I hadn't been aware there were Danish Moltkes before these two, either.
Our Moltke was from Mecklenburg! I have learned that he was not a count until Frederik made him one in 1750, and when he moved from Mecklenburg to Denmark as a boy, his family was not very well off, and they were hoping to do better in Denmark.
This doesn't surprise me, because Mecklenburg in the late 1710s-1720s is a clusterfuck. Remember, this is when Peter the Great's nephew-in-law Duke Karl Leopold is trying to establish absolutism, the nobles are in a total riot, there's an ongoing court case at the Imperial court, Peter's periodically occupying Mecklenburg, the nobles start trying to flee the country, the Karl Leopold has to ban nobles from leaving without his consent, he's eventually placed under the Imperial ban by Charles VI, he keeps fighting to get his principality back, and George II and FW are appointed to be in charge of Mecklenburg, and of course neither is happy with the other's presence, and the fight over competing Prussian and Hanoverian interests in Mecklenburg is one of the things FW and G2 nearly duel over.
...If I were a von Moltke, I'd get the hell out of Dodge too.
So then this branch of Moltkes end up in Denmark and are like, "Oh, thank god, a stable country!" (Or so I imagine.) I believe I read that Moltke became fluent in Danish, but always preferred German.
In 1750, as mentioned, our Moltke is made a count. Two generations later, his grandson becomes the first prime minister of Denmark under the new constitutional monarch of 1848.
Another German/Danish family that we know of is the Suhms! I had known about the Danish branch since early on in salon, when I first started researching Suhm's genealogy, and I had run across his cousin Peter Frederik Suhm, whom Wikipedia describes as the most significant Danish-Norwegian historian of the 18th century. Imagine how tickled I was to see him mentioned in the Struensee bio. Apparently this Suhm was not a fan of Struensee!
Other tidbits I have learned about Moltke:
- He was president of the Danish East Asiatic Company. This was the thing that made me worried about slavery, that plus the recent scandal where someone dumped a bust of Frederik V into the harbor in protest of the slave trade during his reign; but Wikipedia and my quick googling aren't showing a link between the East Asiatic Company and slavery, just the West Indies Company (as you'd expect). Doesn't mean there wasn't any, or that Moltke didn't profit off involuntary labor (we know he opposed freeing the serfs in Denmark), but at least he doesn't seem to have personally been president of the slave trade.
- There is an equestrian statue of Frederik V that Moltke apparently decided the Asiatic Company would pay for. The shareholders were outraged, so he ended up having to skimp on the base, but apparently the statue itself was a masterpiece.
I should not be this amused, but I am. :)
- He had an interest in the fine arts. His main estate was apparently a "fairy wonderland," he was (partially?) responsible for one of the first Neoclassical rooms in Europe, as early as 1757, and he was president of the Academy of Arts and thus in charge of patronizing the fine arts in Denmark.
- There were always rumors that he and Bernstorff were rivals, but they worked together pretty reliably, and although Fritz kept giving his envoys instructions to get on Moltke's good side and try to drive a wedge between him and Bernstorff, because of Bernstorff's anti-Prussian policies, Moltke was having none of it.
- When Frederik V was dying of cirrhosis of the liver, so much water had accumulated in his abdomen (ascites) that he had an operation to drain it. He wanted Moltke present during the operation (of course), but Moltke in his memoirs says he fainted and had to be carried out of the room and into his own chamber. But by the next day, he had recovered and was back at Frederik's side.
- The death scene, from Moltke's memoirs. This comes immediately after the fainting scene, where Moltke reports that the operation gave Frederik some relief, but it was clear that his end was drawing ever nearer.
Pronouns: Moltke uses "sie/ihrer" for Frederik, which I am taking as a third person plural "they", but translating it "he" for clarity. (I was originally wondering if it was "she", for Majestät, which is what French does with "elle", but it keeps taking a plural verb. OTOH, Selena has mentioned that German pronouns are different in the 17th-18th centuries, so if I'm misunderstanding the grammar here, let me know!) He does sometimes also use "Er".
I did not leave him one day during the entire sickness, just as at the end I spent nights in his room. In all this time I took care care of all affairs from all departments, as he did not work with any of his minsters during his illness. Meanwhile he became ever weaker and sicker. He had Hr. Magister Bluhm more often come to him and prepare him for his blessed end, and it pleased the Almighty, according to his holiest judgment, to take this lovable, good, and benevolent monarch out of the world on January 14 1766, to the great distress of the whole country and especially me.
[Some praise of Frederik, then back to the death scene.]
I don't want to leave unmentioned the fact that the departed had me summoned shortly before his end by his valet Jessen, and ordered me to sit close by him on the bed. He laid his head on my shoulder and arm, and shortly thereafter departed from the world, just as an enclosed copy of valet Jessen's certificate can attest. The original of this certificate lies with the life of Frederik V written by me.
[ETA: Oh, and a bit later he notes that it was around 2 am.]
I mean, you know me, I always check out the death scene first. :P Haha, I just remembered salon got its very first start when I pulled my copy of MacDonogh off the shelf, wished I could reread it but alas for back pain, and just read the last few pages to remind myself how Fritz's decline and death went. I'm nothing if not predictable!
Finally, to quote from "Reign Without a Ruler", with the author Busck's commentary:
Moltke finished his record of the life of Frederik V with the following words: "He died in my arms imbued with respect for religion; he was famed for having been a good and Christian ruler, untiring as the father of his people and in his efforts to advance their well-being, for having been a great friend and protector of the arts and sciences and a Christian and beneficent friend of men." Moltke must have felt it to be his duty to provide his friend with a beautiful legacy; it is difficult to say whether he meant his words honestly. After all, Moltke's words can be read as referring to qualities the King only had an undeserved reputation for possessing, and this interpretation would suggest that Moltke was in fact referring primarily to his own achievements. On the other hand, Moltke always showed the deepest veneration for Frederik V in his letters and notes.
Busck, I had the same question about "I need to show you all what an excellent character he had, here he is apologizing incessantly for his satanic behavior"!
I mean, Moltke would not be the first or last person to have this kind of relationship with his abuser, it's quite human. And he is writing decades later, and the apologies are extremely apologetic! But the cognitive dissonance needed to produce that sentence as a description of those examples is striking.
Regardless, though, he definitely did the thing that Struensee didn't and Pompadour did: never lost sight of where his power came from and remained emotionally available until the very end.
I was also recently reminded of the conversation we had where Zweig was very upset that Louis XV didn't get to have Madame du Barry with him when he died, and Selena pointed out that royal mistresses usually don't get to stay (and I would point out that Guiliano Dami didn't--Anna Maria Luisa apparently hated his guts and he had to leave court with the money he'd acquired before GG died and she took over). At least when your royal favorite is a father figure of good repute and is a noble, you get to die in his arms.
I suspect Fredersdorf would have been allowed to stay, but one advantage of dying in your prime, as Lehndorff said about Peter in one of my fics, is that you don't outlive the people you love. </3
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cahn
Re: Danish kings and their favorites: Frederik V and Moltke
Date: 2023-02-17 10:55 pm (UTC)Our Moltke was from Mecklenburg! I have learned that he was not a count until Frederik made him one in 1750, and when he moved from Mecklenburg to Denmark as a boy, his family was not very well off, and they were hoping to do better in Denmark.
This doesn't surprise me, because Mecklenburg in the late 1710s-1720s is a clusterfuck. Remember, this is when Peter the Great's nephew-in-law Duke Karl Leopold is trying to establish absolutism, the nobles are in a total riot, there's an ongoing court case at the Imperial court, Peter's periodically occupying Mecklenburg, the nobles start trying to flee the country, the Karl Leopold has to ban nobles from leaving without his consent, he's eventually placed under the Imperial ban by Charles VI, he keeps fighting to get his principality back, and George II and FW are appointed to be in charge of Mecklenburg, and of course neither is happy with the other's presence, and the fight over competing Prussian and Hanoverian interests in Mecklenburg is one of the things FW and G2 nearly duel over.
...If I were a von Moltke, I'd get the hell out of Dodge too.
So then this branch of Moltkes end up in Denmark and are like, "Oh, thank god, a stable country!" (Or so I imagine.) I believe I read that Moltke became fluent in Danish, but always preferred German.
In 1750, as mentioned, our Moltke is made a count. Two generations later, his grandson becomes the first prime minister of Denmark under the new constitutional monarch of 1848.
Another German/Danish family that we know of is the Suhms! I had known about the Danish branch since early on in salon, when I first started researching Suhm's genealogy, and I had run across his cousin Peter Frederik Suhm, whom Wikipedia describes as the most significant Danish-Norwegian historian of the 18th century. Imagine how tickled I was to see him mentioned in the Struensee bio. Apparently this Suhm was not a fan of Struensee!
Other tidbits I have learned about Moltke:
- He was president of the Danish East Asiatic Company. This was the thing that made me worried about slavery, that plus the recent scandal where someone dumped a bust of Frederik V into the harbor in protest of the slave trade during his reign; but Wikipedia and my quick googling aren't showing a link between the East Asiatic Company and slavery, just the West Indies Company (as you'd expect). Doesn't mean there wasn't any, or that Moltke didn't profit off involuntary labor (we know he opposed freeing the serfs in Denmark), but at least he doesn't seem to have personally been president of the slave trade.
- There is an equestrian statue of Frederik V that Moltke apparently decided the Asiatic Company would pay for. The shareholders were outraged, so he ended up having to skimp on the base, but apparently the statue itself was a masterpiece.
I should not be this amused, but I am. :)
- He had an interest in the fine arts. His main estate was apparently a "fairy wonderland," he was (partially?) responsible for one of the first Neoclassical rooms in Europe, as early as 1757, and he was president of the Academy of Arts and thus in charge of patronizing the fine arts in Denmark.
- There were always rumors that he and Bernstorff were rivals, but they worked together pretty reliably, and although Fritz kept giving his envoys instructions to get on Moltke's good side and try to drive a wedge between him and Bernstorff, because of Bernstorff's anti-Prussian policies, Moltke was having none of it.
- When Frederik V was dying of cirrhosis of the liver, so much water had accumulated in his abdomen (ascites) that he had an operation to drain it. He wanted Moltke present during the operation (of course), but Moltke in his memoirs says he fainted and had to be carried out of the room and into his own chamber. But by the next day, he had recovered and was back at Frederik's side.
- The death scene, from Moltke's memoirs. This comes immediately after the fainting scene, where Moltke reports that the operation gave Frederik some relief, but it was clear that his end was drawing ever nearer.
Pronouns: Moltke uses "sie/ihrer" for Frederik, which I am taking as a third person plural "they", but translating it "he" for clarity. (I was originally wondering if it was "she", for Majestät, which is what French does with "elle", but it keeps taking a plural verb. OTOH, Selena has mentioned that German pronouns are different in the 17th-18th centuries, so if I'm misunderstanding the grammar here, let me know!) He does sometimes also use "Er".
I did not leave him one day during the entire sickness, just as at the end I spent nights in his room. In all this time I took care care of all affairs from all departments, as he did not work with any of his minsters during his illness. Meanwhile he became ever weaker and sicker. He had Hr. Magister Bluhm more often come to him and prepare him for his blessed end, and it pleased the Almighty, according to his holiest judgment, to take this lovable, good, and benevolent monarch out of the world on January 14 1766, to the great distress of the whole country and especially me.
[Some praise of Frederik, then back to the death scene.]
I don't want to leave unmentioned the fact that the departed had me summoned shortly before his end by his valet Jessen, and ordered me to sit close by him on the bed. He laid his head on my shoulder and arm, and shortly thereafter departed from the world, just as an enclosed copy of valet Jessen's certificate can attest. The original of this certificate lies with the life of Frederik V written by me.
[ETA: Oh, and a bit later he notes that it was around 2 am.]
I mean, you know me, I always check out the death scene first. :P Haha, I just remembered salon got its very first start when I pulled my copy of MacDonogh off the shelf, wished I could reread it but alas for back pain, and just read the last few pages to remind myself how Fritz's decline and death went. I'm nothing if not predictable!
Finally, to quote from "Reign Without a Ruler", with the author Busck's commentary:
Moltke finished his record of the life of Frederik V with the following words: "He died in my arms imbued with respect for religion; he was famed for having been a good and Christian ruler, untiring as the father of his people and in his efforts to advance their well-being, for having been a great friend and protector of the arts and sciences and a Christian and beneficent friend of men." Moltke must have felt it to be his duty to provide his friend with a beautiful legacy; it is difficult to say whether he meant his words honestly. After all, Moltke's words can be read as referring to qualities the King only had an undeserved reputation for possessing, and this interpretation would suggest that Moltke was in fact referring primarily to his own achievements. On the other hand, Moltke always showed the deepest veneration for Frederik V in his letters and notes.
Busck, I had the same question about "I need to show you all what an excellent character he had, here he is apologizing incessantly for his satanic behavior"!
I mean, Moltke would not be the first or last person to have this kind of relationship with his abuser, it's quite human. And he is writing decades later, and the apologies are extremely apologetic! But the cognitive dissonance needed to produce that sentence as a description of those examples is striking.
Regardless, though, he definitely did the thing that Struensee didn't and Pompadour did: never lost sight of where his power came from and remained emotionally available until the very end.
I was also recently reminded of the conversation we had where Zweig was very upset that Louis XV didn't get to have Madame du Barry with him when he died, and Selena pointed out that royal mistresses usually don't get to stay (and I would point out that Guiliano Dami didn't--Anna Maria Luisa apparently hated his guts and he had to leave court with the money he'd acquired before GG died and she took over). At least when your royal favorite is a father figure of good repute and is a noble, you get to die in his arms.
I suspect Fredersdorf would have been allowed to stay, but one advantage of dying in your prime, as Lehndorff said about Peter in one of my fics, is that you don't outlive the people you love. </3