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:

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...)