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:

cahn

2) I want to say Wilhelmine said something along those lines in her memoirs? (I may be remembering incorrectly.) FW, ugh.

3) I FULLY SUPPORT THIS AU

From:

mildred_of_midgard

3) Not writing this AU, but got inspired to write a related AU involving the French envoy, and I may be certifiably insane. Aka, for something I'm probably never going to finish and show to anyone, and even if I did, I COULD FREAKING HANDWAVE THIS, I did this last night, for three hours past my bedtime. Even created an LJ account for it. :D

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

Edited Date: 2019-10-19 11:58 pm (UTC)

From:

cahn

Heh! OK, I can do that. I was also vaguely thinking that maybe we should have a comm if this is going to continue indefinitely (although every time I think you guys are out of anecdotes, THERE ARE MORE), though I certainly do not mind At All hosting these discussions! And I'm definitely better at replying to things in my own DW.

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Every time I think I'm out of anecdotes, there are more! Plus Selena has more anecdotes about non-Fritz people, which I envy.

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?

From:

cahn

Good thinking! I'll do that, then. It sounded rather like they'll have it open in a day or two.

(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.)

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Yes, that's what I was thinking and why it might be worth waiting.

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?")

Edited (700, not 600!) Date: 2019-10-20 04:51 am (UTC)

From:

cahn

More later and I will make a post tonight, but

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

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Algarotti OMG!! <3 <3 <3 This is going to be a great year! Can't wait for sign-ups!

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

selenak can enlighten)

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.

Edited Date: 2019-10-22 03:52 am (UTC)

From:

cahn

Psst, Catherine was selenak's nom. I'll pop into the admin post and let them know :)

ETA: Never mind! I see what you mean now. I won't comment, yours is perfect :)

Edited Date: 2019-10-22 05:08 am (UTC)