January Meme: Favourite Hohenzollern Sibling Moments
felis wanted to know my favourite Hohenzollern sibling moments. There is a true embarassment of riches to choose from by now (has it been less than two years since I'd have been hard pressed to name a sibling of Frederick the Great other than his oldest sister Wilhelmine (and the-brother-who-also-was-gifted-and-gay-what-was-hie-called), let alone know anything about their personalities and interactions? Many a correspondence, lots of memoirs and biographies later...
So, picking and choosing just some of many, and trying for a balance between funny ones and angsty ones:
Friedrich and Wilhelmine:
Well, them ghostwriting letters to each other's dogs is a deserved classic. While this exchange was presumably mostly written to make each other smile, they really were in sync with their dog adoration - after the kind of childhood and youth they had, it's no wonder they went for emotional support animals - , and when the dogs they had written those letters for died years later, they could grieve in letters to each other without embarassment. So both Wilhelmine's letter about Folichon's death to Fritz and his letter about Biche's death to her are among my favourite moments for these two as well.
But of course I'm so there for the big drama as well, meaning both the passionate love declarations that in a way bookend their relationship, as they come in a particular intensity in the earliest preserved letters (when he was a prisoner in Küstrin) and in the ones from her last two years of life (when he was busy fighting the 7 Years War). Whether it's young Fritz asking his sister on the eve of his engagement to send him a ribbon she's worn at least fourteen days because he misses her so much or middle-aged Fritz, in between having nervous breakdowns or causing others to have them while also engaged in a four front war, going from suggesting a suicide pact to urging her to live for him, it's all catnip. As is, in another vein, the big three years long enstrangement crisis of the mid 1740s, culminating in her having lunch with his arch nemesis Maria Theresia and them finally having it out. If either of them had died then, I'd have hated it, but as they reconciled afterwards and went back to writing each other there-but-for-his-gay-orientation-go-they love letters, I'm seeing the funny and absurd side. Other than lunch-with-MT, my favourite detail is the stale of the Erlangen journalist, where Frederick the Great is upset because some journalist from tiny Erlangen which happens to belong at the time to the principality his sister had married into, Bayreuth, critisizes him in print, demands conquences, then, when Wilhelmine says she had no idea because she doesn't read German newspapers but sure, the guy will be arrested recalls he's supposed to be an enlightened monarch and friend to free speech so Wilhelmine's husband can let the journalist go, and Wilhelmine writes back she's glad Fritz so generous because the journalist actually couldn't be arrested, he's left the country. Meanwhile, the journalist in question, no fool he, then advertised his tiny paper with the fact Frederick the Great reads it, too.
Okay, one more of my favourite exchanges between Fritz and Wilhelmine, which goes somewhat paraphrased thusly:
W: Have just come across a book that really made me furious. The author says women are not capable of rational thought, only men are. So we've been put on a level with sheep.
F: Gotta agree with the author. You, dearest sis, are of course an exception and Not Like Other Girls, but then I don't consider you a woman. You are one of the first men of Europe.
W: Thanks but no thanks. I'm a woman. I don't want to be thought as an exception. (literal quote is "I don't want to be held apart from my sisters"). Maybe rethink your criteria?
F: *changes subject*
That's my girl. On to the other siblings.
August Wilhelm and siblings: while his fate forms the radioactive core of the Friedrich/Heinrich relationship, and is just relentless tragedy (which is something for when I truly want dark drama), I'm glad we know things about AW and how he related to his siblings beyond that. On the funny side, the aftermath of the battle of Soor having resulted in a considerable part of the luggage being gone, the fact that AW wryly writes to youngest brother Ferdinand that Friedrich and Heinrich now have to wear his shirts still cracks me up, and it is a favourite moment, but I also love that despite being stuck with a himbo reputation for ages, AW in his letters to his siblings comes across as anything but. The ones to sister Ulrike, now Queen in Sweden, being a case in point, and for so many other aspects - you can see him as the family shoulder to lean on in action as he tries to provide sympathy and practical (financial) help for her troubles, but you can also see he's not doing so by just telling her what she wants to hear, but tries to give good advice (without being patronizing about it, and since we have a Fritz letter on the same subject in direct comparison, it's very noticeable). And he's also pro constitutional and anti absolute monarchy (very much as opposed to Ulrike), which given his father and brother were/are micromanagingn control freaks isn't that surprising, but it's still a sympathetic trait that comes out as he is being a good brother and friend. So that letter of his to Ulrike where AW writes If I was a Swedish senator, I would give the King the power to do good, but I would also use the laws to limit his authority to stop him from committing injustices. I would wish he'd be the first servant of the state, the most useful man of the kingdom, and if he worked the hardest, then he would be rewarded accordingly is another favourite Hohenzollern sibling moment for me.
Sadly, the entirety of his correspondence with Heinrich is gone, but to me one of the most telling things about their relationship is that AW in 1744, when he's just become a father for the first time in his early 20s and writes a "my life so far" type of document for his new offspring to read one way, sums up the year 1730 by noting this was the year when brother Heinrich (age 4) moved into his (AW's) household so they now lived together. 1730, aka the year of the dramatic flight attempt by oldest brother Friedrich, the Katte execution and the Küstrin imprisonment. I never cease to marvel.
Amalie: other than the anecdote with which I'll conclude this post, my favourite Amalie related Hohenzollern sibling story is of the tragic kind: her desperate and ultimately hopeless long struggle to convince brother August Wilhelm to live when he wanted to die. They had been arguing repeatedly that spring, but it's telling he still entrusted her with his last will and that she was the sole family member (not his children, not the sister-in-law he had strong feelings for, not his wife) whom he told the truth about his state; and that she kept his confidence but kept trying to save hiim till the very end.
Heinrich
Before I get to the epic hateship (or hate/love ship) Heinrich/Friedrich, let me quote a relatively recent discovery which showcases Heinrich's emotion about the sole sibling younger than him, Ferdinand, beautifully. (Heinrich never seems to have gotten over the urge to protect Ferdinand, btw; in one of the last preserved Lehndorff diaries, from 1799, he's as much fussing about Ferdinand in the winter as Ferdinand's wife is, trying to make sure Ferdinand is wrapped in a warm shawl and all.) This letter, the first of Heinrich's that we have, was written when Heinrich was 16, Ferdinand was 12, and Heinrich, who'd become brother Friedrich's aide-de-camp in the second Silesian war, wrote home to "Quecke" (that's another favourite Hohenzollern sibling thing for me - Ferdinand having that nickname because as a toddler, he used to ask "Qu'est-ce que?" all the time) in a very Hohenzollern mixture of French and badly spelled German:
Pro Fuer
Ecrit moi, Du solst mir schreiben
Ce qu tu fais, was Du machst
Ce que tu dis, was Du sachst
et tu doit etre jolli dans la lettre
und Du solst ehrlich sein in Deinem
Brief, allors, je t'aimerai, So werde
ich Dich lieb haben
Henri
Heinrich
(Heinrich, I don't know about Rokoko French, but joli and ehrlich are two different things!)
On to Heinrich and Fritz. Talk about an embarassment of riches. But a selection I must make. The Marwitz Affair is definitely among the highlights for me, because that m/m/m triangle is just ridiculously soap operatic and over the top. (A friend of mine read the above linked story I wrote about it and his critique involved saying "too much gay operetta" - as a gay man, he got to say this - , to which I said, well, every letter therein was actually written by Friedrich to his fourteen years younger brother, setting the tone of their interaction for life, in a way.)
Then there's the AW tragedy, and the letter of doom which is solely not the worst condolence letter Fritz ever wrote because he wrote an even worse one to his wife about her brother's death, followed by Heinrich's icy replies and visit of the dying Wilhelmine in Bayreuth, where Fritz writing desperate "there is no love like the one between siblings who grew up together, like Wilhelmine and I, so PLEASE write to me she's not dying!" counters Heinrich's "Wilhemine: totally dying, and btw, her doctors think if she hears about AW, aka the sibling I grew up with and for whose death I totally blame you, she'll die even faster", but on the other hand, visiting Wilhemine must have had some kind of mellowing effect on him, because when then he encounters Friedrich in person for the first time after AW's death, in Dresden, he not only refrains from strangling him but must have been downright - something - because the next thing we hear is Fritz writing to thank Heinrich for giving him this day. (And to Amalie that he's seen Heinrich and it was a good meeting, they did not talk of "unfortunate things - you understand me".) This Dresden meeting, which Fritz had set up so they'd be alone together except in the beginning for Seydlitz, aka a man they both respected and who had a good relationship with them both at this point, is one of those "damn, Seydltiz, why couldn't you secretly stay and record for posterity what they said?" occasions.
However, if there's just one favourite sibling interaction which showcases how the emotional dynamic between them changed in the 7 Years War and became downright co-dependent while continuing to be spectacularly dysfunctional, it's that time immediately after Friedrich lost his first serious battle, that of Kolin, had a complete meltdown, stunned Heinrich's diary-writing AD Henckel von Donnersberg by hugging and kissing Heinrich plus telling him he couldn't deal and wanted to die, and wrapped it up by letting Heinrich organize the withdrawal from Prague. Heinrich having distinguished himself earlier at the battle of Prague already got him some fraternal approval, but I think this was the point where Friedrich started to rely on Heinrich not just to deliver the military goods (he had other generals who did that as well), but as someone who'd get him back on his feet emotionally as well. (In a very different way from Wilhelmine.)
(None of which meant he wouldn't also continue to be paranoid and ensure, post war, that Heinrich would never have a power base independent from him (or any kind of power whatsoever). Or that they couldn't continue to argue about ridiculous things (Heinrich not properly saluting him at the revue). Or to continue to interfere with Heinrich's boyfriends if he thought they got to expensive. These two managing to give each other the silent treatment for two years once yet write to each other twice a week, long philosophical letters till the end of Friedrich's life also allows us to see the development from sarcastic older brother Fritz in ye 1740s writing the Marwitz letters to Heinrich and then "we have the same coldness" to Old Fritz writing one of his most touching letters to Heinrich during the 1780s, which is another favourite sibling moment for, coming when Heinrich at last has made it to Paris: My dearest brother,
When you are in Paris, my dear brother, a multitude of materials appear under the pen; a prodigiously populated city, an industrious nation, are inexhaustible sources from which one draws a hundred pleasant, interesting and instructive things. In this I find myself very backward, and unable to return the favor to you. Shall I speak to you of my vines, which have produced very poor grapes, of our trees, which the cold strips of their leaves, of my garden, which the cold will force me to abandon shortly? What will I tell you about society? I live as a recluse like the monks of La Trappe, on which you have glanced; I work, I walk, and I don't see anyone. But I talk to the dead by reading their good works, which is better than invoking the manes and talking to the Sorbonne and its evil genius, a use that masonry has put in vogue, and that popular superstition adopted. I beg you, my dear brother, to familiarize yourself a little with the Gallic hermits, so that when you return you can live with your old brother, who no longer cares about the world except by a thread. What a fall to leave Paris, and find yourself in Potsdam, at the home of an old rambler who has already sent part of his big baggage to take the lead for the last trip he has left to make. There, you saw busts, you were presented with operas, you heard famous academicians declaim; here, you will see an old cacochym body, whose memory is almost lost, who will annoy you with used words and the nonsense of his gossip. But bear in mind, however, that this old man loves you more than all the fine esprits in Paris do....
To end on a less sad and more hilarious (if still spectacularly dysfunctional ) note, my absolutely favourite multiple Hohenzollern siblings moment is of course what happened when Ulrike made her visit to Prussia in the early 1770s, because you can't make these people up:
Ulrike: *arrives with one of her daughters, gets state visit reception in Potsdam; her sister Charlotte comes from Braunschweig, which means all three of the surviving Hohenzollern sisters as well as all surviving brothers are together at the same place at the same time*
Ulrike: Boys, I've just got a wonderful idea! Why don't we make a family trip to darling old Wusterhausen, where dear old Dad used to spend the summer holidays with us! I missed that place so much in Sweden, I can't tell you.
Fritz: You mean the house of horrors where I spent some of the worst times of my life, only made bearable by Wihelmine WHO IS NO LONGER THERE! Nope. Not coming.
Heinrich: Come on. "We will remember every corner where we were scolded and sometimes hit. But even the sufferings one remembers from one's childhood cause joy in one's advanced years."
Fritz: To you, maybe. NOT COMING.
Heinrich: Have it your way. Girls, Ferdinand, Pöllnitiz, off we go.
Hohenzollern Sisters: Wow. That place brings memories. Dad was - well. But you know, Mom was worse.
Hohenzollern Brothers: WTF? Dad was way worse than Mom!
Family quarrel: *ensues*
(No really, they have a giant sibling face off about which of their parents was worse. In the end, Ulrike and Charlotte as well as Ferdinand give up, whereas Heinrich and Amalie still keep going, with Heinrich insisting FW was worst and Amalie insisting SD was worst until they swear never to talk to each other again.) (They kept it up for about two years, too. Seems that was Heinrich's record of giving a sibling the silent treatment.)
Fritz: Had a good time in dear old Wusterhausen, did we?
Heinrich: Shut up.
(I'm proud of the emojji version as well)
The other days This entry was originally posted at https://selenak.dreamwidth.org/1428303.html. Comment there or here, as you wish.