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: Monkey see, monkey do

[selenak]

Just to clear this up, Mimi was a male monkey?

Also, lol about the redecorating of Voltaire's room after he already departed from it. Must have been around the time Fritz had this exchange with Wilhelmine (writing from France):

Wilhelmine (literal quote from letter): "I don't think my beautiful eyes are why Voltaire wanted to see me." (end literal quote). It's all about you! He's realllllly sorry and says to send lots of love! He still wants you!

Fritz: He's faking it, sis! He wants my money, that's what he wants. He's made the mistake of lending your son-in-law Carl Eugen some and now Carl Eugen refuses to pay him back. Well, if he thinks I'm going to call in that debt for him he's got another think coming. Why oh why must such a genius be such a jerk!

(Voltaire: The Margravine stopped by and I was gracious enough to let her. I mean, she's nice. Why oh why must her brother be such a jerk!)

Re: Wolff - the English version of the wiki article is pretty informative, cahn, though I can make it even shorter and excerpt the Hohenzollern relevant bits for you:

"His enemies had gained the ear of the king Frederick William I and told him that, if Wolff's determinism were recognized, no soldier who deserted could be punished, since he would only have acted as it was necessarily predetermined that he should. This so enraged the king that he immediately deprived Wolff of his office, and commanded him to leave Prussian territory within 48 hours or be hanged. (...)The Prussian crown prince Frederick defended Wolff against Joachim Lange and ordered the Berlin minister Jean Deschamps, a former pupil of Wolff, to translate Vernünftige Gedanken von Gott, der Welt und der Seele des Menschen, auch allen Dingen überhaupt into French. Frederick proposed to send a copy of Logique ou réflexions sur les forces de l'entendement humain to Voltaire in his first letter to the philosopher from 8 August 1736. In 1737 Wolff's Metafysica was translated into French by Ulrich Friedrich von Suhm (1691–1740). Voltaire got the impression Frederick had translated the book himself.

In 1738 Frederick William begun the hard labour of trying to read Wolff. In 1740 Frederick William died, and one of the first acts of his son and successor, Frederick the Great, was to acquire him for the Prussian Academy. Wolff refused.(...)

(Who can blame him? Better to stay away from Hohenzollerns.) (However, he did lecture elswhere, for:

When Wolff died on 9 April 1754, he was a very wealthy man, almost entirely due to his income from lecture-fees, salaries, and royalties. He was also a member of many academies and probably the first scholar to have been created hereditary Baron of the Holy Roman Empire on the basis of his academic work.

Re: Monkey see, monkey do

[mildred_of_midgard]

Just to clear this up, Mimi was a male monkey?

Well, this is an excellent question. That first passage I pasted was translated either by a biographer or someone the biographer was quoting. I was a bit surprised to see the "he/him" myself, so I went and looked at the original. Fritz definitely uses "il", but since "le singe" is masculine, that could just as easily be grammatical gender as biological. I stuck with "he" in my translation of the subsequent passage, just to be consistent with the first and in case somebody knew something I didn't, but, yes, I did raise an eyebrow, and I did check first, before deciding to just go with it.

In 1737 Wolff's Metafysica was translated into French by Ulrich Friedrich von Suhm (1691–1740). Voltaire got the impression Frederick had translated the book himself.

I mean, he hadn't met Fritz yet? If he was still making this mistake in 1753, then I'd be worried. :P But yes, the reason Fritz had Suhm (the recipient of the Mimi letters, btw) translate it was because he didn't feel his German was up to the task of reading philosophy.

Speaking of translations and going back to the Algarotti discussion: Émilie du Châtelet's 1749 translation of (and commentary on) Newton's Principia is still the definitive French translation today, because it's such a difficult text to translate. An impressive feat from an impressive woman.

Re: Monkey see, monkey do

[cahn]

All right, I have GOT to check out the Fritz-Wilhelmine letters, every time you quote from them it's just amazing.