While we're all waiting for the RMSE opening (again), Stabi has delivered two biographies of F1 to me - the Werner Schmidt one from 2004, which is the one his Germman wiki entry footnotes most frequently, and one by Frank Göse from 2012. Frank Göse we already know as the guy who co-edited the FW essays anthology together with Kloosterhuis and who published the latest FW biography (only last year or so). His F1 biography is, like his FW biography, only intermittently chronological and arranged by topics (foreign policy, inner policy, family life etc). Like his FW biography, it's also a bit plodding to read - a great narrator, he's not - but unlike with his FW biography, I'm glad I've read to have read this one, since Werner Schmidt's attitude towards their shared subject is: "F1 is my woobie and I'm his one man defense squad!", so Göse, while also sympathetic to F1, provides a good counterbalance. A good example of how differently they present the same subject comes when we get to the fall of Danckelman.
But mainly I wanted to read these books to look up F1's youth and the other escape attempt by a Crown Prince, well, Kurprinz. And on the youth, Schmidt the woobie defense squad delivers in far more detail than Göse, despite his book being far slimmer. (Their different emphasis is also telling.)
Schmidt: First, have some background to understand where my woobie's Dad is coming from so I won't be accused to be mean about the Great Elector. Once upon a time, there was this really ghastly war, remember? 30 Years? Johann Georg of Brandenburg really wanted to keep out of it, but between having married the Winter King's sister and his sister having married Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden, naturally before all went to hell, he really couldn't. With the result that Brandenburg kept being invaded either by Swedes or Imperials. Future Great Elector, whose first names were Friedrich Wilhelm which is just too confusing, so selenak won't mention them again, thus spent seven years as a boy (from 7 to 14) at Küstrin because it was the toughest fortress Prussia had and his parents wanted him to be safe. Then he went to stay with relations in the Netherlands, where he met Louisa Hollandine the painter and daughter of the Winter Queen and romanced her, only it didn't work out because money. Then he came back and unsurprisingly had two major principles once he became the Prince Elector:
a) Brandenburg needs an army of its own so we won't get invaded, devastated and depopulated again. b) Brandenburg also needs money.
He married the (rich) Dutch princess Louise Henriette of Orange whom Oranienburg the palace is named after and who gave him four sons. The first one died as a kid. Then came Karl Emil, who looked like the ideal Prussian prince - healthy, jolly, loves sports and playing war Then came Friedrich, future F1, who wasn't only sickly, no, his nurse managed to drop him during a carriage drive, with the result that future F1 ended up with both feet turned inwards and a curved spinal (is this the right expression in English?). None one thought he'd live long, except for his mother, who fought for him. (More details to come.) Unfortunately, fighting for future F1 also meant subjecting him to an endless series of medical tortures, iron corsets, getting pressed between weights to correct his spine and feet, until one Dr. Fey put an end to it and said the weight pressures especially were probably responsible for F1's asthma or at least it being so bad and could kill the kid.
Future F1 remained the youngest until his brother Ludwig was born. Now, for as long as his mother and older brother Karl Emil were still alive, he had affection to balance the medical tortures and some aspects of the teaching. The teaching parts are interesting for many reasons. Like future Prussian rulers after him, the Great Elector wrote a "how to handle the princes" instructions to his sons' governor. There are things in common with FW's lists, to wit, the religion - the Elector, too, wanted his sons to be raised as good Christians, start the day with praying etc. -, but there's a very different approach to art and sciences. The Elector wanted his sons to learn Latin, for example, but in a way that wouldn't make them hate the language, so the teacher was to be playful about it and also use it in conversation as often as possible. (French, too, but that's what the princess, including future F1, had a governess for. Unlike FW, though, F1's first language was German.) And with geography, the princes were supposed to learn the names of towns and countries etc. in a non-dull manner by the teacher attaching interesting stories to them so they memorize them better. All pretty fly for a 17th century guy!
These were the instructions for Karl Emil and F1 both. Karl Emil still hated school, but he wrote a lovely letter to his brother when being hunting. Practice your German on this baroque letter opening:
"Herzallerliebstes Brüderchen, weil Ihr bei Eurer grossen Glückseligkeit da Ihr alllzeit bei Papa und Mama seit, meiner ganz vergesset, so will ich hiermit beweisen, dass ich fleissig an Euch gedenke. Ich hoffe, mein Herzensbrüderchen bald wieder zu sehen."
Future F1's teacher was one Eberhard Danckelmann. (Later to be ennobled into "von Danckelmann".) He was a proto Prussian two generations before FW - austere, dutiful, into discipline. A genuine prodigy - he'd debated and defended his thesis at 12 years old at a university! - but extremely shouty, and the first time F1's mother Louise Henriette noticed this, she wrote a letter in protest, that "Fritzchen" surely would be better guided by kindness than by verbal abuse. Whereupon Danckelmann was a bit quieter but still did things like this bit of German-to-Latin translation exercise for F1, of which there is a copy of the manuscript in child!F1's handwriting in the book:
Baroque German: "Mein Bruder und ich wollen gelehrte Printzen werden. Aber Fritz wird ein Esel bleiben." Latin: "Frater et ego volumus fieri docti Principes. Sed Fridericus manebit Asinus."
Werner Schmidt: Pray keep this in mind when we get to the fate of Danckelmann a few decades later! At age 10, my woobie makes a fateful discovery when deciding he'll found an order "De la generosité". His governor (a member of the Schwerin clan at this point, Danckelmann was his teacher, different thing) lets him play this out. Little F1 discovers that the play acting as a gracious ruler, the ceremony, the investing, that all this makes him feel good and not like damaged goods for the first time! Not that his bitchy grandson shows any understanding for this. FYI, F2, your precious Black Eagle Order grew directly from this childhood Order de La Generosité.
But back to a tale of childhood woe, which is about to kick in in earnest. Because his mother dies, only one of two persons to love my hero truly and unconditionally. According to an eyewitness, ten years old F1 when told his mother was dying "cried out terribly, and hung from the Stewardess' neck and begged for for God's sake she should save everything and make it so his Mama did not die!" But she does, with her body exhausted after giving birth or having stillbirths nearly every other year. And then the Great Elector remarries. A woman who wasn't a poisoner, I don't think that, but she was without any sensitivity or sympathy for the stepkids and...
Frank Göse: Let me stop you right here. She wasn't that bad. Before her own kids were born, she wrote downright lovely letters to little future F1, calling him "Engelchen" and "Fritzchen". True, once she had kids of her own, she didn't do that anymore, but you yourself point out that every mother fights for her children, and when the late Electress got future F1, she immediately persuaded the Elector that he'd get a life long rent and a county of his own so his financial future was assured despite him being a third son. Dorothea followed the same principle for her kids.
Werner Schmidt: The only women I approve of unconditionally in this book are F1's mother and his first wife, who loved him unconditionally. Be content I don't think Dorothea the founder of the Schwedt line was a poisoner. Anyway, back to young F1's woes: Karl Emil dies next. This is a devastating blow for Dad, who until this point hasn't singled F1 out for anything but hasn't done anything against him, either. It's not too much to say, though, that after Karl Emil's death, the Great Elector will treat my guy as if it needs to be made clear the wrong brother died. Think that I'm exaggarating? Lemme quote the French ambassador.
Background here: The Elector had won some key battles against the French as part of the anti Sun King team up only for the Habsburgs to screw him over by making peace with Louis XIV without asking him to the negotiations. He then screwed over the Habsburgs by making his own secret treaty with Louis in which he promised that he'd vote for Louis or Louis' son the Dauphin the next time an HRE Emperor got voted hin, and that he'd make Louis executor of his last will. This team up with the French went on until Louis kicked the Huguenots out of France, at which point the Elector, champion of Protestants, couldn't stand by it anymore and changed his policy. But because grandson F2 as well as subsequent historians for two centuries accused my guy F1 of falling short of his Dad, let me point out the Great Elector made a completely bad treaty with the goddam French here, and wasn't the mastermind Hohenzollern historians insisted he was.
Anyway: the French were also hand in glove with Stepmom and her campaign to get her sons as big a portion of the Electorate as possible. Bear in mind primogeniture wasn't yet a fixture in all the German principalities, and Stepmom campaigned for dividing the realm the old fashioned way among all the sons. The French were all for it, since Louis hadn't forgotten the Elector had won that battle and many tiny Brandenburg pieces sounded better than an increasingly larger one. Future F1, now the Kurprinz (Prince Elector) instead of Karl Emil, otoh, thought this was a bad idea and got increasingly distrustful about Dad changing his will. Rébenac, the French envoy who was on Team Dorothea for the above named reason, wrote thus reports like this to Louis in France:
The Prince, Sire, has a very damaged figure, is of a weak constitution and doesn't show much will to live; a doctor has said he'll only live for three or four years more. He's of a weak mind, a hypocrite and very miserly, of little noblesse; and if he has the wish to enlarge his realm, then only in order to fill his purse with more cash, which is his only ambition. He lets himself be ruled by a man named Danckelmann who used to be his teacher, a feeble mind who is teaching his master hypocricy and hatred towards some of his father's ministers. (...) The Elector does not love him, nor does he esteem him. (...) A man from Sweden told the Elector unguardedly that the King of Sweden - against whom the Elector had fought and won battles - says he'll let the Elector of Brandenburg die in peace but that he'll make the Elector's son pay. The Elector himself told me this and added: "The King of Sweden is right; for my son isn't good for anything."
Objectivity, thy name is not Rébenac. More like "Wishful thinking". But while posterity can point out the obvious mistakes here at once (F1 would live on some decades more, he wouldn't get crushed by Sweden, and miserliness isn't a fault he's ever been accused of by posterity), the quote from the Elector about his son has the ring of authenticity to Werner Schmidt and Frank Göse alike.
Meanwhile, young future F1 had one good thing going in his life. As a child and youth, he'd been sent to take the waters in the principality of Hessen-Kassel every year (because the Elector's mother had been from there). There, he'd struck up a childhood friendship with the Hessian princess Elisabeth Henriette, nicknamed Hanette. (There's a letter from child!F1 to her mother thanking the mother for the hospitality and saying all the other Hessian princesses can be married of as long as "the one I love" stays.) And once little Hanette, five years younger than him, was of marriagable age, "weak" F1 lobbied for permission to marry her with both sets of (surviving) parents - and actually managed to pull it off. Thus, he achieved that rarity in the era, a mutual love match between friends. He also got a household of his own granted, in Köpenick (there's a Fontane chapter from the Wanderungen on his and Hanette's time there.) Mind you, the Elector behaved very badly and grumpily about the marriage, making it as insulting to the Hessen-Kassel family as possible by for eons refusing to name a date and then cancelling one agreed on and then, one morning while in bed with his wife, deciding this evening the marriage would happen without a fuss and no ceremony since Hanette was already in town. Young F1 put up with it and hightailed it out of Berlin with Hanette as soon as possible.
Werner Schmidt: But because that's the way his life goes, nothing good ever lasts long. Hanette gives birth to a daughter - his only daughter, as it would happen - and dies after just a few years. And that was the last person to ever truly love my guy. By this comment you may gather I don't like Sophie Charlotte, aka Figuelotte. Who was just like her grandson Fritz: a sarcastic, cold-hearted bitch unable to resist a witty quip no matter how hurtful, with an intellectual superiority complex. Granted, she started out not as bad as that at age 16, which is when she became still not yet F1's second wife. I'll quote Sophie her mother (about whom I'm a bit more positive right until two decades later she makes a sarcastic remark about F1 and his ministers, at which point I'll say she's just like her daughter, because I am A One Man Defense Squad) who writes to one of Liselotte's sisters:
She's not cruel, either, and he's always shown amiability and esteem towards her when her Highness the Princess Elector had still been alive and nobody would have imagined this possibility. The Kurprinz isn't a handsome man in his figure, but he has a very good temper, and sound reason, and his face isn't ugly; it's a good thing she does like him and doesn't care about the exterior so much, for his highness the Duke and I love her so much that we could follow her own inclination if she'd chosen another suitor.
(As mentioned in the Barbara Beuys biography, future F1 & wife had visited Hannover, and he'd taken to the entire clan like a duck to water.)
Because Figuelotte is a princess of Hannover and has a mother who is quite up to standing toe to toe with the Elector, she gets a proper princely wedding. This does not mean relations between the Elector and his oldest surviving son improve.
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Once Upon A Time in Brandenburg: Portrait of F1 as a Young Woobie
Date: 2021-08-04 07:29 am (UTC)But mainly I wanted to read these books to look up F1's youth and the other escape attempt by a Crown Prince, well, Kurprinz. And on the youth, Schmidt the woobie defense squad delivers in far more detail than Göse, despite his book being far slimmer. (Their different emphasis is also telling.)
Schmidt: First, have some background to understand where my woobie's Dad is coming from so I won't be accused to be mean about the Great Elector. Once upon a time, there was this really ghastly war, remember? 30 Years? Johann Georg of Brandenburg really wanted to keep out of it, but between having married the Winter King's sister and his sister having married Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden, naturally before all went to hell, he really couldn't. With the result that Brandenburg kept being invaded either by Swedes or Imperials. Future Great Elector, whose first names were Friedrich Wilhelm which is just too confusing, so
a) Brandenburg needs an army of its own so we won't get invaded, devastated and depopulated again.
b) Brandenburg also needs money.
He married the (rich) Dutch princess Louise Henriette of Orange whom Oranienburg the palace is named after and who gave him four sons. The first one died as a kid. Then came Karl Emil, who looked like the ideal Prussian prince - healthy, jolly, loves sports and playing war Then came Friedrich, future F1, who wasn't only sickly, no, his nurse managed to drop him during a carriage drive, with the result that future F1 ended up with both feet turned inwards and a curved spinal (is this the right expression in English?). None one thought he'd live long, except for his mother, who fought for him. (More details to come.) Unfortunately, fighting for future F1 also meant subjecting him to an endless series of medical tortures, iron corsets, getting pressed between weights to correct his spine and feet, until one Dr. Fey put an end to it and said the weight pressures especially were probably responsible for F1's asthma or at least it being so bad and could kill the kid.
Future F1 remained the youngest until his brother Ludwig was born. Now, for as long as his mother and older brother Karl Emil were still alive, he had affection to balance the medical tortures and some aspects of the teaching. The teaching parts are interesting for many reasons. Like future Prussian rulers after him, the Great Elector wrote a "how to handle the princes" instructions to his sons' governor. There are things in common with FW's lists, to wit, the religion - the Elector, too, wanted his sons to be raised as good Christians, start the day with praying etc. -, but there's a very different approach to art and sciences. The Elector wanted his sons to learn Latin, for example, but in a way that wouldn't make them hate the language, so the teacher was to be playful about it and also use it in conversation as often as possible. (French, too, but that's what the princess, including future F1, had a governess for. Unlike FW, though, F1's first language was German.) And with geography, the princes were supposed to learn the names of towns and countries etc. in a non-dull manner by the teacher attaching interesting stories to them so they memorize them better. All pretty fly for a 17th century guy!
These were the instructions for Karl Emil and F1 both. Karl Emil still hated school, but he wrote a lovely letter to his brother when being hunting. Practice your German on this baroque letter opening:
"Herzallerliebstes Brüderchen,
weil Ihr bei Eurer grossen Glückseligkeit da Ihr alllzeit bei Papa und Mama seit, meiner ganz vergesset, so will ich hiermit beweisen, dass ich fleissig an Euch gedenke. Ich hoffe, mein Herzensbrüderchen bald wieder zu sehen."
Future F1's teacher was one Eberhard Danckelmann. (Later to be ennobled into "von Danckelmann".) He was a proto Prussian two generations before FW - austere, dutiful, into discipline. A genuine prodigy - he'd debated and defended his thesis at 12 years old at a university! - but extremely shouty, and the first time F1's mother Louise Henriette noticed this, she wrote a letter in protest, that "Fritzchen" surely would be better guided by kindness than by verbal abuse. Whereupon Danckelmann was a bit quieter but still did things like this bit of German-to-Latin translation exercise for F1, of which there is a copy of the manuscript in child!F1's handwriting in the book:
Baroque German: "Mein Bruder und ich wollen gelehrte Printzen werden. Aber Fritz wird ein Esel bleiben."
Latin: "Frater et ego volumus fieri docti Principes. Sed Fridericus manebit Asinus."
Werner Schmidt: Pray keep this in mind when we get to the fate of Danckelmann a few decades later! At age 10, my woobie makes a fateful discovery when deciding he'll found an order "De la generosité". His governor (a member of the Schwerin clan at this point, Danckelmann was his teacher, different thing) lets him play this out. Little F1 discovers that the play acting as a gracious ruler, the ceremony, the investing, that all this makes him feel good and not like damaged goods for the first time! Not that his bitchy grandson shows any understanding for this. FYI, F2, your precious Black Eagle Order grew directly from this childhood Order de La Generosité.
But back to a tale of childhood woe, which is about to kick in in earnest. Because his mother dies, only one of two persons to love my hero truly and unconditionally. According to an eyewitness, ten years old F1 when told his mother was dying "cried out terribly, and hung from the Stewardess' neck and begged for for God's sake she should save everything and make it so his Mama did not die!" But she does, with her body exhausted after giving birth or having stillbirths nearly every other year. And then the Great Elector remarries. A woman who wasn't a poisoner, I don't think that, but she was without any sensitivity or sympathy for the stepkids and...
Frank Göse: Let me stop you right here. She wasn't that bad. Before her own kids were born, she wrote downright lovely letters to little future F1, calling him "Engelchen" and "Fritzchen". True, once she had kids of her own, she didn't do that anymore, but you yourself point out that every mother fights for her children, and when the late Electress got future F1, she immediately persuaded the Elector that he'd get a life long rent and a county of his own so his financial future was assured despite him being a third son. Dorothea followed the same principle for her kids.
Werner Schmidt: The only women I approve of unconditionally in this book are F1's mother and his first wife, who loved him unconditionally. Be content I don't think Dorothea the founder of the Schwedt line was a poisoner. Anyway, back to young F1's woes: Karl Emil dies next. This is a devastating blow for Dad, who until this point hasn't singled F1 out for anything but hasn't done anything against him, either. It's not too much to say, though, that after Karl Emil's death, the Great Elector will treat my guy as if it needs to be made clear the wrong brother died. Think that I'm exaggarating? Lemme quote the French ambassador.
Background here: The Elector had won some key battles against the French as part of the anti Sun King team up only for the Habsburgs to screw him over by making peace with Louis XIV without asking him to the negotiations. He then screwed over the Habsburgs by making his own secret treaty with Louis in which he promised that he'd vote for Louis or Louis' son the Dauphin the next time an HRE Emperor got voted hin, and that he'd make Louis executor of his last will. This team up with the French went on until Louis kicked the Huguenots out of France, at which point the Elector, champion of Protestants, couldn't stand by it anymore and changed his policy. But because grandson F2 as well as subsequent historians for two centuries accused my guy F1 of falling short of his Dad, let me point out the Great Elector made a completely bad treaty with the goddam French here, and wasn't the mastermind Hohenzollern historians insisted he was.
Anyway: the French were also hand in glove with Stepmom and her campaign to get her sons as big a portion of the Electorate as possible. Bear in mind primogeniture wasn't yet a fixture in all the German principalities, and Stepmom campaigned for dividing the realm the old fashioned way among all the sons. The French were all for it, since Louis hadn't forgotten the Elector had won that battle and many tiny Brandenburg pieces sounded better than an increasingly larger one. Future F1, now the Kurprinz (Prince Elector) instead of Karl Emil, otoh, thought this was a bad idea and got increasingly distrustful about Dad changing his will. Rébenac, the French envoy who was on Team Dorothea for the above named reason, wrote thus reports like this to Louis in France:
The Prince, Sire, has a very damaged figure, is of a weak constitution and doesn't show much will to live; a doctor has said he'll only live for three or four years more. He's of a weak mind, a hypocrite and very miserly, of little noblesse; and if he has the wish to enlarge his realm, then only in order to fill his purse with more cash, which is his only ambition. He lets himself be ruled by a man named Danckelmann who used to be his teacher, a feeble mind who is teaching his master hypocricy and hatred towards some of his father's ministers. (...) The Elector does not love him, nor does he esteem him. (...) A man from Sweden told the Elector unguardedly that the King of Sweden - against whom the Elector had fought and won battles - says he'll let the Elector of Brandenburg die in peace but that he'll make the Elector's son pay. The Elector himself told me this and added: "The King of Sweden is right; for my son isn't good for anything."
Objectivity, thy name is not Rébenac. More like "Wishful thinking". But while posterity can point out the obvious mistakes here at once (F1 would live on some decades more, he wouldn't get crushed by Sweden, and miserliness isn't a fault he's ever been accused of by posterity), the quote from the Elector about his son has the ring of authenticity to Werner Schmidt and Frank Göse alike.
Meanwhile, young future F1 had one good thing going in his life. As a child and youth, he'd been sent to take the waters in the principality of Hessen-Kassel every year (because the Elector's mother had been from there). There, he'd struck up a childhood friendship with the Hessian princess Elisabeth Henriette, nicknamed Hanette. (There's a letter from child!F1 to her mother thanking the mother for the hospitality and saying all the other Hessian princesses can be married of as long as "the one I love" stays.) And once little Hanette, five years younger than him, was of marriagable age, "weak" F1 lobbied for permission to marry her with both sets of (surviving) parents - and actually managed to pull it off. Thus, he achieved that rarity in the era, a mutual love match between friends. He also got a household of his own granted, in Köpenick (there's a Fontane chapter from the Wanderungen on his and Hanette's time there.) Mind you, the Elector behaved very badly and grumpily about the marriage, making it as insulting to the Hessen-Kassel family as possible by for eons refusing to name a date and then cancelling one agreed on and then, one morning while in bed with his wife, deciding this evening the marriage would happen without a fuss and no ceremony since Hanette was already in town. Young F1 put up with it and hightailed it out of Berlin with Hanette as soon as possible.
Werner Schmidt: But because that's the way his life goes, nothing good ever lasts long. Hanette gives birth to a daughter - his only daughter, as it would happen - and dies after just a few years. And that was the last person to ever truly love my guy. By this comment you may gather I don't like Sophie Charlotte, aka Figuelotte. Who was just like her grandson Fritz: a sarcastic, cold-hearted bitch unable to resist a witty quip no matter how hurtful, with an intellectual superiority complex. Granted, she started out not as bad as that at age 16, which is when she became still not yet F1's second wife. I'll quote Sophie her mother (about whom I'm a bit more positive right until two decades later she makes a sarcastic remark about F1 and his ministers, at which point I'll say she's just like her daughter, because I am A One Man Defense Squad) who writes to one of Liselotte's sisters:
She's not cruel, either, and he's always shown amiability and esteem towards her when her Highness the Princess Elector had still been alive and nobody would have imagined this possibility.
The Kurprinz isn't a handsome man in his figure, but he has a very good temper, and sound reason, and his face isn't ugly; it's a good thing she does like him and doesn't care about the exterior so much, for his highness the Duke and I love her so much that we could follow her own inclination if she'd chosen another suitor.
(As mentioned in the Barbara Beuys biography, future F1 & wife had visited Hannover, and he'd taken to the entire clan like a duck to water.)
Because Figuelotte is a princess of Hannover and has a mother who is quite up to standing toe to toe with the Elector, she gets a proper princely wedding. This does not mean relations between the Elector and his oldest surviving son improve.