cahn | (no subject)

This is totally too good to keep to myself: on my "I showed my family opera clips" post,

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

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

selenak

Because it meant he got to build a memorial for everyone he credited with winning the war that Fritz had started and then mishandled beginning to end, "about whom he says nothing in his fucking memoirs," beginning with dear older brother Augustus Wilhelm.

cahn, you have to check out Heinrich's "Fuck You, Fritz!" monument to truly get the full flavour of fraternal feeling here, aka the obelisk with all those names of people Heinrich felt were wronged by Fritz: Here it is.

re: other brother Augustus Wilhelm, loved by Heinrich and loathed & humiliated by Fritz, we should also mention he was FW's favourite kid (no. 11 of 14, thus also much younger than Fritz) and the only one FW was sort of decent to. Which evidently had much to do with Friedrich's Feelings. (I mean, what's worse, having an abusive parent who can't be other than abusive, or one who can and just isn't towards YOU?)

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Yeah, AW was the kid who was willing to go along with what Dad wanted and agree that the army was cool.

Fritz's take on this was "NO, you're WRONG. Dad's army wasn't cool at all. Only MY army is cool. And you and your oldest son [future Friedrich Wilhelm II] are going to get in major trouble for not adequately respecting the cool factor of MY army."

FW 2, who also got mistreated by Fritz, was the one who, the moment Fritz was safely dead, was like, "Fuck you and your dogs and your burial at Sanssouci like a Roman philosopher, Uncle Fritz, you're getting buried in a CHURCH. With POMP and CIRCUMSTANCE. Next to your DAD!"

No, unless Selenak knows something I don't, I don't think he specifically did this to spite Fritz's atheistic principles and to rub in the part about abusive Dad, I suspect his thinking was that that's what you do with kings and Grandpa was a pretty great king himself, but still. Fritz's last wishes definitely took second place to doing things the Right Way. (Mind you, this was another of those awesome family traditions: Fritz had ignored *his* father's wishes about the disposal of his remains, albeit I think less blatantly.)

Also FW 2: "Shit, we gotta do something about all that homoeroticism at Sanssouci too, that's embarrassing. Plus he didn't like me being ultra-het, so there. Karma is a bitch, Fritz."

From:

mildred_of_midgard

So that statue I referred to earlier that FW2 made off with, is one of those Greco-Roman statues of a naked young man, of which various copies were made. No one really knows who or what it's supposed to depict, afaik, but one of the names it's been called by, including in Fritz's time, was Antinous.

Now, Antinous was the boyfriend of the Roman emperor Hadrian. Antinous died under mysterious circumstances when he was still young and beautiful. Hadrian was devastated and deified him and commemorated him all over the place. Among the possible explanations for his mysterious death was that he was a human sacrifice as part of some religious ritual meant to prolong Hadrian's life.

It has been speculated that "naked statue of guy who died young and may have sacrificed himself in order to save his boyfriend the emperor," placed near Fritz's selected future grave site and in view of his bedroom/study window (yes, his grave is quite near his bedroom/study, memento mori I guess), was Fritz's silent tribute to one Hans Hermann von Katte.

I WANT TO BELIEVE.

The statue is now called "Praying Boy" (it having been acknowledged by responsible art historians that it actually predates Antinous), and a copy is back at Fritz's grave, the original being in a Berlin museum. I super wish I had known this when I was in that museum, dammit! (Or when I was at his grave.)

Mostly I was excited, though, about finding the Velletri Pallas (Athena) bust acquired by Fritz (Velletri Pallas being my all-time favorite work of art, and I had a plaster copy in my own study until it began to disintegrate; I'm still angry about that and planning on finding a more durable one once my disability situation sorts itself out and I can afford it again), because Athena is one avatar of this Mary Sue character I've had in my head all my life, and in my mental Mary Sue bio, there's one whole volume devoted to her and Fritz, because if you think Athena would not have been ALL OVER Frederick the Great, you should reread the Odyssey. ;)

From:

cahn

lol, hilariously enough the only reason I know anything about Hadrian and his boyfriend (and I don't know very much, just that they exist) is that some modern composer made an opera out of it last year? starring Thomas Hampson (who played Posa in that original clip I showed you). Which I have not watched because as far as I know there is no recording, boooooo.

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Opera is educational! It can even be like taking an entire history class if you watch the right opera and post about it in the right place. :P

Booo, I want you to see this opera! Do you know if they went with the "ritual sacrifice" story?

From:

cahn

ahahaha, I did not realize my opera habit was going to be so historically educational!

...poooossibly? I am having trouble finding a good synopsis, grr.

From:

mildred_of_midgard

It's been educational for me too! Operatically and historically.

Let me know if you find out. My inner Classicist is interested.

From:

iberiandoctor

Heh, I am also familiar with Antinous's story via Thomas Hampson (did I recc this to you, cahn?), and I'm here with this review of Rufus Wainwright's Hadrian! More a review of the music than the plot, but it should give you a sense of the storyline: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/14/arts/music/hadrian-opera-review-rufus-wainwright.html

From:

cahn

Haha, I think

esteven recced it :D Ahh, that's an interesting article, thanks!

From:

selenak

Given Fritz gave him (FW 2) hell about his mistress (of a life time) Wilhelmine Enke and wrote in his memoirs that FW2's wife cheating on him was solely FW's fault and he liked the wife better anyway (!), I'm suspecting you're right about those thoughts.

Fun fact: one of the more popular 20th century German historical novels is about this Wilhelmine, not to be confused with Fritz' sister, called Die schöne Wilhelmine" by Ernst von Salomon. I read this when I was ca. 12 or 13. At which point I was already familiar with the tragic tale of Young Fritz and Katte, but it took me a moment or two to realise that Snarky Old Uncle Fritz at the start of this novel was the same guy. He's not a villain by any means, btw, and Salomon lets him encounter Casanova ("you're a good looking man", observes Fritz) and flirt a bit in between being sarcastic towards his nephew. Said nephew is not the brightest but well-meaning; Wilhelmine, Berlin street child determined to make it to the top and stay there, is the heroine in whose pov we mostly remain.

From:

mildred_of_midgard

he liked the wife better anyway (!)

Omg. ULTIMATE INSULT.

Casanova ("you're a good looking man", observes Fritz)

Historically accurate opinion of Fritz's after their meeting, iirc?

From:

selenak

ULTIMATE INSULT.

I know, right? It's also, shall we say, an iiiinteresting comment given his own marital circumstances. Quoth Fritz, in his memoirs:

"The husband, young and without manners, was daily unfaithful to his wife. (…) The princess who was at the prime of her beauty was insulted by the lack of attention paid to her charms, and was provoked to avenge the injustice done to her."

(German Version of quote which I had looked up: "„Der Ehemann, jung und ohne Sitten, […] brach seiner Frau täglich die Treue. […] Die Prinzessin, die in der Blüte ihrer Schönheit stand, fand sich von der geringen Aufmerksamkeit, die man ihren Reizen zollte, beleidigt, fühlte sich angestachelt, sich für das Unrecht, das man ihr angetan hatte, zu rächen.“ )

Now, future FW2 had managed to get a divorce because his wife was pregnant with a kid that really could not have been his (as they didn't have sex with each other, only with other people), so Fritz HAD to give his okay for said divorce they both wanted, or allow an obvious non-Hohenzollern into the succession, but he was extremely disgruntled about having to do this and immediately insisted on FW2 marrying another princess. What really slays me is the the Feminist Fritz pose here. I mean… do you really want to talk Princes not paying attention to the charms of their wives, Fritz? Really?

(Still not FW2 made Uncle Fritz officially recognize Wilhelmine Encke as his Maitresse en titre, though, officially, in 1777. With a yearly rent paid by the crown and a house in Charlottenburg. This was probably the most impressive battle he ever won in his life.)

From:

mildred_of_midgard

I mean… do you really want to talk Princes not paying attention to the charms of their wives, Fritz? Really?

Fritz: *wins Olympic gold for mental gymnastics*

This was probably the most impressive battle he ever won in his life.

Making Fritz do anything definitely warrants an entry in the history books, that's for sure!

From:

selenak

I think he finally caved because he'd had Wilhelmine Encke under spy surveillance for years and concluded that she actually was no one's tool and if he kept insisting that future FW2 got rid of the one stable relationship in his life, it could result in him being influenced by all the other women he'd have sex with who could be in the pay of *insert other power here*. Thus Wilhelmine E. became the first Maitresse en titre in Prussia since F1's day.

(FW2 didn't remain physically faithful to her, but not least since it was all the younger mistresses who threw jealous fits and kept handing out ultimatums, while Wilhelmine kept her cool, she remained his firm fave (and also nursed him when he got sick etc.) until his death. His son was horrid to her and had her exiled and confiscated her money, blaming her for his father's unfaithfulness to his mother. Enter Napoleon, who as mentioned in that Hohenzollern post you linked to me kicked FW3's ass, and among many other things ended Wilhelmine Encke's exile and had her money restored. So she died in comfort and in Berlin, but then had bad luck again as the part where her grave was became part of the death zone once the Berlin wall went up. German history and the enterprising Berlin girl: a trial.

From:

mildred_of_midgard

it could result in him being influenced by all the other women he'd have sex with

Ooooh, that makes sense, that's exactly how he thought. Did Wilhelmine have political agendas of her own? Because I'm pretty sure Fritz would have been opposed to those other mistresses having minds of their own as well, even if they were in no one's pay.

Fritz: Louis XV's mistresses have too much influence over him, which is why women shouldn't be allowed to have power.

Fritz: Catherine II's lovers have too much influence over her, which is why women shouldn't be allowed to have power.

Me: Aristotle probably agrees with your conclusions, Fritz, but I don't think he's giving you high marks for the strength of your logic.

From:

selenak

Quite, not to mention that Catherine's lovers would rather have complained about their Little influence. (It's been while, but I seem to recall the only one with actual political clout was Potemkin?)

And re: Wilhelmine having a political agenda of her own - she always denied it. ("I was not a Prussian Madame de Pompadour." Meanwhile, her nickname on the Streets: The Prussian Pompadour." ) She was hands down the most influential art patron of her day, though. (Oh, and her father had been a musician at the Berlin opera. Whether that was a plus or minus in Fritz' eyes...)

From:

cahn

Just be aware that I have been reading all these over the last couple of days and boggling at how insane this family is over all these generations :P

From:

selenak

Historically accurate opinion of Fritz's after their meeting, iirc?

Indeed. I mean, they mostly talked about taxes and the lottery, but he did make that comment according to Casanova. Incidentally, if you visit Sanssouci in the summer months today, you can experience a restaging of that encounter: Voila.