cahn | Historical Characters, Including Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 47

We haven't had a new post since before December 25, so obligatory Yuletide link to this hilarious story of Frederick the Great babysitting his bratty little brother, with bonus Fritz/Fredersdorf!

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From:

selenak

SD definitely got enough to eat. If not always what she wanted, i.e. the kind of food considered luxurious by FW - think of of those multi course meals with eleborately decorated pheasants you've surely seen in historical movies, or for that matter many sweets - but there was never a suggestion she was starved.

(The kids weren't starved in the sense of not getting enough food full stop, either. In the famous scene where Wilhelmine recounts her sister Friederike (the first one to get married) mouth off FW re: food, she has Friederike complain that the food was awful and unenjoyable, not that it wasn't there. (This is the scene when FW starts to throw plates soon, but not at Friederike, at Fritz and Wilhelmine.) (Friederike will leave Berlin soon for Ansbach, which helps with the courage, undoubtedly.) How much Wilhelmine exaggarates about the food being awful was of course heavily debated among Hohenzollern historians ever since. On the one hand, we do have Fritz' weight from when he and FW were visiting Saxony and got on that famous scales where August the Strong had all his guests weight, at Königstein, and it's not below avarage, even taking account that he was fully clothed (like everyone else). And if you recall, Stratemann reports such scenes like FW being a Disney Dad, feeding pregnant (with Ferdinand) SD with chicken soup, telling Wilhelmine to take care of Heinrich (the then youngest before Ferdinand's birth) and ensure he gets the fish he wants to eat, and in the previous year he reports on FW touring the Christmas market and buying sweets for his kids. While Stratemann is as pro FW as Lövenörn is against him, I don't think he made that up - FW is just the type to play the good housefather when he's feeling sentimental, which his highly pregnant wife or Christmas approaching would bring out of him. But that wouldn't stop him from insisting everyone eat healthy like the Spartans during the rest of the year, especially the boys.

No, SD would not have been breastfeeding. Another thing Stratemann reports on is how Ferdinand's wetnurse was chosen from a variety of candidates in the spring of 1730, renember? It's a French Colonel's wife who makes it in the end. I refer you to my Stratemann write up at Rheinsberg for more details, it's an interesting glimpse of how wetnurses were chosen.

(FW: I can't understand why all my kids speak French rather than German...)

Another thing re: SD's weight - according to Wilhelmine, she was in denial about being pregnant with Amalie and thought it was already menopause, and thus there weren't the usual midwives and wetnurses etc. ready and FW had to assist with the birth. Leaving some room for exaggaration, that story still would not work if SD hadn't already been a somewhat heavy woman by the time Amalie was born. Which was years before 1730. So she did have some weight to lose and a far way to to to a skeleton.

From:

mildred_of_midgard

SD definitely got enough to eat. If not always what she wanted, i.e. the kind of food considered luxurious by FW - think of of those multi course meals with eleborately decorated pheasants you've surely seen in historical movies, or for that matter many sweets - but there was never a suggestion she was starved.

Yeah, I can't remember anyone saying she was starved by FW, either.

(The kids weren't starved in the sense of not getting enough food full stop, either.

This is something we've debated in salon before. On the one hand, both Wilhelmine and Fritz said they were starved. Ziebura also says AW says he and the other kids were often half-starved (but Ziebura doesn't believe in citing her sources). On the other hand, yeah, we have Fritz's weight and he was not underweight or skeletal or anything.

In the famous scene where Wilhelmine recounts her sister Friederike (the first one to get married) mouth off FW re: food, she has Friederike complain that the food was awful and unenjoyable, not that it wasn't there.

But in other places in the memoir, she does talk about not being given enough to eat, quantity-wise.

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. This is how trauma works. Plus Mom talking about how this food wasn't edible (by upper class people) and sending them secret food deliveries, etc.

she was in denial about being pregnant with Amalie

I remembered the scales at Königstein but had forgotten about this, but yes, now that you remind me, I remember. There's no way she was a skeleton in 1730.

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's an independent second-hand source for Doris, but may go back to the same first-hand source. Guy-Dickens and Løvenørn are obviously not both independent first-hand sources who witnessed the evidence of her virginity.)

No, SD would not have been breastfeeding. Another thing Stratemann reports on is how Ferdinand's wetnurse was chosen from a variety of candidates in the spring of 1730, renember?

I also remembered this and was going to tell Cahn about it if you hadn't reminded her first! :D

Edited Date: 2024-01-19 02:49 pm (UTC)

From:

selenak

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.

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Oh, right, Catt mentions Kamecke by name! I remembered the hiding under the table bit, but not that she was mentioned.

That's what everyone thinks when hearing Hohenzollern family life stories for the first time, Henri de Catt.

That's what I think! And not just for the first time hearing them, either.

From:

selenak

Catt also confirms that Wilhelmine spoke up first and got beaten by FW. As I said in my original write up, the differences between accounts are also interesting - for example, Kamecke in the one given to Catt by either Heinrich or a friend of his speaks up for all the children, whereas in Wilhelmine's memoirs she specifically pleads for Fritz with the "don't do a Philip of Spain or Peter the Great!" comparison. But we can filter a common denominator in all the accounts (the Lövenörn one included), which is that FW shows up in a rage, Wilhelmine speaks, gets beaten, the kids are frightened (and try to hide in the Catt version whereas in Wilhelmine's they still kneel and plead with FW), Frau von Kamecke becomes the heroine of the day with some choice words towards FW which prevent any further violence.

(It must have been terrifying for all present, and that Heinrich at four can remember it later is also telling.)