Stepbrother Fritz
|75| Let me refer the reader to what my father says concerning this in his autobiography. [1] With respect to his marriage to his first and second wives, the latter being my mother, it was through them that we were related to almost all the first families of the citizenry as well as with various families of nobility through marriages of daughters of the former.
Because my eldest brother, Christian Friedrich Michaelis, was born on 13 May 1754, he was much older than I [born 1770]; for when in 1776 he returned from Strasbourg as a doctor, I already viewed him as man, perhaps even fearing him more than loving him. I had smallpox at the time, and although I had been inoculated, I was extremely sick; and although people always referred to me as a pretty child — something especially Herr von Ramdohr did, my brother’s friend and my sister Caroline’s admirer, who later made a name for himself — that is, he often gave me sugar cookies whenever I came home from knitting school at the side of a pretty young maidservant, though more because of her than my blue eyes. But it did play to my petty vanity, which after I had smallpox was quite hurt by the remark, “How ugly the child has become” — which hurt me so badly that I never forgot it, often recalling it later whenever anyone complimented me.
My brother’s return [from America] provided the occasion for all sorts of enjoyable events, e.g., balls that took place in our home, since at the time my father would not allow my sisters to attend public balls. So my brother arranged a piquenik, attended especially by the Böhmer, Schlözer, Feder, Grätzel, Ayrer, etc. families, as well as by distinguished students such as Ramdohr. [2] The Böhmers had 3 sons who were my brother’s friends, including the later physician, my sister Caroline’s husband. [3] We had daily social contact with this family, with all the various family members finding like-minded company of the same age; moreover, our gardens were next door to each other, so that ongoing, even hourly contact was never interrupted.
|76| My brother afterward traveled to London to receive training as a physician, and it was here that he received a charge from Lord Shesterfielt [Marginal note: No, not this one after all. I no longer remember who it was. I may be mistaking the name here.] to accompany his son on the latter’s journeys. But he preferred to go into English military service, namely, to accompany the Hessians on their military campaign to America as a staff medical officer, at that time a journey as adventurous as going to the moon. He remained there for the entire campaign, then returned with the troops, after which he received a position as court physician to the current landgrave in Kassel, whose successor then appointed him professor (with the title Oberrath) in Marburg [1786]. There he made a name for himself as a physician and surgeon until 1814, when he fell victim to a nervous fever he contracted while caring for the sick in both the Prussian and French hospitals.
After my brother returned [1784] — I had just turned 14 years old — my sister Caroline married Justizrath Böhmer’s son, a mining physician in Clausthal. Only later [1794] did my brother [Fritz] marry a certain Frau von Malzburg, who was no longer able to bear him any children. Because his income was often quite restricted by the disturbances of war and the change in territorial rulers, his respected widow used the pension she was yet drawing from the property of her [first] husband’s family to pay off all the debts. After the death of my second brother in 1811, he [Fritz Michaelis] took in the latter’s second daughter, Sophie. But her aunt took her back to her mother, since she [the aunt] now had other obligations. In a very peculiar incident, my brother became extremely ill and temporarily amnesic. While making a sick visitation during the winter, he fell from his horse on the back of his head. He recovered, but only after they had considered trepanning him. But his entire life he always had an unusually large handwriting. — When he died, I had outlived my entire family. — He was a handsome man, and quite intelligent, but also vehement and powerful; he greatly loved his family, love that even went as far as the romantic sort in the case of his sister Caroline.
Notes
[1] Johann David Michaelis, Lebensbeschreibung von ihm selbst abgefasst . . . (Leipzig 1793) 144:
I have been married twice, and my second marriage continues. First on 28 October 1749, to Johanna Christiana Friederike Schachtrup, daughter of a merchant [Johann Conrad Schachtrup] in Clausthal. She died 24 January 1759. I had only one son with her, born 13 May 1754, Christian Friedrich Michaelis [Fritz], formerly field surgeon with the Hessian-Kassel troops in America, currently Hofrath and [from Easter 1786] professor of medicine in Marburg. The second time, on 17 August 1759 I married Louise Philippine Antonette Schöder, daughter of the senior postal administrator, Herr Schröder, in Göttingen; I had nine children with her, of whom only one son, Gottfried Philipp Michaelis, who studied medicine, and three daughters are still alive. Back.
[2] Concerning assemblies, concerts, and piqueniks in Göttingen at this time, see supplementary appendix 11.1. Back.
[3] The sons of Georg Ludwig Böhmer were, in order of age: Johann Friedrich Eberhard Böhmer, Johann Franz Wilhelm Böhmer (Caroline’s first husband), Justus Ludwig Bechteld Böhmer, and Georg Wilhelm Böhmer, the latter of whom would cause Caroline so much trouble later through his participation in the Mainz Republic. Back.