Oh, speaking of the next generation and their distrust and tension, Danish Wikipedia says Christian's son Frederik VI disliked Moltke's son the 1814-1818 prime minister! Until he didn't:
Immediately after the change of government in 1784, Frederik VI, as a young crown prince, had "formal disgust" for Moltke and felt vivid distrust of him. But this highly youthful attitude gradually changed. Moltke's thoroughly honorable character earned him far too great a reputation with everyone, whether they shared his opinions or not, for Frederik VI not to come to look at him differently over the years. When Moltke became chancellor of the Order in 1808 as the oldest Knight of the Elephant, a certain rapprochement was brought about between him and the king, who then also gave him the title of privy councilor, and when the state's position in every respect in the year 1813 developed into complete despair, Moltke was among the men Frederik VI sought advice from.
He appears to have been exactly like his father, except more bookish: nice, full of integrity, ultra-conservative. They both stepped down when they refused to work with Struensee, and opposed any reforms that benefitted the peasants too much.
Oh, interesting:
In the year 1792, when his father died, it was he who came to inherit the county of Bregentved. According to a tradition in the family, his older brother Christian Magnus Moltke was actually destined to follow his father as count; but old Moltke had excluded him from it on account of his sympathies for the ideas of the French Revolution.
Re his bookishness, Wikipedia tells me:
It has been said above that in his youth Moltke studied eagerly at several universities. The love he felt for scientific studies found expression, among other things, in a German translation he prepared of Quintilian's 10th book (published 1776) and in some reviews he wrote in the Leipziger gelehrte Zeitung. Later, when he became head of the great royal library, he thereby had an opportunity to benefit science in another way, and he had in several respects real merit in the organization and expansion of the library. In his youth it had evidently been classical philology that had interested him, but it has become our natural history museums that the memory of him has been most strongly attached. He gave the university the natural history collection that his father had left behind, and which he himself increased, and in addition to donating 10,000 reigsdalers during his lifetime for the purchase of natural history works for the university, he determined in his will 60,000 reigsdalers to promote the natural history studies at the University. At the same time, his will testified to his gentle, humane mind by the considerable bequests in a benevolent direction which it contained.
OH HEY. I was looking something up, and I just read 3 sentences in Danish without needing translation help! Granted, they were from a biographical dictionary, but this is 3 more sentences than I could do a month ago. :DDD
Re: Mirror mirror on the wall: Who's the evilest of them all?
Immediately after the change of government in 1784, Frederik VI, as a young crown prince, had "formal disgust" for Moltke and felt vivid distrust of him. But this highly youthful attitude gradually changed. Moltke's thoroughly honorable character earned him far too great a reputation with everyone, whether they shared his opinions or not, for Frederik VI not to come to look at him differently over the years. When Moltke became chancellor of the Order in 1808 as the oldest Knight of the Elephant, a certain rapprochement was brought about between him and the king, who then also gave him the title of privy councilor, and when the state's position in every respect in the year 1813 developed into complete despair, Moltke was among the men Frederik VI sought advice from.
He appears to have been exactly like his father, except more bookish: nice, full of integrity, ultra-conservative. They both stepped down when they refused to work with Struensee, and opposed any reforms that benefitted the peasants too much.
Oh, interesting:
In the year 1792, when his father died, it was he who came to inherit the county of Bregentved. According to a tradition in the family, his older brother Christian Magnus Moltke was actually destined to follow his father as count; but old Moltke had excluded him from it on account of his sympathies for the ideas of the French Revolution.
Re his bookishness, Wikipedia tells me:
It has been said above that in his youth Moltke studied eagerly at several universities. The love he felt for scientific studies found expression, among other things, in a German translation he prepared of Quintilian's 10th book (published 1776) and in some reviews he wrote in the Leipziger gelehrte Zeitung. Later, when he became head of the great royal library, he thereby had an opportunity to benefit science in another way, and he had in several respects real merit in the organization and expansion of the library. In his youth it had evidently been classical philology that had interested him, but it has become our natural history museums that the memory of him has been most strongly attached. He gave the university the natural history collection that his father had left behind, and which he himself increased, and in addition to donating 10,000 reigsdalers during his lifetime for the purchase of natural history works for the university, he determined in his will 60,000 reigsdalers to promote the natural history studies at the University. At the same time, his will testified to his gentle, humane mind by the considerable bequests in a benevolent direction which it contained.
OH HEY. I was looking something up, and I just read 3 sentences in Danish without needing translation help! Granted, they were from a biographical dictionary, but this is 3 more sentences than I could do a month ago. :DDD