George Keith, 9th Earl Marischal
George Keith, Earl Marischal 9. (* probably 2. April 1693 on Inverugie Castle in Peterhead ; † 25. May 1778 in Potsdam ) was a Scottish nobleman , who long lived abroad and through the friendship with Frederick the Great is known .
On the death of his father William Keith, 8th Earl Marischal (around 1664-1712), he inherited his title Earl Marischal , with which the hereditary marshal dignity of Scotland was connected. Keith has been commonly called Lord Marischal ever since . He was the last holder of this title. His mother was Mary Drummond (1675-1729), daughter of the Earl of Perth, a Catholic.
biography
Keith and his three years younger brother James received a careful upbringing from the tutor Robert Keith (also of the Keith clan ), who was known as a scholar and later became a bishop. Keith was destined for a military career by the family (in contrast to his brother, who was to become a lawyer), received the captaincy in the royal guard under Queen Anna and served as early as 1712 under Marlborough in the War of the Spanish Succession . After George I's accession to the throne, he hoped for a further career, but was rejected as Tory by the ruling Whigs in London . Then the brothers (although Protestant) switched to the Jacobites and took part in the Jacobite revolt of 1715 for the pretender James Stuart . After its unsuccessful landing in 1716, they were ostracized by parliament for high treason ( Bill of Attainder ) and sentenced to death. His earl dignity was stripped from him by the ostracism and his lands confiscated.
He lived in Spain for a long time and in 1719 took part in the Spanish expedition to invade Scotland, instigated by the ruling Cardinal Alberoni , landed at Eilean Donan Castle in April , was defeated in the Battle of Glenshiel and escaped to France. He then lived for a long time in Spain, mainly in Valencia . His younger brother James served in the Russian army and was wounded at Ochakiv , whereupon George also traveled to Russia and accompanied his brother back before he went back to Spain. Both visited England in 1740. He did not join the uprising of Charles Edward Stuart in 1744 because he believed it to be hopeless, and for these reasons he also left Spain and moved to Venice. In 1746 he wanted to visit his brother in St. Petersburg (he was again in Russian service), but following complaints from the English against the well-known Jacobite, he was not allowed into the country. He returned to Venice via Berlin , where he met Frederick the Great for the first time. In 1747 he moved to Berlin to live with his brother James , who was now in Prussian service, where he became friends with Frederick the Great, whose literary interests he shared. Like his brother, he became a member of the Prussian Academy of Sciences .
Diplomat, governor of Neuchâtel, meeting with Rousseau
In 1751 the king appointed Keith as the Prussian envoy to Paris . Despite some successes (a certain rapprochement with France) Keith did not feel up to the task and asked for his dismissal, which Friedrich finally granted him after he had initially sent Baron von Knyphausen to support him . Finally, he brokered the appointment of Jean-Baptiste le Rond d'Alembert to the Academy in Berlin. In 1754 he was appointed governor of Neuchâtel in Switzerland, which was under the administration of Friedrich, and the king awarded him the Order of the Black Eagle . In Neuchâtel there were conflicts with the clergy and other conservative forces when he abolished torture and public penance on Friedrich's orders. Keith wished for a more active political role and went to Spain in 1759 with the consent of Friedrich (but without formal diplomatic status) to help with the transition from Ferdinand VI. on his successor Karl III. to mediate for the Anglo-Prussian side. He was less successful in this and left Spain in 1760 to go to England. In the meantime, King Friedrich had campaigned for him with the war- allied British government and obtained that he was pardoned by King George II in 1759 . By resolution of the British Parliament in 1760, he was again given the right to inherit property. In 1761 he was able to take possession of the lands that came to him from the estate of his relative William Keith, 4th Earl of Kintore . However, the ostracism was never withdrawn, as a result of which his title of nobility remained forfeited, he never regained the possessions confiscated in 1716 and he could not take up the title of Earl of Kintore . Keith informed Prime Minister William Pitt about the situation in Spain, but he was unable to assert himself with a declaration of war on Spain and after his resignation Keith also left England in 1761. In 1762 he returned to Neuchâtel after a stay in the Netherlands.
Keith initially stayed in Neuchâtel; In 1762, Jean-Jacques Rousseau reported in detail in his Les Confessions (The Confessions) about conversations with Keith. Rousseau moved near Neuchâtel in July 1762 after being driven out of Geneva. Frederick the Great had instructed Keith to support Rousseau (and advised Keith to provide him with in kind rather than money, since he would be more likely to accept them), but an offer from Keith to build him a house or supplies of wood or coal and to give food, he refused, because he suspected that this offer came from the king. Rousseau wrote in his confessions about his first meeting with Keith: The venerable appearance of this famous and virtuous Scotsman moved my heart tremendously, and instantly that warm affection arose between me and him which I have always faithfully retained for him . Both became friends, and from Rousseau's point of view, something like a father-son relationship developed. Since Keith's summer palace, Colombier, was only six miles from Rousseau's house in Motiers, Rousseau visited him regularly, and Keith was occasionally in Motiers. Keith even invited him to live permanently in Colombier, but he turned it down because he felt freer in his own house. In his confessions, however, Rousseau notes not only a penetrating mind , a deep knowledge of human nature and great sensitivity , but also a strange disposition that expressed itself in absent-mindedness and moodiness and a strange sense of humor: as a young man from Geneva asking for a letter of recommendation for Frederick the Great asked, he handed him a small bag of peas - when Friedrich opened it, he immediately stopped the Geneva man. When Rousseau had started to dress in an Armenian caftan every day , he was initially afraid to show himself to Keith, but he only greeted him with a dry as-salāmu ʿalaikum and thus relieved him of further concerns on the matter.
In August 1763 he visited his Scottish homeland again. He was received with the highest honors, but found his ancestral palace Dunnottar Castle in ruins and could not make up his mind to spend his old age there. In 1764, the 70-year-old Keith returned to Prussia at the request of Frederick the Great. In Neuchâtel he was represented by a lieutenant governor. On the return journey from Scotland he was accompanied by the travel writer James Boswell (who had previously asked Keith for advice on a planned visit to Germany) and by his adopted daughter Emet-Ulla de Froment (around 1725-1820). He visited, among others, Belle van Zuylen in Utrecht, Lüneburg and Braunschweig during his trip to Berlin. When he arrived in Potsdam, he invited Rousseau to Berlin, but he preferred to live on St. Petersinsel (until he was expelled from there soon). Keith offered Rousseau a pension - of the 1,200 francs offered annually, he accepted half.
The king had a house built for Keith, today's Lordmarschallhaus in the Brandenburg suburb of Potsdam (Lennéstrasse 9) within sight of Sanssouci. He died here in 1778.
After the siege of Ochakov, Keith had adopted the Turkish daughter of the head of the Janissaries , Emet-Ulla de Froment. She converted to Christianity in 1763 and took the name Marie Emeté. In the same year she married the French Huguenot and officer Denis Daniel de Froment († 1810), but the marriage was divorced in 1765 (and the husband received an annual pension from Keith afterwards). His adopted daughter lived with him until his death.
Since he died childless, Anthony Adrian Falconer , 7th Lord Falconer of Halkerton , succeeded him as head of Clan Keith. This was also awarded the title Earl of Kintore in 1778 and he added his family name to Keith-Falconer .
His correspondence with Frederick the Great has only survived in fragments.
Honors
- The Keith streets as in Berlin-Schöneberg and Bremen- Walle were named after him and his brother James Keith .
- The Keithhaus in Potsdam, Lennéstr. 9, bears his name.
literature
- Field Marshal Jakob Keith. In: Karl August Varnhagen von Ense: Biographical monuments. Volume 13, part 7, Brockhaus, Leipzig 1873, pp. 1–165 (biography of James Keith, there also on George Keith, archive.org ).
- Memoirs and Papers of Sir Andrew Mitchell , London 1850, Volume 2, pp. 406 ff, 508 ff.
- d'Alembert: Éloge de Milord Marechal 1779 , Oeuvres de d'Alembert, Paris 1805, Volume 6, pp. 31-109.
- James Boswell's Great Journey. Germany and Switzerland 1764 . Diana Verlag, Stuttgart, Konstanz 1955.
- Arnold Dietrich Schaefer: Keith, George . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 15, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1882, pp. 551-555.
- George, tenth Earl Marischal. In: James Balfour Paul : The Scots Peerage. Volume 6, David Douglas, Edinburgh 1909, pp. 62-64.
Web links
- Eric-André Klauser, EJ: Keith, George. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .
- George Keith, 9th Earl Marischal on thepeerage.com
Individual evidence
- ↑ In the older literature erroneously listed as 10th Earl Marischal, see Earl Marischal
- ↑ Date of birth as stated in Schaefer, ADB. Varnhagen von Ense also gives this date.
- ↑ It's two miles away
- ↑ Rousseau reports in his Confessions, Insel-Ausgabe 1985, p. 809, that the Neuchâtel people, who only have a sense for ringing sound and frills , and who do not understand true inner human worth , would have only seen him as a cold man who accepted all formality and so simplicity for arrogance, openness for unpolishing, lack of words for stupidity .
- ^ Will and Ariel Durant Rousseau and the Revolution , Francke Verlag, p. 228ff, there cited letters from Frederick the Great and Rousseau
- ^ Rousseau, Confessions, Insel Edition 1985, p. 825
- ^ Rousseau, Confessions, Translation Ernst Hardt, Insel Verlag 1985, p. 818
- ^ Rousseau, Confessions, Insel-Ausgabe 1985, p. 821. I called him father and he called me child
- ^ Rousseau, Confessions, Insel Ausgabe, pp. 820f
- ^ Rousseau, Confessions, Insel edition 1985, p. 826
- ↑ http://www.jamesboswell.info/biography/george-keith-10th-earl-marischal
- ↑ Emet-Ulla de Froment, at jamesboswell.info
- ^ Rousseau Confessions , Insel Taschenbuch, p. 877
- ↑ Potsdam-wiki ( Memento of the original from July 10, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
| predecessor | Office | successor |
|---|---|---|
| William Keith |
Earl Marischal 1712-1716 |
Title forfeited |
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Keith, George, 9th Earl Marischal |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Lord Marischal; Keith, George, 10th Earl Marischal |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Scottish nobleman |
| DATE OF BIRTH | around 1693 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Inverugie Castle, Peterhead |
| DATE OF DEATH | May 25, 1778 |
| Place of death | Potsdam |