Frederick the Great post links
Sep. 18th, 2019 01:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cahnMore 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 moviesbecause 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)!
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
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)!
Re: Epic rap battles of history
Date: 2019-10-04 07:04 am (UTC)(Alas if it's about her old age, though, we won't get away from the depressing fact her son hated her guts and banned women from the throne the minute she died. She had intended to pass him over in favour of her grandson Alexander, but didn't get to it before dying. Otoh her son then ended up murdered after a relatively short reign just as his legal father had done - legal because he may not have been Peter III's biological kid -, with Alexander ascending anyway.)
Re: Epic rap battles of history
Date: 2019-10-04 08:59 pm (UTC)* I *still* haven't finished Mein Name ist Bach (just barely got to the roleplaying scene recently, and oh, god, it killed me inside, I have *so* many thoughts and feelings, it was not at all what I was imagining from your description), nor the two Fritz documentary films I've been crawling through.
Haha, so, confession, when you mentioned Alexander and the post-Catherine inheritance shenanigans, it gave me flashbacks to that historical AU novel I spent most of high school writing. Namely, the part in which my OC protagonist's granddaughter went to Russia to marry a teenage Alexander. They ended up doing a little one-upmanship over their respective grandmothers' accomplishments as expansionist queens, and at the end, my character did the insincere "I am a young woman newly arrived in a foreign court and will defer to my betrothed" thing by saying, "Yes, you're right, your grandmother is far greater, I will model myself on her instead."
At which point Alexander got very flustered, as intended. :-P
(
By way of contrast, my OC protagonist had spent her life playing Joan of Arc to her husband and conquering more and more territory for him to rule, so that's where Alexander's "But I should talk up my grandmother!" "But my own wife should be supportive of me and not overthrow me!" confusion comes in. My OC protagonist was modeled on Joan, both explicitly in-universe and in terms of authorial choices, but with Alexander the Great's level of success at incorporating new territories into her growing empire, lol forever, plus a longevity that is only remotely plausible if you know she was a time-traveler from the future, oh god, I'm laughing so hard.
While my novel was not very good, OOC historical figures and an extremely implausible plot being the least embarrassing of its faults, writing it was one of the most educational things I ever did, especially since I was in an academically poor US high school where *none* of this was covered. I'm like 99% sure we never even learned who Fritz was. I have a specific memory of invoking Machiavelli during a discussion in advanced US History in junior year, and having the guy who would later be salutatorian ask, "Who or what is Machiavelli?" on behalf of the entire class, who were all nodding vigorously and looking confused.
So I regret nothing!
I've actually been thinking lately that all that research I did is paying off in
Re: Epic rap battles of history
Date: 2019-10-05 01:18 am (UTC)My schools weren't nearly as terrible as yours, but skipping eighth grade and changing schools in eleventh grade meant I basically led to my skipping all of the world history classes, so I definitely never learned about Frederick the Great in school. (I think I knew who Machiavelli was, but almost certainly because some fiction book I was reading talked about him.)
Re: Epic rap battles of history
Date: 2019-10-05 01:50 am (UTC)Those facts are related. :) I refuse to watch almost everything, and I wouldn't be watching any of this now if I weren't chronically sleep-deprived.
basically led to my skipping all of the world history classes, so I definitely never learned about Frederick the Great in school.
I *took* all my world history classes, and still didn't learn any of this! At best Fritz might have been a passing mention in the Seven Years' War, but only if we covered the war before I became obsessed, because then I would definitely remember. It's just possible, because I became obsessed in January or February of that school year (I don't remember the day, but I still have a very clear visual and tactile memory of the exact moment), and if we started with the Renaissance in August and finished up with WWI in May...why, yes, I do have surprisingly specific memories of my life, why do you ask? :P
My OC protagonist was modeled on Joan, both explicitly in-universe and in terms of authorial choices, but with Alexander the Great's level of success at incorporating new territories into her growing empire, lol forever, plus a longevity that is only remotely plausible if you know she was a time-traveler from the future, oh god, I'm laughing so hard.
She would have performed well in an epic rap battle, is I guess what I'm saying. ;)
Speaking of memories, I have no idea why this memory just came back to me, but in that world history class sophomore year, I have this hilarious memory of someone asking, in all seriousness, "What's sodomy?" and the teacher panicking and looking at *me* to bail her out, LOOOL. Unfortunately for her, I was such a prude at that age that even though I knew the answer, I said, "Don't look at me!" So she was forced to address the question while trying to keep the class from getting out of control. Older me would have happily bailed her out, but she got sophomore and sophomoric me, alas.
I was surprised then and I'm surprised now, not that she knew that I knew, because of course I knew virtually everything that came up in that class from my extensive reading, but that in her moment of panic she turned to me. And then I let her down. I'm sorry, Mrs. R!
Re: Epic rap battles of history
Date: 2019-10-05 07:15 am (UTC)Skipping classes because you changed schools, lolsob, you don't know how lucky you were, you sweet summer child.
I can't remember if I've complained about this before, but I very narrowly escaped repeating freshman math and freshman English, in junior year, while I would have simultaneously been taking senior math and AP English, because I'd changed school systems between junior high and high school.
Because I'd taken freshman math and English during junior high in a school system in another state that allowed that, so my high school had no record of me taking those things. Which they discovered at the end of my sophomore year.
Naturally, the fucking guidance counselor (whose stated goal was to hold me back in all possible ways) refused to acknowledge my arguments that having blazed through sophomore and junior math and English with high As, while crying from boredom at how easy it all was, before she noticed the lack of freshman courses on my record, meant that maaaaaybe I had mastered the freshman skills and shouldn't be repeating freshman year. SMH. So much damn hate.
I don't know what I would have done if my mom hadn't gone to bat for me and jumped through all the hoops to get my records transferred. Pulled a Fritz and run away, I don't know. The thought still gives me the shudders. She was inconsistent in her willingness to support my academic needs, but she saved my sanity that time.
Re: Epic rap battles of history
Date: 2019-10-05 08:30 am (UTC)(That miniseries also had Catherine's advisor being the British ambassador to Moswow, for no other reason than a British series needed to have a sympathetic Brit somewhere, I assume.)
Now, both of these are movies rather than tv shows, but I'd fail my movie buff credentials if I didn't point out two famous German acting performances as Catherine. Marlene Dietrich famously played Catherine in "The Scarlet Empress" for Josef von Sternberg, and Käthe Dorsch played her in the original Münchhausen, where she has a fling with our titular hero the lying baron (or so he says), both of them enjoying themselves thoroughly. What's so unusual about the later is that this movie was made in 1944, in Germany, and positive presentations of Russians, including Prussians-turned-Russians who were also political masterminds owning their female sexuality, were otherwise impossible. And yet. The script for Münchhausen was written by Erich "Emil and the Detectives" Kästner, who wasn't allowed to publish under his own name at the time, was probably the only German writer to see his books burned in front of him at the infamous book burning of 1933, and wrote the script under the alias of "Berthold Bürger" (Berthold Citizen).
Mein Name ist Bach: and, what do you think of Jürgen Vogel as Fritz so far? If you find the time, pray share those thoughts and feelings?
re: your Alexander/Joan of Arc RPF with the numbers filed off, was there any particular reason why Alexander? Were you interested in Russia, or was it that he was the best looking prince available in the era? (That's what Napoleon thought, anyway, who said he'd marry Alex if Alex was a woman.)
Re: Epic rap battles of history
Date: 2019-10-05 07:39 pm (UTC)Lol, but probably preferable to being portrayed by women? Which seems to keep happening to him.
re: your Alexander/Joan of Arc RPF with the numbers filed off, was there any particular reason why Alexander? Were you interested in Russia, or was it that he was the best looking prince available in the era? (That's what Napoleon thought, anyway, who said he'd marry Alex if Alex was a woman.)
It's worse than that. :P It's because Russia was one of the few places my OC protagonist hadn't conquered yet! And my OC (coming from the future and all) knew better than to get involved in a land war in Asia, so she decided to initiate a little conquest-by-marriage through her granddaughter.
It was a little because I had enough of an interest in Russia to be able to fake knowing what was going on at the time, as opposed to, like, the Ottoman Empire--the only places whose political and military history I had a decent command of during my European history studying days were England, Scotland, Ireland, France, Austria-Hungary/HRE (but not most of the principalities in it, god, there are too many), Prussia, and Russia. I had only the vaguest idea of what was going on elsewhere. So after OC had conquered everywhere on that list except Russia by the early 1790s, that left Russia to try to get an alliance with.
Mein Name ist Bach: and, what do you think of Jürgen Vogel as Fritz so far? If you find the time, pray share those thoughts and feelings?
Well, since you ask and all... :D
I can't speak much to anyone's acting, because I keep the sound turned off and the playback speed at 2x, which is how I'm getting around my dislike of movies/television. The fact that all these things I'm watching in small increments are subtitled is the only reason I'm watching so many things. Having this many items on my in-flight watchlist is almost unprecedented for me, and it's because I'm actually reading them.
The depiction of Fritz so far seems to be 90% jerkass, 10% woobie, 0% magnificent bastard. Which, realistically, was probably your experience if you had to interact with him at close range, especially as a musician. Like I've said, I think there's an inverse proportion of admiration and proximity (which is why I think Heinrich looks up to him in the AU where there's a successful escape attempt and no one in his family's had direct interaction with young woobie Fritz in over a decade, compared to RL by 1786 where he was just impatiently waiting for dictatorial older bro to die already). So in a movie about Bach, this portrayal seems reasonable.
The roleplaying specifically: oh, god. I wasn't expecting that Fritz roleplayed *Katte* and the servant roleplayed young Fritz. The reversal just killed me inside. It's actually a pretty spectacular way of showing without telling just how tangled up Katte is with Fritz's emotions and how deep the trauma runs.
I wasn't expecting the spontaneity or the intimacy. I also wasn't expecting it to be that much of a private moment between Katte and young Fritz. I was expecting something rather more distant and plot-based, where Fritz instructs the servant to re-enact one of the public moments (the capture, the interrogation, the execution, something like that), and then they do it. Not the moment when Fritz and Katte were alone together and making the decision to run away. But it makes so much sense!
The fact that Fritz is on his knees during it OH GOD I'M DYING. And the face-touching. *cry*
Which leads me to, the worst part of all this for me is that he picked Goltz (Goltz? Goltz?!) to be his roleplay partner. Where the fuck is Fredersdorf?! (It's 3 am, I'm sure he's awake.) I would let Fredersdorf* roleplay with Fritz all day long. Because, for me, the biggest problem with this roleplay is that the other party has been conscripted to partake in something he doesn't think is a good idea. And on those terms, it's not. It's clear the film means to portray Fritz's idea as not helping him, and that it's not helping isn't surprising.
But having watched this scene, I feel like Fritz's instincts were on the mark. Under different circumstances, if he felt like doing this kind of roleplay, it had the potential to be really good for him, especially in the absence of better options in the 18th century.
In general, going over your traumas again and again can be healing or can be just a form of wound-picking. In Fritz's case, since he had so much difficulty talking about his trauma, I think repetitive middle-of-the-night roleplay might be a good way to habituate his brain to the memories. With someone who actually wanted to be there with him. With someone who was close enough to him and committed enough to the exercise to encourage it and try to provide a supportive environment for him to be that vulnerable. (Preferably someone who can also keep transference and countertransference from becoming a problem, which is admittedly a tall order for something like this.)
Not someone who's like, "It's 3 am, I just want to go to bed, I don't even like you, nobody in this movie likes you, this isn't my job, why do I live in an absolute monarchy where the king can just decide I need to be his therapist RIGHT NOW, I'm not even qualified to be a therapist, this job sucks." Cause you really shouldn't conscript people to be your therapist; it's not good for them, and it's not good for you. Just like you shouldn't have that much power in general; it's not good for anyone around you, and it's not good for you.
But wow, I now *desperately* want to see good roleplay between Fritz and someone who wants to be there for him. It's now become a *thing* in my brain. Oooff. Thank you for telling me about this movie.
* For the sake of fiction, I would obviously be perfectly fine with someone by the name of Goltz replacing real-life Fredersdorf and exhibiting an equivalent closeness to Friedrich within the movie. But that's not what we get. We get "I don't want to be here." Which is reasonable! Under any circumstances, and especially ones where you know from experience it never ends well and yet you're trapped with a king who won't give up the idea. But the idea had so much potential!
Re: Epic rap battles of history
Date: 2019-10-06 01:20 pm (UTC)re:replacing real Fredersdorff with fictional Goltz, no, I have no idea what was up with that, either. The first time I watched, I thought something might happen to Goltz, hence the switch, but no, it doesn't, so that can't have been the reason, and it's clear the scriptwriters did their research (there's a great amount of real quotes built into the script, including the one about Voltaire), so it wasn't out of ignorance that there was a real person Fritz could have had this scene with.
However, I would say that your high speed, no sound method of watching gives you a wrong impression about how fictional Goltz regards Fritz. Because the intonation and the way of phrasing makes it pretty clear to me Goltz does care, and when he says "it's not good for you" when trying to talk Fritz out of the roleplay, he doesn't sound cautious or bothered, but seriously concerned (for Fritz, not himself). It's not remotely a relationship of equals, of course, but the actor who plays Goltz does a lot with the expressions and with the way he's watching Fritz in public, too, so the impression I had was that knows he shouldn't care (because when all is said and done Fritz is a mess and his boss, a dangerous combination) but he does.
Also, if you watch a little further you'll get to the scene where Bach and Fritz bare their souls to each other (Bach with his "I'm going blind and also, I shouldn't have burdened my sons with being in the same profession as me" and Fritz with his myriad of issues) and old JB actually does try to comfort Fritz.
Re: Epic rap battles of history
Date: 2019-10-06 09:47 pm (UTC)I will say that, with my deep emotional investment in this scene, I watched these particular few minutes multiple times like a normal person, and also in slow motion, before forming an opinion, but I agree I am handicapped by 1) experiencing it in translation, which affects both phrasing and intonation (you can hear the intonation this way, but not reliably match it up with the words) 2) my refusal to watch the rest of the movie like a normal person and thus absorb the full Fritz/Goltz context for the scene.
But here's why I parsed this dynamic the way I did, and why I would have far preferred Fredersdorf:
It begins with Goltz saying he's tired and wants to go, and Fritz saying, in effect, that he doesn't care what Goltz wants, it's therapy time. That lead-in made it very difficult for me to interpret what came next in light of anything except a power imbalance. And so I took Goltz's apparently genuine concern, "This game does Your Majesty no good," as him appealing to Fritz's self-interest in order to get them both out of this, since his own needs have already been rejected as irrelevant.
And then everything after that is Fritz/Katte roleplay, so all words, intonations, facial expressions, and gestures of tenderness can be assumed to have been micromanaged by Fritz over the course of the previous roleplay occasions, and so none of this is admissible as evidence. (As noted, the facial expressions in the rest of the movie that you have seen and I have not are admissible as evidence and I defer to you.)
Whereas RL Fritz showed at least some concern over Fredersdorf's well-being in their correspondence, and same with Catt's well-being in Catt's memoirs. What I haven't seen in this movie, and stop me if I just missed or forgot it from 2xing the thing in small increments over the course of several weeks, is Fritz showing any concern for Goltz's well-being. Now, granted, *any* relationship between Fritz and another person is going to suffer from a power imbalance, including and up to Wilhelmine and Katte. But when I see some reciprocity, I'm more likely to interpret it as a mutual relationship with potentially positive aspects. That's why, if they had only changed the name to Fredersdorf, and kept all the dialogue and everything else the same, I would have been more likely to parse Fredersdorf as genuinely concerned, as opposed to simply watching his back and trying to keep his job (in the face of Fritz's notorious zero-strike policy).
Also. My experience of the film leaves me taking Goltz's word for it that the roleplaying isn't good for Fritz. Maybe it's not. Maybe he's always in a foul mood afterward and takes it out on everyone around him and never gets anywhere even after numerous repetitions. But what I've actually gotten out of the movie so far with my own eyes and what you've told me is 1) Fritz crying at the end of the roleplay, 2) Fritz confiding in Bach later on. Neither of which convinces me that the roleplay wasn't good for him, given the way his historical number one reaction to Katte's death, after those first few days, was to bottle it all up inside. Obviously, roleplay hasn't solved all of his issues, no one thing is going to do that (especially when the Katte affair was only his most acute trauma, and his chronic trauma had imo far more widespread and ineradicable effects), but that's different from saying it does him no good.
Here's how I would have loved to have seen this play out. It requires absolutely minimal changes.
1) Change Goltz's name to Fredersdorf.
2) Same roleplay scene. We can even keep the line about it not being good for Fritz, on the assumption that Fredersdorf doesn't know that it might be good for him, because I don't expect anyone in the 18th century to know the first thing about psychology.
3) That flute music by moonlight scene immediately after? Have Fritz and Fredersdorf playing their flutes together.
4) Keep the therapy session with Bach later on.
Implication: spontaneous repetitive roleplaying of acute trauma in the dark, with someone he has a close relationship with, functions as exposure therapy, which in turn leads to it being easier for him to open up about his chronic trauma in the daylight with someone whom he knows less well (and Gooood knows, hasn't has the smoothest relationship with so far in this movie!) but who can function as a father figure.
It substitutes one name and makes a slight alteration in one scene, and it changes the whole arc for me.
Btw, question for you, as someone who's seen the whole movie: I've done repeated slow-mo-ing and freeze framing of the shot right after Goltz knocks over the ink, and I'm a bit confused. My interpretation is that it's Fritz having a flashback to what appears to be a beheaded (?) individual in a white shroud (?) lying next to a wheel and a stone wall suggestive of a fortress. Now, I've seen historians suggest that FW threatening Katte and Keith with torture (though he never followed through) might lie behind some of Friedrich II's later mitigation of torture. And that definitely seems to be what this scene is getting at: it starts with Fritz talking to Goltz about his personal horror of torture, and ends with him having a flashback to what has to be Katte.
Am I interpreting this correctly? Is this just artistic license on the part of the film, implying that Katte was broken on the wheel? Is this cleared up in the discussion with Bach? Does Fritz explicitly talk about Katte at all with Bach, or just the many, many other daddy issues?
Thank you for bearing with my dislike of this medium that dates back to when I was 2-3 years old and my mother tried and failed to get me to be a normal kid and watch Sesame Street. :)
I suspect some conspiracy involving Prussian cyber agents from the beyond.
Those sneaky cyber agents, always foiling us!
Say hi to Old Fritz from me, agents. :DRe: Epic rap battles of history
Date: 2019-10-06 11:49 pm (UTC)Which leads me to, either Goltz is right or wrong that this is another one of Fritz's patented Really Bad Ideas (TM). If he's right, it means Fritz genuinely feels worse as a result of doing this, in not just the short but the long term. I find it difficult to believe, given both the RL man and the theme of this movie, that Fritz feeling worse wouldn't have any effect on the way he treats the people around him, and therefore that Goltz doesn't have some vested interest in talking Fritz out of the roleplay. There are many ways for this roleplay to go wrong, with and without the power differential, and Goltz may be spot on.
But he may also be wrong. And if he's wrong, it means Fritz would actually benefit from having someone to do this with him, and what he's got is someone who's sending "don't do this" messages. Now this may be because Goltz totally cares about Fritz and doesn't want to see him crying at the end. It may be the case that Fredersdorf would have had the same reaction, purely out of caring and his own discomfort at seeing Fritz cry. That still doesn't mean the roleplay was a bad idea.
[Okay, this turned into a ramble about trauma psychology, which is one of my interests.]
It's actually extremely common, and a big problem for trauma survivors, for the people closest to them to feel radically uncomfortable with them reliving their traumatic memories. Sometimes people tell the survivor it's better to let it go, or sometimes they try to listen, but get increasingly and visibly upset at hearing about these awful things and/or watching the survivor cry. At that point, the survivor is now having to manage the emotions of the person they're talking to as well as their own emotions, which is not something you can do while reliving a traumatic experience. So the whole thing starts shutting down.
Both these approaches mean the survivor ends up feeling like they're not allowed to talk about what they need to talk about, even when they want to, which is really, really bad for their recovery prospects. Now! It is no one's responsibility to listen to anyone else's traumas, much less participate in a roleplay. You can absolutely find someone else's traumas too upsetting to listen to and tell them so. Self-care comes first.
But telling someone it's bad for *them* to relive their memories is absolutely the wrong thing to say. I realize pretty much everyone who says this is well-meaning, and God knows I don't hold random laypeople responsible for understanding psychology in this century, much less 3 centuries ago. But they're still misinformed and spreading misinformation. (As noted, this specific roleplay between Fritz and Goltz may be going horribly wrong in many ways, and I'm not saying Goltz was necessarily concluding it was bad for Fritz just because of Fritz's emotions during the roleplay. But if that's what he meant, then that's an extremely common mistake.)
The most helpful thing you can do, if someone you care about is reliving a trauma, is to realize that they're dealing with their own emotions right now and can't deal with yours, to understand that just because your own emotions are in revolt at the thought of them suffering doesn't mean that it's bad for them to relive it, and to try to manage your own secondhand emotions out of their sight.
That's IF doing so isn't going to cause you unhealthy amounts of distress, of course. But sometimes it's enough just to know that it's okay to let them experience their own distress without you having to fix it or try to make it stop. If you're not a trained professional, quiet support and validation is usually the best thing you can do. If we're talking the present day, suggestions that they find someone qualified to help if they need to. Above all, not pressure to talk, but acceptance and encouragement when they do. And, of course, navigation of boundaries: distinguish between "I can't hear about X right now/ever because it's inherently upsetting/I don't have the spoons/I don't want to do this/I don't need to explain" and "I balk at hearing about X because I have misconceptions about what the other person needs."
TL;DR: I didn't come up with this specific roleplay for Fritz, but I've been having him roleplay with trusted loved ones in my head for months because it has a lot of potential to help if done right, and this scene hit pretty close to home in that respect.