1740 and All That

I first took notice of Jean Des Champs (also spelled Dechamps, or Deschamps in various sources, just to make our researching life easier) in the context of Bronisch's Manteuffel dissertation, where his fate in the Fritz/Manteuffel fallout gets quickly summarized here. It's mentioned that he wrote memoirs, and given Bronisch mentioned Des Champs getting stiffed and ridiculed, these sounded like potential sensational gossip, so when Mildred discovered they were avaiable at the Munich Stabi, I read them. Or to be more precise, I read the lengthy introduction and skimmed the main text, for alas, other than the English introduction, it's an edition in the original (French) language, edited and published by the Huguenot Society of GB and Ireland. However, the, there is the really long introduction which feels like an English summary of the memoirs themselves, complete with translated into English quotes from same. Said introduction being more of a lengthy summary than a foreword is really noticeable, since the introduction writer (and presumably translator), Uta Janssens-Knorsch, takes all of Des Champs' presentations of his life on faith, which can be hilarious when it comes to Manteuffel (called a "son of Apollo" and only present as a patron of the art, which means that Fritz kicking him out of the country for no reason at all is just incomprehensibly; Des Champs explanation why he himself correspondended with Seckendorff Jr the diary writer BUT NOT LIKE THAT and only an evil scheme made it look that way to Fritz, thus ruining his, Des Champs' reputation is also something to behold), but is a problem when it comes to Fredersdorf, because lo and behold, near their end Des Champs' Memoirs finally present us with a contemporary account of someone charging Fredersdorf with embezzlement (to wit, Des Champs, claiming Fredersdorf kept his, Des Champs, salary, and that of others, and Fritz just refuses making Fredersdorf's heirs pay said salary because he'd then have to pay everyone else's stuff that Fredersdorf embezzled as well). The introduction quotes both a letter from Des Champs to Fritz and statements from Abraham Michell (aka the the Swiss guy who worked as Prussia's sort of envoy in London instead of Peter Keith, if you recall) to Des Champs (via his brother) to that effect, but both the letter and the Michell statements are sourced from the Memoirs themselves, not from other archives. (I.e. Des Champs claims "I wrote" and "Michell told me", we don't have, it seems the original documents.) Still, we have to acknowledge now the claim does exist by a contemporary source. I'll discuss the context and reliability below.


But back to the beginning, as summarized in the English introduction.

( Jean Des Champs: Biographical pre-Fritz background )

Since Des Champs is now 29 and badly in need of a steady job, he accepts the post of steady employment, so he accepts when Fritz offers him the position of chaplain at Rheinsberg, which he starts in February 1737.

( The Rheinsberg Years, or: I DID NOT SPY FOR THE AUSTRIANS; THEY FRAMED ME! )


( The Berlin Years, or: How Frederick the Great got me to tutor his brothers, stiffed me of a salary and made fun of me through a play )

( My efforts to get my money from Fritz and Fredersdorf: The aftermath )

Like I said: I've only read the introduction. But it does provide us with a few questions.

( The Salon debates )

Gustav Volz' anthology "Gespräche" which is in our library contains Volz' combination of two French reports on Friedrich's' 1740 attempt at an incognito journey to France which ended prematurely in Straßburg/Strassbourg, that of the Marquis de Valfons, who was a captain in the local regiment, and that of the overall CEO Broglie's report as given on August 26th 1740, i.e. a day after it happened , for his superiors in Paris. A reminder on Broglie: not the one from the 7 Years War, but but this one, his father.

Volz is conscientious about his sources, so he tells us via footnote that the Marquis de Valfons' report is from "Souvenirs du marquis de Valfons", S. 50 ff, Paris 1860, while Boglie's report was printed in the "Archives de la Bastille, BD. XIII, S. 195 ff, Paris 1881.

Having read them now: worst incognito traveller ever! Also, no arrest, unless Broglie is being lying. The date: 23 - 25th August 1740.

( How to not travel under an alias if you don't want to be outed by the French )

felis then unearthed other reports on those Strassbourg/Straßburg days, including one from Manteuffel of all the people, which led to a lively salon debate, not least because we were curious who Le Diable's source among the travellers might have been.

( How fast can you send secret spy reports from Straßburg to Berlin anyway? )

This was not just an but the most famous, most expensive GDR tv production, and somehow I didn't watch it until this last week. The title is somewhat misleading, since it's All Saxony, (Nearly) All The Time, and Prussia only has two cameos (in episode 2) in the first four episodes, not becoming equally important in terms of location and character until the last two episodes (which are set early in the Seven Years War). The miniseries is loosely based on a a series of novels by a nineteenth century Polish author collectively referred as "the Saxon series". If he already took liberties with history, the show then added some. Something else to keep in mind: it was created in the 1980s. The first few decades, East Germany found dealing with its Hohenzollern past a bit tricky. On the one hand, imperial feudalism = BAD, obviously. On the other hand, by the 1980s, the GDR was in dire need of money, tourists were an income, and national pride was a thing again. And given the content of this miniseries, I also suspect someone in the production team said: "You know how they're all glued to the tv screen in the west, watching these decadent American shows where people have sex and scheme all the time? We can do that, too, with more nudity than the Yanks and way better fashion, and still justify it as national heritage!"

Keep this in mind as I give you the summary of the six episodes:

( Episode 1 + 2: Countess Cosel, or: Anne Boleyn in Saxony )

( Episodes 3 + 4: Brühl, or: The J.R. Ewing of the Rococo Age )

( Episodes 5 + 6: 7 Years War, or: In which Fritz becomes a main character )

And now for the screencaps:

( Fritzian Screenshots from the above )

As Mildred has pointed out, today is the anniversary of our antihero's death. It's also the anniversary of the salon's spark of ignition, and in celebration of that, I present icons made from the photos taken during my recent expection to Brandenburg. You're welcome to take whichever strikes your fancy:

Sanssouci



Rheinsberg




People - Fredersdorf, Lehndorff and AW's bust at Rheinsberg

By now, enough intriguing contradictory sources have turned up on the matter of Christian Friedrich Glasow, hussar, valet and possible spy/wannabe assassin, that it's worth a separate post collecting them all.

( Lehndorff: This Glasow must die! )

Then there's Alexander von Münchow, who was of interest to us mainly due to his controversial testimony regarding Katte's execution which he may or may not have witnessed as a child when his father was a key player at Küstrin, and who served for a while as page to Fritz years later.

( Münchow: With a tea spoon of poison )

Now, neither Lehndorff nor Münchow doubt Glasow was, in fact, guilty of what he's been accused of. Imagine, therefore, my intrigued surprise when I read the memoirs of Friedrich Adolf von Kalckreuth, as dictated to his son, translated into German (Kalckreuth had dictated in French), and printed also in Minerva (clearly the magazine for 19th century history lovers), and they turned out to contain a passionate defense of Glasow.

Credibility of witness: Kalckreuth met Heinrich shortly before the war, became his AD and favourite from 1758 onwards, and remained his favourite until he was ousted by Kaphengst in the mid 1760s. His last attempt to hold to his position involved making a pass at Heinrich's unfortunate wife. He then ended up in a couple of deadbeat assignments in the provinces (where Lehndorff reencounters him in the 1770s and can't help indulging in some Schadenfreude, more here), until Fritz dies and nephew FW2 gets on the throne, which is when Kalckreuth resumes his career and makes it to Field Marshal in the Napoleonic wars. Being dumped by Heinrich in favour of Kaphengst left him with an ongoing grudge and the tendency to claim that all of Heinrich's military success during the Seven-Years-War was really due to him, which historians have taken less than seriously (especially given that Kalckreuth hadn't been with Heinrich in the early war years and was not always present during the later events). However: whether or not Glasow was guilty is absolutely immaterial to Kalckreuth's reputation, he has no horse riding on this, and he was, though not as Heinrich's AD, present in the Dresden winter quarters of 1756/1757, and so it's absolutely worth noting that he thinks Glasow was completely innocent. Here's what Kalckreuth, in old age - just like Münchow - dictated to his son:

( Kalckreuth: Glasow was framed! )

Now, this version by itself is actually quite plausible. Anyone rising quickly in royal favour, which Glasow undoubtedly did, is bound to evoke jealousy and resentment among the rest of the staff. And if favourite sister Wihelmine having lunch with Maria Theresia in the last phase of the previous war caused spectacular royal displeasure in her brother, then a mere valet hanging out with the wife of Saxony's PM (whom Fritz despised and presented in the blackest colours in his later history of the 7 Years War) was bound to suffer severe consequences.

However, as stated before: Kalckreuth writes this decades after the fact. Turns out there's yet another source noting down the Glasow scandal, this one, like Lehndorff, right when it happened, but, unlike Lehndorff, not from far away Berlin but during the events itself in Dresden. It's none other than Kalckreuth's predecessor as Heinrich's AD, Victor Amadeus Henckel Graf von Donnersmarck. (If anyone reading this is a fan of the Oscar winning movie The Lives of Others, directed by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, yes, same family.) Credibility of witness: Henckel von Donnersmarck's war time diary from 1756 - 1758 is regarded an an important source on the early part of the 7 Years War. He's relentlessly critical of Frederick the Great, which earlier historians - to whom any criticism of the great national hero was suspect - blamed on his connection to Heinrich, but I haven't seen anyone calling him a liar for it. (Just prejudiced.) Henckel von Donnersmarck resented Kalckreuth which is why he ended up asking for a transfer once Kalckreuth also became Heinrich's AD. However, Henckel's (friendly - no biographer has described them as romantic) relationship with Heinrich survived this, and the war. When he died, Heinrich assumed responsibility for his widow and son. His grandson's memoirs are responsible for a couple of anecdotes about Heinrich in his last years of life, and Henckel himself is one of the 29 men honored by Heinrich on the Rheinsberg Obelisk.)

This same Victor Amadeus Henckel von Donnersmarck believes Glasow to be guilty as sin when noting down the sensational news:

( Henckel: Glasow did it! He only had himself to blame! )


So: what do we believe?

( The Salon debates )

gambitten added another key bit of evidence, directly from the Secret Prussian State Archive, here:

( Glasow: A Most Wanted Man )

Yet another take on the Glasow affair is offered by Friedrich Nicolai in his six volume collection of Frederician anecdotes, "Anekdoten von König Friedrich II. von Preußen, und von einigen Personen, die um ihn waren", which got published between 1788 and 1792:

( Glasow: A seduced youth corrupted by a ruthless coffee maker )


This ends the Nicolai version of the tale of Glasow (and Völker). I'll do a separate post on Nicolai one of these days, but suffice to say for the purpose of this matter that he usually names his sources, though not in this particular case, which is interesting. He just says they are "trustworthy". The other pro-Glasow source we have is Kalckreuth, but Kalckreuth blames Glasow's dismissed servant for wrongly accusing him and doesn't say anything about Völker/Wöllner at all, so I don't think Kalkreuth is Nicolai's source. (My other reason for doubting it is that Heinrich doesn't get mentioned once in six volumes of anecdotes, and I think if Nicolai had an in with Heinrich's former boyfriend AD, there's be some stories at least co-starring him.)

A more likely source is former Chamber Hussar Schöning, about whom more here, who is the named source of a somewhat similar version of the story as given in the anecdote collection by Anton Friedrich Büsching, "Charakter Friedrichs des zweyten, Königs von Preussen", which was published in 1788, and somewhat elaborated upon in Büsching's later "Zuverlässige Beiträge", which was published in 1790.

The (much briefer) tale of Glasow shows up right after Büsching's account of the tale of suicidal (and kicked) Kammerhussar Deesen, aka the other handsome hussar who committed suicide over Fritz (and since Fredersdorf had been dead for decades, he really can't have been the cause); you'll find the story here. Which is why Büsching starts with "another" in this version of the Glasow tale:

( Glasow and Völker: both guilty )

And then we have Manger in his history of the builders and architects of Potsdam, talking about the various valets and chamber hussars through which Fritz often interacted with said building folk, usually when he was too angry to talk with them directly. Manger joined the Potsdam Baukontor in 1753 in a lowly position; after the 7 Years War, he made Bauinspektor in 1763. So he might actually have known Glasow, at least from afar. His take:

( Guilt proven! Though he looked dashing in red )

As of July 2022, yet another take has come to our attention, through Gustav Volz's essay on the correspondence between August Wilhelm and Lehndorff ("Aus dem Briefwechsel des Prinzen von Preußen August Wilhelm mit dem Kammerherrn Graf Ernst Ahasverus Lehndorf (sic)", published 1905 in the "Masovia" magazine).

( AW: Other than treason and theft, he didn't do anything )

Gentle readers, we leave it up to you to decide whether Glasow was guilty or framed. If you want to know what happened to him: his father petitioned Fritz for his life, with the the petition in question reading like an eerie deja vu if you're familiar with the petitions Katte's father and grandfather wrote to Friedrich Wilhelm. Unlike his father, Fritz noted on the petition that whille "his son's crime was great, I have mitigated somewhat", and did not go for a death sentence. Glasow regardless died in prison in Spandau within that same year.

It's only taken a few months, but yours truly was finally able to identify the original sources for two particular Fredersdorf-related claims in various biographies.

Firstly, there's what we dubbed "The Matter of the Handsome Hussar". This first came to our attention in Wolfgang Burgdorf's biography "Friedrich der Große". Burgdorf, as if to make up for centuries of biographical no-homo'ing, is of "he was GAY GAY GAY AND THERE WAS NO HETEROSEX WITH ANYONE ANYWHERE" persuasion (this leads, for example, to the bewildering statement that Fritz was life long utterly platonic pen pals with the Countess Orzelska, which would be nice except none of us has seen a single letter in any collection anywhere), and often given to not providing any citation. So his declaration that "the King's love could be deadly" not just for Katte, but for "a handsome hussar named Girgorijj" who committed sucide after Fritz withdrew his favour was taken by us with a pinch of salt.

Then mildred_of_midgard came across the somewhat more reliable Tim Blanning making the following statement in his Frederick biography:

Only once did Fredersdorf appear to have lost his position, when ejected from Frederick’s tent while on campaign in favor of a handsome hussar. The mysterious suicide of his rival soon afterwards saw Fredersdorf back in Frederick’s favor.

Blanning provided a citation, to which, Peter-Michael Hahn, Friedrich II von Preußen., p. 62. I looked up said biography, and it did say what Blanning claims it did in as many words, but Hahn did not provide a citation as to where he had the story from. (Though Hahn is otherwise more given to provide footnotes than not.) So there we were, with a dead hussar, a potential temporary Fritz/Fredersdorf fallout with no date given, the insinuation that Fredersdorf might or might not have had anything to do with the death of said hussar, and no actual source. Until we came upon Gustav Volz, author and editor of many a Fritz-related book.

Gustav Volz, "Friedrich der Große im Spiegel seiner Zeitgenossen", volume 1, FINALLY turns out to have the original source of the "handsome husar", "the King's love could be deadly" "Fredersdorf jealous, soldier dead?" insinuations. It's on page 203. Context: part of a dispatch dated Hannover, March 9th, 1742, by one Baron August Wilhelm von Schicheldt, Secret Councillor to George II, Hannover department. In addition to writing a "hot or not?"profile of Fritz himself, he also profiles the entire court, politicians like Podewils (current Fritz minister, future envoy to Vienna and MT profiler), courtiers like Pöllnitz, relations like AW (who gets described as good natured but undereducated and not nearly the witty conversationalist or leader Big Bro is)...and finally he gets around to Fredersdorf. This report claims he's been enobled, which the books I've read so far said wasn't the case. Anyway, here's what the Baron says (drumroll...):

( Fredersdorf: Prime Suspect? )

The other Fredersdorf-related tale of uncertain origin we've been wondering about shows up in 19th century biographies like Preuss or Carlyle, but not so much in 20th century and later biographies, presumably because through later biographers, who had access to sources Preuss, Caryle et al did not, have dismissed it for the same reasons we did. This anecdote has Fredersdorf getting the permission from Fritz to marry Karoline Marie Elisabeth Daum in 1753 by pretending to be on death's door, and, being given the permission, marrying her within 24 hours to prevent Fritz from changing his mind. This is belied by, among other things, Lehndorff in his diaries mentioning the future Mrs. Fredersdorf as the future Mrs. Fredersdorf almost a year earlier; he also is informed of Fritz' wedding present for the bride. (December 15th 1752. Dinner with Frau von Grappendorf, a very charming lady who has a revolting husband; in his appearance, he is a monster, full of prejudices and rather ridiculous. I make the aquaintance of the Abbé de Prades, who had to leave France due to his preachings. I also see the fiancee of Fredersdorf; she has received 5000 Taler as a wedding present from the King.)

Unsurprisingly, the origin of the "24 hours" tale is a poet, to wit, Achim von Arnim. Reminder for non-Germans re: Achim von Arnim: grandson of Fredersdorf's widow on the maternal side, bff of Clemens Brentano, husband of Clemens' sister Bettina, both of whom are more famous in German literature than Achim. Who spent much of his childhood on the Zernikow estate. His mother had died shortly after his birth, his father didn't want to take care of him and his brother Karl Otto, and his grandmother, Karoline Maria Elisabeth Labes, widowed twice at this point (Fredersdorf was husband No.1, Johann Labes, also chamberlain to the King, was husband No.2, who died in 1776), literary bought the right the raise her grandkids from her son-in-law with 1.000 Taler and a contract saying as much. (Possibly to ensure he wouldn't suddenly change his mind again, the law favouring fathers.) This shows what an enterprising lady she was in her older years.

( Zernikow, Karoline Maria and Fredersdorf: quotes and pictures await )