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cahnUnfortunately, there was then at Berlin a King who pursued one policy only, who deceived his enemies, but not his servants, and who lied without scruple, but never without necessity.
(from The King's Secret - by Duke de Broglie, grand-nephew of the subject of the book, Comte de Broglie, and grandfather of the physicist) )
(from The King's Secret - by Duke de Broglie, grand-nephew of the subject of the book, Comte de Broglie, and grandfather of the physicist) )
Goethe and Frederick II
Date: 2023-10-15 10:24 pm (UTC)Eight months after the king’s death, Goethe was in Sicily, enjoying an al fresco dinner in Caltanisetta and answering the enquiries of locals who had gathered around his table à l’antique: "We had to tell stories of Frederick II, and their interest in the great king was so great that we kept quiet about his death, so as not to incur the hatred of our hosts as the harbingers of bad tidings."
They had forgotten the 'rape' of Silesia. Neither Goethe nor the Sicilians thought Frederick had 'doomed Europe to generations of bloody strife'. They did not enjoy the benefit of hindsight that allows a modern writer to lay all the misfortunes of modern Europe at the Prussian king's feet. To Goethe and the Sicilians, Frederick was still the hero who had pitted his inferior numbers against the combined mights of Europe and not lost an inch of land; he was the ruler who had sacrificed his little pleasures for the good of his people and the sage administration of his country; he had abolished torture and reformed the law from top to bottom; most recently he had taken the side of the little peasants against the great lords. This man who had sparred nightly with the greatest intellectuals of his day had, they heard, found relaxation in writing poetry.
When they looked at the rest of Europe, they could see little to rival the Prussian king: neither George III of Britain nor Louis XVI of France had anything like his charisma. Their own Bourbon rulers were a byword for cruelty. Frederick's 'pupil' Joseph II was well-intentioned, but the dice were loaded against him. Only in far-away Russia was there a monarch who was his equal in stature, and she too had instigated many of her reforms in imitation of his.
So imagine my surprise when I was catching up on the History of the Germans podcast episodes on that *other* Frederick II, and Dirk the podcaster says Goethe got it all wrong:
There is a story in Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's diaries about his journey to Italy in the 1790s. He gets into a conversation with some locals who praise Frederick II and his enlightened absolutism. Goethe notes in his diary that he did not have the heart to tell them the Frederick II had just died the previous year. The great poet thinks they are talking about Frederick II the Great of Prussia – who else could they have meant? The Frederick II they and we talk about did not feature anywhere in Goethe's consciousness. When Goethe comes to Palermo, neither the cathedral nor the imperial tombs gets mentioned at all.
So apparently Dirk is dead certain they *weren't* talking about our Fritz...which makes sense given this was taking place in Sicily, homeland of the stupor mundi where he was actually remembered...but it's kind of amazing that they managed to have an entire conversation in which they talked past each other *so much* that Goethe never caught on. Though I guess that happens a lot when people travel and talk to the locals: "lost in translation"!
I wonder if after he left, the Sicilians were all thinking, "Who is that weird German guy and why on earth would he think we care about his Prussian?"
Re: Goethe and Frederick II
Date: 2023-10-18 07:41 am (UTC)Re: MacDonogh, though, there is of course the famous quote by Dr. Johnson about Fritz as the one true monarch of Europe or something like that, but whatever the Sicilians thought about Fritz (if they thought of him at all and not his Hohenstaufen namesake), Goethe‘s overall opinion was a bit more critical thaqn MacDonogh acknowledges here, and not just because of Fritz attacking him personally in his anti-German-literature book. He always stood by his teenage fanishness, but he also saw the darker sides, and remember, Fritz‘ niece Amalie as Duchess of Weimar (where Goethe lived) had done her level best not having to provide Fritz with „voluntary“ troops during the War of the Bavarian Succession, and Goethe had also seen the way Saxony was still recovering from what Fritz had done first hand.
Re: Goethe and Frederick II
Date: 2023-10-18 07:49 am (UTC)Anyway, I will check out the original passage in the Italienische Reise to make sure what he actually wrote, but it‘s entirely possible there was such a misunderstanding.
Awesome, would love your take on whether MacDonogh is overly confident in his straightforward reading of Goethe or whether Dirk is overly confident in his "It was all a misunderstanding!" reading of Goethe. Maybe we just can't tell!
Re: Goethe and Frederick II
From:Bregentved
Date: 2023-10-15 10:30 pm (UTC)Guess who owned Bregentved before it came into royal hands? Løvenørn, our Danish envoy who's supposed to have warned Katte that he should escape, and who got recalled in 1730 when Frederik V's father (Christian VI) became king and saved his envoy from a furious FW.
This is the second time there's been overlap between the estates of our Prussian and Danish fandoms; the first time being when Sorgenfri Slot was built at the same time Manteufful was envoy in Denmark, which inspired his Kummerfrey estate, which may have inspired the name Sanssouci.
August III: This is how you lose the PR war
Date: 2023-10-16 03:35 am (UTC)We saw in one of my earlier write-ups that Norman Davies said August has been described as "like a pudding: soft, sweet, and inert." Turns out, that's one of the nicer things that's been said about him. A typical description is "August III the Fat was a pitiful figure" or "a helpless and catastrophic figure."
Adam Zamoyski calls him a "preposterous creature" in the Poniatowski bio Selena and I both read, but goes all out on the viciousness and rips him (and his father) a new one in The Polish Way:
[August the Strong's] son Augustus, Poland's new monarch, was obese, indolent, and virtually incapable of thought. He would spend his days cutting out bits of paper with a pair of scissors or else sitting by the window taking potshots at stray dogs with a pistol. He also drank like a fish. The extremes of drunkenness usually put down to Slavic barbarism were introduced by the only two representatives of that proverbially sober nation, the Germans, to sit on the Polish throne. Augustus II had been the first to elevate drinking marathons and duels to cult proportions, and his porcine son was a worthy successor.
...Karol Radziwiłł...was a worthy subject of his in every respect. Apart from drinking himself into a stupor, the king's favourite activity was shooting at flying Bison which had been catapulted into the air for the purpose. Radziwiłł favoured great banquets and drinking-bouts which usually ended with his killing someone, after which he would stumble into his private chapel and bawl himself back to sobriety by singing hymns. Between them, these two epitomise the abysmal condition into which Poland had sunk in the first half of the 18th century. The king's only redeeming feature was his love of the arts, and he endowed Warsaw with fine buildings.
Zamoyski tones it down considerably in Poland, published twenty years later as a revised second edition of The Polish Way, but he's still not kind:
His son Augustus, Poland's new monarch, was obese and indolent: he would spend his days cutting out bits of paper with a pair of scissors or else sitting by the window taking potshots at stray dogs with a pistol. He also drank like a fish.
But Konopczyński, whom I've mentioned a few times, takes the cake. One website summarizes his take as:
W. Konopczyński called him a lazy, apathetic, ponderous and obese Saxon, who was satisfied with simple games with jesters, cutting paper figures and shooting dogs out of boredom.
And Jacek Staszewski (author of the revisionist bio I read) gives a longer and more detailed quote from Konopczyński, when he summarizes the treatment of August in traditional historiography:
The king, his laziness, and his intellectual indolence were blamed for this state of affairs, and August III's lack of any mental dispositions to meet the tasks that History set for him was pointed out. If the person of the king was sometimes relieved of the accusations, it was only apparently, because putting the blame for the defeats of Poland and Saxony on Henry Brühl even more emphasized the weakness of August III, who allowed himself to be guided by this "skillful upstart" only for his convenience.
The assessment of August III is contained in the opinion expressed by Władysław Konopczyński, first in the Political History of Poland (1925, published by PAU), then repeated in the first volume of the Polish Biographical Dictionary and in the second volume of The Newest History of Poland (1936). Here it is:
“August III did not take after his father in any way. In his youth, he promised to be quite good: serious, conscientious, distinguished, far from his father's promiscuity and perversity, but also from his animal energy and daring, he exhausted his reserve of initiative before he calmly sat on the Polish throne [...]. The handsome, plump young man turned into a heavy lump of meat and fat, growing more listless and thoughtless with each passing year. In the end, the king-elector would spend his days clipping paper, shooting dogs or slapping buffoons, or at best hunting, which, if properly organized, would amount to a great slaughter of herd game rather than to sporting exercises. The only nobler passion retained by August the Fat was a predilection for classical painting. evidenced by the Sistine Madonna he purchased for the Dresden Gallery; one feeling will influence his politics - a feeling of unjustified pride. And one single instinct of this lazy, chubby king will leave considerable results - the reproductive instinct. Suffice it to say that with his ugly wife Maria Józefa, August fathered no more, no less, than five sons and six daughters (sic)."
That's all Google translated from Polish, but I went over "heavy lump of meat and fat" in a few different variations, and it seems to be accurate.
Now, as I set out to read Staszewski's revisionist bio (which I read in German translation; the passage quoted above is from a shorter monograph that was only published in Polish), I was prepared to find out that all this trash-talking is due to Fritz! And Prussian historians copying him.But apparently, at least according to Staszewski, Fritz was too busy trashing Brühl to bother much with August III, and his reputation probably had more to do with Protestant Europe having such high hopes of him when he was young and then being disappointed by the conversion to Catholicism (on which more in another comment).
And of course the Poles hate the Saxons for the "anarchy" period during the reign of August II and August III, which did nothing to prevent the partitions soon after.
Augusts II and III: But...the Poles were the ones stopping us from reforming the state.
Poles: Never mind that, you sucked us dry!
To summarize Markiewicz, author of an essay entitled "The Functioning of the Monarchyduring the Reigns of the Electors of Saxony, 1697-1763":
The 'Saxon period' (czasy saskie) has over the centuries acquired distinctly pejorative connotations. For a long time the reigns of the two monarchs of the Wettin dynasty, Augustus II ( 1697-1733) and Augustus III ( 1733-63) were universally regarded as the period of the collapse of the Commonwealth of the Two Nations, an age of anarchy and lost sovereignty. This impression was rooted in many factors. During the reign of Stanisław August Poniatowski, political publicists painted the preceding reigns in dark colours, as they propagated change in both the political system and social behaviour. Similar opinions were expressed in the propaganda of the partitioning powers, and later in German and Russian historiography, because ‘Polish anarchy' justified the liquidation of the Commonwealth. In the nineteenth century, Polish historians confirmed the image. The 'Cracow school' attributed the collapse of the state to its internal dissolution; the black picture of the Saxon period fitted that concept perfectly. The 'Warsaw school' blamed the fall of Poland on the rapacity of its neighbours, emphasizing the reform effort undertaken under Stanisław August. This, however, was set in sharp contrast to the chaos of the Saxon era. Moreover Polish nationalism was above all anti-German in tone, and historians affected by those ideas presented the rule of the German monarchs as ruinous to the Polish nation. In the last thirty years the image of the Saxon period has been changing gradually, as a result of research done in German, Russian and other national archives. Slowly, the work of historians suchas Józef Andrzej Gierowski, Jacek Staszewski and Zofia Zielińska have been altering our view, not fundamentally revising it but enabling a better understanding of that era.
So what does Jacek Staszewski say about August III?
Well, Fritz he was not, but he did demonstrate an interest in ruling his country. He woke up at 6 am (later 3 am) and started doing paperwork and meeting with ministers. In fact, his father had started involving him in politics and presiding over councils even when he was crown prince.
Part of the problem seems to be that he neither had the popular touch of a monarch like his father, nor the force of personality to pull off a Louis XIV-style of ruling. August III abandoned his father's practice of the casual walks on which he'd run into random people and chat with them in favor of a formal etiquette that kept everyone at arm's length. August III likewise abandoned drinking parties in favor of being a family man. The only time most people got to see him was at formal events like sitting at the theater. When he did work, like sitting in his rooms going over paperwork, he didn't get credit for it, the way Fritz did.
I am reminded of both Louis XV and Louis XVI. Louis XV gets a lot of flak for being ruled by his mistresses the way August III was supposedly ruled by Brühl, because he allegedly didn't give a shit about anything political, but the King's Secret show that Louis XV had a very deep interest in what was happening in his country. He met a lot with ministers and went over reports...he just did so without letting on. Secret kingship! And he also clung to the formal etiquette his great-grandfather had come up with, but instead of embodying the Sun King role. When someone talked to him, he would come across as aloof and snobbish because he was shy and would freeze up and not think of anything to say.
My guess is that August III was also using etiquette as a screen behind which to hide his shyness.
And Louis XVI was also a family man and, like MA, hated the etiquette, and neither of them were nearly visible enough to the public in their role as awe-inspiring monarch to carry on what Louis XIV pulled off. Louis XIV struck an amazing balance of "I am visible all the time, I am not hiding in my rooms, but neither am I one of you like Henri IV (or later August the Strong). I am visible doing kingly things, making sure everyone follows the rituals and isn't overly familiar with me, and making sure everyone knows I am a king making kingly decisions."
Fritz: I'm a workaholic and everyone knows it! Also, check out the results.
August III apparently did manage to pull off some of that sense of Sun King majesty in Poland amongst contemporaries by almost never showing up, only going through the bare minimum of ceremony while he was there, and leaving as quickly as possible. So he was "the king who inspires awe from far away" in Poland and not the "king who lives amongst us, but always in his private rooms doing god knows what" that he was in Saxony.
But none of that left any impact after his reign was over; it was all "Guy obviously did nothing or else Poland wouldn't be where it is today."
So his posthumous PR really, really sucked.
ETA: Oh HEY. Wilhelmine confirms August III was shy:
The prince royal of Poland came soon after to pay his respects to the queen. This prince is very tall and stout, his face is regularly handsome, but not prepossessing; an air of embarrassment accompanies all his actions, and, in order to conceal this embarrassment he has recourse to a very disagreeable forced smile. He speaks little, and does not possess the talent of making himself affable and obliging like his father. He may even be taxed with inattention and rudeness.
JUST like Louis XV! Like I said. :D Wilhelmine continues:
Under this uninviting exterior however he conceals great qualities which have displayed themselves since he became king of Poland. He values himself on being a truly honest man, and his whole attention is devoted to the happiness of his subjects. Those who incur his displeasure might still consider themselves fortunate if they were in any other country. Far from doing them any harm he dismisses them with large pensions; he never, has forsaken those on whom he had once placed his affection; he leads a very regular life and cannot be reproached with any vice, and the good understanding which prevails between him and his spouse merits the greatest praise. This princess was uncommonly plain, and had no accomplishment to make amends for her want of beauty.
Re: August III: This is how you lose the PR war
Date: 2023-10-17 02:19 pm (UTC)Re: August III: This is how you lose the PR war
Date: 2023-10-17 06:30 pm (UTC)Right?
Re: this bit: “he would spend his days cutting out bits of paper with a pair of scissors”, it reminds me of similar phrasing in Mrs Calderwood's journal that I reported on here. She said it of the son of Colonel Townley, when she wanted to imply that he was feminine and without much initiative. Hmm.
Oh, that's interesting! Do you have a sense of whether that was a literal 18th century hobby, or if it was a trope used to insult people?
ETA: I should remind everyone, though, of the take on August III that
Polish historians have traditionally portrayed Augustus III as a cipher for the greater part of his reign in the hands of his favourite and chief minister, Heinrich Brühl, a man whose reputation for financial corruption in Poland was exceeded only by his reputation for the same in Saxony. Augustus II had given his son the best education that money could buy. Yet when Charles VI’s ministers had decided to support the new elector’s candidacy in March 1733, one of the factors in his favour was his apparent stupidity. Augustus III had been taught Polish, but was reluctant to use it. His poor grasp of Latin did not facilitate communication with his new subjects. His conversion to Catholicism in 1717 was less cynical than his father’s. The energy which Augustus II had put into sex and drink his son put into piety and gluttony. His consort, Maria Josepha, was supposedly the more actively interested in politics, at least in relations with her native Austria. Heinrich Bruhl’s extraordinary predominance was at least partly attributable to her unfailing support. By the end of the reign the initial bitter hostility which Augustus III had met had given way to a widespread affection. Clad in his ceremonial robes his corpulent body exuded a kind of majesty. He had long abandoned any effort to tamper with Golden Liberty. He had become what the szlachta wanted in a king.
It is not yet possible to say whether a more complex reality underlay this obvious stereotype. At the very least, the patron of Johann Sebastian Bach must have had some positive qualities.
When I first mentioned this (not quoted in full),
If you're wondering if Algarotti shows up in the Staszewski bio, he does not, but he does show up in Fellmann's bio of Brühl, which, alas, I only got about 100 pages into before getting distracted (per my usual procedure). Not sure when I'm going to pick it back up; I'm trying to finish Stollberg-Rilinger, and Duchhardt's "Balance of Power" und Pentarchie (the book I've been wanting but not for $100) arrived yesterday, a cheaper copy finally having appeared on the used book market, and I've at least got to check out Duchhardt's section on the First Polish Partition (but actually half the book looks good), so...the Royal Detective approach to reading is a bit ADHD and unpredictable. :D (It's weird because I don't actually have ADHD, but staying focused on a single book is usually like pulling teeth for me.)
Re: August III: This is how you lose the PR war
From:Re: August III: This is how you lose the PR war
From:Re: August III: This is how you lose the PR war
From:Re: August III: This is how you lose the PR war
Date: 2023-10-18 07:30 am (UTC)….none of which helped but rather encouraged the build up to the Civil War. The Tudors, especially Henry VIII and Elizabeth, had a knack of that balance between inspiring awe and coming across as accessible to the people which the Stuarts just didn‘t manage until Charles II. James I and VI was seen as a too jocular Scot, Charles I as a tyrant in the making probably about to go over to Rome, no matter how unfounded that rumor was, and that he introduced Spanish style etiquette did not help in that regard.
*One of the great elements of Alec Guinness‘ performance as Charles I in „Cromwell“ is that you can hear that Charles is fighting with that stutter problem every time he speaks in public despite him never stuttering per se - he had trained himself out of it - but the slight hesitation moments are there. (Exception, which is true to history: his trial and execution. At this point, according to all reports, he talked fluently.)
Re: August III: This is how you lose the PR war
Date: 2023-10-21 06:53 pm (UTC)This is all rather fascinating to me!
...none of which helped but rather encouraged the build up to the Civil War.
Ooh, I can see that. All that etiquette stuff (especially coupled with a not-particularly-charismatic monarch) could come across as so Continental! :)
One of the great elements of Alec Guiness' performance as Charles I
That sounds really cool. I can see that being one of those things that really makes a great performance.
Re: August III: This is how you lose the PR war
Date: 2023-10-21 06:52 pm (UTC)Fritz: I'm a workaholic and everyone knows it! Also, check out the results.
*nods* This checks out. I feel like, royalty or not, there are people who enjoy showing off in front of a crowd, people who have enough of a performance persona and a desire that everyone know the effort they're putting in that they make sure it's known, and people who really don't have that desire (and often as a result people don't know the effort they're putting in). Of course also people can be different about this with different facets of their personality (I can definitely be both the second and the third depending on what kind of thing we're talking about), but when you're a king there's one facet that is kind of the big one...
an air of embarrassment accompanies all his actions, and, in order to conceal this embarrassment he has recourse to a very disagreeable forced smile.
Aw! This seems rather perceptive, really.
August III: This is how you convert to Catholicism
Date: 2023-10-16 03:43 am (UTC)Quick reminder for
Well, young future August III was largely raised by Mom (separated from her husband) and then Grandma, and the one thing they drilled into him from a young age was "Your dad wants you to convert so you can succeed him as king of Poland but NEVER CONVERT!" (Also, no theater, mistresses, drinking parties, or really parties at all.) Mom was a bit of a Protestant hero because she never set foot in Poland despite the fact that she was "supposed" to convert so she could be Queen.
So that goes along merrily until August the crown prince becomes a teenager, and August the Strong decides to send him on a grand tour to Italy starting in 1711, when he's 14. "Just keep an open mind when you get there, I'll make sure you get introduced to lots of nice, smart Catholics!"
August the Strong to his son's guardian: "Keep a close eye on my son. No visiting Protestant churches. No talking to non-Catholics unless you're there to supervise him. No unauthorized discussions of religion. Don't force him to convert, but we're going to make this work!"
Crown Prince August writes letters home that read, I'm homesick, can I come home?
August the Strong: No, politically it's not a good time. Stay in Italy. Go to Rome. The Pope has agreed to treat you like his own son. Wait, no, politically it's not a good time, don't go to Rome. But stay in Italy. In addition to maybe being future king of Poland, I need you to marry a Catholic archduchess so you can also be a future candidate for emperor.
Crown Prince August: Dear Mom and Grandma, I'm lonely and I want to come home, but the one thing I promise is that no matter WHAT, I will remain a faithful Protestant and never ever convert. (P.S. Venice was great, if I can't come home, maybe I could just go back to Venice?)
Crown Prince August: Dear Dad, the people you assigned to convert me are great, I have seen the light, and I am now willing to be a good Catholic.
Protestant contemporaries and historians: OMG! What did the Evil Catholics do to that poor child to break his will so quickly! It must have been horribly abusive, and it broke him psychologically, and that's why he was so easily led as an adult!
Staszewski: Uh, please look at the actual sources. The letters have been misdated, partially quoted, and way too much weight placed on some very sketchy evidence. It is not the case that he held out for a long time and then overnight changed his mind. It seems to have been more gradual, and also, we have zero letters from the period right before his conversion that indicate what he was thinking or feeling. Stop acting like you can draw those kinds of conclusions from the evidence you have! Honestly, his father insisted that he be raised without bigotry, and when he converted to Catholicism, he had a non-bigoted Catholicism. He probably just didn't care as much as his mother and grandmother!
Mildred: Yeah, I could see on the one hand not being super convinced Catholicism was Teh Evil on one hand, and also on the other reassuring the people who raised me that I will of course do what I was taught to do. I remember struggling with my own conversion (from Christianity to atheism) as a teenager, and there was definitely a period of some confusion and inconsistency!
In conclusion, August was 14 when he was sent off on the Grand Tour, 15 when he converted (secretly), and 22 when his conversion became public knowledge so he could marry Maria Josepha, daughter of Joseph I and first cousin of MT. (Which marriage will later lead to Saxony having claims on Habsburg territory during the War of the Austrian Succession.)
Re: August III: This is how you convert to Catholicism
Date: 2023-10-18 07:00 am (UTC)Re: August III: This is how you convert to Catholicism
Date: 2023-10-18 07:57 am (UTC)I wonder if this is specifically where Klement got his idea from. And of course FW found it plausible. If all of Protestant Europe was speculating that crown prince August III had been forcibly converted, despite the strictest of Protestant upbringings, so that he could marry an Austrian archduchess...
Okay, how did none of the sources you read on Klement mention this? Maybe they did, and you just didn't find it worthy of passing on because August III was not really known to salon in those days.
Re: August III: This is how you convert to Catholicism
Date: 2023-10-21 06:54 pm (UTC)Yeah, I could see it being even more confusing given that he's apparently getting these mixed messages from mom and dad! There's a reason why mixed-faith marriages are generally frowned on by the faiths involved...
August III: Misc
Date: 2023-10-16 03:49 am (UTC)1. In case you were wondering, Staszewski agrees the taking potshots at dogs through the window happened, but only in the last few months of his life, when he was too sick to leave his rooms and go hunting like he normally did. He denies the drinking himself into the stupor.
2. The political situation when August III was growing up was pretty insane. It includes things like the Great Northern War, the conquest of Poland by Charles XII and overthrow of August the Strong, the invasion and occupation of Saxony by Charles XII, the battle of Poltava and subsequent restoration of August the Strong to the Polish throne, the death of Joseph I and election of Charles VI, etc. This is why Crown Prince August's Grand Tour keeps changing plans, and why it ends up lasting 8 years instead of the originally planned 3. (At the end, he's all grown up and over the homesickness, and doesn't want to go home anymore but instead stay in Venice indefinitely, but of course he's not allowed to do that either.)
3. Especially during the early stages of his Grand Tour, there is lots of drama, cloak and dagger missions, intrigues, letter openings, conspiracies, kidnapping attempts, and so forth. In collusion with Mom and Grandma back in Dresden, foreign powers like Sophie of Hanover, Frederik IV of Denmark (this is the grandfather of the unhinged alcoholic,
Btw, the Denmark connection is because young August's grandmother, August the Strong's mother, the arch-Protestant, is Anna Sophie of Denmark, aunt of Frederik IV.
4. Speaking of Protestant interventions, Staszewski confuses the hell out of me with this paragraph, which takes place in 1711, at the start of August's Grand Tour:
Ermutigt durch die sächsische Kurfürstin Anna Sophie, zeigte sich auch die Gemahlin des Kurfürsten von Hannover, die Namensverwandte der Königinmutter, Anna Sophie, besorgt um den kleinen Friedrich. Ihr Werk war auch die Intervention am britischen Hof und die eifrige Anteilnahme der Königin Anna an den vielfältigen Aktionen, die im Zusammenhang mit dem sächsischen Thronfolger standen. Sie regte ihren Gemahl an, den Hofjunker Krafft von Erff an die Seite Friedrich Augusts zu stellen, dem die Aufgabe zufiel, den Glaubenswechsel des Sohnes Augusts II. zu verhindern. Persönlich hielt sie ihre schützende Hand über den Prinzen, damit ihm durch die Konversion keine Gewalt angetan werde.
Either Staszewski is confused, or I am. If you can sort out who's doing what in that paragraph in a way that does not contradict history,
5.
ETA:
6. In extremely miscellaneous news, I just took 3 tries to type "Sweden", because my fingers had hit "S-c-h" before my brain caught up and went, "No, that's German, there's no 'c' in English."
"S-h-w"
No, that still looks wrong.
Then finally a victory with "S-w-e-d-e-n."
Selena, I still can't speak your language properly, but it's getting inside my head at odd moments! (Remember when I had to google "fief" for "Lehen"?
Re: August III: Misc
Date: 2023-10-18 06:45 am (UTC)Encouraged by the Saxon Electress Anna Sophie, her namesake, the wife of the Prince Elector of Hannover, showed herself full of concern regarding young Friedrich. The British Court‘s intervention and the eager particpation of Queen Anne in the many actions regarding the Saxon Crown Prince were her work as well. She encounraged her husband to position the Courtier Krafft von Erff at Friedrich August‘s side, who was given the task of preventing a change of faith on the part of August II‘s son. She took the Prince under her personal wing so that he shouldn‘t be forced into a conversion.
Now, given Queen Anne‘s strict anti Hannover relations stance, the biggest surprise here is that Sophie is credited with enough influence at the British court to persuade Anne to join the „Keep Friedrich August Protestant!“ campaign. I mean, I guess it‘s not impossible. Given that ever since it became obvious Sophie and her descendants would be Anne‘s successors, an increasing number of English nobles showed up in Hannover to win the favour of their future monarch(s), and they in turn could have influenced Anne, if, say, Sophie should say something like „you want to win my favour? Talk your current Queen into intervening on behalf of that poor young boy“ . And of course Anne was a faithful Anglican Protestant, plus Catholic conversion was a red button and highly relevant topic for any Stuart.
Why Sophie should care in the first place: well, she was the daughter of the Winter Queen. On the other hand, several of her siblings did convert to Catholicism, much to their mother‘s distress. (Remember, one even became an Abbess, and when Sophie visited Versailles with young Figuelotte, she visited her sister as well.) Her memoirs don‘t make her sound fanatic - and she would have been ready to let Figuelotte convert, much as Liselotte had done, for the sake of a royal French marriage -, but of course the religion of young future August IIII was highly relevant for German politics. Not least because after August the Strong‘s conversion, the number Protestant Princes Electors were shrinking, and if - as eventually did happen - the Palatine line got extinct and thus the Palatine became Wittelsbach property, meaning the same Elector would rule both Bavaria and the Palatinate - , they were down to Hannover and Brandenburg. Also, and more Machiavellian if young future August III had not converted, chances are he‘d never been elected King of Poland, no matter how much money Brühl threw around to make that happen. Which would have left Hannover and Brandenburg as the sole two Electorates whose princes were also Kings of territory outside the HRE, England and Prussia respectively. Much as it‘s nice to help the Protestant cause, it‘s even nicer to be the biggest game in town.
Re: August III: Misc
Date: 2023-10-18 06:58 am (UTC)This is also my translation, but the part that confuses me is that it's 1711. Who is this wife of the Prince Elector of Hanover? Sophie's husband is long dead. The wife of the Prince Elector of Hanover is SDC. So who is encouraging her husband to position people at Friedrich August's side and taking the Prince under her personal wing? The only one of the three women (Anna Sophie the Saxon Electress, Sophie of Hanover, and Anne of England) with a living husband is Anna Sophie, and it would feel weird to describe her keeping a long-distance eye on her own son as "she took the Prince under her personal wing."
That's why I wanted your opinion on who all these "she"s and "her"s are in a way that's consistent with history.
ETA: I mean, given that Lewin was a Soviet scholar who didn't have access to the West until his mid 40s, and he makes other mistakes (Prince Karl of Bayreuth instead of Prince Friedrich of Bayreuth, Rudolf of Holstein-Gottorp, Peter III's uncle, as king of Sweden instead of Adolf, Peter's first cousin once removed--a mistake Selena also once made, but not in a published book), it's entirely possible he thinks that 1) Sophie of Hanover is named Anna Sophie and 2) her husband is still alive and running Hanover in 1711. Which means he could be misinterpreting one of two scenarios in his sources:
a) At Sophie's behest, her *son* future G1 intervened to get someone Protestant placed at crown prince future August III's side, and Lewin thinks that was Sophie influencing her *husband*,
or
b) Crown prince future August III's mother, aka Anna Sophie originally of Denmark and now electress of Hanover, got her husband (August the Strong) to place someone Protestant at their son's side, and Lewin thinks Sophie did it because he thinks her name is also Anna Sophie (and that her husband is still alive). [ETA: Ugh, no, that's his grandmother, and she *also* doesn't have a living husband. Now I'm the one getting confused! But now I've confirmed none of these women had a living husband in 1711, so...he's definitely confused about something.]
I just wanted to see if there was a reading that doesn't require the author to be wrong about this many things, but like I said, he doesn't have the greatest track record with the names and genealogies of Germans.
Maria Antonia
Date: 2023-10-16 06:13 am (UTC)How did she manage that? Well, she was living in Saxony when Fritz invaded during the Seven Years' War. She and her husband fled in 1759 to Prague to place themselves under MT's protection, while August fled to Warsaw. Due to an extreme lack of income coming from Saxony (all money flowed toward Fritz's war chest), everyone in the Saxon royal-electoral family had to tighten their belts.
Friedrich Christian and Maria Antonia wanted to capitulate and ask Fritz for money, but August was like, "No! Anything but that! Take the poor fund that my wife collected for charity and use it on yourselves; the royal family is among the poorest these days. We can barely afford to fund artists here in Warsaw! The poorest, I tell you."
Mildred: *severe side-eye*
So that works for a while, but eventually Maria Antonia's having a difficult pregnancy, and she breaks down and gives Fritz exactly what he's been waiting for: a request for money. He grants her 10,000 talers, thus turning her in one fell swoop into his ardent admirer.
In 1763, when the Treaty of Hubertusburg was being negotiated, Maria Antonia was the one urging her husband to give Fritz whatever he wanted. "Then he'll be *grateful*, and he'll show his gratitude by supporting you for King of Poland when your father dies later this year!"
Since Seckendorff also died in 1763, I can only imagine he died *laughing*, and that his last words were "Oh, you sweet summer child."
Fritz: So that's a vote for Poniatowski for King of Poland from me!
Fritz: Look, Maria Antonia, it's like Voltaire and Keyserlingk. I'll chat music, art, and literature with you people all day, but my politics are governed exclusively by realpolitik considerations
named Catherine.Somehow Maria Antonia gets over it and manages to continue her musical penpal-ship with Fritz. Perhaps helped by the fact that her husband did in fact only live 6 weeks, and that their son was a minor whom Fritz couldn't really be expected to support. So the amount of disappointment he caused her in practice was limited.
Totally random anecdote about Maria Antonia from The King's Secret, she had a run-in with the Comte de Broglie when he was envoy at August's court and she was Electoral Princess.
The intractable Ambassador found a fresh opportunity for exciting the annoyance and the suspicions of his Minister by a scene with the Electoral Princess of Saxony, which took place in her own house at a ball given by her to the Hereditary Prince of Modena, who was then visiting Dresden. The Electoral Princess, who had a quick and haughty temper, had promptly recognised an enemy of her House and an adversary to her future pretensions in Count de Broglie.
She treated him with marked coldness, and on that evening in particular she made a pretext of her pregnancy for declining to dance, in order to avoid opening the ball with him, according to the right of the Ambassador of France, even in presence of a prince. A few minutes afterwards he saw her dancing with the Prince of Modena, and advanced so as to be exactly opposite to her at the moment when she resumed her seat.
"I am quite out of breath," said the Princess, with some embarrassment.
"That is not surprising," replied the Count, "your Highness having committed the imprudence of dancing, in your present situation."
"Nevertheless," said the Princess, "that shall not prevent me from dancing with you, when I am a little rested."
"I have no wish to dance," rejoined the Count drily, and, taking his sword and his muff, he left the room without another word.
Next day there was a panic in the palace. The Princess shed tears of rage at the affront to which she had been subjected, and Count Brühl endeavoured to appease her by promising that he would have the offender recalled from Dresden.
More letters, fresh complaints, were addressed by the Court of Saxony to that of France, and again the Count had recourse to Prince de Conti. "I hope the King will see," wrote he, " that I am treated in this way only that it may be boasted of at the Court of Vienna. Take care that there is no yielding about this; " and he added, "these people are cowards; when one shows them one's teeth they give in; when one is civil to them they think it is through fear."
Eventually the King, whose pride was hurt at the slight put upon his representative, sided with the Count, and the Minister, although he grumbled from the bottom of his heart against the agent who gave him so much trouble, sent him only a slight reprimand for having lost his temper, and not found a better excuse for his rudeness.
Summary of the politics, if you've forgotten: Louis XV's son and heir is married to August III's daughter, making him the father-in-law of Maria Antonia's sister-in-law. Meaning he's kind of required to side with the Saxons. Comte de Broglie is perceived by Maria Antonia as an enemy because he's angling to keep the Saxons off the Polish throne in favor of the French Prince de Conti (whom Louis also secretly supports, while publicly supporting the Saxons). Or at least so the Duc de Broglie says; maybe Maria Antonia just didn't like the Comte de Broglie because he was INSUFFERABLE, not because she'd seen through the King's Secret. :P
So those are your Maria Antonia anecdotes from my reading.
Re: Maria Antonia
Date: 2023-10-18 06:52 am (UTC)LOL for „a quick and haughty temper“. Towards whom? Evidently not Fritz and MT, where given the power differential self discipline was asked for. But towards de Broglie the insufferable….
BTW, I just recalled Valori and his insightful Fritz commentary. Does Valori ever show up in „The King‘s Secret“, and if so, do we know what he thought about his fellow envoy?
Re: Maria Antonia
From:Re: Maria Antonia
From:Danish archives
Date: 2023-10-16 05:37 pm (UTC)I was finally able to get scans of everything the Danish state archives have from and to Løvenørn from August 1730 to the end of 1730. Good news: that gives us almost 200 pages of material, including the FW-dictated "Fritz, c'est le Prince" one. Bad news: it doesn't include the ONE letter that was the reason I was willing to pay $350 (*grumbles*--German archives are cheaper) for the archive to do the scanning for me; the one Stefan Hartmann cites as saying that Katte broke into tears when his death sentence was read to him.
The Danish archivist says there is no report from November 5, 1730, and though she didn't look closely through Løvenørn's personal archives, she did a quick skim and couldn't find anything from that date either.
She said I can get the archive to do a more thorough dig through the personal archives by making another prepayment of $350, but they can't guarantee finding what I'm looking for. I have declined at this time.
Hartmann died in 2016 and cannot be contacted for clarification on where on earth he found this November 5, 1730 report. (You know me, I will contact scholars if I'm motivated enough.)
Curses, foiled again!
That said, we do have a ton of new envoy report material, and this is why I need to focus on improving my French and German, because I am not painstakingly hand-transcribing 200 pages of Løvenørn material, 10000 pages of Suhm and Manteuffel material, and 1500 pages of Peter Keith material (not to mention all the Kiekemal material) the way I did the letters to Fredersdorf and Lt. Groeben--I need to be able to sight read.
If I ever *can* sight read reams of text all at once, maybe someday *I* will go to Copenhagen and *I* will look for this elusive letter about Katte! (Which needs to be published, because no one believes he broke down into tears when his death sentence was read; because Wilhelmine says the opposite.)
ETA: Okay, because we found this entertaining, I couldn't resist sharing:
Re: Danish archives
Date: 2023-10-18 06:54 am (UTC)350 Dollars, OMG! So sorry that was a bust on the Katte letter account.
Re: Danish archives
From:Re: Danish archives
From:Re: Danish archives
From:Re: Danish archives
From:Re: Danish archives
From:Re: Danish archives
From:Re: Danish archives
From:Königsmark, by A E W Mason
Date: 2023-10-18 06:22 pm (UTC)The book opens with the two main characters meeting as young teenagers when Philip was a page at Celle. No idea if that's true. Bernstorff (who is in general portrayed as scheming and out for his own gain, and in secret correspondence with Hanover) discovers their budding romance and sends Philip away, after first threatening to kill him and letting him spend the night tied up. We next see Philip in England, where he has a passionate and slashy friendship with a fellow student called Anthony Craston. Don't know if he's made-up. Anyway, Philip loses Anthony's friendship when he lies to save his brother’s life in a murder trial. Then he has to leave England because public opinion has turned against them.
Meanwhile, Bernstorff has maneuvered Sophia Dorothea’s marriage to the future G1, against her will. She quickly makes an enemy of Clara von Platen. Philip comes to Hanover and initially begins to pursue Sophia Dorothea not because he's in love with her, but because he feels like it will blot out his two humiliations in Celle and England. But when she falls in love with him, he comes to return her feelings passionately, though he feels bad about having initially pursued her in bad faith.
So how does their downfall come about? Well, Anthony Craston, having pursued a career in diplomacy, is now also in Hanover. Still being kind of obsessed with Philip and his unworthiness, he spies on him and sees him with Sophia Dorothea. Despite despising himself for it, he rats them out to Bernstorff. Also, Philip had been making up to Clara von Platen to disguise his relationship with Sophia Dorothea, but Clara hears that Philip trash-talked her while on a visit to some other place. Also, of course she hears about Philip's relationship to Sofia Dorothea, whom she hates.
Philip is murdered by Clara along with some henchmen, and the future G1 hardly comes into it. There's a moment where I thought Philip was going to be bricked up alive behind a fireplace! But no, he's buried behind it after being killed--but it's implied that even if he dies, he has in some measure been redeemed by his love. I do find the portrayal of Clara a little misogynistic--there's a bit too much about how she's like an aging witch who has to use thick makeup.
The book ends with a future G2 visiting Sophia Dorothea in her prison castle, accompanied by Anthony who is wracked with remorse for his role in her downfall.
Re: Königsmark, by A E W Mason
Date: 2023-10-18 09:39 pm (UTC)Lol! Yay salon. (I also had never heard of these people before
Bernstorff (who is in general portrayed as scheming and out for his own gain, and in secret correspondence with Hanover)
Just to clarify, this is not the Danish Bernstorff whom Stefan Hartmann fanboys as Fritz's only equal among statesmen. The Bernstorff clan was politically active in Hanover and Denmark, and contained several prominent members from at least the late seventeenth to the twentieth century. This would be Andreas Gottlob, who shows up in Whitworth's bio a lot (usually by making Whitworth's negotiations with FW more difficult).
The Bernstorff who worked alongside Moltke under Frederik V and Christian VII was this Bernstorff's grandson, Johann Hartwig Ernst.
We next see Philip in England, where he has a passionate and slashy friendship with a fellow student called Anthony Craston. Don't know if he's made-up.
Seems to be? I only get hits from this book when I do a quick search. But you never know!
There's a moment where I thought Philip was going to be bricked up alive behind a fireplace!
Wow, Cask of Amontillado-style!
I do find the portrayal of Clara a little misogynistic--there's a bit too much about how she's like an aging witch who has to use thick makeup.
Not surprising, in 1938. I wouldn't even be surprised to find that in a book written today.
Interesting write-up, thank you!
Re: Königsmark, by A E W Mason
Date: 2023-10-20 06:58 pm (UTC)Clara von Platen seems to have been the chosen main villainess for novels from the early 20th century, „Sarabande for dead lovers“ puts her into that position as well. Accusing anyone of thick make-up in that century is, err, there weren‘t enough glass houses to throw the tiniest stone, is what I‘m saying, but again, aging woman scorned is a popular trope, and of course romantic heroines by contrast don‘t use make up and just exude natural radiance.
Does Autora von Königsmarck, Philipp‘s sister, get any mention? If there is a heroine in this whole affair historically speaking, it‘s surely her, as she used her influence on her lover (August the Strong) to find out what the hell happened to her brother, no matter how inconvenient this got for everyone else. (Sarabande for Dead Lovers has one Aurora mention, I think, but early on when introducing Königsmarck, and that‘s it. Royal mistresses who don‘t have a tragic death and/or a legitimizing marriage and/or a punishment for their sins are a bit tricky to handle for novelists from that time…
Future G2 visiting: last year or so I would have written „she didn‘t see either of her children again“, but then we found out SD the younger, the mother of Fritz, actually did keep up contact and did lobby on her mother‘s behalf, though the contact seems to have been in letters. G2‘s attitude re: his mother is debated, as there are two different statements by memoirists - Hervey claims he never ever mentioned her, while Horace Walpole claims that as soon as G1 had breathed his last, G2 hung up his mother‘s portrait in all his personal apartments in his residences and that he was totally on her side. Walpole‘s source for this was G2‘s mistress (until she retired, much to Caroline‘s disgruntlement because of Caroline‘s treasured reading time) Lady Sussex, who might not have been beloved by G2 the way Caroline was but would be in a position to know about which portraits G2 had in his personal apartments. Hervey on the one had as opposed to Horace Walpole has first hand, not second hand knowledge, but otoh he was notoriously uninterested in the Hannover‘s German connections and German nobility in general. Then again, the SD the older/Königsmarck scandal had been talked about in all of Europe (no less a monarch than Louis XIV had asked Liselotte to give him the dirt on the whole Königsmarck tale, because after all Sophie of Hannover was her aunt and future G1 her cousin, but she replied with the equivalent of „hell if I know“), so one would assume the gossip hungry Hervey would make an exception for that particular scandal and listen if G2 said something about his later mother.
In any event: both future G2 and SD were children when their mother ended up imprisoned, and their father was notoriously a cold fish towards both of them even before he and G2 started the series of spectalarly bad Hannover father/son relationships in earnest, so I guess chances are it was a traumatic experience for kid!G2. And would not be surprised if a bit of both was true - he didn‘t like to talk about his mother, but he also felt attached to her memory and had those portraits hung up.
Re: Königsmark, by A E W Mason
From:Re: Königsmark, by A E W Mason
From:Re: Königsmark, by A E W Mason
Date: 2023-10-21 07:06 pm (UTC)This is awesome! (I will never get over my -- knowing less about history than the average bear -- DW being a repository of historical knowledge!)
Also I find Philip von Königsmark/Sophia Dorothea of Celle an interesting ship :)
Philip is murdered by Clara along with some henchmen, and the future G1 hardly comes into it.
Although I must say this is a plot twist I was not expecting!
There's a moment where I thought Philip was going to be bricked up alive behind a fireplace!
haha, wow, that would have been something!
The book ends with a future G2 visiting Sophia Dorothea in her prison castle
Well, anyway, I see what you mean by the author liking tragic romance :P Thank you for writing this up!
Re: Königsmark, by A E W Mason
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