My own theory is that on a regular basis, the kids got enough to eat, to the point where they weren't underweight, but the times when they were deprived of food were really traumatic and loomed large in their memory.
Right, that does make sense, and it's worth noting that SD uses withdrawal of food as punishment for Amalie when Amalie is around 30! I mean, in this case it's funny, because Amalie has alternate methods of getting her chickens roasted, but it's still telling that "the princess will no longer be supplied by my kitchen" is something SD thinks off when she's really angry with her (adult) daughter.
Sadly for our desire to back Wilhelmine up, Løvenørn, like Guy-Dickens, is a massively partisan exaggerator. But I still think he counts as an independent source for Frau von Kamecke!
He does, and re: backing up Wilhelmine, Stratemann - who is partisan to FW and thus not suspect of inventing stuff detrimental to FW - did that with a couple of claims. Remember 19th century Hohenzollern doubting even Wilhelmine's mention of Gundling's funeral (in a letter to her sister) as a Dad slight? And then it turns out Stratemann reports the same funeral in great detail to Braunschweig. He also confirms a few days after Wilhelmine's wedding that rumour has it there was an impression Fritz was cold to "people", which verifies something Fritzian partisans have argued was surely her projecting backwards when writing it in her memoirs.
Re: Frau von Kamecke, we actually have a non-Wilhelmine independent source, to wit, Henri de Catt in his diary, not in the memoirs, with the diary noting down the story when de Catt has been left with Heinrich (and the memoirs putting the whole story into Fritz' mouth which makes no sense since he wasn't there), and her role is mentioned. So you don't have to look it up, here's the version as noted down by Henri de Catt in Heinrich's camp (likely either narrated by Heinrich himself or by one of his friends, de Catt doesn't say whom he talked to, but the perspective is Heinrich's, as seen by the mention of him hiding under the table):
When the King was in Küstrin, the Queen mother told her children to throw themselves on the King's knee to beg for mercy. The Princess of Baireuth, as the oldest one, threw herself before him in the anteroom; she got beaten. Then the family got under the table. Prince Heinrich got squeezed in.The King had a stick, he wanted to beat them. Arrives the chief stewardess, the Countess of Kameke. She spoke. - ›Go away, carrion!‹ Dixit ei Rex. One argues. - ›The devil will take you away,‹ she said, ›if you don't let these children alone!‹ Which she put in a room. The next day the King saw her, thanked her for the madness she had made him avoid. - ›I will always be your good friend,‹ and he was. Grumbkow said to the late King: "You should send this rascal over there", speaking of His Majesty. What horror!
That's what everyone thinks when hearing Hohenzollern family life stories for the first time, Henri de Catt.
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Re: Løvenørn letters: Sep 10, 1730
Date: 2024-01-19 04:03 pm (UTC)Right, that does make sense, and it's worth noting that SD uses withdrawal of food as punishment for Amalie when Amalie is around 30! I mean, in this case it's funny, because Amalie has alternate methods of getting her chickens roasted, but it's still telling that "the princess will no longer be supplied by my kitchen" is something SD thinks off when she's really angry with her (adult) daughter.
Sadly for our desire to back Wilhelmine up, Løvenørn, like Guy-Dickens, is a massively partisan exaggerator. But I still think he counts as an independent source for Frau von Kamecke!
He does, and re: backing up Wilhelmine, Stratemann - who is partisan to FW and thus not suspect of inventing stuff detrimental to FW - did that with a couple of claims. Remember 19th century Hohenzollern doubting even Wilhelmine's mention of Gundling's funeral (in a letter to her sister) as a Dad slight? And then it turns out Stratemann reports the same funeral in great detail to Braunschweig. He also confirms a few days after Wilhelmine's wedding that rumour has it there was an impression Fritz was cold to "people", which verifies something Fritzian partisans have argued was surely her projecting backwards when writing it in her memoirs.
Re: Frau von Kamecke, we actually have a non-Wilhelmine independent source, to wit, Henri de Catt in his diary, not in the memoirs, with the diary noting down the story when de Catt has been left with Heinrich (and the memoirs putting the whole story into Fritz' mouth which makes no sense since he wasn't there), and her role is mentioned. So you don't have to look it up, here's the version as noted down by Henri de Catt in Heinrich's camp (likely either narrated by Heinrich himself or by one of his friends, de Catt doesn't say whom he talked to, but the perspective is Heinrich's, as seen by the mention of him hiding under the table):
When the King was in Küstrin, the Queen mother told her children to throw themselves on the King's knee to beg for mercy. The Princess of Baireuth, as the oldest one, threw herself before him in the anteroom; she got beaten. Then the family got under the table. Prince Heinrich got squeezed in.The King had a stick, he wanted to beat them. Arrives the chief stewardess, the Countess of Kameke. She spoke. - ›Go away, carrion!‹ Dixit ei Rex. One argues. - ›The devil will take you away,‹ she said, ›if you don't let these children alone!‹ Which she put in a room. The next day the King saw her, thanked her for the madness she had made him avoid. - ›I will always be your good friend,‹ and he was. Grumbkow said to the late King: "You should send this rascal over there", speaking of His Majesty. What horror!
That's what everyone thinks when hearing Hohenzollern family life stories for the first time, Henri de Catt.