(Now that I'm reading Kloosterhuis, researching his sources on Rottembourg is on my to-do list, because I need to compare their reliability to the reliability of the sources that are telling me Rottembourg wasn't in Madrid that year.
I found the book Kloosterhuis cited for this claim. Snippet view shows me it does indeed say 1727-1734 in Madrid, and there's a footnote I can't view. Since the book costs 75 euros, I've put in a request with my local Interlibrary Loan, and we'll see what happens. (I send them such obscure requests that 50% get canceled because they can't find a library willing to lend, but this one seems easier to acquire, so fingers crossed.) It's a 2004 secondary source that seems reputable, but my 19th century collection of instructions to French ambassadors still seems more reliable. But until I see the footnote, I will reserve judgment.
Also the Schulenburgs, I need to research the contradictions between Kloosterhuis' genealogy and Wikipedia's.
This one I tracked down, and it really looks like Wikipedia is right and Kloosterhuis is wrong! (Oh, how the mighty have fallen. :P)
Kloosterhuis:
Über seine Großmutter väterlicherseits, Eva Auguste von Stammer, war Hans Hermann von Katte mit dieser altadligen Familie verwandt, denn deren Schwester Anna Elisabeth hatte den brandenburgischen Kammerpräsidenten Gustav Adolf von der Schulenburg geheiratet. Von dessen Kindern war insbesondere Matthias Johann von der Schulenburg...berühmt geworden; nicht minder seine Schwester Ehrengard Melusine unter dem Titel einer Herzogin von Kendal.
Through his paternal grandmother, Eva Auguste von Stammer, Hans Hermann von Katte was related with this old noble family, since her sister Anna Elisabeth had married the Brandenburg chamber-president Gustav Adolf von der Schulenburg. Of their children, Matthias Johann von der Schulenburg especially became famous; not less his sister Ehrengard Melusine under the title Duchess of Kendal.
He cites Georg Schmidt, Das Geschlecht von der Schulenburg, II. Teil: Die Stammreihe, Beetzendorf 1899, 416 – 418.
I tracked that down on FamilySearch, and the page in question says his first wife was Petronella Ottilie Schwenken, and his second wife was Anna Elisabeth von Stammer. The children of the first marriage include Matthias Johann and Ehrengard Melusine. The children of the second marriage do not. The fact that Melusine's mother was the wife named Petronella is also way more consistent with her daughter being Petronella than her being descended from the other wife.
So in this case, Kloosterhuis' source doesn't say what he says it does.
There's also the part where he might be right, but he's not telling me where to find the info that Anna Elisabeth and Eva Auguste were sisters. Schmidt says Anna Elisabeth's parents were Jürgen Arnd auf Wörmlitz, Wedelitz, and Ballenstedt, and Anna Elisabeth von Königsmarck. Schmidt says nothing about Eva Auguste's parentage, but this other 19th century, possibly wrong, source (Nachrichten zur Geschichte des Geschlechts derer von Rochow und ihrer Besitzungen, by Adolph Friedrich August von Rochow, 1861) says Eva Auguste's parents were Hans Heinrich von Stammer and Margarethe Judith von Benningsen.
So even now that I've gotten away from Wikipedia and online genealogy sites that probably draw on Wikipedia or vice versa, I'm still not seeing how Eva Auguste and Anna Elisabeth were related. And all evidence points to Melusine and Katte being related by marriage, not blood. Evidently they kept close enough ties for him to call her "Aunt", but that kind of thing happens in families.
(And yes, I will get to the Melusine write-up at some point, now that I'm winding down on the Great Northern War. Also SDC!)
Oh, what the heck, I'll do the "best of" for Melusine now, and the rest only if I get inspired and have time.
Of most interest to salon:
Melusine was apparently a stickler when it came to proper behavior. We've seen that she was a regular churchgoer, and increasingly devout in her later years, and Hatton speculates that her breaking the silence about her illegitimate daughters in her will is because of the religious context of the will, where she didn't feel she could tell a lie.
New examples have emerged: G1 appears to have been more forgiving than Melusine of their eldest daughter, who took lovers and was divorced when her husband caught her in flagrante. G1 granted the divorce and gave her a title (Gräfin von Delitz). In later years, he gave her a small palace, and in a record in which he's drawing a money order from the Hanoverian treasury for her use, George asks that this 'be done without the knowledge of the Duchess of Kendal' (i.e. her mother Melusine).
Moreover:
She disapproved so strongly of the gambling habits of Philip Dormer Stanhope 4th earl of Chesterfield, who married young Melusine, that he was too scared to confess his losses at cards during a visit to Bath: he pretended he had not played at all.
In her will:
The sums donated to nephews and nieces were quite modest (£300 to each); and the somewhat straitlaced attitude of Melusine as she got older (which we have already noticed in her dislike of gambling for high stakes) is evident in her leaving out one nephew from the list of bequests with the explanation that she did so because he had married against his parents' wishes.
Why is this relevant? Well, Selena pointed out that historical Katte was obviously willing to brave (relative) poverty in exile for Fritz, since he had to know Aunt Melusine might not be willing to host/bankroll him indefinitely.
But now that I've read these examples, I'm not convinced she would have given a deserter and flouter of his father's wishes anything! Remember, Hans Heinrich didn't want his son leaving Prussian service for British even without it being desertion. (And Hans Hermann was reprimanded for overstaying his leave.)
And this is of course relevant to any AU in which he shows up in England in 1730. :D (As an out for the author who needs one, there's always Petronella/young Melusine, whom he was infatuated1, and who might have found a way to get him some money.)
Speaking of Petronella/young Melusine, Hatton tells me that she and her mother were inseparable, and that they continued living together even after young Melusine married Chesterfield. And that young Melusine seems not to have lived with her husband:
Young Melusine's marriage seems to have made little difference: there is hardly a mention of her in Chesterfield, Letters, and her husband's biographers have concluded that, though he behaved towards her with great politeness in society, they lived more or less apart. The duchess of Kendal could not have approved of him; in her will of 1743 she makes sure that he cannot touch any of the money left to the younger Melusine.
Things you would not have guessed!
1. The original Selena summary said "had a fling with", but the text reads "umschwärmte". I take it to mean he was admiring her, with no implications as to whether or not she reciprocated. And while my German admittedly misses a lot of nuances like this, summarizing from memory is also a feature of Selena summaries (just like Mildred summaries), so I'm asking. Do we know from "umschwärmte" whether they had a fling?
Tangent: Oh, and this is interesting. Rereading that passage, Kloosterhuis describes Petronella Melusine as a relative ("Verwandte") of the duchess of Kendal, not a daughter. He cites Schmidt again, who, remember, is writing in 1899. And remember that Hatton told us that the equation of the "nieces" of Melusine with her illegitimate children by G1 was recent as of 1978.
Ooh, Schmidt is saying that that the ADB erroneously says that she was the illegitimate daughter of G1 and Melusine. And Kloosterhuis seems to be going along with this. Okay, guys, but Hatton cites evidence and you don't, so...Schmidt might be 19th century whitewashing and Kloosterhuis might be trustingly following him. Evidence or it didn't happen!
(I may not be able to read entire books or even essays in old-fashioned German font yet, but I can do detective work like this now, which is a huge step forward in terms of my productivity!)
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Schulenburgs and Rottembourgs
I found the book Kloosterhuis cited for this claim. Snippet view shows me it does indeed say 1727-1734 in Madrid, and there's a footnote I can't view. Since the book costs 75 euros, I've put in a request with my local Interlibrary Loan, and we'll see what happens. (I send them such obscure requests that 50% get canceled because they can't find a library willing to lend, but this one seems easier to acquire, so fingers crossed.) It's a 2004 secondary source that seems reputable, but my 19th century collection of instructions to French ambassadors still seems more reliable. But until I see the footnote, I will reserve judgment.
Also the Schulenburgs, I need to research the contradictions between Kloosterhuis' genealogy and Wikipedia's.
This one I tracked down, and it really looks like Wikipedia is right and Kloosterhuis is wrong! (Oh, how the mighty have fallen. :P)
Kloosterhuis:
Über seine Großmutter väterlicherseits, Eva Auguste von Stammer, war Hans Hermann von Katte mit dieser altadligen Familie verwandt, denn deren Schwester Anna Elisabeth hatte den brandenburgischen Kammerpräsidenten Gustav Adolf von der Schulenburg geheiratet. Von dessen Kindern war insbesondere Matthias Johann von der Schulenburg...berühmt geworden; nicht minder seine Schwester Ehrengard Melusine unter dem Titel einer Herzogin von Kendal.
Through his paternal grandmother, Eva Auguste von Stammer, Hans Hermann von Katte was related with this old noble family, since her sister Anna Elisabeth had married the Brandenburg chamber-president Gustav Adolf von der Schulenburg. Of their children, Matthias Johann von der Schulenburg especially became famous; not less his sister Ehrengard Melusine under the title Duchess of Kendal.
He cites Georg Schmidt, Das Geschlecht von der Schulenburg, II. Teil: Die Stammreihe, Beetzendorf 1899, 416 – 418.
I tracked that down on FamilySearch, and the page in question says his first wife was Petronella Ottilie Schwenken, and his second wife was Anna Elisabeth von Stammer. The children of the first marriage include Matthias Johann and Ehrengard Melusine. The children of the second marriage do not. The fact that Melusine's mother was the wife named Petronella is also way more consistent with her daughter being Petronella than her being descended from the other wife.
So in this case, Kloosterhuis' source doesn't say what he says it does.
There's also the part where he might be right, but he's not telling me where to find the info that Anna Elisabeth and Eva Auguste were sisters. Schmidt says Anna Elisabeth's parents were Jürgen Arnd auf Wörmlitz, Wedelitz, and Ballenstedt, and Anna Elisabeth von Königsmarck. Schmidt says nothing about Eva Auguste's parentage, but this other 19th century, possibly wrong, source (Nachrichten zur Geschichte des Geschlechts derer von Rochow und ihrer Besitzungen, by Adolph Friedrich August von Rochow, 1861) says Eva Auguste's parents were Hans Heinrich von Stammer and Margarethe Judith von Benningsen.
So even now that I've gotten away from Wikipedia and online genealogy sites that probably draw on Wikipedia or vice versa, I'm still not seeing how Eva Auguste and Anna Elisabeth were related. And all evidence points to Melusine and Katte being related by marriage, not blood. Evidently they kept close enough ties for him to call her "Aunt", but that kind of thing happens in families.
(And yes, I will get to the Melusine write-up at some point, now that I'm winding down on the Great Northern War. Also SDC!)
Melusine
Of most interest to salon:
Melusine was apparently a stickler when it came to proper behavior. We've seen that she was a regular churchgoer, and increasingly devout in her later years, and Hatton speculates that her breaking the silence about her illegitimate daughters in her will is because of the religious context of the will, where she didn't feel she could tell a lie.
New examples have emerged: G1 appears to have been more forgiving than Melusine of their eldest daughter, who took lovers and was divorced when her husband caught her in flagrante. G1 granted the divorce and gave her a title (Gräfin von Delitz). In later years, he gave her a small palace, and in a record in which he's drawing a money order from the Hanoverian treasury for her use, George asks that this 'be done without the knowledge of the Duchess of Kendal' (i.e. her mother Melusine).
Moreover:
She disapproved so strongly of the gambling habits of Philip Dormer Stanhope 4th earl of Chesterfield, who married young Melusine, that he was too scared to confess his losses at cards during a visit to Bath: he pretended he had not played at all.
In her will:
The sums donated to nephews and nieces were quite modest (£300 to each); and the somewhat straitlaced attitude of Melusine as she got older (which we have already noticed in her dislike of gambling for high stakes) is evident in her leaving out one nephew from the list of bequests with the explanation that she did so because he had married against his parents' wishes.
Why is this relevant? Well, Selena pointed out that historical Katte was obviously willing to brave (relative) poverty in exile for Fritz, since he had to know Aunt Melusine might not be willing to host/bankroll him indefinitely.
But now that I've read these examples, I'm not convinced she would have given a deserter and flouter of his father's wishes anything! Remember, Hans Heinrich didn't want his son leaving Prussian service for British even without it being desertion. (And Hans Hermann was reprimanded for overstaying his leave.)
And this is of course relevant to any AU in which he shows up in England in 1730. :D (As an out for the author who needs one, there's always Petronella/young Melusine, whom he was infatuated1, and who might have found a way to get him some money.)
Speaking of Petronella/young Melusine, Hatton tells me that she and her mother were inseparable, and that they continued living together even after young Melusine married Chesterfield. And that young Melusine seems not to have lived with her husband:
Young Melusine's marriage seems to have made little difference: there is hardly a mention of her in Chesterfield, Letters, and her husband's biographers have concluded that, though he behaved towards her with great politeness in society, they lived more or less apart. The duchess of Kendal could not have approved of him; in her will of 1743 she makes sure that he cannot touch any of the money left to the younger Melusine.
Things you would not have guessed!
1. The original Selena summary said "had a fling with", but the text reads "umschwärmte". I take it to mean he was admiring her, with no implications as to whether or not she reciprocated. And while my German admittedly misses a lot of nuances like this, summarizing from memory is also a feature of Selena summaries (just like Mildred summaries), so I'm asking. Do we know from "umschwärmte" whether they had a fling?
Tangent: Oh, and this is interesting. Rereading that passage, Kloosterhuis describes Petronella Melusine as a relative ("Verwandte") of the duchess of Kendal, not a daughter. He cites Schmidt again, who, remember, is writing in 1899. And remember that Hatton told us that the equation of the "nieces" of Melusine with her illegitimate children by G1 was recent as of 1978.
Ooh, Schmidt is saying that that the ADB erroneously says that she was the illegitimate daughter of G1 and Melusine. And Kloosterhuis seems to be going along with this. Okay, guys, but Hatton cites evidence and you don't, so...Schmidt might be 19th century whitewashing and Kloosterhuis might be trustingly following him. Evidence or it didn't happen!
(I may not be able to read entire books or even essays in old-fashioned German font yet, but I can do detective work like this now, which is a huge step forward in terms of my productivity!)