Since the last round of textual criticism was posted, several new developments have turned up. In this post, I'm going to report on these developments and how they've affected the conclusions of the previous posts. I will stop short of doing a polished write-up of each new source in this post, especially since producing the necessary evidence for similarities would involve adding new excerpts from existing sources.
A major discovery was the fact that the edition of Thiébault we had been working for was an 1860 edition that was condensed from 5 volumes to 2, and rewritten significantly by the editor, one Jean-François Barrière.
The plagiarism of Wilhelmine in the Katte passage was done not by Thiébault, but by Barrière. It makes sense, because the 1804 Thiébault version is even less accurate, but the failure to signal this clearly is intellectually dishonest!
Katte is "M. le baron de Catt." He doesn't leave in time to avoid arrest because he wants to say his farewells.
Fritz is being held prisoner in the "palace of the prince of Prussia," whatever that means.
FW read all the letters (presumably that Katte had), which implicated Wilhelmine, so he beat her with his cane and tried to throw her out the window, where she was only saved from falling to the pavement by her mother grabbing her.
After trying several times to get Fritz condemned by his ministers, then a council of war (court martial?), then another council of war with more pliable members, FW has Fritz conveyed to Küstrin, where Katte was being held.
Katte is the only son of Field-Marshal Katte (note that he only became a field-marshal after Fritz became king).
Katte is executed on a scaffold that's been erected in front of Fritz's cell, on the level of the window. Thiébault has Fritz's head being forcibly held at the window to make him watch. Thiébault has Fritz crying out "mon ami!" and doesn't report Katte saying anything. Then Fritz faints. It's a long time before Fritz wakes up, and then he's only able to shed tears for Katte.
He's a very unreliable source in general. In addition to the mistakes I'll enumerate below, and in addition to the fact that more modern authors comment on his unreliability, and in addition to the fact that he's writing 75 years after events that happened before he was born, he says that Fritz never rewarded the Katte family after becoming king, that only his brother Heinrich would ever employ them, and that the only reward they got from him was not being persecuted. We have documentary evidence as well as contemporary accounts to the contrary.
Katte not leaving in time because he lingered saying his farewells is unique to this source, of those I've seen.
Thiébault has Fritz being taken to the prison where Katte was being held, not vice versa. This is a mistake, and is unique to him as far as I've seen.
FW throwing Wilhelmine out the window and her being grabbed by her mother just in time is in Voltaire, and nowhere else that I know of. No modern source I've read believes it.
FW changing the members of the court martial to get a different verdict is a garbled version of FW forcing the same members to meet again and telling them he wanted a different verdict.
Katte being the only son of Field-Marshal Katte is in Voltaire, and nowhere else that I know of. Even Katte's last letter to his father, which was published by 1731, reminds him that he has other sons.
The scaffold is in Voltaire, Wilhelmine, and Pöllnitz. The language most closely follows Pöllnitz:
Thiébault: On dressa pour lui un échafaud sur la place, devant l'appartement de Frédéric, et au niveau de sa fenêtre.
Pöllnitz: On avoit élevé un échafaud dans la place de la citadelle au niveau de la chambre du prince royal
Voltaire: sur un échafaud dressé immédiatement sous sa croisée
Similarly, concerning the pleas of Katte and his family for a pardon, Pöllnitz has "mais le roi demeurra inflexible" and Thiébault has "et Guillaume fut inexorable," which suggests to me that Pöllnitz may be one of Thiébault's sources.
Fritz's head being forcibly held is in Voltaire but not Pöllnitz.
The final exchange with Katte is very short. Fritz cries, "Mon ami!" and Katte says nothing. Most sources report Fritz begging forgiveness, and Katte saying there was nothing to forgive. The ones that don't are Voltaire, who reports no dialogue at all, and Catt, who has Fritz calling, "Ah, Katte!" and nothing else.
Fritz fainting is in all sources that I've seen, with the exception of Münchow, who has him about to faint and being made to sit down and drinks some spirits.
Fritz being in great distress when he wakes up, and only able to grieve, is in Pöllnitz and Wilhelmine, and this version is most similar to Pöllnitz.
No mention of the body being visible from the window, which is in Pöllnitz.
We then turned up a Katte passage in the memoirs of Andrew Mitchell.
Andrew Mitchell was the British envoy to Prussia during the Seven Years' War. He joined Fritz in the field and was on quite friendly terms with him. His memoirs, consisting of private letters, dispatches, and a journal he kept at the time, were published in 1850.![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
selenak judges him to be very reliable in what he reports, and the editor likewise reliable about not meddling without signalling.
It's a very brief account, and contains only the following two sentences pertaining to Catt:
[Katt] might have made his escape and saved himself, the Danish minister having given him notice, but he loitered, he [Fritz] believed, on account of some girl he was fond of.
That during his imprisonment at [Custrin] he [Fritz] had been treated in the harshest manner; brought to the window to see [Katt] beheaded; that he fainted away.
With Catt's credibility in shreds (see below), it's extremely interesting that Mitchell is now our sole reliable source to tell us that Fritz talked to him about Katte. What it means is that Fritz is now confirmed with high confidence to have talked to people, and in fact people he was merely good friends with and didn't love passionately (like, say, Wilhelmine), about Katte's failure to escape and about his experience witnessing Katte's execution.
As noted, every account has Fritz fainting, with the one, non-eyewitness account of him almost fainting, and we now have Fritz confirming that he fainted. We also now have a horse's mouth account saying that he had been brought, evidently not of his own free will, to see Katte beheaded. That is a critical point, because it implies that Fritz believed that he was going to be able to see the execution from where he was.
Unfortunately, very little detail is supplied, but it is absolutely indispensable to know that other people may have gotten their accounts from Fritz, and that he didn't go total radio silence on the subject of Katte for the rest of his life.
We then turned up an anonymous pamphlet that was published shortly after Katte's execution.
It's titled "True story of the dreadful execution of Lieutenant von Katte, executed by the sword." It was published in 1731 in Cologne, whichselenak tells me was a hotbed of resentment against Prussians, and thus anything that portrayed FW as a tyrant was going to be eaten right up.
It has a two-page summary of events, and then letters written by Katte after receiving his death sentence. One to the King, asking for pardon, one to his stepmother, one to his grandfather, and one to his father.
It's got yet another variant on Katte's last words! This is the only one to mention FW that I've ever seen.
Mein gnädigster Cron-prinz sie haben nicht Ursach mich um Verzeihung zu bitten, wenn ich zehen Leben zu verliehren hätte, so wollte ich gern darum geben, wann nur Eu. Königliche Hoheit mit Dero Herrn Vater dem König dadurch könten versöhn et werden.
My most gracious Crown Prince, you have nothing to ask me for forgiveness for; if I had ten lives to lose, I would gladly give them up, if only Your Royal Highness could be reconciled with your Lord Father the King.
selenak's summary: In this version, Fritz learns Katte will be executed at 5 am, the execution itself doesn‘t take place until 10 am. He‘s informed by „two captains“ who also tell him they‘re ordered to force him to watch and will have to drag him to the window if he can‘t go on his own. He does faint after, not before the beheading. Katte keeps eye contact with him right until death. He‘s calm and undresses himself (i.e. removes his shirt), and, as described by Fontane, who quotes Major v. S on this, binds his own eyes via the sleeping cap. Before he does that, he makes one last hand kiss gesture towards Fritz. (Pamphlet says Hand-Fuß, not „Hand-Kuß“, but I think that‘s simply a letter misprint, because a foot instead of a kiss makes no sense here.) Fritz faints as soon as the head rolls and is no more seen by anyone. Katte‘s body lies there until 2 pm.
selenak's thoughts: Thoughts: there are enough accurate elements here - sand, not scaffold, Katte putting the cap over his eyes, the body lying until 2 pm, as specified by FW‘s orders, which the pamphleteer couldn‘t have known, and of course the big one, accurate letters - that I think there‘s an eyewitness report involved. The divergences - the hour of execution, Fritz watching and fainting after, not before, Katte keeping eye contact - can be simply yellow press need for even more drama. Because these kind of pamphlets are the 18th century equivalent of the Daily Mail/Bildzeitung in Germany/ Whatever rag preceded the existence of Fox TV in the US). The more tearjerking, the better.
Now, FW mention in Katte‘s reply - yes, I do think this is for making FW look even worse. Though there is one alternate explanation, if the whole thing (the pamphlet) is intended as a moral lesson for disobedient sons to lead a more Christian life. But I think in that case, it would have ended on the Crown Prince praying with Pater Müller. That Fritz post fainting „isn‘t seen or heard of“ anymore is one of those details that make me believe someone did get an eyewitness account and then proceeded to juice it up. Pamphlets aren‘t meant for historians but for sensational gossip mongers paying for them, after all!
mildred_of_midgard's comments:
Katte keeps eye contact with him right until death.
On the one hand, this is obviously something anyone in the history of ever would supply to spice up the narrative, but, on the other, if we trust the sources that say that Fritz couldn't see over the ones that say he could, it's possible that what really happened was that Katte kept looking in the direction of the Schloss where Fritz was.
Also, I agree the pamphlet is based largely off an eyewitness report, and if you consider that there were 150 eyewitnesses from the garrison, plus a handful of others, the source is most likely one or more of them. And as I said in another comment, since all contemporaries agree that Fritz could see the execution from where he was, it must not have been at all obvious to them that he couldn't. If nothing else, even if they can tell that Fritz's room isn't visible, they can't be certain that Fritz hasn't been moved to a room with a better view. So if Katte was staring at the Schloss or Weisskopf until the end, everyone outside is going to assume that Fritz is looking back.
And thus FW gets a report that Fritz *totally* watched, and fainted afterwards (I figured that's what Münchow/Schack/Lepel told him, and it's nice to see a contemporary account that says exactly that!).
But by far the most earth-shattering discovery has been just how unreliable Catt is. He is basically a historical novelist. You can read a detailed account of the evidence here. In sum, Catt is unreliable in three main ways:
- Taking anecdotes he read in books, or heard from other people, and putting them in Fritz's mouth.
- Changing the dates on which he had conversations with Fritz, and combining unrelated conversations.
- Rewriting entire episodes to make himself look better, even if it makes Fritz look worse.
It's entirely possible that twenty-years' worth of conversations with Fritz are packed into this memoir supposedly covering the first two years.
Below the cut, a dissection of the passage in which Fritz supposedly tells Catt about his escape attempt, imprisonment, and Katte's execution. To make a long story short, it purports to be a single conversation, but is really a composite of conversations that took place on different days, including conversations that weren't with Fritz.
So, a long time ago, when we were all younger and much more innocent, in the salad days of our fandom, I commented with surprise on how the Katte conversation went, Catt's failure to say anything at all, and the abrupt transition to talking about the war. We agreed that it might have been tricky to know what to say, and that Fritz might have signaled that he didn't want to discuss it and then moved on to less painful topics.
Well! Now having looked at the evidence more closely, I still don't know whether Fritz told him about Katte or Catt's recounting what he heard elsewhere, but I can tell you in much better detail what's going on in this so-called conversation.
Long story short: Catt is stitching together thematically related but chronologically disparate episodes to make one intellectually dishonest conversation with Fritz. Behold.
It starts with Fritz's dream about being taken to Magdeburg for not loving his father enough. Aside from the fact that the diary has "his sisters" and the memoirs makes it the more moving "sister of Bayreuth," the diary records this dream in January 1760. The memoirs place it in April 1758!
Recurring dream? Sure, but given the vast numbers of other disparate things he's going to weave into this conversation, I don't buy it. Especially since it's conveniently one month after he starts working for Fritz. This may, by the way, be as much about front-loading the most exciting parts of his memoirs as much as by making him appear the immediate confidant.
Now Fritz talks about how great Dad was as a king, and how morally upstanding, but wow that parenting. /o\ Especially the part where he didn't want Fritz to learn Latin. Well, not learning Latin is in the diary...from July 16, 1758. Without the exciting detail of hiding under the table, although given it's FW, I totally buy it.
Then Fritz says he was raised as if to be a theologian, the way he wasn't supposed to read anything except religious material. The diary has this in June, 1759.
Does Fritz comment on this more than once? I'm sure he does. Does he work *all* these topics into this one April 1758 conversation? No way.
Now we come to the Katte episode, which we have no known written source for, unless it's possibly Voltaire. It could be Fritz. But I doubt it's from the period of the diary if so.
Then that episode about Sydow and the deserting soldier, which according to the diary, Catt learns around camp in July 1759, when he's left with Heinrich after Fritz heads off to get his butt kicked at Kunersdorf. But now it's in Fritz's mouth.
Funnily enough, that one, which we know he heard from a non-Fritz source, is the only part of this monologue in which Catt manages to interject a word sideways. Normally there's more back-and-forth, where Catt gets to say things.
I am 100% sure he is just pasting a bunch of separate accounts together, at least two of which are not from Fritz, and he never polished it, and that's why this is a monologue instead of a conversation.
Then we get the story about the younger siblings hiding under the table, which as we know, Catt also learned in 1759 from someone in Heinrich's camp, not from Fritz.
Then Fritz opens up the archives after becoming king. Haven't found a source for this.
And then this amazing segue, non sequitur to surpass all non sequiturs, happens:
"On coming to the throne, I was curious to see all that had been done during my detention at Küstrin. I sent for the minutes of the deliberations concerning me and for all the documents in this strange case. I read them carefully, and extracted a few sheets, so that they might not be speaking witnesses for future centuries of the barbarities of an unheard-of conduct towards me. After having torn up these atrocious and sanguinary pages, I had the rest carefully sealed and placed in the archives of the cabinet.
"To continue your brief military course, you should know that I made my plan for the campaign at Breslau. I began it by the taking of Schweidnitz, and I shall march into Moravia with my army, which consists of 65 battalions and of 118 squadrons. I shall besiege Olmütz, and, having taken that town, I will then tell you where I shall lead you. General Fouqué is following me with the supply column, the heavy artillery, munitions and everything necessary for a siege ; and the corps he commands is intended for that purpose."
Honest to god, that reads like Catt meant to fix it later and never did. In fact, all the separate anecdotes read like that, with Fritz jumping from topic to topic without a pause, except at least the topics are thematically related so you don't notice as much. Catt's seams are showing, and it reads very much like a rough draft of raw material that he was planning to rework. [personal profile] cahn, if it's not obvious just how much whiplash is in that transition, he's jumping from 1740 to the campaigns of the present day, 1756-1758.
Inescapable conclusion: this conversation did nooooot happen like that.
So here's my current thinking on the subject.
Thanks to a 1737 letter to Grumbkow, we know that Fritz talked about Katte after his death, at least in brief. (Evidence for this is extremely thin on the ground and took us a long time to turn up, once we realized Catt no longer counted as evidence.) Thanks to Mitchell, we know that Fritz talked about Katte's execution. Thanks to Catt's diary, we know that Fritz talked about his imprisonment at Küstrin and childhood with Catt in the first two years of knowing him. After twenty-four years as Fritz's reader, it wouldn't be impossible if Catt had never heard about Katte from Fritz, but it would be surprising.
Unfortunately, due to Catt's tendency to flesh out his narrative from other sources, and due to the extreme brevity of Mitchell's account, we don't know how much of the account Catt puts in Fritz's mouth comes from Fritz and how much from other sources.
It's difficult to know how much to make of the similarities between Catt and Voltaire. They could be due to both authors getting their account orally from Fritz. Or, Catt could be ripping off Voltaire and fleshing him out. Mitchell makes it more likely that Catt heard an account from Fritz. But the following passages make it likely that Catt knew and had no problem plagiarizing, consciously or unconsciously, Voltaire's memoirs:
Voltaire
Il était dans sa nature de faire toujours tout le contraire de ce qu'il disait de ce qu'il ecrivait, non par dissimulation, mais parce qu'il écrivait & parlait avec une espèce d'enthousiasme, & agissait ensuite avec un autre.
But it was constitutional with him to do the direct Contrary of what he said or writ; not from dissimulation; but because he spoke and writ with one kind of enthusiasm, and afterwards acted with another.
Catt
C'est que parfois on parlait avec une espèce d'enthousiasme et qu'on agissait ensuite avec un autre bien contraire au premier... ces disparates étaient plutôt la suite de cet enthousiasme que d'un manque de franchise.
Sometimes the King spoke with a kind of enthusiasm, and acted afterwards with an enthusiasm very different from the first...These discrepancies were rather the consequence of this enthusiasm than of a lack of sincerity.
So it's still uncertain to me, from external and textual evidence, whether Catt got his account from Fritz or not. I will revisit this question below in terms of content.
Meanwhile, if Fritz talked about Katte with Mitchell after knowing him for a year, it would be surprising if he had never talked about him with Wilhelmine, who knew him at the time and who was his primary confidant as long as she lived (possibly excepting Fredersdorf). The only reason he might not have confided in her about what happened would have been that she was married by the time she saw him again, and then she lived far away. But we know that they smuggled letters to each other while he was imprisoned, and that they had to be burned immediately. I consider it quite likely that Katte's execution was one of those subjects. Alternatively, when they met in person after Fritz's release, he may have confided in her orally.
After evaluating all the sources I currently have access to, I've found one really important distinction emerging: inside POV vs. outside POV. On the morning of November 6, 1730, everyone present at the execution was either inside the cell where Fritz was being held, or outside where Katte was being executed. People inside had very limited information on what was taking place outside, and vice versa.
Our sources with the clearest outside perspective are Major Schack, Besser, Münchow fils, and the 1731 pamphlet.
Our sources with the clearest inside perspective are Catt, Voltaire, and to a more limited extent due to his brevity, Mitchell.
Wilhelmine, Pöllnitz, and Thiébault present both perspectives.
The most interesting thing is that the outsider perspectives tend to match each other, and tend to match very closely FW's letter to Lepel giving specific instructions, such as leaving Katte's body where it fell until 2 pm, when it was carried off by respectable townspeople for burial. The outsider eyewitness reports also agree with each other, for the most part. When they diverge, it's very interesting and worthy of detailed analysis.
The other major distinction, besides inside/outside POV, that emerges is: what details are likely to be supplied or assumed by tellers in the absence of knowledge, and what details are not? And there, I think it's most likely that for insignificant details, something familiar will be filled in, and for significant details, something exciting or interesting, that makes a good story, will be filled in.
For example, if we had a tradition of a scaffold and a tradition of a sand heap as the platform for Katte's execution, we would, in the absence of other data, be more likely to think that the sand heap was real and the scaffold supplied in the absence of knowledge, since scaffolds are very common for executions, especially the public executions that will come to mind when people think of executions they're familiar with. The fact that in our case, it is the eyewitnesses who independently agree on the sand heap just reinforces this.
Furthermore, if we have accounts that Fritz could see the execution and accounts that he couldn't, we'd have to wonder if maybe the former was the result of making the story more dramatic. When we know that all the most sensationalist accounts agree that he could see it, and that all early accounts are agreed on it, and the contrary only started to emerge much later, from one eyewitness and from someone examining the structure of Küstrin in a scholarly manner, we are inclined to conclude that the version according to which he could see it spread like wildfire, and the more boring "he couldn't," is more likely to be the truth.
Likewise, it's more dramatic if Fritz fainted after watching than if he fainted before. It doesn't surprise me at all that most accounts don't specify, and that the 1731 sensationalist pamphlet has him fainting after, and that only a few, later, accounts say that he fainted before.
Furthermore, since Fritz was required to watch, the official narrative from anyone involved in sparing him from being able to see the execution site, or anyone who witnessed him fainting before the execution happened, will be that he could see the execution site and that he fainted afterwards.
Most interestingly, the only two accounts that explicitly have him fainting before are Wilhelmine, and Catt. Since the officials in the room have every incentive to lie while FW is alive, and since no one outside can tell, the only one likely to talk about him fainting beforehand is Fritz. And, as we've seen, Fritz might very well be a source for both of them.
The one account that has him not fainting, or being able to witness the execution, is Münchow fils, suggesting that his father, who was present in the room, revised his story after FW's death. But it's important that he didn't revise it to have Fritz fainting before the execution, or at least that his son didn't remember it that way fifty years later. He certainly didn't have Fritz being prevented from seeing the execution by fainting, because he believed that the execution site wasn't visible from the window.
And because Fritz is likely the only source for fainting before the execution, and even more likely to be the only source for him being prevented from seeing the execution by his loss of consciousness just in time, and because that is extremely unlikely to be made up naturally by someone trying to tell a good story, it's extremely likely that Fritz is the source for both Catt and Wilhelmine. Catt, as we know, did not have access to Wilhelmine's memoirs, and this detail isn't in Pöllnitz.
There is also one other detail that is common to Wilhelmine, Fritz, and Voltaire: that Fritz believed he was going to be executed before he realized it was Katte. According to Wilhelmine, who believes the execution site was visible from the window, it was when Fritz saw the scaffold going up. According to Catt and Voltaire, it was when an old officer accompanied by several/four grenadiers entered the room, weeping.
Now, this detail is sensationalist enough that it might have been made up. It might have been available on the grapevine, where Wilhelmine incorporated it into her belief about scaffolds and visible execution sites, and we know that Catt might be copying from Voltaire, who might have gotten it from the grapevine, or made it up. (Voltaire's memoirs are not noted for their fidelity to historical accuracy--he has FW present at the execution, for example.)
But the single most significant thing Catt and Voltaire have in common is a POV from inside the room. If either of them was operating from the grapevine, and in particular if Catt was fleshing out what he knew with detail from other sources, you would expect some kind of detail of what was going on outside, even if it was wrong, such as Fritz being able to see the body through the window when he wakes up. Instead, both stick strictly to Fritz's POV, even inaccurately. And the fact that Catt and Wilhelmine share the fact that Fritz believed that he was going to be executed, but in wildly different ways, and the fact that Catt's account ends with Fritz losing consciousness and displays no awareness of anything happening outside the window except for Katte's final farewell, make me think that Catt's main or even only source is Fritz, and that both Catt and Wilhelmine heard a story from Fritz.
Arguments from the absence of evidence are always perilous, but there are also some specific details missing from the accounts that probably came from Fritz, that make sense if they did come from Fritz:
- No body visible through his window afterward.
- No sand heap, circle of 150 men, or other sign of impending execution through his window beforehand.
- No final dialogue with Katte. At best, him calling "Mon ami" or "Ah, Katte," but no response from Katte.
The absence of any signs of a planned execution could be explained if Fritz simply wasn't looking through the window beforehand, but we know he was looking through the window to say goodbye to Katte, and he still doesn't report seeing anything.
FW ordered the body left out seven hours, multiple eyewitnesses say it was (even if covered up with a cloth), non-eyewitnesses who think the body was visible from Fritz's window report him seeing it. Fritz, who says he defeated having to watch the execution by fainting, would be very likely to comment on seeing it when he woke up. He says nothing.
These two things taken together, reinforce, even if weakly, the case for the execution site not being visible from Fritz's window.
As for the final dialogue, which is reported in several variants from the outsider perspective, not one source with an insider perspective gives it. Wilhelmine has one, but she is clearly pulling together as many sources as she can, to get every possible detail of the execution. If the insider perspective is Fritz's, it's quite likely that this wasn't something he could bear to say out loud.
The letter to Grumbkow says Fritz offered his life for Katte's, not once but a thousand times, but we know from contemporary documentary evidence (Seckendorff and the like) that Fritz was offering it back in August and September. I'm not sure we have confirmation of Wilhelmine's account that Fritz was offering it, or his crown, on the morning of November 9, 1730. He may or may not have.
Finally, there is one other significant but reconcilable difference in the insider POV: who informed Fritz of his friend's impending execution? According to the pamphlet, two captains. According to Wilhelmine, Lepel and Münchow. According to Münchow fils, Lepel and Münchow. But according to Catt and Voltaire, "an old officer and four/several grenadiers."
So either Voltaire is making it up and Catt is copying him, which as described, I think is unlikely, or else there's this possible reconciliation: Münchow and Lepel are the two men of rank that are considered worth mentioning, plus several minor officers there to wrangle the reluctant prince to the window if necessary. Lepel, 73 years old, is most likely the one who breaks the news to Fritz. He is, after all, the one who has received the letter from FW ordering all the details of the execution. Münchow (age 59) is present in the room, but Fritz is too busy freaking out at the time to remember all the details three decades later, or possibly just doesn't consider the presence of another officer important enough to be worth reporting, when there are much bigger matters to talk about, like the part where his boyfriend is about to die.
And now, for my tentative conclusions on what happened and who said what when.
FW definitely orders Lepel to make Fritz watch.
Presumably for reasons of compassion, Lepel and Münchow agree to stop just short of holding the execution where Fritz can see. In order to achieve plausible deniability for themselves, they do everything they can short of holding the execution in his line of view.
1) They position the execution site very close to his window.
2) They tell Fritz he's going to have to watch.
3) They have him dragged to the window when it's time.
4) They have Katte marched by his window.
Combining all those points, it wouldn't have been difficult to write a report afterward that conveyed to FW the impression that Fritz watched the execution, nor to convince everyone who was present that he was watching.
Having made these plans, they come to Fritz's room, crying. He believes that this means he's going to die. Lepel breaks the news to him, and has have the accompanying grenadiers drag Fritz to the window.
While Fritz is being held there, Katte is marched past. Fritz begs for his forgiveness, and Katte replies there's nothing to forgive. Fritz thrusts his arm out the window (possibly to blow a kiss).
Fritz faints. Katte is marched to the execution site, out of Fritz's view. He stands in a circle of 150 men while the sentence is read. He may gaze the whole time in the direction of the building where Fritz is being held. He refuses a blindfold, takes off his wig, pulls a cap over his eyes, kneels in the sand. His head is removed with one stroke.
None of the 150 men can tell that Fritz can't see from where he is.
Katte's body is covered with a black cloth, then left there until 2 pm, when the townspeople come to bury him, per FW's orders.
Meanwhile, Fritz is unconscious. Word spreads at Küstrin that he has fainted. Perhaps this happens when a doctor is sent for. When Fritz wakes, he can't see a body or any signs of an execution site, and he assumes it's all been removed. He spends the rest of his life believing that the only reason he didn't watch was that he fainted.
The official report from Lepel and co. to FW goes out stating that Fritz watched and was so impressed that he fainted afterwards. Eyewitnesses report that he watched.
The pamphlet, from the perspective of someone watching the execution, believes that Fritz watched, and that he fainted after seeing the head roll.
Fritz somehow, perhaps through a smuggled letter, conveys to Wilhelmine that he thought he was going to be executed, that he was dragged to the window, that he saw Katte go by, and that he fainted before he could see the execution. He mentions nothing about the execution site or any body, because he never saw either.
Wilhelmine writes her memoirs on the basis of a long-since destroyed letter, a memory of a conversation many years ago, or both. She is not on speaking terms with Fritz at the time, she doesn't have access to the archives, and she can't let on that she's writing memoirs. She compiles as many accounts of events as she can and tries to make a coherent and exciting narrative out of them. Her perspective on what was happening outside the room is very inaccurate, and it informs her thinking on what was happening inside the room.
Pöllnitz, whom we know was in Bayreuth in 1744, when she was writing her memoirs, sits down and talks to her about what happened. They agree on an account and both render it in their respective memoirs, with something like 90% agreement on detail and overlap in wording, but not so much that I have reason to believe one was reading the draft of the other. She doesn't let on to him that she's writing memoirs (otherwise it would have become public knowledge, thanks to the notoriously talkative Pöllnitz).
In the 1750s, Fritz gives Voltaire a probably abbreviated account of what he told Wilhelmine. He also gives Mitchell an account in 1757. It's unclear how much Mitchell is summarizing or reporting everything he was told, but he writes down what he knows in 1757. Voltaire's memoirs aren't published until 1784, posthumously.
At some point after Catt's diary ends, Fritz also tells this story to Catt. It's unknown when Catt composed his memoirs or how late in the century he was still editing it, but at some point, he hears about Katte. In his memoirs, he assigns that anecdote to April 1758, in a conversation that also contains a lot of other stories that he's heard at various times from various people, including but not limited to Fritz.
Fritz may or may not tell this story to Thiébault during the 1760s or 70s. Thiébault almost certainly refers to Pöllnitz, published 1791, when writing his memoirs to be published in 1804, and quite likely to Voltaire, published in 1784.
At some point in the 1740s, Münchow the father tells his family about the Katte execution, with reference to the fact that Fritz did *not* have to watch. He also says that he and Lepel were in the room at the time, and they made him sit down and drink something before he fainted.
In the 1790s, the son of Münchow, writes the first account that we know of that states that Fritz was not in a position to watch. Until now, everyone has either said that he did watch it, or that he fainted just in time to avoid seeing it. Münchow was a child at the time, an eyewitness, and represents the outsider perspective, with a secondhand knowledge of the insider perspective through his father. He does not know about FW's order to make Fritz watch and concludes that there was none, because he can't imagine Lepel would engage in civil disobedience like that. He is probably our most reliable source on what the layout of Küstrin was like in the 1730s, since he lived there.
In 1804, Thiébault's memoirs are published.
In 1810, Wilhelmine's memoirs are published.
In 1860, Thiébault's memoirs are condensed and rewritten by someone else after his death, massively plagiarizing the Katte execution scene from Wilhelmine's memoirs.
In the 1860s, Theodor Hoffbauer publishes an investigation of two questions: Where was Katte executed? Did Fritz really watch? He concludes that Fritz couldn't see the execution site, and positions the execution site accordingly.
State the problem.
Do a facts-only summary of each source. Introduce who the author is but don't talk about problems yet.
A summary of the reliability and unreliability of each source, without direct reference to facts.
Comparative analysis of the facts in each one. Note that Wilhelmine's memoirs were used in the 1860 Thiebault, but not 1804. Don't have to back it up. Talk about publication dates, Pollnitz as go-to guy for anecdotes, Pollnitz in Bayreuth, etc.
Analysis of which facts are most likely to be true.
Summary of what likely happened. (Mostly already written.)
A major discovery was the fact that the edition of Thiébault we had been working for was an 1860 edition that was condensed from 5 volumes to 2, and rewritten significantly by the editor, one Jean-François Barrière.
The plagiarism of Wilhelmine in the Katte passage was done not by Thiébault, but by Barrière. It makes sense, because the 1804 Thiébault version is even less accurate, but the failure to signal this clearly is intellectually dishonest!
Katte is "M. le baron de Catt." He doesn't leave in time to avoid arrest because he wants to say his farewells.
Fritz is being held prisoner in the "palace of the prince of Prussia," whatever that means.
FW read all the letters (presumably that Katte had), which implicated Wilhelmine, so he beat her with his cane and tried to throw her out the window, where she was only saved from falling to the pavement by her mother grabbing her.
After trying several times to get Fritz condemned by his ministers, then a council of war (court martial?), then another council of war with more pliable members, FW has Fritz conveyed to Küstrin, where Katte was being held.
Katte is the only son of Field-Marshal Katte (note that he only became a field-marshal after Fritz became king).
Katte is executed on a scaffold that's been erected in front of Fritz's cell, on the level of the window. Thiébault has Fritz's head being forcibly held at the window to make him watch. Thiébault has Fritz crying out "mon ami!" and doesn't report Katte saying anything. Then Fritz faints. It's a long time before Fritz wakes up, and then he's only able to shed tears for Katte.
He's a very unreliable source in general. In addition to the mistakes I'll enumerate below, and in addition to the fact that more modern authors comment on his unreliability, and in addition to the fact that he's writing 75 years after events that happened before he was born, he says that Fritz never rewarded the Katte family after becoming king, that only his brother Heinrich would ever employ them, and that the only reward they got from him was not being persecuted. We have documentary evidence as well as contemporary accounts to the contrary.
Katte not leaving in time because he lingered saying his farewells is unique to this source, of those I've seen.
Thiébault has Fritz being taken to the prison where Katte was being held, not vice versa. This is a mistake, and is unique to him as far as I've seen.
FW throwing Wilhelmine out the window and her being grabbed by her mother just in time is in Voltaire, and nowhere else that I know of. No modern source I've read believes it.
FW changing the members of the court martial to get a different verdict is a garbled version of FW forcing the same members to meet again and telling them he wanted a different verdict.
Katte being the only son of Field-Marshal Katte is in Voltaire, and nowhere else that I know of. Even Katte's last letter to his father, which was published by 1731, reminds him that he has other sons.
The scaffold is in Voltaire, Wilhelmine, and Pöllnitz. The language most closely follows Pöllnitz:
Thiébault: On dressa pour lui un échafaud sur la place, devant l'appartement de Frédéric, et au niveau de sa fenêtre.
Pöllnitz: On avoit élevé un échafaud dans la place de la citadelle au niveau de la chambre du prince royal
Voltaire: sur un échafaud dressé immédiatement sous sa croisée
Similarly, concerning the pleas of Katte and his family for a pardon, Pöllnitz has "mais le roi demeurra inflexible" and Thiébault has "et Guillaume fut inexorable," which suggests to me that Pöllnitz may be one of Thiébault's sources.
Fritz's head being forcibly held is in Voltaire but not Pöllnitz.
The final exchange with Katte is very short. Fritz cries, "Mon ami!" and Katte says nothing. Most sources report Fritz begging forgiveness, and Katte saying there was nothing to forgive. The ones that don't are Voltaire, who reports no dialogue at all, and Catt, who has Fritz calling, "Ah, Katte!" and nothing else.
Fritz fainting is in all sources that I've seen, with the exception of Münchow, who has him about to faint and being made to sit down and drinks some spirits.
Fritz being in great distress when he wakes up, and only able to grieve, is in Pöllnitz and Wilhelmine, and this version is most similar to Pöllnitz.
No mention of the body being visible from the window, which is in Pöllnitz.
We then turned up a Katte passage in the memoirs of Andrew Mitchell.
Andrew Mitchell was the British envoy to Prussia during the Seven Years' War. He joined Fritz in the field and was on quite friendly terms with him. His memoirs, consisting of private letters, dispatches, and a journal he kept at the time, were published in 1850.
selenak judges him to be very reliable in what he reports, and the editor likewise reliable about not meddling without signalling.It's a very brief account, and contains only the following two sentences pertaining to Catt:
[Katt] might have made his escape and saved himself, the Danish minister having given him notice, but he loitered, he [Fritz] believed, on account of some girl he was fond of.
That during his imprisonment at [Custrin] he [Fritz] had been treated in the harshest manner; brought to the window to see [Katt] beheaded; that he fainted away.
With Catt's credibility in shreds (see below), it's extremely interesting that Mitchell is now our sole reliable source to tell us that Fritz talked to him about Katte. What it means is that Fritz is now confirmed with high confidence to have talked to people, and in fact people he was merely good friends with and didn't love passionately (like, say, Wilhelmine), about Katte's failure to escape and about his experience witnessing Katte's execution.
As noted, every account has Fritz fainting, with the one, non-eyewitness account of him almost fainting, and we now have Fritz confirming that he fainted. We also now have a horse's mouth account saying that he had been brought, evidently not of his own free will, to see Katte beheaded. That is a critical point, because it implies that Fritz believed that he was going to be able to see the execution from where he was.
Unfortunately, very little detail is supplied, but it is absolutely indispensable to know that other people may have gotten their accounts from Fritz, and that he didn't go total radio silence on the subject of Katte for the rest of his life.
We then turned up an anonymous pamphlet that was published shortly after Katte's execution.
It's titled "True story of the dreadful execution of Lieutenant von Katte, executed by the sword." It was published in 1731 in Cologne, which
selenak tells me was a hotbed of resentment against Prussians, and thus anything that portrayed FW as a tyrant was going to be eaten right up.It has a two-page summary of events, and then letters written by Katte after receiving his death sentence. One to the King, asking for pardon, one to his stepmother, one to his grandfather, and one to his father.
It's got yet another variant on Katte's last words! This is the only one to mention FW that I've ever seen.
Mein gnädigster Cron-prinz sie haben nicht Ursach mich um Verzeihung zu bitten, wenn ich zehen Leben zu verliehren hätte, so wollte ich gern darum geben, wann nur Eu. Königliche Hoheit mit Dero Herrn Vater dem König dadurch könten versöhn et werden.
My most gracious Crown Prince, you have nothing to ask me for forgiveness for; if I had ten lives to lose, I would gladly give them up, if only Your Royal Highness could be reconciled with your Lord Father the King.
selenak's summary: In this version, Fritz learns Katte will be executed at 5 am, the execution itself doesn‘t take place until 10 am. He‘s informed by „two captains“ who also tell him they‘re ordered to force him to watch and will have to drag him to the window if he can‘t go on his own. He does faint after, not before the beheading. Katte keeps eye contact with him right until death. He‘s calm and undresses himself (i.e. removes his shirt), and, as described by Fontane, who quotes Major v. S on this, binds his own eyes via the sleeping cap. Before he does that, he makes one last hand kiss gesture towards Fritz. (Pamphlet says Hand-Fuß, not „Hand-Kuß“, but I think that‘s simply a letter misprint, because a foot instead of a kiss makes no sense here.) Fritz faints as soon as the head rolls and is no more seen by anyone. Katte‘s body lies there until 2 pm.selenak's thoughts: Thoughts: there are enough accurate elements here - sand, not scaffold, Katte putting the cap over his eyes, the body lying until 2 pm, as specified by FW‘s orders, which the pamphleteer couldn‘t have known, and of course the big one, accurate letters - that I think there‘s an eyewitness report involved. The divergences - the hour of execution, Fritz watching and fainting after, not before, Katte keeping eye contact - can be simply yellow press need for even more drama. Because these kind of pamphlets are the 18th century equivalent of the Daily Mail/Bildzeitung in Germany/ Whatever rag preceded the existence of Fox TV in the US). The more tearjerking, the better.Now, FW mention in Katte‘s reply - yes, I do think this is for making FW look even worse. Though there is one alternate explanation, if the whole thing (the pamphlet) is intended as a moral lesson for disobedient sons to lead a more Christian life. But I think in that case, it would have ended on the Crown Prince praying with Pater Müller. That Fritz post fainting „isn‘t seen or heard of“ anymore is one of those details that make me believe someone did get an eyewitness account and then proceeded to juice it up. Pamphlets aren‘t meant for historians but for sensational gossip mongers paying for them, after all!
mildred_of_midgard's comments:Katte keeps eye contact with him right until death.
On the one hand, this is obviously something anyone in the history of ever would supply to spice up the narrative, but, on the other, if we trust the sources that say that Fritz couldn't see over the ones that say he could, it's possible that what really happened was that Katte kept looking in the direction of the Schloss where Fritz was.
Also, I agree the pamphlet is based largely off an eyewitness report, and if you consider that there were 150 eyewitnesses from the garrison, plus a handful of others, the source is most likely one or more of them. And as I said in another comment, since all contemporaries agree that Fritz could see the execution from where he was, it must not have been at all obvious to them that he couldn't. If nothing else, even if they can tell that Fritz's room isn't visible, they can't be certain that Fritz hasn't been moved to a room with a better view. So if Katte was staring at the Schloss or Weisskopf until the end, everyone outside is going to assume that Fritz is looking back.
And thus FW gets a report that Fritz *totally* watched, and fainted afterwards (I figured that's what Münchow/Schack/Lepel told him, and it's nice to see a contemporary account that says exactly that!).
But by far the most earth-shattering discovery has been just how unreliable Catt is. He is basically a historical novelist. You can read a detailed account of the evidence here. In sum, Catt is unreliable in three main ways:
- Taking anecdotes he read in books, or heard from other people, and putting them in Fritz's mouth.
- Changing the dates on which he had conversations with Fritz, and combining unrelated conversations.
- Rewriting entire episodes to make himself look better, even if it makes Fritz look worse.
It's entirely possible that twenty-years' worth of conversations with Fritz are packed into this memoir supposedly covering the first two years.
Below the cut, a dissection of the passage in which Fritz supposedly tells Catt about his escape attempt, imprisonment, and Katte's execution. To make a long story short, it purports to be a single conversation, but is really a composite of conversations that took place on different days, including conversations that weren't with Fritz.
So, a long time ago, when we were all younger and much more innocent, in the salad days of our fandom, I commented with surprise on how the Katte conversation went, Catt's failure to say anything at all, and the abrupt transition to talking about the war. We agreed that it might have been tricky to know what to say, and that Fritz might have signaled that he didn't want to discuss it and then moved on to less painful topics.
Well! Now having looked at the evidence more closely, I still don't know whether Fritz told him about Katte or Catt's recounting what he heard elsewhere, but I can tell you in much better detail what's going on in this so-called conversation.
Long story short: Catt is stitching together thematically related but chronologically disparate episodes to make one intellectually dishonest conversation with Fritz. Behold.
It starts with Fritz's dream about being taken to Magdeburg for not loving his father enough. Aside from the fact that the diary has "his sisters" and the memoirs makes it the more moving "sister of Bayreuth," the diary records this dream in January 1760. The memoirs place it in April 1758!
Recurring dream? Sure, but given the vast numbers of other disparate things he's going to weave into this conversation, I don't buy it. Especially since it's conveniently one month after he starts working for Fritz. This may, by the way, be as much about front-loading the most exciting parts of his memoirs as much as by making him appear the immediate confidant.
Now Fritz talks about how great Dad was as a king, and how morally upstanding, but wow that parenting. /o\ Especially the part where he didn't want Fritz to learn Latin. Well, not learning Latin is in the diary...from July 16, 1758. Without the exciting detail of hiding under the table, although given it's FW, I totally buy it.
Then Fritz says he was raised as if to be a theologian, the way he wasn't supposed to read anything except religious material. The diary has this in June, 1759.
Does Fritz comment on this more than once? I'm sure he does. Does he work *all* these topics into this one April 1758 conversation? No way.
Now we come to the Katte episode, which we have no known written source for, unless it's possibly Voltaire. It could be Fritz. But I doubt it's from the period of the diary if so.
Then that episode about Sydow and the deserting soldier, which according to the diary, Catt learns around camp in July 1759, when he's left with Heinrich after Fritz heads off to get his butt kicked at Kunersdorf. But now it's in Fritz's mouth.
Funnily enough, that one, which we know he heard from a non-Fritz source, is the only part of this monologue in which Catt manages to interject a word sideways. Normally there's more back-and-forth, where Catt gets to say things.
I am 100% sure he is just pasting a bunch of separate accounts together, at least two of which are not from Fritz, and he never polished it, and that's why this is a monologue instead of a conversation.
Then we get the story about the younger siblings hiding under the table, which as we know, Catt also learned in 1759 from someone in Heinrich's camp, not from Fritz.
Then Fritz opens up the archives after becoming king. Haven't found a source for this.
And then this amazing segue, non sequitur to surpass all non sequiturs, happens:
"On coming to the throne, I was curious to see all that had been done during my detention at Küstrin. I sent for the minutes of the deliberations concerning me and for all the documents in this strange case. I read them carefully, and extracted a few sheets, so that they might not be speaking witnesses for future centuries of the barbarities of an unheard-of conduct towards me. After having torn up these atrocious and sanguinary pages, I had the rest carefully sealed and placed in the archives of the cabinet.
"To continue your brief military course, you should know that I made my plan for the campaign at Breslau. I began it by the taking of Schweidnitz, and I shall march into Moravia with my army, which consists of 65 battalions and of 118 squadrons. I shall besiege Olmütz, and, having taken that town, I will then tell you where I shall lead you. General Fouqué is following me with the supply column, the heavy artillery, munitions and everything necessary for a siege ; and the corps he commands is intended for that purpose."
Honest to god, that reads like Catt meant to fix it later and never did. In fact, all the separate anecdotes read like that, with Fritz jumping from topic to topic without a pause, except at least the topics are thematically related so you don't notice as much. Catt's seams are showing, and it reads very much like a rough draft of raw material that he was planning to rework. [personal profile] cahn, if it's not obvious just how much whiplash is in that transition, he's jumping from 1740 to the campaigns of the present day, 1756-1758.
Inescapable conclusion: this conversation did nooooot happen like that.
So here's my current thinking on the subject.
Thanks to a 1737 letter to Grumbkow, we know that Fritz talked about Katte after his death, at least in brief. (Evidence for this is extremely thin on the ground and took us a long time to turn up, once we realized Catt no longer counted as evidence.) Thanks to Mitchell, we know that Fritz talked about Katte's execution. Thanks to Catt's diary, we know that Fritz talked about his imprisonment at Küstrin and childhood with Catt in the first two years of knowing him. After twenty-four years as Fritz's reader, it wouldn't be impossible if Catt had never heard about Katte from Fritz, but it would be surprising.
Unfortunately, due to Catt's tendency to flesh out his narrative from other sources, and due to the extreme brevity of Mitchell's account, we don't know how much of the account Catt puts in Fritz's mouth comes from Fritz and how much from other sources.
It's difficult to know how much to make of the similarities between Catt and Voltaire. They could be due to both authors getting their account orally from Fritz. Or, Catt could be ripping off Voltaire and fleshing him out. Mitchell makes it more likely that Catt heard an account from Fritz. But the following passages make it likely that Catt knew and had no problem plagiarizing, consciously or unconsciously, Voltaire's memoirs:
Voltaire
Il était dans sa nature de faire toujours tout le contraire de ce qu'il disait de ce qu'il ecrivait, non par dissimulation, mais parce qu'il écrivait & parlait avec une espèce d'enthousiasme, & agissait ensuite avec un autre.
But it was constitutional with him to do the direct Contrary of what he said or writ; not from dissimulation; but because he spoke and writ with one kind of enthusiasm, and afterwards acted with another.
Catt
C'est que parfois on parlait avec une espèce d'enthousiasme et qu'on agissait ensuite avec un autre bien contraire au premier... ces disparates étaient plutôt la suite de cet enthousiasme que d'un manque de franchise.
Sometimes the King spoke with a kind of enthusiasm, and acted afterwards with an enthusiasm very different from the first...These discrepancies were rather the consequence of this enthusiasm than of a lack of sincerity.
So it's still uncertain to me, from external and textual evidence, whether Catt got his account from Fritz or not. I will revisit this question below in terms of content.
Meanwhile, if Fritz talked about Katte with Mitchell after knowing him for a year, it would be surprising if he had never talked about him with Wilhelmine, who knew him at the time and who was his primary confidant as long as she lived (possibly excepting Fredersdorf). The only reason he might not have confided in her about what happened would have been that she was married by the time she saw him again, and then she lived far away. But we know that they smuggled letters to each other while he was imprisoned, and that they had to be burned immediately. I consider it quite likely that Katte's execution was one of those subjects. Alternatively, when they met in person after Fritz's release, he may have confided in her orally.
After evaluating all the sources I currently have access to, I've found one really important distinction emerging: inside POV vs. outside POV. On the morning of November 6, 1730, everyone present at the execution was either inside the cell where Fritz was being held, or outside where Katte was being executed. People inside had very limited information on what was taking place outside, and vice versa.
Our sources with the clearest outside perspective are Major Schack, Besser, Münchow fils, and the 1731 pamphlet.
Our sources with the clearest inside perspective are Catt, Voltaire, and to a more limited extent due to his brevity, Mitchell.
Wilhelmine, Pöllnitz, and Thiébault present both perspectives.
The most interesting thing is that the outsider perspectives tend to match each other, and tend to match very closely FW's letter to Lepel giving specific instructions, such as leaving Katte's body where it fell until 2 pm, when it was carried off by respectable townspeople for burial. The outsider eyewitness reports also agree with each other, for the most part. When they diverge, it's very interesting and worthy of detailed analysis.
The other major distinction, besides inside/outside POV, that emerges is: what details are likely to be supplied or assumed by tellers in the absence of knowledge, and what details are not? And there, I think it's most likely that for insignificant details, something familiar will be filled in, and for significant details, something exciting or interesting, that makes a good story, will be filled in.
For example, if we had a tradition of a scaffold and a tradition of a sand heap as the platform for Katte's execution, we would, in the absence of other data, be more likely to think that the sand heap was real and the scaffold supplied in the absence of knowledge, since scaffolds are very common for executions, especially the public executions that will come to mind when people think of executions they're familiar with. The fact that in our case, it is the eyewitnesses who independently agree on the sand heap just reinforces this.
Furthermore, if we have accounts that Fritz could see the execution and accounts that he couldn't, we'd have to wonder if maybe the former was the result of making the story more dramatic. When we know that all the most sensationalist accounts agree that he could see it, and that all early accounts are agreed on it, and the contrary only started to emerge much later, from one eyewitness and from someone examining the structure of Küstrin in a scholarly manner, we are inclined to conclude that the version according to which he could see it spread like wildfire, and the more boring "he couldn't," is more likely to be the truth.
Likewise, it's more dramatic if Fritz fainted after watching than if he fainted before. It doesn't surprise me at all that most accounts don't specify, and that the 1731 sensationalist pamphlet has him fainting after, and that only a few, later, accounts say that he fainted before.
Furthermore, since Fritz was required to watch, the official narrative from anyone involved in sparing him from being able to see the execution site, or anyone who witnessed him fainting before the execution happened, will be that he could see the execution site and that he fainted afterwards.
Most interestingly, the only two accounts that explicitly have him fainting before are Wilhelmine, and Catt. Since the officials in the room have every incentive to lie while FW is alive, and since no one outside can tell, the only one likely to talk about him fainting beforehand is Fritz. And, as we've seen, Fritz might very well be a source for both of them.
The one account that has him not fainting, or being able to witness the execution, is Münchow fils, suggesting that his father, who was present in the room, revised his story after FW's death. But it's important that he didn't revise it to have Fritz fainting before the execution, or at least that his son didn't remember it that way fifty years later. He certainly didn't have Fritz being prevented from seeing the execution by fainting, because he believed that the execution site wasn't visible from the window.
And because Fritz is likely the only source for fainting before the execution, and even more likely to be the only source for him being prevented from seeing the execution by his loss of consciousness just in time, and because that is extremely unlikely to be made up naturally by someone trying to tell a good story, it's extremely likely that Fritz is the source for both Catt and Wilhelmine. Catt, as we know, did not have access to Wilhelmine's memoirs, and this detail isn't in Pöllnitz.
There is also one other detail that is common to Wilhelmine, Fritz, and Voltaire: that Fritz believed he was going to be executed before he realized it was Katte. According to Wilhelmine, who believes the execution site was visible from the window, it was when Fritz saw the scaffold going up. According to Catt and Voltaire, it was when an old officer accompanied by several/four grenadiers entered the room, weeping.
Now, this detail is sensationalist enough that it might have been made up. It might have been available on the grapevine, where Wilhelmine incorporated it into her belief about scaffolds and visible execution sites, and we know that Catt might be copying from Voltaire, who might have gotten it from the grapevine, or made it up. (Voltaire's memoirs are not noted for their fidelity to historical accuracy--he has FW present at the execution, for example.)
But the single most significant thing Catt and Voltaire have in common is a POV from inside the room. If either of them was operating from the grapevine, and in particular if Catt was fleshing out what he knew with detail from other sources, you would expect some kind of detail of what was going on outside, even if it was wrong, such as Fritz being able to see the body through the window when he wakes up. Instead, both stick strictly to Fritz's POV, even inaccurately. And the fact that Catt and Wilhelmine share the fact that Fritz believed that he was going to be executed, but in wildly different ways, and the fact that Catt's account ends with Fritz losing consciousness and displays no awareness of anything happening outside the window except for Katte's final farewell, make me think that Catt's main or even only source is Fritz, and that both Catt and Wilhelmine heard a story from Fritz.
Arguments from the absence of evidence are always perilous, but there are also some specific details missing from the accounts that probably came from Fritz, that make sense if they did come from Fritz:
- No body visible through his window afterward.
- No sand heap, circle of 150 men, or other sign of impending execution through his window beforehand.
- No final dialogue with Katte. At best, him calling "Mon ami" or "Ah, Katte," but no response from Katte.
The absence of any signs of a planned execution could be explained if Fritz simply wasn't looking through the window beforehand, but we know he was looking through the window to say goodbye to Katte, and he still doesn't report seeing anything.
FW ordered the body left out seven hours, multiple eyewitnesses say it was (even if covered up with a cloth), non-eyewitnesses who think the body was visible from Fritz's window report him seeing it. Fritz, who says he defeated having to watch the execution by fainting, would be very likely to comment on seeing it when he woke up. He says nothing.
These two things taken together, reinforce, even if weakly, the case for the execution site not being visible from Fritz's window.
As for the final dialogue, which is reported in several variants from the outsider perspective, not one source with an insider perspective gives it. Wilhelmine has one, but she is clearly pulling together as many sources as she can, to get every possible detail of the execution. If the insider perspective is Fritz's, it's quite likely that this wasn't something he could bear to say out loud.
The letter to Grumbkow says Fritz offered his life for Katte's, not once but a thousand times, but we know from contemporary documentary evidence (Seckendorff and the like) that Fritz was offering it back in August and September. I'm not sure we have confirmation of Wilhelmine's account that Fritz was offering it, or his crown, on the morning of November 9, 1730. He may or may not have.
Finally, there is one other significant but reconcilable difference in the insider POV: who informed Fritz of his friend's impending execution? According to the pamphlet, two captains. According to Wilhelmine, Lepel and Münchow. According to Münchow fils, Lepel and Münchow. But according to Catt and Voltaire, "an old officer and four/several grenadiers."
So either Voltaire is making it up and Catt is copying him, which as described, I think is unlikely, or else there's this possible reconciliation: Münchow and Lepel are the two men of rank that are considered worth mentioning, plus several minor officers there to wrangle the reluctant prince to the window if necessary. Lepel, 73 years old, is most likely the one who breaks the news to Fritz. He is, after all, the one who has received the letter from FW ordering all the details of the execution. Münchow (age 59) is present in the room, but Fritz is too busy freaking out at the time to remember all the details three decades later, or possibly just doesn't consider the presence of another officer important enough to be worth reporting, when there are much bigger matters to talk about, like the part where his boyfriend is about to die.
And now, for my tentative conclusions on what happened and who said what when.
FW definitely orders Lepel to make Fritz watch.
Presumably for reasons of compassion, Lepel and Münchow agree to stop just short of holding the execution where Fritz can see. In order to achieve plausible deniability for themselves, they do everything they can short of holding the execution in his line of view.
1) They position the execution site very close to his window.
2) They tell Fritz he's going to have to watch.
3) They have him dragged to the window when it's time.
4) They have Katte marched by his window.
Combining all those points, it wouldn't have been difficult to write a report afterward that conveyed to FW the impression that Fritz watched the execution, nor to convince everyone who was present that he was watching.
Having made these plans, they come to Fritz's room, crying. He believes that this means he's going to die. Lepel breaks the news to him, and has have the accompanying grenadiers drag Fritz to the window.
While Fritz is being held there, Katte is marched past. Fritz begs for his forgiveness, and Katte replies there's nothing to forgive. Fritz thrusts his arm out the window (possibly to blow a kiss).
Fritz faints. Katte is marched to the execution site, out of Fritz's view. He stands in a circle of 150 men while the sentence is read. He may gaze the whole time in the direction of the building where Fritz is being held. He refuses a blindfold, takes off his wig, pulls a cap over his eyes, kneels in the sand. His head is removed with one stroke.
None of the 150 men can tell that Fritz can't see from where he is.
Katte's body is covered with a black cloth, then left there until 2 pm, when the townspeople come to bury him, per FW's orders.
Meanwhile, Fritz is unconscious. Word spreads at Küstrin that he has fainted. Perhaps this happens when a doctor is sent for. When Fritz wakes, he can't see a body or any signs of an execution site, and he assumes it's all been removed. He spends the rest of his life believing that the only reason he didn't watch was that he fainted.
The official report from Lepel and co. to FW goes out stating that Fritz watched and was so impressed that he fainted afterwards. Eyewitnesses report that he watched.
The pamphlet, from the perspective of someone watching the execution, believes that Fritz watched, and that he fainted after seeing the head roll.
Fritz somehow, perhaps through a smuggled letter, conveys to Wilhelmine that he thought he was going to be executed, that he was dragged to the window, that he saw Katte go by, and that he fainted before he could see the execution. He mentions nothing about the execution site or any body, because he never saw either.
Wilhelmine writes her memoirs on the basis of a long-since destroyed letter, a memory of a conversation many years ago, or both. She is not on speaking terms with Fritz at the time, she doesn't have access to the archives, and she can't let on that she's writing memoirs. She compiles as many accounts of events as she can and tries to make a coherent and exciting narrative out of them. Her perspective on what was happening outside the room is very inaccurate, and it informs her thinking on what was happening inside the room.
Pöllnitz, whom we know was in Bayreuth in 1744, when she was writing her memoirs, sits down and talks to her about what happened. They agree on an account and both render it in their respective memoirs, with something like 90% agreement on detail and overlap in wording, but not so much that I have reason to believe one was reading the draft of the other. She doesn't let on to him that she's writing memoirs (otherwise it would have become public knowledge, thanks to the notoriously talkative Pöllnitz).
In the 1750s, Fritz gives Voltaire a probably abbreviated account of what he told Wilhelmine. He also gives Mitchell an account in 1757. It's unclear how much Mitchell is summarizing or reporting everything he was told, but he writes down what he knows in 1757. Voltaire's memoirs aren't published until 1784, posthumously.
At some point after Catt's diary ends, Fritz also tells this story to Catt. It's unknown when Catt composed his memoirs or how late in the century he was still editing it, but at some point, he hears about Katte. In his memoirs, he assigns that anecdote to April 1758, in a conversation that also contains a lot of other stories that he's heard at various times from various people, including but not limited to Fritz.
Fritz may or may not tell this story to Thiébault during the 1760s or 70s. Thiébault almost certainly refers to Pöllnitz, published 1791, when writing his memoirs to be published in 1804, and quite likely to Voltaire, published in 1784.
At some point in the 1740s, Münchow the father tells his family about the Katte execution, with reference to the fact that Fritz did *not* have to watch. He also says that he and Lepel were in the room at the time, and they made him sit down and drink something before he fainted.
In the 1790s, the son of Münchow, writes the first account that we know of that states that Fritz was not in a position to watch. Until now, everyone has either said that he did watch it, or that he fainted just in time to avoid seeing it. Münchow was a child at the time, an eyewitness, and represents the outsider perspective, with a secondhand knowledge of the insider perspective through his father. He does not know about FW's order to make Fritz watch and concludes that there was none, because he can't imagine Lepel would engage in civil disobedience like that. He is probably our most reliable source on what the layout of Küstrin was like in the 1730s, since he lived there.
In 1804, Thiébault's memoirs are published.
In 1810, Wilhelmine's memoirs are published.
In 1860, Thiébault's memoirs are condensed and rewritten by someone else after his death, massively plagiarizing the Katte execution scene from Wilhelmine's memoirs.
In the 1860s, Theodor Hoffbauer publishes an investigation of two questions: Where was Katte executed? Did Fritz really watch? He concludes that Fritz couldn't see the execution site, and positions the execution site accordingly.
State the problem.
Do a facts-only summary of each source. Introduce who the author is but don't talk about problems yet.
A summary of the reliability and unreliability of each source, without direct reference to facts.
Comparative analysis of the facts in each one. Note that Wilhelmine's memoirs were used in the 1860 Thiebault, but not 1804. Don't have to back it up. Talk about publication dates, Pollnitz as go-to guy for anecdotes, Pollnitz in Bayreuth, etc.
Analysis of which facts are most likely to be true.
Summary of what likely happened. (Mostly already written.)
