Hans von Labes. You can see both why Caroline at first fell for him and why it later went downhill, and Fredersdorf remained unseated as her favourite husband.
My mother's father had a thoroughly unique mental life, a strange mixture of free, great experience and close minded tastes bound to his era, much character, a lot of quircks, which in the lonely years near the end of his life verged on impossibilities. He was a self made man, and never forgot it, and thus the rest of the world often seemed to him just an attachment to his movement. As a boy, he'd run away to Hannover and was able to distinguish himself there so much that he found support at the universities. Afterwards, he distinguished himself in the eyes of Friedrich II. through voluntary important services in foreign departments. As resident in some South German courts through personal influence with one princess, he knew how to uncover her preparations for the 7 Years War.
Translation: Granda Labes was a spy! The footnote says the princess in question was either the Duchess of Bavaria or Wilhelmine's daughter the Duchess of Württemberg, Friederike Sophie. However, since Friederike at this point was already back home with her parents in Bayreuth, having left her husband for good, I'm not sure how that should have worked, so Mrs. Wittelsbach it has to be.
After the outbreak of said war he was limited to working in a department. Through a strange inflexibility and a lot of impudence he eventually drew the hatred of the King on himself, left town and spent his last year at Zernikow, his wife's estate. This as an overview of his life, some details which I have chosen of a great number.
Achim next goes into said details. Seems Grandpa Labes once the war was over turned into a wine, women and song guy. He was celebrated for his spectacular wine cellar and for his banquets. Each banquet guest had to gift him one book for his library, and said library was really large by the end, thus, says Achim, you can see Grandpa was popular as long as he was throwing said banquets.
His most favourite friend seems to have been Count Gotter whom Friedrich himself also wrote poetry about as an expert, and of whom there are three different portraits in his heritage. Of his female friends, of whom he had many as a chevalier d'amour, I only name the later famous Karschin, of whom there are many tender poems adressed to him in his papers.
(Anna Karsch, the "Karschin", was one of the few famous 18th century female poets.)
He supported her in her rise to fame, often let her improvise at his banquets, and thus it happened that since she was fond of wine herself that she once in the middle of enthusiastic poetry reciting fell under the table crowned with laurels but completely drunk and passed out. He had put coffins in the next room for all drunks as if for dead people. She, too, was put in one of them with her laurels, and forgotten there, so that in the next morning people first thought a thief had broken into the house when she awoke and completed her triumph with a cat's howling over her headache.
In general, he didn't much esteem German poetry, though, Horace was for him the ultimate in wit and wisdom, and even dying he recommended Latin to his son, or rather to his son's mother so that his son should learn it.
Achim says when Grandduke Paul returned with Heinrich after Heinrich's second trip to Russia in order to get married again, Grandpa Labes sent food and drink over to the Grandduke from Zernikow, but was already on his deathbed and hence unable to attend to the Grandduke even if he'd been permitted.
His tauntings of the law of the country sometimes got him arrested. He was tireless in tormenting the royal civil servants. So he had once an argument over hunting. In order to annoy the hunters, he invited them into his banqueting room, where there were a lot of mice and rats, and between them shot with his gun after the little vermin. (...) He had some favourites among the farmers, whom he often made drunk in many ways in order to have sex with their wives undisturbed. He gave then poetical names to the children like Galathée whereas the farmer named her Theke.
And this, mes amies, is why Caroline during these last years of her husband's life didn't live in Zernikow with her husband, much as she loved the estate otherwise, but in Berlin with her daughter and only returned to Zernikow after he had died. :(
The Third Husband
My mother's father had a thoroughly unique mental life, a strange mixture of free, great experience and close minded tastes bound to his era, much character, a lot of quircks, which in the lonely years near the end of his life verged on impossibilities. He was a self made man, and never forgot it, and thus the rest of the world often seemed to him just an attachment to his movement. As a boy, he'd run away to Hannover and was able to distinguish himself there so much that he found support at the universities. Afterwards, he distinguished himself in the eyes of Friedrich II. through voluntary important services in foreign departments. As resident in some South German courts through personal influence with one princess, he knew how to uncover her preparations for the 7 Years War.
Translation: Granda Labes was a spy! The footnote says the princess in question was either the Duchess of Bavaria or Wilhelmine's daughter the Duchess of Württemberg, Friederike Sophie. However, since Friederike at this point was already back home with her parents in Bayreuth, having left her husband for good, I'm not sure how that should have worked, so Mrs. Wittelsbach it has to be.
After the outbreak of said war he was limited to working in a department. Through a strange inflexibility and a lot of impudence he eventually drew the hatred of the King on himself, left town and spent his last year at Zernikow, his wife's estate. This as an overview of his life, some details which I have chosen of a great number.
Achim next goes into said details. Seems Grandpa Labes once the war was over turned into a wine, women and song guy. He was celebrated for his spectacular wine cellar and for his banquets. Each banquet guest had to gift him one book for his library, and said library was really large by the end, thus, says Achim, you can see Grandpa was popular as long as he was throwing said banquets.
His most favourite friend seems to have been Count Gotter whom Friedrich himself also wrote poetry about as an expert, and of whom there are three different portraits in his heritage. Of his female friends, of whom he had many as a chevalier d'amour, I only name the later famous Karschin, of whom there are many tender poems adressed to him in his papers.
(Anna Karsch, the "Karschin", was one of the few famous 18th century female poets.)
He supported her in her rise to fame, often let her improvise at his banquets, and thus it happened that since she was fond of wine herself that she once in the middle of enthusiastic poetry reciting fell under the table crowned with laurels but completely drunk and passed out. He had put coffins in the next room for all drunks as if for dead people. She, too, was put in one of them with her laurels, and forgotten there, so that in the next morning people first thought a thief had broken into the house when she awoke and completed her triumph with a cat's howling over her headache.
In general, he didn't much esteem German poetry, though, Horace was for him the ultimate in wit and wisdom, and even dying he recommended Latin to his son, or rather to his son's mother so that his son should learn it.
Achim says when Grandduke Paul returned with Heinrich after Heinrich's second trip to Russia in order to get married again, Grandpa Labes sent food and drink over to the Grandduke from Zernikow, but was already on his deathbed and hence unable to attend to the Grandduke even if he'd been permitted.
His tauntings of the law of the country sometimes got him arrested. He was tireless in tormenting the royal civil servants. So he had once an argument over hunting. In order to annoy the hunters, he invited them into his banqueting room, where there were a lot of mice and rats, and between them shot with his gun after the little vermin. (...) He had some favourites among the farmers, whom he often made drunk in many ways in order to have sex with their wives undisturbed. He gave then poetical names to the children like Galathée whereas the farmer named her Theke.
And this, mes amies, is why Caroline during these last years of her husband's life didn't live in Zernikow with her husband, much as she loved the estate otherwise, but in Berlin with her daughter and only returned to Zernikow after he had died. :(