Yuletide tags are out: Frederician version

[cahn]

Come join us in this crazy Frederick the Great fandom and learn more about all these crazy associated people, like the star-crossed and heartbreaking romance between Maria Theresia's daughter Maria Christina and her daughter-in-law Isabella, wow.

OK, so, there are FOURTEEN characters nominated:
Anna Karolina Orzelska (Frederician RPF)
Elisabeth Christine von Preußen | Elisabeth Christine Queen of Prussia (Frederician RPF)
Francesco Algarotti (Frederician RPF)
François-Marie Arouet | Voltaire (Frederician RPF)
Friedrich II von Preußen | Frederick the Great (Frederician RPF)
Hans Hermann Von Katte (Frederician RPF)
Joseph II Holy Roman Emperor (Frederician RPF)
Maria Theresia | Maria Theresa of Austria (Frederician RPF)
Michael Gabriel Fredersdorf (Frederician RPF)
Peter Karl Christoph von Keith (Frederician RPF)
Sophia Dorothea of Hanover (Frederician RPF)
Stanisław August Poniatowski (Frederician RPF)
Wilhelmine von Preußen | Wilhelmine of Prussia (1709-1758) (Frederician RPF)
Yekatarina II Alekseyevna | Catherine the Great of Russia (Frederician RPF)

This means some fourth person kindly nominated Algarotti and -- I think? -- Stanislaw August Poniatowski! YAY! Thank you fourth person! Come be our friend! :D Yuletide is so great!

I am definitely requesting Maria Theresia, Wilhelmine, and Fritz (Put them in a room together. Shake. How big is the explosion?), and thinking about Elisabeth Christine, but maybe not this year.

I am also declaring this post another Frederician post, as the last one was getting out of hand. I think I'll still use that one as the overall index to these, though, to keep all the links in one place.

(seriously, every time I think the wild stories are done there is ANOTHER one)

Comments

Re: Fritz Does His Bit For European Unity (And So Does Voltaire)

[mildred_of_midgard]

I haven't read their entire correspondence, but to be fair, the majority of what they wrote to each other as pen pals *was* straight out of their mutual admiration society. As some biographer put it, their relationship was great as long as all they had to do was exchange compliments. And one of the things they had in common was snarking at *other people*, that's why they kept falling head over heels for each other. They did a lot of snarking about the other one to third parties, as your sampler noted. Plus, in the period immediately after the big explosion (put Fritz and Voltaire in Sanssouci, shake, how big is the explosion?), there wasn't much correspondence between them at all because they were both sulking in their tents (and trashing each other to the rest of the world). So though there is some snarking at each other in their correspondence, most of the best quotes are going to be from other sources.

I'm still laughing at

"BOSWELL: He said the King of Prussia wrote like your footboy.
VOLTAIRE. He is a sensible man."

Btw, when Voltaire died, apparently Fritz had a mass said for him in Berlin. I love that so much. Trolling the Church: it's what Voltaire would have wanted! (Remember, neither was a big fan of religion in general, but Catholicism specifically was The Worst, and Voltaire, being a French subject, had a lot of conflict with the Church. Fritz mostly just sat off to the side as Protestant king and made snide remarks, then went, "ooh, look how tolerant I am, I'm harboring Jesuits and building Catholic churches in Berlin while writing libretti about how the Aztec religion* was more tolerant than Catholicism, yay freedom of religion.")

* Did he know about all the human sacrifice? Was he having a noble savage moment without realizing it?

Oh, speaking of Fritz and religious snark, albeit not Voltaire related, this one made me laugh out loud:

"He also enjoyed reminding his subjects that constitutionally he was the head of both the Lutheran and the Reformed (Calvinist) churches in his dominions. Adjudicating a petition from a man refused permission by the church authorities to marry his widowed aunt, he wrote: 'The Consistory is an ass. As Vicar of Jesus Christ and Archbishop of Magdeburg, I decree that the couple shall be joined together in holy matrimony.' The parishioners of a Pomeranian village who asked for the dismissal of a pastor who did not believe in the resurrection of the body were told that on the Day of Judgment it was up to him if he wished to just lie there prostrate while everyone else got up. Ordering the reappointment of a pastor dismissed because his parishioners objected to his preaching against the eternity of Hell, he commented that if they wished to be damned for all eternity, he had nothing against it. And so on."

"It was up to him if he wished to just lie there prostrate while everyone else got up," "As Vicar of Jesus Christ," omg, Fritz, this is why people love pen-palling with you. The sarcasm, it burns. :-DD

Oh, and speaking of that mass for Voltaire, it reminds me of something else Fritz said. See, Voltaire spent the last few decades of his life loudly proclaiming that he was on his deathbed and his death was expected imminently and everyone should cut him some slack. Fritz started rolling his eyes and retorting that Voltaire would outlive everyone, including him. "You'll write my epitaph," is approximately how he put it. (He was wrong: Voltaire died about 8 years before Fritz, albeit he was also 17 years older than Fritz, so about 9 years more advanced in age at time of death). I like to imagine Old Fritz wishing there were some way for him to find out from beyond the grave what his old frenemy had to say about him.

Re: Fritz Does His Bit For European Unity (And So Does Voltaire)

[selenak]

Boswell was so good at getting excellent quotes out of people that it is one of my lasting regrets he didn't manage to gatecrash Fritz. If his French was good enough to chat with Voltaire and Rousseau, he could have carried a conversation with Frederic Le Grand, or rather, provided cues for Fritz to spout terse aphorisms.

* Did he know about all the human sacrifice? Was he having a noble savage moment without realizing it?

Oh, he knew. Not least because the Spaniards made damn sure all of Europe knew, this being part of the "we brought light to the heathens" tale. Heinrich Heine (now here's a poet one wishes Fritz would spar with - Francophile, free thinker, loathed the Prussian military and Prussians in general as most Rhinelanders did) wrote a poem in which the gods of the Aztecs decide to avenge their people's slaughter by Cortez by joining the Spaniards on their way back to Europe and inspire the wars of religion that ravaged the continent through the ensuing centuries as the Christian version of human sacrifice.


Fritz' contemporary Rousseau didn't invent the trope of the Noble Savage, but he certainly helped popularize it; it was in the later 18th century air. In terms of serious discussion of the Spanish behavior vs the Aztecs (and other native Americans), though, it's worth pointing out that given Las Casas famously pleaded in front of Charles V. that the treatment of the "Indians" was horrible, unchristian and had to stop, i.e. you had inner Spanish objections to conquistadoring as early as a generation after it had started, I'd say it's likely Fritz' pro-Aztecs libretto expressed a majority opinion of his time at least in terms of "the Spaniards were the bad guys here", though not in terms of "...what human sacrfice are you talking about?")

The "Friedrich II und die Musik" book I was reading two months ago also points out his Montezuma opera points out that the Aztecs were lacking a strong leader to stand up to Catholic tyranny and conquest and represent their interest, that Montezuma honoring his promises and treaties instead of practical and using pre-emptive counterstrikes just doomed him. Which of course was written without any thought of contemporary application and propaganda at all, I'm sure.

Re: Fritz Does His Bit For European Unity (And So Does Voltaire)

[cahn]

the Aztecs were lacking a strong leader to stand up to Catholic tyranny and conquest and represent their interest, that Montezuma honoring his promises and treaties instead of practical and using pre-emptive counterstrikes just doomed him.

All together now: oh, Fritz.