Friedrich I. : Portrait(s) of a Prussian King (and Woobie)

[selenak]

Seeking to find out more about our antihero's much disparaged (by him) grandfather, the first King in (!) Prussia, Friedrich I., I read two biographies, the Werner Schmidt one from 2004 (though originally published in the 1990s), which is the one his German wiki entry footnotes most frequently, and one by Frank Göse from 2012. Frank Göse we already know as the guy who co-edited the FW essays anthology together with Kloosterhuis and who published the latest FW biography (only last year or so). His F1 biography is, like his FW biography, only intermittently chronological and arranged by topics (foreign policy, inner policy, family life etc). Like his FW biography, it's also a bit plodding to read - a great narrator, he's not - but unlike with his FW biography, I'm glad I've read to have read this one, since Werner Schmidt's attitude towards their shared subject is: "F1 is my woobie and I'm his one man defense squad!", so Göse, while also sympathetic to F1, provides a good counterbalance. A good example of how differently they present the same subject comes when we get to the fall of Danckelman.

But mainly I wanted to read these books to look up F1's youth and the other escape attempt by a Crown Prince, well, Kurprinz. And on the youth, Schmidt the woobie defense squad delivers in far more detail than Göse, despite his book being far slimmer. (Their different emphasis is also telling.)



Schmidt: First, have some background to understand where my woobie's Dad is coming from so I won't be accused to be mean about the Great Elector. Once upon a time, there was this really ghastly war, remember? 30 Years? Johann Georg of Brandenburg really wanted to keep out of it, but between having married the Winter King's sister and his sister having married Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden, naturally before all went to hell, he really couldn't. With the result that Brandenburg kept being invaded either by Swedes or Imperials. Future Great Elector, whose first names were Friedrich Wilhelm which is just too confusing, so selenak won't mention them again, thus spent seven years as a boy (from 7 to 14) at Küstrin because it was the toughest fortress Prussia had and his parents wanted him to be safe. Then he went to stay with relations in the Netherlands, where he met Louisa Hollandine the painter and daughter of the Winter Queen and romanced her, only it didn't work out because money. Then he came back and unsurprisingly had two major principles once he became the Prince Elector:

a) Brandenburg needs an army of its own so we won't get invaded, devastated and depopulated again.
b) Brandenburg also needs money.

He married the (rich) Dutch princess Louise Henriette of Orange whom Oranienburg the palace is named after and who gave him four sons. The first one died as a kid. Then came Karl Emil, who looked like the ideal Prussian prince - healthy, jolly, loves sports and playing war Then came Friedrich, future F1, who wasn't only sickly, no, his nurse managed to drop him during a carriage drive, with the result that future F1 ended up with both feet turned inwards and a curved spinal (is this the right expression in English?). None one thought he'd live long, except for his mother, who fought for him. (More details to come.) Unfortunately, fighting for future F1 also meant subjecting him to an endless series of medical tortures, iron corsets, getting pressed between weights to correct his spine and feet, until one Dr. Fey put an end to it and said the weight pressures especially were probably responsible for F1's asthma or at least it being so bad and could kill the kid.

Future F1 remained the youngest until his brother Ludwig was born. Now, for as long as his mother and older brother Karl Emil were still alive, he had affection to balance the medical tortures and some aspects of the teaching. The teaching parts are interesting for many reasons. Like future Prussian rulers after him, the Great Elector wrote a "how to handle the princes" instructions to his sons' governor. There are things in common with FW's lists, to wit, the religion - the Elector, too, wanted his sons to be raised as good Christians, start the day with praying etc. -, but there's a very different approach to art and sciences. The Elector wanted his sons to learn Latin, for example, but in a way that wouldn't make them hate the language, so the teacher was to be playful about it and also use it in conversation as often as possible. (French, too, but that's what the princess, including future F1, had a governess for. Unlike FW, though, F1's first language was German.) And with geography, the princes were supposed to learn the names of towns and countries etc. in a non-dull manner by the teacher attaching interesting stories to them so they memorize them better. All pretty fly for a 17th century guy!

These were the instructions for Karl Emil and F1 both. Karl Emil still hated school, but he wrote a lovely letter to his brother when being hunting. Practice your German on this baroque letter opening:

"Herzallerliebstes Brüderchen,
weil Ihr bei Eurer grossen Glückseligkeit da Ihr alllzeit bei Papa und Mama seit, meiner ganz vergesset, so will ich hiermit beweisen, dass ich fleissig an Euch gedenke. Ich hoffe, mein Herzensbrüderchen bald wieder zu sehen."

(Most beloved of little brothers, as you forget me due to your great happiness of being with Mama and Papa always, I shall prove that I'm thinking of you all the time. I hope to see my dearest little brother again soon.)



Future F1's teacher was one Eberhard Danckelmann. (Later to be ennobled into "von Danckelmann".) He was a proto Prussian two generations before FW - austere, dutiful, into discipline. A genuine prodigy - he'd debated and defended his thesis at 12 years old at a university! - but extremely shouty, and the first time F1's mother Louise Henriette noticed this, she wrote a letter in protest, that "Fritzchen" surely would be better guided by kindness than by verbal abuse.

Here's the letter Louise Henriette wrote on Christmas Day 1666 to future F1's governor Schwerin:

Monsieur, it is also necessary for me to tell you that there are people who reported to me that Monsieur Danckelmann fiercely attacks Fritzchen during his studies - rudoyoit fort, Schmidt says, is the original expression the Electress used - people who have heard it themselves. I must admit that this is something extremely repellent to me. (...)It could damage his health and his soul. I ask you not to permit it any longer and to signal to (Danckelmann) that this does not please me. I believe his intentions to be good, that he wants (F1) to learn much. But (F1) knows enough for his age, and gentleness is the best methods to win children (douceur est la meilleur méthode pour gagner les enfants).


Whereupon Danckelmann was a bit quieter but still did things like this bit of German-to-Latin translation exercise for F1, of which there is a copy of the manuscript in child!F1's handwriting in the book:

Baroque German: "Mein Bruder und ich wollen gelehrte Printzen werden. Aber Fritz wird ein Esel bleiben."
Latin: "Frater et ego volumus fieri docti Principes. Sed Fridericus manebit Asinus."





Werner Schmidt: Pray keep this in mind when we get to the fate of Danckelmann a few decades later! At age 10, my woobie makes a fateful discovery when deciding he'll found an order "De la generosité". His governor (a member of the Schwerin clan at this point, Danckelmann was his teacher, different thing) lets him play this out. Little F1 discovers that the play acting as a gracious ruler, the ceremony, the investing, that all this makes him feel good and not like damaged goods for the first time! Not that his bitchy grandson shows any understanding for this. FYI, F2, your precious Black Eagle Order grew directly from this childhood Order de La Generosité.



But back to a tale of childhood woe, which is about to kick in in earnest. Because his mother dies, only one of two persons to love my hero truly and unconditionally. According to an eyewitness, ten years old F1 when told his mother was dying "cried out terribly, and hung from the Stewardess' neck and begged for for God's sake she should save everything and make it so his Mama did not die!" But she does, with her body exhausted after giving birth or having stillbirths nearly every other year. And then the Great Elector remarries. A woman who wasn't a poisoner, I don't think that, but she was without any sensitivity or sympathy for the stepkids and...

Frank Göse: Let me stop you right here. She wasn't that bad. Before her own kids were born, she wrote downright lovely letters to little future F1, calling him "Engelchen" and "Fritzchen". True, once she had kids of her own, she didn't do that anymore, but you yourself point out that every mother fights for her children, and when the late Electress got future F1, she immediately persuaded the Elector that he'd get a life long rent and a county of his own so his financial future was assured despite him being a third son. Dorothea followed the same principle for her kids.

Werner Schmidt: The only women I approve of unconditionally in this book are F1's mother and his first wife, who loved him unconditionally. Be content I don't think Dorothea the founder of the Schwedt line was a poisoner. Anyway, back to young F1's woes: Karl Emil dies next. This is a devastating blow for Dad, who until this point hasn't singled F1 out for anything but hasn't done anything against him, either. It's not too much to say, though, that after Karl Emil's death, the Great Elector will treat my guy as if it needs to be made clear the wrong brother died. Think that I'm exaggarating? Lemme quote the French ambassador.

Background here: The Elector had won some key battles against the French as part of the anti Sun King team up only for the Habsburgs to screw him over by making peace with Louis XIV without asking him to the negotiations. He then screwed over the Habsburgs by making his own secret treaty with Louis in which he promised that he'd vote for Louis or Louis' son the Dauphin the next time an HRE Emperor got voted hin, and that he'd make Louis executor of his last will. This team up with the French went on until Louis kicked the Huguenots out of France, at which point the Elector, champion of Protestants, couldn't stand by it anymore and changed his policy. But because grandson F2 as well as subsequent historians for two centuries accused my guy F1 of falling short of his Dad, let me point out the Great Elector made a completely bad treaty with the goddam French here, and wasn't the mastermind Hohenzollern historians insisted he was.

Anyway: the French were also hand in glove with Stepmom and her campaign to get her sons as big a portion of the Electorate as possible. Bear in mind primogeniture wasn't yet a fixture in all the German principalities, and Stepmom campaigned for dividing the realm the old fashioned way among all the sons. The French were all for it, since Louis hadn't forgotten the Elector had won that battle and many tiny Brandenburg pieces sounded better than an increasingly larger one. Future F1, now the Kurprinz (Prince Elector) instead of Karl Emil, otoh, thought this was a bad idea and got increasingly distrustful about Dad changing his will. Rébenac, the French envoy who was on Team Dorothea for the above named reason, wrote thus reports like this to Louis in France:

The Prince, Sire, has a very damaged figure, is of a weak constitution and doesn't show much will to live; a doctor has said he'll only live for three or four years more. He's of a weak mind, a hypocrite and very miserly, of little noblesse; and if he has the wish to enlarge his realm, then only in order to fill his purse with more cash, which is his only ambition. He lets himself be ruled by a man named Danckelmann who used to be his teacher, a feeble mind who is teaching his master hypocrisy and hatred towards some of his father's ministers. (...) The Elector does not love him, nor does he esteem him. (...) A man from Sweden told the Elector unguardedly that the King of Sweden - against whom the Elector had fought and won battles - says he'll let the Elector of Brandenburg die in peace but that he'll make the Elector's son pay. The Elector himself told me this and added: "The King of Sweden is right; for my son isn't good for anything."

Objectivity, thy name is not Rébenac. More like "Wishful thinking". But while posterity can point out the obvious mistakes here at once (F1 would live on some decades more, he wouldn't get crushed by Sweden, and miserliness isn't a fault he's ever been accused of by posterity), the quote from the Elector about his son has the ring of authenticity to Werner Schmidt and Frank Göse alike.



Meanwhile, young future F1 had one good thing going in his life. As a child and youth, he'd been sent to take the waters in the principality of Hessen-Kassel every year (because the Elector's mother had been from there). There, he'd struck up a childhood friendship with the Hessian princess Elisabeth Henriette, nicknamed Hanette. (There's a letter from child!F1 to her mother thanking the mother for the hospitality and saying all the other Hessian princesses can be married of as long as "the one I love" stays.) And once little Hanette, five years younger than him, was of marriagable age, "weak" F1 lobbied for permission to marry her with both sets of (surviving) parents - and actually managed to pull it off. Thus, he achieved that rarity in the era, a mutual love match between friends. He also got a household of his own granted, in Köpenick (there's a Fontane chapter from the Wanderungen on his and Hanette's time there.) Mind you, the Elector behaved very badly and grumpily about the marriage, making it as insulting to the Hessen-Kassel family as possible by for eons refusing to name a date and then cancelling one agreed on and then, one morning while in bed with his wife, deciding this evening the marriage would happen without a fuss and no ceremony since Hanette was already in town. Young F1 put up with it and hightailed it out of Berlin with Hanette as soon as possible.

Werner Schmidt: But because that's the way his life goes, nothing good ever lasts long. Hanette gives birth to a daughter - his only daughter, as it would happen - and dies after just a few years. And that was the last person to ever truly love my guy. By this comment you may gather I don't like Sophie Charlotte, aka Figuelotte. Who was just like her grandson Fritz: a sarcastic, cold-hearted bitch unable to resist a witty quip no matter how hurtful, with an intellectual superiority complex. Granted, she started out not as bad as that at age 16, which is when she became still not yet F1's second wife. I'll quote Sophie her mother (about whom I'm a bit more positive right until two decades later she makes a sarcastic remark about F1 and his ministers, at which point I'll say she's just like her daughter, because I am A One Man Defense Squad) who writes to one of Liselotte's sisters:

She's not cruel, either, and he's always shown amiability and esteem towards her when her Highness the Princess Elector had still been alive and nobody would have imagined this possibility.
The Kurprinz isn't a handsome man in his figure, but he has a very good temper, and sound reason, and his face isn't ugly; it's a good thing she does like him and doesn't care about the exterior so much, for his highness the Duke and I love her so much that we could follow her own inclination if she'd chosen another suitor.

(As mentioned in the Barbara Beuys biography, future F1 & wife had visited Hannover, and he'd taken to the entire clan like a duck to water.)

Because Figuelotte is a princess of Hannover and has a mother who is quite up to standing toe to toe with the Elector, she gets a proper princely wedding. This does not mean relations between the Elector and his oldest surviving son improve.

Werner Schmidt: Time to defend my guy again. This is when he signs a secret contract with Team Vienna. What's this about, you ask? Well, future F1, no fool, figured that if Stepmom had Louis XIV to back her up, he needed the only other heavy puncher, who was the Emperor, in his corner. Now, Dad the Elector had grown uneasy about his French alliance himself (Louis was about to kick the Huguenots out) and saw the need to reconcile with Vienna, too. On that note, he and the Emperor signed a contract in which Dad Elector agreed Brandenburg-Prussia would drop all claims on Silesia (!!!!) if the Habsburgs would fork over the county Schwiebus which is located in the Silesian duchy of Glogau. My guy F1 simultanously made a secret contract with the Emperor in which in return for the promise to defend F1's rights should Dad attempt to change his last weill, F1 as soon as he'd become F1 would return Schwiebus to the Habsburgs. He's been critiqued a lot for this but what I'd like to know is: how is this different from Dad Elector's secret treaty with Louis years earlier? Also, naturally this was the pretext F2's historians hit upon when he told him to justify his invasion of Silesia. (Their argument being that by Vienna making secret treaties with the son, their treaty with the Elector in which he resigns from his claims on Silesia was non valid.) Which means in a roundabout way it was good for Prussia!



Now, in 1676, the Marquise de Brinvilliers had been executed as a poisoner in Paris. Her discovery triggered the biggest poisoning scandal of the age, the "Affair of the Poisons" which became so notorious because at least one of Louis' main mistresses, the Marquise de Montespan, as well as several other high society ladies at Versailles were all clients of the same poisoner (& soothsayer & abortionist), Catherine La Voisin. Naturally, all of Europe was glued on the latest news from Versailles. And when does young future F1 start to wonder about stepmom? In 1677. It becomes really serious when three things happen:

1) F1 after drinking a cup of mocca coffee at his stepmom's table collapses. Danckelmann (as far as F1 is concerned) saves his life by giving him a digestive that makes him throw up.

2) Ludwig, the last of F1's full brothers, whom he's been close to, dies as well. Ludwig like F1 has been punished by Dad Elector for not being Karl Emil. Rebénac the French envoy reports that Ludwig a day before his death had begged to see his father one more time but the Elector thought he was faking it and, quote: Instead of visiting him, he sent messages complaining of (Ludwig's) weakness and silly fear to die. (...) At last, Sire, he died only three rooms away from his father without having seen the later again.

3) Figuelotte is pregnant again (the first kid has died as a baby already), and Rebénac, no fan of F1's and thus definitely not biased in his favor, has this to report about the event that ensued, in the same letter he talks about Ludwig's death (and assures Louis that no poisoning happened, no matter what future F1 thinks):

A more realistic and far more justified reason to complain on the Kurprinz' part is related to his lady wife. This princess (Sophie Charlotte/Figuelotte), who has all the good qualities which beauty and wit can provide, and who in addition to this has a good temper and virtue, has the misfortune to be disliked by the Elector and the Electress, despite having shown them only humility. She gets treated so badly that even the most dishonorable of women would find it unbearable. It seems the final straw for her and her husband was that the Prince Elector replied to the joyful news brought by the Kurprinz that the princess was expecting again that maybe his daughter-in-law was expecting but that only God knew who caused it. Since then all conversations (by the Elector) only circle around this subject, and I'm told he has started to throw the name of the supposed father around. This is an affair which saddens the Princess deeply but which will not have any consequences. Her conduct has been so spotless, and the accusation so unlikely, that one cannot marvel enough at the Elector's statements.

At which point F1 decides he's had enough and is hightailing it out of Brandenburg with his pregnant wife, using an already scheduled trip to Hessen-Kassel to visit his former in-laws as an excuse. His first stopover is Hannover where his current in-laws reside. Schmidt and Göse both quote the letter from Sophie that felis also quoted, only a bit longer (the next sentence makes it clear Sophie also thinks poor dead Ludwig has been poisoned).

Der gutte Courprins bekombt aber ein hauffen böe brif von Dero Herr Vatter, welger I. L. verfluchen wollen, wan sie nicht widerum nach Berlin gehen, welches I. L. gern thun wolten, wan die poudre de succession nicht thar ihm schwang ging undt I. L. schon selber in gefhar tharvon weren gewessen‚ aber doch durch ein hauffen contrepoisen sein errett worden undt sich nun gottlob recht wol befinden.

[English translation, because that's not exactly easy German: The good electoral prince [?] is getting a lot of angry letters from his father, who wants to execrate him if he doesn't go back to Berlin. Which the prince would like to do if there wasn't succession powder [nice] going around and if he hadn't been in danger himself already, getting rescued through a bunch of antitoxin and feeling well now, thank God.]

Unlike the author of the book felis found, neither Schmidt nor Göse think Sophie was meddling and following an evil agenda here.

Schmidt and Göse: we both agree that Dorothea was in all likelihood innocent, but that F1 & Team Hannover were far from the only ones who thought she wasn't. Most of their contemporaries thought the very same thing. Where we disagree is:

Schmidt: I'm blaming Dorothea for poisoning the atmosphere between the Elector and the sons of his first marriage, F1 and Ludwig both, in order to favour her own sons.

Göse: I don't. Firstly, the Elector being awful to his sons is on him, not her. Secondly, I'd like to point out that once the Elector had died and F1 had all the power, he was remarkably unvengeful to Stepmom, and actually got on well with his Schwedt half brothers, inviting them to court etc. If he really thought Dorothea, not Dad had been after his life, that's a bit odd. Methinks he probably thought Dad did but wasn't able to say so, hence blamed Stepmom.

Schmidt: I'm not letting the Elector of the hook! His last change of will, fueled by the anger of F1's public flight and conditions for his return (the guarantee not to be murdered), would have divided Prussia, giving the Schwedt brothers everything except Brandenburg. Like Leipniz said, it's the testament of a housefather, not a monarch, and for that alone the title "great", which his contemporaries gave him already, should have been taken away from him. Luckily, F1 ignored it. He gave his half brothers estate of their own but only as vasals of Brandenburg-Prussia and thus kept the realm together. Without this, his grandson could never have become Frederick the Great, but you wouldn't know it from his constant granddad bashing. Why yes, F2 is my red button in this biography. I'm completely blaming him for 200 years of F1 dissings.


Werner Schmidt: So in a short while after very soon to be F1 returns amidst reassurances, has a lengthy talk with Dad and is officially reconciled with him, though how deep that went is anyone's guess, the Elector dies. My guy becomes F3 at first, since he's not King yet but Elector. Now, let's talk money! And buildings! And cultural foundations! I'm simply incensed at the double standards everyone has. Take two of F1's contemporaries: Max Emmanuel of Bavaria and August the Strong. Both pump a lot of money into baroque palaces and parties. selenak can show you her pics of Nymphenburg which Max Emmanuel built in Munich, and you've seen Dresden, where August left his mark. Both Max Emmanuel and August also weren't content with being Princes Elector, they wanted to become Kings. Hell, Max Emmanuel wanted to be Emperor! That's how he ended up on the French side in the Spanish War of Succession and Eugene & Marlborough kicked his butt at Blenheim/Blindheim/Höchstedt! Which is in Bavaria, and Bavaria suffered for those armies marching through just half a century after the 30 Years War, which was hardly recovery time! As for August, he changed his religion to get his hands on Poland. That's how eager he was to all himself King! And then he pissed off Charles XII, which resulted in the Scouring of Saxony (Swedish variation). What I'm getting at: August and Max Emmanuel get called art loving powerful Baroque princes.My guy Friedrich, by contrast, gets bashed as a ridiculous money wasting prince making himself the laughing stock of Europe with his wanting to become a King. Yet are the baroque buildings from the F1 era any lesser than those in Bavaria and Saxony, huh? While Brandenburg never ever suffered from being scoured or marched through (until grandson's time anyway). Not for lack of war. F1 was participating in wars for 22 of the 25 years of his rule, which is way more than son and grandson put together. But he participated in other people's wars, ELSEWHERE, and got a crown out of it because the Emperor really needed those Prussian troops. To return to my point: Max Emmanuel, August and F1 were all big baroque spenders. Only Bavarians and Saxons suffered while this was going on, while Prussians profited, yet my guy...

Frank Göse: Excuse me. I also think he got understimated and that he needs to be compared to his contemporaries, not to his son and grandson, but we have to acknowledge that his subjects did suffer in the three W era, despite the lack of an invasion.



Werner Schmidt:. But we're not there yet! For the first 13 years of F1's rule, his PM was Danckelmann. As in, former shouty teacher, prodigy, austere proto Prussian. Since he started as an ordinary citizen, the nobility hated his guts. The Secret Council was jealous as hell, and lobbied against him. But what really did him in was one woman's hate. Yes, Figuelotte, I'm blaming this one on you! Welll, on you and F1's unresolved issues with a teacher he'd admired and feared and who made him translate "Fritz will always be an ass" into Latin.

Frank Göse: While I wouldn't deny Sophie Charlotte came to dislike Danckelmann intensely, I think her part in his downfall was exaggarated by later Hohenzollern historians. As was her political influence in general, as opposed to her cultural one. She also disliked Danckelmann's successor Wartenberg, and Wartenberg remained on top till the last two years of F1's life, and it was her son who did him in.

Werner Schmidt: You're far too easy on her. Let's state for the record she hated Danckelmann because he saw through her. Remember how we've said that primogeniture hadn't become the self evident princple in the German principalities yet and that the Elector near the end of his life was trying to get a secondogeniture thing going? Well, Hannover, newly coined electorate that it was, also had the problem of lots of sons. However, Sophie's husband Ernst August had no intention of letting his newly united realm be hacked into tiny principality pieces once he died. Which is why he changed the law so that his oldest, George Louis, future G1, would inherit it all. Now, this was not in Prussia's interest, since until then Hannover & Brandenburg had been in the same playing field, but an undivided with that intriguing British prospect on the horizon would be more powerful. So Danckelmann encouraged some Hannoverian councillors to make a move preventing primogeniture to become law in Hannover. However, Figuelotte learned about this and warned Mom and Dad what was coming, thereby proving she loved Hannover more. Since Dad had one of the councillors executed, which ended opposition to primogeniture becoming law in Hannover, she also had blood on her hands! And when Danckelmann basically called her a treacherous bitch, she dared to resent him for it!

Frank Göse: I dare say she also resented him for being in charge of FW's educational schedule for the first few years, especially once presented with the results, i.e. Tiny Terror FW.

Werner Schmidt: That's what she claimed in her letters to Mom, but I don't believe her. She was being hysterical and trying to justify her hate. Not very philosophical of this so-called "Philosopher Queen".

Frank Göse: My point stands: while she undoubtedly cheered when Danckelmann fell, she wasn't the primary mover, nor did she profit from it. The guy moving into that power vacuum was Wartenberg, not Sophie Charlotte.

Werner Schmidt: I'm also blaming her for this. If she'd just shown more political interest, F1, who adored her, would not have needed Wartenberg and listened to her instead. But no! Madame preferred having debates with Leipniz and getting on with her Athens-on-the-Spree program .

Frank Göse: Blaming her both for intervening in the political arena (Danckelmann) and not intervening (Wartenberg) as a way of explaining why she disliked both yet only one fell within her life time is a bit illogical.

Werner Schmidt: I also do the psychological thing which you don't and declare that the way Danckelmann fell, the arrest, the years locked up before he was released, the multiple accusations which were plainly ridiculous were not only the the work of his enemies but of F1's subconscious. Freud would have totally gone for the delayed oedipal father figure killing explanation there. Moving on to the three W's. They were scum.




Frank Göse: Beg to differ.

Werner Schmidt: They were! Exploiting my fave woobie because he needed affection and respect and sure as hell wasn't getting it from his wife.

Frank Göse: Incidentally, we both agree that while F1 loved Sophie Charlotte, Figuelotte after the first few years did not love him, only I see this not as coldness on her part but the result of both of them being very different. And growing up. Remember, she'd been only sixteen when she married him. She'd liked him, and he might even have been a romantic figure to her - the persecuted, grieving prince - , papering over the fact he was handicapped, not physically attractive to her, not as quick verbally, a devout Calvinist where she was more into philosophy, someone who rose early while she was a night owl, who loved ceremonies which bored her. In short, he was the EC to her Fritz, only the power differential was the reverse. So she took some tobacco to snuff while he had his coronation ceremony at Königsberg to make fun of all the earnest pomposity -

Werner Schmidt: The most meaningful achievement of his life to him! She hardly could have hurt him more!

Frank Göse: That's your speculation, and you don't provide any quote from him to prove he was hurt.

Werner Schmidt: I don't need it, I know his soul. I also completely believe that story about her making fun of his size and don't consider it apocryphal, unlike you. After all, we do have her calling him "my Aesop" in one of her few preserved letters, and given Aesop had a hunchback, that just shows how she was. Like her grandson, indeed. But let's get on to the scum. Wartenberg:. the worst of the worst. Typical evil favourite. The only good thing he ever did as PM was uniting the various parts of Berlin with each other and making it the Berlin it was in Fritz' time. Otherwise, he just took money and offices, unlike Danckelmann was careful enough to let himself be made Reichsgraf, which meant he was a peer of the HRE, not just Prussia, which meant that when he did fall, he couldn't end up locked up as well. He also promoted his buddies at his side, like awful Wittgenstein, who was already deeply in debt when Wartenberg hired him, and that scum Wartensleben the Katte Granddad.

Frank Göse: Wartensleben wasn't like the other two Ws. My guy FW's liking for him testifies to that! He only got bitched about initially because the local military noblemen were totally jealous that he got promoted to head of the army over their heads.

Werner Schmidt: I don't think so. Watch me tear Granddad Wartensleben a new one while describing him thus to my readers: Wartensleben reccommended himself through the "galant courtier's life as a condottieri he'd lived" (Koch). He'd fought for and against the French, against the Turks and for the Venetians and finally ended up as leader of the army of Saxe-Gotha. Such a flexible and amoral mind ata the head of the (Prussian) army was for Wartenberg the ideal replacement of a stubborn straight-talker like Barfus.
Frank Göse: As for Wartenberg himself: agreed that he was corrupt. But no more so than the top guys at any Baroque court. Can we agree that contrary to what the gossips claimed and what since got repeated by people through the ages, he did not pimp out his wife as a mistress to F1?

Werner Schmidt: Most def. F1 never slept with her, and no, he didn't take her as a titular mistress, either. That woman was scum, though. After Wartenberg died, she plied her trade in Brussels and died a whore. You know how she and Wartenberg met? She was the daughter of a customs inspector, which legend made an innkeeper. Then she married a royal valet who brought her to Berlin, where she became Wartenberg's mistress. Then Danckelmann made Wartenberg marry her, which was the TRUE reason why Wartenberg hated Danckelmann and jointed the rest of the council who wanted to tumble him.

Frank Göse: Not so. I say these are legends. Sure, the woman loved splendor and power, which as the Pm's wife she had, but might I point out Sophie received her in Hannover? Would Sophie have done that if she'd thought La Wartenberg had been her son-in-law's mistress and the rival of her late beloved daughter?

Werner Schmidt: Sophie also received her own husband's mistress and those of her son and grandson, so that's not exactly a good argument.

Frank Göse: Still, her overall positive description of the Countess paints a more differentiated picture.

Werner Schmidt: Still a female Don Juan, though. Though she said that while her conquests were many, the King, much as she'd liked to, never was among them.

Frank Göse: Let's go back to the part where Figuelotte dies young, only in her early 30s, son FW married SD, and then F1 marries for the third time to secure the succession.

Werner Schmidt: we both agree this last marriage was a tragedy. The poor girl was evidently unstable from the get go. Also a fanatic Lutheran. She told F1 he would go to hell because only Lutherans, not Calvinists, went to heaven. And after the White Woman of the Hohenzollern incident, well, that was that. She died insane in Mecklenburg.



Frank Göse: RIP. Let's say something of grandson's two more famous accusations, to wit, that F1 while pumping money into courtly splendour and art didn't give any to his subjects suffering from the plague.

Werner Schmidt: Total slander and untrue. He provided 100 000 Taler, which are 20 Million Deutsche Marks in modern currency (that I don't use Euros tells you my book can't have been published for the first time in 2003), for the plague victims' families and rebuilding of Prussia. Grandson's claim that F1 oppressed the poor to feed the rich is also - well, rich. Look, F2, F1 had his luxury goods made in Brandenburg if at all possible, and thus encouraged the local economy, which took a hit at first when FW took over and immediately cut off all court orders. Also, someone who built his palaces with Silesian marble and brought three wars on Prussia is not in a position to talk about taking care of the poor, F2!

Frank Göse: With you except that we have to grant that the administration was in a terrible state when Wartenberg was toppled and FW needed a lot of work to make up for that. Also, he solved the problem of no more work for artisans, craftsmen, tailors, bakeries etc. by increasing the need for army supplies as we all now.

Werner Schmidt: Oh, and as for grandson F2 quipping that if only the priests had offered F1 more ceremonies, F1 wouldn't have remained a Calvinist but converted, that just shows you how he sacrificed truth for a quip, truly his grandmother's grandson in this. a) F1 would never have converted. The Pope, having succeeded in making August the Strong a Catholic as the prize for making him a king, did try, holding out the lure of a papal coronation, and F1 said never. He was sincere in his faith.

Frank Göse: So he was. Also, b) you can't beat the Catholics for ceremony, especially for coronations, just ask MT or Joseph. So what's this "if the priests had offered more ceremonies"? F1 knew all about those ceremonies and said no anyway. Grandson was just incapable of granting him a single virtue, even that of sincere religion.

Werner Schmidt: Should we say something about F1's relationship with FW? You do it, because I'm oddly silent on the subject. While you're going on to become an FW specialist.

Frank Göse: Err. Well. I don't say much. Because we don't have much material to judge it on. No famous arguments, unlike in any other generation of Hohenzollern. F1 left the arguing with teachers and the instructing of same to Sophie Charlotte. He worried about his son and was proud of him, but he was a distant Dad, though no more so than usual for a king and a prince. As FW got older, it became ever more blatant they did not enjoy the same things, and FW was drawn to people like Old Young Dessauer who could provide him with all the manly military stuff his father lacked, but there were no insults said about the father from the son or from the father about the sun. Basically, Crown Prince FW was at Wusterhausen living the country life most of the time. I do think he was more emotionally invested in his mother, for all that he believed in the patriarchy.

Werner Schmidt: I'm ending my book by saying that this lonely man who never found true love again after his first wife died, and who was ridiculed as a cripple all his life - "Humpback Fritz", the people called him - still managed to create a kingdom and solidify it at an age where Louis the supreme honcho of France just kept ruining his with his endless wars, August and Max Emmanuel, see above, and the Medici, let's not even go there. Long live Woobie F1!