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)!
Random facts
Date: 2019-10-16 02:03 am (UTC)Anyway, I thought yesterday evening's and this morning's fun facts were worth sharing here.
1) Book 1 says mail in the 19th century was mostly cash-on-delivery, meaning the recipient paid. When soldiers got mail, it put them in a really tight spot, because they had so little pay, and yet being stuck in the horrible conditions of a campaign for long periods meant you were really desperate to get those letters. And so you'd often end up selling things you couldn't afford to do without (or were required to have as part of army life and would be punished for not having) in order to get your hands on those letters.
Well, my book says Fritz set up free postal service for his soldiers in the Silesian wars to deal with this problem.
This is consistent with other things I've read about Fritz's army, which is that on the one hand, Prussian discipline was notoriously *brutal*, so desertion was a huge problem he and his officers had to contend with, but on the other hand, he had a lot of soldiers defecting to his side, in part because working conditions were better in many respects than in his opponents' armies. E.g. Fritz was able to keep his supply lines intact and provide much more reliable food, so you were much less likely to go hungry in his army. And getting your mail must have been good for morale.
2) A quote both memorable and pathetic from Book 2.
Infant/toddler Fritz (who was the inbred scion of a family in which illnesses galloped and who only had 18th century medicine to treat him) was sickly, which greatly displeased FW (who had already buried his first 2 or 3 infant sons, I forget, and was desperate for an heir). Quote:
"His father often stormed into the nursery or had the child brought to him to examine as if he were some sort of backward worm."
This was before bb!Fritz could freaking talk! This was before he was pissing off FW by reading French and writing poetry!
Man, I'd always had it presented to me as FW leaving bb!Fritz to the women and ignoring him until he was about to turn 6, which was when the abuse started. No such luck, apparently.
3) Book 2 says when Fritz was fourteen (the actual quote is "in many ways a very weary fourteen," which strikes me as heart-breakingly accurate), the French envoy to Berlin fucking hated FW and for years had been trying to get transferred back home. Meanwhile, he convinced the French court that they needed to build up a party around Fritz and try to stage a coup. Fritz was *all over* this and used to tell the French envoy literally everything he knew about what his dad was up to. He was, in other words, spying on FW for the French.
At one point, French envoy dude wrote a report back home stating that he thought FW was on the verge of being declared insane and unfit to rule and being locked up in a fortress. My book says there's some evidence SD and Fritz thought so too, "which certainly would have been an exciting prospect for the harassed heir."
AU! AU! AU!
Re: Random facts
Date: 2019-10-17 06:55 pm (UTC)Re: Random facts
Date: 2019-10-18 05:07 am (UTC)3) I FULLY SUPPORT THIS AU
Re: Random facts
Date: 2019-10-19 11:53 pm (UTC)3) If we *did* develop this AU, you know what fortress FW has to end up in. :P I hear Küstrin was his favorite. See how *he* likes it from the inside! Mwahahaha.
ETA: Btw, I think we need a new Fritz post. I don't know if anyone else is having problems, but my phone can no longer expand all comments so I can search for a thread, and even my computer takes several seconds. DW says we're having too much fun! I say no such thing. :P
Re: Random facts
Date: 2019-10-20 03:44 am (UTC)Re: Random facts
Date: 2019-10-20 03:47 am (UTC)It occurred to me that they'll be opening the Yuletide tag set soon, and maybe that would make a good post for you to talk about Fritz as well as advertise our fandom?
Re: Random facts
Date: 2019-10-20 03:50 am (UTC)(I was highly entertained by seeing you on the evidence post. What with that and all, I feel like you can TOTALLY make your Silesian case for being a participant and therefore free to nominate.)
Re: Random facts
Date: 2019-10-20 04:34 am (UTC)And haha, yes, that's what I was thinking! I'm helping out with Yuletide. Also, this is *totally* the year for royals and their favorites:
Edward II and Piers Gaveston
Richard II and Richard de Vere
James VI/I and Robert Carr
Alexander and Hephaistion <3
Fritz and Katte, Keith, and Fredersdorf (and I only didn't nominate Algarotti because I ran out of slots)
And those are only the ones we know about! I hope we get some good fic out of this. *gleeful hand-rubby* And man, I wish James' other favorites had been nominated, especially Buckingham.
Oh! You probably don't know this. But James was known for his favorites that contemporaries said he carried on with like a lover with his mistress (the thing someone said about Fritz and Katte while Katte was still alive), and we gossipy sensationalists argue about "did they or didn't they?" :P Well, we'll never know, but it was recently discovered that in one of his palaces, there was a secret passage connecting James' bedroom with Buckhingham's bedroom. Now, men could share a bed in the 17th century without it being assumed to be sexual, but if that's all that's going on, why do you need the secret passage, I ask you???
Also, did you notice we're approaching 700 comments to your Fritz posts? o.O
Also, random Fritz fact time:
In the course of working on one my fics, I was googling "Non soli cedit" just to double check that it was FW who came up with it. It literally means, "he does not yield to the sun" and, as FW's motto for Prussia, was a political statement that "Prussia does not acknowledge any cultural superiority of France aka the Sun King Louis XIV." So my memory was right about that. But then German Wikipedia had more to tell me.
So Fritz comes to power and is slightly more favorably disposed toward the French, at least culturally and linguistically, and he changes the motto to "Pro Gloria et Patria" ("For glory and the fatherland") aka "Let's all invade Silesia so I get famous and Prussia gets rich!"
Then Fritz, who as we all know is not exactly a Francophile in terms of the eighteenth-century political entity, ditches his French allies in the War of the Austrian Succession, then when they get mad at him and join the Seven Years' War coalition against him, he kicks their asses at places like Rossbach1 (which was less of a lost military battle than a really embarrassing rout for the French), and finally wins the war. Then he triumphantly puts "Non soli cedit"2 on one of his palaces, no doubt feeling he's earned it.
Fritz, you magnificent bastard, I read your book! (I did, actually, read two of his books, back in the day. ;) I need to get my hands on translations of his memoirs. Although what I really want is a scan of Heinrich's annotated copies of his brother's memoirs, because apparently his copies are full of "Lies!" and "WTF!" in the margins. :P)
1 After Napoleon kicks the Prussian army's ass, takes Berlin, pays his respects at Fritz's tomb, and takes some Fritz memorabilia home, he, or some other Frenchman, I forget, announces that Rossbach has been avenged, and all of France can finally heave a huge sigh of relief and hold their heads up again, 50 years later.
2 He actually puts "Nec soli cedit," a slight variation which may be best translated "Are you watching, Dad?" ("Are you proud of me yet, Dad?" "Have I surpassed you yet, Dad?" "Are we at the point where you're going to be remembered as Frederick the Great's father and not me as the Soldier King's son yet, Dad?")
Re: Random facts
Date: 2019-10-22 01:34 am (UTC)TAG SET IS OUT
THERE ARE 14 CHARACTERS!!
ALGAROTTI IS IN!
I think the 14th is Stanisław August Poniatowski? I don't remember him being discussed in our 12.
I am just all gleeful that there is a fourth person we have in our fandom! :D
Re: Random facts
Date: 2019-10-22 02:21 am (UTC)Huh. I kind of wonder where they're going with Poniatowski. Are they a) using our fandom to get Catherine the Great fic in? (although they could have used "18th Century CE Russian Royalty RPF" if so) b) interested in fic about the first Polish partition? c) aware of Fritz/Poniatowski interactions that I am not? (always possible, perhaps
Also, yep, looks like "Ekatarina" got misspelled. Cannot believe it took me this long to notice, and after I proofread your tag list and all. *hangs head in shame* Oh, well.
OUR FANDOM HAS 14 CHARACTERS \O/
*eagerly awaiting your post*
ETA: Oh, possible 4th option, they nominated Catherine and Poniatowski under a different fandom name, and because we also had Catherine, the mods slotted both under our fandom? Maybe we should ask about that, because if that's the case, it should definitely either go under Russian royalty, or, even better, historical royals and their favorites.
...I'm going to ask.
Re: Random facts
Date: 2019-10-22 05:07 am (UTC)ETA: Never mind! I see what you mean now. I won't comment, yours is perfect :)