German of the time: both one-syllable words ending in a 't' sound).
So I still don't know where Wilhelmine and Catt got their stories, but while they agree on Peter being warned, they don't agree on Fritz warning him; that's Nicolai and Catt.
Well, yes. Which is why I nominated them at [Bad username or unknown identity: unsent letters]; letters are good for venting. :)
Indeed, and I'm sorry no one is in a position to join you and request them! What can I say, we can't keep up with you. ;)
It's funny if it's contemporaries wondering how Voltaire and Fritz can cure and praise each other within two breaths, but it's heartbreaking if it's Fritz and Wilhelmine, or Fritz and Peter Keith, unable to to admit that they have these particular resentments.
I knooooow.
while he was alive he evidently tried to repress resentment sensations by falling back on the faith of his childhood
Yeah, it's so clear from the write-up that he's clinging to religion as a way of managing his emotions (fear as much as resentment) that even when I was headcanoning it as a display for FW's benefit, I was assuming he was getting *some* emotional comfort from it. Even if just the hymn-singing and something to focus on that wasn't imminent death.
But if FW hadn't intervened and he had spent those ten years in prison, well....
Yeeahh. Especially if he then ends up with a guilt-ridden and Kool-aid-drinking Fritz who is not at all what he expected, and is also more traumatized than an equally traumatized Katte is equipped to deal with.
So you know what I'm thinking? I'm thinking we have another simplification here.
Having gone through Seckendorf's report, I'm thinking you're right. Also, the fact that Peter took the time to have lunch or dinner with Keppel (the former Dutch resident in Berlin, who, however, seems to have been a Prussian citizen*, since Seckendorff mentions later FW is pissed off with "General Keppel for aiding Keith") would indicate he's at this point not yet aware that FW is after him and he has to fear for his life.
*Like Stratemann was actually a Prussian citizen but appointed envoy by the Duke of Braunschweig nonetheless.
I'm curious what you make of other details Hertefeld-via-Nicolai gives for the escape plan, but I'll fait for your comment on this before I ask.
Argh, I know you've been waiting, and I was planning on getting to it today! But then unexpected things happened, and I got unexpectedly revved up about one of the two planned meetings, and if I want to sleep, I think I have to put this off until tomorrow. But tomorrow if all goes well!
Uggggh. Yeah, I think even in this day and age where mixed feelings about people are a lot more acceptable and talked about, it's often hard to personally verbalize/admit to those sorts of mixed feelings about someone one really loves, especially if one is a person who hasn't had a lot of practice in self-analysis in general. Then add in an era where it really wasn't acceptable or talked about, and...
That makes a lot of sense about Fritz and Wilhelmine :(
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
timeasmymeasure
Sauvez-Vous!
Date: 2021-02-25 06:03 am (UTC)Same here, especially given how much of the retelling must have been by word of mouth, and without any ability to look up sources.
Unless there is a big successful coverup here, I have to assume Nicolai, Peter Keith's son, Wilhelmine, and Catt are all wrong, and that a story was going around to the effect that Peter was warned. After all, it's possible Fritz did send the letter; it's just that Peter was already gone when he did..
The fascinating thing is that they must have at least two different sources.
Nicolai: v. Hertefeld, who has it from his father, who says he has it from Peter.
Keith Jr: Peter (and/or his mother, given he was a boy when Peter died, so possibly like with the Hertefelds a retelling of a retelling.
Wilhelmine: Can't be Peter, certainly not in a document written from 1739 - 1744, thus must be Fritz, possibly also Pöllnitz providing court gossip.
Catt: probably Fritz. Though possibly also other people, see his habit of putting stories into Fritz' mouth he heard elsewhere.
Voltaire: most likely Fritz, possibly also some gossip among his fellow table-rounders, and yes, I'm sure you're right and he's confusing the two Keith brothers recalling the story decades later. (Am also reminded how the "Sachsens Glanz und Preußens Gloria" scriptwriters and/or their nineteenth century Polish novel source simplified their lives by making Katte and both Keith brothers into the same character.)
I don't believe in a massive cover-up for the simple reason that Mylius must know that FW is on his way to Wesel and will be there in furious person, and it's just too risky. What if random soldier X mentions Lieutenant Keith left on a different date?
Is it possible Peter told the story this way? To make it look like, "I only left because Fritz said to! To save my life!"
Very plausible, since he was likely feeling defensive for not having become a dead lion, but that doesn't explain Wilhelmine whom he certainly hasn't talked to at the point of her writing since the late 1720s. (If they talked then at all.)
Current speculation: Fritz did write a note, and since Peter managed to escaped, he naturally assumed this note saved Peter's life, was glad about it, and mentioned this in his own retellings to Wilhelmine etc. By the time Peter returned to Berlin, the story was firmly established, and he was both touched that Fritz wrote to begin with (since that proved at least in the past, Fritz had cared), and wise enough not to contradict the King, especially if he was also feeling defensive due to the implicit Katte comparison everyone must have been making. So he included the note into his own version.
Re: Sauvez-Vous!
Date: 2021-02-25 12:51 pm (UTC)Exactly my thinking.
Am also reminded how the "Sachsens Glanz und Preußens Gloria" scriptwriters and/or their nineteenth century Polish novel source simplified their lives by making Katte and both Keith brothers into the same character.
Yep, I was thinking of that too. It's a pretty complex story. (I still want to know where the name Robert for the brother originated.
Keith Jr: Peter (and/or his mother, given he was a boy when Peter died, so possibly like with the Hertefelds a retelling of a retelling.
Agreed, I've always assumed that even if Peter told the story when the kids were young, their actual memories of it (in 1820!) were based on variants they heard later. It's a PITY a certain Academy secretary felt the need to gloss over the account in the memoirs!
Current speculation: Fritz did write a note, and since Peter managed to escaped, he naturally assumed this note saved Peter's life, was glad about it, and mentioned this in his own retellings to Wilhelmine etc.
This has been my theory for a long time (it might even be in the Rheinsberg textual criticism posts), and this...
By the time Peter returned to Berlin, the story was firmly established, and he was both touched that Fritz wrote to begin with (since that proved at least in the past, Fritz had cared), and wise enough not to contradict the King, especially if he was also feeling defensive due to the implicit Katte comparison everyone must have been making. So he included the note into his own version.
...is a perfect explanation for the rest! SOLD. :)
ETA: Fritz did write a note, and since Peter managed to escaped, he naturally assumed this note saved Peter's life, was glad about it, and mentioned this in his own retellings to Wilhelmine etc.
It occurs to me that Fritz might have spent 10 years believing his note saved Peter, telling everyone that, only found out otherwise in 1740 when he went through the archives, and didn't want to change his story.
Speaking of people being only human, I've always assumed that even if Peter was just following Fritz's orders when he deserted, and even if Fritz *didn't* want him executed in addition to, or even instead of, Katte, Fritz would only be human if he had some resentment after hearing about Peter living for ten years in freedom (even with FW after him) while he was put through the Küstrin regimen and Katte was killed. Of course, I think the bigger problem is Fritz drank the Prussian kool-aid in the 1730s, but I think we have to assume everyone resents everyone at least a little in this story. :(
Re: Sauvez-Vous!
Date: 2021-02-25 05:29 pm (UTC)It's a pity we don't have the memoirs themselves. Along with a print out of AW's account of his youthful life. :)
It occurs to me that Fritz might have spent 10 years believing his note saved Peter, telling everyone that, only found out otherwise in 1740 when he went through the archives, and didn't want to change his story.
Two words: Quintus Icilius.
I think we have to assume everyone resents everyone at least a little in this story.
Well, yes. Which is why I nominated them at [Bad username or unknown identity: unsent letters]; letters are good for venting. :) More seriously, it must have been extra hard on them because having mixed feelings about a loved one was so not the done thing in this era. It's funny if it's contemporaries wondering how Voltaire and Fritz can cure and praise each other within two breaths, but it's heartbreaking if it's Fritz and Wilhelmine, or Fritz and Peter Keith, unable to to admit that they have these particular resentments. (I think that's why Wilhelmine pounces so on the "he doesn't love me anymore!" theory in her memoirs. That, she can complain about. "I resent that he was able to leave me in hell with Mom and Dad", otoh? Not so much. And Fritz can complain about Erlangen journalists, Austrian marriages for female Marwitzes and lunch with MT, but he can't say "you should have supported my wish to escape, you who knew better than anyone how terrible every day there was for me". As for Peter, he has the additional problem that he's a subject and Fritz is a King and he can't say anything to anyone other than his wife without having to be aware it could get back to Fritz sooner or later.
And poor Katte is dead, so he can't resent or not resent anyone, and while he was alive he evidently tried to repress resentment sensations by falling back on the faith of his childhood and by telling himself at least Fritz would live. But if FW hadn't intervened and he had spent those ten years in prison, well....
Re: Sauvez-Vous!
Date: 2021-02-26 12:59 am (UTC)Well, yes! But the second one we still might get someday, and the first one is presumably lost forever...but Formey's work survives and the author made a choice for which I reserve the right to hold a grudge!
So one thing that occurs to me is that I've been assuming Peter's memoirs disappeared before 1820 and the son didn't have access to them. I *think* Koser also comments that this letter is not worth anything as evidence, and I suspect he's thinking primarily of the "Sauvez-vous" part, since he calls that out in his text as a oft-repeated historical impossibility. Yeah, he calls it "unerheblich"--insignificant, unimportant.
But...what if Peter stuck to the "Sauvez-vous" story even in his memoirs?
Oh, no, wait, son says Peter was warned that Fritz had been arrested, nothing about a note from Fritz. That's also the story in Wilhelmine: specifically that a page from the house of Anhalt (wonder where she got that detail) warned Peter. Nothing about a note. Hmm. Fritz warning Peter is in Nicolai (via Hertefeld) and Catt (via who knows).
So you know what I'm thinking? I'm thinking we have another simplification here. See, after Peter spent several days in the Hague, someone must have warned him that FW was after him, and that was when he fled to Chesterfield's house. Yeah, Seckendorff, writing August 30, says Peter first went to the guy who used to be an envoy to Berlin (someone Peter presumably knew when the guy was stationed in Berlin), and then Peter got a report that the Prussians were after him, and then he fled to Chesterfield. And I think Wilhelmine and the son are conflating that story with his escape from Wesel, and having him go straight from Wesel to Chesterfield.
So possibly the memoirs are still lost by 1820, but there is a story going around, possibly put forth by Peter himself, according to which Peter left Prussia only because he was warned that someone was after him. And his son and Wilhelmine might have conflated the two escapes (interestingly, she doesn't mention her brother's role in warning him, suggesting that maybe he *didn't* tell her this story after all, and thus maybe not Catt).
Btw, Wilhelmine has Peter pretending to go after a deserter; the son has him trying out his new horse. Nicolai's story of a leisurely ride matches Peter's son's more closely, so maybe that was the story Peter told, and Wilhelmine misremembered or got a slightly different variant.
Okay, so I had been wondering when Seckendorff reports Peter missing. On August 14, Seckendorf's in Wesel with FW, and he has a several-page write-up in Forster (volume 3. starting on page 1) that I don't have time to plod through, but he mentions "Katt und Keith" as accomplices, and says--and this is odd--that of the "letzteren" know one knows anything about where he might be, but the "der erste" has gone to Nijmegen and Colonel Moulin has been sent after him to try to arrest him. Now Wilhelmine, Peter's son, *and* the official Mylius report to FW during the trial (the most reliable of all sources) all say Moulin went after Peter in the Hague, thus causing him to flee to Chesterfield. And Nijmegen is just across the Dutch border from Wesel (man, I am learning so much geography in this fandom). So Seckendorff must be swapping Katt and Keith (and remember,
So I still don't know where Wilhelmine and Catt got their stories, but while they agree on Peter being warned, they don't agree on Fritz warning him; that's Nicolai and Catt.
Two words: Quintus Icilius.
I died.
Well, yes. Which is why I nominated them at [Bad username or unknown identity: unsent letters]; letters are good for venting. :)
Indeed, and I'm sorry no one is in a position to join you and request them! What can I say, we can't keep up with you. ;)
It's funny if it's contemporaries wondering how Voltaire and Fritz can cure and praise each other within two breaths, but it's heartbreaking if it's Fritz and Wilhelmine, or Fritz and Peter Keith, unable to to admit that they have these particular resentments.
I knooooow.
while he was alive he evidently tried to repress resentment sensations by falling back on the faith of his childhood
Yeah, it's so clear from the write-up that he's clinging to religion as a way of managing his emotions (fear as much as resentment) that even when I was headcanoning it as a display for FW's benefit, I was assuming he was getting *some* emotional comfort from it. Even if just the hymn-singing and something to focus on that wasn't imminent death.
But if FW hadn't intervened and he had spent those ten years in prison, well....
Yeeahh. Especially if he then ends up with a guilt-ridden and Kool-aid-drinking Fritz who is not at all what he expected, and is also more traumatized than an equally traumatized Katte is equipped to deal with.
FIX-IT FOR EVERYONE.
Re: Sauvez-Vous!
Date: 2021-02-26 07:14 am (UTC)Having gone through Seckendorf's report, I'm thinking you're right. Also, the fact that Peter took the time to have lunch or dinner with Keppel (the former Dutch resident in Berlin, who, however, seems to have been a Prussian citizen*, since Seckendorff mentions later FW is pissed off with "General Keppel for aiding Keith") would indicate he's at this point not yet aware that FW is after him and he has to fear for his life.
*Like Stratemann was actually a Prussian citizen but appointed envoy by the Duke of Braunschweig nonetheless.
I'm curious what you make of other details Hertefeld-via-Nicolai gives for the escape plan, but I'll fait for your comment on this before I ask.
Re: Sauvez-Vous!
Date: 2021-02-26 09:48 pm (UTC)Re: Sauvez-Vous!
Date: 2021-02-26 06:05 am (UTC)That makes a lot of sense about Fritz and Wilhelmine :(