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: MT marriage AU, cont'd

[mildred_of_midgard]

Yeah, the implausible part seems to be not so much that it was proposed, but that it got actual backing, as opposed to being something that a young, desperate, imprisoned Fritz came up with out of his own head, to which all the adults went, "...Or not."

Grumbkow: "alarmed"
Eugene: "peculiar"
FW: "less impressed," "hurt"

Haha.

I'm glad my timetable pleases! :D

Re: MT marriage AU, cont'd

[selenak]

Mes amies, I just checked, and now all my nominations for our Frederician RPF were approved. Yours?

The two Fritz biographies on loan which I was skipping told me Grumpkow, if he hadn't been a cynic himself, would have had reason to look alarmed at teenage Fritz' idea of marriage years earlier, too, when according to Grumpkow himself they had this chat:

15 years old Fritz, het-posing: So, dad told me lust quickly passes and cheating on your wife is an evil sin. I have therefore decided I'll wait with marriage until I'm ancient, like 40, and then I'll marry a 14 years old. Presumably she'll have some years ahead before getting fat and old herself. That way, I'll stay interested and won't cheat on her! Which would be a sin.

Given MT was five years younger than Fritz, it occurs to me that she would have been 14 to 15 when he came up with the desperate marriage/escape plot. I've now read a brief essay about the two of them (in a German book, thus not linkable) which provided me with more neat useable trivia for future reference: Fritz actually met Franz Stefan once before the later married MT. He also wrote to him, never to MT, in the brief upbuilding to the first Silesian War (cause you know, as a man clearly Franz Stefan was the one really making the decisions here). After he won the battle of Mollwitz (April 1741, cahn), he had the field preacher chose for his sermon that famous put-down by Paul in his letter to Timothy: "A woman should learn humility in quietness. I will not allow a woman to teach, nor that she should rule over a man; she should be quiet."

By the second Silesian War, he was, of course, aware who was really ruling in Vienna, but he couldn't figure out how that worked for MT and Franz Stefan as a couple (not surprisingly, because well, his model for m/f marriage were his parents), and asked a French visitor who'd also been to Vienna: "Don't they invite the comment that the woman is dressed up as a man and the man as a woman? At least the Emperor shows the behaviour of a hen-pecked husband who leaves everything to his wife. She must be a strange woman, more masculine than feminine. Does she appear to be very busy?"

(The French visitor told him that au contraire, MT was very feminine indeed, but also a workoholic like himself (imagine Fritz' face at that) who would accomplish great things if she had better ministers to work with, as the Prussian king did.)

(I would say in terms of business they were about even. Fritz probably slept less, but then again, Maria Theresia had those 16 kids during her rule. Of course she didn't hands-on raise them any more than other royalty did, but no one could take those nine months of pregnancy from her. I mean, she was pregnant with her fourth child - Joseph, actually - when Fritz invaded for the first time. She must have had an iron constitution.)

The essay contains the Fritz about MT quotes we already talked about - "the first man the Habsburgs produced in centuries, and it's a woman", "one of the three whores of Europe" (the others were Madame de Pompadour and Elizabeth of Russia, [Bad username or unknown identity: cahn"]), and then the reverse, to Henri de Catt, which I won't paraphrase but translate to let cahn enjoy the full, err, Fritzness: "Despite all the evil she's done to me, I must admit this princess invites much respect due to her morals. There are few women who resemble her in this regard. Most are whores, and the Queen despises whores. She's very industrious and gifted in more than one area." And once she was dead, he topped even that with what we already partially quoted: "I have regretted the death of the Empress-Queen; she brought honor to her throne and her sex; I went to war with her, but I was never her enemy."

The essay writer chides MT for not being similarly chill and praising about her arch nemesis. Leaving aside the fact as to who wronged whom, she didn't outlive him; it's always easier to speak well of the dead. The essay does quote the bit from the letter to Joseph, and also a comment MT made in another letter (early in the 7-years-war): "No, I am not unforgiving towards him. But my dislike is rooted in the experiences I've had with him. I am concerned, and not without reason, that I will never be able to feel safe for as long as this King is as powerful as he is now."

Re: MT marriage AU, cont'd

[mildred_of_midgard]

Will reply to the rest later, but for now: nominations, yep! See here. We're on it, lol.

Re: MT marriage AU, cont'd

[mildred_of_midgard]

Leaving aside the fact as to who wronged whom,

This.

she didn't outlive him; it's always easier to speak well of the dead.

This. (It's also what I think is largely responsible for Napoleon's famous comment about Fritz.)

But my dislike is rooted in the experiences I've had with him.

This. Duh, essay writer?

Re: MT marriage AU, cont'd

[selenak]

Essay writer was male, which was no big surprise. There's also the fact that the "chill, generous" things Fritz had to say about MT were incredibly condescending; if the writer really wanted MT to have said something similar about Fritz, it would have had to be:

"The King of Prussia can keep it in his pants. Most men can't, and waste a lot of money and time on getting laid, but not him. He brought honor to his sex, and he's got more than one talent."

...somehow I think Fritz would have been happier with what she actually said about him...

Re: Napoleon, considering that I can't recall him being similarly complimentary about, say, Wellington, I think you're onto something. (Whereas Wellington, once Napoleon was safely dead, replied to the question who the greatest military leader of their age had been: "In this age, in past ages, in any age, Napoleon."

(Now there's a set up for an epic rap battle - Fritz vs Napoleon - who'd win?)

Re: MT marriage AU, cont'd

[mildred_of_midgard]

LOLOLOL, MT, you missed your chance! That would have been hilarious.

The funniest part is that, leaving out the part about writing off an entire sex, Fritz actually *was* kind of proud of being able to keep it in his pants and not waste a lot of money and time getting laid, haha. The *facepalm*y part was where he decided both Louis XV's and Catherine II's politically active favorites were proof that women were unfit for ruling, because...logic fail.

Ah, yes, Wellington's quote. In his case, I think it's not only that Napoleon was safely dead, but also, if you've *beaten* the greatest military commander, it makes you look extra awesome.

Which reminds me of the exchange attributed to Hannibal and Scipio:

Scipio: So, who are the greatest generals of history?
Hannibal: Alexander, then Pyrrhus, then me.
Scipio: Hahahaha, lol forever, and where would you have ranked yourself if you'd actually managed to beat *me*?

(Now there's a set up for an epic rap battle - Fritz vs Napoleon - who'd win?)

LOL! Fritz wins! He has the flute. Check out the polls for the episode Fritz was in. On the official poll, current votes are

- Ivan the Terrible: 751
- Alexander the Great: 1021
- Frederick the Great: 5267
- Catherine the Great: 1996

Fritz by a landslide! I also found this unofficial straw poll someone put together hilarious:

- Frederick the Great: 38
- Catherine the Great: 7
- Old Fritz's flute: 6
- Ivan the Terrible: 4
- Pompey the Great: 4
- Alexander the Great: 3

Catherine's gotten one vote since the last time I checked. When I found this poll, Fritz was in first and his flute was tied for second, which made me laugh a lot.

So I say Napoleon doesn't stand a chance. (In his actual rap battle, it looks like he beat Napoleon Dynamite.)

Real life battle/war? Man, this is something I've been thinking about lately, and gotten super annoyed because I studied Napoleon's campaigns about as closely as Fritz's back in the day, but haven't looked at them in 20 years, and so I no longer remember enough detail to make informed comparisons. And for the same reasons I'm not up to doing MT research, Napoleon research is out of the question.

My impression is that Napoleon was the far superior tactician, but Fritz won his wars through a variety of other skills and personality traits, and I think he would have put up much more of a fight after his defeats than Napoleon got from the Prussians in real life. However, any time I try to do an actual "Who would win?" I run into AU world-building problems. How old and decrepit is Fritz? How long has he been king? A Fritz born in 1778 and just getting started is a world of difference from a Fritz who manages to live to 94 years old and somehow still be alive and active.

Is the oblique order new and surprising or old hat to Europe? Is Fritz in the middle of trying to hold Silesia? What does the political scene of Europe look like? I get the impression Fritz has more allies in this AU than in the Seven Years' War, because people are a wee bit more worried about Napoleon, but how well does Fritz play the political game and does he piss off all of his allies? Does he underestimate Napoleon as badly as he underestimated his real-life foes? Etc.

Someday I may have opinions rather than questions. Right now all I have is questions.

Definitely Old Fritz in the rap battle, though. He's got creative talents and battle malice. ;)

Re: MT marriage AU, cont'd

[cahn]

What I think:

Napoleon: I have superior battle tactics! *wins lots of battles*
Fritz: Yeah, but NO ONE can out-stubborn me! *grimly holds on like a terrier until Napoleon folds*

Re: MT marriage AU, cont'd

[mildred_of_midgard]

That's what I think!

That plus Napoleon and Alexander were so battle-and-territory focused that they never put together something that was going to last. If Alexander had lived a bit longer, I think we would have seen some catastrophic empire-holding-together failures.

Re: MT marriage AU, cont'd

[mildred_of_midgard]

I mean, this is pretty much the Seven Years' War.

Heinrich: I am clearly the superior tactician in this family. Can you 1) listen to me before battles, 2) make peace already, even if it means giving up some territory?
Fritz the Terrier: No and NO!

One of Fritz's contemporaries said about him, "It is in adversity that he shines; when he is really down, he has an irresistible buoyancy."

Re: MT marriage AU, cont'd

[cahn]

...every time this 16 kids thing comes up I'm all !! how does this even work with running an empire?! /has given birth twice, was pretty overwhelmed by the whole thing, and that's with modern medicine

That Fritz quote! One hears such sounds, and what can one say but... Fritz. (mildred_of_midgard, this is a quote from Amadeus, what Mozart says about Salieri. But it is applicable here!)

"No, I am not unforgiving towards him. But my dislike is rooted in the experiences I've had with him. I am concerned, and not without reason, that I will never be able to feel safe for as long as this King is as powerful as he is now."

I don't understand the essay writer; this sounds pretty chill to me, given everything that had happened!

Re: MT marriage AU, cont'd

[mildred_of_midgard]

Could you double check the spelling of "Yekaterina" in your nomination? I just noticed that we've all, myself included, been copy-pasting "Yekatarina" all over the place.

Re: MT marriage AU, cont'd

[selenak]

Will do. I‘ve been at a conference this last week which was great but also exhausting and time-consuming. In between, I did manage to start one of the two new big MT biographies in earnest and have some more useful and/or fun anecdotes for you two. I also am listening to a complete rendition of Wanderungen in der Mark Brandenburg, which has a Neu-Ruppin and a Rheinsberg chapter, too, and of course Fontane gets chatty about Fritz in Neuruppin as well. You probably know this, but Cahn does not, but: in order to win Dad‘s favour, post-Küstrin Fritz, stationed in Neuruppin since about two months, writes home to FW that there‘s a really extra size tall shepherd who already has refused to join the army, and he‘s totally willing to kidnap him for his father‘s Tall Guy Regiment. (A moment of silence, please, for the poor tall shepherd whose fault Hohenzollern dysfunction was not, and who just wanted to stay with his sheep.)

Fontane also mentions the Austrian money Fritz got via Seckendorff well until 1736 - and also that Seckendorff left him in no doubt that this wasn‘t him, S, as a private person doing the crown prince a favour but Karl VI (aka MT‘s Dad) it‘s from, and tongue-in-cheekily (for a Prussian writer a hundred years later writing about the national idol) adds he wonders whether since Fritz ever paid MT (as her father‘s heir) back, since post-Silesia it‘s not like he was lacking for funds and revenues...

But really, Cahn, we need a new post, so I can tell you all about MT being unimpressed with her civil service asking for vacations when she‘s back to work in the cabinet just a few days after giving birth and her favourite daughter, Maria Christine, aka Mimi, carrying on a passionate love affair with Joseph‘s first wife Isabella of Parma (we have Isabella‘s love letters; in the 19th century this was passed off as a platonic romantic friendship entirely and just in the spirit of the emo age, but they had to edit out the raunchier bits to do so).

Re: MT marriage AU, cont'd

[mildred_of_midgard]

New post coming as soon as the tag set is up!

Thank you for the instructive potato links and everything while you were at the conference! You're very dedicated. (If I were Fritz, I would question why you were at the conference in the first place and how it could possibly be more important than answering my questions, but since I'm not, I'll just say I'm glad it was a great conference. ;) The best ones are time-consuming and exhausting.)

I actually had missed that anecdote, but it surprises me not at all. Actually, the part that surprises me is how the hell this guy hadn't already been kidnapped. Since when did refusing to join the army keep you out of the army? Especially if you were tall? Especially at Neuruppin?? It barely worked outside of Prussia!

*moment of silence for all the shepherds and their ilk who just wanted to stay home*

Mind you, I had some distant family member who oral history says dodged being drafted (I want to say by the Wehrmacht in WWII) by hiding in trees and having the kids tell the soldiers at the door that Dad had gone off to war long ago. Whether this was post-War "I was never a Nazi!" history-rewriting, I do not know.

he wonders whether since Fritz ever paid MT (as her father‘s heir) back, since post-Silesia it‘s not like he was lacking for funds and revenues...

Lol, I would be *astonished*. The man periodically would do the hard right thing rather than the "this benefits me" thing (e.g. refusing to negotiate a subsidy with Britain until he could do so on more equal terms, saying he didn't want to be a burden to his allies), but my impression of the terms of his debts as Crown Prince to foreign courts was that he was trading not promises of specific amounts of money but generally being well-disposed toward their state in his future foreign policy, and well, that ship sailed in December 1740. :P I could be wrong; maybe he agreed to repay specific amounts of money, but I've read otherwise. (Mind you, I treat all biographies as novels and only believe things where I know what the evidence is, so this could be totally made up.)

And I'm also astonished there was a tall shepherd left at Neuruppin to be kidnapped, so impossible things are happening every day, as Rodgers and Hammerstein would say.

Oh, man, given what 18th century letters were like, I want to know how raunchy stuff had to get before it had to be edited out!

The Ballad of Isabella and Maria Christina

[selenak]

Non-censored bits: "I overwhelm you with my kisses" or "I kiss everything you're letting me kiss", or "despite your saintliness, I kiss you from all my soul, so we can say these are pious kisses, for what hails from the soul is spiritual and not earthly, though I love earthly matters - le terre à terre."

Censored bit: for example a rare German sentence in an otherwise French correspondance: "Ich küsse dein erzenglisches Arscherl", "I kiss your arch angelic arse". "Englisch" here in the sense of "angelic", not in the sense of "English". Erz is arch, as in arch duchess, Maria Christina's title. Except for one, all the 200 plus letters still existing are Isabella's.

It's a sad story for everyone concerned, other than Maria Christina, aka Mimi, who was MT's favourite daughter and after Isabella's death became the only one of MT's children to be allowed to marry for love, not politics, the man of her choice. (BTW, in the two Marie Antoinette novels I've read that include her pre-France chldhood, MC is a villain because the rest of the kids, not blind to the favouritism, resented her. Antoinette didn't allow MC to visit her at her personal refugee, the Petit Trianon when MC visited Paris with her husband later, she only received her in the main palace of Versailles.) The Isabella/Joseph match was, like Marie Antoinette/Louis meant to strengthen the new Austria/France alliance. (Isabella being a Bourbon.) The future couple were incredibly nervous going into the match, as we know from their letters. Joseph, unlike his father, was still a virgin when marrying, and a shy, slightly stammering one. Isabella was more outwardly confident, but she also had inherited marriage trauma. Her mother had been a child bride, only 14 years old at the time of Isabella's birth, and said "I turn to ice every time he touches me" about her husband, whom she loathed. She also died when only in her 30s. Moreover, and most importantly, without "no homo" blinders of older biographers it's pretty clear that Isabella just didn't like men and preferred women. She wrote those 200 plus letters while being mostly in the same city with Maria Christina, whom she had corresponded with even before meeting her in person, and pretty much adored her on sight. And vice versa.

Meanwhile, Joseph also fell for his bride on sight, nervous or not. As well he might. On the surface, he'd hit the jackpot of arranged marriages. She was beautiful, smart, and very musical - she played the violin, which as you'll recall from Gertrud Elisabeth Schmeling Mara, was considered a bit scandalous for a woman at least by non-royalty. He remained smitten, and when she died only three years later, he'd nursed her through her painful illness, the smallpox, likelihood of infection be damned. (Maria Theresia was also present at Isabella's sick bed a lot; Isabella was the sole family member whom she never as much as mildly critisized but only had praise for. Maria Christina, otoh, was not there, but she may not have been allowed to, being yet unmarried, and a smallpox infection even if she'd survived it would have ruined her marriage chances. Remember, this was before MT allowed her to marry for love.)

If Joseph ever figured out she never loved him, and had in fact loved his sister, passionately, we don't have any evidence to go with it. And emotionally, she barely tolerated and not even respected him. In the letters to MC, he's ridiculed for not noticing she much prefers his sister, and Isabella wrote a pamphlet called "On the nature of men" which can be summed up with "men are scum, led by their dicks, never as much as noticing we don't want to have sex with them, and incapable of higher feelings". Don't get me wrong, being in an enforced sexual relationship is awful, legally licensed rape, and she wasn't obliged to feel anything for him. But it's still sad that not even friendship on her part was possible, because he did adore her, and was also a devoted father to their daughter instead of doing the period thing of being disappointed for her not being a son. (Who turned out to be his only child, and she died before growing up.)

(Joseph's second marriage was also a disaster but for oppposite reasons. He didn't want to marry again in the first place, since Isabella's death had devasteded him, but both his parents - Franz Stefan was still alive then - insisted, because dynastic duty. And then he pulled a Fritz on the princess he did end up with, going out of his way to avoid her, and being in her presence in the few years they were married mere hours. When she died as well, he stuck to his guns and refused to marry till the rest of his admittedly none too long life, which is why brother Leopold became Emperor after him.)

Re: The Ballad of Isabella and Maria Christina

[cahn]

Holy cow.

Wow, those letters! That is amazing. (And it's really interesting to see a F/F relationship in this time period with textual support, demonstrably not platonic romantic friendship.)

This makes me awfully sad for everyone involved. Maybe not so much Joseph if he never realized it (which if Isabella is writing that "they don't notice we don't want to have sex with them," maybe he didn't??) -- but I don't know, maybe it makes it even sadder -- and then his second marriage :(

And I guess at least Isabella and MC found love. For a short while :(

It seems like rather a relief that at least MC was able to marry for love later on :( Way to be a hypocrite, MT!