Frederick the Great post links

[cahn]

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)!

Comments

Re: speaking of musical relationships....

[mildred_of_midgard]

Yeah, what about us?! (Honestly, I think there are much better reasons to be interested, not the least of which is that if his favorites were women, no one would call you a gossipy sensationalist for being interested in his relationships with them. There's also the question of "just how did being gay in the 18th century affect people?")

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

Yeah, I mean, she may not hit a bunch of my specific buttons, but she's definitely got her shit together as a human being. Go, MT!

Re Fritz, though: we spend a lot of time talking about the ways in which his trauma fucked him up emotionally, but honestly, it's possible to look at it from the flip-side, and I do that a lot. As you know, Bob, I think there's a tendency to overestimate the extent to which the trauma shaped him. And regardless, even if, for the sake of argument, you agree with the historians about every single thing about him that's ever been attributed to the trauma...I continue to be fairly impressed by how intact he came out of all this. Compared to a lot of other people in a whole gamut of other traumatic experiences.

Part of this is genetic, of course, and his personality, but a huge part of it, I think, was that FW was an outlier. The number of people who agreed with FW and wholeheartedly joined in with the abuse are vanishingly small. Even Fritz's earliest influences, his mother and sister, were all, "Yeah arts! Yeah French!" Even the *society* in which they lived overwhelmingly disagreed with FW.

FW: Music is effeminate.
Male musicians in Europe: abound. Are respected. Are often in the military as well.

Etc., etc.

So Fritz was getting validated like crazy every time he turned around. The number of validation/mitigation anecdotes is astounding. Even Katte's executioner had to be ordered three times, and was apologizing profusely to Katte! And as a result (I would argue), a lot of Fritz's time as an abuse victim was spent waiting for Dad to die already so he could join the rest of the world in Sane Land. And that kind of ability to externalize the abuse makes a world of difference to your prospects as a survivor, and is why I start twitching every time I see a biographer use the word "broken" to describe what FW did to Fritz. Hurt? Absolutely. Damage? Sure, at this point we'd be arguing semantics. But break?

I maintain that Fritz came out of his abuse difficult, frequently abusive to others, and unhappy, but with a basically intact core. And that is part of why in the other comment I said his relationship with Wilhelmine was the best thing for both of them: as far as I can tell, they both came out with basically intact cores, and without that close relationship (and at least some of the positive aspects with their mother, amongst all her terrible acts of parenting), it would have been much more unlikely for both of them.

But fix-it fics for everyone!

Re: speaking of musical relationships....

[cahn]

Heh, I'd feel equally like a gossipy sensationalist for being interested in the relationships with women. (hiiiii there, August the Strong!) But, yeah.

Oh, I agree with you that he came out functionally intact, although damaged and also verrrrrry bad at relationships. I do appreciate that view of all the external validation he was getting -- and also his relationship with Wilhelmine. (As I've mentioned before, my relationship with my sister is very close, and a large part of how we weathered parents that were (a) not nearly as bad as Fritz's and (b) not nearly as wacko as yours, but who still I think could have messed up either of us -- though particularly my sister -- rather worse. So I feel that very much.)