(no subject)

[cahn]

This is totally too good to keep to myself: on my "I showed my family opera clips" post, mildred_of_midgard and selenak are talking about Frederick the Great (by way of Don Carlo, of course) and it is like this amazing virtuoso spontaneous thing and whoa

Things I knew about Frederick the Great before a year ago: he was king of... Prussia??

Additional things I knew about Frederick the Great before the last couple of days: selenak informed me last year that he and his dad may well have been at least somewhat the inspiration for Schiller's Don Carlos, and everything that goes with that: his dad (Friedrich Wilhelm, henceforth FW) was majorly awful, he had a boyfriend (Katte) who was horribly killed by his dad

Only a partial list of the additional things I now know about Frederick the Great (henceforth "Fritz") and associated historical figures due to mildred and selenak:
-Fritz and Katte's escape plan (which resulted in Katte's execution) was... really, really boneheaded. As boneheaded as opera plots! :P
-Katte was in the process of destroying 1,500 letters when he got caught (! puts all those letters in Don Carlos into perspective) (ETA: but also see mildred's comment below)
-Fritz wrote opera libretti and so did his sister
-Fritz decided to use himself as an experimental test subject to see if it was entirely possible to do without sleep via the application of coffee WITH PEPPERCORNS AND MUSTARD
-Fritz wrote a poem about orgasm that also reads as if he's never actually, like, had sex (although that was not in this post, it was in the comments to this one)
-FW apparently beat up George II when they were kids
-I am totally not even going to try to summarize the discussion about FW's "rationalized sadism" and sexual hangups and the reeeeeally bizarre Dresden interlude (go down a couple of comments for the really insane stuff)
-Fritz' sister Wilhemina wrote tell-all memoirs about her totally insane family which I am SUPER going to read now, watch this space

Also, there is apparently some subplot involving Russian fanboys that introduces an entirely new cast of people which I am dying to find out about

Comments

[mildred_of_midgard]

it is like this amazing virtuoso spontaneous thing and whoa

Awww, thank you! High praise indeed.

One little quibble:

Katte was in the process of destroying 1,500 letters when he got caught

Technically, Sophia Dorothea and Wilhelmina (Fritz's mother and sister, also in on the plot) were destroying the 1,500 letters (and destroying was the easy part; the hard part was rewriting them under the gun to be less incriminating) that Katte had forwarded them. We don't know *what* Katte was doing that kept him from escaping when he had the chance.

a) Waiting for his fancy French saddle to be finished, presumably so he could escape in style? (What a primary source who doesn't like Katte has to say. I and others are highly skeptical.)
b) Destroying/hiding his own incriminating evidence, particularly those valuables Fritz had given him for safekeeping?
c) Hoping that the whole thing would blow over, believing fleeing would confirm his guilt but staying put might allow him to talk his way out of it, on the grounds that he *hadn't* actually deserted, and maybe all the evidence of him conspiring with foreign powers could be destroyed in time? <-- Highly plausible, if you ask me.
d) Not wanting to leave Fritz behind alone without even knowing what was going to happen to him?
e) Terribly indecisive about what the right move was? (I mean, he told Fritz he wouldn't go, tried to talk Fritz out of it, went along with the conspiring anyway, waited to get permission to leave Berlin, wouldn't sneak out without permission, told his interrogators that he would have sneaked out if he'd gotten word the Prince had made it out of Prussia safely, packed and got ready to flee Berlin when he knew his arrest was imminent, did not actually flee Berlin despite plenty of warning. Does not strike me as the most decisive personality in general. Probably a very laid-back kind of guy who got along with people as iron-willed as Fritz precisely because he wasn't constantly clashing with them. See for contrast: iron-willed Voltaire.)
f) Some combination of all of the above?

Fritz decided to use himself as an experimental test subject to see if it was entirely possible to do without sleep via the application of coffee WITH PEPPERCORNS AND MUSTARD

Yes and it's WORSE THAN THAT. The experiment was "can 40 cups of coffee totally obviate the need for sleep?" It was unsuccessful. The "coffee is best taken with mustard and peppercorns" thing was LIFELONG. He liked that shit into his 70s. Or drank it without liking it, no one's sure. I can't decide which would be weirder.

WTF, Fritz.

"rationalized sadism"

I'm not sure if you're using "sadism" in its sexual sense here, but just so your readers are clear, I wasn't. I was using the word in its generalized sense of emotional gratification from inflicting pain on others. I totally think FW was power tripping on making his son suffer and at the prospect of finally breaking his will, do not think he was getting off on it (ewww).

Fritz' sister Wilhemina wrote tell-all memoirs about her totally insane family which I am SUPER going to read now, watch this space

OMMMGGGG, I can't wait! Will be watching this space, you can count on it.

Also, there is apparently some subplot involving Russian fanboys that introduces an entirely new cast of people which I am dying to find out about

Well, I can see that we're going to have to share this with you! :DDDD

Trailer: Russians be crazy. (Including Russians who are actually German because European royal intermarriage was such a thing that your poor Don Carlo had 4 great-grandparents instead of 8.)

I'm so glad you're enjoying all this. My best friend is someone who likes to go on long trips with me and encourage me to ramble about my current favorite things. I always get self-conscious about the unlikelihood of other people being interested in hearing at great length whatever I'm currently most obsessed with, but apparently some people find my story-telling style entertaining and informative? Thank you for being one of them. <3 I'm happy to entertain with the slightest encouragement.

[cahn]

Thank you and selenak! This is amaaaaaaazing, as you said :)

Technically, Sophia Dorothea and Wilhelmina (Fritz's mother and sister, also in on the plot) were destroying the 1,500 letters (and destroying was the easy part; the hard part was rewriting them under the gun to be less incriminating) that Katte had forwarded them. We don't know *what* Katte was doing that kept him from escaping when he had the chance.

lol, thanks, I have added a note to the post :)

I'm not sure if you're using "sadism" in its sexual sense here, but just so your readers are clear, I wasn't. I was using the word in its generalized sense of emotional gratification from inflicting pain on others. I totally think FW was power tripping on making his son suffer and at the prospect of finally breaking his will, do not think he was getting off on it (ewww).

ewwww no, I am an innocent, that didn't actually occur to me! "Rationalized sadism" is a quote from you (that selenak picked up in a later comment) :P But I guess it is a reasonable conclusion given that "sexual hangups" comes right after it...

[selenak]

Including Russians who are actually German because European royal intermarriage was such a thing that your poor Don Carlo had 4 great-grandparents instead of 8

On that note, talking about all of this, it occured to me that practically every royal in Europe of note in this story, other than the French royals pre-Marie Antoinette, were either German (for a qualification of German that includes Austrians) or half German. I mean, Farmer George was the first of the Hannovers who spoke English as his first language, George I didn't speak a word, and George II only picked it up later.

...but of course, they all wrote to each other in French. :) (Though I find it touching that Fritz, who usually hated the language, actually wrote German letters to Fredersdorf. The quotes in this article sound adorably awkward and tender, I don't think translation can get across how much precisely because the spelling is bad and the grammar is off: "Ich küsse den Docter, wan er Dihr gesundt macht! (...)ich wollte Dihr so gerne helffen, als das ich das leben habe". Let's see, I'll have a go to come up with something: "I kiss the Docter if he be healthy making you! (…) I wish so much to help you as life I have." But that makes Fritz sounds like Yoda in English, which, err, doesn't fit the personality.

[mildred_of_midgard]

While looking through W's memoirs just now to refresh my memory on a point of chronology, I happened upon her description of Katte's saddle, which reminds me that *she* says he was waiting because he needed a saddle that could hide papers and such, which makes iiiiiinfinitely more sense. I still think there has to be another way to escape than waiting for a new saddle to be made, but if you're already torn on what the right move is and probably not thinking clearly anyway, because PANIC, it might contribute to your delay.

Anyway, when I was about Fritz's age, I tried and failed to come up with a plan to escape from my non-absolute-monarch parents, so I am totally sympathetic to Fritz's failure to escape from the efficient and restrictive military state that was Prussia, and am willing to believe it represented a best effort. Katte was 26, yes, but he was much less invested in the escape, and potentially more interested in dragging his feet and hoping it went away than in coming up with the best plan ever.

[el_staplador]

That is glorious. Thank you for hosting and sharing it!

[cahn]

:D Isn't it?! I am so glad you are enjoying it too :D

[mildred_of_midgard]

Okay, I see you wanted the Russian shenanigans in this post, so here goes. You asked for it!

selenak may have to flesh out some of the details, it's been 20 years since I looked at European history from the Russian perspective.

So, Elizabeth is Tzarina of Russia. She haaaates Fritz's guts, hopes he chokes on his own spite and has an aneurysm and dies. (I'm making the details up, but she does hate him.)

Now she's in an alliance with Austria and France and a half-hearted Sweden*, who have all ganged up on Fritz in a three-and-a-half front war because he's like that guy mouthing off in a bar who's dead set on provoking everyone in sight. (I will spare you the details, but you do not understand how ridiculously improbable this alliance was--Austria and France getting together was called the Diplomatic Revolution because it was *so* revolutionary that they would agree on anything the way they agreed that Fritz needed to be taught a lesson. Okay, the Seven Years' War was not all about Fritz, it was a lot of superpowers clashing over a million things. But let's note that Fritz did nothing to avoid making everyone in Europe mad at him.)

Uncle George (II) in Great Britain, who has also been provoked by Fritz, has balance of power considerations in continental Europe, and huge conflicts with France overseas, decides that it's worth putting up with his nephew the obnoxious little shit in order to kick France's ass. Especially since Fritz is Machiavellian (ask me about Fritz and Machiavelli) enough to be willing to present himself as the savior of the Protestant faith for the sake of propaganda, lol Fritz.

But mostly George (whose name I'm using metonymically for him and his ministers, he was not nearly as active in foreign policy as some of his neighbors) is interested in his overseas territories, of which Prussia has none, and so he offers Prussia some money and mostly moral support, and some distraction of his neighbors, but isn't fielding an army to fight alongside Prussia, which is on its own in this three-front war. So Fritz 1) got his country into an avoidable three-front war with enemies bigger than he was and 2) won it, barely, which accounts for a great deal of his ambivalent legacy (more on ambivalent legacy later).

* When Sweden eventually made peace with Fritz, he snarked at their ambassadors, "I'm sorry, were you at war with me? Wow, you learn something new every day." (Paraphrased.)

Also, remember that Austria AND France AND GB were all on Fritz's side when he was running away from his dad and tried to get FW to calm down, and FW actually attributed his decision not to kill his son to foreign intervention, and how does Fritz show his gratitude when he comes to power ten years later? "Screw you all, I do what I want. My dad left me an army and a treasury."

So here's Fritz, well into the Seven Years' War, barely hanging in there, swaying around in the bar seeing stars but landing enough punches his opponents are also bleeding out of various orifices. No one understands how he's still on his feet, this was supposed to be over in thirty seconds. "You have got to be kidding me" is the general reaction. But he might finally be about to drop.

Enter...the Miracle of the House of Brandenburg! (Brandenburg is where the Hohenzollerns are from. It's the area around Berlin.)

Elizabeth, who we remember hates Fritz's guts, has been getting progressively sicker. Finally, finally (Fritz has been calling her an "old bitch" for not doing it sooner), she dies.

Her heir is Peter III. He's a German prince who ended up on the throne of Russia because intermarriage.

What happens when he succeeds to the throne?

"Hey, Fritz! ILLLUUUUU! You're my hero! Can I get your autograph? I dress like you and wear my hair like you and I wanna have an army just like you and initiate reforms just like you and I pretend I'm you when I play with my soldiers! *hyperventilates*

"OMG, I'm soooooo sorry about my predecessor making war on you. Women, amirite? Here's my army which was trying to kill you yesterday. My soldiers are totally on your side now and will attack your enemies and defend you with their lives. YOUR CAUSE IS MINE!

"P.S. If you ever come visit, I will totally give you a blow job, you have only to ask."

(Okay, I made up the postscript, there's no evidence for that, but it's in the spirit of things. :P)

Fritz: "Oh thank the Supreme Being that I as a Deist kind of believe in when I'm not sporadically pretending to be a Protestant for the peasants, I might not actually have destroyed my entire country with my ill-thought-out decisions. Comin' at you, Austria and France! It's two on two now! How do you like *them* apples?" *gets a second wind*

Peter: Lasts approximately five minutes (six months, which is like five minutes for a reign) as Tzar before the "Russia is not a province of Prussia" party led by his wife overthrows and probably assassinates him.

His wife and successor, Catherine the soon-to-be-Great: "Fritz is a total asshole, and sucking his dick is not going to be this country's foreign policy. Yes, he's an intelligent asshole and I like some of his reforms, but we are out of this war. Attention, soldiers! Return to Russia at once."

Russian general on site with Fritz in Poland or thereabouts: "Sorry, dude, there was a coup; boss says I have to go home."

Fritz: "Shit. Shit. Enemies approaching now. Okay, Russian guy, I know you can't disobey orders, but it takes time to pack up an army and move it. Can you stick around for, like, two days, arrange your army in battle order, and pretend like you're going to attack, but really just watch, so no one dies and your Empress isn't pissed off? I can work with that."

Russian general: "I guess, yeah."

Austrians or French or both, I forget: "Wow, Fritz sure has a lot of troops on his side. Approach with caution." *battle ensues* "I wonder why the Russians are looking so menacing over there but never actually engaging?" ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Fritz: "Thank you SO MUCH. You can go home now."

And thus concluded the Russian fanboy shenanigans.

To understand how significant all this was on a major geopolitical scale, you have to realize that Prussia was on the verge of losing. Fritz lost some major battles, partly through very questionable decisions when his generals were yelling at him to do basically anything but what he was doing but Fritz has never listened to anyone in his life except for Voltaire on matters of French literary style, and after having his army destroyed repeatedly, he was on the verge of abdicating and committing suicide. Like, imo, "I've been reading the Stoics" suicide, not "I'm suicidally depressed" suicide, although he was also in a pretty rotten emotional state. (Wilhelmine died on the day of one of his military defeats, it was pretty distressing.)

But he won the war. Three bigger guys set out to teach the scrawny little wiseguy a lesson, and at the end of the day, they're all staggering around punch drunk, and he's ready to come back for more. They all stare at each other in disbelief and head off to the hospital to get their injuries treated, leaving him sitting at the bar wearily drinking that glass of beer he snatched out of someone else's hand that started the whole thing.

Friedrich attributed his victory to the two "Miracles of the House of Brandenburg." The one where Elizabeth finally died and Peter came to power for like 6 whole months, and the one where he had lost a battle catastrophically and had no power to stop his enemies from sacking Berlin and conquering his entire country, but his enemies, like, did some tourism in Prussia and left without capitalizing on their opportunity.

It has been plausibly argued that Friedrich overrated the importance of these "miracles" and that, for once in his life he overestimated his enemies, by underestimating the extent to which, even if they won some key battles, they were losing the war because they didn't have the resources to keep fighting. The one thing Friedrich and FW before him did was make sure their country had a near bottomless pool of resources to keep fighting from.

Regardless. Friedrich said he came within a hairsbreadth of losing and was saved by his enemies, and everyone believed him.

Critically, almost two hundred years later, the Nazis believed him. When they were at the end of WWII and staring a really obvious defeat in the face, they held out without surrendering longer than they otherwise would, on the grounds that they were exactly like Old Fritz in every way possible (*Fritz spinning in his misplaced grave*) and Providence had saved Friedrich with some miracles, so it would save them! This is what Selenak was referring to about Roosevelt dying and all that.

Also, their propagandistic version of their hero Old Fritz who tooootally would have endorsed the Nazi party that was just following in his footsteps...is so OOC character assassination as to be unrecognizable and as deluded as the idea that Truman was going to withdraw America from the war...because...he was such a fan of Hitler???

In conclusion, the Russian fanboy shenanigans perfectly encapsulate how decisive Fritz was both to his contemporaries and to later generations. Reactions ranged from "Kill the bastard" to "I want your autograph" to the middle ground, summarized by the best description of Fritz I've ever seen, which I think is contemporary: "Thinks like a philosopher and acts like a king."

At the time, after the Seven Years' War, Fritz was a big celebrity in Europe, both to Protestants (because defender of the Protestant faith, omg lol) and Germans and liberal thinkers and hero-worshippers and intellectuals and so forth. People named their kids after him and their taverns, and people with money traveled to Potsdam to see Old Fritz toward the end of his life (but he was getting increasingly antisocial and only saw you if he wanted to, so a lot of people walked away disappointed).

In later times, fast forwarding through nineteenth-century German nationalism, Hitler and the Nazis made Old Fritz into their epitome of everything Aryanism was striving for. (That the RL guy would have ended up in a concentration camp wearing a pink triangle is just...the mind boggles.) After the Holocaust, everyone except the neo-Nazis hated Fritz for a long time because they saw him as the predecessor to Hitler and practically a Nazi himself, with all his unprovoked expansionist warfare, absolutism, and glorification of the army. Eventually, everyone calmed down a little, read some books, and decided Fritz should only be held responsible for his own actions, not the ones that later people invoked his name to justify, and his historical context should be taken into account. Current communis opinio is that Fritz's legacy should be handled with caution, but as long as we remember not to be nationalistic and to criticize the conquest of Silesia etc., it's okay to like him and write thousands of words about him in cahn's comment threads, because he was actually kind of amazing for his time.

Among contemporaries, Joseph II was a middle-grounder. He respected the hell out of Fritz's brain, not so much the repeated betrayal of allies, invasions of states that were minding their own business, and general reneging on agreements. Had some pretty sharp things to say about that, and definitely had political goals of his own that brought him into conflict with Friedrich. But okay, a lot of people feel that way about Fritz.

But what's amazing about Joseph fanboying as much as he did, even if it was significantly less than Peter over in Russia, was that Joseph was the SON and HEIR of Maria Theresia, whose country Fritz had INVADED within months of coming to power, meaning Fritz had conquered part of JOSEPH'S future territory, DURING Joseph's lifetime! (I just checked the dates, and Fritz began the invasion scarce months before Joseph was born, and made war on Joseph's country for the first five years of his life, then again for seven years when Joseph was a teenager and young man.) And yet that portrait of Joseph looking at Fritz like he can barely stand to be in the presence of so much awesomeness. Omg, the date of that meeting, it's 6 years after Fritz has just finished a super-bloody war (1 million casualties worldwide, since Britain and France brought in their colonial possessions) to confirm that Austria did not get to kidnap what he had rightfully stolen (to quote from Princess Bride).

Fritz had some nice things to say about Joseph after that meeting, and how bright the future looked with young people like this ready to take the helm, and Voltaire was pretty skeptical. "Dude, you're saying that because you're his hero and he's modeling himself after you. Come back when you can get an objective opinion."

And in conclusion, one of the most entertaining summaries of Fritz's ambivalent legacy is from a tumblr post I linked to somewhere in another post, the one called: "Should You Fight Them? The Prussian Monarch Edition."

"Frederick the Great: on the one hand, his father and the Seven Years' War already did. On the other, he’s an absolute warmongering asshole. Probably could beat you through some sneaky maneuver. Proceed with caution and maybe an Italian greyhound to win him over."

What I love most about that post is not only the ambivalence, but that, of all the Prussian monarchs, he's the only one predicted to win against a random internet reader! I guess that's why he's the only one in the list with an epithet instead of a regnal number.

And I'll stop there, but more later in reply to one of your other comments, omg.

The anecdotes, they never stop

[mildred_of_midgard]

Reactions ranged from "Kill the bastard" to "I want your autograph" to the middle ground, summarized by the best description of Fritz I've ever seen, which I think is contemporary: "Thinks like a philosopher and acts like a king."

I might add that Voltaire managed to encompass all of these reactions during the course of his life, and possibly all at the same time. :P

It was like a very, very messy divorce where they eventually reconciled enough to be long-distance pen pals again.

Oh, Voltaire *also* wrote some character assassination memoirs (which he denied and claimed someone was impersonating him and pretended to be outraged, but I think historians have decided it was really him wanting deniability?) during the period of *his* messy divorce estrangement from Fritz, all about how Fritz is terrible in all possible ways, and definitely homosexual and not only that, but impotent so he has to settle for being a *bottom*, HAHAHA, TAKE THAT, FRITZ.

Fritz: *eyeroll* You all know he's saying that because of our falling out, right?

Fritz: *puts another statue of a naked guy in the yard outside his bedroom window*

His heir, upon his death: *removes statue immediately*

Nineteenth century Germans: our beloved hyper-masculine general hero? NO HOMO.

Twenty-first (late twentieth?) century: *puts statue back*

[mildred_of_midgard]

how decisive Fritz was both to his contemporaries

Ugh, I can't edit it now because I replied, but that should read "divisive." Though he was also decisive (unlike poor Katte), strikingly so.

[selenak]

This is a perfect and wonderful summary. *applauds*

re: Catherine: among so many other things, what happens if the wife in an unhappy royal marriage isn't an Elisabeth Christine (accepting her lot in exiled life) or a Sophia Dorothea (fighting a marital war, but via the kids mostly), but a politically ambitious woman (with, famously, her own lovers) and one of the best survivalists of the era. Considering Fritz actually had been pushing for her marriage to Peter (as Catherine was born Sophie von Anhalt-Zerbst - her dad had been one of his generals, and whether or not that was responsible for her not hero worshipping attitude towards him, I'll leave to you), there's additional irony here.

re: Nazis and their Fridericus Cult: just to illustrate a bit of how pervasive that one was even before 1945 and Hitler expecting a fanboy letter from Truman any time soon: there was a whole series of Fritz movies, most, though not all starring Otto Gebühr, who made a career out of playing Friedrich II. Said series started in the Weimar Republic, but really picked up later. Now, Stalingrad happens, and even your hardcore Nazi has an inkling this is REALLY BAD NEWS and invading Russia might not have been such a bright idea after all. At first, Goebbels declares all German soldiers died at Stalingrad so he can sell it as some kind of heroic death scenario. Then, it becomes undeniable that General Paullus surrendered. Goebbels' propaganda solution? MAKE A NEW FRITZ MOVIE. Which takes up considerable resources. Bear in mind by now there are bombings of German cities, and really, do you want to devote a lot of money, petrol and people to making a movie, so that Veit Harlan can shoot realistic battle Scenes with real soldiers, I kid you not, and over 5000 horses? In the middle of WWII? Sure. Because hey, you have Otto Gebühr as Fritz in a key scene, an argument between Friedrich and his younger brother Heinrich (also a general, and, historians today argue, a better one than big bro) in which movie!Fritz gets to say it would have been the duty of the regiment who ran at the battle of Kunersdorf to stay and get slaughtered - "to build a shield wall with their dead bodies" is the phrasing - which is absolutely chilling to watch today even if you are not aware of the Stalingrad subtext. Talk About the dark side of historical fiction and fannishness.

Joseph: the RATIONAL fanboy

[selenak]

And yet that portrait of Joseph looking at Fritz like he can barely stand to be in the presence of so much awesomeness.

Well, to be fair, it was painted by a Prussian painter who never saw either party in their life, commissioned by a Prussian Institution. Also, the historical context is important: Menzel painted it in 1855. He already had drawn the very same scene as an Illustration for Kugel's "History of Frederick the Great" which was published in 1840, mind; it evidently meant a lot to him beyond the commission. But still, you have to consider: by 1855, the Holy Roman German Empire had been over for half a century. The big debate in the German states was: if there was to be a unified Germany, a second Empire, would it be a) one uniting all the German speaking states under Habsburg leadership, or b) one which was excluding the Austrians and led by Prussia instead? (This, obviously, was the solution Prussia favoured.) So a painting in which a Habsburg Emperor openly adores the most famous Prussian King there was has, shall we say, a very political message in this context.

But that meeting did happen, and it was Joseph's idea. I always imagine him reasoning with Maria Theresia on the notes of "I can totally see your point, Mom, and don't worry, he won't get any concessions from me, but HE'S JUST SO COOL". (MT: Fine. Guess I'll go and have another date with his favourite sister.)

Mind you, the other monarch Joseph admired was Peter the Great of Russia, and that usually gets blamed for him travelling a lot. As in, A LOT. He was the European ruler who travelled the most of his time; people into statistics claim that if you put all his travels together, it equals one and a half time around the globe, and six years of his life. He was a big believer in learning from travelling (including learning about the people), and checking out your country's most important foe yourself instead of relying solely on ambassadors makes sense from that pov.

[cahn]

omg, ahahahaha, this is so GREAT.

(Seriously, you do not know what a huge grin I get on my face reading all this stuff you guys are giving me. History, WTF!)

Fritz: "Shit. Shit. Enemies approaching now. Okay, Russian guy, I know you can't disobey orders, but it takes time to pack up an army and move it. Can you stick around for, like, two days, arrange your army in battle order, and pretend like you're going to attack, but really just watch, so no one dies and your Empress isn't pissed off? I can work with that."

omg. Fritz is unbelievable!

[mildred_of_midgard]

"Screw you all, I do what I want. My dad left me an army and a treasury".

From beyond the grave, I can hear Old Fritz: "I EARNED that army and that treasury!"

[cahn]

holy cow selenak I am like 5 pages in:

the two favorites of the prince royal... had no difficulty in corrupting the herat of a young prince... The Prince of Anhalt... feared lest [the prince's wife] might obtain possession of the heart of her consort. To prevent this, he attempted to sow the seeds of discord between them

Welp HI THERE ALVA AND DOMINGO

mildred_of_midgard, in Schiller there are two characters, the Duke of Alva and the priest Domingo, who are the king's councilors and basically keep goading him into distrust and jealousy of his wife and also his son (as they correctly understand that both Elisabeth and Carlos are progressives, and they are not).

the princess royal presented her royal husband with a daughter, who was very unfavorably received, because the ardent wishes of all had been for a prince. I was the child who met with that ungracious reception.

Aw Wilhelmina!

[selenak]

Alva and Domingo indeed. BTW, one of the duo, Grumbkow, also shows up in the Maria Theresia series I linked you two as Prussia's main representative at the Austrian court.

And yep, Wilhelmine wasn't projecting with how her birth was received. (Though she shared that fate, alas, with most princesses of her time, though the others didn't have as neurotic parents…)

[mildred_of_midgard]

some subplot involving Russian fanboys

I like your choice of the word "subplot". It's not just history, it's a fandom!

[cahn]

Honestly in my head it's basically that TV show about Frederick the Great that both you and selenak linked me to (at different times) :D

[mildred_of_midgard]

Oh, fuck you, Mitford. The only thing I remembered about Mitford's bio of Fritz from when I read it 15-20 years ago was that I hated it, but it's one of the only books on him available on Kindle, and I now have this disability where I can't read physical books any more, and that's killing me. So I started rereading it this evening, wondering whether to expect the worst or whether I might like it better as an adult.

Well...twelve pages in...

"By the time Frederick was twelve it had become obvious that he and his father were on the worst of terms. Frederick was a polite, delicate little boy who hated rough ways. He was always in trouble: was beaten for wearing gloves in cold weather, for eating with a silver fork, for throwing himself off a bolting horse...Sophia Dorothea never took her husband’s part. She must have known how ill he was but never showed him any sympathy; she told all and sundry that he was mad and that she went in fear for her life. Nor did Frederick try to please his father...Frederick William’s favourite pastime was hunting, which Frederick disliked all his life. He loved riding—a day never went by without several gallops—but thought that hunting was cruel and dull. He was forced to ride to hounds by his father, but infuriated him by disappearing, to be found talking to his mother in her carriage or playing the flute in a forest glade. Worse still, he hated or pretended to hate anything to do with the army. His father knew that he called his uniform his shroud. If he was beaten, starved, humiliated and generally ill-treated it was to a large extent his own fault and his mother’s."

PLEASE TELL ME SHE DIDN'T HAVE KIDS. I want to rage-cry for every kid who's grown up in a world where these are acceptable opinions.

Man. Mostly I look back at my high school self's opinions about history and have to cringe a little and think, well, they were precocious for my age and I outgrew the most embarrassing ones. But this time...I have to look back and say, "Good job, teenage self."

Oh, no, I just turned the page. "He had icy self-control, never flew into rages, and received his father’s blows and insults with an air of maddening indifference."

*rage-cry*

I mean, the victim-blaming here is so over the top that it's the sort of thing I would write under censorship, if FW were going to read it, and I wanted to garner sympathy for his victims under his nose among all sensible readers. Or, you know, it's the sort of thing I would write IF I WERE FW WRITING MY MEMOIRS.

Omg, I just realized. If I keep reading, I'm going to hit the Katte affair. I don't think I can take it.

*closes book*

It's not worth it.

[mildred_of_midgard]

Cannot cope, off to Mordor write a "five things that never happened to Fritz and Katte" as a palate cleanser, just to recover from that.

[mildred_of_midgard]

he was king of... Prussia??

Little known fact! He started out with the counterintuitive title King *in* Prussia, not King *of* Prussia. As you probably know, the Holy Roman Empire was this grab-bag of little principalities of varying degrees of size and importance, all technically (some only nominally) under the Holy Roman Emperor. The Hohenzollerns gradually got more and more powerful and the Emperor less and less powerful, until finally Fritz's grandfather got to call himself a king.

But King *in* Prussia, not King *of* Prussia. In part because the region that had been called Prussia from olden times was now divided up, and the Hohenzollerns only ruled part of it. The rest was part of Poland. So it wasn't accurate to say the Hohenzollerns were kings of the whole *of* Prussia, but only kings of some territory *inside* it. (If your eyes are glazing over, just know that this was the most I could simplify it.)

But, as Fritz would later say about being "Duke" of his newly conquered province Silesia, "I don't give a fuck about titles as long as I have the territory." F 1, FW 1, and F 2 were all kings and acted like it.

Enter Old Fritz. He's won the Seven Years' War and is trying not to get involved in another one. He figures out the best way to achieve his current political goals is to get his neighbors Catherine the Great and Maria Theresa involved in grabbing parts of Poland as opposed to fighting each other.

Many Europeans are appalled, because it's cool to divide up the Americas and Africa and places like that, but when you start dividing up countries in *Europe*, omg, who's next? Me???

But when Russia, Austria, and a Prussia that's just elbowed its way in with the big boys all agree on something, what're you going to do? Well, nothing, and certainly not if you're Poland.

So the three rulers sit down, draw up a map, and everybody takes the part of Poland that's of most interest to them that they think they can hold. Fritz gets the smallest part, but it's very strategically chosen. Now he's got all of Prussia! Tada, congratulations, Your Majesty, King OF Prussia.

Maria Theresa was one of the "but this is terrible! What have the poor Poles ever done to us??" Europeans. But when you're a monarch and your principles come up against what you convince yourself is necessary for your country...you find a way.

Inspiring Fritz to this jewel of cynicism:

“Catherine and I are simply brigands; but I wonder how the Queen-Empress managed to square her confessor!...She wept as she took, and the more she wept, the more she took.”

Words of wisdom from the man who shed *no* recorded tears over the discarding of the Anti-Machiavel before the ink was dry.

After Fritz's death, more partitions of Poland continued, because it was, like, sitting RIGHT THERE.

[cahn]

Wow, okay! Hee, Fritz. Also, lol, some large part of what I know about history comes from Dave Barry (the humorist)'s book A Sort-of History of the United States (which was the book my roommate and I used to study for the US History AP -- if you can judge from this that our history teacher and textbook were both terrible, you would be right; Dave Barry was way better than either of them). I don't have access to my copy right now, but he says something like, "One of the lessons of history is that anything, including summer thunderstorms, leads to Germany invading Poland."

[mildred_of_midgard]

Other anecdotes of note.

Fritz was an anti-anti-vaxxer. Vaccination per se hadn't been invented yet, but inoculation via variolation had, and Fritz was *all for it*, and got super mad at it getting banned in France, the same way we get mad at anti-vaxxers today. So mixed in with all the deaths, he saved some lives.

Plus the lives that he failed to take because the criminal code became less harsh (still very harsh by modern standards) in most respects under his rule.

One thing he takes a lot of modern heat for is leaving the death penalty for "sodomy" while probably committing more than his share of sodomy, and even if not technically committing it in practice, definitely all for it in theory. However, I would be super curious about whether enforcement changed at all under Friedrich II, in either direction. (Sodomy law is one of those things where enforcement has varied widely across place and time. If you read up on Renaissance Florence, for example, it's amaaaaazing.) There has to be some queer history paper or book out there where someone's looked into this.

Another fun, out-there anecdote that you can add to your peppercorns and orgasm list: he and Wilhelmine once wrote letters to each other, each pretending to be their dog writing to the other one's dog, because of course they did. The letters are a little on the misanthropic side, all "The more people I meet, the more I love my dog," but they're also adorable and more than a little weird. You can read the context and English translations of the letters here.

Would not be at all surprised if this ever happened in real life. "I'm a very busy king, total workaholic, no time to sleep, important stuff to do, don't bother me!" *closes door* "Whoooo's a good giiiirl?" Would not be surprised if it happened more than once.

[mildred_of_midgard]

OMG, forgot to tell THIS anecdote.

In addition to homosexuality being a capital offense, so was bestiality. There are at least two accounts of Friedrich refusing to enforce this sentence against someone who'd had sex with a four-legged animal. In one case, it was a member of the cavalry who'd had sex with his horse. Fritz's punishment was to put him in the infantry, which, as it was both a demotion (the cavalry being the more prestigious of the two) and got him away from horses, I consider quite a neat little solution.

On the other occasion, Friedrich wrote, and you're going to love this, "In this country, there is freedom of conscience and penis."

Now, the plural of anecdote is not data, but I HOPE, and I expect, that it was a lot easier to get away with homosexual intercourse under his reign than previous reigns. Still would have been infinitely better for all, e.g. people after he died, to lift the death penalty, but I accept that reformers run into problems getting their reforms accepted. And I would still love to see the data on prosecutions.

But anyway. CONSCIENCE AND PENIS. Yes, Fritz, I'm sure your subjects loved religion and sex being placed side-by-side like this. Go you!

[mildred_of_midgard]

Wait, did you tell me that when Opera!Posa dies, he sings, "Ah, je meurs, l'âme joyeuse"/"Io morrò, ma lieto in core"???

Because one version (there are several slight variants, all telling Fritz not to blame himself) of Katte's last words to Fritz is "Je meurs pour vous la joie dans le cœur."

!!!

[cahn]

oh, man, I don't think I did tell you, sorry!! Yes, he sings that, it's basically my favorite aria in the whole thing <3

[mildred_of_midgard]

Today's anecdotes (you can tell the anecdotes are tapering off) from FW's A+ parenting:

On the one hand, he did the over-the-top parenting thing with executing Katte in front of Fritz's eyes for the express purpose of breaking Fritz's heart and hoping to inspire a reversion to religious orthodoxy (seriously, his orders were "Head falls, my son watches, chaplain steps into his cell ready to comfort him and lead him back to the faith"; what they got instead was 3 days of Fritz screaming hysterically and refusing to eat*), which we all know about.

* How long this would have gone on, we don't know, but somebody finally reminded Fritz that his mother and sister would be pretty darn upset if he starved himself to death, and then he consented to eat, and the rehabilitation process began. (Which his jailers had to beg FW to allow them to tone down at one point, because they were seriously worried Fritz was going to lose his reason under the kind of treatment he was being given.)

On the other hand, FW engaged in less-well-known and much more standard homophobic parenting as well. Boyfriend-before-Katte, Peter Keith, was caught doing...something...inappropriate with Fritz when they were about 16/17. Since he was a lieutenant in the army, FW promptly stationed him somewhere far, far away. Like, 300 miles away.

Now, this is relevant to our story, because Keith was that third conspirator during the escape attempt that I told you about. Unlike Katte, who was stuck in Berlin, the heart of FW territory, Keith was stationed right near the border with the Netherlands. So when he got word that their cover was blown, he darted without hesitation across the border to safety, then for good measure from there into England, where FW tried to have him extradited, and the response of the English was basically, "Screw you, and also WTF was that with Katte?" As I mentioned, Keith, after a 10-year stint in the Portuguese army, went back to Prussia after Fritz inherited, and sadly they seem to have quarreled.

Keith: was originally a page for FW, used to report his doings to Fritz and warn him of anything bad coming his way. Was hanged in effigy in front of his regiment after FW couldn't get him extradited.

Katte: has a very famous anecdote, which is in all the fics on AO3 and a bunch of the bios, in which he was standing guard outside Fritz's room while Fritz did some illicit flute-playing inside. When Katte heard FW's footsteps approaching, he came running to warn Fritz, then helped him hide all the evidence, while Fritz changed quickly into uniform, and Katte hid in a closet alongside Fritz's flute instructor. Unfortunately, Fritz's fancy French hairstyle gave away that he'd been up to something, and his fancy French dressing gown (and I think French books) was found by his father and burned, but Katte and Quantz were not found in their hiding place. That must have been a stressful day.

Keith and Katte: have just arrived safely in England with Fritz in one of my many fix-it WIPs. ;) Keith is a little jealous of Katte's new place in Fritz's heart, but Katte is busy smoothing things over, and everyone's going to live happily ever after.

[cahn]

ahahaha, I have just got to this part (Keith) with Wilhelmine, who emphatically Does Not Approve of Fritz' boyfriends, lol.

God save our Saxon cousins

[selenak]

I feel we‘re neglecting Fritz‘ maternal family here, so I refreshed my memories, and yep, wasn‘t exaggerating when claiming the House of Hannover could easily compete with the Hohenzollern when it comes to dysfunction.

Grandma: Sophia Dorothea the Older. Was a high spirited princess forced to marry future George I.; at their first meeting, she cried „I will not marry the pig snout!“ But then, no one asked her. She and (future) G 1 both were unfaithful in their marriage, but this being the merry times for women that they were, it had only bad results for SD the Older. She fell passionately in love with one Count of Königsmarck and wanted to run away with him. (Are you paying attention, grandson?) The plan was uncovered, Königsmarck disappeared from the face of the earth, and no one ever saw him again or knows, to this day, what happened. Obvious guess: still not G1 had him killed. But it could never be proven. SD was locked up and remained in prison for the rest of her life, over thirty years of it. She never saw either of her children (future G2 and Sophia Dorothea the Younger, mother of Fritz) again. Most heartbreaking detail: when SD the younger was Queen of Prussia, she once did visit Hannover and the place where SD the older was kept prisoner. SD the older got special robes for the occasion and waited for the entire time of the visit... in vain, because SD the younger only saw her father, G1, during that visit to Hannover.

Uncle G2: spent his early childhood at Sophia of Hannover‘s palace due to his mother being locked up (where he had that unfriendly childhood encounter with younger cousin FW). Despised his father and vice versa, culminating in big scandal during the baptism ceremony for G2‘s second son. G1 had wanted a different godfather than future G2 intended. G1‘s choice of godfather showed up at the cathedral. Future G2 freaks out, insults godfather to the point godfather challenges him to duel. G1 freaks out, has future G2 & wife Caroline locked up in their apartments, then banished from court but without their kids and forbidding them to see same. (Including the just baptized baby.) Later relents so that Caroline can see the kid, but future G2 only once a week, strictly supervised. The baby dies in future G2‘s arms. Flashforward: when G1 dies (in Hannover), G2 refuses to go to the funeral. British subjects, pleased, assume this is because G2 feels more like a Brit than a German. Get disillusioned when he subsequently keeps holidaying in Hannover, to which he says that it‘s a British custom to have a countryhouse, and Hannover is his. Meanwhile, no visits to Dad‘s grave.

G2 has surviving sons of his own. But does he have better relationships with them? Ha. The one Wilhelmine was supposed to marry once upon a time, Frederick, actively campaigns for the opposition. When G2 returns from one of Hannover holidays and gets sick, Fred launches the rumor his father is already dying (not the first itme a Prince of Wales would do something like that), which means G2 gets up and insists on attending a party to stop the rumor.

When Fred dies (leaving baby future G3 behind), followed by his sister Louisa, G2 comments: "This has been a fatal year for my family. I lost my eldest son – but I am glad of it ... Now [Louisa] is gone. I know I did not love my children when they were young: I hated to have them running into my room; but now I love them as well as most fathers.“

This was as functional as Hannoverian parents ever got. I mean, FW still wins in terms of being The Worst Father because the only one executing someone‘s lover was G1 and he did it to his wife, not offspring, but seriously, had those English marriages for Fritz and Wilhelmine ever worked out, they‘d have gotten from the frying pan into the fire, is what I‘m saying.

Re: God save our Saxon cousins

[mildred_of_midgard]

This is fascinating, thank you. Most (not quite all) of that was new to me.

had those English marriages for Fritz and Wilhelmine ever worked out, they‘d have gotten from the frying pan into the fire

Wilhelmine, definitely. Fritz? I seem to recall Amelia more or less had her shit together, or at least if there are any similar anecdotes about her, I'm not aware of them (but please feel free to share!).

[mildred_of_midgard]

Okay, so this is mildly interesting.

Little backstory: In the latter part of his life, Fritz employed a "reader" (Vorleser) named Henri de Catt. Catt wrote some memoirs that make it clear Fritz confided in him. Those nightmares I told you about in another comment were recounted to Catt, plus there's one passage where Fritz talks to Catt about Katte's execution, a subject that was evidently very difficult for him to discuss throughout his life.

Meanwhile, I'm watching this subtitled German documentary film (the one with the escape attempt I gave you the clip from), at the rate of about five minutes every few days because that's about my attention span for audiovisual media, and I just got to the part where Catt is introduced.

Now, the similarity in name between "von Katte" and "de Catt" has been remarked upon by a number of us independently. Jokes and even fanart have been made on tumblr. I noticed it myself and attributed it to complete coincidence; it's not exactly a rare name to have a variant of. But this documentary is the first time I've seen someone at least semi-serious-business comment on it, and this is what they have to say: "Did Frederick choose de Catt because his name is so similar to that of his old friend Katte?"

IMO? No, of course not. Fritz was always picky about who he chose to let into the inner circle, Henri de Catt meets the usual standards, it's not a rare name, and the actual Katte family has plenty of members among the nobility, and we don't see him being drawn to them at all. (Katte's dad gets a promotion immediately after Fritz becomes king, and that's the only interaction that I'm aware of.) I think they're making too much of a coincidence.

But did Fritz get any kind of half-painful, half-pleasurable twinge from the similarity in names, especially shortly after meeting Catt? I consider that quite likely. And would such a twinge have made him any more likely to open up about Katte and Küstrin to someone he'd already admitted into the inner circle? Maybe. I myself experienced a comparable phenomenon once, and I wasn't even close to my sister who died young, nor was her death traumatic for me. (Stressful, yes; traumatic, no.)

[iberiandoctor]

LOL, this is so great! I did read of the orgasm poem in the comments on your family exposure to opera powerpoint recap (here I was, thinking exactly, "Bah, IN GERMAN", and then, "Oh yeah, Fritz was actually all Francophile, so it would be IN FRENCH!" and then, bam, there was the link to English version anyw!), but it sounds like those comments really took off, and I missed all the sexy stuff.

You know, I did actually visit Sanssoucci this March, and I think I recommended to you this fabulous RPF Bach & Fritz crossover novel Evening in the Palace of Reason, which I bought in the gift shop and DEVOURED -- if I didn't, please read it after the Wilhemina tell-all, I think it would totally be your thing, and has a whole chapter on fugues and musical transposition <3

OK, I'm now going to slowly devour this discourse ;)

[mildred_of_midgard]

it sounds like those comments really took off

I couldn't help it! She encouraged me! Then she brought someone in to encourage me more! I'm innocent, officer. I plead extenuating circumstances. :P

I missed all the sexy stuff

You missed...oh, say, 50,000 words...of gloriously chaotic wallowing in a scandalous fandom.

I think it would totally be your thing

Yes! I had totally forgotten this existed, because after reading the description and reviews, I went "meh" and decided it wasn't my thing, but it absolutely sounds like it would be yours, cahn.

Reading Wilhemine's memoirs

[cahn]

OK, mildred, I'm starting to see what you mean about teen!Fritz just not... being very good at plotting. It seems clear from the way she talks about FW and Fritz that he just wanted OUT. Wilhelmine (who seems in general a little less damaged/abused, although the queen is putting her through a LOT of emotional abuse, it's super awful) keeps trying to tell him all of this is a bad idea!

Fritz: *waltzes in wearing fancy French clothes*
Wilhelmine: WHO IS THAT WEIRDO?! Oh, it's you, bro.
Fritz: I am FED UP with FW, I have a plan!
Wilhelmine: ...that is a really, really terrible plan, bro. Here are all the reasons this is super stupid. Please don't use that plan, you'll be captured immediately.
Fritz: ...oh. Okay.

*rinse and repeat SEVERAL TIMES*

Fritz: I have another plan!
Wilhelmine: As usual, that is a really terrible stupid no-good plan.
Fritz: Don't care. I'm DOING IT.

selenak, I am now kinda wondering whether Schiller had specifically read Wilhelmine's memoirs and whether Elisabeth owes a debt to her, because Wilhelmine's pointing out how boneheaded his plans are and begging him to stop is giving me flashbacks to Elisabeth doing pretty much the same with Posa.

Re: Reading Wilhemine's memoirs

[selenak]

Alas, Schiller can't have, because he died five years before they were published. (In 1810 - 52 years after her death -, Schiller died in 1805; Wilhelmine was careful not to have her tell all published within her or her brother's or her husband's lifetimes.) Otoh, I suppose it's just possible that he could have read them in manuscript if he really wanted to, because he did know enough nobles and librarians in the relevant principalities.

[mildred_of_midgard]

Things I knew about Frederick the Great before a year ago: he was king of... Prussia??

Additional things I knew about Frederick the Great before the last couple of days: selenak informed me last year that he and his dad may well have been at least somewhat the inspiration for Schiller's Don Carlos, and everything that goes with that: his dad (Friedrich Wilhelm, henceforth FW) was majorly awful, he had a boyfriend (Katte) who was horribly killed by his dad


Things you are now qualified to do: beta read Fritz/Katte fic! Seriously, you are the BEST.