Definitely sounds like it, yeah. I only knew bits and pieces and the general gist of Gundling's story, so a lot of the details were new to me, including the kidnapping by Old Dessauer and the burial circumstances. Damn.
Re: Book Review II: Der König und sein Narr (Novel and Film)
Re: burial circumstances, having now read the non-fiction book on Gundling, I can tell you that this is another case - like Oncker with the Knyphausen-derived FW quote about Fritz - of 19th and early 20th century historians refusing to accept reality if it didn't fit with their idea of a character. For lo and behold, this happened:
David Fassmann in his Gundling-Mocking diatribe, among many other things: The King buried him in a barrel of wine.
Wilhelmine, in a letter to her sister Friederike (who was already married to Ansbach) from 1731: "The King had him buried in his beautiful robe and his gigantic wig in a barrel. He himself accompagnied the body till Borndstädt, where (Gundling) was buried."
Later Hohenzollern fan historians: Fassmann was a satirist and Wilhelmine is a Dad-hating liar. No way super Christian Protestant FW would have made a mockery of a funeral like that, having Gundling buried in in a wine barrel, letting his arch enemy hold the taunting burial speech. No way!
So we get from Louis Schneider, 1867, writing an essay "Ist Gundling in einem Weinfasse begraben worden?" to the Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (frequent wiki source, though not for the Gundling entry) from 1878 claiming that the doubts as to whether the mocking inscriptions on Gundlings coffin really were put there", to the Neue Deutsche Biographie from 1966 declaring that "especially the infamous burial of Gundling in a barrel of wine can't have happened in this form".
THEN, someone has the bright idea of checking for records of the people professionally concerned with burials, to wit, the clergy. And lo! In the archive of the Franckesche Stiftungen in Halle, there's a letter from Potsdam Reverend Johann Heinrich Schubert, written only five days after Gundling's burial. Which not only backs up the wine barrel tale 100% but also proves poor Gundling in his dying days knew FW wouldn't even let him be buried in peace. Writes Schubert: Poor Gundling has told me among many sighs and lamentations how he has been abused, and lamented especially that due to his distress over the fact he would be buried in a barrel with such an inscription could not properly collect himself. (For to face his death calmly, that is.) (Remember, that barrel with the inscription had to stand in the same room with the dying man.) Continues Reverend Schubert:
On the 8th of this month (April) I visited him, and departed from him rather sadly because of this matter. R(ex) learns of this and questions me on the 9th, why I went so sadly from Gundling? I replied that I regretted very much being unable to soothe the man's distress in his soul, and was begging R(ex) most humbly to have pity in the poor soul and give (Gundling) the assurance that he would be buried like other people. But alas! This petition has been received most uncharitably.
There are other documents from clergymen, too, because originally FW had demanded one of them hold the funeral. Five Lutheran Pastors (Gundling was originally from Nuremberg and thus not a Calvinist) teamed up, led by Pfarrer Schultze, Schubert the letter writer, and the preacher from St. Nikolai (which was the parish where Gundling would be buried), and decided to "rather suffer everything" than obey FW's instruction to participate in such a funeral. They told FW they'd be happy to bless and preach over Gundling's coffin as long as it was a proper coffin, as every Christian had a right to, not a wine barrel. FW then threatened that he'd get the Calvinist clergy to do it instead, but the Lutherans didn't back down, and so it turned out FW had bluffed, because the Calvinists refused to go along with this horrible mockery of a funeral, either. FW then had a colonel tell the clergymen "Wollen die Priester nicht mitgehen u(nd) haben Bedenken, so mögen sie zu hause bleiben."
Not having a preacher for the funeral rites, he then told Fassmann to do it.
Later historians: FW WOULD NEVER!
Re: Book Review II: Der König und sein Narr (Novel and Film)
No way super Christian Protestant FW would have made a mockery of a funeral like that
To be honest, my thoughts took a similar direction - not as emphatically of course, but I did wonder how FW reconciled such a mockery of a funeral with his faith, going against all the preachers to boot. Schubert's report is just depressing in the relentlessness it depicts; or as you so chillingly put it: the "systematic destruction of a human being" until his last breath (and even after).
But hey, I had no idea Gundling was buried in Bornstedt! I've visited both the church and the graveyard and remember Lenné's grave for example, but not Grundling's. ... aha, googling tells me he was actually buried inside the church and I definitely missed the plate that was initially put over his grave and is now mounted on a wall.
And I see that Manger was buried there as well (outside), as was De Catt (whose grave doesn't exist anymore, so there's only a commemorative plaque).
Re: Book Review II: Der König und sein Narr (Novel and Film)
Ah, thank you for linking the plate! Sabrow (the biographer) mentions it, but the black and white photo in the book doesn't show it as well. The two figures on each side are a hare and Athena/Minerva, which sums up Gundling's double existence, for the hare is an allusion to the 18th century term "haselieren" for "playing the fool", while Minerva of course is the goddess of wisdom. Sabrow's book otherwise offers a bit more light for Gundling, in that he managed to continue his life as a scholar - he had an enormous output on books written during those years which is one of the reasons why Sabrow doubts his alcoholic input was actually more than what FW, Grumbkow and Seckendorff drank, because having read the books, he says they demanded an enormous amount on focus and concentration, as a great deal is original research work. And while FW made him head of the acedemy to humiliate the academy, Gundling took that job seriously, attended his first Academy session three days after FW appointed him and his last in 1730, i.e. months before his death. Sabrow says that since FW insisted on his presence whereever FW was, he couldn't attend on more than key sessions, i.e. whenn new members were suggested/appointed or when changes were made), but those he was always there for. And he initialized and pushed several projects through despite the minimum budget FW allowed for the Academy. (Which is why the Academy under Leipniz published only one volume, despite having a much, much larger budget, but two in the much shorter and minimum-budgeted Gundling era, to which he contributed several essays in one case and a preface in the other.) He couldn't realise his most ambitious project, which was a world geographical atlas, which was supposed to come about in a collaboration between different branches of scholars. (Gundling himself had mapped and written about Brandenburg and Pomerania in this detailed way.) But the point is, he took what was meant as a joke on FW's part and worked hard to make it something different, because the world of letters never ceased to mean something to him that survived all the put downs and degredations.
FW: Well, I felt reminded of him asking, in the same year, no less, the clergy wheather a man was entitled to force his daughter into marriage against her will and upon hearing that no, he wasn't, chose to ignore that. Then there was that time he frightened the preacher of the local church at Rheinsberg (not Dechamps, the local guy) to death by showing up unexpected and shaking his stick at him because he disagreed with the sermon. And let's not forget that predestination is actually standard for Calvinism, only for FW to decide that no, Luther was right on this point. Methinks if he had become King of England, he'd have taken that "supreme head of the church" title to mean that he could reorganize the Anglican church in his image.
For Sabrow, the bigger question is where this relentless persecution came from given that simultanously, FW spent hours alone with Gundling (in addition to the tobacco parliament sessions), and Seckendorff as late as the mid 1720s actually wrote to Prince Eugene that Gundling was one of the few who could get FW to change his mind on something, and that he was someone to win over if you wanted to get somewhere. Sabrow also makes a good case by presenting the relevant documents that the mocking and humiliating of Gundling doesn't start until about two years after Gundling has joined FW's service, that for the first two years, FW accepts Gundling's commercial suggestions and sends him on a cross country tour for the manufactoring cause. And yet he doesn't even have enough pity to let the man die in peace but torments him until the end and after.
This, btw, is why I think that as sad and unjust and terrible Katte's fate was, he was still within that tragedy fortunate in that he was the scion of a privileged family with a father whom FW respected. Because Gundling and Doris Ritter are examples of what happened to people whom no one championed, whom no one was interested in.
Re: Book Review II: Der König und sein Narr (Novel and Film)
FW: Well, I felt reminded of him asking, in the same year, no less, the clergy wheather a man was entitled to force his daughter into marriage against her will and upon hearing that no, he wasn't, chose to ignore that.
Exactly what came to mind for me as well.
Methinks if he had become King of England, he'd have taken that "supreme head of the church" title to mean that he could reorganize the Anglican church in his image.
Blanning would have me believe that the King of Prussia was at least in some sense head of the church in Prussia, because lo:
[Fritz] also enjoyed reminding his subjects that constitutionally he was the head of both the Lutheran and the Reformed (Calvinist) churches in his dominions. Adjudicating a petition from a man refused permission by the church authorities to marry his widowed aunt, he wrote: “The Consistory is an ass. As Vicar of Jesus Christ and Archbishop of Magdeburg, I decree that the couple shall be joined together in holy matrimony.” The parishioners of a Pomeranian village who asked for the dismissal of a pastor who did not believe in the resurrection of the body were told that on the Day of Judgment it was up to him if he wished to just lie there prostrate while everyone else got up. Ordering the reappointment of a pastor dismissed because his parishioners objected to his preaching against the eternity of Hell, he commented that if they wished to be damned for all eternity, he had nothing against it. And so on.
Quoted for Fritz snark. :D
This, btw, is why I think that as sad and unjust and terrible Katte's fate was, he was still within that tragedy fortunate in that he was the scion of a privileged family with a father whom FW respected. Because Gundling and Doris Ritter are examples of what happened to people whom no one championed, whom no one was interested in.
I agree completely. We've talked about how Peter Keith, younger son of minor nobility with no living father and no prominent relatives, would have gotten hanged instead of beheaded, and most likely tortured beforehand.
Re: Book Review II: Der König und sein Narr (Novel and Film)
and decided to "rather suffer everything" than obey FW's instruction to participate in such a funeral.
Man, I'm cheering for the Lutheran pastors over here. They seem to be the heroes of FW's time, what with a) not going along with Gundling's funeral b) telling him he can't actually force Wilhelmine to marry someone c) that guy who was like "well Katte was a martyr actually." I suppose maybe they weren't the same pastors, and maybe I'm getting slanted stories, but I feel like I don't see many other stories about people standing up to FW. I suppose the fact that they had a sort of ecclesiastical authority over him, where no one else could claim to any sort of authority over him, helped, but still.
Re: Book Review II: Der König und sein Narr (Novel and Film)
Sabrow is also cheering for the Lutheran pastors and saying they truly acted in the spirits of Luther's "Here I am, I can do no other". Given they didn't get any public praise for standing up to FW in this regard (or in the Wilhelmine matter, and no one but Hans Heinrich - we hope - read the letter where Hans Herrmann is near explicitly called a martyr), and given that we only know this because their letters written immediately after the events in question survived, not because some writer claimed they did decades later , I think it's save to say that yes, that's what they did, and they deserve the applause.
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Re: Book Review II: Der König und sein Narr (Novel and Film)
Definitely sounds like it, yeah. I only knew bits and pieces and the general gist of Gundling's story, so a lot of the details were new to me, including the kidnapping by Old Dessauer and the burial circumstances. Damn.
Re: Book Review II: Der König und sein Narr (Novel and Film)
David Fassmann in his Gundling-Mocking diatribe, among many other things: The King buried him in a barrel of wine.
Wilhelmine, in a letter to her sister Friederike (who was already married to Ansbach) from 1731: "The King had him buried in his beautiful robe and his gigantic wig in a barrel. He himself accompagnied the body till Borndstädt, where (Gundling) was buried."
Later Hohenzollern fan historians: Fassmann was a satirist and Wilhelmine is a Dad-hating liar. No way super Christian Protestant FW would have made a mockery of a funeral like that, having Gundling buried in in a wine barrel, letting his arch enemy hold the taunting burial speech. No way!
So we get from Louis Schneider, 1867, writing an essay "Ist Gundling in einem Weinfasse begraben worden?" to the Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (frequent wiki source, though not for the Gundling entry) from 1878 claiming that the doubts as to whether the mocking inscriptions on Gundlings coffin really were put there", to the Neue Deutsche Biographie from 1966 declaring that "especially the infamous burial of Gundling in a barrel of wine can't have happened in this form".
THEN, someone has the bright idea of checking for records of the people professionally concerned with burials, to wit, the clergy. And lo! In the archive of the Franckesche Stiftungen in Halle, there's a letter from Potsdam Reverend Johann Heinrich Schubert, written only five days after Gundling's burial. Which not only backs up the wine barrel tale 100% but also proves poor Gundling in his dying days knew FW wouldn't even let him be buried in peace. Writes Schubert: Poor Gundling has told me among many sighs and lamentations how he has been abused, and lamented especially that due to his distress over the fact he would be buried in a barrel with such an inscription could not properly collect himself. (For to face his death calmly, that is.) (Remember, that barrel with the inscription had to stand in the same room with the dying man.) Continues Reverend Schubert:
On the 8th of this month (April) I visited him, and departed from him rather sadly because of this matter. R(ex) learns of this and questions me on the 9th, why I went so sadly from Gundling? I replied that I regretted very much being unable to soothe the man's distress in his soul, and was begging R(ex) most humbly to have pity in the poor soul and give (Gundling) the assurance that he would be buried like other people. But alas! This petition has been received most uncharitably.
There are other documents from clergymen, too, because originally FW had demanded one of them hold the funeral. Five Lutheran Pastors (Gundling was originally from Nuremberg and thus not a Calvinist) teamed up, led by Pfarrer Schultze, Schubert the letter writer, and the preacher from St. Nikolai (which was the parish where Gundling would be buried), and decided to "rather suffer everything" than obey FW's instruction to participate in such a funeral. They told FW they'd be happy to bless and preach over Gundling's coffin as long as it was a proper coffin, as every Christian had a right to, not a wine barrel. FW then threatened that he'd get the Calvinist clergy to do it instead, but the Lutherans didn't back down, and so it turned out FW had bluffed, because the Calvinists refused to go along with this horrible mockery of a funeral, either. FW then had a colonel tell the clergymen "Wollen die Priester nicht mitgehen u(nd) haben Bedenken, so mögen sie zu hause bleiben."
Not having a preacher for the funeral rites, he then told Fassmann to do it.
Later historians: FW WOULD NEVER!
Re: Book Review II: Der König und sein Narr (Novel and Film)
To be honest, my thoughts took a similar direction - not as emphatically of course, but I did wonder how FW reconciled such a mockery of a funeral with his faith, going against all the preachers to boot. Schubert's report is just depressing in the relentlessness it depicts; or as you so chillingly put it: the "systematic destruction of a human being" until his last breath (and even after).
But hey, I had no idea Gundling was buried in Bornstedt! I've visited both the church and the graveyard and remember Lenné's grave for example, but not Grundling's. ... aha, googling tells me he was actually buried inside the church and I definitely missed the plate that was initially put over his grave and is now mounted on a wall.
And I see that Manger was buried there as well (outside), as was De Catt (whose grave doesn't exist anymore, so there's only a commemorative plaque).
Re: Book Review II: Der König und sein Narr (Novel and Film)
FW: Well, I felt reminded of him asking, in the same year, no less, the clergy wheather a man was entitled to force his daughter into marriage against her will and upon hearing that no, he wasn't, chose to ignore that. Then there was that time he frightened the preacher of the local church at Rheinsberg (not Dechamps, the local guy) to death by showing up unexpected and shaking his stick at him because he disagreed with the sermon. And let's not forget that predestination is actually standard for Calvinism, only for FW to decide that no, Luther was right on this point. Methinks if he had become King of England, he'd have taken that "supreme head of the church" title to mean that he could reorganize the Anglican church in his image.
For Sabrow, the bigger question is where this relentless persecution came from given that simultanously, FW spent hours alone with Gundling (in addition to the tobacco parliament sessions), and Seckendorff as late as the mid 1720s actually wrote to Prince Eugene that Gundling was one of the few who could get FW to change his mind on something, and that he was someone to win over if you wanted to get somewhere. Sabrow also makes a good case by presenting the relevant documents that the mocking and humiliating of Gundling doesn't start until about two years after Gundling has joined FW's service, that for the first two years, FW accepts Gundling's commercial suggestions and sends him on a cross country tour for the manufactoring cause. And yet he doesn't even have enough pity to let the man die in peace but torments him until the end and after.
This, btw, is why I think that as sad and unjust and terrible Katte's fate was, he was still within that tragedy fortunate in that he was the scion of a privileged family with a father whom FW respected. Because Gundling and Doris Ritter are examples of what happened to people whom no one championed, whom no one was interested in.
Re: Book Review II: Der König und sein Narr (Novel and Film)
Exactly what came to mind for me as well.
Methinks if he had become King of England, he'd have taken that "supreme head of the church" title to mean that he could reorganize the Anglican church in his image.
Blanning would have me believe that the King of Prussia was at least in some sense head of the church in Prussia, because lo:
[Fritz] also enjoyed reminding his subjects that constitutionally he was the head of both the Lutheran and the Reformed (Calvinist) churches in his dominions. Adjudicating a petition from a man refused permission by the church authorities to marry his widowed aunt, he wrote: “The Consistory is an ass. As Vicar of Jesus Christ and Archbishop of Magdeburg, I decree that the couple shall be joined together in holy matrimony.” The parishioners of a Pomeranian village who asked for the dismissal of a pastor who did not believe in the resurrection of the body were told that on the Day of Judgment it was up to him if he wished to just lie there prostrate while everyone else got up. Ordering the reappointment of a pastor dismissed because his parishioners objected to his preaching against the eternity of Hell, he commented that if they wished to be damned for all eternity, he had nothing against it. And so on.
Quoted for Fritz snark. :D
This, btw, is why I think that as sad and unjust and terrible Katte's fate was, he was still within that tragedy fortunate in that he was the scion of a privileged family with a father whom FW respected. Because Gundling and Doris Ritter are examples of what happened to people whom no one championed, whom no one was interested in.
I agree completely. We've talked about how Peter Keith, younger son of minor nobility with no living father and no prominent relatives, would have gotten hanged instead of beheaded, and most likely tortured beforehand.
Re: Book Review II: Der König und sein Narr (Novel and Film)
Man, I'm cheering for the Lutheran pastors over here. They seem to be the heroes of FW's time, what with a) not going along with Gundling's funeral b) telling him he can't actually force Wilhelmine to marry someone c) that guy who was like "well Katte was a martyr actually." I suppose maybe they weren't the same pastors, and maybe I'm getting slanted stories, but I feel like I don't see many other stories about people standing up to FW. I suppose the fact that they had a sort of ecclesiastical authority over him, where no one else could claim to any sort of authority over him, helped, but still.
Re: Book Review II: Der König und sein Narr (Novel and Film)