cahn | Historical Characters, Including Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 40

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I'm trying to use my other account at least occasionally so I posted about my Yuletide gifts there, including the salon-relevant 12k fic that features Fritz, Heinrich, Voltaire, Fredersdorf, Saint Germain, Caroline Daum (Fredersdorf's wife), and Groundhog Day tropes! (Don't need to know canon.)

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From:

mildred_of_midgard

The Royal Detective and the Royal Transcriber being hard at work at a collaboration (while juggling work/school responsibilities), we have Peter's first burial record!

M. Peter Carl Christoph von Keith, Königl. Obristlieute
nant von der Armee, Stallmeister, wie auch
Curator der hiesigen Academie der Wissenschaften 45 Jah
re alt, starb den 27. Dec: 1756 Zu Mittage.
St. Nicolai in dem Erbbegräbnis beygesezet word.

Peter Carl Christoph von Keith, Royal Lt. Col.
in the army, equerry, and also
curator of the local Academy of Sciences, 45
years old, died Dec 27, 1756 at noon.
He was laid to rest in a hereditary burial at St. Nicolai.

Three things we didn't know:

1. The '2' in the "Jan 2" of the burial date is definitely a 2, only after Prinzsorgenfrei did the transcription, I looked more closely and realized that that one most likely goes with the previous entry, and Peter's is "Jan 3". (That's how I knew it was a 2, there was a 3 right below it.) The dates are placed right at the boundary between entries, so it's hard to eyeball whether a date goes with the previous or next entry. But I now think we have consistency between the two burial records for Jan 3 being the date, and I've updated the Frederician chronology accordingly.

While updating it, I realized that Fritz arrived (with his brothers) in Berlin on January 4. :/

2. Died at noon: we didn't know the time of day before this.

3. "Hereditary burial"! That's interesting. It does make even more sense of his son being buried there. But since Peter was from Poberow, Pomerania (today Poland), I wonder if any previous Keiths were buried there, or if he was the first to purchase this site.

I also had a search for "Erbbegräbnis" in connection with the Nikolai Church, because after we learned that Peter was buried here, I wondering sure how many burials were there and where they were buried. Are we talking a mass grave here, or a dedicated monument? Wikipedia tells me:

After the Berlin Reformation of 1539, around 150 burials (Erbbegräbnisse) for Berlin statesmen, scholars and wealthy citizens were buried in the chancel and aisle niches.

That's more promising than the mass grave I had feared! Especially since the exterior walls *did* survive the bombing, and looking at the post-bombing picture, it kind of looks like some of the aisle niches did. With only 150, and with what sounds like a dedicated family burial site, there's a chance that his burial was restored enough that we know where it was today (even if his ruins are now smithereens).

I'm holding off to see if the next two burial records I've asked

prinzsorgenfrei to transcribe when they have time, namely Peter's other burial record and one of Friedrich Ludwig's, shed any further light, but once we have that data, I'm going to reach out to the Nikolaikirche museum people and see if they can tell me about the state of preservation of the burial site of the Keiths in the church.

From:

selenak

3. "Hereditary burial"! That's interesting. It does make even more sense of his son being buried there. But since Peter was from Poberow, Pomerania (today Poland), I wonder if any previous Keiths were buried there, or if he was the first to purchase this site.

I suspect the later. For a contemporary parallel, see Caroline Fredersdorf starting an "Erbbegräbnis" in the chapel at Zernikow by burying Fredersdorf there, with herself following suit decades later. Now as I told you back when, her initials intertwined with Fredersdorf's indicate she always meant it for the two of them, and since they had no children, it's an unusual use for an Erbbegräbnis. Though I think her daughter from husband No.3, the one who was Achim von Arnim's mother, is also there. Anyway, what I'm getting at is that if you were a well off Frederician citizen, you clearly could purchase an Erbbegräbnis.

While updating it, I realized that Fritz arrived (with his brothers) in Berlin on January 4. :/

Hate to say it, but that might have been a good thing. If he had been in Berlin already, and NOT gone to the funeral, it would have felt like a final put down to Peter's family. Otoh, I bet Lehndorff was present, and some of Peter's colleagues of the Academy.

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Anyway, what I'm getting at is that if you were a well off Frederician citizen, you clearly could purchase an Erbbegräbnis.

Yeah. I was wondering how well off he was, because he's always being frugal in the sources we have on him, but maybe, between Fritz starting to gift him money, and him getting to take over Knobbelsdorf's jobs, finances got better in the 1750s. Or Ariane was like, "To heck with it!" and sold some of the art.

Anyway, it's pretty unlikely any other Keiths were already there, so it was probably started for him, and then Friedrich Ludwig was buried with him a few years later.

If he had been in Berlin already, and NOT gone to the funeral, it would have felt like a final put down to Peter's family.

Yeah. The face I was making was not "Too bad he just missed it," but more "Too bad he presumably had no interest in attending."

Otoh, I bet Lehndorff was present, and some of Peter's colleagues of the Academy.

<3

Had Maupertuis left yet? Ah, yeah, he left in June of 1756. So I guess he wasn't there either, although I imagine he would have been if he'd still been in Berlin.