Le Diable Squared (Review of two books by Johannes Bronisch starring Manteuffel)

[selenak]

"Der Mäzen der Aufklärung: Ernst Christoph von Manteuffel und das Netzwerk des Wolffianismus" was Johannes Bronisch's doctoral thesis and reads like it - aimed at a strictly academic audience, long footnotes at times taking most of the page space etc - , while "Der Kampf um Kronprinz Friedrich: Wolff gegen Voltaire" is basically a canny Fritz-focused digested excerpt from it, repacked for a larger audience (though it's still clearly not for newbies who know nothing of the 18th century). Before I get into details, let me add what his dissertation is not, and doesn't claim to be: a biography of Manteuffel. The emphasis here is strictly on him in the context of his philosophical and literary networking from 1730 onwards (why 1730? Not for the reason you think), with his entire decades long life and career before that only summarized. This frustrated me a little, as I'd hoped for more of a complete life, but that's on me, the key is in the title(s), and also, I do know more about Manteuffel even before 1730 than I used to through the summarzing. (Also, courtesy of the footnotes, I know there is an early 20th century Manteuffel biography: Thea von Seydewitz: Ernst Christoph Graf von Manteuffel, Kabinettsminister Augusts des Starken. Persönlichkeit und Wirken (Aus Sachsens Vergangenheit 5), Dresden 1926, which Bronisch by and large approves of for its research but chides for its emphasis (on Manteuffel the politician) which he seeks to rectify by presenting Manteuffel the enlightenment networker and cultural beacon, though inevitably there are politics involved there, too.) (See other title.) Another thing: Bronish praises older Fritzian historians like Koser and Droysen for their never again matched knowledge of primary sources as well me might, but that also means he relies on them for the Prussian side of things, which means the occasional blip like poor Gundling still showing up as the court fool made head of the academy.

Sir not appearing in either volume at all (seriously, no single mention, not even in the footnotes): Suhm. Seriously, Bronisch not only apparently had zero interest in the other Saxon envoy but doesn't think he's a factor in any way in his subject. (The titular fight from the canny repackage is carried out by French envoy La Chetardie and Voltaire as the main opponents to Manteuffel and Wolff.)


Okay, on to Mantteuffel, or, as the Imperial Secret Service with their idea of discretion codenamed him: Le Diable.



He was another case of an 18th century European noble - like Prince Eugene, Seckendorff, the Scottish Keiths or even Stratemann who ended up serving not in his country/state of birth but another country. Like Stratemann, he was actually born a Prussian subject, from Pomerania in his case with the first class education of a baroque nobleman that included visiting the university of Leipzig in neighboring Thuringia, and started out as a young noble at Grandpa F1's court but after some satiric verses on the King's mistress, Countess Wartenberg, blew up in his face prudently left Prussia for Saxony where he became bff with August the Strong and rose into office there. Unlike many a university visiting noble, he remained fluent in Latin (see Horace translations - Latin into French - for the fun of it right into his old age), and united being an excellent courtier, witty, charming, with a genuine life long passion for literature and philosophy. According to none other than our Berlin Academy obituary writer Formey, whom I encountered here in another context - to wit, as a young Manteuffel acolyte who is both made a Wolffian by him and a member of the Manteuffel-founded Society of the Truth Lovers (Sociéte des Aletophiles) - , he remained a very handsome figure of a man into his old age, too. (So Formey writes not just immediately after Manteuffel died but also recalling him many years later.) In short, which isn't as Bronisch puts it, when Crown Prince Fritz is on the prowl for sugar daddies in the 1730s, <ahref="https://rheinsberg.dreamwidth.org/13450.html"> Manteuffel really was a great candidate.

Not least because he was also there, in Brandenburg, and not, I repeat, not as the official Saxon envoy. He's been the official Saxon envoy in earlier times, true, but after his recall (and Suhm's arrival, though as I said, Suhm is Sir Not Appearing In These Books) rose to cabinet minister in August the Strong's ministry, taking over one of his original patron Flemming's old jobs after Flemming's death. This is why Manteuffel in 1728 was in a position to found the Society Against Sobriety with August, FW, Grumbkow and Seckendorff when FW (and Fritz) visited Dresden in 1728. Which of course was less important for the drinking excesses of FW and August and more because of the Imperial Alliance networking of Grumbkow, Seckendorff and Mantteuffel, and Prince Eugene in Vienna. Bronisch argues that Manteuffel being Team Habsburg here isn't contradictory or shady in terms of him also being a Saxon government official, since the HRE still exists, and thus the Emperor does have claim on his top loyalty as German noble (especially since he's been made a Reichsgraf at this point). Manteuffel's idea of a policy for Saxony - pro-Emperor, in a close alliance with Prussia, anti France - is, however, dealt a big blow in 1730 when Karl Heinrich Graf von Hoym, until then Saxon anvoy at the Court of Versailles, manages to become the next big thing with August, filling the vaccuum Flemming left (which Manteuffel had not - he became a cabinet member, but not THE dominating minister the way Flemming had been). (Hoym, bw, as I was reminded recently wen reading through translation and excerpts of the interrogation protocols of Katte again, was also whom Fritz tried to contact and gt to help him at Zeithain.) Hoym was pro France, anti Habsburg, anti Prussia, and Manteuffel barely prevented getting fired by handing in his resignation on August 5 (Fritz is about to make his last escape attempt). However, Mantteuffel had seen where the wind was blowing for a while and thus had brought over thirty boxes filled with his secret correspondences with G & S as well as Eugene to his Pomeranian country estate, which means that when Hoym ordered a search of his vacated offices in Dresden, he found exactly nothing, whiile Manteuffel got a nice state pension of 12 000 Taler per annum and the continued use of his title of Cabinet Minister. Still, he was stuck in Pomerania for a while, cooling his heels. It's worth bearing in mind, though, that what Manteuffel does from this point onwards, and it's a lot, he does officially as a private citizen. He remains officially retired till the rest of his life.

(About the country seat: it's Kummerfrey, aka Sanssouci as the French writing Manteuffel always calls it, and Bronisch scoffs at Nicolai's anecdote as an explanation as to why Fritz called his own philosophical summer retreat the same name, pointing out that Manteuffel in a letter to Fritz even refers to his visitors as "his knights of Sanssouci" and that freaking FW visited for two days there in 1731, so there's no way Fritz was unaware of the precedent. To which I say, that doesn't mean he didn't mean the grave pun as well.)

Hoym in turn is toppled by Brühl and others and loses the top spot before 1731 has ended, ends up in Königstein accused of incest with his niece, and will commit suicide there in April 1736, with Manteuffel commenting on it in a letter to Fritz.

(felis: And Fritz responding: I have the misfortune of having attacks of hypochondria, and I have been in a very harsh prison; I know that the first is an evil that you cannot know unless you have had it, and the other is a situation where you have to arm yourself with all the consistency possible to resist boredom, loneliness, and the terrible thought of deprivation of liberty.
The Earl of Hoym will surely have believed in the immortality of his soul, otherwise he would not have had the heart to reduce it to nothingness, and it is to be hoped that the good Lord, who is a God of mercy, will have compassion on him, by virtue of the fact that he did not sin so much from wickedness as from temperament. I am sure, my dear Quinze-Vingt, that your generous heart will be charmed to see the apology of a person who was once your enemy, and I expect to see you collect the ashes from his pyre.)

Speaking of the letters: there is a severe problem for anyone studying the Fritz and Manteuffel relationship, to wit, most of the letters don't exist anymore. Of those which do exist, Preuss published nineteen letters from Fritz and twenty letters from Manteuffel in volume 16 and 25 of his gigantic edition. Except, says Bronisch, that not only was his textual basis for these letters lousy - Preuss didn't have originals but copies, and it's questionable even whether the copies were complete -, but Preuss misidentified several, with the last four letters from Fritz we today know for sure not to be addressed to Manteuffel while the last three letters from Manteuffel not addressed to Fritz, either. Simultanously to Preuss, one Karl von Weber published an additional eight letters from Fritz to Mantteufel and one from Manteuffel to Fritz from the Dresden State Archive, but didn't publish them completely, solely in excerpts. Guess what happened to the originals? WWII. And then in 1901 Curt Tröger managed to unearth a Manteuffel to Fritz letter from 1737. And that's it, while the correspondence by estimation of how many letters they mention in the ones which are preserved consisted of at least 200 letters. Which means that a lot of the takes on the Fritz/Manteuffel relationship can't come from their direct communication but from secondary sources, with history lucking out that Seckendorff Jr.s secret journal exists. (Or else we'd have missed out such priceless gems as Fritz presenting Manteuffel with a golden Socrates knob for a came complete with inscription calling himself Alcibiades a month or so before giving Voltaire the same present, as well as showing Manteuffel "all the tendernesses imaginable" in his room.)

(felis: The thing about the letters at Trier is interesting, though. A quick skim tells me that at least Fritz' last ones are pretty obviously not to Manteuffel because he switches from "Mon cher Quinze-Vingt" to "Mon Très Cher General". Since Preuss even includes a note from Grumbkow to Manteuffel saying "Voici la suite de ma correspondance avec Junior", I really don't know how Preuss didn't realize what was going on here and that letters to Grumbkow ended up in Manteuffel's collection of Fritz letters. (On top of that, Grumbkow seems to have been a go-between for letters exchanged between Fritz and Manteuffel at other times, I saw a mention of it in one of Manteuffel's letters.)

Manteuffel in 1733 (for chronology's sake: August the Strong dies, under August III. Saxony is now run by Sulkowski and below him Brühl, with Brühl working on becoming No.1) moves to Berlin, into a nice palais in Dorotheenstadt, the Landhaus Kameke, which had been built in 1712 by Andreas Schlüter and is described as a late baroque jewel, of which only remnants exist anymore (not because of WWII but because of subsequent rebuildings - parts of it ended up in today's Berlin Bode Museum). In Berlin, he's busy networking on both the political and philosophical front, becoming Wolff's most important patron (btw, the way he'll sell this to FW as an argument of how Wolff isn't, contrary to what Lange and the Pietists say, a man whose thoughts will lead to atheism is classic: he tells FW via Grumbkow that he, Manteuffel, used to have severe religious doubts until reading Wolff which showed him the light back to the Christian faith. FW is totally impressed and it's an argument that while not swaying him yet to reading the man's work himself does sway him to believe Wolff isn't an atheist in disguise but a good Christian), collecting promising young folk like Dechamps, Reinbek and Formey (even Jordan, though Jordan will ditch Manteuffel poste haste in Rheinsberg), and the bookseller Haude (whom we've met in Nicolai's anecdotes as holding back books for Fritz), and on the political front, as Private Citizen Manteuffel keeps reporting to both Vienna and nearly at the top Brühl back home in Saxony. He is, in short, an ideal candidate for a crown prince in search of an erastes.

On the subject of "How close were they when they were close?", Bronisch points out Manteuffel not just pitched Wolff at Fritz. (As proof one can be an enlightened philosopher and a Christian at the same time, among other things, but also because Manteuffel thought Fritz was a bright kid but that all this indiscriminate reading would have him end up in nihilism if he didn't get a philosophical guide line.) He also was responsible for the "little book" Fritz in his very first letter to Voltaire mentions including, the "Nouvelles Pièces", which consisted of an anti Wolff accusation by Wolff's main enemy Lang (chiefly responsible for FW kicking Wolff out of the country) and a pro Wolff defense. Not just responsible in the sense of enabling the print, Manteuffel had personally translated it into French, which wasn't noticed for a while, because the translator is only mentioned as being "un Q-t", which is a pseudonym using another nickname Manteuffel had adopted in his relationship with Fritz, "Quinze-Vingt".

(Explanation for the nickname: it's complicated. French King Louis the Saint had founded a hospital for the blind called "les Quinze-Vingts" in the Rue Saint-Honoré in Paris. The name alludes to the 300 beds available in the old Latin number. 18th century readers were reminded of this historical factoid again when Voltaire wrote a short story called "Petite Digression". When Fritz approached Manteuffel with a "please become my erastes teacher?" request, Manteuffel, being an adroit courtier, replied he didn't know whether he had enough knowledge to teach such a great prince next to whom he rather resembled a poor blind Quinze-Vingt. How do we know this happened? Because a) good old Formey, becoming a Manteuffel protegé this very decade, mentions it decades later, and b) the nickname actually shows up in the correspondence, which Formey wasn't familiar with.)

Manteuffel from the get go didn't miss the obvious chance offering itself here, but Bronisch makes a good case that it wasn't all worldly ambition. After a life time in politics, Manteuffel didn't have a high opinion of the current crop of rulers and thought it really needed a good one. In a text he published anonymously in 1739, he wrote that nearly all the great ones in the world had a distorted view of the use of power, seeing it as a license for despotism and just follow their instincts, to hell with everyone else. In a letter to Christian Wolff himself from June 16th 1738, Manteuffel wrote that two thirds of the princes in the HRE had shown themselves to be worse than useless plagues of humanity and called them "prètendus Dieux terrestres", but thankfully, one could expect a good counterexample to ascend soon. (Guess whom?) And in an unpublished treatise on how to educate a prince, written in the later 1730s, he wrote that absolute monarchical power was subject to the "Loix de la Nature et de la raison", and the monarchs needed to respect the laws of nature and reason all the more because they were carrying the responsibility for "le bien de la societé"; only this provides in Manteuffel's unpublished opinion a legitimization to the institution of kings at all, "l'unique fin de leur institution".

The self education program Fritz started at Rheinsberg was, says Bronisch, based on Manteuffel's suggestions re: nearly every book in it. As an example for an earlier attempt by Mantteufel to teach a moral lesson without being FW like about it, he brings up Manteuffel bringing up the anecdote from Cassius Dio in a letter to Fritz from March 22nd 1736. (Short version: it's a huge crowd, Augustus is about to fell a bad sentence which could have resulted with him gaining a tyrant's reputation, Maecenas raises a writing tablet with the words "surge, carnifex!", Augustus sees it and desists) (The who is who casting is obvious without Manteuffel spelling it out.) Augustus didn't begrudge this and much later when Maecenas had died supposedly once said apropos a wrong decision that he wouldn't have made it if his trusted advisor was still around. The ability to stop, to reconsider yourself is a quintessential virtue of a good ruler.




And then, of course, Fritz writes to Voltaire. Bronisch admits that the double attack of Le Chetardie (the French envoy trying to steer the future King away from Vienna and to France) on the political and Voltaire on the pilosophical front wasn't the only reason why the Fritz/Manteuffel relationship started to get less close, then dissolve in later 1736 to 1737, he says Fritz probably became aware just how much Private Citizen Mantteuffel was involved with Team Habsburg, but he still thinks it's a key factor. Of course, Manteuffel didn't back off without a fight. Among other things, he financed the reprint in Prussia of not one but two anti-Voltaire pamphlets from Voltaire's arch enemies back home in France. This did not work as intended. Then there was the Pyrrhic victory of FW at long last coming around to not just tolerating but reading Wolff in 1739 (which took away from Wolff's remaining coolness in Fritz' eyes, though at that point he'd long since moved on in essence), of which the most blatant proof was in one of FW's hobby paintings from his last months of life. It shows Nossig, who Bronisch says was at that point one of Gundling's successor's as court fool (sigh, see above) and especially stupid. The painting depicts Nossig with asses ears and hung with bells reading various Pietist works, among them, prominently, several books by Joachim Lange, aka Wolff's arch enemy mainly responsible for his banishment, including Lang's "Exegese der Apostelbriefe" which had been printed on FW's orders just a few years earlier. (Manteuffel writes about this painting to Brühl.) However, as felis mentioned elswhere, at this point Manteuffel and the other Berlin Wolffians were actually not keen at all in the idea of FW doing the recalling and reinstating of Wolff, because the triumphant return of Wolff was supposed to happen on Fritz' orders, thereby associating Wolff as THE philosopher of the new regime, not some last moment note of grace for the old one. As FW had sent another "court fool" named Samuel Jacob Morgenstern (about whom more in a separate entry; important in this context here is that he's more of an actual sucessor to Gundling in that he's a bona fide scholar- studied in Leipzig and taught there and in Halle before caching FW's eye - doubling as a court fool; he's also involved in some spy missions) to sound out Wolff. This, Morgenstern managed, and heard from Wolff over a shared cup of coffee that sure, he'd love nothing better than return to Halle, especially since his wife is heartily sick of exile and wants back to her old home, if only such and such minor impendiment didn't exist. Morgenstern goes back to Berlin to report this to FW.

Team Berlin Wolffians, mainly bookseller Haude, Reinbek and Manteuffel, do not like to hear this. Haude writes in umistakable terms to Wolff on 31st October 1739 that he should trust his true friends in Berlin, the Aletophiles, and not to a court fool, for God's sake, see attached also two letters from Manteuffel, your most influential patron, Wolff, remember? DO NOT ACCEPT FW'S OFFER. Manteuffel's own argument is of the psychological type, using period sexism very effectively; if Wolff now attempts, one has to assume that he was "un homme absulement gouverné par sa femme et qui par consequent n'est grand Philosophe". That does it. Wolff says of course he's the boss in his marriage and yeah, no accepting of FW's offer, promise.

Other Manteuffel activities of the 1739 include preparing a translated into French volume of "Best of Wolff" extracts under the title Le Roi Philosophe, dedicated to the Crown Prince of Prussia. Fritz' reply when he gets the printed copy in 1740 a few days before FW's death, once more raises everyone's hopes (Gottsched, another new literary Manteuffel friend at this point) quickly translates into German and spreads it and made the Wolffians hope once more that the fight for Fritz wasn't all lost, as it's very gracious, on the notes that not only every citizen but every prince and king should read this and it is up to the wise of this world to teach princes etc etc., and he's studied this for a long time and is delighted, etc. Alas. Alack. History happens. Btw, to Fritz' credit, especially that he later catches a lot of deserved flack for his treatment of German writers, thinkers and scientists, once Wolff has made it back to Halle, he really does his best to make Wolff accept a membership of the Academy. Which Wolff absolutely won't. One of the main arguments is the langugage: Wolff says that while he can read French, he can't understand it when it's spoken out loud and so quickly (I emphatize), let alone speak it, and Fritz has just nixed the previous Academy language, which was Latin, and which Wolff could speak, and won't accept German. As for the other Academy members already called according to the papers, this Algarotti fellow (WTF Newton for Ladies?), Maupertuis (did he really compare exploring Lappland to exploring a woman's body ?!?) and Voltaire (Arggggggh), yeah, no. "I can't talk to them, and they don't understand me." He stays in Halle, thank you very much.



As for Manteuffel, he moves to Leipzig after Fritz kicks him out shortly before invading Silesia (on November 5th 1740). Even Bronisch admits this was a necessary and prudent measure, since Manteuffel after Grumbkow died in 1739 immediately wrote home to Dresden and asked for a budget raise to he could take over Grumbkow's spy network, which he got and which he did. Post successful Silesian invasion, the remaining Aletophiles in Berlin became splintered, as many were swayed to the Fritzian side. When Reinbek made the mistake of writing a "Silesia Fuck Yeah!" type of letter, Manteuffel fired off a reply that's also an evisceration of Fritz, rethorically asking there was either a legal by HRE law justification for the invasion, or one by natural law, or one on the basis of religion (which Reinbek had argued), i.e. Fritz needing to save the Silesian Protestants from Catholic MT? And his reply to each of these was no. Fritz has become a gangster with good PR just another despot and a robber donning the robes of monarch. So much for you, Alcibiades.

Still, Manteuffel keeps up the good networking work and continues to be an A plus encourager of writers and philosophers. The refounded Aletophiles in Leipzig even have a female member, Louise Gottsched (remember her? Émilie fan and translator?), who points out to him in a letter even before the Silesian invasion that this Roi Philosophe dedication to Fritz and the whole Roi Philosophe concept is a mistake because she knows of not a few princes who had a great education and knew damm well what they were doing and did it anyway. Philosophy does not keep them from this.

Meanwhile, the remaining Berlin Aletophiles, if they haven't changed sides like Haude or miraculously managed remain friendly to both like Formey, don't fare so well. Primary example: Dechamps. Manteuffel protegé Dechamps in 1736 managed to score a double employment - he became Fritz' official court preacher at Rheinsberg (if you're surprised Fritz had an official court preacher at Rheinsberg, remember FW being alive and making surprise visits) as well as teacher to Heinrich and Ferdinand in pihilosophy from 1740 onwards.) He pointedly addresses Wolffian themes in his preachings. In 1741, he attempts to strike out against Voltaire in a major way and gets busy writing Cours abrégé de la philosophie wolffiene en formé de lettres, in which he says that Voltaire was just a rude religion mocker with the ability of making some neat verses, and an ugly, grimacing dwarf of a man to boot. Also, the works of the great Wolff naturally can't be understood by such a creature. Dechamps dedicates this to his two students and sends a copy directly to Fritz as soon as it's printed. The reaction doesn't take long. On November 1742, a one act play gets performed in Charlottenburg, Le singe de la Mode, in which a stupid provincial nobleman is looking for books to feel the shelves of his new library with. He discovers that the volumes best suited for this purpose are hundreds of copies of Dechamps' Cours abregé, which he can get to a bargain price since no one wanted to buy or read them. The author of this play: Fritz. How does Dechamps find out? From little Ferdinand. Oh, and he doesn't get his salary for teaching Ferdinand and Heinrich, either, and Dechamps doesn't get to be a member of the Royal Academy. In 1746, he's finally had it (why so late?) and leaves Berlin for The Hague and London.

Formey, otoh, gets asked by Voltaire whether he's one of those men paid to fool the people (Formey is a Calvinist clergyman) when first they meet, but he does get to be an academy member (and a good thing, too, or Mildred would never have read his obituary for Peter von Keith). His main work, other than obituaries, is the six volume philosophical novel "La Belle Wolffienne". In volume 2, which he works on in the early 1740s, he gets into a major spiritual crisis, which Manteuffel by mail manages to talk him through, so the rest of the magnum opus can be published. Manteuffel doesn't live long enough to witness the big Voltaire implosion, but he gets to see the first big Academy controversy from afar, see my write up of the Maupertuis biography. He also guides August III's son Christian August in his studies (Christian August, alas, will die in the same year his father will, in 1763), and dies a respected and admired private citizen (we swear!) in 1749.

As for Christian Wolff: in 1743, Fritz en route to Bayreuth stops in Halle. Wolff presents himself, but is told to wait in the antechambre and in the end is not received. This is of course on the same trip where Voltaire is with Fritz, visiting Wilhelmine, so Wolff notes in a letter to Manteuffel. Just to complete the humilation, in Histoire de mon temps, Fritz writes years later that there were only two German professors of genius ever: Only two men distinguish themselves through their genius and honor the nation: the great Leipniz and the learned Thomasius. I'm leaving Wolff aside. He just repeats Leipniz' system and repeats ramblingly what the later has written with fire and inspiration. Most German scholars were simple craftsmen, while the French ones were artists.

1790s German writer Boie, like many young men of the time a frustrated Fritz fan: I won't accept this.

Boie: writes RPF titled "Totengespräche", in which dead Fritz, with Voltaire at his side, meets dead Wolff in the underworld and tells Wolff he was the first one to make him think, the author of his soul and mind, everything he became as a thinker, he owes thus to Wolff. Wolff modestly says there's a much greater one he must present to Fritz and points to Lessing. Fritz and Wolff leave the unworthy shallow Voltaire behind and unite with Gotthold Ephraim Lessing in the Hereafter. Happy ending!

Bronisch: yeah, I know. Even the idea that Wolff would have admired Lessing doesn't fit, never mind Fritz. But I still wanted to tell you the story. One more thing: Fritz totally named Sanssouci after Manteuffel's Sanssouci, and it wasn't because he was looking for his grave, it was because he was pining for the happy time with his mentor in the mid 1730s. So there. The end.