Rheinsberg

Rheinsberg Castle

Many people come to Rheinsberg, a castle near Potsdam, to feel the charm of the novella Rheinsberg, written by Kurt Tucholsky in 1922.

  

The Vossische Zeitung
published Kurt's preferences in their New Year's edition, 1928

They eventually end up in a small museum dedicated to the poet.

Crown Prince Frederick at the entrance to Rheisberg

Some others come because of Frederick the Great, who spent his honeymoon if you can call it that, at Rheinsberg with an unloved wife destined to him by his father.

Click to enlarge

Only a few hike the extensive park of the castle.

Our travel group experienced all. Following a tour of the rooms of Rheinsberg Castle, our guide took us on an excursion into the parks.

After a visit to the Tucholsky Museum, a boat trip through the extensive chain of Brandenburg lakes to the north across the border to Mecklenburg-Vorpommern concluded the last day of Red Baron's trip to Havelland.

Our specialized tour guide is already waiting for us.

When visiting Reinsberg Castle, one learns much about Frederick the Great's relatives. 

Prince Frederick William Henry Augustus of Prussia

While the king was a dud in terms of population policy, his cousin Frederick William Henry Augustus, with 11 illegitimate children, was just the contrary.

He probably strove to emulate his uncle, the Soldier King, who fathered 14 legitimate children with his wife, Sophie Dorothea.

Wikipedia knows, "Frederick William Henry Augustus' first mistress, Karoline Friederike Wichmann, with whom he cohabited from 1805 until 1817, bore him four children. She was ennobled as Baroness von Waldenburg."

Baroness von Prillwitz

"His second mistress was Auguste Arend, later ennobled as Baroness von Prillwitz. They were together from 1818 until her death in 1834 and had seven children. Shortly after Baroness Von Prillwitz's death, he began a relationship with and morganatically married Emilie von Ostrowska, a Polish noblewoman. They had a daughter, Charlotte, who was five when her father died and was raised by her father's Jewish tailor. "

Before we took off for our walk in the park, our guide showed us a grotto within the castle. The artificial cave later served as a laundry. So the romantic wall paintings are mostly destroyed.

View into the main avenue in the direction of the garden portal

View from the hedge parterre in the direction of Lake Grienerick

Locked entrance to the Egeria Grotto

View from the park toward the obelisk

In the August Wilhelm Rondell, our guide told us the story of a quarrel between two Prussian brothers.

 
Prince Augustus William of Prussia was the eleventh child of the Soldier King and his wife Sophie Dorothea and Frederick the Great's younger brother. He served as all of the family in the army. It happened that his first own command was the unfortunate retreat of Prussian troops after the Battle of Kolín. The bombardment of Zittau by Austrian troops led his brother, the king, to rush to his aid with his army from Silesia. After the two armies were united at Bautzen, Frederick immediately reprimanded his brother sharply and ungraciously dismissed him from troop service. Less than a year later, Prince August Wilhelm died, broken in body and soul, presumably from a brain tumor.

Another brother of  King Frederick, Prince Henry of Prussia, the 13th and the one but last child of the Soldier King and Queen Sophia Dorothea, successfully led Prussian armies in the Silesian Wars and the Seven Years' War. He lived in Rheinsberg Palace after receiving it as a gift from his brother-king in 1744. 

Still, Henry could not bear Frederick's atrocity against August Wilhelm. So he had a memorial column erected for his humiliated brother bearing the Latin inscription: HINC VENVSTVM OS VIRI VERITATIS VIRTVTIS PATRIAE AMANTISSIMI. Fontane translated it into: Here is the friendly face of the favorite of truth, virtue, and of the fatherland. 

 It is not finished yet with Prince Henry for Red Baron read in Wikipedia, "In 1786, either Nathaniel Gorham, then-President of the Continental Congress, or Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben, the Prussian general who served in the Continental Army, suggested to Alexander Hamilton that Henry should become monarch of the United States, but the prince declined, and the new nation had no support for a monarchy."

Our guide reads the pyramid's inscription in German

Henry set himself a monument in the park formed like a pyramid. He left an inscription in French to posterity that reads:

Thrown from his birth into this vortex of adulation,
which the vulgar calls
glory and greatness,
but in which the wise man recognizes nothingness;
victim of all the evils of humanity;
tormented by the passions of others,
agitated by his own;
often confronted with slander
or victim of injustice;
still burdened
by the loss of cherished parents,
trusted and loyal friends,
but also often comforted by friendship;
happy in the recollection of his thoughts,
and happier still
when his services have been of benefit to his homeland
or a for suffering humanity.

This is the short version of the life
of Frederick Henry Ludwig
son of Frederick William I, King of Prussia,
and Sophie Dorothea, daughter of George I, King of Great Britain.

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