Wanderungen: Katte tributes
Jan. 18th, 2020 04:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mildred_of_midgard posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
rheinsbergSome tributes to Hans Hermann von Katte. Pictures were collected from all over the internet. If any of them are yours and you would like me to take them down, please let me know.
1) First, a commemorative plaque at Küstrin, unveiled in April 2015.
2) Closeup:
3) Now, where is this thing, you ask? For when you're wandering around the ruins, like you've *totally* spent the last several months looking forward to being able to do someday? *cough* Well, I can't get a direct shot of it in Google maps, but by obsessively comparing the angles on every image at Küstrin that anyone's taken and uploaded, I managed to figure out where it is. The actual picture that allowed me to match a Google maps location to the picture in (1), with the red brick wall surrounded by concrete and a bunch of steps in front, isn't useful in helping you locate it when you visit, but the following picture, which we've seen before, is.
Remember this one? Look at the Bastion Brandenburg, and go to the right. You'll see a little arch-shaped dark spot on the wall. On the opposite side of that, on the inside of the wall, is the plaque. So now you can find it when you go there! (And by you I mean I, because thanks to this post, everyone else has gotten all the benefits of going to this remote ghost town, without any of the plane or driving time or costs. :D)
Now, that whole wall on which you see the arch in the preceding picture, the wall running south of the Bastion Brandenburg to the Bastion Filip? The defensive wall was torn down in 1928/1929 and a park put in its place. It was called the Promenada Kattego* in Polish, Kattewall in German. Katte never set foot on that side of the Bastion Brandenburg, but he is commemorated there, and his plaque is on his promenade.
* -ego is a genitive suffix in Polish, which I was excited to recognize after I studied Russian grammar for all of one week, two at most, back in 2007.
The promenade is one of the few elements at Küstrin that's been restored.
4) Here's an aerial view. I've outlined the Brandenburg Bastion in blue, the Kattewall/Promenada Kattego in yellow, and put a red P where his plaque is on the wall. By now, you should be able to pick out Fritz and Katte's respective locations on November 6 on your own!
5) And a picture of the promenade from Earth.
6) Now a different kind of tribute: some artwork, mostly 19th century, imagining Fritz and Katte's last encounter. You should now be qualified to comment on historical inaccuracies. For example, in this one, they're walking the wrong direction, and Fritz isn't in the last window on the right.
7) Still walking in the wrong direction. But notice the guy behind Fritz, who looks like he's holding Fritz's head to the window.
8) Fritz is not in the last window, and the execution is taking place outside the window.
9) Execution on a scaffold visible from Fritz's window, just as Wilhelmine and Pöllnitz have it.
10) Lovely and moving piece of art, but observe that the execution is happening just outside the window, and that the window is on the first floor. Wilhelmine does describe him being moved to a room on the level at which the scaffold had been erected, for optimum viewing purposes, but we have no reason to believe this is true.
11) Fritz is in the last window, they're walking in the right direction, and there's no sign of a scaffold! Woohoo! Unlike in most of them, though, he's not thrusting his arm out, which we do find in all the accounts. (Interestingly, C & V agree he was prevented from thrusting his arm out, and M, P, & T that he was prevented from throwing himself out. Fontane simply reports that he blew a kiss, no mention of anyone preventing him.)
12) The Antinous statue.
It's a bronze statue from the ancient Greek period, approximately 300 BCE, which Friedrich acquired for his collection at Sanssouci. He put it outside, in the direct line of sight from his library, and very near his grave, and he kept the old name of "Antinous" that had been given to it by early modern collectors, notwithstanding that he must have known it predated Hadrian and Antinous by centuries.
For all of these reasons, scholars speculate that it was set up there in silent homage to Katte's sacrifice for Fritz. In fact, some speculate that Katte may be part of the reason Friedrich persisted in calling it Antinous in the face of all the evidence. (That, and being pedantic about dating was less of a thing in the 18th century.)
This is the original statue, now in the Altes Museum in Berlin, where it's called the Praying Boy statue and there is no mention of either Antinous or Katte.
13) Today, there's a copy of the statue standing in situ as Fritz would have seen it in his day, surrounded by a trellis. I wish this breathtakingly gorgeous picture were mine; it's not. Fritz's grave is a few steps straight ahead and to the left; the statue is facing the library.
He never forgot you, Katte. <3 And we're still setting up plaques and restoring promenades 300 years later.
14) If you want to see the location of the statue relative to his palace and grave, plus read more details on it, see this post.
1) First, a commemorative plaque at Küstrin, unveiled in April 2015.
2) Closeup:
3) Now, where is this thing, you ask? For when you're wandering around the ruins, like you've *totally* spent the last several months looking forward to being able to do someday? *cough* Well, I can't get a direct shot of it in Google maps, but by obsessively comparing the angles on every image at Küstrin that anyone's taken and uploaded, I managed to figure out where it is. The actual picture that allowed me to match a Google maps location to the picture in (1), with the red brick wall surrounded by concrete and a bunch of steps in front, isn't useful in helping you locate it when you visit, but the following picture, which we've seen before, is.
Remember this one? Look at the Bastion Brandenburg, and go to the right. You'll see a little arch-shaped dark spot on the wall. On the opposite side of that, on the inside of the wall, is the plaque. So now you can find it when you go there! (And by you I mean I, because thanks to this post, everyone else has gotten all the benefits of going to this remote ghost town, without any of the plane or driving time or costs. :D)
Now, that whole wall on which you see the arch in the preceding picture, the wall running south of the Bastion Brandenburg to the Bastion Filip? The defensive wall was torn down in 1928/1929 and a park put in its place. It was called the Promenada Kattego* in Polish, Kattewall in German. Katte never set foot on that side of the Bastion Brandenburg, but he is commemorated there, and his plaque is on his promenade.
* -ego is a genitive suffix in Polish, which I was excited to recognize after I studied Russian grammar for all of one week, two at most, back in 2007.
The promenade is one of the few elements at Küstrin that's been restored.
4) Here's an aerial view. I've outlined the Brandenburg Bastion in blue, the Kattewall/Promenada Kattego in yellow, and put a red P where his plaque is on the wall. By now, you should be able to pick out Fritz and Katte's respective locations on November 6 on your own!
5) And a picture of the promenade from Earth.
6) Now a different kind of tribute: some artwork, mostly 19th century, imagining Fritz and Katte's last encounter. You should now be qualified to comment on historical inaccuracies. For example, in this one, they're walking the wrong direction, and Fritz isn't in the last window on the right.
7) Still walking in the wrong direction. But notice the guy behind Fritz, who looks like he's holding Fritz's head to the window.
8) Fritz is not in the last window, and the execution is taking place outside the window.
9) Execution on a scaffold visible from Fritz's window, just as Wilhelmine and Pöllnitz have it.
10) Lovely and moving piece of art, but observe that the execution is happening just outside the window, and that the window is on the first floor. Wilhelmine does describe him being moved to a room on the level at which the scaffold had been erected, for optimum viewing purposes, but we have no reason to believe this is true.
11) Fritz is in the last window, they're walking in the right direction, and there's no sign of a scaffold! Woohoo! Unlike in most of them, though, he's not thrusting his arm out, which we do find in all the accounts. (Interestingly, C & V agree he was prevented from thrusting his arm out, and M, P, & T that he was prevented from throwing himself out. Fontane simply reports that he blew a kiss, no mention of anyone preventing him.)
12) The Antinous statue.
It's a bronze statue from the ancient Greek period, approximately 300 BCE, which Friedrich acquired for his collection at Sanssouci. He put it outside, in the direct line of sight from his library, and very near his grave, and he kept the old name of "Antinous" that had been given to it by early modern collectors, notwithstanding that he must have known it predated Hadrian and Antinous by centuries.
For all of these reasons, scholars speculate that it was set up there in silent homage to Katte's sacrifice for Fritz. In fact, some speculate that Katte may be part of the reason Friedrich persisted in calling it Antinous in the face of all the evidence. (That, and being pedantic about dating was less of a thing in the 18th century.)
This is the original statue, now in the Altes Museum in Berlin, where it's called the Praying Boy statue and there is no mention of either Antinous or Katte.
13) Today, there's a copy of the statue standing in situ as Fritz would have seen it in his day, surrounded by a trellis. I wish this breathtakingly gorgeous picture were mine; it's not. Fritz's grave is a few steps straight ahead and to the left; the statue is facing the library.
He never forgot you, Katte. <3 And we're still setting up plaques and restoring promenades 300 years later.
14) If you want to see the location of the statue relative to his palace and grave, plus read more details on it, see this post.
