Swedish noble and military officer. Son of Frederik von Quanten and Elisabeth von Waalwijk. Married to Charlotte Magdalena von Scheiding, with whom he had six children.
Von Quanten's father died when Carl was nine, and Carl became a page at the court of the King of Sweden. From 1756 to 1759 he was in the military service of France, in 1759 he was a cornet in the Scanian cavalry regiment, in 1760 was promoted to the rank of Captain before in 1763 he became first major and later lieutenant-colonel in the service of the Brunswick horse guards. He returned to French service in 1771 from where he resigned in 1773.
In 1769 the publisher Johann Julius Hummel published six flute sonatas composed by von Quanten, and in 1773 was published "Tanker I Krigs-Wetenskapen", one of the first Swedish books on military science.
In 1778 Quanten established the entail of Quanteburg in the Swedish province of Dalsland.1
- 1Sources include http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Jacob_von_Quanten
Boswell met "Quanten, a Swede, an officer in the service of Brunswick" who "was kind enough to entertain [him] with some music this morning" on August 17, 1764, in Brunswick. The Swede also told Boswell about several of Boswell's kin, whose ancestors had emigrated to Sweden in the 17th century. Boswell described Quanten as follows:
"He plays delightfully on the German flute, and composes very well in a singular taste, with quick transitions from high to low notes, very hard to play. He paints too. He is a lively, genteel, brisk young man. He brought to my mind many ideas of healthy, accomplished foreign officers."