Fritz and Wilhelmine Correspondance

[selenak]

The summaries and excerpts from the correspondance between Friedrich and his favourite sister Wilhelmine I've made across several posts, as well as summaries and quotes from a biography about her, go here.

Source: website with letters to and from Wilhelmine during her 1754/1755 journey through France and Italy.

There are also a few letters about Wilhelmine from various family members during that era. All in the original French, in a German translation, and in a faksimile, so you can see what the actual letters look like. Fritz is the main other correspondant, but there are also three of her other siblings (August Wilhelm, Ulrike and Amalie).

Now, about that journey: Wilhelmine and her husband the Margrave - whose first name, btw, was Friedrich, which is just too confusing in this context, so I'll keep calling him the Margrave like she did - were travelling under the nome de plume "Count and Contess von Zollern" because if they'd travelled officially, it would have been a quasi royal state visit to to Wilhelmine being Fritz' sister, and more expensive both for them and their hosts. Wilhelmine was already sick (she only had a few more years to live) and traveled partly for the climate's sake, but wouldn't you know it, Europe collectively was suffering form one of the coldest years around, so it wasn't much warmer in France and only a bit in Italy. She also was a culture tourist, of course, and visiting France and Italy was fulfilling a life long dream.

( Wilhelmine on the road )

( Summary and exerpts from Uwe Oster's biography of Wihelmine )

( Quotes from Fritz Letters to Wilhelmine in the last year of her life )

The Lehndorff Diaries

[selenak]

Summarizing and quotes from the diaries of Ernst Ahasverus Count von Lehndorfff, Chamberlain to Elisabeth Christine, Queen of Prussia.

Lehndorfff was appointed to this office by Fritz at age 19 in 1746. He kept it for thirty years. During that time, he got close to various members of the royal family, especially Prince Heinrich. His journals are a source a lot of biographies draw from.

A collection of the diaries was published in 1907 which, however, left out significant parts; the editor subsequently published them in two further volumes of appencies.

( Summary and quotes from the three volumes )

Individual aspects of Lehndorff’s diaries:

( Lehndorff and Heinrich )

( Lehndorff and Charles Hotham )

( Lehndorff and the Kattes )

The Marwitz (Male) Affair

[selenak]

(Male) Qualifier added because there's also a Marwitz (Female) Affair involving Hohenzollern siblings.

The documented facts are these:

a) Diary entry by Lehndorff from 1756, giving the following summary:

Morning with the King. All are delighted to see our sovereign, and one would adore him if only this great man were a bit more gracious to those who want to adore him. But nothing is more humiliating than having to stand around and to wait for hours to at last see someone who doesn't grace us with a look. The fear which princes inspire only signifies their power. Awe is inspired by their dignity; their true glory springs from the estimation and personal respect one has for them. Friedrich does enjoy this precious advantage, and he would be loved, too, if only he numbered kindness among his qualities.

I renew my acquaitance with a man I had not seen since the year 1749. It is a young Marwitz, who started his career as page with the King, and who became a favourite with him as well as with Prince Heinrich. This affection went so far that the two royal brothers turned incredibly furious on each other for his sake. The young page was sent away, but due to urgent pleadings on Prince Heinrich's side, he got a commission in the guard. Some time later, the Prince accused him of falsehood and bad manners, and banished him completely from his company. Since then, the King has occasionally favoured him with his grace, but in the next moment sends him to guard duty and treats him like a criminal. This man now resurfaces on the horizon; the Prince tells me that he is quite amiable, that he invites him to his parties again, and the King has made him his batman. He posseses wit and is somewhat strongly fantastical; I consider him malicious.

In the evening, the whole royal family dines with the Queen Mother.


b) Letters from Fritz to younger brother Heinrich, written in March 1746:

Heinrich got sick near the end of carnival time and thus is in Berlin, when Fritz (who is in Potsdam) writes to him on March 3rd, 1746:

"I am glad to hear you are recovering from your colic. Don't go out again too early, and allow your body time to recover. Your little favourite is doing very well, and if he remains good, you'll soon see him again. Right now, he's pining for love and is composing elegies full of hot kisses in your honor which he intends to give you upon your return. I advise you not to exhaust yourself so that you have enough strength to express your love. The happiness of the immortals will not be equal to yours, and you will be able to drink rivers of lust in the arms of your beloved.

Adieu, mon cher Henri. I hope your illness will be the last with which you will worry my friendship for you, and that I shall soon be able to enjoy your amiable company without having to worry about you.

This is still sounds like more or less good natured big brotherly teasing (for Fritz). The next letter, alas, does not. It's dated on March 6th, 1756.

My dear Heinrich, no, there is no crueller martyrdom than separation! How to live for a moment without the one you love? (...) Our sighs travel on country roads, and we pour our heart out as messages of our unhappy souls flying away like doves. Oh! Oh! The faithless man has forgotten me! says a certain person. Already a day has passed without a sigh of his has reached me! Surely, he's become faithless! He doesn't love me anymore! No, he doesn't love me anymore! If I had the courage, I'd tell this charming sad person: "That's no more than you deserve, you damned whore! Didn't you want to infect my poor brother with your gonorhoe? Oh! If he listened to me, he'd turn his love towards a worthier object and would send you to hell with all your nice little qualities, of which your STD, your vanity, your lies and your recklessness are but the least.
I do apologize for having committed the sacrilege of having dared to speak so dismissively of your angel's qualities. I do hope you'll forgive me.

Whatever Heinrich replied, Fritz was still not done, and wrote again the next day, March 7th:

There is little more admirable than your fidelity. Since Pharamon and Rosamunde, Cyrus and Mandone, Pierre de Provence and the beautiful Madlone one hasn't seen the like. If you'll allow me, I'll write a novel titled "Fidelity. Love. Henri and the beautiful Marwitz", and it would be a novel so delicate, so tender, so sentimental and so sensual that it would be instructive to our youth. I would paint the gonorhea-ridden Marwitz in such lovely colors, I'd equip him with all the wit he believes himself to have, and I would above all describe all his coy affectations, as far as I was able to, with which he seems to signal silently to everyone: 'Look at me, am I not a pretty boy? Doesn't everyone have to love me, adore me, worship me? What, you little villain, you resist? You haven't yet put your heart at my feet? As for you, my angel, you'll have to die of love for me.'
Afterwards, I must describe the details of his figure, the charm of his wide shoulders, his supposedly heavy but actually seductive walk - in a word - but I can't continue, for otherwise my novel will be written by someone else. To you, my dear Heinrich, I reccommend to eat a lot, drink a lot and sleep a lot. Stay for some more days in Berlin, and do justice to my tenderness for you.

Again, we don't have Heinrich's reply. Fritz sounds a bit more apologetic and tries to pass it off as fraternal teasing in the last letter relating to this affair, dated March 9th:

I do hope, my dear Heinrich, that this explanation will mollify you. I haven't said anything detrimental regarding your fidelity. I only listed the famously faithful couples known in history, with whom, incidentally, you can't really compare yourself, for your separation has lasted only ten days so far, and your little sweetheart lives only four miles away from you. Moreover, you can be sure to see him again soon. Pharamon had to wait for ten years before seeing Rosamonde again. I dare say there's a difference. I do hope, dear Heinrich, that this silliness don't rob me of your friendship, and that you will do me more justice in the future. But don't demand me of me that I should take your little romance seriously, and don't sulk over my jokes regarding a matter which wasn't an insult. Adieu, mon cher Henri, and believe me, I didn't hurt you intentionally.

c) The Wartime Diary of Heinrich's AD Victor Amadeus Henckel von Donnersmarck covering the years 1756 - 1758. These were later published by Henckel von Donnersmarck's grandson. Notes Henckel on page 220, June 5th 1757: "On the 5th, the King sent his Quartermaster-Lieutenant and AD, Hauptmann Marwitz, with two Saxon Regiments to Colonel Meier who was camping outside of Nuremberg in order to help him. However, the rumor spread that not this but to go to the Duke of Bevern had been his true mission. This Marwitz had played several roles in his life. He'd started as a page of the King and had sometimes been in favour, sometimes in disgrace. The King had lowered himself to teach him himself, had given him his own books and works to use, and had even comissioned him to write his history."

The German phrasing doesn't make it clear whether "his history" means the King's history or Marwitz' history. Also, Henckel still doesn't grace us with a first Name for Marwitz. And note that as opposed to Lehndorff, he seems not to be informed about the romantic history Marwitz has with Heinrich. (Which probably says something about the different types of relationships Heinrich has with Lehndorff and Henckel respectively.) However, by providing us with the information that in-and-out-of-favour former page Marwitz ended up as Quartermaster in the Seven-Years-War, he allows us to identify Marwitz the former page with the Marwitz honored by Heinrich at the Obelisk he built in Rheinsberg, in memory of his brother August Wilhelm as well as 27 other men whom he felt to have been wronged by his brother Friedrich. This is what the inscription at the Obelisk says about Marwitz the quartermaster:

von Marwitz, quartermaster of the King's army. Earned great merits in all wars, was present in all battles and distinguished himself in several incidents. He died in 1759, at the age of thirty-six. Perhaps his value and merits would be forgotten if this monument did not honor his memory.

(All the Rheinsberg Obelisk transcriptions are available in German here.)


d) "Die Pagen am Brandenburg-Peußischem Hofe, 1415 - 1895", a book published in 1895 by a gentleman named von Scharfenorf, Captain A.D. , librarian and teacher at the Cadet Academy, which tells the story of the pages at the Hohenzollern courts for the centuries advertised in the title, and which uses, among other things, the detailed accounts of the Fredersdorf-as-treasurer era of Fritz' court as source material, offers two references to a page who could be "our" Marwitz. In 1742, the page G.W. von der Marwitz hands out money to the poor on royal command after the troop parade at Neisse in the church courtyard (the money in question is four Taler eight Groschen). In 1746, a page von der Marwitz, no initials provided this time in the book, is listed as receiving 66 Taler "Abreisegeld", which technically could mean either travel expenses or severance pay, though since "Abreise", as opposed to "Reise", means "departure", not "journey", I'm tempted to go with the later. (1746 as the year is significant because Fritz' letters to Heinrich referencing "Marwitz" are thankfully dated, see above.)

e) This letter from Fritz to Heinrich dated July 8th 1759 contains a single sentence mentioning Marwitz, but this one highly significant: Marwitz vient de mourir à Landshut d'une fièvre chaude mêlée de rougeole, "Marwitz has died in Landshut of a hot fever caused by measles".
1759 is the year Quartermaster Marwitz from the Rheinsberg Obelisk inscription has died, so this definitely is the same person. Now the Marwitz family is still large enough that it's possible that Fritz had more than one page of that name in the 1740s who was in and out of favor, and that the one who died in 1759 doesn't have to be the same Marwitz mentioned in the 1746 letters. However, it's worth pointing out that there were several members of the Marwitz clan serving in the 7 Years War - including, for example, the one who will later refuse to sack Hubertsburg -, and yet Fritz does not consider it necessary to tell Heinrich which Marwitz he means in his 1759 remark; he takes it for granted that Heinrich will know whom he's talking about. Which would make sense if this Marwitz had personal meaning beyond other members of his family to both brothers. Droysen, who edited the "Political Correspondence" in which this letter is included in the 19th century, identifies the Marwitz who died as Georg Wilhelm von der Marwitz in the personal register.

f.) As of March 30th 2021, wikipedia has an entry identifying Marwitz the page/quartermaster as Georg Wilhelm von der Marwitz. The references in the footnotes of this new Wikipedia entry are those sources we've listed above. There's still a margin of error possible - for example, we don't know how Droysen made the identification of the Marwitz who died in July 1759 as Georg Wilhelm - but it does look extremely likely know that all these references, from page G.W. von der Marwitz who has to hand out money to the poor in 1742 to Quartermaster Marwitz from the Rheinsberg Obelisk inscription are the same person and that person featured in a triangle with Friedrich and Heinrich.

Voltaire-Fritz Correspondance

[selenak]

Summary and excerpts from the correspondance between Friedrich and his favourite writer, based on the edition by Hans Pleschinski.

( The Crown Prince Years )

( Who's Afraid of King Fritz? Not Voltaire )

( Fritz and Voltaire: The Sunset Years )

Addenda:

( Voltaire's Death )

( Voltaire and Ulrike )

( Fritz and Émilie )

The Fredersdorf Letters

[selenak]

Michael Gabriel Fredersdorf met Fritz when he was 22, Fritz was 19, and still a prisoner at Küstrin. He became Fritz' valet, and ended up as the closest thing Prussia had as a PM. Arguably the most important relationship Fritz had with another man he wasn't related to from the point of their meeting onwards. Also one of the very few people he wrote and spoke in German to.

( Portrait of a decades long life partnership )

Addendum:
Lehndorff About Fredersdorf:

on October 25th, 1757:

I make only one more visit, to the famous Fredersdorf, who under the title of "valet to the King" has played the role of prime minister for so long. For if anyone deserves this title, he does. At least he enjoyed such renown in the world that I have often seen him surrounded by knights and excellencies who made pretty deep bows to him, and his antechambre was often filled with state ministers and great lords. As far as I was concerned, I never had the cowardice to flatter him, nor did I seek him out except for now, when he no longer is connected to his majesty. His ill health, his jealousy of the famous Glasow, his riches and especially his desire for a quiet life have caused him to beg the King long enough so that the King allowed him to resign his positions. For this man basically filled out all the court offices. He supervised all the buildings, the King's accounts and treasure, all the staff, in short, after the King he was the only one who ruled, and often did so somewhat despotically. He is currently even more sick, the hemmorhoides have nearly devoured him. It is not a little amazing that a common man from the most backward Pommarania without any education could aquire such decency, grace of conduct and quickness of mind. A very pretty face aided him and was the beginning of his fortune, and through his intelligence, he managed to keep and defend such a difficult position as his. Most of all, though, I admire that he was able to withdraw in time, which is such a delicate matter for men who have a position equal to that of a beautiful woman when she notices her looks are fading. I remain with him until 11 in the evening and then return to the house of Frau V. Ingersleben, where I am lodging.

Keeping up with the Habsburgs

[selenak]

Friedrich wasn't the only one who ascended to the throne in 1740.

Maria Theresia
Collecting various posts on Friedrich’s best enemy, the one and only female ruler of Austria and de facto of the Holy Roman Empire:

( She was always THE WOMAN )

One Count von Podewils, Prussian ambassador in Vienna, had a lot to say about Friedrich’s arch nemesis. That it is an "enemy" assassment makes it especially valuable, of course, as opposed to some Austrian courtier wanting to carry favor, but bear the intended recipient in mind:
( Maria Theresia, The Prussian Dossier )

The Kids
Marie Antoinette
( MT’s teenage daughter vs Madame Dubarry )

Joseph II

( How (not) to be a successful reformer )

Joseph visits Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI in Paris, as covered by the Duc de Croy:

( Chronicle of an undercover visit )

Joseph’s first wife, Isabella de Parma, was young, beautiful, smart – and utterly disinterested in men. She was in love with his sister Maria Christina. She also died young, after a few years of marriage.

( The Ballad of Isabella and Maria Christina )

Isabella’s and Joseph’s only daughter, who was called MT after his mother, didn’t survive her mother for long. When she died at only 7 years of age, he wrote this letter to her governess, Christine de Trazegnies, Marquise d'Herzelles:

Madame,

If decency permitted, it would be with you alone that I would be pouring out the sorrow which… pierces my soul. I have ceased to be a father: it is more than I can bear. Despite being resigned to it, I cannot stop myself thinking and saying every moment: ‘O my God, restore to me my daughter, restore her to me.’ I hear her voice, I see her. I was dazed when the terrible blow fell. Only after I had got back to my room did I feel the full horror of it, and I shall go on feeling it all the rest of my life, since I shall miss her in everything. But not that I have, I believe, fulfilled all the duties of a father - and a good father - one [duty] remains which I hear my daughter imposing on me: that of rendering thanks to you. Madame, where would you wish me to begin? All your trouble and care have been beyond price. But [she] would never forgive me if I did not at least try to induce you to accept the enclosed offering as a memento of all that I owe you and a pledge of all that I should like to do for you. In addition the sincere respect and true friendship that I have sworn to you can in some way discharge [my obligation], you can be sure it will be unshakable. I venture to ask only one favour from you, which is that no one shall ever know anything about it and that even between ourselves - since I am counting on our weeping and talking again together about this dear child - there will never be any mention of it, or you will at once cause me to regret fulfilling this duty. I beg you to urge the same absolute silence of Mlle Chanclos, for whom I also enclose a letter; it is for me a point of importance. As my daughter’s sole heir, I have just given orders… that I should keep only her diamonds. [You are to have everything else.] One thing that I would ask you to let me have is her white dimity dressing-gown, embroidered with flowers, and some of her writings. I have her mother’s, I shall keep them together. Have pity on a friend in despair, and be sure that I can hardly wait for the moment when I come to see you…

Your true friend and servant,

Joseph

This unhappy 23 January, which has overturned our happy and so successful household, 1770.

Did Joseph have non-disastrous relationships? He did, the circle of five, allow me to copypaste:
( The Circle of Five )

( What happened to Maria Christina )