cahn | Frederick the Great, discussion post 5: or: Yuletide requests are out!

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Frederick the Great, discussion post 5: or: Yuletide requests are out!

All Yuletide requests are out!

Yuletide related:
-it is sad that I can't watch opera quickly enough these days to have offered any of them, these requests are delightful!

-That is... sure a lot of prompts for MCS/Jingyan. But happily some that are not :D (I like MCS/Jingyan! But there are So Many Other characters!)

Frederician-specific:
-I am so excited someone requested Fritz/Voltaire, please someone write it!!

-I also really want someone to write that request for Poniatowski, although that is... definitely a niche request, even for this niche fandom. But he has memoirs?? apparently they are translated from Polish into French

-But while we are waiting/writing/etc., check out this crack commentfic where Heinrich and Franz Stefan are drinking together while Maria Theresia and Frederick the Great have their secret summit, which turns into a plot to marry the future Emperor Joseph to Fritz...

Master link to Frederick the Great posts and associated online links

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(...that is a lot of Wilhelmines)

Hohenzollerns WHY DO YOU SUCK SO MUCH

I feel so bad for EC, as I always do :( I didn't know she studied French and music for him -- somehow that just makes my heart hurt :( I'm glad she got her sister there, though!

And I feel even worse for Mina. That's horrible -- at least EC a) got left alone, even if she didn't get any respect b) had her sister around c) got to enjoy her widowhood :P

The story of Louise makes me (relatively) happy, though. Not least, yay for Hohenzollerns actually treating a nice person right! WHY COULDN'T YOU DO THAT WITH MINA. ahem.

people were confused because Heinrich being so obviously gay, he was the one man she showed such fondness to who never ever was suspected of having an affair with her.

heeee! but also this is super sweet <3

I can never forget her attention, her amiability and the power of her mind. What remains now is very small, compared to her. Of course, from a political point of view her death is a stroke of luck for us.

HAHAHAHA that is both moving and rather funny.

Catherine to Fritz: Mind if I keep your brother as my personal satrap and make him King of Wallachia? Fritz: YES. NO HEINRICH FOR YOU.

LOL!

Beaumarchais told Heinrich he wanted to work together with a composer working at Joseph's court, to wit: Salieri!

I am dying. That is just too much. (And glad that this... didn't happen? or did it? well, glad anyway that it also became a Mozart opera, because that Beaumarchais-daPonte-Mozart combination/collaboration is in my opinion one of the great things about Western civilization.

...And somewhere, Shaffer!Salieri is shaking his fist in his grave.)

Heinrich: YES GOD YES. You bastard.

Okay, this? This is endearing. <3333333333333 to both Fritz and Heinrich

Actually your whole writeup is definitely giving me "yes, your fave is totally cool" vibes, so I guess Ziebura succeeded <3 :D

Ferdiand: *counts* Twelve years? Counting back from March 1799? You mean, when...

Me: *counts*
Me: checks wikipedia, because super bad at dates
Me: Oh Heinrich. <33333333

OK... tell me more about Lehndorff? So I know from your previous posts that he was EC's chamberlain and Heinrich's friend-with-benefits and had a diary... did he write about Heinrich in his diary??

I haven't yet, but will keep that in mind!

Oh, I don't know that she wrote under that name; that's her real name. Her two pseudonyms that my mom had in the house when I was growing up were Victoria Holt and Philippa Carr, if either of those ring a bell. (I don't care enough to look up her other pseudonyms either. ;) )

Well, you definitely know a lot of things that biographers don't! And I think it's safe to say you've left the average person in the dust. You were the average person four months ago.

I feel like I could get my French reading proficiency up to speed if I were sufficiently motivated and in better health, but German would take ages, and also they're just not high enough on my list that they're likely to happen, alas.

Yeah, that makes perfect sense to me -- I mean, it's pretty common for abused kids to grow up and be emotionally stunted, right? Especially in the absence of therapy.

Oh, yeah, that's totally normal. I mean, it's possible to come out non-functional or barely functional, with a very weak sense of self, which Fritz didn't (hence my objection to "broken"); and it's possible to come out basically intact, with a lot of wounds and scars, and lacking in certain of the more complex skills that you might have developed with a more solid foundation. And interpersonal skills are among the most complex in the animal world. (From an evolutionary standpoint, a lot of our intelligence as primates is thought to be tied inextricably to the size of our social groups; as in, your ability to grasp calculus is a side effect of your ability to sit through a Thanksgiving dinner with in-laws, and to a certain extent, vice versa. I mean this at the species level and not at the individual level, btw.)

Re Fredersdorf: so you think he was holding on to him, hmm, socially/politically and possibly sexually, but not emotionally? Interesting.

Well, there's what I *think*, which is that there are many possibilities and I have no idea. And then there's how my brain is fleshing things out to achieve some sort of consistent characterization in the absence of evidence.

I mean, there are so many possibilities, among them the following.

1) Conventional close mutual romantic/sexual relationship that didn't solve Fritz's emotional problems enough that he could be mature about other people's relationships.
2) Conventional close mutual romantic/sexual relationship that Fritz couldn't fully get security from, because he was emotionally fucked up.
3) Non-romantic/non-sexual close friendship, full of love and affection, which was all Fritz or Fredersdorf wanted from each other. Fritz remained emotionally fucked up.
4) Non-romantic/non-sexual close friendship, full of love and affection, where one or both of them wanted conventional romance and/or sex, but the fucked-up-ness of the whole situation was such that neither of them ever took the step of risking something that was working for something that might not. And that was related to Fritz's resentment of other people's relationships, including Fredersdorf's eventual marriage.

Are all extremely likely. But the last one is the one that I find myself filling in the blanks with. They meet at a time where they can't do conventional romance/sex. There are serious social differences between them, including but not limited to employer/employee. Fritz is emotionally fucked up in many ways. Fredersdorf comes across to me as quiet and reserved. The fact that he is quiet and reserved probably accounts for a lot of the way the relationship was so stable for so long, but the combination of the complex situation, his personality, and Fritz's trauma may mean that they got into a pattern of affectionate friendship and then just never went into romance/marriage when one or both might have wanted to, consciously or sub-consciously.

Added to that is the question mark around Fredersdorf's sexuality, and how his personality led him to express it. He may not have been participating in the homoerotic banter, or at least only going along with it because it was the Done Thing at Fritz's court; he may not have been having affairs with or even showing interest in other guys; he may have been keeping his sex life in a completely separate sphere; his sexuality may not have been any more clear to Fritz than it is to us, or it may have been clear he was outright straight. (Fritz's letter to him suggesting he take a scout or page with him when he got married means no more to me without context than the Marwitz letters--Fritz could be bitter and nasty where other people's relationships are concerned, and he is far from a reliable source.) In short, in addition to probably not being the type of person who would hit on his boss, Fredersdorf may not have been sending "hitting on me would be welcome" vibes toward Fritz. (I might have more data on this if I 1) had the letters, 2) could read them. I reserve the right to change my opinion in the face of more data.)

And so it's possible Fritz wanted a marriage-level commitment that he wasn't getting, even if he had other forms of emotional closeness such as mutual affection and a confidant he trusted. And maybe even if they were having sex; maybe Fredersdorf was giving off "Sure, you can have sex with me and also other people, and I'm also free to look elsewhere" vibes.

Oh, and when I say "vibes," I do mean vibes--you know how Fritz and Wilhelmine don't always communicate when it would really be in their best interests to? Good communication is one of those advanced skills that requires emotional maturity and is very vulnerable to trauma. (The relationship between talking and trauma is also extremely complex, and it gets a lot of coverage in the trauma literature. Tangentially, so is the relationship between trauma and memory: one thing that horrifies me is that if it's true that Katte was executed in sight of Fritz's window per FW's orders--and a lot of accounts say he was deliberately executed around the corner and out of sight--it remains entirely possible that Fritz witnessed the execution and didn't lose consciousness until afterward, and that the event simply didn't get recorded in his memory, such that he thought he fainted right before it happened. I prefer to think that it happened around the corner, and that he fainted before he could even hear anything. It remains possible, of course, that he fainted after he heard it but didn't record the memory of that either.) And in a situation as complex and involving as much emotional vulnerability as this, Fritz wanting marriage-level commitment and reassurance might not translate to him communicating "I want marriage-level commitment and reassurance" in a way that would be both understood as such and likely to elicit the desired response.

It also occurs to me also that there is an aspect of emotional relationship security that he couldn't have by definition with a subordinate who was paid to attend him, as Fredersdorf was.

I would say that that it's obviously not ideal, but it was a lot more common in previous centuries, both because the odds of you falling in love with someone outside your class were greater the closer you were to the top of the pyramid, and because meeting someone you couldn't have a public relationship with and then hiring them so you had an excuse to be together was a fairly common workaround. The resulting power imbalance is obviously going to make things tricky, but I feel like a lot of couples managed to make it work, and if Fritz had been less messed up, he might have been able to get that kind of security from Fredersdorf. (And maybe he did, and their relationship just ran its course like any other relationship would. Twenty years is a long time.)

I do agree the relationship with Wilhelmine was critical for both of them. And probably more than a band-aid; it was probably structurally important in those formative years, when they were both coming out basically intact.

Me: *counts*
Me: checks wikipedia, because super bad at dates
Me: Oh Heinrich. <33333333

March 1799 - August 17, 1786 = 12 years, 6 months, some days. Just saying.

OK... tell me more about Lehndorff? So I know from your previous posts that he was EC's chamberlain and Heinrich's friend-with-benefits and had a diary... did he write about Heinrich in his diary??

Extensively, and it's even online...in German...in scanned pages...in Fraktur. *facepalm* Actually, the font is a lot less bad than most such examples, but omfg. Also, I can get copy-pastable OCRed text views, but only a couple sentences at a time without paying. I was looking him up recently for the Fredersdorf quotes.

Anyway, I'll give you what I can from various bios.

"His love life can be followed in some detail through the diaries of Count Lehndorff, who was himself besotted with the prince, as the following sample reveals:

"1 May 1753 the most miserable day of my life, because Prince Henry is leaving; I go to see him, my heart full of grief. I hurry to my dear prince, what a sorrowful meeting! I leave him without a word, I see tears pouring down his face, the dearest in the world, what a man to be worshipped, what a loss for me, I swear eternal devotion. I return to my home in sorrow and cannot sleep, I write my prince a letter.

"2 May I get a letter from him which makes me burst into tears. I jump on my horse and ride to meet him, but when I see his carriage approaching I get off and hide, otherwise my heart would have burst. I did not think that one person could be so devoted to another; in pagan times they would have made him a God.

"The sight of Prince Henry in tight riding breeches and looking 'as beautiful as an angel' was enough to send Lehndorff into erotic rapture."

Also, Lehndorff fell in love with an English aristocrat, Sir. Charles Hotham, and wanted to join him in England. But as a Prussian, he had to ask the King's permission to leave the country. Fritz said no. "I cry, and I cry, and I cry," Lehndorff writes. No reason given for the refusal, but I think we all know the real reason is: "If *I* can't go to England with my lover, *nobody* gets to go to England with their lover."

The Maras: *sigh*

Lehndorff also records a masked party in January 1754 where AW dressed up as a woman as part of some general royal hijinks (with heavy anti-Semitic overtones that Lehndorff and all the Hohenzollern brothers thought was hilarious, and which I will refrain from recounting), and also later in the month, when a Countess Bentick more seriously dressed as a man, "in the forlorn hope that her male attire would win her the attention of the exclusively homosexual Prince Henry." No dice, Countess.

After Heinrich's forced marriage, Lehndorff wrote to him: 'Monseigneur, the king has built a palace for you with admirable arrangements: one may spend one’s life there without ever setting one's eyes on one's wife.'

I should add that on this occasion, Bielfeld referred to Heinrich as a "Potsdamite," saying that even though his wife was of more than mortal beauty, it would do her no good. Oh, those Potsdamites. :P

If I find an accessible translation, I'll let you know, but I doubt there is one, since even my biographers are using the German original, and they usually tell you about translations where they can.

Also, I just want to say that today the OCR + auto Google Translate function in Chrome seem to be behaving themselves, but last time I checked, Chrome persisted in translating "Dreissig Jahre am Hofe Friedrichs des Grossen" as "Thirty Years at the Pants of Frederick the Great," through what I suspect was a confusion between 'f' and old-fashioned 's', leading to "Dreissig Jahre am Hose Friedrichs des Grossen."

It made me laugh so much. So close but yet so far! It's "Thirty Years in the Pants of Frederick the Great's Other Self," Google!

Oh, but what you don't know is that when FW was dying, he said that he had every reason to worry that young Fritz would have made a terrible king and squandered his inheritance, but current Fritz was going to do just fine and he couldn't have hoped for a better heir.

Fritz: *stares at Dad*

Fritz: *cries*

HEAVILY implied "See, my ~~abuse~~ ~~trauma~~ rehabilitation worked!" (Which was also the discourse of Prussian historians for, like, forever. Including the devoutly Protestant homophobic ones.)

That's why I think he looks for the parts he likes, takes credit, and tries to overlook what he can't change, while occasionally muttering darkly to himself. (I mean, once you've reincarnated him, there's the whole theology question, but I'm not interested enough in FW to figure out *what* he would have made of the eternal damnation aspect. Oh, and I'm not letting him *around* Fritz in this AU. They stay on opposite sides of the planet, and FW quickly kicks it ~~in a highly satisfying manner~~ before that can change. :P)

Also, huh. This reminded me strongly of the Fritz/Heinrich dynamic when Fritz was dying and having a cunning plan to keep Heinrich from feeling relieved once he kicked it. Well, he was relieved, but also immediately started talking Dad up to everyone, including Wilhelmine.

So I guess what I'm saying is, if we marry him off to his social equal* Joseph, maybe other people can visit England with their lovers. :-PPP

Hell, Joseph likes to travel. Maybe Fritz can visit England with his lover. (Doubt he'd want to, but maybe Chill New Fritz is different.)

* Joseph disagrees, but Fritz says, "You and what army?" to the whole Emperor point.

"The one at Leuthen? Or Hohenfriedberg?"

"The one at Hochkirch," Joseph counters.

"Burkersdorf?"

"Hasn't happened yet. The secret summit is 1761. Your irrational fanboy is still twiddling his thumbs."

"I was trying to decide whether to say Bavarian Succession, but...okay. We'll call it a draw."

Edited 2019-12-03 00:37 (UTC)

Good enough!

They can't have been from the memoirs, because she wrote the memoirs ten to fifteen years before the Seven Years' War. I suspect it's a letter.

is it possible that she's talking about FW's character (I mean, he seems to have been at least as stubborn as Fritz!) rather than the abuse in particular

I absolutely parsed this as FW's rather impressive and extremely Fritz-like endurance in the face of crippling pain/illness and other hardships, though I suppose it's also possible she saw her abusive childhood as the fire that tempered the steel? But yes, context might make it clear one way or the other.

Yeah, it's like Fritz/Voltaire: the more you empathize with everyone as real people, the more tragic it is; the more you view it from centuries of remove as practically fictional, the more comic it is.

Man, Wilhelmine really did luck out

Yeah, just cheating on your wife with her best friend gets you like an A-, when grading on the curve of other men in 18th century marriages!

How much childhood trauma did the Margrave have? Not to defend the Hohenzollerns, but childhood trauma vs. conflicts with equals beginning in adulthood makes a big, big difference to general fucked-up-ness. (It is possible to be deeply traumatized and not take it out on other people, of course, but the deck is stacked more against you with childhood trauma--which is almost word for word what Fritz told Catt, not just about himself but when observing other people who shared his anger management issues.)

I guess all these lives taken during the kidnapping of tall men were taken justly, and God is A-OK with that? I mean, granted the death count is way smaller than the Silesian wars, but if you have to account for each and every one...I hope God is an understanding repressed homosexual himself. ~~There were giants on the earth in those days.~~

ETA: I meant to say, nice use of "King in Prussia" there!

Edited 2019-12-03 05:55 (UTC)

Oh, thank goodness. I mean, I knew it wasn't perfect, but that movie had me worried about them.

Because this has nothing to do with Heinrich, but is a story of its own, I'm replying to it separately. Aside from the fact Amalie - who had some serious musical skills in various instruments and, like Big Brother and Big Sister, composed - did have a certified (musical) passion for all things Bach (Johann Sebastian and his sons), there is one other reason (I guess) why the scriptwriter included her the way he didi, one big question mark hanging around the relationship of the younger Amalie and Fritz, and that's the Mysterious Trenck Affair (tm).

Important to know apart in this very confusing tale:

Friedrich von der Trenck (aka Prussian Trenck): future bestselling memoir writer, definitely an influence on Dumas (in Count of Monte Christo) and Mark Twain (in Tom Sawyer & Huckleberry Finn) who name check him both; this is a subtle literary pop quiz for you, as it'll make you guess what Prussian Trenck will be most famous for

Franz von der Trenck (aka Austrian Trenck): his cousin, famous for his temper, derring-do, courageous soldiering but sadly also cruelty (both towards civilians and his own men) which will be his doom

Prussian Trenck: Let me give you a short version of my famously bestselling three volume memoirs, currently at Gutenberg in a one volume edition in German at least; the editor dares to say my Rokoko feelings and rants are too much for the modern reader, so nothing was lost when severely cutting them down, and a decent adventure novel gained. Bah.

Anyway: I was born to a noble Prussian family with Austrian relations. In 1740, when Fritz came on the throne, I joined his army. By 1744, I was his batman. He totally had a really warm fatherly regard for me -

(Self: When he was 32? If you say so...)

- and despite the later turn of events, I spent the first bit of my memoirs raving about how charismatic Fritz was, how much it rocked serving under him. When his sister Ulrike got married, I was part of the festivities, and there I met a An Unmarried Lady Of The Highest Rank whom I, being a gentleman, will not identify by name until volume 3 gets published, but we're talking Highest Family here, wink, nudge. I scored! So basically, life was sweet. Then the Second Silesian War started. Totally not the fault of Fritz this time. I swear, he only wanted to protect the poor, helpless Prince Elector of Bavaria, who had cruelly lost his dukedom and hometown when becoming Emperor - I mean, who could have predicted MT would do that, amirite?

Speaking of Austrians: So, I had this cousin. Austrian Trenck was an early supporter of MT's and distinguished himself in her service by fighting for her from Day 1 in 1740, like I distinguished myself in the service of Fritz and his family. Shut up, this is not a double entendre. We had never met, but we heard from another. And one time, when our horses got captured and Fritz nearly was captured, my cousin sent the horses back to me. So there was talk among the chaps. And then I got this letter, which I thought was from my cousin but which actually now I think was a forgery by some bastard who wanted to do me in, asking me switch sides. Which of course I refused! I mean, why would I go to the Austrians? I had a sweet deal as Fritz' batman and secret lover of A Certain High Ranking Lady! However. I was slandered. By more anonymous letters claiming I was spying for the Austrians. And woe, but Fritz listened! There may or may not have been also something about me and Very High Ranking Lady, I'm too discreet to say. Anyway, Fritz, ignoring my loyal service so far, cruelly locked me up at the fortress Glatz. He even had me sit on my gravestone! I escaped a year later. Whereto, faithful reader? Well, naturally to Vienna. Not because I was a spy. Because I had heard my cousin Austrian Trenck had made me his universal heir, and was in severe trouble himself. Naturally, I wanted to help!

My cousin Austrian Trenck really was in trouble. Several of his men as well as some civilians had accused him of war crimes, and he'd been condemned to death. MT's brother-in-law, under whom he had served, reminded her she owed him, and so she allowed a retrial. Which, however, didn't exonorate him, because brave as he was, he actually was guilty as charged. Since this was apparant in the later part of the trial, aka when I arrived in Vienna, she told him that if he pled guilty, she'd commute his sentence out of gratitude and mercy, he refused and insisted on being completely cleared, and the trial went on. So he wasn't in a good mind frame, is what I'm saying, and he turned out to be a bastard. I, a naive innocent, believed it was cousinly feeling that made him make me his heir, but really, it was because he knew Fritz would never believe I was innocent if I accepted the heritage! Also, one condition for the heritage was that I had to join Austrian service and swear not to work for Prussia again. Prussia, my beloved home country, where my beloved King and High Ranking Lady were! Naturally, I refused. At first.

So anyway, my cousin: got condemned to death again, MT commuted the sentence to life long imprisonment, my cousin took sick and died. Leaving me his heir, as promised. That was a legal nightmare, I can tell you. All part of the evil plan. The part where I had to go from one clerk to the next sounds positively out of Kafka, which fits since Kafka was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. So VERY relluctantly, I joined Austrian service. Went to Rusisa for a while, to the court of the Czarina Elizabeth where I scored again with another High Ranking Lady I Will Not Name. Some years later, 1753, I had to travel to Danzig on some family business. And would you believe it, but Fritz still held a grudge! I got arrested and imprisoned again. Which is where the worst part of my life started. Locked up in a cell in Magdeburg, and after my first escape attempt there, even chained to a wall.

(Self: Okay, Trenck, that does sound awful.)

This went on until the end of the Seven-Years-War, when MT personally asked for my release as part of the peace negotiations, and got it. So here I was, free. Went to Vienna again, where I thought MT & Co. would be overwhelmingly grateful and shower me with riches for all my sufferings. I did get an audience with her, and but would you believe it, her idea of showering me with riches was suggesting a rich widow for me to marry! ME! As if I'd marry some Austrian broad two years older than me who wasn't even a virgin. I told her that was a no go, and she was all, have it your way, and that, dear readers, was the end of Habsburg gratitude. After all I had gone through while being UNFAIRLY suspected of spying for them!

I had enough and went to Aachen, aka Aix-La-Chapelle, where I married the mayor's daughter and opened a trade with Hungarian wine. I also started publishing these memoirs. When Fritz died, his successor FW2 granted me a pension - I don't care what anyone says, you're cool with me, FW2! - , and I met my First Mysterious Lady again whom I can now reveal in the last volume was totally Princess Amalie, because sadly, she's now gone as well. We had a tearful reunion just before she died, though.

Not covered in my memoirs for obvious reasons is my ending. I went to Revolutionary Paris. Some claim to spy for the Austrians, but as if, I mean, I never did, and I had enough of Royals, I thought I'd fit right in the place where they had just gotten rid of theirs. Now, some may claim that given Prussia and Austria, allied for the first time, were in a state of war with Revolutionary France it was a bad idea for me to go there, but hey! Did anything so far make you think I have common sense? Naturally, once I was there, I started to name drop. And got arrested. I mean, I TOLD them that I was completely in sympathy with their goals, that I was a victim of both Hohenzollerns and Habsburgs and knew how much royalty sucks, but I might have mentioned that MT personally asked for my release from Prussian imprisonment as part of an explanation as to why I wasn't suffering in Prussian prison anymore. So they were all, what, MT, as in, mother of MA the Austrian bitch we just beheaded? Off with your head!

I got beheaded just ten days before Robespierre did. I guess I was a drama guy to the finish. Now, for SOME reason, historians were a bit sceptical about some of my claims. Especially the one where I scored with Amalie. But in 2008, they found a letter from me to her, written in 1787, the year of her death, which "at least indicates great familiarity", which is their way of phrasing I totally scored! Now, how my treatment at the hands of her brother made her feel about her brother is anyone's guess, but seriously, I could never figure that family out. I mean, if Fritz hadn't been listening to these ABSURD claims I was an Austrian spy and responsible for his near capture, I could have gone on being his batman and scoring with his youngest sister forever!

Edited 2019-12-03 06:28 (UTC)

Oh, right, the crazy Trenck affair was Amalie! See, I know all these stories in isolation, but summoning them all up in connection with the right person all at the same time is a bit harder. ;) Yeah, the Trenck affair (double entendre totally intended) is confusing, more confusing than the two cousin Count Rothenburgs who supported Fritz, largely because we're all WTF actually happened there???

At the very least, it's one of the cases where Fritz gets finger wagging from historians for locking someone up with so little transparency, no trial, no formal charges, etc. Bad enlightened monarch!

But in 2008, they found a letter from me to her, written in 1787, the year of her death, which "at least indicates great familiarity", which is their way of phrasing I totally scored!

Ahahahaha, love it.

I could never figure that family out.

Join the club, Trenck. Every day, I wake up to new developments from this family to stare at in disbelief.

Fritz called Heinrich his other self??!!* Heinrich picked back up a correspondence with him because he needed someone to bicker with?? Heinrich moved to Wusterhausen in 1799 so he could forget about the last twelve years??!!

I know. You really couldn't make these people up. Or, to use a phrase coined by our other famous dyfunctional and intense brothers, the brothers Mann, "das brüderliche Welterlebnis". (Thanks, Tommy!)

This just goes to show that having self-awareness does not equal knowing what to do about it, which is consistent with my experiences with other highly intelligent, self-aware people with severe trauma, even in the twenty-first century.

Well, Fritz knew what to do about it, alright, it's just that his method of choice was to vary Larkin's famous "they fuck you up, your Mum and Dad, they may not mean to, but they do" into "and then you'll fuck up your brother, too". This isn't what Larkin meant by concluding that poem with "don't have any kids yourself", Fritz!

I would say at least Heinrich didn't hand down the trauma to the next generation, but taking it (at least somewhat) out on his wife isn't much better, so. Other self indeed.

OMG, this is Fritz/Voltaire levels of hateshipping, wow. This may even put them to shame. Wow wow wow

Well, it has that extra special family element. Also Fritz never did anything as serious to Voltaire as force him to marry, break the person Voltaire loves most who dies in his mind because of that, nor did he, conversely, form Voltaire's ideas about a great many things from literature to how to treat your unwanted wife. (Though I guess Voltaire did form several of Fritz' ideas by virtue of being his favourite writer.)

Silesia. He conquered Silesia. He couldn't even hold onto Bohemia or Saxony.

Which reminds me: as has been pointed out by biographers, Heinrich in his partition of Poland negotiations aquired more territory for Prussia diplomatically and thus without a single loss of (Prussian) life than Fritz managed in three Silesian wars. (I mean, it sucked for the Poles, and caused no end of trouble in European history, long term wise, but from a Prussian pov back then, this was awesome.) You can bet Heinrich pointed that out, too. Big Brother wasn't amused.

What. Why would you do that to your boyfriend?

My question exactly, which is why I had to share it. I assume T. thought Heinrich would consider it funny? Or maybe flattering, because the audience, when it noticed Heinrich was present, cheered both him and the Fritz actor with lots of Vive Frederic! Vive le frère du grand Frederic! calls. How that made Heinrich feel, I'll leave to your imagination.

That particular boyfriend also had managed the following saga:

T: So, I got my girlfriend, which yes, I had on the side, pregnant. We need money to marry. Pretty please?
H: ....Okay.
T's father and Fritz: WTF? Prussian nobles aren't allowed to marry without permission of the King! (See also: Marwitz, female edition.)
H: *keeps young T & pregnant wife from being punished, points out done is done and also there's an heir on the way, manages to achieve reconcilation*

Young Mrs. T: dies in childbirth, along with the baby

T: Woe! Comfort me!
H: *does so*

Anyway, Heinrich's romantic/sexual track record is the one thing which makes me at least consider the possibility Fritz wasn't acting purely out of spite in the four Marwitz (male) letters.

Oh, and not Ziebura, but older male historians going "why the very het Catherine and the very gay Heinrich went along so well is a complete mystery to us" clearly haven't heard of Elizabeth Taylor, which was the association I immediately had when reading about Heinrich's visits in Russia.

ETA: Meant to include this - when Fritz gave Heinrich permission to go to Paris the first time, it wasn't meant as a holiday, though of course both of them knew it would be a #lifegoal accomplished - Paris! -; Heinrich was actually there to try and woo the French away from their Austrian alliance, now that MT was dead.

(MA: come on. I know I'm not Mom, but I would never, ever, have let that happen! Joseph was counting on me!)

So, while they hash out final instructions and policies via letters, Fritz says, re: the French: "But let them come to you, don't fling yourself in their arms at the first sign of interest, the way you usually do."

Yep. That fraternal bitching is alive and well. (You can bet Fritz would have flung himself into proverbial French arms if he'd ever made it to Paris.)

Edited 2019-12-03 09:02 (UTC)

Thank you so much for all those Lehndorf quotes! Presumably for reasons of copyright, I can't read the online edition here in Germany. (There was a 2007 new edition of the diaries, though that was only a "best of" selection.)

German wiki, btw, mentions, as did Ziebura, that Lehndorf was married (twice) while all this was going on. Not of course unusual for someone in this era even when not being a Royal. He was also really bitter about Fritz never promoting him, realising chamberlain to EC was a dead-end job in that it paid well but really wasn't how you distinguished yourself and got some juicy or glorious promotion, and eventually retiring to the countryside.

"The sight of Prince Henry in tight riding breeches and looking 'as beautiful as an angel' was enough to send Lehndorff into erotic rapture."

ETA: This also proves how far gone Lehndorff must have been, because even when young, Heinrich was never more than avarage looking, and when older, usually people found him downright ugly when first meeting him (Most of them were however subsequently wowed by his charm, which he must have had in considerable degree if he tried - very useful in a diplomat -, so a typical description of Heinrich from French, Russian and Swedes - he visited Ulrike in Stockholm, too - goes "huh, at first I thought, this little dry wrinkly man is the hero of the 7 Years War, but then he opened his mouth and wow! So smart! So charming! So witty! Swoon!"

Re: small, he was literally smaller than the not tall Fritz and both his other brothers. There's a famous anecdote of Heinrich motivating the guys from his first serious command by jumping into the muddy river and saying "men, if I can cross this depite it going to my waist, then so can you!"

Edited 2019-12-03 09:22 (UTC)

This isn't in Ziebura's book, but I'm tentatively speculating that one reason why not just Heinrich but also Ferdinand completely changed their behaviour towards Mina, aside from using her as an emotional punchbag for their own issues at that point, but why Fritz who'd at least been approving before and why the sisters who'd all been "Mina is great!" didn't try anything to shield her might have been, in a cruel irony, precisely because AW in his changed will wanted her to raise his kids and left her the diamond ring he was always wearing while he was at it. I mean, we know that they didn't have a sexual affair because we have access to Mina's diary as well as their entire correspondance. But the suspicion that there might have been more would have been logical at that time, especially given that AW did have affairs, and Ferdinand had written at least one letter saying "yes, Mina is great, but always remember so far and no further".

My own guess is they were each other's might-have-been. (While Sophie von Pannwitz, whom AW had asked Fritz permission to divorce his wife for, was a far more clear cut "one who got away".) BTW, Ziebura isn't sure if Mina ever got that diamond ring, because surely once she was financial difficulties she'd have sold it, but we simply don't know one way or the other.

(Re: financial difficulties - given Heinrich was only rarely in Berlin and surrounding area during the war during the Seven Years War and was the most important general in same other than Fritz, he has a sort of excuse for not always getting his wife her allowance, except he did always find the money for his boyfriends when they were in trouble. Post-war, he was simply being petty.)

Now, given the entire family knew that Mina might have been a virgin as far as Heinrich was concerned, you'd think that they would have understood even if they assumed the thing with her and AW had gone beyond harmless flirtation due to the "I want Mina to raise my kids and have the ring I was always wearing" bit from the altered Last Will. But we're talking 18th century double standards here. And it would definitely make sense of Ferdinand doing a 180% as well. (Stopping flirting would have made sense not least because he was married now, even though their flirting had been harmless, but not completely dumping her as a friend, too. Poor Mina literally writes I thought he was my friend in her journals. She basically went from being SD's favourite daughter-in-law, the most admired woman at the court, with an empty marriage, yes, but one very intense relationship with a man who had high regard with her and another friendly flirtatious one with her other brother-in-law, to "well, you can come to the next salon, fine, but only if Heinrich isn't there."

Yes, it's from a late letter, but alas I'm currently separated from my physical books due to being not at home, so I can't provide you with the exact quote.

...did collaborate, on this opera, about which more in this essay. (In German, so you'll have to employ Google.) Incidentally, that was the French original version. Salieri later had Da Ponte write him an Italian libretto and presented that version in Vienna - it's the very opera he's premiering after Figaro in Amadeus, the one causing Mozart's "what can one say but: Salieri!" snark.

Presumably for reasons of copyright, I can't read the online edition here in Germany.

Oh, noes! Oh, you're right, my link says "US access only." And I can only download one page at a time, even though it says it's public domain. Oh, well. Presumably when you get home, you can get your hands on a copy? Your write-ups are always awesome (thank you for Trenck, btw), and Lehndorff seems like he's full of the good stuff.

[ETA: I have asked a friend, but the friend may also not have access. We'll see.]

He was also really bitter about Fritz never promoting him, realising chamberlain to EC was a dead-end job in that it paid well but really wasn't how you distinguished yourself and got some juicy or glorious promotion, and eventually retiring to the countryside.

Yep, I almost quoted this but left it out because it wasn't about Heinrich: "It must have occurred to him that his senior position in the queen’s household was not calculated to endear him to Frederick."

This also proves how far gone Lehndorff must have been

Yes, I was going to say that, but I forgot! Thank you! Yes, Heinrich was no prize physically. Hey, he was Fritz's other self: of course he was short, far from good-looking, and charismatic when he wanted to be. :P

Edited 2019-12-04 00:06 (UTC)

Well, Fritz knew what to do about it, alright

What I meant was that he wanted to not have the anger management issues, and he repeatedly said he kept trying to get them under control, but repeatedly failed, because he'd been fucked up in childhood. And he *wanted* better quality relationships, including with various members of his family (not including EC), and couldn't always figure out how. The people I know and know of also want to get better, but even with medication and decades of therapy don't always manage it. Reprogramming your brain after the formative years is *hard*.

You can bet Heinrich pointed that out, too. Big Brother wasn't amused.

Yep, and nope.

Anyway, Heinrich's romantic/sexual track record is the one thing which makes me at least consider the possibility Fritz wasn't acting purely out of spite in the four Marwitz (male) letters.

Oh, yeah. That was definitely on my mind when I proposed that maybe Fritz was maybe trying to save him from himself (in the most unlikely-to-succeed possible way) and then had to give up when it didn't succeed (shocker).

clearly haven't heard of Elizabeth Taylor, which was the association I immediately had when reading about Heinrich's visits in Russia.

For those of us who've heard of her but live under a rock and don't know anything about her, would you care to elaborate? Look, knowing far more about the eighteenth century than the twentieth goes all the way back to childhood with me. :P ETA: See also these anecdotes.

Edited 2019-12-04 00:12 (UTC)

Have replied re: Elizabeth Taylor at the new post. These are endearing anecdotes!

How much childhood trauma did the Margrave have?

The answer to this question is found in a reply at the latest post, she says with an evil laugh, here.

Edited 2019-12-04 17:34 (UTC)

[ETA: I have asked a friend, but the friend may also not have access. We'll see.]

DMed you.

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Page 15 of 16

Frederick the Great, discussion post 5: or: Yuletide requests are out!

Re: Why you should never marry a Hohenzollern: The Wives' Tale

Re: Oh Brother! More impressions of the Heinrich bio

Re: Hohenzollern Family Reunion

Re: Merrie Olde England

Re: Fredersdorf

Re: mostly Fredersdorf

Re: Oh Brother! More impressions of the Heinrich bio

Re: More Book Reports: AW bio, Fritz and Heinrich double portrait/lengthy essay

Crackfic

Re: what about a flute-bustin' Prussian

Re: Hohenzollern Family Reunion

Re: More Book Reports: AW bio, Fritz and Heinrich double portrait/lengthy essay

Re: More Book Reports: AW bio, Fritz and Heinrich double portrait/lengthy essay

Trenck, or: My Sister's Possible Boyfriend

Re: Trenck, or: My Sister's Possible Boyfriend

Re: Oh Brother! More impressions of the Heinrich bio

Re: Oh Brother! More impressions of the Heinrich bio

Re: Why you should never marry a Hohenzollern: The Wives' Tale

Re: Hohenzollern Family Reunion

Salieri and Beaumarchais

Lehndorff

Re: Oh Brother! More impressions of the Heinrich bio

Re: Oh Brother! More impressions of the Heinrich bio

Re: More Book Reports: AW bio, Fritz and Heinrich double portrait/lengthy essay

Re: Lehndorff