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rheinsbergA collection of short posts on families. Specifically, families related to our antihero. Factoids gathered from various online lexica as well as the biographies from "our" generation of Hohenzollern.
First of all, of course: Great Grandpa, Grandpa and Dad:
Our Insane Family: The Prequel Years
I've been meaning to share this, i.e. support for Mildred's "everyone had PtSD at each other since the 30 Years War at least" theory.
Friedrich Wilhelm of Brandenburg, The Great Prince Elector: Hi. I'm not yet a King either in or of Prussia, but you might say it all starts with me. By "all", I mean making Prussia awesome and making my family - well. I spent my childhood mostly at Küstrin - yes, that one - because it's a mighty fortress, and the 30 Years War was going on. My parents figured I'd be safe there. Speaking of my parents, I didn't see them for seven years, but hey, we nobles are raised by other people anyway.
So, by the time I started ruling, there wasn't much left to rule. The population was wiped out, two thirds of it. The countryside was destroyed. And we still had the Swedes occupying the country. Whereupon yours truly hit upon a couple of winning ideas.
1. Marry rich, repeatedly. Procreate
2. Invite the Dutch in. They're good at trading. Also, start with a Dutch princess.
3. Invite French Huguenots in. Louis XIV has just kicked them out, they need a new country, I need skilled people who owe me everything. Win win!
4. Invite the Jews in. See above points.
5. Once we have goods to trade with, get involved in the overseas trade. By which I absolutely mean the slave trade as well. Profit!
This worked out for me and Prussia. Alas, my first wife died. I married again. And then there were... difficulties.
Friedrich III of Brandenburg, later Friedrich I IN Prussia: Hi! I'm the much maligned grandpa of that sickly kid I hardly knew. Which is also how you can describe my relationiship with my father. Sickly, that is. I started out as the third son, with three more children after me. My wetnurse dropped me, and for the rest of my life I had an uneven shoulder. No, you don't see it on the portraits. That's not what I paid young Pense for, after all. But they did call me Humpback Fritz. So, Dad was a bit embarassed of me, but he had my two older brothers at first. Did Dad consider he had enough of us? He did not. Instead, when my adored mother died, he married again. A total bitch who gave him plenty more sons and some daughters. Not to spoil anything, but we hated each other. Once my two older brother's died, we REALLY hated each other. And then my younger brother died, and I point blank accused her of poisoning hiim and refused to see Dad without a guarantee of personal safety and hostage exchange. Dad didn't take that well, but seriously? That woman had already persuaded him to part tiny Prussia into fours, with her sons getting as much territory as me. No way. In case anyone is wondering, I won that one. My stepbrothers later got palmed off calling themselves "Margraves of Swedt". Yep, those Schwedts. Aaaanyway, once I was the Prince Elector, I started plan Make Prussia a Kingdom. Which was expensive. I know my son and grandson were on my case for all the money I spent, but seriously? They'd still have been Margraves if I hadn't done that. Bribing the Emperor is expensive. Dress to impress wasn't just a motto, it was part of the Kingdom Prussia campaign. Now, my first much beloved wife died, and I had to marry again because I didn't have a son already. I got one from wife No. 2, though. Actually, I got two. Our first boy didn't make it beyond a year, but tiny terror FW? Couldn't keep him down.
Unfortunately, me and the wife got into arguments about how to educate him. What to emphasize and the like. You might say we sent mixed signals. Which is why he had a time out in Hannover with his cousins. I mean, it seemed like a good idea at the time! Kids his age! He'd make future friends! Did he ever. When he wasn't beating up his cousins, he was swallowing golden shoe laces. We had to take him back. And then he freaked me out by having his own balance book, noting money expenses. I mean, which kid does that! Kid ask you for MORE money, they don't try to figure out how their household could spend less. May have been the result of making a strict Calvinist his teacher who scared the hell out of him with the predestination doctrine, but look, that kid had to be brought under control.
I was being an encouraging Dad, though. When he was ten, I gave him Wusterhausen. And would you believe it, but he turned that into a self sustaining estate. A plus achievement, son. I might have had trouble communicating this, though, because welll, he was just somewhat embarassing to look at, not wanting to get into the proper baroque representation spirit. So I thought, hey, marriage will do the trick! One can always rely on the ladies to encourage a man to dress well and look his best. Since I had done nicely in that regard with his mother, a Hannover princess, I thought, might as well go for another one of those for my boy. And hey, maybe it would make the Hannover in laws get over the fact he beat up his other cousin as a kid! Win win!
Look, I know his dress sense remained abysmall, but one thing you can't accuse me of: lack of trying. After all, we all want only the best for our kids.
I feel we‘re neglecting Fritz‘ maternal family here, so I refreshed my memories, and yep, wasn‘t exaggerating when claiming the House of Hannover could easily compete with the Hohenzollern when it comes to dysfunction. So let's hear it for the Brits! (Er, "Brits", as in German rulers of Britain, all named George, their wives and daughters.)
God Save Our Saxon Cousins!
Grandma: Sophia Dorothea the Older. Was a high spirited princess forced to marry future George I.; at their first meeting, she cried „I will not marry the pig snout!“ But then, no one asked her. She and (future) G 1 both were unfaithful in their marriage, but this being the merry times for women that they were, it had only bad results for SD the Older. She fell passionately in love with one Count of Königsmarck and wanted to run away with him. (Are you paying attention, grandson?) The plan was uncovered, Königsmarck disappeared from the face of the earth, and no one ever saw him again or knows, to this day, what happened. Obvious guess: still not G1 had him killed. But it could never be proven. SD was locked up and remained in prison for the rest of her life, over thirty years of it. She never saw either of her children (future G2 and Sophia Dorothea the Younger, mother of Fritz) again. Most heartbreaking detail: when SD the younger was Queen of Prussia, she once did visit Hannover and the place where SD the older was kept prisoner. SD the older got special robes for the occasion and waited for the entire time of the visit... in vain, because SD the younger only saw her father, G1, during that visit to Hannover.
Uncle G2: spent his early childhood at Sophia of Hannover‘s palace due to his mother being locked up (where he had that unfriendly childhood encounter with younger cousin FW). Despised his father and vice versa, culminating in big scandal during the baptism ceremony for G2‘s second son. G1 had wanted a different godfather than future G2 intended. G1‘s choice of godfather showed up at the cathedral. Future G2 freaks out, insults godfather to the point godfather challenges him to duel. G1 freaks out, has future G2 & wife Caroline locked up in their apartments, then banished from court but without their kids and forbidding them to see same. (Including the just baptized baby.) Later relents so that Caroline can see the kid, but future G2 only once a week, strictly supervised. The baby dies in future G2‘s arms. Flashforward: when G1 dies (in Hannover), G2 refuses to go to the funeral. British subjects, pleased, assume this is because G2 feels more like a Brit than a German. Get disillusioned when he subsequently keeps holidaying in Hannover, to which he says that it‘s a British custom to have a countryhouse, and Hannover is his. Meanwhile, no visits to Dad‘s grave.
G2 has surviving sons of his own. But does he have better relationships with them? Ha. The one Wilhelmine was supposed to marry once upon a time, Frederick, actively campaigns for the opposition. When G2 returns from one of Hannover holidays and gets sick, Fred launches the rumor his father is already dying (not the first itme a Prince of Wales would do something like that), which means G2 gets up and insists on attending a party to stop the rumor.
When Fred dies (leaving baby future G3 behind), followed by his sister Louisa, G2 comments: "This has been a fatal year for my family. I lost my eldest son – but I am glad of it ... Now [Louisa] is gone. I know I did not love my children when they were young: I hated to have them running into my room; but now I love them as well as most fathers.“
This was as functional as Hannoverian parents ever got. I mean, FW still wins in terms of being The Worst Father because the only one executing someone‘s lover was G1 and he did it to his wife, not offspring, but seriously, had those English marriages for Fritz and Wilhelmine ever worked out, they might have gotten from the frying pan into the fire, is what I‘m saying.
On to the family Wilhelmine did marry into. I.e. the Franconinian branch of the Hohenzollerns, located in Bayreuth.
mildred_of_midgard asked:
How much childhood trauma did the Margrave have?
You know, this made me finally look up his parents closer than through what I recall from Wilhelmine's memoirs, and you'll never guess, but...
Wilhelmine's in-Laws:
Dad was a stick wielding Ultra Protestant. Hence Bayreuth Friedrich studying eight years in Geneva, btw. Mom, by name of Dorothea, got divorced from Dad for her "crime against marital fidelity" and locked up in the next fortress. Future Margrave was then raised by his grandmother. In 1734, the old Margrave finally allowed his wife to leave her prison but only under the condition that she was to emigrate to Sweden and never ever return, and he made that a condition in his Last Will from 1735, too. After his death, his son, Wilhelmine's husband, heightened his mother's Budget to a generous sum, but he didn't withdraw the banishment from Bayreuth, so she died in Sweden without having seen her son again after the time she first was arrested for adultery.
Weird fact: one of Dorothea's brothers - she was a princess of Schleswig-Holstein - ended up married to the Countess Orzelska! (As in, the one whom young Fritz had a very brief early fling with when he and Dad visited Dresden, and during her return visit to Berlin.)
Wilhelmine's opinion of her father-in-law is probably best summed up by the tale which ended up in his wiki entry: supposedly, when she became pregnant, he first accused her of having made that up in order to get attention. When this was not the case, he said he hoped it would be a daughter since by the marriage contract as signed by him and FW, he was only obliged to bear the financial costs for a son. When Wilhelmine's husband the future Margrave told him not to be a jerk to her, Old Margrave went with a stick at him, and there was a physical father-son brawl.
Also of interest: when Wilhelmine's widower - who had married one of Charlotte's daughters after her death, but that marriage ended up without children - died without a son, Bayreuth went to his uncle Christian. And Uncle Christian was nuts. When Christian had found a hot page in his wife's bedroom, he shot the guy, which is why he ended up spending some time under lock and key in the Plassenburg. (He also divorced his wife.) After Wilhelmine's husband released him, he went to Denmark and served in the army there. Once he inherited Bayreuth from his nephew in the 1760s, he fired all the artists, most of whom ended up going to Fritz.
After all of this, you won't be surprised if I point out the full name of the Bayreuth tribe was "von Brandenburg-Bayreuth", for lo, they were the Franconian branch of the Hohenzollern.
It should be added, though, that jerk or not, the old Margrave evidently did finance a Grand Tour for his son, starting in 1730, the year of doom, which is why future Margrave was able to visit France, improve his French there and learn how to play the flute before being called back with the news he was supposed to marry.
First of all, of course: Great Grandpa, Grandpa and Dad:
Our Insane Family: The Prequel Years
I've been meaning to share this, i.e. support for Mildred's "everyone had PtSD at each other since the 30 Years War at least" theory.
Friedrich Wilhelm of Brandenburg, The Great Prince Elector: Hi. I'm not yet a King either in or of Prussia, but you might say it all starts with me. By "all", I mean making Prussia awesome and making my family - well. I spent my childhood mostly at Küstrin - yes, that one - because it's a mighty fortress, and the 30 Years War was going on. My parents figured I'd be safe there. Speaking of my parents, I didn't see them for seven years, but hey, we nobles are raised by other people anyway.
So, by the time I started ruling, there wasn't much left to rule. The population was wiped out, two thirds of it. The countryside was destroyed. And we still had the Swedes occupying the country. Whereupon yours truly hit upon a couple of winning ideas.
1. Marry rich, repeatedly. Procreate
2. Invite the Dutch in. They're good at trading. Also, start with a Dutch princess.
3. Invite French Huguenots in. Louis XIV has just kicked them out, they need a new country, I need skilled people who owe me everything. Win win!
4. Invite the Jews in. See above points.
5. Once we have goods to trade with, get involved in the overseas trade. By which I absolutely mean the slave trade as well. Profit!
This worked out for me and Prussia. Alas, my first wife died. I married again. And then there were... difficulties.
Friedrich III of Brandenburg, later Friedrich I IN Prussia: Hi! I'm the much maligned grandpa of that sickly kid I hardly knew. Which is also how you can describe my relationiship with my father. Sickly, that is. I started out as the third son, with three more children after me. My wetnurse dropped me, and for the rest of my life I had an uneven shoulder. No, you don't see it on the portraits. That's not what I paid young Pense for, after all. But they did call me Humpback Fritz. So, Dad was a bit embarassed of me, but he had my two older brothers at first. Did Dad consider he had enough of us? He did not. Instead, when my adored mother died, he married again. A total bitch who gave him plenty more sons and some daughters. Not to spoil anything, but we hated each other. Once my two older brother's died, we REALLY hated each other. And then my younger brother died, and I point blank accused her of poisoning hiim and refused to see Dad without a guarantee of personal safety and hostage exchange. Dad didn't take that well, but seriously? That woman had already persuaded him to part tiny Prussia into fours, with her sons getting as much territory as me. No way. In case anyone is wondering, I won that one. My stepbrothers later got palmed off calling themselves "Margraves of Swedt". Yep, those Schwedts. Aaaanyway, once I was the Prince Elector, I started plan Make Prussia a Kingdom. Which was expensive. I know my son and grandson were on my case for all the money I spent, but seriously? They'd still have been Margraves if I hadn't done that. Bribing the Emperor is expensive. Dress to impress wasn't just a motto, it was part of the Kingdom Prussia campaign. Now, my first much beloved wife died, and I had to marry again because I didn't have a son already. I got one from wife No. 2, though. Actually, I got two. Our first boy didn't make it beyond a year, but tiny terror FW? Couldn't keep him down.
Unfortunately, me and the wife got into arguments about how to educate him. What to emphasize and the like. You might say we sent mixed signals. Which is why he had a time out in Hannover with his cousins. I mean, it seemed like a good idea at the time! Kids his age! He'd make future friends! Did he ever. When he wasn't beating up his cousins, he was swallowing golden shoe laces. We had to take him back. And then he freaked me out by having his own balance book, noting money expenses. I mean, which kid does that! Kid ask you for MORE money, they don't try to figure out how their household could spend less. May have been the result of making a strict Calvinist his teacher who scared the hell out of him with the predestination doctrine, but look, that kid had to be brought under control.
I was being an encouraging Dad, though. When he was ten, I gave him Wusterhausen. And would you believe it, but he turned that into a self sustaining estate. A plus achievement, son. I might have had trouble communicating this, though, because welll, he was just somewhat embarassing to look at, not wanting to get into the proper baroque representation spirit. So I thought, hey, marriage will do the trick! One can always rely on the ladies to encourage a man to dress well and look his best. Since I had done nicely in that regard with his mother, a Hannover princess, I thought, might as well go for another one of those for my boy. And hey, maybe it would make the Hannover in laws get over the fact he beat up his other cousin as a kid! Win win!
Look, I know his dress sense remained abysmall, but one thing you can't accuse me of: lack of trying. After all, we all want only the best for our kids.
I feel we‘re neglecting Fritz‘ maternal family here, so I refreshed my memories, and yep, wasn‘t exaggerating when claiming the House of Hannover could easily compete with the Hohenzollern when it comes to dysfunction. So let's hear it for the Brits! (Er, "Brits", as in German rulers of Britain, all named George, their wives and daughters.)
God Save Our Saxon Cousins!
Grandma: Sophia Dorothea the Older. Was a high spirited princess forced to marry future George I.; at their first meeting, she cried „I will not marry the pig snout!“ But then, no one asked her. She and (future) G 1 both were unfaithful in their marriage, but this being the merry times for women that they were, it had only bad results for SD the Older. She fell passionately in love with one Count of Königsmarck and wanted to run away with him. (Are you paying attention, grandson?) The plan was uncovered, Königsmarck disappeared from the face of the earth, and no one ever saw him again or knows, to this day, what happened. Obvious guess: still not G1 had him killed. But it could never be proven. SD was locked up and remained in prison for the rest of her life, over thirty years of it. She never saw either of her children (future G2 and Sophia Dorothea the Younger, mother of Fritz) again. Most heartbreaking detail: when SD the younger was Queen of Prussia, she once did visit Hannover and the place where SD the older was kept prisoner. SD the older got special robes for the occasion and waited for the entire time of the visit... in vain, because SD the younger only saw her father, G1, during that visit to Hannover.
Uncle G2: spent his early childhood at Sophia of Hannover‘s palace due to his mother being locked up (where he had that unfriendly childhood encounter with younger cousin FW). Despised his father and vice versa, culminating in big scandal during the baptism ceremony for G2‘s second son. G1 had wanted a different godfather than future G2 intended. G1‘s choice of godfather showed up at the cathedral. Future G2 freaks out, insults godfather to the point godfather challenges him to duel. G1 freaks out, has future G2 & wife Caroline locked up in their apartments, then banished from court but without their kids and forbidding them to see same. (Including the just baptized baby.) Later relents so that Caroline can see the kid, but future G2 only once a week, strictly supervised. The baby dies in future G2‘s arms. Flashforward: when G1 dies (in Hannover), G2 refuses to go to the funeral. British subjects, pleased, assume this is because G2 feels more like a Brit than a German. Get disillusioned when he subsequently keeps holidaying in Hannover, to which he says that it‘s a British custom to have a countryhouse, and Hannover is his. Meanwhile, no visits to Dad‘s grave.
G2 has surviving sons of his own. But does he have better relationships with them? Ha. The one Wilhelmine was supposed to marry once upon a time, Frederick, actively campaigns for the opposition. When G2 returns from one of Hannover holidays and gets sick, Fred launches the rumor his father is already dying (not the first itme a Prince of Wales would do something like that), which means G2 gets up and insists on attending a party to stop the rumor.
When Fred dies (leaving baby future G3 behind), followed by his sister Louisa, G2 comments: "This has been a fatal year for my family. I lost my eldest son – but I am glad of it ... Now [Louisa] is gone. I know I did not love my children when they were young: I hated to have them running into my room; but now I love them as well as most fathers.“
This was as functional as Hannoverian parents ever got. I mean, FW still wins in terms of being The Worst Father because the only one executing someone‘s lover was G1 and he did it to his wife, not offspring, but seriously, had those English marriages for Fritz and Wilhelmine ever worked out, they might have gotten from the frying pan into the fire, is what I‘m saying.
On to the family Wilhelmine did marry into. I.e. the Franconinian branch of the Hohenzollerns, located in Bayreuth.
mildred_of_midgard asked: How much childhood trauma did the Margrave have?
You know, this made me finally look up his parents closer than through what I recall from Wilhelmine's memoirs, and you'll never guess, but...
Wilhelmine's in-Laws:
Dad was a stick wielding Ultra Protestant. Hence Bayreuth Friedrich studying eight years in Geneva, btw. Mom, by name of Dorothea, got divorced from Dad for her "crime against marital fidelity" and locked up in the next fortress. Future Margrave was then raised by his grandmother. In 1734, the old Margrave finally allowed his wife to leave her prison but only under the condition that she was to emigrate to Sweden and never ever return, and he made that a condition in his Last Will from 1735, too. After his death, his son, Wilhelmine's husband, heightened his mother's Budget to a generous sum, but he didn't withdraw the banishment from Bayreuth, so she died in Sweden without having seen her son again after the time she first was arrested for adultery.
Weird fact: one of Dorothea's brothers - she was a princess of Schleswig-Holstein - ended up married to the Countess Orzelska! (As in, the one whom young Fritz had a very brief early fling with when he and Dad visited Dresden, and during her return visit to Berlin.)
Wilhelmine's opinion of her father-in-law is probably best summed up by the tale which ended up in his wiki entry: supposedly, when she became pregnant, he first accused her of having made that up in order to get attention. When this was not the case, he said he hoped it would be a daughter since by the marriage contract as signed by him and FW, he was only obliged to bear the financial costs for a son. When Wilhelmine's husband the future Margrave told him not to be a jerk to her, Old Margrave went with a stick at him, and there was a physical father-son brawl.
Also of interest: when Wilhelmine's widower - who had married one of Charlotte's daughters after her death, but that marriage ended up without children - died without a son, Bayreuth went to his uncle Christian. And Uncle Christian was nuts. When Christian had found a hot page in his wife's bedroom, he shot the guy, which is why he ended up spending some time under lock and key in the Plassenburg. (He also divorced his wife.) After Wilhelmine's husband released him, he went to Denmark and served in the army there. Once he inherited Bayreuth from his nephew in the 1760s, he fired all the artists, most of whom ended up going to Fritz.
After all of this, you won't be surprised if I point out the full name of the Bayreuth tribe was "von Brandenburg-Bayreuth", for lo, they were the Franconian branch of the Hohenzollern.
It should be added, though, that jerk or not, the old Margrave evidently did finance a Grand Tour for his son, starting in 1730, the year of doom, which is why future Margrave was able to visit France, improve his French there and learn how to play the flute before being called back with the news he was supposed to marry.
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