Eva Ziebura's Heinrich biography is still on my to-be-read-list
Oh, right! Do let us know when you do; I'm terribly curious about him.
Given he was 14 when FW died, though, I doubt FW would have let him get away with no German at all. There's also the practical issue of being in the field a lot - his officers would be fluent in French, of course, but messenger boy x? (Or for that matter sexy violinists and pages?)
Agreed, the source in which I read that is unreliable, and it raised an eyebrow on my part, which is why I wanted a second opinion.
Though I was irritated by Zeithain making him into yet another evil Prussian father, because it felt gratitious to me and reflective of the author's issues more than of reality.
Right? I'm not saying FW was the sole individual who thought his son shouldn't play the flute, but he was definitely swimming upstream. This wasn't Sparta, he just wanted it to be! (FW: born in the wrong place and time.)
Katte's dad and signatures of same: have never seen any facsimiles, I was actually assuming based on his petitions for mercy.
Oooh, but if that was to FW, that would have been written in German, right? As noted, Fritz signed himself Friedrich in German. Or, at least, I haven't seen a facsimile, but the transcription uses Federic for his French letters, and switches to Friedrich for Fredersdorf, so I'm assuming that's accurate, since I *have* seen facsimiles of his French letters (of which there are many more).
I'm also sure I've seen a facsimile of Katte's signature, but I don't seem to have saved it, dammit. I have a facsimile of a snippet of a letter in his handwriting, but not his signature. I'll see if I can dig it up. I can almost visualize it, but I can't remember if it was "HH v Katte" or if he spelled it out, and if the "HHv" is from a fic.
I haven't seen a quote anywhere by either Katte or his father indicating they had a bad relationship
Same, although limited evidence, etc. The one quote I've seen is that Katte at school wasn't really religious but pretended to be because he wanted to please his dad (another reason I think the death scene recantation might have been aimed at Hans Heinrich et al. instead of being spontaneous).
plus I'm assuming Fritz wouldn't have favored Katte Senior the month he came on the throne if he'd had "our fathers, ugh!" type of conversations with his beloved.
Excellent point, and yes, if Katte Senior had been anywhere near FW levels, no, I don't think he's getting made a count and a field marshal as high priority to-do items for the new king. I think it's safe to say whatever Katte Senior was doing wasn't shocking his contemporaries like FW.
But I'm assuming Katte Senior could have been awful by modern standards, and Katte could have shrugged it off as "normal" and "not that bad" and not trash-talked his father to Fritz. He's already presumably having to hide his religion and sexuality, maybe he has to hide other things in order to keep his father's love. Maybe he doesn't think that's a failing on his father's part. Maybe most people don't. Maybe he's better at hiding than Fritz (he almost certainly is) and maybe that's responsible for a lot of his stable relationship with his father.
Maybe he did have an awful home life growing up, but doesn't trash-talk his dad to Fritz precisely because he hears stories about dinner plates being thrown in Fritz's face and servants having to pry FW's hands off Fritz's throat and starts thinking he's really lucky. This is extremely common among abuse survivors. Plus a lot of survivors are trained from birth never to talk about what goes on at home; Fritz's case was a bit special because the family was so public.
I'm also sure Fritz dominated most of the conversation with Katte in the one to two years (with interruptions for travel) they had to get to know each other; so if his beloved didn't talk much about his father and just gave off the same vibes of "trying to please him" that we're getting 300 years later, Fritz might well have parsed that as "do something nice for Katte Senior to make up for what happened to Katte Junior."
Or maybe Hans Heinrich was pretty chill, and happy to pay for his son to try to make it as an intellectual and aesthete, and then got him a place in an elite regiment when FW made the army the only real option.
WIDE RANGE, is what I'm saying, and I suspect all of it short of plate-throwing gets Katte Senior a guilt promotion in June 1740. (I kind of wonder if he and Fritz ever met face-to-face after the promotion and if so, how stilted that was.) cahn, when I say "guilt promotion," I'm referring to the timing and the fact that he gets made a count too; there's every evidence that Katte Senior was actually a very good officer (much better than his son) and that the promotion to field marshal was deserved and not just nepotism.
Independently of what kind of father he was, or at least semi-independently, I wonder what Katte Senior thought of his son's role in the escape plan. Because you can be a super liberal dad by FW standards when it comes to letting your son go to university and do the Grand Tour like all the other noble sons in Europe, and still be HELL NO about treason and attempted desertion. Especially in a family with a tradition as military officers. Or you could be privately sympathetic and just never ever going to say that out loud. Or anywhere in between.
Btw, on the opposite end of the extremes in fictional depictions of Hans Heinrich as a father, there's a fic on AO3 in which Fritz and Katte start having explicit sex on the desk in Katte Senior's office, but he comes back sooner than expected, catches them, and then surprise! Announces that he's gay too, have fun, use his office any time. Which makes me roll my eyes in the other direction, but just goes to show how much flexibility there is for authors in terms of the available evidence.
I personally aim somewhere at the middle; decent, somewhat aloof, but willing to demonstrate an occasional bit of pride or affection, as long as you hide the right things.
Re: Stanislaw August Poniatowski
Oh, right! Do let us know when you do; I'm terribly curious about him.
Given he was 14 when FW died, though, I doubt FW would have let him get away with no German at all. There's also the practical issue of being in the field a lot - his officers would be fluent in French, of course, but messenger boy x? (Or for that matter sexy violinists and pages?)
Agreed, the source in which I read that is unreliable, and it raised an eyebrow on my part, which is why I wanted a second opinion.
Though I was irritated by Zeithain making him into yet another evil Prussian father, because it felt gratitious to me and reflective of the author's issues more than of reality.
Right? I'm not saying FW was the sole individual who thought his son shouldn't play the flute, but he was definitely swimming upstream. This wasn't Sparta, he just wanted it to be! (FW: born in the wrong place and time.)
Katte's dad and signatures of same: have never seen any facsimiles, I was actually assuming based on his petitions for mercy.
Oooh, but if that was to FW, that would have been written in German, right? As noted, Fritz signed himself Friedrich in German. Or, at least, I haven't seen a facsimile, but the transcription uses Federic for his French letters, and switches to Friedrich for Fredersdorf, so I'm assuming that's accurate, since I *have* seen facsimiles of his French letters (of which there are many more).
I'm also sure I've seen a facsimile of Katte's signature, but I don't seem to have saved it, dammit. I have a facsimile of a snippet of a letter in his handwriting, but not his signature. I'll see if I can dig it up. I can almost visualize it, but I can't remember if it was "HH v Katte" or if he spelled it out, and if the "HHv" is from a fic.
I haven't seen a quote anywhere by either Katte or his father indicating they had a bad relationship
Same, although limited evidence, etc. The one quote I've seen is that Katte at school wasn't really religious but pretended to be because he wanted to please his dad (another reason I think the death scene recantation might have been aimed at Hans Heinrich et al. instead of being spontaneous).
plus I'm assuming Fritz wouldn't have favored Katte Senior the month he came on the throne if he'd had "our fathers, ugh!" type of conversations with his beloved.
Excellent point, and yes, if Katte Senior had been anywhere near FW levels, no, I don't think he's getting made a count and a field marshal as high priority to-do items for the new king. I think it's safe to say whatever Katte Senior was doing wasn't shocking his contemporaries like FW.
But I'm assuming Katte Senior could have been awful by modern standards, and Katte could have shrugged it off as "normal" and "not that bad" and not trash-talked his father to Fritz. He's already presumably having to hide his religion and sexuality, maybe he has to hide other things in order to keep his father's love. Maybe he doesn't think that's a failing on his father's part. Maybe most people don't. Maybe he's better at hiding than Fritz (he almost certainly is) and maybe that's responsible for a lot of his stable relationship with his father.
Maybe he did have an awful home life growing up, but doesn't trash-talk his dad to Fritz precisely because he hears stories about dinner plates being thrown in Fritz's face and servants having to pry FW's hands off Fritz's throat and starts thinking he's really lucky. This is extremely common among abuse survivors. Plus a lot of survivors are trained from birth never to talk about what goes on at home; Fritz's case was a bit special because the family was so public.
I'm also sure Fritz dominated most of the conversation with Katte in the one to two years (with interruptions for travel) they had to get to know each other; so if his beloved didn't talk much about his father and just gave off the same vibes of "trying to please him" that we're getting 300 years later, Fritz might well have parsed that as "do something nice for Katte Senior to make up for what happened to Katte Junior."
Or maybe Hans Heinrich was pretty chill, and happy to pay for his son to try to make it as an intellectual and aesthete, and then got him a place in an elite regiment when FW made the army the only real option.
WIDE RANGE, is what I'm saying, and I suspect all of it short of plate-throwing gets Katte Senior a guilt promotion in June 1740. (I kind of wonder if he and Fritz ever met face-to-face after the promotion and if so, how stilted that was.)
Independently of what kind of father he was, or at least semi-independently, I wonder what Katte Senior thought of his son's role in the escape plan. Because you can be a super liberal dad by FW standards when it comes to letting your son go to university and do the Grand Tour like all the other noble sons in Europe, and still be HELL NO about treason and attempted desertion. Especially in a family with a tradition as military officers. Or you could be privately sympathetic and just never ever going to say that out loud. Or anywhere in between.
Btw, on the opposite end of the extremes in fictional depictions of Hans Heinrich as a father, there's a fic on AO3 in which Fritz and Katte start having explicit sex on the desk in Katte Senior's office, but he comes back sooner than expected, catches them, and then surprise! Announces that he's gay too, have fun, use his office any time. Which makes me roll my eyes in the other direction, but just goes to show how much flexibility there is for authors in terms of the available evidence.
I personally aim somewhere at the middle; decent, somewhat aloof, but willing to demonstrate an occasional bit of pride or affection, as long as you hide the right things.