From a trio of German Romantic writers - Achim von Arnim, his wife Bettina, who is also the sister of the third, Achim's bff Clemens Brentano. Of interest to us because Achim was the grandson of the former Mrs. Fredersdorf, grew up at Zernikow and provided a good quote for the current Zernikow website which as it turns out hails from this volume (though the website version lacks the virginity part). The editor points out that both the Brentano siblings and Achim von Arnim lost their mothers early and did not get along with their fathers, hence the intense relating to the grandparents, of whom all these anecdotes tell. Of interest to us is what Achim has to say about Grandma, her father, and also his Grandfather (her third husband). It's also worth reading the footnotes, which reveal that, drumroll, Caroline (i.e. Mrs. Fredersdorf) wrote a short "My life so far" memoir in 1777, of which a typoscript exists and is mentioned in the source footnote as follows: Typoskript einer Lebensbeschreibung vom 13. September 1777 im Brandesburgischen Landeshauptarchiv Potsdam, Rep. 37, Bärwalde-Wiepersdorf, Nr. 1832.) As the description of Fredersdorf the footnote quotes from it is even more glowing than the one Achim renembers her giving, this almost makes me cry that felis doesn't live in Potsdam anymore. Anyway, something to look up in the future.
Caroline's father, Gottfried Adolf Daum (1679 - 1743) founded together with David Splitgerber the Berlin Bank and Trading House Splitgerber & Daum. They were just the kind of manufacturers FW wanted to encourage. Daum managed to impress him (not least by building houses in Berlin) and got permission to found and lead the Royal weapons and gun manufactory in Potsdam and Spandau 1722. (After Daum's death, his partner Splitgerber also founded the first Prussian sugar manufactury in 1746. You can see why Caroline was loaded as an heiress.) Daum also managed to become a casual member of the Tobacco Parliament. So it won't surprise you if I tell you he was a strict Dad. Quoting Achim remembering what his grandmother said:
For all the wealth, strict austerity ruled the house, the children were cautioned to work hard, so only in the evening was time for leisure. And even those evening hours were used in summer to practice how to walk decent and ladylike under the eyes of governess and governor.
(Methinks we know where the "freedom" part in Caroline's characterisation of her first marriage comes from. The governor was for her brother. Who scandalized Dad and Mom by becoming a Catholic and moving to Italy later. Mom would have disinherited him if Caroline, who loved her brother, hadn't insisted that she then wouldn't accept her inheritance, either, and reconciled him with Mom.)
When autumn arrived, their hearts grew heavy when they saw fruits lying on the ground and weren't allowed to touch them. They then thought of some artifice, like saying: "a pretty colorful stone, perhaps father's cufflink!" and adroitly hid the fruit beneath their skirts in order to eat it in the restroom later in secret.
On to Daum and FW:
He had built a Dutch kitchen in his house in order to honor the King, that is a clean oven, the Kitchen red with white streaks of chalk in imitation of the usual burned stone, a large table and a closet full of Dutch pipes. The King often visited him with his generals and enjoyed his kind of pranks. Thus, he told him once: Listen, Daum, all women are whores! - No, your Majesty, Daum replied, my wife is not a whore. - Well, the King said, be he reassured, his wife and mine excepted, all women are whores. - The King rarely took back anything he said, and it showed how much credit Daum had with him that he did this time. For the King had the habit, on each Sunday to order the entire high society of Potsdam to drive past him three times and to call to each lady "Whore Whore!" - It's strange that my grandmother claimed that actually, there had been only one whore in Potsdam at that time, who'd been called Putzers Hanne, but maybe she didn't know the other ones.
Or maybe FW was an oafish ass, Achim. Though I'm impressed Caroline knew the name of an actual prostitute, which I wouldn't have thought a rich man'd daughter would.
On to Caroline.
My grandmother had even into her old age very vivid intense blue eyes, regular features, she was tall and had a good figure. Her coloring she'd lost due to an illness, without looking sickly or being an invalid, though. She was very vivacious, fulll of eagerness for the world's turnmoil, was used to devotion, discipline and austerity from her youth, was very noble in mind, and a witty companion to most. One should have believed these qualities would have assuredly let her into blissful domesticity with an ever growing circle of children. But strange fate! Her affection was won by a man who was already really ill and suffering from hemorhoids, though he was otherwise very handsome - the original word Achim uses is "schön", i.e. beautiful, but I know it's not used for men in English - , the Secret Chamberlain of the new King Friedrich II, his favourite ever since he as a soldier in the prison of Küstrin had lessened (Fritz') grief through his flute play. He seems to have been too well educated for a soldier; probably his tall figure caused his being drafted into service under the old King. My grandmother in her love believed him to be the most intelligent and wittiest man of the world. In her old age she read their exchanged love letters again, and be it that she had been aged too much, or that she did not want us to know and did not see the suitability of the jokes anymore, she did not want to share them and burned them with the same amazement that she'd been delighted by them in her youth. Friedrich didn't like the people around him to be married, he may have felt that they then didn't belong to him as completely anymore; he demanded utter devotion, but permitted them much confidentiality as a result. Moments in which to demand something of him had still be spotted and used quickly. The opportune moment to get the permission to marry from the King seemed to take years, the illness of the poor favourite grew, and he explained to the King that he could only hope to get better through this marriage and that he was dying of grief. That worked; the King agreed, and so that the King wouldn't change his mind again, the marriage was celebrated within twenty four hours after the hard won permission of the King had arrived. Thus the sickbed was the entrance to a marriage in which my grandmother lived as a virgin under a thousand worries but also with blissful freedom, mutual agreement and inner cheerfulness for three years after which he died after much sicknesss, so that after her own death she only wanted to rest at the side of this most beloved of her three husbands in her coffin. Illness made the poor man often irritable, but she swore that his general kindness and repentance over each outburst had her always reconciled. He tried to find all kinds of diversions for her so that she wouldn't suffer from the sitting in a sick room, and made her go on long rides so she'd have distractions. As a proof of her fitness may serve the fact she often rode to Berlin and back from Potsdam in one day, at a time when this way was much longer and very uneven, so really lasted eight miles. I have seen a painting of her in her riding dress, it was a half male outfit in green, wiht a female skirt and a three point hat. She also rode like a man.
Comment: we already know the "got married within 24 hours" isn't true from Lehndorff's diary (and also by implication from the one Fritz letter where Fredersdorf's upcoming marriage is mentioned), but it's interesting the story had taken this shape decades later for Achim and his brother. The footnote to this passage by the editor contains an actual quote from Caroline's memoir preserved in typoscript, and it says:
His loss and his memory will always remain unforgettable to me, since our love was uncontestedly the purest and most loyal I was ever to find, which is why this worthy man has deserved that it should be known he was gifted besides the most beautiful pleasant looks with the most enlightened mind, abilities and quickness of spirit, which can hardly find their like anywhere.
From this praise by Caroline in 1777 you can deduce not just her very brief second marriage but the longer one to Achim's actual grandfather was less than stellar. Stay tuned as to why, but which I'll translate and transcribe later and separatedly.
"Anekdoten, die wir erlebten und hörten"
Caroline's father, Gottfried Adolf Daum (1679 - 1743) founded together with David Splitgerber the Berlin Bank and Trading House Splitgerber & Daum. They were just the kind of manufacturers FW wanted to encourage. Daum managed to impress him (not least by building houses in Berlin) and got permission to found and lead the Royal weapons and gun manufactory in Potsdam and Spandau 1722. (After Daum's death, his partner Splitgerber also founded the first Prussian sugar manufactury in 1746. You can see why Caroline was loaded as an heiress.) Daum also managed to become a casual member of the Tobacco Parliament. So it won't surprise you if I tell you he was a strict Dad. Quoting Achim remembering what his grandmother said:
For all the wealth, strict austerity ruled the house, the children were cautioned to work hard, so only in the evening was time for leisure. And even those evening hours were used in summer to practice how to walk decent and ladylike under the eyes of governess and governor.
(Methinks we know where the "freedom" part in Caroline's characterisation of her first marriage comes from. The governor was for her brother. Who scandalized Dad and Mom by becoming a Catholic and moving to Italy later. Mom would have disinherited him if Caroline, who loved her brother, hadn't insisted that she then wouldn't accept her inheritance, either, and reconciled him with Mom.)
When autumn arrived, their hearts grew heavy when they saw fruits lying on the ground and weren't allowed to touch them. They then thought of some artifice, like saying: "a pretty colorful stone, perhaps father's cufflink!" and adroitly hid the fruit beneath their skirts in order to eat it in the restroom later in secret.
On to Daum and FW:
He had built a Dutch kitchen in his house in order to honor the King, that is a clean oven, the Kitchen red with white streaks of chalk in imitation of the usual burned stone, a large table and a closet full of Dutch pipes. The King often visited him with his generals and enjoyed his kind of pranks. Thus, he told him once: Listen, Daum, all women are whores! - No, your Majesty, Daum replied, my wife is not a whore. - Well, the King said, be he reassured, his wife and mine excepted, all women are whores. - The King rarely took back anything he said, and it showed how much credit Daum had with him that he did this time. For the King had the habit, on each Sunday to order the entire high society of Potsdam to drive past him three times and to call to each lady "Whore Whore!" - It's strange that my grandmother claimed that actually, there had been only one whore in Potsdam at that time, who'd been called Putzers Hanne, but maybe she didn't know the other ones.
Or maybe FW was an oafish ass, Achim. Though I'm impressed Caroline knew the name of an actual prostitute, which I wouldn't have thought a rich man'd daughter would.
On to Caroline.
My grandmother had even into her old age very vivid intense blue eyes, regular features, she was tall and had a good figure. Her coloring she'd lost due to an illness, without looking sickly or being an invalid, though. She was very vivacious, fulll of eagerness for the world's turnmoil, was used to devotion, discipline and austerity from her youth, was very noble in mind, and a witty companion to most. One should have believed these qualities would have assuredly let her into blissful domesticity with an ever growing circle of children. But strange fate! Her affection was won by a man who was already really ill and suffering from hemorhoids, though he was otherwise very handsome - the original word Achim uses is "schön", i.e. beautiful, but I know it's not used for men in English - , the Secret Chamberlain of the new King Friedrich II, his favourite ever since he as a soldier in the prison of Küstrin had lessened (Fritz') grief through his flute play. He seems to have been too well educated for a soldier; probably his tall figure caused his being drafted into service under the old King. My grandmother in her love believed him to be the most intelligent and wittiest man of the world. In her old age she read their exchanged love letters again, and be it that she had been aged too much, or that she did not want us to know and did not see the suitability of the jokes anymore, she did not want to share them and burned them with the same amazement that she'd been delighted by them in her youth.
Friedrich didn't like the people around him to be married, he may have felt that they then didn't belong to him as completely anymore; he demanded utter devotion, but permitted them much confidentiality as a result. Moments in which to demand something of him had still be spotted and used quickly. The opportune moment to get the permission to marry from the King seemed to take years, the illness of the poor favourite grew, and he explained to the King that he could only hope to get better through this marriage and that he was dying of grief. That worked; the King agreed, and so that the King wouldn't change his mind again, the marriage was celebrated within twenty four hours after the hard won permission of the King had arrived. Thus the sickbed was the entrance to a marriage in which my grandmother lived as a virgin under a thousand worries but also with blissful freedom, mutual agreement and inner cheerfulness for three years after which he died after much sicknesss, so that after her own death she only wanted to rest at the side of this most beloved of her three husbands in her coffin.
Illness made the poor man often irritable, but she swore that his general kindness and repentance over each outburst had her always reconciled. He tried to find all kinds of diversions for her so that she wouldn't suffer from the sitting in a sick room, and made her go on long rides so she'd have distractions. As a proof of her fitness may serve the fact she often rode to Berlin and back from Potsdam in one day, at a time when this way was much longer and very uneven, so really lasted eight miles. I have seen a painting of her in her riding dress, it was a half male outfit in green, wiht a female skirt and a three point hat. She also rode like a man.
Comment: we already know the "got married within 24 hours" isn't true from Lehndorff's diary (and also by implication from the one Fritz letter where Fredersdorf's upcoming marriage is mentioned), but it's interesting the story had taken this shape decades later for Achim and his brother. The footnote to this passage by the editor contains an actual quote from Caroline's memoir preserved in typoscript, and it says:
His loss and his memory will always remain unforgettable to me, since our love was uncontestedly the purest and most loyal I was ever to find, which is why this worthy man has deserved that it should be known he was gifted besides the most beautiful pleasant looks with the most enlightened mind, abilities and quickness of spirit, which can hardly find their like anywhere.
From this praise by Caroline in 1777 you can deduce not just her very brief second marriage but the longer one to Achim's actual grandfather was less than stellar. Stay tuned as to why, but which I'll translate and transcribe later and separatedly.