cahn | Frederick the Great post links

More Frederick the Great (henceforth "Fritz") and surrounding ~~spinoffs~~ history! Clearly my purpose in life is now revealed: it is to encourage

mildred_of_midgard and

selenak to talk to me about Frederick the Great and associated/tangential European history. I am having such a great time here! Collating some links in this post:

* selenak's post on Frederick the Great as a TV show with associated fandom; a great place to start for the general history

* I have given up indexing all posts, here is the tag of discussion posts. Someday when I actually have time maybe I'll do a "best of."

Some links that have come up in the course of this discussion (and which I am putting here partially for my own benefit because in particular I haven't had time to watch the movies ~~because still mainlining Nirvana in Fire~~):
Fritz' sister Wilhelmine's tell-all tabloidy memoirs (English translation); this is Part I; the text options have been imperfectly OCR'd so be aware of that (NOTE 11-6-19: THIS IS A BOWDLERIZED TEXT, I WILL COME BACK WITH A BETTER LINK)
Part II of Wilhelmine's memoirs (English translation)
A dramatization of Frederick the Great's story, English subtitles
Mein Name ist Bach, Movie of Frederick the Great and J.S. Bach, with subtitles Some discussion of the subtitles in the thread here (also scroll down)
2017 miniseries about Maria Theresia, with subtitles and better translation of one scene in comments

ETA:
Miniseries of Peter the Great, IN ENGLISH, apparently reasonably historically solid
ETA 10-22-19
Website with letters from and to Wilhelmine during her 1754/1755 journey through France and Italy, as well as a few letters about Wilhelmine, in the original French, in a German translation, and in facsimile
University of Trier site where the full works of Friedrich in the original French and German have been transcribed, digitized, and uploaded:
30 volumes of writings and personal correspondence
46 volumes of political correspondence
Fritz and Wilhelmine's correspondence (vol 27_1)
ETA 10-28-19
Der Thronfolger (German, no subtitles; explanation of action in the comment here)
ETA 11-6-19
Memoirs of Stanisław August Poniatowski, dual Polish and French translation
ETA 1-14-20
Our Royal Librarian Mildred has collated some documentation, including google translate versions of the Trier letters above (see the "Correspondence" folder)!

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Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

selenak

Oh, and I really am getting a sense of everyone else's personalities and relationships for the first time from these letters travel letters. The Margrave sounds as if he's very careful and a bit scared when writing to Fritz - it's all "Sire" and expressions of fealty - but is a bit more relaxed when writing to August Wilhelm (whom Fritz has writing back, when he's not letting his secretary write to the Margrave, acknowledging the letters - he himself only writes directly to Wilhelmine, though this he does a lot). For his part, August Wilhelm - who was Wilhelm to his family - comes across as genuinely nice. Example:

"I just received your letter, dear brother, and I wish you a happy journey with all of my heart. You'll have the joy of living in a warm climate while the winter will reduce the rest of us to trembling knees and grinding teeth. And I do hope my sister's health will get better; I've always noticed that the winters were damaging to her. Please give her my love and don't the two of you forget me during such a long journey! P.S. I hope you aren't irritated when I'm writing to you without having been adressed." (Since the previous letter by the Margrave had been adressed to Fritz.)

Wilhelmine, like many a tourist after her, told all her siblings she'd bring souvenirs and do shopping for them (first in France, then Italy) if they told her what they wanted. What we don't have is a letter from her to her mother offering the same thing. Here's the letter which made me come to certain conclusions about Ulrike in the famliy context. Ulrike to Sophia Dorothea:

"Gossip here talks of a journey which my Bayreuth sister undertakes to France. I cannot believe it. Maybe my disbelief hails from my wish that this news should be false. It seems to me that her rank and status cannot allow such an enterprise. And I fear that the King, my brother, would never condone the role which she would play on such an occasion. My heart always beats in affectionate sympathy with my dear, dear family. And it greatly distresses me if there is the slightest semblance of a disagreement. All the more so since it cannot but displease my beloved Mama. And your contentment is the aim of all my wishes. May God always answer your prayers, and may I never have the misfortune of displeasing you, and may I be able to flatter myself that my beloved Mama takes a benevolent view towards me."

Incidentally, "my Bayreuth sister" isn't an affectation of Ulrike's; Fritz also refers to "my Bayreuth sister" or "my sister in Bayreuth" (and "my Braunschweig sister" etc.) to differentiate his sisters when talking or writing about them to someone else. (Will have to check what that made Amalie, who never married. (That's the sister in Mein name ist Bach.) Have just learned the original inspiration for Fritz writing his anti-German-literature pamphlet of 1780 was a visit by Charlotte and Amalie which ensued in a debate he had with them about German literature and the German language.)

From:

mildred_of_midgard

I, er, so, continuing with the theme of me being completely obsessed with Sanssouci and Fritz's burial choices...having written two fics on the subject, I have now proceeded to create what is probably the closest to fanart my inartistic self will ever come.

I.e., I discovered that Google sent someone to get lovely tourist-free images of the Sanssouci grounds on a clear day at sunrise before the park was open, so you can walk around the grounds without leaving your computer, and that's how I spent a good chunk of my evening.

Since you've both read "Pulvis et Umbra" and are now experts on the Antinous statue, I share with you this slideshow of captioned screenshots I compiled from Google street view, which, in full screen presentation mode, gives you pretty good visuals for that fic. You can see what's meant by things like "in the line of sight from my library."

Easter egg: the Antinous statue is extremely dark in these pictures (here's a link to a better picture, of the original), but you can just make out that it's facing the library window and raising both its arms. In "Pulvis et Umbra", I snuck in "a bronze statue of a naked young man, arms held aloft" in our introduction to the piece, followed by "Katte's hands were giving him no such problems. He raised both and waved easily to Friedrich" in Fritz's dream/near death experience.

If you look at the slideshow, you can visualize what I'm imagining: Fritz walks to his window, looks out, and sees Katte standing where the statue is, in a roughly similar pose. The dream also inserts a river in between the window and the statue/grave, which is, of course, less accurate and more symbolic. ;)

Thanks, Google!

I may or may not also have "driven" around the ruins of Kostrzyn today, I mean different parts than I usually drive around, WHAT? :P

On a less morbid note, I am intrigued by the staircases on the terraces. I didn't notice it while I was actually walking down them (walking up, I was sprinting all out because I was way late for my timed entry ticket to the palace, because I spent too long on the grounds), and it may simply be my own architectural ignorance and this may be way more common than I think, but this view looking up the hill reminded me of another staircase I climbed once...Michelangelo's famous one at the Laurentian Library. Fritz's isn't tripartite, of course, nor a close copy, but it's got that flowing effect, and the last three steps are rounded and overflow the horizontal boundaries in a way that seems very reminiscent of the most striking part in the center of Michelangelo's.

I know Fritz was obsessed with Italian architecture, paid people to go there looking for inspiration, picked Algarotti's brain, repeatedly used the Pantheon dome for inspiration in his commissioned structures, including here at Sanssouci, and so...I'm wondering if this is another instance of a specific inspiration. I can't find a link between the two staircases by googling, but given just how *famous* that Laurentian staircase is, and given Fritz's predilections, I'm going to hypothesize that there's a link, until and unless someone tells me that that staircase design was totally a rococo thing and was everywhere to be seen, no Renaissance inspiration needed.

Until then, "If you're afraid to go to Italy and risk your heart, you can always bring Italy to you (if your dad left you enough money)."

Man, I need to go back to Sanssouci now that I know stuff. Meanwhile, thanks, Google!

ETA: Oh, hopefully all the links work and you have permission to view them, but let me know if not.

Edited Date: 2019-10-14 06:26 am (UTC)

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Obvious typo: "Fritz and MT annulment."

The best part of all this for me is that Fritz gets early freedom from *and* revenge on his father, purely through ethical non-patricidal patricide, just by playing music and commissioning architecture and doing in Vienna what his dad has been doing in Berlin, beefing up the army. Mwahahahaha. That was the best AU letter ever.

I also imagine AW getting a nasty surprise circa 1732, and MT getting one in 1740. Haha, I wonder if having lived in Vienna, however briefly, would make Fritz more or less likely to underestimate the Austrians in his future wars. Probably more, but you never know. Hmmm.

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Awwww. That makes me sad. I had no idea people avoided visiting their dream countries, can't even imagine, but if that's a thing people do, it's very plausible in this case: Fritz was a ~~hugely traumatized~~ pessimist, and he'd totally been primed to believe the universe wouldn't let him have nice things. I could see him having an emotional "don't set yourself up for disappointment" reaction, and then rationalizing it. Man. And then trying to keep Wilhelmine from that disappointment he saw as inevitable. AUS FOR EVERYONE.

And omg, you're right, when he's sour-grapes-ing Wilhelmine, it's *right* after the whole Voltaire debacle went down. Wow. Okay, Fritz, you get like 5% more slack from me. Still try to have some self-awareness and let your sister enjoy her things, though, okay??

(The first time I tried to imagine what I would be like if I had depression, in my early 20s, the immediate conclusion I came to was that if I wasn't happy, no one around me was going to be happy either, and that the younger this started, the less I was going to be able to compensate. Thus leading me to the conclusion that I'm more an especially fortunate person than an especially good one.)

From:

selenak

Yes, died, and poor EC, losing not one but two brothers in Frederician battles...

re: Fritz visiting Wilhelmine's burial site: I don't know. If he ever visited Bayreuth again after her death, he probably did, but just about the only occasion he might have done that I can think of is when the Margrave married again, Wilhelmine's (and Fritz') niece no less, Charlotte's daughter Sophie Caroline. (As if to make a point about Marx' statement re: history repeating itself from tragedy to farce, Sophie Caroline was supposed to marry Prince George of England before ending up with the Margrave to keep up the alliance. They didn't have a son, either, or any kid, the marriage lasted only three years and then he died. Caroline moved to Erlangen as her widow's seat and got chummy with cousin FW II, aka Fritz unloved successor.

Speaking of burials, when I googled I learned that when the German government re-buried Fritz according to his own wishes centuries after the first burial, the "minimal attendance" he requested consisted of a priest, the head of the House of Hohenzollern then (Prince Louis Ferdinand, now deceased; the new head is the guy who wants money from the German state and got a lot of bile about Willy and son of Willy in response) and Chancellor Helmut Kohl. I have no idea who attended FW's reburial, though...

From:

mildred_of_midgard

the "minimal attendance" he requested

Interesting. Link?

re: Fritz visiting Wilhelmine's burial site: I don't know.

Okay, thanks. Reason I ask: I keep seeing people get so worked up about how Fritz dealt with Katte's death, including but not limited to not visiting his grave. And it just makes me angry how common it is for people to decide that if other people don't react to trauma according to the One True Way they've come up with, the traumatized person is doing it wrong. (Much worse example that my wife ran into in a documentary recently: insisting your daughter is lying about sexual assault, because when *you* were raped, *you* were crying and hysterical, but *she's* numb and in shock. SMH.)

Anyway, Wust is obviously much closer to Berlin than Bayreuth, and under his purview, but I was just wondering if maybe he simply preferred commissioning temples and putting up statues at Sanssouci to visiting burial sites, maybe that was much more therapeutic. But even if you DID go all the way to Bayreuth and avoided Wust because wow the survivor's guilt, that's STILL OK, Fritz. <3

From:

selenak

The Spiegel being very sarcastic about both Helmut Kohl and the Hohenzollern before the ceremony, Deutschlandfunk - our most intellectual radio broadcast - reporting about the event afterwards (I linked the transcript). Both are in German, and too long for me to translate, so you'll have to employ google. In any event, the gist of it is that it's pointed out the last German chancellor who absolutely wanted a connection to Frederick the Great was you-know-who, and must we? Otoh, Deutschlandfunk also reports that amidst the - mild - protests in Berlin on the day the bodies of Fritz and FW were moved (only the last part of which, the actual solo reburial near midnight as requested was with the minimal attendance, the rest had lots of attending people watching as the coffins passed) , there were also some Fritz friendly people watching and commenting:

„Wir kommen aus Berlin. Wir sind Schwule und sind hierhergekommen, weil Friedrich ein Bruder von uns war, und da haben wir uns im Stil der Jahre zurecht gemacht.“ ("We're from Berlin. We're gay and came here because Friedrich was a brother, and that's why we got into gear the style of his era.")

ETA: In case you're wondering whose idea the entire reburial was, and also reburying FW, too, instead of leaving him where both bodies used to be, that would be Louis Ferdinand, who was lobbying for it since reunificationion. He was Wilhelm II's grandson and was prone to say stuff like "My house has never surrendered its claim to the throne". Very much in the style of Willy's "no descendant of Frederick the Great would ever...", which makes me conclude that dynasty never learns...

Re: different ways of mourning - I hear you. And chances are he didn't go to Bayreuth, either. It was a six days journey, and he'd have had to put up with socializing with his brother-in-law, which otherwise he appears to have dumped on August Wilhelm. (No longer available.) Also, there would have been inevitably celebrity voyeurs, since she's buried in a public church, and who knows whether he'd been able to do any private mourning. Much better to mourn her away from all that.

BTW: leaving aside the blatant playing to the audience, Voltaire actually seems to have liked her. After she died, he wrote an "Ode Sur La Mort De Son Altesse Royale Madame La Markgrave De Bareith" which he published in the first edition of his novel Candide.

Edited Date: 2019-10-14 05:12 pm (UTC)

From:

selenak

The links work perfectly for me. And you know, if Thomas Jefferson based the designs for Monticello on Italian architecture he, personally, never got to see but which he had sketches, paintings and descriptions for, most of which he aquired in Paris, I'd say your theory is plausible enough. Plus Fritz certainly comes across as well-versed (for a man of his era) on Renaissance painters and architects on those lecturing letters and mentions Michelangelo more than once. (Even if to say all Michelangelo only did eight or so truly great works, the rest is just not quite genius, and the genius ones are mostly out of the country, so really, sis, get your expectations low.)

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Oh, okay, I had misinterpreted what you wrote. I knew who was present from my own research, but I read your "The minimal attendance he requested consisted of ..." as *Fritz* requesting there be a priest, his successor, and, well, I couldn't figure out where the Chancellor fit in. I was so confused by the increasingly implausible list of people Fritz supposedly requested that I had to ask for a source. If what you meant was that in 1991, the relevant Germans decided those people should be present and that that would meet Old Fritz's "minimum attendance" requirements, that makes infinitely more sense.

Every time I read his last wishes (and I've read every English article I could find on the 1991 reburial, plus I think some German ones--Chrome is nice because it automatically translates as soon as I open the tab), Fritz's minimal attendance requirements are presented as "one lantern, no one following, and definitely no major television spectacle the next day. :P"

From:

mildred_of_midgard

My nominations just got approved!

✔ 18th Century CE Frederician RPF
✔ Friedrich II von Preußen | Frederick the Great (Frederician RPF)
✔ Hans Hermann Von Katte (Frederician RPF)
✔ Peter Karl Christoph von Keith (Frederician RPF)
✔ Michael Gabriel Fredersdorf (Frederician RPF)

Fritz and his boyfriends are IN! \o/ :-DD

From:

mildred_of_midgard

As far as I know, Fritz modeling commissions on Italian architecture he'd never seen in person is a well-documented phenomenon. The only question in my mind is: are the staircases similar enough for the one to be an inspiration for the other (they're pretty different), yet different enough from other staircases that the one is the most *likely* inspiration for the other, as opposed to a common way of designing a staircase?

(Even if to say all Michelangelo only did eight or so truly great works, the rest is just not quite genius, and the genius ones are mostly out of the country, so really, sis, get your expectations low.)

It's for your own good, sis. If you never get your hopes up, they won't be dashed.

...This is such a common cognitive bias in clinical depression that it might not even be sour grapes speaking. Especially if he was avoiding going himself not because he *couldn't*, but because he was too emotionally invested.

Gotta wonder if Katte had talked to Fritz about doing the Grand Tour and if so, what kind of spin he put on it. It may not have been something they could talk about, depending on whether 17-yo Fritz was like "Tell me EVERYTHING" or "Don't rub it in that your father's saner than mine." (Weirdly, I've never seen Rome in the list of places Katte hit on his tour, although I have a hard time with that, so I just mentally insert Rome in his itinerary. I put a certain amount of thought into this, because, like I said, I keep sending them to all these places together. ;) Keith likes to come too sometimes.)

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Yeah, the implausible part seems to be not so much that it was proposed, but that it got actual backing, as opposed to being something that a young, desperate, imprisoned Fritz came up with out of his own head, to which all the adults went, "...Or not."

Grumbkow: "alarmed"
Eugene: "peculiar"
FW: "less impressed," "hurt"

Haha.

I'm glad my timetable pleases! :D

From:

cahn

But what about being a gossipy sensationalist????

Lol, Joseph's Rational Fanboy thing cracks me up every time. But yes, absolutely, she has to say that in the SecretSummit. Maria Theresa is just so great, so emotionally healthy compared to... well, most people at that time, but particularly Fritz. With some reason, of course. Yay no-super-traumatic childhoods and romances :P

From:

cahn

:( Yeah, I mean,

mildred_of_midgard is the psychology expert here, but I was definitely getting a trauma bonding / emotional incest vibe from them even before that telling letter. But I guess at this point I'm kind of just happy both of them had someone with whom to form any kind of even somewhat positive emotional bond.

Also, I think this makes it a little more clear why Wilhelminedidn't have nice things to say about Keith or Katte! It clarifies for me that she must have found it (subconsciously) threatening.

(I want Wilhelmine fix-it fic too :P Can she escape with Fritz and Katte? ~~or with Maria Theresia~~)

From:

cahn

lol forever, Voltaire. I mean, he's not wrong, either! (Though it may just mean that one of them had absolute power and the other one was pretty much powerless her entire life. Although on the other hand there's that letter from Ulrike you quote from later...)

From:

cahn

Awwww, August Wilhelm does seem quite nice! But Ulrike, wow.

From:

cahn

(now that I can finally look at this!)

Lol, I especially liked the annotation of "Fritz's potatoes." You know you're going to have to explain this to me now :P :D

From:

cahn

✔ Maria Theresia | Maria Theresa of Austria (Frederician RPF)
✔ Elisabeth Christine von Preußen | Elisabeth Christine Queen of Prussia (Frederician RPF)
✔ Wilhelmine von Preußen | Wilhelmine of Prussia (1709-1758) (Frederician RPF)
✔ Joseph II Holy Roman Emperor (Frederician RPF)

:D

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Oh, I thought you knew, or I totally would have! It's in my blog entry from August where I rambled about my Sanssouci trip and posted my pics and everything. Oh, wait, you replied to that post. Time to refresh your memory, then. :)

For completeness' sake, the statue near his grave is Flora, Roman goddess of flowers, and Zephyr, Greco-Roman god of gentle breezes.

I almost labeled that "Fritz's chill" in the last slide, but I was being all serious business about death and stuff, so I didn't. But seriously, that statue is the one I'm referring to in my Could Not Chill comment about Fritz.

From:

cahn

ahhhhh I totally did apparently know once upon a time! In my defense, there has been quite a lot of stuff to remember :P :D

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Haha, in your defense, there has been a heck of a lot to remember! (I should recompute the word counts at some point.) Honestly, you're keeping up impressively well, and I mean it.

[ETA: I've honestly been afraid for a while now that I'm going to start repeating myself without realizing it, and you two are going to be rolling your eyes at me. "You already said that,

mildred_of_midgard!" It's getting to the point where I wonder at least three times a day if what I'm about to hit reply on is something I already said, lol. The perils of such a fast-moving fandom!]

Notice how many potatoes there are on his grave in the slideshow compared to the pic I took in 2012. That's what I meant by my visit having some of the lowest potato count I've ever seen in pictures.

Also, this pic I found online is hilarious. Somebody's a Fritz potato fan!

Edited (Confusing the dates on my Europe trips.) Date: 2019-10-15 06:32 am (UTC)

From:

selenak

Mes amies, I just checked, and now all my nominations for our Frederician RPF were approved. Yours?

The two Fritz biographies on loan which I was skipping told me Grumpkow, if he hadn't been a cynic himself, would have had reason to look alarmed at teenage Fritz' idea of marriage years earlier, too, when according to Grumpkow himself they had this chat:

15 years old Fritz, het-posing: So, dad told me lust quickly passes and cheating on your wife is an evil sin. I have therefore decided I'll wait with marriage until I'm ancient, like 40, and then I'll marry a 14 years old. Presumably she'll have some years ahead before getting fat and old herself. That way, I'll stay interested and won't cheat on her! Which would be a sin.

Given MT was five years younger than Fritz, it occurs to me that she would have been 14 to 15 when he came up with the desperate marriage/escape plot. I've now read a brief essay about the two of them (in a German book, thus not linkable) which provided me with more neat useable trivia for future reference: Fritz actually met Franz Stefan once before the later married MT. He also wrote to him, never to MT, in the brief upbuilding to the first Silesian War (cause you know, as a man clearly Franz Stefan was the one really making the decisions here). After he won the battle of Mollwitz (April 1741,

cahn), he had the field preacher chose for his sermon that famous put-down by Paul in his letter to Timothy: "A woman should learn humility in quietness. I will not allow a woman to teach, nor that she should rule over a man; she should be quiet."

By the second Silesian War, he was, of course, aware who was really ruling in Vienna, but he couldn't figure out how that worked for MT and Franz Stefan as a couple (not surprisingly, because well, his model for m/f marriage were his parents), and asked a French visitor who'd also been to Vienna: "Don't they invite the comment that the woman is dressed up as a man and the man as a woman? At least the Emperor shows the behaviour of a hen-pecked husband who leaves everything to his wife. She must be a strange woman, more masculine than feminine. Does she appear to be very busy?"

(The French visitor told him that au contraire, MT was very feminine indeed, but also a workoholic like himself (imagine Fritz' face at that) who would accomplish great things if she had better ministers to work with, as the Prussian king did.)

(I would say in terms of business they were about even. Fritz probably slept less, but then again, Maria Theresia had those 16 kids during her rule. Of course she didn't hands-on raise them any more than other royalty did, but no one could take those nine months of pregnancy from her. I mean, she was pregnant with her fourth child - Joseph, actually - when Fritz invaded for the first time. She must have had an iron constitution.)

The essay contains the Fritz about MT quotes we already talked about - "the first man the Habsburgs produced in centuries, and it's a woman", "one of the three whores of Europe" (the others were Madame de Pompadour and Elizabeth of Russia, [Bad username or unknown identity: cahn"]), and then the reverse, to Henri de Catt, which I won't paraphrase but translate to let

cahn enjoy the full, err, Fritzness: "Despite all the evil she's done to me, I must admit this princess invites much respect due to her morals. There are few women who resemble her in this regard. Most are whores, and the Queen despises whores. She's very industrious and gifted in more than one area." And once she was dead, he topped even that with what we already partially quoted: "I have regretted the death of the Empress-Queen; she brought honor to her throne and her sex; I went to war with her, but I was never her enemy."

The essay writer chides MT for not being similarly chill and praising about her arch nemesis. Leaving aside the fact as to who wronged whom, she didn't outlive him; it's always easier to speak well of the dead. The essay does quote the bit from the letter to Joseph, and also a comment MT made in another letter (early in the 7-years-war): "No, I am not unforgiving towards him. But my dislike is rooted in the experiences I've had with him. I am concerned, and not without reason, that I will never be able to feel safe for as long as this King is as powerful as he is now."

From:

selenak

On the one hand: if they actually had known each other in person for a few years, wouldn't both Fritz and MT be more aware of each other's character and abilities, and thus pre-warned? (Of a sort.) I mean, the British ambassador to Vienna at least gets points for figuring out that lack of parental training for the job or not, MT would be the one to rule, not Franz Stefan, while her Dad was still alive. (He wrote home in a dispatch: "This princess means to rule, to the point that she seems to regard her father as the administrator of her future belongings.") If he could see that, presumably Fritz would have done as well? Now presumably MT during the few years of marriage would have been dealing with Fritz, sensitive musician and lover of the fine arts more often than with future Machiavellian Fritz, but since Katte still was dead, he'd be a traumatized mess even under those more favourable circumstances, and she was a sharp-eyed woman; she'd at least known about his darker sides.

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Oh, now that we're in a

selenak-inhabited space, maybe she can answer the unanswered questions in that entry!

1) How did Fritz convince everyone that potatoes were awesome? Are the legends apocryphal, or true? (It's Fritz, it could go either way.)

2) How and when did the whole potato-grave thing start? Do we have a specific person to attribute the idea to? Was it a grass roots thing that caught on? Did it, or the concept, predate the 1991 reburial?