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

On the endearing side: early in the travel correspondance, Fritz sends a pineapple to Wilhelmine from Potsdam. Bear in mind that pineapples otherwise don't exist in Germany at this point, by and large; Fritz had some of the earliest grown for him in garden house, it was a rare and precious thing. He also after one visit left a poem he'd written for her decoratively hidden.

Both on the good and bad side, and to be fair to Fritz: Wilhelmine could be needy. This was the most intense emotional relationship she had with anyone in her life. (It's not that she didn't reconcile with her husband post Marwitz, but she didn't trust him again, and she hadn't been in love with him in the first place, so... Odd but true: FW had raised his kids to believe in marital fidelity. This fit very ill with marital fidelity.) Anyway, here's a letter from Wilhelmine to Fritz, not dated, when apparantly the mail was late. It's a rare critical outburst and at the same time a passionate love declaration:

"My dearest brother, I write today solely to scold you. You are unbearably lazy, and one has to kill oneself writing letters before you bother to reply. I already can guess what you will reply to this letter: that there is nothing new to report, that you were too busy and didn't have a moment to spare, and what other lousy excuses you can offer. If you wrote to me a thousand times, I love you, my sister, my sister, I love you, then I will be full of joy, and it will more than make up for any news which you could possibly tell me. As for my part, since I have the pleasure to tell you that I love you, I am not so scrupulous, and if you get bored by this - your problem, for I permit you to throw my letters away unread, as long as you leave me the satisfaction of writing them. Now who of us does love the other one more?"

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Fritz had some of the earliest grown for him in garden house, it was a rare and precious thing.

Fritz totally loved fruit and went to no small expense to get a lot of fresh fruit grown locally for his table, which now that I think of it, may partly account for how he survived his litany of health problems plus 18th century medicine for 74 years, lol. Good to know he shared some of his bounty with Wilhelmine!

From:

cahn

:( Yeah, I mean,

mildred_of_midgard is the psychology expert here, but I was definitely getting a trauma bonding / emotional incest vibe from them even before that telling letter. But I guess at this point I'm kind of just happy both of them had someone with whom to form any kind of even somewhat positive emotional bond.

Also, I think this makes it a little more clear why Wilhelminedidn't have nice things to say about Keith or Katte! It clarifies for me that she must have found it (subconsciously) threatening.

(I want Wilhelmine fix-it fic too :P Can she escape with Fritz and Katte? ~~or with Maria Theresia~~)

From:

selenak

At one point when Wilhelmine's daughter Friederike, age 16, takes off with her new husband to Italy on a whim with no advance warning (this was before Wilhelmine's own journey south), Wilhelmine writes ruefully to Fritz wen reporting this that this is what they should have done at that age (running off to Italy together). "We have wasted our youth trying so hard to be dutiful and good."

Have relistened further, and post-reconciliation (quoth Fritz "in an argument between head and heart, my heart will always argue in your favor", and hence he accepts she didn't mean to betray him and really loves him), they've fallen in their old co-dependence. He's actually rather sweet when she finally does come clean about her reasons for the Marwitz debacle. Which she has to, because Marwitz, whose first name was Wilhelmine Dorothee (this, like the Margrave being called Friedrich, is just mean to future fiction writers and readers!), upped the ante. Background: her father, who was old Prussian nobility and once was left for dead after a Fritzian battle but came back from that, had died. Because Wilhelmine had arranged the Marwitz/Burghaus Austrian marriage, Fritz refused to let Marwitz have her inheritance (no Prussian money or Prussian goods go to the Austrians!). Given Marwitz' Austrian husband, it then turned out, had counted on that money - he was a gambler -, Marwitz remained in Bayreuth and continued to be the Margrave's mistress. Post sibling reconciliation, she point blank told Wilhelmine that if Wilhelmine wanted her to go to Vienna as opposed to spending her mornings fucking the Margrave, she'd better get her that inheritance money. (Marwitz is totally played by Joan Collins in my head.)

Fritz: after that explanation, provides the money without a single "I told you so" and only warns Wihelmine that Marwitz and her husband the gambler are just the types to ask for more later.

(She did go to Vienna, and was quite succesful in creating a salon there, attended, among others by young Joseph, eagerly listening to stories about the Prussian court.)

Some years later, when Fritz has the impression the Margraves cheats again, he tries marriage counselling by creating a fable about a butterfly which can't help visiting all the flowers, and so our heroine who loves the butterfly is only making herself sad when wishing it not to be a butterfly (thus says a fairy he names "Moral"). To which Wilhelmine responds with: "Love your fable, but it doesn't apply right now: luckily my own butterfly is finding the local flowers to be roses, with thorns." (This was during their long journey.)

Meanwhile, Wilhelmine tries her best to reconcile him with his frenemy. Incidentally, his reaction to Wilhelmine's Voltaire letter is "I'm not surprised at the comedy he played for you. Why oh why has such a genius to be such a jerk!" (All of Europe: starts coughing.)

I think for a Wilhelmine fix-it (which alas would make our Franconian landscape poorer - it's my home province she contributed a lot of nice buildings and nature parks to), it would have needed someone who accomplished such a myriad of feats: being trustworthy, in love with her, interesting, able to outshine or at least equal Fritz in her eyes, with patience and understanding, and at least a noble because she definitely wasn't ahead of her time enough to go for a citizen, that no candidate among her ontemporaries comes to mind. Not to have married at all might have worked for her in that she never appears to have considered cheating on the Margrave on return and once writes to Fritz when he does his thing about female virtue again (i.e. she's one of the few, everyone else at the spa where she's currently staying is a slut) that it's no virtue without temptation and her passion is for music, not guys. But otoh, this is a girl who's been told her purpose in life was to be a royal spouse and mother and only married woman who procreate are pleasing in God's eyes from toddlerdom onwards by both parents (who just disagreed on whose spouse she was supposed to be), and no matter her own inclination, she probably would have felt like a failure if she hadn't gotten married at all.

A romantic friendship with another woman would have been a plausible non-anachronistic way to be happy, perhaps, but alas for Marwitz' nature (that letter where Wilhelmine finally explains about her also has her writing "I truly thought I had found a friend, a true and beloved friend in her"). No other lady-in-waiting ever seems to have gained similar stature in her eyes, other than her beloved "Sonsine" - i.e. Fräulein von Sonsfeld, her governess (the non-abusive one) who'd come with her to Bayreuth and remained with her until her death, but that's a very different type of relationship.

From:

mildred_of_midgard

"Why oh why has such a genius to be such a jerk!" (All of Europe: starts coughing.)

Haha, I have my own matching anecdote! Fritz once told Catt that he had reprimanded Voltaire for quarreling, and that Voltaire had countered with "We're exactly alike, Sire."

Fritz: Can you BELIEVE it? About ME?!

[How I like to imagine Catt reacting: Sorry, Sire, it's just this cold I'm catching. You might hear me coughing a lot tonight. Don't take it personally.]

From:

cahn

Awwww, Wilhelmine and Fritz may be awfully co-dependent but they are so cute together :P

Well, this is why the romantic friendship has to be with Maria Theresia :P (At least, until Fritz finds out about it...)

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Look, if this is to be a fix-it fic, Fritz is going to have to be okay with it. We'll make this as canon-divergent as we need to!

AU: Instead of Fritz, Katte, and Keith escaping to France and/or England, Fritz and Wilhelmine (and possibly SD?) escape to sympathetic Vienna court. Discuss. :P

From:

cahn

I AM TOTALLY UP FOR THIS

though I must say I don't have enough sympathy for SD at this point for her to escape too :P (She was pretty vile to Wilhelmine.)

Edited (added the actual important part of the coment) Date: 2019-10-18 05:26 am (UTC)

From:

mildred_of_midgard

This is true. She should stay well away from them. I just wanted to get her away from abusive husband FW. Maybe she can go to England?

BUT ANYWAY. Fritz and Wilhelmine escape to Vienna, where canonically, MT's dad was like, "Please take a chill pill and don't kill your son" to FW during the whole Katte affair.

Somewhat-less-senile Eugene takes Fritz under his wing as surrogate father. Wilhelmine and MT end up in a romantic friendship. Fritz doesn't go to war with Austria, so he's cool with his sister's BFF.

No Silesian invasion. No marriages that don't work out.

HAPPILY EVER AFTER.

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Yeah, I mean, mildred_of_midgard is the psychology expert here, but I was definitely getting a trauma bonding / emotional incest vibe from them even before that telling letter.

Haha, "expert", but yeah, they definitely banded together in the face of a traumatic situation. Some siblings do this; other siblings go in the opposite direction. Like most trauma coping mechanisms, this one had its downsides, but honestly, despite the many and obvious downsides, my opinion is that, given the situation and their limited options, their relationship was really the best thing in the world for them. In that, without it, they would have been much, much worse off, both of them.

(I want Wilhelmine fix-it fic too :P Can she escape with Fritz and Katte? or with Maria Theresia)

I know, right?! Every time I do a Fritz/Katte successful escape attempt, it turns dark the moment Fritz starts worrying about those left behind (which is like paragraph 2 in the one I'm currently working on). Seriously, you know what FW said to Fritz about what would have happened if he'd made it to England? I only have indirect discourse from a biographer here, but it goes like this:

"Had he thought of the consequences? his father asked. His mother would have suffered the greatest misfortune; Wilhelmina would have been imprisoned for life. Finally, 'I would have invaded Hanover and burned and ravaged it even at the cost of my life and kingdom.'"

(That's so incredibly common in abusive situations. There are so often hostages holding you back from escaping, and then if you do make it out, half the people you meet later in life are going to blame you, the fucking victim, for not caring about the ones left behind. Ugh.)

Keith and Katte: she has so many reasons for holding her brother's bond with them against them that it's not even funny.

Fix-it fic: the only one I've found is that modern AU, where Wilhelmine is not abused (except insofar as she has to watch her brother get abused, which is a form of abuse), gets married, has a kid, gets divorced, and becomes a successful conductor and composer. No estrangement period with Fritz, lives happily ever after.

W and MT fix-it fic: I like it! I don't think I can write it, but I like it! (I'm sorry I'm not up for doing research these days, I would totally get my hands on some books and give you MT fic. :/)