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

I'm sure someone did a map for 1740 to 1786 Fritz movements as well, somewhere, long before the digital age, given how obsessed with him the 19th and first half of the 20th century was. The trick, of course, is how to find it! If I come across a version, I will point you its way.

Have now arrived in my audio re-hearing at the big estrangement phase. Turns out that while I had remembered the Marwitz marriage drama and the Maria Theresia meeting drama, I had forgotten there was also Würtemberg marriage drama at the start and in between Marwitz and Maria Theresia there was Erlangen journalist drama, all adding to their growing distance, with the MT meeting just as final culminating event. The Würtemberg stuff were mostly misunderstandings. Context: Fritz wanted Wilhelmine's daughter (at that time 11 years) to marry Karl Eugen, future Duke of Würtemberg, who together with his brother was growing up at his court, as part of his anti-Habsburg policy of aligning as many of the other German principalities as he could with Prussia. The boy's mother wanted to get the boy back under her own supervision in Würtemberg. Fritz saw this as potential conspiracy to not follow through with the marriage and make an alternate match. Wilhelmine was unsure whether or not to look for potential other matches for her daughter or bank it all on the Würtemberg match. (Not least because she could tell a tale about being told you were to marry someone from early age only for it not to happen.) The widowed Duchess wanted control of her sons. (Spoiler: Karl Eugen and Wilhelmine's daughter, who according to Casanova was the most beautiful princess in Europe, got married when the girl was 16. It was such an unhappy marriage that she moved back to her parents in Bayreuth, where she's buried. Karl Eugen bankrupted Würtemberg with his pomp and his mistresses and makes into literary history by being the Duke who banished young Schiller from his realm.

cahn, remember that scene from Kabale und Liebe I translated for you where Lady Milford, Mistress of Not Named Duke Who IS Totally Not Karl Eugen, gets jewelry paid for by soldiers sold to fight in the American Wars and the old servant delivering said jewels is the father of one of the gangpressed soldiers, describing how anyone resisting gangpressing was shot, the scene which English wiki bewilderingly describes as "anti-British satire"?)

The Erlangen journalist bit went thusly:
Ulrike, writing from Sweden during the second Silesian War: Dear brother, are you aware not one but several articles describing you as a war mongerer and Prussia as the villain have appeared in a newspaper printed in Erlangen? Erlangen, small Franconian town ruled by... who was it again? Hmmmm????

Fritz: I can't believe the Margrave and you are standing by while I get slandered repeatedly by an Erlangen journalist, Wilhelmine.

Wilhelmine: As if the Margrave and I read German newspapers. I am, of course, horrified. The man shall be arrested at once!

Fritz: Okay, I've just recalled I'm an enlightened monarch. The journalist doesn't have to stay in your prison, just make sure his stuff never gets printed again, and we're good.

Wihelmine: Good to know you're not insisting on his imprisonment, because he's mysteriously disappeared when the order for his arrest went out. I trust we'll never hear from him again.

Fritz: *says nothing now, but will bring it up later in his big "how you betrayed me, let me count the ways" letter, at which point it's "and then the Margrave and you let that bastard who slandered me escape"

The MT business: now during the first Silesian War, Wilhelmine is a brother-admiring loyalist who when MT's mother (who happened to be a Brunswick, i.e. Elisabeth Christine's aunt, for all the good that did), wrote her a letter asking for her mediation promptly forwards said letter to Fritz while saying "as if I would interfere, this is just for your amusement, they're so doomed with you against them". During the break between Silesian Wars, there's a cryptic exchange along the notes of Fritz mentioning "The Queen of Hungary, whom you admire so much" and Wilhelmine retorting defensively "I don't admire her at all, I just fairly acknowledge she has her strengths". During the Second Silesian war, when the Wittelsbach Emperor dies and MT gets the German princes (other than Prussia and one or two others) to vote for her husband Franz Stefan as next Emperor, MT travels to Frankfurt for Franz Stefan's coronation and on that occasion makes her fateful Bayreuth visit. (Wilhelmine: IT WAS JUST LUNCH! THE ONE TIME! WE ONLY HAD LUNCH!" (Literal quote: "She was served lunch, and I attended as politeness demanded"). This explanation comes in reply to Fritz' delayed "the reasons you suck" outburst, mind, not immediately after it happened. The letter building up to his big outburst says: "Since you care so much about the Queen of Hungary, it may please you to know I've made peace with her" (with MT accepting Prussia's ownership of Silesia and Fritz accepting Franz Stefan as Emperor and hence MT as Empress), Wilhelmine makes the mistake of writing back "how wonderful and befitting your greatness is this peace making, I dare say it will contribute even more to your glory than your earlier victories" and THEN Fritz cuts loose.

It has to be said, though, MT isn't the most reviled woman in the estrangement years. That's the quondam Countess of Marwitz and married Countess of Burghausen, Wilhelmine's (ex-)friend who became her husband's mistress and whom she married off to an Austrian. Fritz seems to have clued into Marwitz having an affair with the Margrave before Wilhelmine did which leads to this:

F: Why are you defending Marwitz? She's the worst! A Medea, a vile excrement of humanity! You are exactly like a cuckold who learns the truth only after everyone else has already found out.
W: Marwitz isn't dominating me, if that's what you mean. You should know I'm mistress of my own actions and am not likely to be manipulated by a courtier.
F: You being dominated by Marwitz was not what I meant!

(I don't get why he calls Marwitz "Medea", though, because it's really the wrong classical reference. Even if he's not associating child murder but Medea as a sorceress.)

On a more fun note, my checking out individual letters from Wilhelmine's France & Italy travel correspondance years post reconciliation let me discover that she and Fritz were "Who was the Man in the Iron Mask?" geeks. So when she's travelling along the Cote d'Azure (having lunch in "a little town named Cannes"), she's visiting the Island St. Marguerite where the Man in the Iron Mask was supposedly kept, visits his cell and interviews people who swear their parents interacted with him. And gets this bit of sensational news: "(Feri) and others who saw him say that they believe it was a woman, that he had tiny and smallboned hands, and that the skin was very smooth and soft, despite being a bit bronze." The woman in the Iron Mask! That's a new one for me. Wilhelmine finishes her interview report to Fritz by saying the common most featured theories are that it was either the Comte de Vermandois (illegitimate son of Henri IV, i.e. Louis XIV bastard uncle, literally) or "the first Dauphine", by which she means this lady.

This is the letter, and here the German translation.

From:

cahn

Oh Fritz, oh Wilhelmine :(

(Ihave no idea if I'm going to be able to have much opportunity to respond over the next week or so, but I'm still reading and this is all amazing and I promise I'll come back and respond later)

From:

cahn

I reread this (this is just the most wonderful comment, feeding all my wishes to hear about Fritz and Wilhemline) and, really, it boils down to Oh Fritz, oh Wilhelmine. Like, it seems so in character that she would be so happy that he had concluded the war, and say so very nicely, and also in character that Fritz would not take this well!

Also, I will never tire of your recaps/interpretations. IT WAS JUST LUNCH! THE ONE TIME! Poor Wilhelmine :(

You being dominated by Marwitz is not what Imeant!

Awwww! This bit makes me feel sorry for both Wilhelmine and Fritz, while wanting them to have much MUCH better communication.

From:

mildred_of_midgard

You said everything I was thinking. I was going to reply to your previous command and say that "Oh Fritz, oh Wilhelmine" pretty much sums it up. :-( I feel sorry for Wilhelmine and Fritz and everyone who had to deal with Fritz at close range after he became king.

Speaking of his correspondence in the other thread, apparently his idea of a condolence letter was "I am so sorry your brother died in one of my battles...but I just have to take advantage of this opportunity to say I TOLD YOU SO. I've been saying over and over again that he was going to get himself killed unnecessarily, I'm only surprised it didn't happen sooner."

He wrote this letter to EC about her brother's death *and also* to EC's surviving brother.

Um, Fritz? I'm notoriously bad at condolence letters, but even I know THAT'S NOT HOW YOU DO IT.

In a way, that's even worse than his "but don't be too sad, my problems are much bigger" condolence ("condolence") letter to his own brother Heinrich after their brother Wilhelm's death 13 years later.

Both EC and Heinrich then wrote to their surviving brother, both named Ferdinand, expressing their fury at the "condolence" letters they got from Fritz. I don't have EC's letter, but all my sources agree that even she got mad. Saint EC!

She may have gotten her revenge, as one of my sources says *she* later blurted out the news of Friedrich's mother's death in a letter to him that she sealed with a red seal, instead of one of the black ones indicating bad news, and that's how he found out. Now, I don't have documentary evidence on any of this, and even if it's all thoroughly based in fact, I don't know to what extent she was familiar with the practice of preparing the King for bad news with a different seal, but...after watching him not learn how to write a condolence letter in 13 years, I think it was time for him to be on the receiving end of some insensitivity.

Fritz, unlike every historian ever, I don't expect you to interact with your forced-marriage wife or really any of your family you didn't choose. PLEASE DON'T INTERACT with your forced-marriage wife or really any of your family you didn't choose!! It works wonders for me.

Edited (Hit enter way too soon.) Date: 2019-10-12 04:22 am (UTC)

From:

cahn

Awwwww EC :( Man, she deserved better. On the other hand, so did both Fritz and everyone around him, sigh. (Especially Wilhelmine, omg.)

(Is it mean of me that I kind of hope she actually did do the letter thing on purpose?)

From:

mildred_of_midgard

(Is it mean of me that I kind of hope she actually did do the letter thing on purpose?)

No, because I love Fritz with a deep and unreasonable love that is totally dependent on him being safely long dead, and even *I* hope she did it on purpose.

Not because being insensitive back at people is a good way of getting them to be less insensitive in future, but since that ship has sailed, just...EC, you're allowed to have your moment here, and this is coming from a non-fan of you.

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Man, she deserved better. On the other hand, so did...everyone.

This. This is why I live for AUs in this fandom. Also, why it breaks my heart that, unlike in my fictional fandoms, where I'm perfectly willing to tell myself that, say, my LOTR AUs are as valid in my head as anything canonical, the awful 18th century stuff all really happened no matter how many AUs I come up with. I write and I write and I write, and Katte's head is still separated from his body in that coffin in Wust, and Fritz still fainted watching. :'-(

From:

mildred_of_midgard

I love the Iron Mask bit! I didn't know that at all about Fritz & W, but it makes so much sense.

what was Wilhelmine was doing was actually filfilling a life long dream for both of them. And he never got to do it, and he never would.

So, I've been wondering for a long time now: after 1740, was anything stopping him except his own priorities? Like, I know arranging a royal visit is non-trivial, and traveling incognito doesn't always work when you're a monarch, but...other monarchs managed to travel, and even Fritz made it to the Netherlands. If he hadn't been so obsessed with micromanaging his own country and invading others, would it have been that hard to visit Paris and Italy at some point in 1740-1786?

cahn, anecdote I've always found hilarious.

It's 1740. Fritz has been king for a couple of months. He hasn't invaded Silesia yet (MT's dad is still alive). After visiting Wilhelmine, he decides, "I'm going to France!" Algarotti is with him, along with a few others.

Fritz: Forges a passport under an assumed name, crosses the border* into Strasbourg.
Fritz: Yay, now I get to be an anonymous tourist and enjoy myself just like everyone else. :D
*approximately five minutes later*
Guy in Strasbourg: OMG, it's the new King of Prussia! Hey, everyone! Look!
Fritz: No, no, you're mistaken. I'm the count of something else, definitely not the King of Prussia.
Guy in Strasbourg: Hi, Fritz! Omg, fancy running into you here! You look exactly like your picture, which I conveniently have a copy of right here. Look, everyone!
Algarotti: Listen. I've known this man my whole life, and okay, he's *related* to the King of Prussia, but I promise you, he is *not* the King of Prussia.
Everyone in Strasbourg: Hey, Fritz! Can we get your autograph? Can I host you? No, me, I want to host you!
Fritz: ...
Fritz: *sad panda*

* Someone on tumblr said, "What *is* it with this man and illegally crossing borders?" which made me laugh.

Then he canceled the rest of the incognito France trip (although he also got hit by a bout of malaria around that time, which was probably a major reason for canceling too), and never did that again. In France. A couple decades later, he met his future reader Catt in the Netherlands, while pretending to be a musician.

Catt: You ask a lot of questions for a musician.
Fritz: Um. Yes. Sorry. But I am definitely just a musician, nothing suspicious about me at all, nothing to see here, this is not the king you are looking for. Sorry, gotta go! Bye!

Then as soon as Fritz went back to being the King of Prussia, Catt got a job offer.

I used to say that Fritz was no Odysseus when it came to disguises, but then I remembered the time Odysseus snuck his men out of the Cyclops' cave under an assumed name, then shouted his real name at the heavens as soon as he was free, thus royally pissing off Poseidon and triggering a sequence of events that led to all of his men getting killed and him taking 10 years to get home. Yeah, no, that's Fritz for you, lol.

Anyway, it's always made me sad that Fritz never made it to Paris or Italy, which is why I keep coming up with AUs where he does. WITH KATTE. ;)

So a part of him must have found it impossible to let her enjoy it without him.

Oh, Fritz. :-( Don't do that. Come to my AU, you will like it. <3 I promise.

From:

cahn

heeeee, oh Fritz :P

From:

selenak

So, I've been wondering for a long time now: after 1740, was anything stopping him except his own priorities?

Consciously? Nothing. Subconsciously, I think in later years, he was scared, precisely because he always wanted to go, it was a dream of youth, and he'd built it up in his mind as wonderful so very much. He was afraid if he went, he'd be disappointed, and then he wouldn't have those dream countries in his head anymore, either. (I'm influenced here by the fact that two German writers I've read a lot of, Karl May and Lion Feuchtwanger, both avoided visiting their dream countries even once they could; in May's case, once he finally did, it was a terrifying experience, and in Feuchtwanger's case, he frankly wrote "I don't want the reality of the moment spoil the country of my imagination" and never went.) All those "here's why current day Italy and the Italians must suck and you can't enjoy them, tell me they suck" comments hail from that, too, imo.

I mean: just think how his meeting with Voltaire went - never meet your heroes or your dream countries? BTW, I've now read the footnotes of some of the letters I already read, too, and the ones to Wilhelmine's report on her meeting Voltaire and how very sorry he is for all he's done wrong and how he sends Fritz his love are priceless, because Voltaire, of course, presented the whole visit very differently in his own letters: "The Margravaine visited me yesterday, trying her best to make up for the damage her brother the king did to our relationship. From this, you can conclude women are better than men."

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Awwww. That makes me sad. I had no idea people avoided visiting their dream countries, can't even imagine, but if that's a thing people do, it's very plausible in this case: Fritz was a ~~hugely traumatized~~ pessimist, and he'd totally been primed to believe the universe wouldn't let him have nice things. I could see him having an emotional "don't set yourself up for disappointment" reaction, and then rationalizing it. Man. And then trying to keep Wilhelmine from that disappointment he saw as inevitable. AUS FOR EVERYONE.

And omg, you're right, when he's sour-grapes-ing Wilhelmine, it's *right* after the whole Voltaire debacle went down. Wow. Okay, Fritz, you get like 5% more slack from me. Still try to have some self-awareness and let your sister enjoy her things, though, okay??

(The first time I tried to imagine what I would be like if I had depression, in my early 20s, the immediate conclusion I came to was that if I wasn't happy, no one around me was going to be happy either, and that the younger this started, the less I was going to be able to compensate. Thus leading me to the conclusion that I'm more an especially fortunate person than an especially good one.)

From:

cahn

lol forever, Voltaire. I mean, he's not wrong, either! (Though it may just mean that one of them had absolute power and the other one was pretty much powerless her entire life. Although on the other hand there's that letter from Ulrike you quote from later...)