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: Yuletide ideas and the Other Royal Murder Dad

[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.)

Re: Yuletide ideas and the Other Royal Murder Dad

[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)