Mrs. Fredersdorf and her husbands
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rheinsbergFirst, in her grandson's report, as given in the short volume "Anekdoten, die wir erlebten und hörten".
From a trio of German Romantic writers - Achim von Arnim, his wife Bettina, who is also the sister of the third, Achim's bff Clemens Brentano. Of interest to us because Achim was the grandson of the former Mrs. Fredersdorf, grew up at Zernikow and provided a good quote for the current Zernikow website which as it turns out hails from this volume (though the website version lacks the virginity part). The editor points out that both the Brentano siblings and Achim von Arnim lost their mothers early and did not get along with their fathers, hence the intense relating to the grandparents, of whom all these anecdotes tell. Of interest to us is what Achim has to say about Grandma, her father, and also his Grandfather (her third husband). It's also worth reading the footnotes, which reveal that, drumroll, Caroline (i.e. Mrs. Fredersdorf) wrote a short "My life so far" memoir in 1777, of which a typoscript exists and is mentioned in the source footnote as follows: Typoskript einer Lebensbeschreibung vom 13. September 1777 im Brandesburgischen Landeshauptarchiv Potsdam, Rep. 37, Bärwalde-Wiepersdorf, Nr. 1832.) We'll get to this document as well.
Caroline's father, Gottfried Adolf Daum (1679 - 1743) founded together with David Splitgerber the Berlin Bank and Trading House Splitgerber & Daum. They were just the kind of manufacturers FW wanted to encourage. Daum managed to impress him (not least by building houses in Berlin) and got permission to found and lead the Royal weapons and gun manufactory in Potsdam and Spandau 1722. (After Daum's death, his partner Splitgerber also founded the first Prussian sugar manufactury in 1746. You can see why Caroline was loaded as an heiress.) Daum also managed to become a casual member of the Tobacco Parliament. So it won't surprise you if I tell you he was a strict Dad. Quoting Achim remembering what his grandmother said:
For all the wealth, strict austerity ruled the house, the children were cautioned to work hard, so only in the evening was time for leisure. And even those evening hours were used in summer to practice how to walk decent and ladylike under the eyes of governess and governor.
(Methinks we know where the "freedom" part in Caroline's characterisation of her first marriage comes from. The governor was for her brother. Who scandalized Dad and Mom by becoming a Catholic and moving to Italy later. Mom would have disinherited him if Caroline, who loved her brother, hadn't insisted that she then wouldn't accept her inheritance, either, and reconciled him with Mom.)
When autumn arrived, their hearts grew heavy when they saw fruits lying on the ground and weren't allowed to touch them. They then thought of some artifice, like saying: "a pretty colorful stone, perhaps father's cufflink!" and adroitly hid the fruit beneath their skirts in order to eat it in the restroom later in secret.
On to Daum and FW:
He had built a Dutch kitchen in his house in order to honor the King, that is a clean oven, the Kitchen red with white streaks of chalk in imitation of the usual burned stone, a large table and a closet full of Dutch pipes. The King often visited him with his generals and enjoyed his kind of pranks. Thus, he told him once: Listen, Daum, all women are whores! - No, your Majesty, Daum replied, my wife is not a whore. - Well, the King said, be he reassured, his wife and mine excepted, all women are whores. - The King rarely took back anything he said, and it showed how much credit Daum had with him that he did this time. For the King had the habit, on each Sunday to order the entire high society of Potsdam to drive past him three times and to call to each lady "Whore Whore!" - It's strange that my grandmother claimed that actually, there had been only one whore in Potsdam at that time, who'd been called Putzers Hanne, but maybe she didn't know the other ones.
Or maybe FW was an oafish ass, Achim. Though I'm impressed Caroline knew the name of an actual prostitute, which I wouldn't have thought a rich man'd daughter would.
On to Caroline.
My grandmother had even into her old age very vivid intense blue eyes, regular features, she was tall and had a good figure. Her coloring she'd lost due to an illness, without looking sickly or being an invalid, though. She was very vivacious, fulll of eagerness for the world's turnmoil, was used to devotion, discipline and austerity from her youth, was very noble in mind, and a witty companion to most. One should have believed these qualities would have assuredly let her into blissful domesticity with an ever growing circle of children. But strange fate! Her affection was won by a man who was already really ill and suffering from hemorhoids, though he was otherwise very handsome - the original word Achim uses is "schön", i.e. beautiful, but I know it's not used for men in English - , the Secret Chamberlain of the new King Friedrich II, his favourite ever since he as a soldier in the prison of Küstrin had lessened (Fritz') grief through his flute play. He seems to have been too well educated for a soldier; probably his tall figure caused his being drafted into service under the old King. My grandmother in her love believed him to be the most intelligent and wittiest man of the world. In her old age she read their exchanged love letters again, and be it that she had been aged too much, or that she did not want us to know and did not see the suitability of the jokes anymore, she did not want to share them and burned them with the same amazement that she'd been delighted by them in her youth.
Friedrich didn't like the people around him to be married, he may have felt that they then didn't belong to him as completely anymore; he demanded utter devotion, but permitted them much confidentiality as a result. Moments in which to demand something of him had still be spotted and used quickly. The opportune moment to get the permission to marry from the King seemed to take years, the illness of the poor favourite grew, and he explained to the King that he could only hope to get better through this marriage and that he was dying of grief. That worked; the King agreed, and so that the King wouldn't change his mind again, the marriage was celebrated within twenty four hours after the hard won permission of the King had arrived. Thus the sickbed was the entrance to a marriage in which my grandmother lived as a virgin under a thousand worries but also with blissful freedom, mutual agreement and inner cheerfulness for three years after which he died after much sicknesss, so that after her own death she only wanted to rest at the side of this most beloved of her three husbands in her coffin.
Illness made the poor man often irritable, but she swore that his general kindness and repentance over each outburst had her always reconciled. He tried to find all kinds of diversions for her so that she wouldn't suffer from the sitting in a sick room, and made her go on long rides so she'd have distractions. As a proof of her fitness may serve the fact she often rode to Berlin and back from Potsdam in one day, at a time when this way was much longer and very uneven, so really lasted eight miles. I have seen a painting of her in her riding dress, it was a half male outfit in green, with a female skirt and a three point hat. She also rode like a man.
Comment: we already know the "got married within 24 hours" isn't true from Lehndorff's diary (and also by implication from the one Fritz letter where Fredersdorf's upcoming marriage is mentioned), but it's interesting the story had taken this shape decades later for Achim and his brother. The footnote to this passage by the editor contains an actual quote from Caroline's memoir preserved in typoscript, and it says:
His loss and his memory will always remain unforgettable to me, since our love was uncontestedly the purest and most loyal I was ever to find, which is why this worthy man has deserved that it should be known he was gifted besides the most beautiful pleasant looks with the most enlightened mind, abilities and quickness of spirit, which can hardly find their like anywhere.
From this praise by Caroline in 1777 you can deduce not just her very brief second marriage but the longer one to Achim's actual grandfather was less than stellar. More direct quotes from Caroline in a moment, but first let me elaborate on the matter of her third husband.
Hans von Labes. You can see both why Caroline at first fell for him and why it later went downhill, and Fredersdorf remained unseated as her favourite husband.
My mother's father had a thoroughly unique mental life, a strange mixture of free, great experience and close minded tastes bound to his era, much character, a lot of quircks, which in the lonely years near the end of his life verged on impossibilities. He was a self made man, and never forgot it, and thus the rest of the world often seemed to him just an attachment to his movement. As a boy, he'd run away to Hannover and was able to distinguish himself there so much that he found support at the universities. Afterwards, he distinguished himself in the eyes of Friedrich II. through voluntary important services in foreign departments. As resident in some South German courts through personal influence with one princess, he knew how to uncover her preparations for the 7 Years War.
Translation: Granda Labes was a spy! The footnote says the princess in question was either the Duchess of Bavaria or Wilhelmine's daughter the Duchess of Württemberg, Friederike Sophie. However, since Friederike at this point was already back home with her parents in Bayreuth, having left her husband for good, I'm not sure how that should have worked, so Mrs. Wittelsbach it has to be.
After the outbreak of said war he was limited to working in a department. Through a strange inflexibility and a lot of impudence he eventually drew the hatred of the King on himself, left town and spent his last year at Zernikow, his wife's estate. This as an overview of his life, some details which I have chosen of a great number.
Achim next goes into said details. Seems Grandpa Labes once the war was over turned into a wine, women and song guy. He was celebrated for his spectacular wine cellar and for his banquets. Each banquet guest had to gift him one book for his library, and said library was really large by the end, thus, says Achim, you can see Grandpa was popular as long as he was throwing said banquets.
His most favourite friend seems to have been Count Gotter whom Friedrich himself also wrote poetry about as an expert, and of whom there are three different portraits in his heritage. Of his female friends, of whom he had many as a chevalier d'amour, I only name the later famous Karschin, of whom there are many tender poems adressed to him in his papers.
(Anna Karsch, the "Karschin", was one of the few famous 18th century female poets.)
He supported her in her rise to fame, often let her improvise at his banquets, and thus it happened that since she was fond of wine herself that she once in the middle of enthusiastic poetry reciting fell under the table crowned with laurels but completely drunk and passed out. He had put coffins in the next room for all drunks as if for dead people. She, too, was put in one of them with her laurels, and forgotten there, so that in the next morning people first thought a thief had broken into the house when she awoke and completed her triumph with a cat's howling over her headache.
In general, he didn't much esteem German poetry, though, Horace was for him the ultimate in wit and wisdom, and even dying he recommended Latin to his son, or rather to his son's mother so that his son should learn it.
Achim says when Grandduke Paul returned with Heinrich after Heinrich's second trip to Russia in order to get married again, Grandpa Labes sent food and drink over to the Grandduke from Zernikow, but was already on his deathbed and hence unable to attend to the Grandduke even if he'd been permitted.
His tauntings of the law of the country sometimes got him arrested. He was tireless in tormenting the royal civil servants. So he had once an argument over hunting. In order to annoy the hunters, he invited them into his banqueting room, where there were a lot of mice and rats, and between them shot with his gun after the little vermin. (...) He had some favourites among the farmers, whom he often made drunk in many ways in order to have sex with their wives undisturbed. He gave then poetical names to the children like Galathée whereas the farmer named her Theke.
And this, mes amies, is why Caroline during these last years of her husband's life didn't live in Zernikow with her husband, much as she loved the estate otherwise, but in Berlin with her daughter and only returned to Zernikow after he had died. :(
Now,mildred_of_midgard found Caroline's 1777 written four page story of her life in no time flat. It's in the library now, starting on page 63. In addition to having even more nice things to say about Fredersdorf, it definitely contradicts Achim's version of how the marriage came about, though you can see why he misremembered it that way decades later.
:
Original German text:
Im Jahre 1752, den 29. Oktober ward ich zum ersten Male verlobt mit dem damaligen königlichen geheimen Kämmerer Michael Gabriel Fredersdorff, welcher kurz nach der Verlobung in kränkliche Umstände verfiel, sodaß der König, da er sein grosser Favorit war, die Vollziehung der Heirat aus grosser Besorgung für sein Leben, nicht vor seiner völligen Genesung zulassen wollte, da die Krankheit aber anhaltend blieb, ward ich mit allerhöchstem Konsens diesem Fredersdorf auf sein innigstes Verlangen 1753, den 20. Dezember auf dem Krankenbette, da die Medici ihm das Leben völlig absprachen, angetraut.
mildred_of_midgard summarizes for non-German speakers: they got engaged October 29, 1752. (I don't think we had that date!) Shortly thereafter, Fredersdorf fell sick. Because he was a great favorite of Fritz, Fritz didn't want him to get married until he was recovered, because Fritz was worried that married life would be detrimental to Fredersdorf's health. [I suspect the sex part?] But the doctors gave Fredersdorf no chance of recovery, so Fritz gave his royal permission, and Caroline and Fredersdorf were married December 20, 1753, with Fredersdorf on his sickbed.
selenak: Definitely the sex part. "Vollziehung der Ehe" is "consumation of marriage". Incidentally, I'm a bit sceptical about the medical part of these supposed Fritzian concerns, given that in the one and only letter to Fredersdorf where he mentions the upcoming marriage, he also makes that "take a hot hunter or page with you" joke. Otoh, maybe he thought sex with a woman would be more stressful. (And also proof Fredersdorf hadn't just married a nurse.) Not to mention that it could be an argument Fredersdorf himself used to Caroline for why he didn't have sex with her that would not feel like a rejection of herself. (A la Mina and Heinrich.) Mind you, given he'd die three years later and really did have terrible hemorrhoid problems already in the winter of 1753, he probably wasn't longing for sex with either man or woman in any event.
Just to set the record straight, we should list the differences here to the Achim derived story from various other biographies and websites:
Caroline: we got engaged, but because he was in such a bad state, the King was worried and said we were not to marry until he recovered.
Achim and successors: Because the King didn't like his bffs to marry, you had to be careful to ask for permission and use a good moment, so they kept their intention a secret until then.
Caroline: The doctors said he wouldn't recover in the long term anyway and he really wanted to marry me, so the King gave permission and we were married a bit more than a year after getting engaged with him being in the sickbed, he was that ill.
Achim and successors: Fredersdorf got sick, pretended to be dying if he didn't marry Caroline, got permission from Fritz and immediately married her within 24 hours of getting the permission, upon which he recovered.
This has become quite a different story!
mildred_of_midgard: Indeed! But the interesting part is that the individual elements are all there, even if the way they're put together completely contradicts the later version of the story. I did wonder briefly if maybe Fritz gave his permission (the second time) on December 19, 1753, but no, his "take a hot hunter or page with you" letter is from "around the beginning of November 1753." Incidentally, Richter gives the marriage date as December 30, not December 20, citing the church book in the Potsdam Garrison Church, and Fahlenkamp agrees. Our chronology says December 23!! Which is from Wikipedia, no citation. (This is what I mean by constantly hitting different dates for the same event.) (Fontane of course gives 1750, but we know that's way off.)
mildred_of_midgard: Also! We now know that he died about 10 in the morning on January 12. We knew the date but not the time.
da er zu meinem allergrössten Schmerz den 12. Januar des morgens um 10 Uhr im 48. Jahre seines Alters zu Potsdam in der Gnade seines grossen Königs dies zeitliche segnete.
Also, help me out with that sentence: I can't tell if she's saying Fredersdorf was in Fritz's favor when he died??? or if "in der Gnade seines grossen Königs" has to do with God. (God or Fritz, easy to confuse. :P)
selenak: She definitely means Fritz. (So there, Wikipedia and Fahlenkamp!) "Der große König" was NOT how Rococo people talked about God.
mildred_of_midgard: Aha! That was my first reading (and "so there!" my first reaction), but then I started second-guessing and thinking maybe I just have Wikipedia and Fahlenkamp on the brain because I've been doing some serious research on that subject in the last month.
So...is she being defensive because when she was writing, there were already claims about him not having been in favor? Because that seems like an interesting thing to interject into his death description. "Fredersdorf was Fritz's favorite, so Fritz was worried about his health and didn't want to let us get married" is an important part of the plot; "Fredersdorf was in favor when he died!" is...lacking context unless there are already rumors going around.
selenak: There were. You're forgetting
Glasow! Lehndorff definitely is under the impression Glasow was one of the reaosns why Fredersdorf quit his job and thinks Fritz traded one for the other in his journals. Henckel von Donnersmarck also thinks Glasow "got rid of Fredersdorf" on his rise to power. Both are contemporay writers writing independently from each other in their journals. Which means there must have been a rumor that Fredersdorf either quit because of Glasow or got traded in or both, and I suspect that's what Caroline is argueing against implicitly, saying, no, he died very much in favor.
mildred_of_midgarad: Huh, I had never interpreted the Lehndorff passage to mean Fredersdorf was out of favor, just that Fredersdorf stepped down voluntarily because he didn't like how much favor Glasow was getting. But Donnersmarck saying Glasow did get rid of Fredersdorf I had forgotten.
got rid of the treasurer Fredesdorf who thus was dismissed shortly before his death
Yeah, okay, so that rumor was definitely going around, and is independent of whether Fredersdorf had been accused of embezzlement and dismissed for that reason.
Excellent, thank you for reminding me!
Oh, Selena, since you're always interested in Fredersdorf's marriage and the Voltaire explosion, I was updating our chronology just now, and I give you this juxtaposition:
1752, October 15: Fritz publishes Lettre d‘un académicien de Berlin à un académicien de Paris, defending Maupertuis and trashing Voltaire.
1752, October 29: Fredersdorf and Caroline von Daum get engaged.
selenak: I knew it. I put it to you that someone just about had it with the constant Voltaire drama taking over his Fritzian life and wanted his own haven of sanity as a balance.
cahn (re: Labes): Oh noooo :( Yeah, this guy sounds like maybe he could be a lot of fun in the short term but seriously bad news in the long term.
selenak: Alas yes. Now Caroline had divorced husband No.2 after only three months, which in her short "my life" text is explained by "weil ich mich gezwungen sah, mich wegen schlechter Begegnung im März 1759 wieder scheiden zu lassen" - "bad encounter" literally, might mean anything between "bad interaction" or that he married her in bad faith. And she was the one with the money. If you want to know my suspicion as to why she didn't divorce Labes, it's that by the time he showed his true colors, they had children. (Achim's mother was born on May 13th 1761, and her son on January 1st 1763, i.e. both still during the 7 Years War.) And then she might have loved him and taken a while to fall out of love. What she does write is:
Despite this marriage being happier than the previous one, it certainly wasn't so completely, least of all was it comparable to the one with my dear Fredersdorf. Despite many sad hours and harsh trials, I did try to live with this last husband for sixteen years, during which time he took his constant residence in Zernikow for the last nine, while I with both children took mine in Berlin in the Dorotheenstadt (quarter) in the Quaree close to the Brandenburg Gate, Unter den Linden, and lived in the impressive house there I still own, though I did visit him once or twice a year with the children for several weeks in order to preserve (parental) unity as much as it was possible to do.
Unter den Linden is the famous alley running to and through the Brandenburg Gate. Today, most of the embassies are there, and one of the most legendary hotels. That was a top notch address Caroline had for her town residence, which she didn't yet have while Mrs. Fredersdorf - they lived in Potsdam then, remember, which is also where Lehndorff visits Fredersdorf a few months before Fredersdorf's death. In a way, Caroline proves you could go wrong marrying for love in the 18th century just as much as if your marriage was arranged, but then again - she treasured her first marriage, and the children she got from the third, and had more independence than most spouses at that time. What I begrudge is that Labes the louse got to live in Zernikow for nine years just because he pissed Fritz off (if Achim tells the truth) and thus couldn't be the one to stay in town!
Next question: does Labes sound as if he could have been a drinking buddy of Kaphengst (living nearby in Meseberg at exactly the same time) or what?
mildred_of_midgard: YES. And if Kaphengst is known for riding the countryside stirring up the leaves while hunting for local women (and men?) to have sex with, and Labes is getting men drunk so he can have sex with their wives, I'm going with these two as fellow fratboys.
From a trio of German Romantic writers - Achim von Arnim, his wife Bettina, who is also the sister of the third, Achim's bff Clemens Brentano. Of interest to us because Achim was the grandson of the former Mrs. Fredersdorf, grew up at Zernikow and provided a good quote for the current Zernikow website which as it turns out hails from this volume (though the website version lacks the virginity part). The editor points out that both the Brentano siblings and Achim von Arnim lost their mothers early and did not get along with their fathers, hence the intense relating to the grandparents, of whom all these anecdotes tell. Of interest to us is what Achim has to say about Grandma, her father, and also his Grandfather (her third husband). It's also worth reading the footnotes, which reveal that, drumroll, Caroline (i.e. Mrs. Fredersdorf) wrote a short "My life so far" memoir in 1777, of which a typoscript exists and is mentioned in the source footnote as follows: Typoskript einer Lebensbeschreibung vom 13. September 1777 im Brandesburgischen Landeshauptarchiv Potsdam, Rep. 37, Bärwalde-Wiepersdorf, Nr. 1832.) We'll get to this document as well.
Caroline's father, Gottfried Adolf Daum (1679 - 1743) founded together with David Splitgerber the Berlin Bank and Trading House Splitgerber & Daum. They were just the kind of manufacturers FW wanted to encourage. Daum managed to impress him (not least by building houses in Berlin) and got permission to found and lead the Royal weapons and gun manufactory in Potsdam and Spandau 1722. (After Daum's death, his partner Splitgerber also founded the first Prussian sugar manufactury in 1746. You can see why Caroline was loaded as an heiress.) Daum also managed to become a casual member of the Tobacco Parliament. So it won't surprise you if I tell you he was a strict Dad. Quoting Achim remembering what his grandmother said:
For all the wealth, strict austerity ruled the house, the children were cautioned to work hard, so only in the evening was time for leisure. And even those evening hours were used in summer to practice how to walk decent and ladylike under the eyes of governess and governor.
(Methinks we know where the "freedom" part in Caroline's characterisation of her first marriage comes from. The governor was for her brother. Who scandalized Dad and Mom by becoming a Catholic and moving to Italy later. Mom would have disinherited him if Caroline, who loved her brother, hadn't insisted that she then wouldn't accept her inheritance, either, and reconciled him with Mom.)
When autumn arrived, their hearts grew heavy when they saw fruits lying on the ground and weren't allowed to touch them. They then thought of some artifice, like saying: "a pretty colorful stone, perhaps father's cufflink!" and adroitly hid the fruit beneath their skirts in order to eat it in the restroom later in secret.
On to Daum and FW:
He had built a Dutch kitchen in his house in order to honor the King, that is a clean oven, the Kitchen red with white streaks of chalk in imitation of the usual burned stone, a large table and a closet full of Dutch pipes. The King often visited him with his generals and enjoyed his kind of pranks. Thus, he told him once: Listen, Daum, all women are whores! - No, your Majesty, Daum replied, my wife is not a whore. - Well, the King said, be he reassured, his wife and mine excepted, all women are whores. - The King rarely took back anything he said, and it showed how much credit Daum had with him that he did this time. For the King had the habit, on each Sunday to order the entire high society of Potsdam to drive past him three times and to call to each lady "Whore Whore!" - It's strange that my grandmother claimed that actually, there had been only one whore in Potsdam at that time, who'd been called Putzers Hanne, but maybe she didn't know the other ones.
Or maybe FW was an oafish ass, Achim. Though I'm impressed Caroline knew the name of an actual prostitute, which I wouldn't have thought a rich man'd daughter would.
On to Caroline.
My grandmother had even into her old age very vivid intense blue eyes, regular features, she was tall and had a good figure. Her coloring she'd lost due to an illness, without looking sickly or being an invalid, though. She was very vivacious, fulll of eagerness for the world's turnmoil, was used to devotion, discipline and austerity from her youth, was very noble in mind, and a witty companion to most. One should have believed these qualities would have assuredly let her into blissful domesticity with an ever growing circle of children. But strange fate! Her affection was won by a man who was already really ill and suffering from hemorhoids, though he was otherwise very handsome - the original word Achim uses is "schön", i.e. beautiful, but I know it's not used for men in English - , the Secret Chamberlain of the new King Friedrich II, his favourite ever since he as a soldier in the prison of Küstrin had lessened (Fritz') grief through his flute play. He seems to have been too well educated for a soldier; probably his tall figure caused his being drafted into service under the old King. My grandmother in her love believed him to be the most intelligent and wittiest man of the world. In her old age she read their exchanged love letters again, and be it that she had been aged too much, or that she did not want us to know and did not see the suitability of the jokes anymore, she did not want to share them and burned them with the same amazement that she'd been delighted by them in her youth.
Friedrich didn't like the people around him to be married, he may have felt that they then didn't belong to him as completely anymore; he demanded utter devotion, but permitted them much confidentiality as a result. Moments in which to demand something of him had still be spotted and used quickly. The opportune moment to get the permission to marry from the King seemed to take years, the illness of the poor favourite grew, and he explained to the King that he could only hope to get better through this marriage and that he was dying of grief. That worked; the King agreed, and so that the King wouldn't change his mind again, the marriage was celebrated within twenty four hours after the hard won permission of the King had arrived. Thus the sickbed was the entrance to a marriage in which my grandmother lived as a virgin under a thousand worries but also with blissful freedom, mutual agreement and inner cheerfulness for three years after which he died after much sicknesss, so that after her own death she only wanted to rest at the side of this most beloved of her three husbands in her coffin.
Illness made the poor man often irritable, but she swore that his general kindness and repentance over each outburst had her always reconciled. He tried to find all kinds of diversions for her so that she wouldn't suffer from the sitting in a sick room, and made her go on long rides so she'd have distractions. As a proof of her fitness may serve the fact she often rode to Berlin and back from Potsdam in one day, at a time when this way was much longer and very uneven, so really lasted eight miles. I have seen a painting of her in her riding dress, it was a half male outfit in green, with a female skirt and a three point hat. She also rode like a man.
Comment: we already know the "got married within 24 hours" isn't true from Lehndorff's diary (and also by implication from the one Fritz letter where Fredersdorf's upcoming marriage is mentioned), but it's interesting the story had taken this shape decades later for Achim and his brother. The footnote to this passage by the editor contains an actual quote from Caroline's memoir preserved in typoscript, and it says:
His loss and his memory will always remain unforgettable to me, since our love was uncontestedly the purest and most loyal I was ever to find, which is why this worthy man has deserved that it should be known he was gifted besides the most beautiful pleasant looks with the most enlightened mind, abilities and quickness of spirit, which can hardly find their like anywhere.
From this praise by Caroline in 1777 you can deduce not just her very brief second marriage but the longer one to Achim's actual grandfather was less than stellar. More direct quotes from Caroline in a moment, but first let me elaborate on the matter of her third husband.
Hans von Labes. You can see both why Caroline at first fell for him and why it later went downhill, and Fredersdorf remained unseated as her favourite husband.
My mother's father had a thoroughly unique mental life, a strange mixture of free, great experience and close minded tastes bound to his era, much character, a lot of quircks, which in the lonely years near the end of his life verged on impossibilities. He was a self made man, and never forgot it, and thus the rest of the world often seemed to him just an attachment to his movement. As a boy, he'd run away to Hannover and was able to distinguish himself there so much that he found support at the universities. Afterwards, he distinguished himself in the eyes of Friedrich II. through voluntary important services in foreign departments. As resident in some South German courts through personal influence with one princess, he knew how to uncover her preparations for the 7 Years War.
Translation: Granda Labes was a spy! The footnote says the princess in question was either the Duchess of Bavaria or Wilhelmine's daughter the Duchess of Württemberg, Friederike Sophie. However, since Friederike at this point was already back home with her parents in Bayreuth, having left her husband for good, I'm not sure how that should have worked, so Mrs. Wittelsbach it has to be.
After the outbreak of said war he was limited to working in a department. Through a strange inflexibility and a lot of impudence he eventually drew the hatred of the King on himself, left town and spent his last year at Zernikow, his wife's estate. This as an overview of his life, some details which I have chosen of a great number.
Achim next goes into said details. Seems Grandpa Labes once the war was over turned into a wine, women and song guy. He was celebrated for his spectacular wine cellar and for his banquets. Each banquet guest had to gift him one book for his library, and said library was really large by the end, thus, says Achim, you can see Grandpa was popular as long as he was throwing said banquets.
His most favourite friend seems to have been Count Gotter whom Friedrich himself also wrote poetry about as an expert, and of whom there are three different portraits in his heritage. Of his female friends, of whom he had many as a chevalier d'amour, I only name the later famous Karschin, of whom there are many tender poems adressed to him in his papers.
(Anna Karsch, the "Karschin", was one of the few famous 18th century female poets.)
He supported her in her rise to fame, often let her improvise at his banquets, and thus it happened that since she was fond of wine herself that she once in the middle of enthusiastic poetry reciting fell under the table crowned with laurels but completely drunk and passed out. He had put coffins in the next room for all drunks as if for dead people. She, too, was put in one of them with her laurels, and forgotten there, so that in the next morning people first thought a thief had broken into the house when she awoke and completed her triumph with a cat's howling over her headache.
In general, he didn't much esteem German poetry, though, Horace was for him the ultimate in wit and wisdom, and even dying he recommended Latin to his son, or rather to his son's mother so that his son should learn it.
Achim says when Grandduke Paul returned with Heinrich after Heinrich's second trip to Russia in order to get married again, Grandpa Labes sent food and drink over to the Grandduke from Zernikow, but was already on his deathbed and hence unable to attend to the Grandduke even if he'd been permitted.
His tauntings of the law of the country sometimes got him arrested. He was tireless in tormenting the royal civil servants. So he had once an argument over hunting. In order to annoy the hunters, he invited them into his banqueting room, where there were a lot of mice and rats, and between them shot with his gun after the little vermin. (...) He had some favourites among the farmers, whom he often made drunk in many ways in order to have sex with their wives undisturbed. He gave then poetical names to the children like Galathée whereas the farmer named her Theke.
And this, mes amies, is why Caroline during these last years of her husband's life didn't live in Zernikow with her husband, much as she loved the estate otherwise, but in Berlin with her daughter and only returned to Zernikow after he had died. :(
Now,
mildred_of_midgard found Caroline's 1777 written four page story of her life in no time flat. It's in the library now, starting on page 63. In addition to having even more nice things to say about Fredersdorf, it definitely contradicts Achim's version of how the marriage came about, though you can see why he misremembered it that way decades later.:
Original German text:
Im Jahre 1752, den 29. Oktober ward ich zum ersten Male verlobt mit dem damaligen königlichen geheimen Kämmerer Michael Gabriel Fredersdorff, welcher kurz nach der Verlobung in kränkliche Umstände verfiel, sodaß der König, da er sein grosser Favorit war, die Vollziehung der Heirat aus grosser Besorgung für sein Leben, nicht vor seiner völligen Genesung zulassen wollte, da die Krankheit aber anhaltend blieb, ward ich mit allerhöchstem Konsens diesem Fredersdorf auf sein innigstes Verlangen 1753, den 20. Dezember auf dem Krankenbette, da die Medici ihm das Leben völlig absprachen, angetraut.
mildred_of_midgard summarizes for non-German speakers: they got engaged October 29, 1752. (I don't think we had that date!) Shortly thereafter, Fredersdorf fell sick. Because he was a great favorite of Fritz, Fritz didn't want him to get married until he was recovered, because Fritz was worried that married life would be detrimental to Fredersdorf's health. [I suspect the sex part?] But the doctors gave Fredersdorf no chance of recovery, so Fritz gave his royal permission, and Caroline and Fredersdorf were married December 20, 1753, with Fredersdorf on his sickbed.selenak: Definitely the sex part. "Vollziehung der Ehe" is "consumation of marriage". Incidentally, I'm a bit sceptical about the medical part of these supposed Fritzian concerns, given that in the one and only letter to Fredersdorf where he mentions the upcoming marriage, he also makes that "take a hot hunter or page with you" joke. Otoh, maybe he thought sex with a woman would be more stressful. (And also proof Fredersdorf hadn't just married a nurse.) Not to mention that it could be an argument Fredersdorf himself used to Caroline for why he didn't have sex with her that would not feel like a rejection of herself. (A la Mina and Heinrich.) Mind you, given he'd die three years later and really did have terrible hemorrhoid problems already in the winter of 1753, he probably wasn't longing for sex with either man or woman in any event.Just to set the record straight, we should list the differences here to the Achim derived story from various other biographies and websites:
Caroline: we got engaged, but because he was in such a bad state, the King was worried and said we were not to marry until he recovered.
Achim and successors: Because the King didn't like his bffs to marry, you had to be careful to ask for permission and use a good moment, so they kept their intention a secret until then.
Caroline: The doctors said he wouldn't recover in the long term anyway and he really wanted to marry me, so the King gave permission and we were married a bit more than a year after getting engaged with him being in the sickbed, he was that ill.
Achim and successors: Fredersdorf got sick, pretended to be dying if he didn't marry Caroline, got permission from Fritz and immediately married her within 24 hours of getting the permission, upon which he recovered.
This has become quite a different story!
mildred_of_midgard: Indeed! But the interesting part is that the individual elements are all there, even if the way they're put together completely contradicts the later version of the story. I did wonder briefly if maybe Fritz gave his permission (the second time) on December 19, 1753, but no, his "take a hot hunter or page with you" letter is from "around the beginning of November 1753." Incidentally, Richter gives the marriage date as December 30, not December 20, citing the church book in the Potsdam Garrison Church, and Fahlenkamp agrees. Our chronology says December 23!! Which is from Wikipedia, no citation. (This is what I mean by constantly hitting different dates for the same event.) (Fontane of course gives 1750, but we know that's way off.)mildred_of_midgard: Also! We now know that he died about 10 in the morning on January 12. We knew the date but not the time.da er zu meinem allergrössten Schmerz den 12. Januar des morgens um 10 Uhr im 48. Jahre seines Alters zu Potsdam in der Gnade seines grossen Königs dies zeitliche segnete.
Also, help me out with that sentence: I can't tell if she's saying Fredersdorf was in Fritz's favor when he died??? or if "in der Gnade seines grossen Königs" has to do with God. (God or Fritz, easy to confuse. :P)
selenak: She definitely means Fritz. (So there, Wikipedia and Fahlenkamp!) "Der große König" was NOT how Rococo people talked about God.mildred_of_midgard: Aha! That was my first reading (and "so there!" my first reaction), but then I started second-guessing and thinking maybe I just have Wikipedia and Fahlenkamp on the brain because I've been doing some serious research on that subject in the last month.So...is she being defensive because when she was writing, there were already claims about him not having been in favor? Because that seems like an interesting thing to interject into his death description. "Fredersdorf was Fritz's favorite, so Fritz was worried about his health and didn't want to let us get married" is an important part of the plot; "Fredersdorf was in favor when he died!" is...lacking context unless there are already rumors going around.
selenak: There were. You're forgetting Glasow! Lehndorff definitely is under the impression Glasow was one of the reaosns why Fredersdorf quit his job and thinks Fritz traded one for the other in his journals. Henckel von Donnersmarck also thinks Glasow "got rid of Fredersdorf" on his rise to power. Both are contemporay writers writing independently from each other in their journals. Which means there must have been a rumor that Fredersdorf either quit because of Glasow or got traded in or both, and I suspect that's what Caroline is argueing against implicitly, saying, no, he died very much in favor.
mildred_of_midgarad: Huh, I had never interpreted the Lehndorff passage to mean Fredersdorf was out of favor, just that Fredersdorf stepped down voluntarily because he didn't like how much favor Glasow was getting. But Donnersmarck saying Glasow did get rid of Fredersdorf I had forgotten.got rid of the treasurer Fredesdorf who thus was dismissed shortly before his death
Yeah, okay, so that rumor was definitely going around, and is independent of whether Fredersdorf had been accused of embezzlement and dismissed for that reason.
Excellent, thank you for reminding me!
Oh, Selena, since you're always interested in Fredersdorf's marriage and the Voltaire explosion, I was updating our chronology just now, and I give you this juxtaposition:
1752, October 15: Fritz publishes Lettre d‘un académicien de Berlin à un académicien de Paris, defending Maupertuis and trashing Voltaire.
1752, October 29: Fredersdorf and Caroline von Daum get engaged.
selenak: I knew it. I put it to you that someone just about had it with the constant Voltaire drama taking over his Fritzian life and wanted his own haven of sanity as a balance.cahn (re: Labes): Oh noooo :( Yeah, this guy sounds like maybe he could be a lot of fun in the short term but seriously bad news in the long term.selenak: Alas yes. Now Caroline had divorced husband No.2 after only three months, which in her short "my life" text is explained by "weil ich mich gezwungen sah, mich wegen schlechter Begegnung im März 1759 wieder scheiden zu lassen" - "bad encounter" literally, might mean anything between "bad interaction" or that he married her in bad faith. And she was the one with the money. If you want to know my suspicion as to why she didn't divorce Labes, it's that by the time he showed his true colors, they had children. (Achim's mother was born on May 13th 1761, and her son on January 1st 1763, i.e. both still during the 7 Years War.) And then she might have loved him and taken a while to fall out of love. What she does write is:Despite this marriage being happier than the previous one, it certainly wasn't so completely, least of all was it comparable to the one with my dear Fredersdorf. Despite many sad hours and harsh trials, I did try to live with this last husband for sixteen years, during which time he took his constant residence in Zernikow for the last nine, while I with both children took mine in Berlin in the Dorotheenstadt (quarter) in the Quaree close to the Brandenburg Gate, Unter den Linden, and lived in the impressive house there I still own, though I did visit him once or twice a year with the children for several weeks in order to preserve (parental) unity as much as it was possible to do.
Unter den Linden is the famous alley running to and through the Brandenburg Gate. Today, most of the embassies are there, and one of the most legendary hotels. That was a top notch address Caroline had for her town residence, which she didn't yet have while Mrs. Fredersdorf - they lived in Potsdam then, remember, which is also where Lehndorff visits Fredersdorf a few months before Fredersdorf's death. In a way, Caroline proves you could go wrong marrying for love in the 18th century just as much as if your marriage was arranged, but then again - she treasured her first marriage, and the children she got from the third, and had more independence than most spouses at that time. What I begrudge is that Labes the louse got to live in Zernikow for nine years just because he pissed Fritz off (if Achim tells the truth) and thus couldn't be the one to stay in town!
Next question: does Labes sound as if he could have been a drinking buddy of Kaphengst (living nearby in Meseberg at exactly the same time) or what?
mildred_of_midgard: YES. And if Kaphengst is known for riding the countryside stirring up the leaves while hunting for local women (and men?) to have sex with, and Labes is getting men drunk so he can have sex with their wives, I'm going with these two as fellow fratboys.
no subject
Date: 2021-08-05 12:43 am (UTC)