What the Danish Envoy Said

[mildred_of_midgard]

Kloosterhuis reports that according to Danish ambassador Poul Vendelbo-Lövenörn, Katte broke down in tears when his death sentence was read to him. This contradicts Wilhelmine's account that he heard his sentence without changing color.

The citation for the claim was Stefan Hartmann, Beziehungen Preußens zu Dänemark von 1688 bis 1789.

selenak got a hold of this book and translated the relevant passage for us.

Background: relations are tense because FW suspects the Danes of conspiring with the Brits to put a British pawn on the Swedish throne.

The discovery of the escape plans of the Prussian Crown Prince in the beginning of August 1730, behind which King Friedrich Wilhelm suspected English scheming, heightened those tensions even more. The arrest of young Friedrich, his imprisonment in the fortress Küstrin and the death penalty for Lieutenant Katte were observed with great attention in Denmark. Crown Prince Friedrich had indeed confided his escape plans to the Danish envoy Lovenorn, but hadn't found agreement from the later. Lovenorn had done everything to dissuade the Prince from his intent hand had tried to influence Katte to the same purpose. His efforts remained unsuccessful. When the King learned of Lovenorn's entanglement in his son's plans, he felt betrayed by the envoy. The Prussian cabinent secretary von Borck had to write a letter to Lovenorn at (FW's) command in which it was said: "I had believed him (Lovenorn) to be my good friend, but not anymore since Katte and Fritz, c'est le Prince, have testified that he'd known what they had planed, and that the later had confided it to him at Prince Galitzin's party. If he as my friend had told me about it, this unfortunate affair would not have happened."'

(Source Footnote: The letter itself from the archive. Galitzin was Prince Sergey Dimitr. Galitzin, Russian envoy in Berlin 1729/1730.)

While Lovenorn could successfully convince the King of his innocence in later conversations, but due to the unpleasant situation at the Prussian court he was glad, when an order from Christian VI., who had ascended to the Danish throne in October 1730, commanded him back to Copenhagen.

Source Footnote: Letter dated September 10th, 1730.)

Legation secretary von Johnn was chosen as his successor, who was lower in rank than Lovenorn.

Footnote to this: "Rekreviditiv" - I have no idea how to translate this - by Lovenorn from December 26th, 1730. In his report from November 5th, 1730, Lovenorn describes that when the death sentence was read to him, Katte had lost all "contenance" and burst into tears.

End of footnote. And of text about the escape attempt, the next passage is about fishing disputes. There is nothing about the pamphlet, Lovenorn or Johnn as possible sources, or Lovenorn having had a good relationship with Fritz before. I'll read the entire book, which includes Fritz' own reign, so there might be more, but this is the passage Mildred was most interested in. As you can see, while the Katte description is only in a footnote, it is sourced directly to Lovenorn's report from the archives.

( Salon discusses )

Summary of the book as a whole by selenak:

( Prussian/Danish Relations according to Stephan Hartmann: The FW Era (and some spoilers for Fritz) )

( Prussian/Danish Relations according to Stephan Hartmann: The Fritz Era )