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cahnMore diaries of our favorite 18th-century Prussian diary-keeper have been unearthed and have been synopsized!
January 18th: Blessed be thou to me! Under your light, my Prince Heinrich was born!
January 18th: Blessed be thou to me! Under your light, my Prince Heinrich was born!
Cunegonde's Kidnapping - Kidnapping, Trial, and Religious War
Date: 2022-08-31 02:16 pm (UTC)Sara: A Calvinist woman of good family.
Hendrick: Her Catholic husband, of less good family.
Their baby: The subject of the kidnapping attempt.
Cunegonde: Hendrick's sister.
Father Bosten: The local Catholic priest.
Anna: The local midwife, who is Catholic.
Young Calvinist Sara and Catholic Hendrick have a hell of a time getting married. Neither the Catholics nor the Protestants want to perform this ceremony. Sara and Henrick have to shop around, and they have to make 4 different, mutually exclusive agreements with different people as to how the babies will be baptized.
By the time the first baby comes, the parents haven't decided between themselves how he's going to be baptized, and they're still telling different people different things.
When Anna the midwife delivers the baby, she asks how it's going to be baptized, because she's supposed to make the sign of the cross over the baby if it's to be baptized Roman Catholic. But she can't get a straight answer from either of the parents.
Sara has the upper hand, but Hendrick isn't happy about it. He's muttering to himself, and at one point he announces that he's expressly had something stronger to drink to give him the courage to have it out with his Calvinist in-laws!
Then things get complicated. They get complicated for me to recount because our evidence is about 1,000 pages of records relating to a trial, and in that trial, several people gave evidence several times. Their testimony contradicts each other, the same person's later testimony often contradicts their earlier testimony, sometimes people expressly retract their testimony, and no one is unbiased.
So we have no idea who actually said what.
What we know: While the baby was being baptized Calvinist, Father Bosten came and had a talk with Cunegonde, Hendrick's sister. She was an intellectually disabled woman in her twenties. This will later become important.
What we don't know: Either
a) Father Bosten ordered Cunegonde to march into the Calvinist church, where the baby was being baptized as they spoke, and rescue her nephew so he could be baptized Catholic.
b) Someone else, but not Father Bosten, ordered Cunegonde to march into the Calvinist church, where the baby was being baptized as they spoke, and rescue her nephew so he could be baptized Catholic.
c) Father Bosten was super chill about the whole thing, and Cunegonde marched in and started attempting to kidnap her nephew on her own initiative, so he could be baptized Catholic.
In the aftermath of this conversation, however it played out, the baby is being held over the baptismal basin when Cunegonde rushes in and grabs the baby by the legs. A tug of war ensues. (!) Someone manages to grab her and pull her off. A minute later, she lunges again but is held back.
Then she ends up being detained in Vaals, by the Protestant authorities. The baby is baptized Calvinist.
Back in Aachen, a bunch of Catholic farmhands decide to stage a raid and kidnap Cunegonde back. Again, possibly at the instigation of Father Bosten, possibly not.
They are successful. But this is legally even worse than trying to kidnap a baby from the church, because it was the state authorities detaining Cunegonde, and violating that is treason.
So Father Bosten ends up imprisoned and placed on trial for treason. The authorities try to bring the farmhands to trial too, but the Aachen authorities refuse to extradite them. It was night so there are some questions of identification. One guy is almost tortured to get a confession, but at the last minute, the witnesses change their tune and start saying they're not *sure* it was him. Three months later, the authorities get proof that he is in fact innocent--so they almost tortured the wrong guy.
Sneaky attempts to capture the farmhands are largely unsuccessful. The three ringleaders cut a deal and get immunity in exchange for evidence.
So mostly the trial comes down to the Protestants trying to prove that the Catholic clergy, as exemplified by Father Bosten, are lying, violent, religious fanatics who can't handle the baby of a Calvinist mother being baptized Calvinist, and the Catholics try to prove that Father Bosten is an enlightened, chill man who would never say anything like, "I order you to go kidnap that baby!"
MEANWHILE
Religious tensions are escalating. Both sides are blaming the other.
is violently attacked at night and ends up with a concussion.
Remember the Protestants in Aachen who practice Auslaufen, walking to Vaals to go to church? If they try that now, they get assaulted by Catholics on the way. They fear for their lives. It's no longer safe for them to go to church.
They demand an escort of soldiers from the authorities. These escorts are either not provided or are completely inadequate.
Eventually, one of the Protestants is killed.
The Catholics refuse to extradite the accused murderer.
The Dutch retaliate by shutting down the Catholic churches in their territory.
And this is where the author points out: from a modern perspective, the Catholics look like the villains, because they're committing the murder and assault. But from a contemporary perspective, the Protestants committed violence too: they just committed it against symbols. They went into churches and ripped down saints and crucifixes and generally committed iconoclasm. And to a devout Catholic, that's a crime against *God*, which is much worse than a crime against a mere human.
But not all the Catholics are prejudiced: Anna the midwife attends mass every day, but she not only delivers Protestant babies but is comfortable taking them to church to be baptized.
Once long ago Bosten had asked her, "Do you feel no compunction about bringing children to the Reformed church for baptism?" "Why shouldn't I do it?" she had answered defiantly. "I hear no evil there. You [meaning the pastor] say everything in Latin, but in the Reformed church I hear the baptism in German."
But because most people are not that chill, on either side, the trial is dragging on. Important records are disappearing. People are dying. An unofficial religious mini-war has broken out in the area of Aachen and Vaals. There is no end in sight.
Then Amalie shows up! No, she doesn't single-handedly solve the problem. But her presence is one of several factors that ends up contributing to the de-escalation of tensions.
As a reminder, after the end of the Seven Years' War, when it was safe to travel, Amalie went to the spa in Aachen to deal with what were obviously stress-related or stress-exacerbated symptoms. (I'm increasingly convinced this is how "taking the waters" got its reputation for being medicinally helpful: if you get a break from your stressful everyday life by going to a spa, you might feel better.)
And while she's in Aachen, she wants to attend church. And the reformed church is in Vaals. And the Aachen authorities obviously can't have Frederick the Great's sister being assaulted by local Catholic farmhands on her way to church. So they provide the safe escort while Amalie's there. Which means all the other Calvinists in the Aachen area can safely go to church in Vaals with her.
And since the Protestants are being treated better, the Dutch authorities calm down a bit and re-open the Catholic churches. And gradually things get better.
Meanwhile, Father Bosten is still on trial, and the trial is dragging oooon. There's an attempt to determine whether Cunegonde can be held legally accountable for her own actions, and whether her testimony can hold any weight at all. Remember, she keeps blaming Father Bosten for ordering her to do this.
Bosten's defense obviously wants to insist that she's so mentally disabled you can't believe anything she says. Her defense wants you to believe that she's impressionable and not capable of exercising good judgment, but that she's perfectly capable of remembering and accurately recounting what happened in the past.
Eventually, the case ends up making its way all the way up to the Dutch stadtholder, who at this time, is the husband of Fritz's niece Wilhelmine (the one Fritz thinks should exercise political influence over her husband, and whom FW will later stage an invasion to rescue her from Dutch rebels). He and his people eventually decide that:
1. Father Bosten is guilty. He will be banished from Dutch soil and not allowed to perform pastoral duties there again.
2. Cunegonde is guilty. She will be given an hour in the stocks.
3. Both Father Bosten and Cunegonde need to pay the legal fees for this case.
Legal fees are considerable in this period, partly because prisoners are responsible for their food, lodgings, heating, light, etc., and partly because everyone who gets paid by the parties found guilty has an incentive to drag trials on in order to inflate costs.
Cunegonde, who's disabled and still living with her parents and has no income, is not going to be able to pay a thing, and everybody recognizes this. So she "gets off" with just an hour in the pillory. The Catholics were going around insisting that she, poor disabled thing, was going to be whipped by the evil Protestants, but in the end, the Protestants were willing to make allowances for her disability.
But Father Bosten, who's become the prime target of this trial, and who's spent the most time in prison, isn't anywhere near being able to pay his fees either. So now there's a second legal battle over "How ridiculously high can you drive legal fees that obviously no one can pay?"
An attempt is made to raise the money for Father Bosten by asking his congregation to contribute to a collection. This isn't the first time a Protestant has gone after money from a Catholic in exactly this way, and it may be exactly what the Dutch authorities intended when setting the fees so impossibly high.
But even the collection the Church is able to obtain is only able to pay a portion of the fees. They're getting outraged, and accuse the authorities of overcharging. Eventually, Charles Bentinck, local governor, one of the famous Bentinck family (Horowski has a book supposedly* coming out in October that I'm planning to read), and man of the Enlightenment, agrees this persecution of Catholics is ridiculous and lowers the fees.
* Supposedly it was coming out last year, but publication got pushed forward, and I hope that doesn't happen again!
We're not entirely sure what happened to Cunegonde after this, because she has two first cousins with the same first and last name, but "it seems likely that our Cunegonde never married and that she died in 1771 at the age of thirty-one."
Sara and Hendrick had to flee town early on in this process, and they fell into poverty. Hendrick died young, as did the daughter they had, but Sara married twice more, the last time for money, and after outliving her third husband, she was well off. She lived until 1818.
Father Bosten continued serving as a priest "a stone's throw" from the Dutch border, until he died in 1783, age 71.
Was he guilty? The author says that without a time machine or crystal ball, we can't know, but he has an interesting guess:
Cunegonde's first testimony said that someone she didn't know, *not* the priest, pressured her into the kidnapping attempt. Only her later testimonies insist that it was the priest.
Since earlier testimony may be more accurate, as it's closer to events and less likely to be the result of external pressure, realizing where your interests lie, or just retelling the story in your head in a way that you're comfortable with...maybe it was this other guy who ordered Cunegonde.
Said other guy would, based on other evidence, have been Andries Buntgens, the father of the local sexton. Ironically, if he was the guilty party, he was the only person found innocent during the trial. But if the blame was shifted from Andries to Father Bosten, it may have been for two reasons:
1. Andries was a simple commoner, and classism dictates that people like this don't give orders or dispatch raiding parties. Father Bosten was a priest, which meant he was in a position of authority and influence. So he would have been more naturally seen as an instigator of events, and someone like Andries as a follower rather than a leader.
2. Father Bosten was a Catholic priest. The entire Reformation consisted of insisting that the Catholic clergy, from the Pope down, was full of self-serving, casuistic, un-Christian men who just wanted to exploit the common people. So seeing a priest as a man who would be fanatical enough to instigate violence against Protestants minding their own business, and then lie like a Jesuit about it, would have fit Protestant preconceptions much more than "some courier who happened to be Catholic was responsible for this religious mini-war."
But we will never know.
In conclusion, I have summarized a summary of some super complicated events and retelling of said events. If you want the summary, you can read the book, because there is a whole lot of action and drama and "he said, she said," along with some interesting (to me) sociology.
Re: Cunegonde's Kidnapping - Kidnapping, Trial, and Religious War
Date: 2022-09-01 02:03 pm (UTC)Speaking as the granddaughter of a Catholic from Aachen (that's Aix-La-Chapelle, btw,
If this visit of Amalie's is the one directly after the 7 Years War, it ought to be also the one where she met the travelling Mozarts (and liked Wolferl and Nannerl just fine, but, as a disapproving Leopold noticed, wasn't generous with the cash). ("If I had a gold piece for every kiss...") If it was, it might be worth checking Leopold's correspondence for mentions of this mini religious war, because as a staunch Catholic, he's bound to have An Opinion on this.
(Note that Wolfgang was in Paris, trying in vain to make it as a young man where he's been feted as a miracle child, when Voltaire died, and wrote home to Dad an "yay, that bastard Voltaire is dead and burns in hell!" letter. Just as an example of how Catholic the Mozarts were, free masons or not.)
Re: how "taking the waters" got its reputation, methinks you're onto something.
Re: Cunegonde's Kidnapping - Kidnapping, Trial, and Religious War
Date: 2022-09-02 05:13 am (UTC)Oh wow, that would be interesting if Leopold had something about it. (Would it be in the book?)
(Note that Wolfgang was in Paris, trying in vain to make it as a young man where he's been feted as a miracle child, when Voltaire died, and wrote home to Dad an "yay, that bastard Voltaire is dead and burns in hell!" letter. Just as an example of how Catholic the Mozarts were, free masons or not.)
Oh, that's interesting!
Re: Cunegonde's Kidnapping - Kidnapping, Trial, and Religious War
Date: 2022-09-02 05:37 pm (UTC)Oh, neat! I knew this story would be of interest to
All the kidnappings at the start remind me of the event where some of FW's troops were either in the process of returning with their volunteer when assaulted by a mob or lording with their gang-pressed victim which was liberated by the people, depending whom you believe, also at the Dutch border, I think.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure this also happened at the Hanoverian border, the Saxon border, the Danish border, the Mecklenburg border if I'm not mistaken, and probably several others. FW's foreign policy was to keep the diplomats busy over his recruiting practices. :P
If it was, it might be worth checking Leopold's correspondence for mentions of this mini religious war, because as a staunch Catholic, he's bound to have An Opinion on this.
Ooh, nice connection! Yeah, there might be something interesting there.
* The only story I have about religion in that marriage is that the kids were supposed to be raised Catholic, and my loosely Protestant grandmother was fine with that...until one day a Catholic priest told her she should have as many kids as possible, because God could always take away the ones she had. Now, my grandparents were committed to only having the 2 kids they could afford on their income. Outraged, my grandmother said she was never taking the kids to a Catholic church again. To which my grandfather's response was, "If they're not going a Catholic church, they're not going to any church." And that is the story of how churchgoing in my family died a generation and a half back. ;)
Re: Cunegonde's Kidnapping - Kidnapping, Trial, and Religious War
Date: 2022-09-01 06:02 pm (UTC)I do remember the Oglethorpe children were raised in that way--the sisters were raised Catholic and ended up as Jacobite spies, and the son (or sons, I don't know if there were more) was raised Protestant and became a Hanoverian supporter.
Re: Cunegonde's Kidnapping - Kidnapping, Trial, and Religious War
Date: 2022-09-02 11:26 pm (UTC)Lol, we've now tied this obscure event in with the Oglethorpes and the Mozarts, thanks to the awesomeness that is salon. :D
Leopold Mozart about meeting Amalie in Aachen
Date: 2022-09-03 08:31 am (UTC)I didn't intend to stay in Aachen for longer than it took to change my credit letters; but in the night I had an attack of my usual pains, and the other day the real Schiatica. Which meant settling down and staying. Since Aachen is the most expensive place which I've yet encountered on my travels, I've had the honor of paying more than 75 Franc here. True, Princess Amalie, sister of the King in (!!!!!) Prussia was in Aachen; but she herself has no money, and her entire equipage and court looks as much like an assembly of doctors as one drop of water resembles another. If the kisses she gave to my children, especially Master Wolfgang, had been all new Louis d'ors, we'd have been happy enough; but neither the innkeeper nor the post office can be paid by kisses. The most ridiciluous thing was that she really wanted to talk me into heading not for Paris but for Berlin, and tried this with propositions which I didn't want to believe, so I shan't mention them here; for I couldn't believe them, especially not the proposition she made for my person, Vestigia terrent; says the fox. From Aachen we went to Lüttich...
Presumably Amalie suggested Leopold could find himself hired by Fritz if he went to Berlin with his kids. Now, in the very early days of salon when we wrote our crack round robin fic, you may recall I concluded it with the Mozarts showing up for a concert (courtesy of Joseph), and now I'm proud that it almost works out, date wise. I mean, by a measly two years or so. Also, while I can't see Leopold Mozart, who still uses "the King in Prussia" designation after the 7 Years War (no Frederick the Great here, no sir!), settling down in Berlin even if he hasn't heard that Fritz is less than generous and terrible to work for in musical circles, buuuuuut maybe a concert or several. And come on. Could even Fritz with his hardcore old fashioned taste have resisted child!Wolfgang?
Re: Leopold Mozart about meeting Amalie in Aachen
Date: 2022-09-03 01:43 pm (UTC)but the Amalie passage goes further than I've seen quoted in biographies
It's always like that, isn't it?! Preferably after I can get my French up, I still have plans to go through a Fritz bio (probably MacDonogh) and just look up a bunch of the passages in the original sources and see what biographers leave out. I can't forget the Lafayette passage, or quoted "The Dutch invited Fritz to be stadtholder" vs. original "They invited one of his brothers to be stadtholder."
he most ridiciluous thing was that she really wanted to talk me into heading not for Paris but for Berlin, and tried this with propositions which I didn't want to believe, so I shan't mention them here;
LOLOLOL! And your AU being validated! A measly two years is nothing, I say!
buuuuuut maybe a concert or several. And come on. Could even Fritz with his hardcore old fashioned taste have resisted child!Wolfgang?
Oh, man. Talk about a missed historical opportunity!
...I can just hear Leopold muttering something about an "evil man in Potsdam." :PPP And especially given the timing! October 1763? Lol.
And come on. Could even Fritz with his hardcore old fashioned taste have resisted child!Wolfgang?
Now is your opportunity to finish the crack round robin and answer this very question! If you wish to do so with emojis, I would not say no. ;) (Which reminds me...
*some time later*
The latest emoji gem is now up at
Re: Leopold Mozart about meeting Amalie in Aachen
Date: 2022-09-04 09:18 am (UTC)On the feast of Saint Francis we set out from Linz at 4:30 in the afternoon with the so called Wasser-ordinaire,and reached Matthausen the same day by dark night at half past 7. The following Tuesday, we came to Ips in the afternoon, where 2 Minorites and a Benedictine, who were with us on the ship, read Holy Mass, during which our Woferl so cavorted around on the organ and played so well that the Franciscan fathers, who were at that moment sitting with some guests at their midday meal, left their food, took the guests with them, ran to the choir and almost died of astonishment. In the night we were at Stein,
and on Wednesday we reached Vienna at 3 o’clock, where we took what was at once our midday and evening meal at 5 o’clock. On the journey we had constant rain and much wind. Wolfgangl had already had catarrh in Linz and, despite all the disorder, early rising, disorderly eating and drinking, he remained, praise God, in good health. People make more of the whirlpool and vortex than the matter itself amounts to. At the landing, Herr Gilowsky’s servant was already in attendance, came onto the ship and then conducted me to the rooms. But we soon hurried to an inn in order to still our hunger, having previously placed
our baggage in safety and in order in our accommodation. That was also where Herr Gilowsky came to welcome us. Now we have been here for 8 days already and do not yet know where the sun rises in Vienna, for up to this very hour it has done nothing but rain and, with a constant wind blowing, it has occasionally snowed a little, so that we even saw a little snow on the roofs. [30] At the same time, it was not, and still is not, genuinely cold, but genuinely frosty. I must remark on one thing specifically: at the Schanzl customs office we were cleared very quickly and entirely exempted from the Main Customs Office. Once again, the blame goes to our Herr Wolferl, for he was immediately on familiar terms with the
customs officer, showed him the clavier, invited him to listen, played him a menuet on his little violin, and with that we were sent on our way. The customs officer requested with the greatest politeness, and obtained from us, permission to visit us, and to this purpose noted our lodgings. (...)
Count Daun has also given me a letter to take with me for Baron Schell. He is giving me good cause to hope that I will leave Vienna satisfied. This seems to be the case, too, inasmuch as the court is demanding to hear us before we have presented ourselves. For young Count Palfi was going through Linz precisely when our concert was due to start. He went to pay his respects to Countess von Schlick, who
told him about the youngster and persuaded him to have the post-coach stop before the Town Hall and to come to the concert with the Countess. He heard it with astonishment, and told Archduke Joseph of it with much commotion. The latter told the Empress. As soon, then, as it became known that we were in Vienna, the order came that we should come to the court. You see, that was the source of it.
The preceding lines were written on the 11th with the firm intention of reporting on the 12th, when we came back from Schönbrunn, on how it went, but we had to drive in a bee line from Schönbrunn to the Prince of Hildeburghausen’s. The 6 ducats were worth more than sending of the letter. I am putting my trust in Frau Hagenauer and promise myself so much kindness from her friendship that she will accept the good wishes for her name-day now, even though they are so brief that I only say that we will ask God that he may preserve her in good health, along with all who belong to her, even in the most advanced years,
and that he may invite and receive us all, at his chosen time, into heaven for a game of Brandl. Now time no longer permits anything, other than to say in haste that we were so extraordinarily graciously received by Their Majesties that if I were to recount it, one would take it to be a fable. [80] Enough! Wolferl jumped onto the Empress’lap, got hold of her round the neck and kissed her roundly. In brief, we were with her from 3 o’clock to 6 o’clock and the Emperor himself came out into the other room to fetch me in order to hear the Infanta playing the violin. On the 15th, the Empress sent 2 sets of clothing with the Privy Paymaster, who drove up in front of our house in gala dress: 1 set for the boy and 1 for
the girl. As soon as the command comes, they must appear at court and the Privy Paymaster will collect them. Today, at 2:30, they must go to the 2 youngest Archdukes, at 4 o’clock to Count Palfi, the Hungarian Chancellor. Yesterday we were at Count Kaunitz’, and the day before at Countess Kinsky’s,43 and then later at Count von Ulfeld’s. We are invited to concerts in 2 days’ time again. Say everywhere in the name of grace that we are well and happy, praise God. I commend myself and am as always your
Mozart
Re: Leopold Mozart about meeting Amalie in Aachen
Date: 2022-09-04 08:08 pm (UTC)Also, I meant to add earlier that of course Amalie didn't have money to spare, the Seven Years' War has just ended, *and* she's traveling.
Re: Leopold Mozart about meeting Amalie in Aachen
Date: 2022-09-08 02:48 pm (UTC)Leopold had to pay in Aachen, where the Mozarts were staying at the inn "Zum goldenen Drachen" (now there's a good name!) "The Golden Dragon": 75 Gulden, for a relatively short stay. This was two and a half times his monthly salary as First Concert Master in Salzburg.
In Vienna, he received for the three hours concert his kids gave to MT & her kids & husband: 100 Golden Ducats, which were 450 Silver Gulden, which was what Leopold earned in a year. Plus some silver snuff boxes plus a gala gown/ costume each for Nannerl and Wolfers from an arch duchess and an arch duke. The last, btw, wasn't a shabby gesture but a very complimentary and practical one. These gala gowns weren't worn often, the kids grew out of them, and because of the perdigree and the expensive material, undoubtedly the Mozarts could sell them once Wolferl and Nannerl had grown out of them, too.
Entrance fee for public concerts per person, not special performances like the one for MT: Four Gulden in a city like Frankfurt (Goethe Senior, JWG's Dad, wrote this in his account book).
Re: Leopold Mozart about meeting Amalie in Aachen
From:Re: Leopold Mozart about meeting Amalie in Aachen
From:Re: Leopold Mozart about meeting Amalie in Aachen
Date: 2022-09-09 04:44 am (UTC)Re: Leopold Mozart about meeting Amalie in Aachen
Date: 2022-09-08 03:07 am (UTC)Heh, and I am again amused.
(Leopold, loyal MT subject, just writes "the Empress", no "Empress-Queen" qualification, and certainly no "Queen of Hungary".)
sister of the King in (!!!!!) Prussia
Heeee! :D
The most ridiciluous thing was that she really wanted to talk me into heading not for Paris but for Berlin, and tried this with propositions which I didn't want to believe, so I shan't mention them here; for I couldn't believe them, especially not the proposition she made for my person, Vestigia terrent; says the fox.
Lol!
Presumably Amalie suggested Leopold could find himself hired by Fritz if he went to Berlin with his kids.
idk, seems like Leopold made the right decision here, even if we in salon regret the absence of such a concert :) It does sound like child!Wolfgang was adorable :D (And could have played old-fashioned music, right?)
Re: Leopold Mozart about meeting Amalie in Aachen
Date: 2022-09-08 06:31 am (UTC)Learn from this, church choirs and church organ players everywhere. You, too, could have a musical prodigy or two listening among the mass visitors, so you better play/sing well!
Heeee! :D
Leopold seriously is the first person I've seen use the "King IN Prussia" instead of "of Prussia" designation as late as 1763.
...at least he didn't refer to him as the Margrave of Brandenburg? But that's for fellow monarchs to do, I guess. *looks at MT and Louis XV*
And yes, of course there was no money in 1763. I remember a passage from Lehndorff's diaries where he reports Amalie being put out because Fritz wouldn't permit her to mint her own coins to help with that problem. Otoh, Lehndorff also reports Amalie's spontanous deeds of generosity in the war like giving the jewelry she was wearing to Madame de Maupertuis so the later could travel to her dying husband, and at any rate Prussia's lack of available cash is not the fault of Leopold Mozart, travelling musician, or his kids, and he's facing far more serious consequences if he isn't able to pay the innkeepers than the sister of the King IN Prussia who will hardly get arrested.
idk, seems like Leopold made the right decision here, even if we in salon regret the absence of such a concert :) It does sound like child!Wolfgang was adorable :D (And could have played old-fashioned music, right?)
Musical programm: I'll see whether I can hunt down Melchior Grimm's famous description of the Mozart family Paris concert, because I suspect he'd list individual pieces. And yes, presumably the selection would have gone to standard favorites rather than the latest experimental music; HOWEVER, what are favorites in 1762/1763 Austria could already have been too modern for Fritz. One word: Gluck.
idk, seems like Leopold made the right decision here, even if we in salon regret the absence of such a concert :)
Well, yes. Leaving aside the relative shortage of cash in 1763, first of all, Leopold wasn't actually born in Salzburg. He was from Augsburg, which was a freie Reichstadt, which made him an HRE citizen and also the citizen of a town which at that point already had a Protestant majority (though the Catholic minority was still powerful, too), and going south instead of north as a young man in search of a working place as a musician was presumably a choice based on where he liked to live, which wasn't in Protestant Prussia (even if there was toleration of Catholics). Secondly, if rebellious growing up Wolfgang clashed with Prince Bishop Colloredo, can you imagine how he'd have clashed with Old Fritz? And thirdly, Vienna during Joseph's reign really WAS, as Salieri says in Amadeus, the city of music, the one where all the hottest musicians amd composers were or went to, and Berlin due to Fritz' insistence on the musical taste of his youth could no longer compete, while Paris was for a while still in the running (not least because Marie Antoinette had brought Gluck and his opera innovations to Paris, which meant current French music was more modern than Fritzian French music) and of course had a lot of other aspects going for it, but then the French Revolution made it too dangerous to live there for quite a number of artists. Also, to return to 1763, by going to Paris and then London instead, Leopold exposed his kids to a far greater variety of cultural influences and people than he would have if he'd gone to only starting to recover from the war Berlin.
In conclusion, both from a 1763 and from a wiser with hindsight perspective, Leopold made the right call. But it's still a shame no Fritz-meets-Mozart event ever happened!
Meanwhile, have old Goethe in 1830 (two years before his death) stunning young Eckermann, who was his Boswell, by casually mentioning having seen young Mozart during that concert tour across Europe. In 1830, Mozart truly already a classic and of another age, and so to a younger person like Eckermann the realisation Goethe had seen Mozart as a child (when he, JWG, was fourteen) was like you'd feel if a contemporary casually mentions having met Churchill.
Mittwoch, den 3. Februar 1830
Bei Goethe zu Tisch. Wir sprachen über Mozart. »Ich habe ihn als siebenjährigen Knaben gesehen,« sagte Goethe, »wo er auf einer Durchreise ein Konzert gab. Ich selber war etwa vierzehn Jahre alt, und ich erinnere mich des kleinen Mannes in seiner Frisur und Degen noch ganz deutlich.« Ich machte große Augen, und es war mir ein halbes Wunder, zu hören, daß Goethe alt genug sei, um Mozart als Kind gesehen zu haben.
(BTW, this passage is also impressive because unlike us, neither Goethe nor Eckermann had access to the internet or even the Frankfurt newspaper archive so they could look up when exactly child!Wolfgang was in Frankfurt, how old he was and how old young Goethe was. And yet this statement is correct - Goethe was fourteen, and Mozart seven when the Mozart family gave that concert in Frankfurt am Main. That he mentions the hair and the sword tells you something about what was still standard in Austria - dressing children in adult get up, complete with wig and wardrobe, and young Wolferl after the visit in Vienna had some discarded wardrobe of the young archdukes to dress up in - was already looking somewhat quaint for the citizens in Frankfurt, otherwise young Goethe wouldn't have remembered it as unusual.)
(Goethe, btw, adored Mozart's music, especially "The Magic Flute", and his standard reply when asked whether he could see "Faust" becoming an opera was to say only Mozart could have done it, but alas...)
Re: Leopold Mozart about meeting Amalie in Aachen
Date: 2022-09-09 05:12 am (UTC)Amalie! <3 Gosh, I need to get back to German practice and read Lehndorff...
and he's facing far more serious consequences if he isn't able to pay the innkeepers than the sister of the King IN Prussia who will hardly get arrested.
Hee. I must say I laughed at this.
One word: Gluck.
RIGHT. Fritz, why must you be this way?
and so to a younger person like Eckermann the realisation Goethe had seen Mozart as a child (when he, JWG, was fourteen) was like you'd feel if a contemporary casually mentions having met Churchill.
Me: Goethe met EVERYBODY!
neither Goethe nor Eckermann had access to the internet or even the Frankfurt newspaper archive so they could look up when exactly child!Wolfgang was in Frankfurt, how old he was and how old young Goethe was. And yet this statement is correct - Goethe was fourteen, and Mozart seven when the Mozart family gave that concert in Frankfurt am Main.
That IS impressive, and I wonder if that means that it made a really deep impression on Goethe.
(Goethe, btw, adored Mozart's music, especially "The Magic Flute", and his standard reply when asked whether he could see "Faust" becoming an opera was to say only Mozart could have done it, but alas...)
Ohhhhh now I really want this :P
Re: Cunegonde's Kidnapping - Kidnapping, Trial, and Religious War
Date: 2022-09-02 05:12 am (UTC)Then Amalie shows up! No, she doesn't single-handedly solve the problem. But her presence is one of several factors that ends up contributing to the de-escalation of tensions.
Much as I would like her to have saved the day through the power of her awesomeness, there's something kind of hilarious about her saving the day... because she wanted to go to church.
(I'm increasingly convinced this is how "taking the waters" got its reputation for being medicinally helpful: if you get a break from your stressful everyday life by going to a spa, you might feel better.)
And your family! :)
Eventually, Charles Bentinck, local governor, one of the famous Bentinck family (Horowski has a book supposedly* coming out in October that I'm planning to read)
Bentinck! I'm looking forward to you reading this :D
Said other guy would, based on other evidence, have been Andries Buntgens, the father of the local sexton. Ironically, if he was the guilty party, he was the only person found innocent during the trial. But if the blame was shifted from Andries to Father Bosten, it may have been for two reasons:
Wooooow, this all seems very plausible, and I feel really bad for Father Bosten (and really everyone involved) if this is true, even more than I already did.
Re: Cunegonde's Kidnapping - Kidnapping, Trial, and Religious War
Date: 2022-09-03 01:12 pm (UTC)Indeed! On the guy who almost got tortured:
Not that judicial torture was employed lightly or carelessly—at least, not in the Republic. But when an accused person “dared adamantly deny” a heinous crime that seemed at least “half-proven,” early modern law authorized prosecutors to extract by this means a confession. In some parts of Europe, torture was deemed absolutely necessary in such cases because a person accused of a capital offense could be convicted and executed only if he or she confessed. This was the law in Overmaas, as it was in Holland, and in the Habsburg Netherlands. Originally the requirement was intended to protect suspects against unfounded accusations. The reality, notoriously, was quite different, and by the second half of the eighteenth century, many rulers and officials had developed serious qualms about the utility as well as ethics of judicial torture, which Frederick the Great of Prussia led the way in abolishing. In 1776, an official in Overmaas would lend his weight to the move toward abolition. Until then, however, judicial torture was still employed regularly in Overmaas. Between 1773 and 1776 alone, authorities there used torture to extract confessions from more than a hundred men accused of belonging to the Goat Riders. In fact, then, it was not a discretionary matter but a legal requirement Van den Heuvel was fulfilling when he asked to have Pieter Koetgens tortured—“in omni gradu,” as necessary.
Pieter Koetgens was a Catholic farmhand who was accused of being one of the raiders who "liberated" Cunegonde from Vaals, and then--this part is hilarious--returned to the scene of the crime a couple days later in a rowdy party that got ostentatiously drunk and had a flute played to taunt the locals with their victory. (I told you the book had all kinds of details in this drama that I wasn't able to include!)
Koetgens was known to own and sometimes play a flute, and he was accused of being the guy who played the flute to taunt the authorities. He claimed he wasn't there at all and said he wasn't the only person who owned a flute.
Now, the way the legal system worked, in a criminal case you would first accuse someone of wrongdoing in their absence, but after that was done, you had to accuse them a second time in their presence, and the judges would watch both sides' body language to form an opinion on who was likely lying.
So Koetgens was identified as the flute-playing perpetrator both in his absence and in his presence, and he steadfastly denied any wrongdoing. So the judges said he had to be tortured to try to extract a confession, only Vaals was a small village without the apparatus for torture, so he had to be sent to a bigger city (Maastricht). While Koetgens was awaiting torture, his family got together and hastily assembled an alibi and then threatened the lead accuser with repercussions if he didn't change his story.
He did. He and the other two accusers traveled to Maastricht to go, "Actually, wait, no, it might not have been him, it was dark and I didn't get a clear look."
So now the judges had to release Koetgens, and he was a free man.
It was a lucky thing: months later, the judges would hear convincing testimony that Koetgens had played no role in the kidnapping. They had almost tortured the wrong flutist.
Bentinck! I'm looking forward to you reading this :D
I'm looking forward to Selena reading it, because it won't take her a month to pick her way through the German and another month or year to get around to writing it up! (Seriously, the Cunegonde write-up took weeks and was like pulling teeth, and I'm still trying to gear myself up to do the Ferdinand of Parma write-up I promised...six months ago.)
Re: Cunegonde's Kidnapping - Goat Riders
Date: 2022-09-03 01:46 pm (UTC)The Buckriders (Dutch: Bokkenrijders, French: Les Chevaliers du Bouc) are a part of Belgian and Dutch folklore. They are ghosts or demons, who rode through the sky on the back of flying goats provided to them by a demon. During the 18th century, groups of thieves and other criminals co-opted the belief to frighten the inhabitants of southern Limburg, a province in the southern part of the Netherlands and eastern Belgium. Using the name "Bokkenrijders", these criminal bands launched raids across a region that includes southern Limburg, and parts of Germany and the Netherlands (parts of which were a part of the Southern Netherlands, nowadays Belgium). Commonly, the "Bokkenrijders" raided peaceful communities and farms. Several confessed "Bokkenrijders" were convicted and sentenced to death. Because of the link to the occult, authorities accused a large number of potentially innocent men of being "Bokkenrijders" and a number were tortured and subsequently convicted of crimes they denied having committed.
Re: Cunegonde's Kidnapping - Goat Riders
Date: 2022-09-09 04:41 am (UTC)Re: Cunegonde's Kidnapping - Goat Riders
Date: 2022-09-18 10:15 pm (UTC)Re: Cunegonde's Kidnapping - Kidnapping, Trial, and Religious War
Date: 2022-09-09 04:40 am (UTC)Okay, I must agree, it is hilarious that someone played the flute to taunt the authorities.
I'm glad they released him, ack!
Re: Cunegonde's Kidnapping - Kidnapping, Trial, and Religious War
Date: 2022-09-18 10:14 pm (UTC)From the OED's entry on "flout":
Etymology: First recorded in 16th cent.; possibly special use (preserved in some dialect) of floute , Middle English form of flute v. to play on the flute. Compare a similar development of sense in Dutch fluiten to play the flute, to mock, deride.
Re: Cunegonde's Kidnapping - Kidnapping, Trial, and Religious War
Date: 2022-09-20 04:58 am (UTC)no wonder it was Fritz's favorite instrumentRe: Cunegonde's Kidnapping - Kidnapping, Trial, and Religious War
Date: 2022-09-20 08:33 pm (UTC)Re: Cunegonde's Kidnapping - Kidnapping, Trial, and Religious War
Date: 2022-09-23 02:02 pm (UTC)Clearly the flute spoke to him in a way that no other instrument did. :P