cahn | 18th-Century Characters, Including Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 38

Gonna go ahead and make this post even though Yuletide is coming...

But in the meantime, there has been some fic in the fandom posted!

Holding His Space (2503 words) by felisnocturna
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: 18th Century CE RPF, 18th Century CE Frederician RPF
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Michael Gabriel Fredersdorf/Friedrich II von Preußen | Frederick the Great
Characters: Michael Gabriel Fredersdorf, Friedrich II von Preußen | Frederick the Great
Additional Tags: Protectiveness, Domestic, Character Study
Summary:

Five times Fredersdorf has to stay behind - and one time Friedrich doesn't leave.

Using People (3392 words) by prinzsorgenfrei
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: 18th Century CE RPF
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Friedrich II von Preußen | Frederick the Great/Hans Hermann von Katte
Characters: Friedrich II von Preußen | Frederick the Great, Hans Hermann von Katte
Additional Tags: Fluff, Idiots in Love, reading plays aloud while gazing into each others eyes
Summary:

Friedrich had started to talk to him because he had thought of him as a bit of a ditz.
And now here he was. Here he was months later, bundled up in this very same man’s blankets with a cup of hot coffee in front of him, its scent mixing with that of Katte’s French perfume.
_
Fluffy One Shot about one traitorous Crown Prince and the sycophant he accidentally fell for.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only | Expand All

From:

selenak

Go you for finally discovering the origin (Not!)Robert! But I have a bit of pity for McDonogh, despite him being the origin; all these many Keiths in the life of Fritz are bound to confuse! Btw, can't

luzula as our resident Scots expert help with tracing back just which Keith clan Peter's family originally sprang from?

Speaking of other people's decriptions of Keith and Katte, I just saw

prinzsorgenfrei has posted this poem by Sheelagh Pugh about Katte which I hadn't known before:

LT. HANS HERMAN VON KATTE (1979)

I like good manners better than anything;
no heroism comes so hard as style,
and many men might have met your death bravely
but few, I think, would have behaved themselves
like you, when the poor prince whose hare-brained scheme
brought you to the scaffold begged for your forgiveness …
Tempting, at least, to shout ‘Here’s a fine mess
you’ve got me into’, or words to that effect,
but no; you kissed your hand; called politely
that it was quite alright; you didn’t mind
at all; then sauntered on, to lay your youth,
and fun and gallantry and love of life
under a steel blade, minding very much.

From:

luzula

Btw, can't luzula as our resident Scots expert help with tracing back just which Keith clan Peter's family originally sprang from?

Hmm. Have you tried the 40-page history of the Keith family in the Scots Peerage? Could not find him in thepeerage.com nor in Burke's Family Records (though maybe I was doing the search wrong in the latter, as it did not turn up George Keith either). I'll let you know if I think of anything else...

ETA: Augh, poor Katte...does the poem agree with salon's conclusions about Katte's character? *curious*

Edited Date: 2022-11-13 03:09 pm (UTC)

From:

mildred_of_midgard

ETA: Augh, poor Katte...does the poem agree with salon's conclusions about Katte's character? *curious*

Oh, you ask me about Katte's character!

The short answer is, yes and no. The long answer...Settle in. :D

He was definitely brave and died with style, no question.

We're pretty sure he minded dying, like you do. One of the people who was with him until he died said that though Katte was putting a very brave face on it and cheering everyone around him up, you could see flesh and blood struggling with the realization of imminent death in his last hours.

One of the Danish envoys said that Katte "lost all countenance and burst into tears" when his death sentence was read. (This is in contradiction to Wilhelmine's claim that he heard his sentence read without changing countenance. Either could be correct, since both were reporting hearsay, but the Danish envoys were writing as events unfolded and they tended to have pretty good sources aka spies, and Wilhelmine was writing ten years later without access to the archives and noticeably got a lot wrong--like she has him being executed on a scaffold.)

Some sources Selena got hold of convinced me that Katte's display of piety and belief in eternal life was genuine, not an act put on to look good for FW and reassure his own father/family. But even with a belief in eternal life and a belief that this was God's will, he clearly minded very much.

Did he blame Fritz? I think he genuinely loved Fritz and pitied him, even at the end, and really wanted to make him feel better. During his last night, when they were both imprisoned in separate rooms in the same fortress, Katte was begging to be allowed to go talk to Fritz, even for fifteen minutes, to reassure him. All the authorities would agree to was to run messages back and forth, conveying, "I know you must hate me! This is all my fault!" "No, Fritz, it's not your fault! It's God's will! I still love you!" And then, of course, they got that famous last, hand-kissing encounter where Katte's main concern was to reassure Fritz.

I have always read Katte as not wanting to die but, given that he had to, being very glad that he could die in the presence of the person he was willing to die for. I think (I hope) it gave him some comfort, even though doing it that way was hella hard on Fritz. (I think

selenak has said she agrees with this take, though of course neither of us can point to hard evidence.)

Could he have harbored a smidge of resentment toward Fritz? We have evidence that Fritz harbored a smidge of resentment toward Katte several years later, and we've definitely speculated that Wilhelmine and Fritz resented each other (her for him being willing to abandon her to the punishment/abuse that came from FW being furious at Fritz escaping, him for her trying to talk him into enduring the abuse indefinitely).

Yeah, mixed feelings are a thing, and given that these people didn't have a well-developed framework for talking about abuse and victim blaming and such, some repressed resentment is to be expected.

We of salon don't *think* Katte ever figured out Fritz had lied to him to get him to help with the escape attempt when he was reluctant, but it's possible he did, or that he wondered.

But I think, even if he had some repressed resentment, Katte's surface feelings were genuinely love and concern for Fritz, and that wasn't an act he put on for the sake of "good manners."

As for why Fritz resented Katte later, I think two reasons: One, he was one of the people who tried to pressure Fritz into staying in an abusive situation and demonstrably had to be lied to to get him out. (Lie: "My father's ministers want to make me a Catholic!") Two, I think Fritz was doing the victim blaming thing himself and blaming Katte for not pulling off his end of the plan and escaping when he was supposed to (possibly because it was legit hard, possibly because he really was hoping the whole thing would blow over and Fritz would come home), leaving Fritz in a situation where he had to live with the guilt of Katte's death.

P.S. This poet is very victim blame-y. Yes, it was a hare-brained scheme, but it was also the desperate act of someone whose entire life until now has been "abused child" and is now looking forward to a life as "abused adult." He had virtually no support, the deck was stacked against him, and what exactly about his life up until now had trained him in the art of making and executing on well-thought-out escape plans? One of the other victims of FW's horrific abuse, an adult who hadn't even been raised in this situation, escaped twice and got dragged back both times.

If you study psychology and abuse, you see a whole lot of "But why didn't the abuse victim [do X]?" and the answer is that they're at the mercy of someone else and that trauma warps your brain and makes it hard to think in a purely rational manner.

The two main hare-brained features of Fritz's plans are:

1. Everyone knew about them.
2. He kept trying to make his move too soon. It's been argued that if he'd waited until the party reached Wesel, he might have made it. (And even Katte was trying to convince him to wait until Wesel.)

Well, the reason everyone knew about these plans was that Fritz's teenage years went like this:

Fritz: "Person A, please help me escape!"
Person A: "I don't want to lose my head/lose my job/start a war! Please don't run away!"
Fritz: "Person B, please, PLEASE talk my father into letting me take a vacation!"
Person B: "Sorry, no can do. Have you tried being nicer to your father so he's nicer to you?"
Fritz: "Person C, I'm begging you!"
Person C: "Here's some money, kid, if you promise not to try to run away."

and so on. Until persons A-Z in the kingdom have all heard that Fritz is trying to escape. The more time we've spent in salon, the more examples we've turned up.

Now, I'm sympathetic to people who were *also* afraid of FW, but the poor kid just got told to steel himself for a lifetime of this, even by the people who loved him the most. So of course he's increasingly desperate, and of course word gets out.

The only person I have evidence knew about the escape attempt and don't have evidence he tried to talk Fritz out of it was...Peter Keith, the only person who made a sincere effort to run away himself (and made it). And that just means we don't *know* that he ever tried the "But have you tried being nicer to your father?" line on Fritz, because he's poorly attested in the records.

(But I like to think Peter was all, "Yeah, your father's awful, he beats me for reading too, let's go!" This is my headcanon.)

And, of course, Fritz kept trying to make moves when there was very little chance of him getting away. Well, it's easy to sit here in a comfy chair and go, "You should have waited!" but the thing is, given that he was NEVER not supervised by Dad's agents, there was no good time. There's no guarantee he would have made it at Wesel. He didn't get caught at Steinsfurt because it was too far from the border, while Wesel was closer. He got caught at Steinsfurt because the several adults supervising him never let him get as far as getting on a horse and making a break for it. What exactly would have been different a few days later?

Keith, as a random lieutenant in the army, had more freedom in Wesel, and he was allowed to get on a horse and ride around unsupervised as long as he gave some excuse. So he was able to get a head start and make it over the border before his absence was noted at roll call the next day.

Call the escape attempt "hare-brained," but a better word might be "impossible," and I don't blame Fritz for trying anyway. (Trust me, if he hadn't tried, the same people who are calling it hare-brained would have said, "Well, the abuse can't have been that bad, or he would have tried to run away!" That's how victim-blaming works.)

Me: I have a lot of feelings. :P

From:

mildred_of_midgard

(Lie: "My father's ministers want to make me a Catholic!")

Huh. So while this was definitely a lie, I had the impression from Selena's summaries that Fritz was actually proposing to convert to Catholicism in spring of 1731. Today I had to go read these letters myself for the first time, as part of my Peter Keith citation work (this bit comes up in the essay, because it's too good not to include in a footnote), and I find that what Fritz actually says is, "I will marry the archduchess as long as I don't have to convert, because I never ever want to do that as long as I live." And Grumbkow writes to Wolden, "This whole thing doesn't make sense, among other reasons because there's no way they'd let the archduchess marry a prince who wasn't totally Catholic."

Would he have been willing? Presumably. But it makes sense that he was smart enough not to admit that up front to arch-Protestant Dad.

The other thing I found that was super interesting was something we've talked about a lot in salon in our various AUs. Grumbkow says, "As for renouncing his Prussian claims, that'll never work, because everyone knows no one ever keeps their word on a renunciation like this unless there's force involved."

This is so true! I mean, we saw what happened with Philip V "the Frog" (

luzula, do you know why we call him "the Frog"?) and his repeated renunciations of his claims to the throne of France: every time it looked like Louis XV might die, Philip got ready to march into France and claim his rights, with a civil war if need be.

ETA: Speaking of Grumbkow and sources for this essay, though,

selenak, do you have the source for the August 1731 submission protocol you translated for us here?

Edited Date: 2022-11-14 07:52 am (UTC)

From:

selenak

Source for the submission protocol by Grumbkow: it must have been something you asked me to translate back when you started to aquire books for us, and which is in the library - at a guess, Förster’s collection of documents in Volume 3, and/or the much later 20th century “Verbiegung eines Charakters in Wusterhausen” collection? At any rate, it’s not from a book I found on my own, it’s from something you found first.

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Found it in Förster, thanks!

From:

luzula

Thanks for writing that up! : ) I now also have some of your fics on the subject open in tabs…

luzula, do you know why we call him "the Frog"?
Ah no, I do not. I did go to

rheinsberg now to check whether he had a tag there, but no. Instead I got sidetracked and read a post about Eugene of Savoy...

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Yeah, it's a bit hard to find in

rheinsberg. The relevant tag is "philip v of spain", but even there, it's buried in a non-obvious place. Here you go:

Cast of Characters
Philip V: King of Spain
Isabella: Queen of Spain
Rottembourg: French envoy to FW's Prussia and then to Philip V's Spain.
Morgenstern: German scholar who worked for FW and wrote a bio of FW.

selenak, remember when you told us that Morgenstern said Rottembourg said he missed FW's Prussia when he was in Madrid? And we decided it was one of Morgenstern's sarcasms? I now actually believe it! Not that he loved Prussia so much--I've just confirmed he asked for his leave on all three of his missions, in one case within a few months of arrival--but I didn't realize that both Rottembourg's missions to Spain corresponded with the absolute nadir of Philip's mental health, and the effect was torture on ambassadors:

First mission (October 1727-April 1728)
Rottembourg appears to have escaped before matters peaked in June, but I also don't know exactly when certain symptoms began. What I've got is this:

May 1727 - end of 1727: Philip V severely depressed, unwilling to speak to his ministers. Will listen to reports, but "no sign of hearing other than a gesture now and then or a fleeting smile."

Early 1728: Back in business, but severe attacks. Doesn't see ministers for weeks at a time, and then will only see them at night, and will keep them up until dawn. Audiences with ambassadors are held at midnight.

June is when he starts wanting to abdicate for the second time. (Remember, he abdicated once, gave the throne to his son, and his son died of smallpox after about 7 months.) His wife, Isabella, tries to prevent him. She has all writing implements removed, and keeps a close guard on him. So Philip tries escaping by sneaking out at 5 am, while she's asleep, and flees the palace in his nightshirt. She has the guards stop him, changes the locks, and gives the guards orders not to let him escape, but he tries this several times.

Finally, on June 28, he sneaks some paper while Isabella's in another room for a minute, writes out his abdication, and has his most trusted servant smuggle it into the council. The council session is discussing it when Isabella's messenger arrives, confiscates the piece of paper, and destroys it.

During this summer, and I don't know how early it started and whether some of them would have been affecting Rottembourg by April, but we've got these symptoms:

* Giving audiences to ambassadors either in his nightshirt or almost naked.
* Paranoia, delusions, and hallucinations.
* Biting himself.
* Screaming and/or singing.
* Urinating and defecating in bed.
* Believing he's a frog (July). (Rottembourg's replacement as ambassador arrived in June. Man, I don't envy him.)
* Believing that he's dead.
* Bulimia.

Rottembourg gets the hell out just in time, it seems. But he's back in 1730, which is when things are really crazy, and for a much longer time.

Second mission: (December 1730-April 1734)
During most of this time, the court isn't in Madrid, it's in Andalusia, and it's peripatetic. This is Isabella's idea for how to make Philip's mental health improve: change of scenery.

This means tons of expenses for the ambassadors. Ambassadors were notoriously in arrears for their salaries, and most were rich and the rest supported by their families. Random expenses like "The King decided to move his court" have to be covered out of pocket. So Rottembourg, who was himself very rich, had to sell property to cover these years.

And then there's the part where summer 1730 is when Philip's mental health crashes again. He's severely depressed, bulimic, and consuming vast amounts of poison antidotes (I don't know the details) because of his paranoia. He's convinced that his stools contain blood; when he inspects them and they aren't, he accuses the doctors of concealing the blood. His toenails get so long it's difficult to walk. He won't let anyone do his hair, so it turns into a complete mess. He smells terrible. His only entertainment is fishing...in his garden...at night...from a bowl that his attendants have placed fish in.

But he won't give up power, either. He walks around muttering, "I'm the boss here" (Je suis le maître), and making things difficult to prove it. If you give him a stack of papers to be signed in a certain order, he'll rearrange the papers when you're not looking.

And, of course, he's conducting all business at night. Upon arriving, Rottembourg describes the situation as "incomprehensible", and complains about being kept in meetings until 6 am. Meanwhile, Isabella is trying to conduct a normal life during the day and take care of her husband and help him with state business at night.

June 1731: Rottembourg reports that he shows up for an audience at night, but the queen has collapsed from exhaustion and is fast asleep, and Philip hasn't slept in 48 hours. So Rottembourg waits until 7 am, at which point he's told they can't see him until 5:30 pm.

By July, Philip is getting one hour of sleep a night, his legs are swollen, and everyone's convinced he's going to die.

A year later, after a brief manic episode, he's back to depressed, with no hygiene, and refusing to talk to anyone because he's dead. Also, he's extremely concerned that because he had abdicated, then became king again after his son died, his rule is invalid. By not talking, he can avoid ruling!

In October 1732, he decides he's going to talk, but only to his valet. He then starts explaining how he's going to unite the crowns of France and Spain to his valet...but no one else.

In November, he breaks his streak of not talking to ministers and ambassadors by insisting that he needs to talk to Rottembourg. "The startled count was presented with the spectacle of a king with clothing completely disordered, with a long and filthy beard, and wearing no trousers or shoes, his legs and feet naked."

This is the kind of thing that could make you miss FW forcing you to get drunk!

In conclusion, Rottembourg may well have been quoted as saying, "However bad Berlin was, it was better than Madrid!" (At least there was the SD court in Berlin when FW was away.)

*****

So for this reason, whenever we need to remind

cahn who Philip V was, we refer to him as "the frog". (Poor guy with his mental health issues, but the frog really is incredibly memorable.)

Btw, flipping through his bio recently for the Spain in the War of the Austrian Succession discussion, I am reminded that later in life, around the time of said war, one of his delusions was that a ray of sunlight had pierced his shoulder and penetrated his inner organs.

Again, poor guy.

From:

luzula

Wow, poor guy...and poor everyone else. Abdicating seems to have been a great idea, a pity he wasn't allowed to do it.

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Keith genealogy: Thank you! Unfortunately, none of those links have helped me. The 40 page history in the Scots Peerage was great, but even with all that detail, I still wasn't able to link up Peter's line. All I can assume is that he's descended from a younger son so far back that no one has bothered keeping track of that side-line. I even read through that history assuming that all the details and even the names in Formey were wrong, because by the time Peter was writing them down in the 1750s, we're talking oral history going back to the 1500s, and I still can't find any points of connection.

Maybe one day!

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Throwing this out there, in case anyone runs across any connections in their reading.

According to Peter Keith's eulogist who reports his family history, which was written down by Peter in his memoirs, presumably from memory:

The first mentioned ancestor is a 16th century George Keith who lived in Scotland, was a colonel, and married a woman from the house of Stewart/Stuart.

George's son, William Keith, left Scotland in 1606 at the age of 19 and went into Swedish service, where he became a captain of cavalry. He was related somehow to this much more famous Keith in Swedish service, Andrew Keith, Lord Dingwall.

William's son George was a lieutenant in the Swedish guard.

His son Jean Christophle/Hans Christoph established himself in Pomerania (then part of Sweden), and married Vigilantia Elisabeth von Woedtke, of the house of Sydow. He died in 1729, she died in 1747.

The son of Hans Christoph and Vigilantia Elisabeth is our Peter, 1711-1756.

The alternating Williams and Georges exactly matches the naming practices of the Marischals, but that paradoxically makes it harder, because if you find a William or George of that line in the 16th century, he's the heir, and so not Peter's more obscure ancestor.

There's a George Keith of Troup who was born sometime around 1537, and his wife's name is unknown (so could be a Stewart) but he's a bit too old to have fathered William, who was born ca. 1587. And the only son I can find attested for him is named Alexander. I suppose he could have had a son named George who fathered William, or he could have had a son at age 50, but that's speculation.

Other than the naming problem, the problem is they went to Sweden, so they tend not to show up in Scottish documents. In books titled "Scots in Sweden" (of which I've found 2 so far), there's a lot of Andrew Keith, Lord Dingwall, but not a lot of details on other Keiths. One of the books says, "There are many Keiths in Swedish history," and gives examples of a John, an Alexander, and a James (not our James), but that's not helping here!

Since you can read Swedish sources,

luzula, if you run across any 17th century William or George Keiths in Swedish service, let me know!

Edited Date: 2022-11-14 05:02 am (UTC)

From:

luzula

Well, if I run into anything, I'll let you know. I did just put "Keith" into the Swedish army rolls 1620–1723 and got nothing…you can try it yourself here, if you think of any likely spelling variation.

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Thanks!

From:

cahn

Hey, I wrote a story about this! :D (Which you have read.)

mildred_of_midgard betaed, so it's obviously going to more-or-less agree with her take on things, but one of my contributions that I'm pretty sure hadn't been brought up in salon before that was to notice that the Puncta, his last letter to Fritz, started very first thing with him being very clear he doesn't blame Fritz <3

Tempting, at least, to shout ‘Here’s a fine mess
your sociopath dad has got me into’, or 'The tyrant demands blood!' or words to that effect,

Fixed that for you,

mildred_of_midgard!

But really, my sense was that hare-brained/impossible escape or not, pretty much everyone (at the time) knew where to put the blame? Especially that one awesome pastor who was like "Katte is totally a martyr!" and he wasn't saying that because of Fritz...

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Tempting, at least, to shout ‘Here’s a fine mess
your sociopath dad has got me into’, or 'The tyrant demands blood!' or words to that effect,

Fixed that for you,

mildred_of_midgard!

THAT'S AWESOME, Cahn, you totally did!

luzula: There's a semi-reliable oral tradition according to which Katte's remark when being carted off to his execution was that "The tyrant demands blood." This remark is quoted by NO HISTORIAN OR FICTION AUTHOR EVER, all of whom prefer to call attention to his "It's not FW's fault either!" remarks, if not outright putting words like "Lang lebe der König!" into his mouth.

(The reason we think it's reliable is that it's from the 1790s, when criticizing FW this openly in print was not the done thing in Berlin, and we know the links in the oral tradition chain. A French or English author saying this would be propaganda. A Berlin author (Nicolai) saying his source (Hertefeld, Jr.) had it from his father (Hertefeld, Sr.), to whom Katte allegedly uttered this line...we're inclined to believe it.)

ETA: pretty much everyone (at the time) knew where to put the blame?

No, sadly, even if you blamed FW, contemporaries still gave Fritz a hard time for his hare-brained schemes. E.g. Wilhelmine, whose memoirs I was looking at today for...you guessed it, Peter Keith citations. She says, "The situation of my brother was so deporable that I could not disapprove of his resolution, and yet I foresaw its terrible consequences. His plan was so badly contrived, and the individuals acquainted with it were so giddy, and so little calculated to conduct an affair of that importance, that it could not possibly succeed."

Keith: Speak for yourself. *I* succeeded.

Katte: Good manners and style, or lack of victim-blaming or something, prevents me from calling Your Royal Highness ungrateful, when I stayed behind to help destroy the evidence incriminating you.

Edited Date: 2022-11-15 05:39 am (UTC)

From:

selenak

Re: Hertefeld Sr., it’s worth adding for Luzula that he really was in the same regiment as Katte, that Katte was originally (after his arrest) kept prisoner there (i.e. with the regiment) until he got tranferred, that Hertefeld Sr in the account he gave his son - who gave it to Nicolai - correctly named the times of arrest and transfer, all of which heightens his credibility as someone to whom Katte might have made this “the tyrant wants blood” remark in reply to Hertefeld Sr.
attempt at comforting him by hoping for a non-lethal sentence. It’s worth adding that the belief Katte would NOT be condemned to death ahead of actual the sentence actually does not seem to have been just limited to Fritz and Hertefeld. Brunswick envoy Stratemann, who is a very FW friendly source, in his late summer, early autumn reports is convinced that the King will not only pardon Katte but is also surely going to pardon his son and to bring him back to Berlin very soon, etc. He’s so convinced of FW’s goodness that when he hears about some back and forth between FW and the war tribunal, what he thinks happens is that the tribunal wants the death penalty for Katte, and FW wants to pardon him.

Now, Katte was demonstrably guilty of having conspired with planning to desert Fritz and planning to desert himself, but he hadn’t deserted yet, and also he was really well connected (old nobility, rich Dad and Granddad, both in high esteem with FW, so it’s without the benefit of hindsight understandable a lot of people thought he would get punished, but NOT with the death penalty. Otoh, if Katte did say in reply to Hertefeld’s assumption “no, the tryrant demands blood”, it would mean he himself had no such illusion.

(Meanwhile, no one doubted Peter Keith would get killed if ever FW got his hands on him, but then Peter did successfully desert, AND he didn’t have all these seemingly useful connections.)

Wilhelmine: was writing in hindsight, hindsight including the fact FW blamed her anyway even without proof and had her put under three quarters of a year house (well, chambers) arrest, and that it could have been even worse for her if Fritz actually HAD managed to escape, resulting in the repressed resentment we were speculating about. Also she dislikes all her brother’s boyfriends except Voltaire on general principle. :)

Incidentally, when it comes to escape plans, success of lack of same, while I can come up with SOME princes who managed successful escapes (Charles II and BPC, and Grandpa F1 as a prince when thinking his Dad the Great Elector and Stepmom hat it in for him), these guys did not escape FW, and did not escape from comparably supervised situations. Meanwhile, people successfully escaping FW whom he did not want to let go are far and few. Fassmann (who wanted to replace Gundling and when he did found the situation very much not to his liking) did manage it, but FW didn’t have the weirdly intense abusive relationship with Fassman he had with Gundling, let alone anything like the one he had with his son, and also Fassmann wasn’t observed 24/7.

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Re: Hertefeld Sr., it’s worth adding for Luzula

And for me, thank you :)

Wilhelmine: was writing in hindsight, hindsight including the fact FW blamed her anyway even without proof and had her put under three quarters of a year house (well, chambers) arrest, and that it could have been even worse for her if Fritz actually HAD managed to escape, resulting in the repressed resentment we were speculating about. Also she dislikes all her brother’s boyfriends except Voltaire on general principle. :)

Not gonna lie, your last sentence (except I'd temporarily forgotten about Voltaire) was also my response to

mildred_of_midgard's objection about Wilhelmine :D

But also, I think it can sometimes be hard for someone who's gone through abuse to acknowledge that someone else in the same situation with the same abuser is, well, also getting abused, especially when the first person doesn't acknowledge it to herself. One of the heartbreaking things about Wilhelmine's memoirs was all the times when she was like, "But of course I needed to be respectful to FW and SD, because they were my parents! Also let me tell you about another horrible thing that was done to me now."

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Okay, I think maybe we were talking about two different things? I thought we were talking about putting the blame for the escape failing on Fritz's hare-brained schemes, but now it sounds like you were talking about assigning blame for the conflict in the first place? If the latter, then yes, (most) contemporaries understood that FW was the problem here! Fritz was being normal! Even if they thought it was his duty to *obey* his father, everyone (exceptions for Stratemann and apparently Fassman) knew FW was wacko by the standards of his day. (Including in some ways that we would find *good* today.)

But if we were talking about Fritz's hare-brained schemes, well, yes, everyone was writing with the benefit of hindsight because, almost by definition, their opinions on the schemes would be recorded after the schemes came to light (barring some envoy reports beforehand, I guess). And Wilhelmine was far from the only one to go, "Okay, but that was a terrible and poorly executed idea." Catt, for one. Maybe he was reporting the words straight out of Fritz's mouth, but he certainly decided to include this assessment of the plan as hare-brained.

And Lt. Borcke, who had been close to Fritz when he was about 16 (and got enough romantic-sounding letters that biographers have speculated whether that was just 18th century flowery speak or whether it meant more), but soon after seems to have drifted away from Fritz, wrote, "I mourn the fate of the one who is its main object, but I do not pity the doers for this pernicious design, badly digested and badly executed." I'm not sure who he's pitying there (it's August 1730, so can't be Katte yet), FW or Fritz, but that's pretty victim-blamey.

I feel like there have to be other examples, too: the plan was actually unlikely to succeed! I just think people (like this poet) should stop blaming him for trying and acting like it was his fault that it ended badly and Katte died. Okay, maybe lying to Katte was not great (though I understand the desperation), but I don't see anybody complaining about that part! (Because no one but Selena has picked up on it. ;))

Also she dislikes all her brother’s boyfriends except Voltaire on general principle. :)

And Algarotti! And if there was one of them he had sex with, surely it was Algarotti. ;)

ETA: Or, wait, are we talking about whose fault it is that Katte died? Lol, I can't tell *what* we're talking about any more. :P

If that, then, yes, there are a ton of examples of contemporaries going "WTF" at FW overriding the verdict of the tribunal. But, let's not forget that the tribunal was split, and half of the officers (who voted by rank) voted for Katte to die. It was only the tiebreaker vote by one (very brave) person that meant the overall vote was for life imprisonment. I can't imagine they were the only people in all of Prussia who thought Katte deserved to die for what he did.

Actually, I forgot, Eugene said something about "I originally thought the whole Katte thing was too bad (not that FW didn't have the right to order his death, but that it's going to mean bad PR in England), but now that I've read the Puncta, and I've heard Katte was intriguing with foreign envoys, and that the votes of the court martial were split between life imprisonment and death, I'm not sure if it wasn't for the best." And now that I'm looking at Eugene's letter, god, this sentence goes on forever (please end your sentences, German speakers) and is interspersed with random phrases made up of French and Latin words, but I think he's saying FW has published the species facti (Katte's confession) and demonstrated that the death sentence wasn't an unjust and overhasty decision, but a well-thought out judgment, and I think Eugene is saying that Charles VI thinks so too.

So regardless of what we're talking about, I think contemporaries were divided!

(Okay, I like a linguistic challenge as much as the next person, but this sentence has 36 clauses (as counted by commas), and that is just *too* *many*. :P)

Daughter of ETA: And the reason looking at the Puncta changed Eugene's mind was that Katte tells Fritz not to listen to flatterers, and Eugene goes, "...You can tell that means he was doing some flattering and Fritz was listening to it." So, blaming both victims there.

Son of ETA: Charles VI is MT's dad,

mildred_of_midgard

Tempting, at least, to shout ‘Here’s a fine mess
your sociopath dad has got me into’

Speaking of which, I forgot to mention the 1731 pamphlet based on the Danish envoy report, which has Katte's last words being that if he had ten lives, he would gladly give them all if only Fritz could be reconciled with his father. The mention of FW is unique in all the sources we've found, and Selena's interpretation was that in Cologne, where FW/Prussia was very unpopular, mentioning him in the context of poor martyred Katte in a sensationalist pamphlet was a dig at FW, reminding everyone whose fault this really was.

In conclusion, Katte almost certainly didn't *say* anything about FW in that last kiss-blowing goodbye to Fritz, but at least some contemporaries wished he had!

From:

mildred_of_midgard

But I have a bit of pity for McDonogh, despite him being the origin; all these many Keiths in the life of Fritz are bound to confuse!

I have pity too! Kloosterhuis hadn't even published his Katte monograph yet, so it's not like MacDonogh could have checked it. And I feel like if the monograph had been available, MacDonogh would have used it. I used to bash on MacDonogh at the beginning of salon, but the more salon has continued, the more I've come to appreciate his good points. Yes, he's borderline no homo, yes, he makes mistakes, no, his style isn't especially readable, yes, he uncritically copies his take on the siblings from Pangels--but his selection of sources and citation of same comes out looking pretty good compared to other biographers.

I know that if I manage to learn French properly and get my German reading speed (and especially evil font reading speed) up, I will learn a *lot* just going through MacDonogh's sources and reading for context in the passages he cites. (I hate him for not having a bibliography, just full citations in the first occurrence in the notes and abbreviated citations later, which makes it monstrously difficult to browse and see what his sources are, but I still have hopes of doing this source-reading exercise someday.)

Pugh: Oooh, I hadn't known that poem before either. Poor Katte. It does capture his tragedy. </33