It was not only Sophia Dorothea who welcomed the visitor; Duke Ernst August clapped him on the back and made him a colonel of the guard. George Louis’s younger brothers adored the count and often brought him to Sophia Dorothea’s little salon in the evening to cheer her up. Not surprisingly, the princess found she had much more in common with the sophisticated count than with her cold bumbling husband. Both were emotional and flirtatious; they loved music and dancing, literature and art, all things French and refined. Their conversations became the high point of her every day. Before she knew it, the hereditary princess was falling in love.
One evening at a costume ball, George Louis danced the first minuet with Countess Platen, who at forty labored under heavy brocades, heavy diamonds, and heavy makeup. For the second minuet, Sophia Dorothea got up and looked about for a partner. A sharp contrast to the blowsy charms of the countess, at twenty-two Sophia Dorothea was dressed as Flora in a white gown with flowers in her hair. For her partner she selected Königsmark, who was magnificently dressed in rose and silver brocade. Everyone noticed how well suited the couple seemed, how beautifully they danced. Everyone, including the spiteful Countess Platen, who had her own designs on Königsmark and vowed to get him into her bed.
Königsmark was a true gentleman of the seventeenth century, boasting the talent to drink, gamble, ride, fight, and make love with great gusto. Possessed of exquisite courtly manners, he sported a flowing dark wig and sumptuous clothing. Sensual, hot-blooded, an urgent need for sex always throbbing painfully in his breeches, he could rarely turn down a woman’s offer. And when the opulent Countess Platen whispered in his ear an invitation to visit her that night, he eagerly accepted. Exhausted by her feverish embraces, he stumbled back to his rooms as the sun rose.
Though Königsmark enjoyed the voluptuous favors of Countess Platen by night, by day he found himself more and more bewitched by the princess. His military career as a mercenary called him to new battlefields, yet he could not tear himself away from Hanover. So he stayed on, serving the duke for a small salary, spending his inheritance with reckless abandon, and making love to the vile Countess Platen while pretending it was the princess he held in his arms. Hemorrhaging money, he and his sister Aurora lived in a grand house across the Leine Palace garden from the apartments of Sophia Dorothea, where they kept fifty-two horses and twenty-nine servants.
Finally, after two years in Hanover, in a futile effort to forget his hopeless love, he volunteered for a military expedition to the Peloponnesus in 1690. It was a disastrous expedition, and of eleven thousand men who went, only one hundred thirty returned. One of them was Königsmark, and he returned a changed man. Far away amidst the screams of men and horses, the smell of blood and gunpowder, he had realized his overpowering love for Sophia Dorothea, the unattainable hereditary princess.
Countess Platen welcomed her lover home from the wars with open arms, arms which remained open as he walked coldly past her to Sophia Dorothea. Smoldering with hatred, the rejected woman waged all-out war against the princess. She placed spies all over town and in the palace to report the princess’s every move. Displaying her malice as ostentatiously as she did her diamonds, Countess Platen upstaged and insulted Sophia Dorothea at every opportunity, and always succeeded in outdressing her. She schemed with Melusina von Schulenburg on how to keep George Louis utterly enthralled, to the disadvantage of his wife.
Meanwhile Königsmark’s visits to the princess, though platonic, became more intense. Seated together in a corner of her salon, he whispered to her as she bent her head over her embroidery so the ladies-in-waiting at the other end of the room couldn’t see her blush. For a while the sheer intoxication of being in the same room together was enough, as the sparks danced between them. Then the two began secretly sending love letters.
By examining the letters of Königsmark to Sophia Dorothea, we can tell with some certainty when their relationship was physically consummated. His correspondence which began in July 1690 and lasted through April 1691, though filled with frilly romantic verses, had a respectful tone and ended with “Your faithful servant.” But on April 30, he was more intimate, ending with “Farewell my beloved brunette, I embrace your knees.”13
With the invaluable aid of Eleonore de Knesebeck, Königsmark had slipped into the princess’s bed. “Knesebeck lives in the small room near mine,” Sophia Dorothea wrote her lover. “You can come in by a rear door and you can stay for twenty-four hours if you wish without the least risk.”14 By this she meant that the tiny bedroom of Eleonore de Knesebeck was visited by neither courtiers nor servants. No one would find Königsmark hiding there.
Sometimes the lovers met in the palace garden at night when Sophia Dorothea and her maid went out for air. “As for me, every evening Knesebeck and I walk together under the trees near the house,” the princess wrote. “We will wait for you from 10 o’clock to midnight. You know the usual signal. You must make yourself known by it. The gate in the fence is always open. Don’t forget that you must give the signal and that I shall wait for you under the trees.”15 The signal was whistling a popular tune called “The Spanish Follies.”
During these night strolls, Sophia Dorothea and Eleonore would leave the palace gardens and dart into Königsmark’s house. It was a good ruse, because if they were detected they could say they had been visiting Aurora von Königsmark.
Consumed with anticipation of a sexual rendezvous, Königsmark wrote, “I hope… that you will give me permission to come and see you in your apartments this evening. If you don’t agree to that, come and visit me tonight at my house. Let me know one way or the other. If you decide to come to me you will find that everyone in my household has retired. The door will be open. Come in boldly without being afraid of anything. I am dying with impatience to see you. Answer quickly so that I may know what to expect.”16
Sometimes trysts went awry, either through misunderstanding or the unexpected appearance of Sophia Dorothea’s husband or in-laws. Early one morning, having waited in vain to be let into the palace, Königsmark reproached his mistress bitterly: “Thursday, 2:00 in the morning: Your behavior is scarcely kind. You make an appointment and then leave people to freeze to death waiting for the signal. You should know that I was waiting in the streets from 11:30 to 1:00.”17
To prevent their letters from being read by spies, they wrote in code, but the code of children which could easily be deciphered. Numbers referred to places and people. Königsmark was 120, Sophia Dorothea 201, Celle was 305. They had code names for individuals. George Louis was the Reformer, Eleonore de Knesebeck was La Confidante, and Countess Platen was the Fat One.
At court events, sometimes Knesebeck would give Königsmark a sign and place a letter in his hat or gloves. One day he got the sign but found no letter. In great uneasiness he wrote Sophia Dorothea, “I swear to you that I looked in my hat, and, as to my gloves, I put them on, but there was nothing in them. I was angry at La Confidante, for she had given me the signal, and yet I found nothing.”18
Königsmark followed the princess on her rounds of visits to various palaces. After a rendezvous at the palace of Brockhausen, the count wrote, “I cannot forget those delectable moments at Brockhausen. What pleasure! What transports! What ardor! What rapture we tasted together! And with what grief we parted! Oh that I could live those moments over again! Would that I had died then, drinking deep of your sweetness, your exquisite tenderness! What transports of passion were ours!…I will always be your true lover, absent or present, wherever you may be, and whatever may befall.”19
“What wouldn’t I give to hear midnight strike!” he wrote, eagerly anticipating a tryst. “Be sure to have smelling salts ready lest my excess of joy cause me to faint. Tonight I shall embrace the most agreeable person in the world and I shall kiss her charming lips….I shall embrace your knees; my tears will be allowed to run down your incomparable cheeks; my arms will have the satisfaction of embracing the most beautiful body in the world.”20
In public, the lov
ers signaled their passion by eye contact, simmering glances redolent of hot embraces in the dark. “Our restraint has its charms,” wrote Königsmark, “for though the last few days I have seen you only in places where even the language of the eyes is scarcely possible, I have had many happy moments. What a delight, ma petite, for us to be able to communicate with impunity in the presence of thousands of people!”21 But of course the lovers did not communicate with impunity; everyone noticed.
In 1692 the Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I immeasurably raised the status of the duke of Hanover to that of electoral prince. The title “elector” went back to the twelfth century when German princes elected the Holy Roman Emperor by casting votes for various princely contenders. But the title of emperor, which carried an imposing cachet and little else, had remained firmly in the grasping hands of the Hapsburgs for centuries, and elections were social events where Hapsburg envoys dispensed bribes to electors.
Nonetheless, the freshly minted Elector Ernst August was bursting with pride in his honor. Watched closely by jealous rival kingdoms, he would not stand for scandal in his immediate family and took greater efforts to curb the love affair he had been observing for some time. It is likely that the love letters were intercepted beginning in 1692 and easily deciphered. We can imagine the elector’s frown as he read Königsmark’s gush of joy after having made love to the princess. “When I remember all our exquisite transports, all our sweet violence, I forget my grief. What ardor, what fire, what love have we not tasted together!”22 And the especially damning “If I could kiss that little place which has given me so much pleasure….”23
The elector, having discovered that Sophia Dorothea’s love letters went through Aurora von Königsmark’s hands, politely requested that Aurora leave his kingdom. His earlier fondness of the count became marked coldness. He ordered Königsmark to fight with the Hanoverian army against Louis XIV, sending him far away from the hereditary princess. Exiled from court, Königsmark had greater difficulty sending and receiving letters. He would address the missive to Knesebeck and give it to a soldier or traveler returning to Hanover. Similarly, Knesebeck would give Sophia Dorothea’s letters to travelers heading out to the field. But many of these letters were misplaced or stolen, and both feared that they had lost their lover to someone else.
The princess grew pale and thin, weeping frequently. “Am I destined to sorrow all my life?” she lamented. “Shall I never be able to taste quietly the joys of loving and being loved?”24
While Sophia Dorothea sank into depression, her lover’s thoughts strayed in the direction of violence. “I have a consolation here close to me,” he wrote from camp. “Not a pretty girl, but a bear, which I feed. If you should fail me I will bare my chest and let him tear my heart out.”25 Some of his missives he signed with his own blood.
Königsmark composed a tribute to his own jealous writhing:
Alas! I love my own destruction,
And nurse a fire within my breast
Which will soon consume me.
I am well aware of my own perdition,
Because I have dared to love
What I should have only worshipped.26
While other soldiers were routinely given leave to visit Hanover, Königsmark was not. It had become official court policy to separate him from the electoral princess. On several occasions he feigned illness, pitifully moaning and begging for sick leave, which was firmly denied. Exasperated to the point of madness, one night he deserted his post and rode wildly for six days to arrive in Hanover covered in mud and sweat. Without bathing or changing his clothes, he secretly visited Sophia Dorothea.
The next day he called on Field Marshal Heinrich von Podewils who served Ernst August as president of the council of war, confessed his breach of duty, and begged for leave to stay awhile in Hanover. Taking pity on the distraught man, the field marshal, sighing, agreed. But he beseeched Königsmark to end the affair or leave the country. So many factions at court were aware of it that both he and the princess were in great danger. “My dear friend, may God guard thee,” the field marshal said, “but take this advice from me, do not let thy love ever hinder thee from thinking of thy fortune.”27
Podewils also warned Königsmark that he was being watched by spies employed by a certain lady of the court. And indeed Countess Platen had never forgiven Sophia Dorothea her youth and beauty, though she would perhaps have limited her revenge to merely destroying the princess’s marriage had not both women fallen in love with the same man. Her hatred of Königsmark was far more deadly, however; he had left her crumbling altar to worship at the pure shrine of Sophia Dorothea.
Hearing of Podewils’s remarks, Sophia Dorothea grew agitated. “I fear we are betrayed,” she wrote. “I am trembling on the edge of a precipice, but my own danger is the least of my anxieties. I scarcely think of the misfortunes, inevitable and unavoidable, which surely await me if discovered; you, only, occupy my thoughts.”28
“I pray always that my passion may not become fatal to me,” Königsmark wrote.29 “We are treading on dangerous ground, but when people love as we love they do not consider trifles, and if one holds the loved one, what matters the cost? Were I to see the scaffold before my eyes I would not swerve.”30
He began having nightmares about getting caught in flagrante delicto. He wrote, “I hope that what I dreamt last night will not happen, for I had my head cut off because I was surprised with you…. My greatest worry was what had become of you…. On waking up I was bathed in sweat and my valet told me that I had shouted with a sobbing voice, ‘Where is she? Where is she?’ I did not fear death, but my greatest suffering was being deprived of news of you and not being able any longer to find out what had become of you. This sort of thing makes one realize how much one loves people.”31
In a last-ditch effort to connect herself to Königsmark, Countess Platen offered him her daughter in marriage. It was not a bad offer, considering the influence, rank, and property of the girl’s parents, and Sophia Charlotte Platen, though short and dumpy, had a sparkling wit and vivacious personality. But Königsmark, who had bedded the mother, was disgusted at the thought of wedding the daughter and didn’t bother disguising his feelings.
Furious at being spurned again, the countess convinced the elector to exile the count from Hanover. Politely Ernst August told Königsmark his decision, and politely Königsmark departed. He rode straight to Dresden to take part in the coronation ceremonies of his good friend Augustus who had just become the elector of Saxony. The new elector gave his friend a post as major general in the Saxon army.
One evening in Dresden, at an officers’ mess party to honor Königsmark, the count drank too much and began entertaining the guests with intimate descriptions of women at the court of Hanover. He told ribald tales of Countess Platen ruling through her lover, the weak elector. He titillated his audience with details of her raucous parties which inevitably became drunken orgies. They roared with laughter to hear of the milk baths she took to aid her wrinkled skin, after which she doled out the milk to the poor as townspeople commended her Christian charity. The soldiers slapped him on his back and sent him drinks when he described the fat ugly daughter Countess Platen had tried to foist on him. And then, to the sound of loud guffaws, he talked of George Louis’s bony mistress Melusina von Schulenburg who towered over her royal lover. Unfortunately for Königsmark, someone in the group that night—a laughing soldier, perhaps, or a bustling servant—was a spy in the pay of Countess Platen.
Outraged at Königsmark’s public insults, Countess Platen tried to rouse the lethargic Ernst August to action but he impatiently waved her away. She then informed Melusina of her international humiliation.
Melusina was a gentle soul whose only major fault was rapacity. No plotting and planning for Melusina, no upstaging her lover’s wife; she quietly had sex with George Louis at night and pocketed the price the next day. But with the sound of laughter at the Dresden officers’ mess echoing in her ears, Melusina picked up her heavy skirts
and flew to George Louis. Weeping from shame, she upbraided her lover about his wife’s affair with Königsmark and the humiliating stories the count was spreading across Europe.
Furious that his gentle mistress should be so insulted, George Louis burst into Sophia Dorothea’s rooms and bitterly criticized her for her love affair. The enraged princess replied that George Louis’s affair with Melusina was the real scandal and suggested that they divorce. George Louis heatedly agreed, and the quarrel escalated until the prince threw himself on his wife and began tearing out her hair. His hands circled her neck and squeezed. Her attendants in the antechamber, hearing her screams, rushed in to save her. George Louis, seeing her rescuers, threw his wife on the floor and swore he would never look at her again. He never did.
Her mother was horrified to learn of the attack. Her father, however, suggested she had earned the purple finger marks on her neck by her outrageous behavior. Her in-laws, fearing scandal and a possible divorce that would rob them of Sophia Dorothea’s money, sent George Louis away to visit his sister in Berlin until tempers calmed down.
Sophia Dorothea, sick of her life in Hanover, knowing her father would never offer her a respectable haven at Celle, was ready to flee her gilded cage and live the life of a soldier’s woman with Königsmark. If she escaped Hanover, her husband would divorce her for desertion. She could then marry Königsmark and live with him in some sunny foreign land. She would willingly surrender the coronet and gowns, the jewels, state carriages, and pompous ceremonies. She, of all people, knew how empty they were.
The only problem was money. Königsmark had spent his entire inheritance and was wallowing in debt. After more than a decade of marriage, Sophia Dorothea first looked into her own financial affairs. “Yesterday I read my marriage contract,” she wrote Königsmark sadly, “which could not be more disadvantageous to me than it is. The Prince is the absolute master of everything and nothing belongs to me. Even the allowance he ought to give me is so badly explained that they can easily quibble over it. I was very much surprised by all this because I did not expect it at all. It hurt me so much that I had tears in my eyes.”32
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