Thank you so much for this!!! It's been so awesome having an actual German speaker in this discussion (and also someone who learned German history by dint of being immersed in it, not picking and choosing random pieces of history to be interested in). You get to be the BNF in this fandom!
Between the title and the slides I was able to read, I was aware the lecture was a literary take on the subject, not historical, but that is still of great interest to me, especially as someone who, ahem, writes Fritz/Katte fanfic. ;)
Fritz as king has become his father, a woman cries for mercy for her husband, a deserting soldier, with the same phrases Fritz has used to plead for Katte earlier, and Fritz replies with his father's words.
Oh, damn. Does Fritz do the "It would be better for him to die than for justice to pass out of the world" line? Because if so, OOOUUUCH. /o\
I.e. Müller goes for the "what was human in Fritz dies with Katte; FW wins beyond his wildest hopes" interpretation.
As you know, I both agree and disagree with this interpretation. It's undeniable that so many of King Friedrich's life choices were him rationalizing what was done to him. And much of his leadership style was in clear imitation of his father. But Fritz's general fucked-up-ed-ness, imo, came both from the traumatic upbringing and from someone of his personality being handed absolute power plus an army in his society. Absolute power is a *drug*. FW and his traumatic parenting style get way too much credit for "Frederick the Great." Fritz had a strong enough personality and enough resistance to so many of his father's attempts to bend him that I'm convinced much of the post-1740 period was sheer Fritz in context, not Fritz "broken and remolded," as one person put it.
Furthermore, even when we're talking about the effects of the trauma, which were many, I think there's a tendency for eyes to be drawn to the Katte execution, because it's so shocking and in-your-face. It was almost certainly the worst acute trauma Fritz ever had to suffer. But people often react differently to acute and chronic trauma, and a lot of Fritz's reactions later in life make the most sense to me when I view them in the light of the chronic trauma, e.g. the post-Katte "rehabilitation" period in Küstrin.
Katte's invented aunt, at whom Katte addresses the fictional letters from the novel, being called "Melusine" - this is a Fontane heroine from a unrelated to Katte novel, not the French countess and werecreature of myth, though Fontane called his heroine after her, of course.
Oh, that's interesting. I didn't know any of that. (Well, aside from the mythological Melusine, of course.) And yes, I've always been fascinated that one of our major sources on Katte is a travel guide!
the other first person narrator, contemporary to us Philip Stanhope, is...in love with the Katte of his imagination
Aren't we all. ;) (I mean, with an imaginary Katte, not necessarily the one of Stanhope's imagination.)
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Re: The Lecture, summarized
Date: 2019-09-19 01:31 pm (UTC)Between the title and the slides I was able to read, I was aware the lecture was a literary take on the subject, not historical, but that is still of great interest to me, especially as someone who, ahem, writes Fritz/Katte fanfic. ;)
Fritz as king has become his father, a woman cries for mercy for her husband, a deserting soldier, with the same phrases Fritz has used to plead for Katte earlier, and Fritz replies with his father's words.
Oh, damn. Does Fritz do the "It would be better for him to die than for justice to pass out of the world" line? Because if so, OOOUUUCH. /o\
I.e. Müller goes for the "what was human in Fritz dies with Katte; FW wins beyond his wildest hopes" interpretation.
As you know, I both agree and disagree with this interpretation. It's undeniable that so many of King Friedrich's life choices were him rationalizing what was done to him. And much of his leadership style was in clear imitation of his father. But Fritz's general fucked-up-ed-ness, imo, came both from the traumatic upbringing and from someone of his personality being handed absolute power plus an army in his society. Absolute power is a *drug*. FW and his traumatic parenting style get way too much credit for "Frederick the Great." Fritz had a strong enough personality and enough resistance to so many of his father's attempts to bend him that I'm convinced much of the post-1740 period was sheer Fritz in context, not Fritz "broken and remolded," as one person put it.
Furthermore, even when we're talking about the effects of the trauma, which were many, I think there's a tendency for eyes to be drawn to the Katte execution, because it's so shocking and in-your-face. It was almost certainly the worst acute trauma Fritz ever had to suffer. But people often react differently to acute and chronic trauma, and a lot of Fritz's reactions later in life make the most sense to me when I view them in the light of the chronic trauma, e.g. the post-Katte "rehabilitation" period in Küstrin.
Katte's invented aunt, at whom Katte addresses the fictional letters from the novel, being called "Melusine" - this is a Fontane heroine from a unrelated to Katte novel, not the French countess and werecreature of myth, though Fontane called his heroine after her, of course.
Oh, that's interesting. I didn't know any of that. (Well, aside from the mythological Melusine, of course.) And yes, I've always been fascinated that one of our major sources on Katte is a travel guide!
the other first person narrator, contemporary to us Philip Stanhope, is...in love with the Katte of his imagination
Aren't we all. ;) (I mean, with an imaginary Katte, not necessarily the one of Stanhope's imagination.)