Henri de Catt

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Catt. Painting by Joachim Martin Falbe
Catt. Painting by Paul Joseph Bardou

Henri Alexandre de Catt (born June 25, 1725 in Morges , † November 23, 1795 in Potsdam ) was a Swiss scholar and since 1758 private secretary and close confidante of Frederick II of Prussia .

Lineage, Marriage, and Family

Catt was born the son of the trader and confectioner Henri de Catt and his wife Susanne Bouvier. In 1762 he married Anna Ulrica Kühn, daughter of the Prussian Kommerzienrat and consul in Petersburg Ulrich Kühn (1690–1757) and his wife Charlotte Jassoy (1700–1773). Her sister Hedwig Charlotte Kühn (–1817) had married the later important Prussian tax clerk Pierre Jérémie Hainchelin (1727–1787) in 1761 , whom de Catt had probably met while working for the Prussian king.

education

De Catt studied philosophy and theology in Lausanne, Geneva and Utrecht. In 1748 he was refused consecration in Lausanne. From 1750 he worked in Holland as a tutor to a brother of Isabelle de Charrière . In 1755 he corresponded with Laurent Angliviel de La Beaumelle .

Professional activities

Frederick the Great traveled to Holland incognito in June 1755, where he had conversations with the banker Isaac de Pinto . During a trip to Utrecht he met de Catt on a ship and started talking to him. Friedrich was so impressed by de Catt that he invited him six weeks later to come into his service.

De Catt took up his post as a "reader" in 1758. From March 1758 to July 1760, de Catt wrote a short daily summary of his philosophical, political, and literary conversations with the king and held that position until 1780, when he fell from grace. De Catt became famous as his "reader". De Catt did not actually read aloud to Friedrich, but essentially had the task of correcting the monarch's pronunciation and written utterances in French - Friedrich's preferred colloquial language. De Catt wrote a diary during this time, on the descriptions of which numerous episodes and sayings of Friedrich are based to this day.

At the court of Frederick the Great, de Catt also met his future brother-in-law Pierre Jérémie Hainchelin (1727–1787). Until 1758, Hainchelin was secretary to the Prince of Prussia August Wilhelm von Prussia (1722–1758), who was intended as a brother to the childless King Frederick the Great as heir to the throne. Prince August Wilhelm died in 1758, broken in body and soul, when a rift broke out between the brothers after the lost battle of Kolín in the Seven Years' War . In his writing about his conversations with Frederick the Great, Catt describes his statement that if his brother in Oranienburg only had his adjutant Hagen, his secretary Hainchelin and a couple of equally honest people around him, his life would be calmer and his disposition not like that been hostile to him

From 1760, after being appointed by the king, de Catt was a member of the Prussian Academy of Sciences . From 1770 he worked as vicar of the chapter St. Peter and Paul in Halberstadt .

In 1789 King Friedrich Wilhelm II appointed him cantor of the collegiate church of St. Sebastian in Magdeburg .

In the last years of his life he was blind.

Works

Memorial plaque for Catt on the bell tower of Bornstedt Church
  • Reinhold Koser (ed.): Conversations with Frederick the Great. Heinrich de Catt's memoirs and diaries. 1884. (Reprint: Zeller, Osnabrück 1965)
  • Frederick the Great. Conversations with Henri de Catt . dtv library, Munich 1981, ISBN 3-423-06115-4 .

References and comments

  1. ↑ Neil Jeffares: Louis Vigée. In: In: Dictionary of pastellists before 1800. London 2006; online edition (keyword "Jassoy") (accessed September 25, 2014, digital )
  2. ^ Sources and studies on the history of Eastern Europe. Volumes 16-17, 1968, ISBN 3-515-03266-5 , p. 248. (books.google.de)
  3. ↑ friedrich.uni-trier.de
  4. ↑ Hubert Bost et al: Correspondance générale de La Beaumelle. Voltaire Foundation, Oxford 2005–2012.
  5. ↑ friedrich.uni-trier.de
  6. ^ G. MacDonogh: Frederick the Great. St. Martin's Griffin, New York 1999, p. 241.
  7. ^ Cuno Friedrich von Hagen , adjutant of Prince August Wilhelm, (see: Johann David Erdmann Preuss: Friedrich der Grosse with his relatives and friends: A historical sketch. Berlin 1838, p. 226, ebook )
  8. ^ Henri de Catt: Conversations of Frederick the Great. Reprint of the original from 1885, p. 61, (books.google.de , snippet view)

literature

Web links

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personal data
SURNAME Catt, Henri de
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Catt, Henri Alexandre de (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Reader Friedrich II.
DATE OF BIRTH June 25, 1725
PLACE OF BIRTH Morges
DATE OF DEATH November 23, 1795
Place of death Potsdam