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)!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

selenak

Maria Theresia and Wilhelmine liking each other so that Fritz decided not to talk to Wilhelmine any more: there's GOT to be a fic in this, right?? (I know the most rational explanation is that Fritz is... Fritz, but COME ON, this is what we have fic for) (I don't ship MT and W, mind you, I just... really like it that they got along!)

I don't blame you. Also, it's been years since I've been to the Eremitage in Bayreuth (Wilhelmine's Sanssouci) so I couldn't swear to it, but I think she even painted a miniature Portrait of Maria Theresia (or more likely MT gave her one but in any case Wilhelmine kept it among her personal possessions, not with the state stuff), which makes her "look, she's my husband's liege lady, she was just passing through!" protestations to Fritz a bit less than convincing. But then he was basically: YOU TRAITOR! so much that I figure she had to downplay it for any kind of reconciliation being possible at all. (In what few angry letters he wrote during their breakup and pre reconciliation, he kept referring to MT as yOUR FRIEND the queen of Hungary".) Anyway, yes, there's a fic in this!

(Wilhelmine and Fritz had a quarrel shortly pre her meeting with MT, too, but that one was mostly a misunderstanding. Wilhelmine's Lady in waiting, one Countess of Marwitz, was also her husband's mistress, to Wilhelmine's great distress. So she arranged a marriage for her rival. The groom was an Austrian noble (i.e. away with the Countess of Marwitz to Vienna!), which infuriated Fritz because Marwitz was a Prussian noble and thus not allowed to marry an Austrian noble without his permission. Being paranoid, he thought by arranging the marriage his sister entered a conspiracy against him. (She hadn't told him Marwitz was her husband's mistress because when does this family ever share vital Information when it's most needed? Also it hurt her pride - she was insisting her marriage was a success to him.) Post-reconciliationn, she explained what had been up with the Marwitz, and in any case by then MT had become the greater issue.

From:

cahn

(In what few angry letters he wrote during their breakup and pre reconciliation, he kept referring to MT as YOUR FRIEND the queen of Hungary".)

lol forever OH FRITZ

I think a lot of my ~FEELINGS~ here are from reading Wilhelmine's memoirs (I'm still a third through the second part, it's a bit of a rough slog here because she's now going through hard times with her family-in-law and possibly other people, none of whom I can really keep straight) and her life is just horrible in general and I just want her to have a friend!!

(She hadn't told him Marwitz was her husband's mistress because when does this family ever share vital Information when it's most needed? Also it hurt her pride - she was insisting her marriage was a success to him.)

Oh Hohenzollerns :(
Does all this happen in her memoirs? You mentioned MT shows up as the Queen of Hungary but obviously I haven't gotten there yet.

From:

selenak

Wilhelmine's memoirs break off just when she has to describe realizing Marwitz - who wasn't just a Lady in waiting but a dear friend up to that point - was also her husband's mistress. At least in the of the memoirs I have, her last sentence is "I don't want to write about that court anymore". I might misremember, or have one of the shortened editions, but as far as I know, she never finished her memoirs propery. You have to consider her state of mind when she wrote them: marriage crisis, friend lost, Fritz estranged. I wouldn't be surprised if that was why she tackled her chiildhood and youth to begin with - not just because she had time at her hands, but to remind herself she'd survived worse. And afterwards, when Marwitz had at last left for Vienna, she'd made up with her husband, and she was reconciled with Fritz again, she probably didn't want to dive straight back into the arguments and the misery.

Unfortunately, that means the Maria Theresiia encounter didn't make it into the tell all (again, as far as I recall). She just mentions her when listing the royals who married at the same time she and Fritz had to.
end on a slightly less depressing note, I'm currently reading about "Friedrich II als Musiker", and Wilhelmine plays a big role in that one, not just because music was a mutual passion for them but because he kept sending her his compositions ~~for beta-reading~~ for her musical judgment. Am v. amused but not surprised in one letter Fritz explains how he taught the castrato singer he'd just hiired, Porporino, how to sing properly. (Think Hamlet lecturing the players on how to act.) (And bear in mind that castrati were trained from early childhood onwards and that it was an incredibly tough musical education..)

(I also got a more detailed summary of Wilhelmine's opera "Argenore" than I iused to know. Ahem: Argenore, King of Ponto, has a daughter named Palmida, secretly in love with Ormondo, a noble soldier and war leader; however, Argenore has promised her to Leonidas, his other battle-leader, who in turn has a secret love affair with Palmida's friend Martesia. Our villain Alcasto has designs on Palmida himself and frames Ormondo for trying to run away with her. Ormondo gets arrested. Argenore demands that Palmida kills Ormondo herself, otherwise both of them would have to die.

Ormondo manages to escape. Argenore, who plans to present his daughter with her lover's dead body (since she refused to earlier demand) in order to make her marry Leonidas, orders Leonidas to recapture Ormondo. Leonidas does so and in the ensuiing duel mortally wounds Ormondo, who dies. In anger and despiar, Palmida kills Leonidas. Martesia then, too late, via a letter in her possession reveals that Ormondo was really King Argenore's long lost son, i.e. Palmida's brother. Palmida, learning this, drowns herself. Argenore realises he's destroyed both his children, sings about that and commits suicide on the stage. Fina della tragedia.

...I don't know about you, but I think someone was venting... (More seriously, Wilhelmine in some ways may have been more together than Fritz, but I think it's more a question of her being restrained by being a woman and not having the same power at her disposal to deal with her trauma. She was stuck writing opera and memoirs to even try to attempt to.

...I wanted to end less depressingly, didn't I? Okay, I did manage to find the pastel miniature Wilhelmine - who was never more than amateur but as a princess of her age had to learn to paint as well - did of Maria Theresia (the Erremitage online inventory says she did it with her own hands. Given she met her just that one time, it was probably done by memory unless that meeting took longer (will have to track down Thiel's biography who supposedly gives the most detail on this):

http://www.wilhelmine-von-bayreuth.info/index.php/streben-in-der-politik/maria_theresia_pastell/
To

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Am v. amused but not surprised in one letter Fritz explains how he taught the castrato singer he'd just hiired, Porporino, how to sing properly. (Think Hamlet lecturing the players on how to act.) (And bear in mind that castrati were trained from early childhood onwards and that it was an incredibly tough musical education..)

Oh, god, this is so hilariously in character. Fritz *always* knew better than the experts in their field of expertise, that was his thing. Voltaire and Quantz must have been surprised to be exceptions. :P

From:

selenak

That book is golden with stories about Fritz micromanaging his musicians, including, btw, also female sopranos, not just the castrati. The female lead soprano at the Berlin opera he was particularly involved (and surprisingly complimentary about in general) with; in addition to being a good singer, she also had an abusive dad, so there might have been additional sympathy on that count. All singers, including the great Salimbene (who was one of the legendary castrati on a European level), however, had to endure getting lectured by Fritz.

As for Quantz: when he was about to visit Bayreuth Fritz wrote to Wilihelmine not to give him more than what Fritz gave him per appearance for otherwise he might demand a salary raise upon his return to Berlin, so Fritz' introduction scene in Mein Name ist Bach where he refuses to pay for an uncommissioned composition by Emmanuel Bach was dead on the money at least, no pun intended. :) But yes, fictional Quantz saying "he could be your father" re: J.S. Bach was a line just there get the audience to see Fritz' reaction and introduce Fritz' Dad issues early on in the movie, i.e. exposition duty over historical likelihood for Quantz of all the people to have said it. Otoh, who else would say it? The rest of the people in the scene are all younger than Fritz and utterly dependent on him. You have to consider that the film makers couldn't assume their audience would know all about Fritz' background already going in. This is a Swiss-German movie produced for an international audience who may know who Bach was but might or might not be aware Frederick the Great was his contemporary at best, so they had to include exposition somehow.

Back to the book about Fritz as a musician I've just read: also includes analyses of his operas - Coriolano (same myth Shakespeare's play is based on, worthy of note that you get one of the most famous disapproving mother, not father figures here, and the son eventually decides to listen to his mother knowing full well he'll die for it), Silla (good old Lucius Cornelius Sulla, here a misunderstood good dictator sorting everyone's miseries out despite being maligned as an evil tyrant by some of the cast, and and the end retiring as the Republic can now fend for itself) and Montezuma (Fritz strikes a blow for the Aztecs and against bigotted Catholic Spain, ruled, of course, by the Habsburgs at the time the opera is set; the book's author points out that Montezuma, being a good guy, isn't presented as an ideal ruler, either, and that his goodness and passivity allows the evil ~~Habsburgs~~ Spaniards to genocide his country).

The author argues against what some biographers apparantly have claimed - i.e. that Fritz lost interest in opera post 7-years-war - and backs it up with quotes from documents to prove it. Down to him visiting the opera with his last state guest ever in the year of his death. Who was that last guest? Why, none other than great-nephew Carl August from Weimar. She also provides details about the singers, the concerts, the arrangements (down to such details that when Fritz was visiting Bayreuth post-reconciliation with Wilhelmine, she re-arranged the musical presentation of one of her works in his honor in such a way that the style the songs were presented would echo his favourite castrato singer (Salimbene) and composer (Hasse).

Edited Date: 2019-09-23 09:45 am (UTC)

From:

mildred_of_midgard

so Fritz' introduction scene in Mein Name ist Bach where he refuses to pay for an uncommissioned composition by Emmanuel Bach was dead on the money at least

Yes, I was impressed at how the intro scene managed to pack so many of Fritz's traits into so few sentences.

But yes, fictional Quantz saying "he could be your father" re: J.S. Bach was a line just there get the audience to see Fritz' reaction and introduce Fritz' Dad issues early on in the movie, i.e. exposition duty over historical likelihood for Quantz of all the people to have said it.

Oh, I get *why* they did it! I made the same choice to put my exposition in Algarotti's mouth in my latest fic (which cahn is kindly currently beta-reading) because he is the most likely character *within the context of the fic* to have said it, though not in real life. (Then I added an author's note at the end apologizing to Algarotti. ;-) ) I was just saying that personally, knowing the closet story, I raised an eyebrow at Quantz.

Thank you for the details from the books you're reading! Between my inability to read German and my current inability to read physical books, they're very helpful. And sadly, as much as German would be extremely useful to me this month, it's something like 4 or 5 on my list of languages to beef up on, so it's going to be a while. (I wish my PhD program, which theoretically required a reading knowledge of academic German, had either provided the resources to learn to read academic German without having to go through the whole rigmarole of years of learning to speak to Germans about your daily life and ask when the train is coming, or at the very least, held the bar higher: I aced the reading requirements without actually having enough vocabulary to read anything I want to read. I complained about the program expectations at the time.)

From:

cahn

:( Okay, yeah, that's depressing. I can totally understand why she didn't want to talk about it (even if she really liked MT). And venting through opera :( That's a really cute miniature, though!

Fritz explains how he taught the castrato singer he'd just hiired, Porporino, how to sing properly. (Think Hamlet lecturing the players on how to act.) (And bear in mind that castrati were trained from early childhood onwards and that it was an incredibly tough musical education..)

Lol forever, Fritz! (I have taken and failed at enough singing lessons -- as someone who used to be a quite reasonably good violinist, I want to add -- that even before the explanatory note I was kind of laughing at the idea of a flute player teaching a singer how to sing. Yeeeeeah.)

From:

mildred_of_midgard

So hilariously, this reminds me of the time I and another Indo-Europeanist student showed up at a summer school in Europe, took a two-week course on comparative Semitic linguistics with both of us having NO background in Semitic, and by the end of week one I was raising my hand to vociferously disagree with the professor (who would never admit that he was wrong and I was right) about how Semitic historical linguistics worked. The other student was less confrontational, but would take me aside to tell me quietly that I was right and making good arguments and to encourage me to keep fighting the good fight. I was amused at our brazenness at the time, and I continue to be.

Later, back at my home university, I took a full semester course on a Semitic language, asked that professor what he thought, and he agreed with the professor at the other university. I continued to be outraged (ETA: "outraged" is a bit strong for historical linguistics. Indignant, maybe) and disagree.

In our defense, several years later, I found out that the foremost historical Semitic linguistics scholar agreed with me. Said foremost scholar also believes the field of historical Semitic linguistics is not as advanced as historical Indo-European linguistics and contains scholars still making elementary methodological mistakes about things that we IE-ists figured out in the 19th century. So there.

But I still think our total confidence about something we first- and second-year grad students had been studying for a week was hilarious, and I relate so hard to Fritz's arrogance, even when it's unwarranted. The thing about being arrogant is that sometimes you're wrong and you get egg on your face (or your entire army gets pummeled or even destroyed at Hochkirch or Kunersdorf) because you refuse to believe it, and sometimes you really are right and the so-called experts really are wrong! Suspect a flautist teaching a castrato is the first case, but there were times when Fritz really was right, and I am not rewriting my essay to be more like George Washington, dammit! :P (LOL)

Edited Date: 2019-09-29 05:22 pm (UTC)