One of my sources says Antonia played the piano at a royal concert in Potsdam, accompanied by Fritz and Quantz on the flute, the prince of Brunswick on the violin, and the prince of Prussia (future FW 2) the cello. He must have had a high opinion of her talent.
What I’d like to know: how come Fritz, renowned misogynist with a very very few exceptions, made another one of these for MT’s pen pal?
I'm less surprised: I feel like Fritz was pretty willing to make exceptions in general, especially in a musical and poetical context. None of which exceptions, of course, ever changed his opinion of the sex as a whole, or led him to treat women as equals, or, say, want them at Sanssouci. "Some of my best friends" etc., etc.
Incidentally, he also attributed some of the apparent inferiority of women to nurture rather than nature. He proposed giving them (at least the nobility) better education, so they had something to think about besides their appearance and pleasure-chasing, and he had some nice things to say about the potential of individual women to be at least as smart/talented as men, as well as the fact that the whole sex could be doing better if they weren't so neglected.
How can you be so close, and yet so far, Fritz? Oh, well.
As far as her being MT's pen pal, Fritz's correspondence with her seems to begin in 1763, at which point he can presumably afford to be more chill about MT? When he went ballistic on Wilhelmine, he was kind of in the *middle* of his wars. And then they made up, what, 1746? You're the one who knows their correspondence in detail, but I'm thinking it was right around the time he got to keep Silesia for reals and calmed down a bit.
Re: One woman, two pen pals
What I’d like to know: how come Fritz, renowned misogynist with a very very few exceptions, made another one of these for MT’s pen pal?
I'm less surprised: I feel like Fritz was pretty willing to make exceptions in general, especially in a musical and poetical context. None of which exceptions, of course, ever changed his opinion of the sex as a whole, or led him to treat women as equals, or, say, want them at Sanssouci. "Some of my best friends" etc., etc.
Incidentally, he also attributed some of the apparent inferiority of women to nurture rather than nature. He proposed giving them (at least the nobility) better education, so they had something to think about besides their appearance and pleasure-chasing, and he had some nice things to say about the potential of individual women to be at least as smart/talented as men, as well as the fact that the whole sex could be doing better if they weren't so neglected.
How can you be so close, and yet so far, Fritz? Oh, well.
As far as her being MT's pen pal, Fritz's correspondence with her seems to begin in 1763, at which point he can presumably afford to be more chill about MT? When he went ballistic on Wilhelmine, he was kind of in the *middle* of his wars. And then they made up, what, 1746? You're the one who knows their correspondence in detail, but I'm thinking it was right around the time he got to keep Silesia for reals and calmed down a bit.