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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
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
Re: Wilhelmine
But yeah, I seem to remember that my reading was that Wilhelmine kind of hit on it as a method to protest about the whole marriage thing to SD in a way SD and FW couldn't object to; I didn't get the impression she was super committed to it. And is SD really going to tell FW that Wilhelmine is using a method he might not approve of to get out of promising to adhere to a marriage he is totally against? (SD seems to undermine herself sometimes, so maybe? but I can see Wilhelmine taking that gamble.) But I should go back and look when I have time.
Sonsine swears that she reads a bit of the bible to Wilhelmine each morning right after breakfeast while Wilhelmine is doing womanly needlework with her ladies-in-waiting. This, err, is not quite how Wilhelmine describes her days to Fritz
I have a very good impression of Sonsine from the memoirs <3 Haha, I can imagine that Sonsine did that... for about five minutes. Then she can swear to it and Wilhelmine can go off and do her music and gardens. :D
FW and predestination
"The originally Lutheran princes electors of the House of Brandenburg had with Johann Sigismund's conversion in the year 1631 accepted the reformed faith." (I.e. Calvinism as opposed to Lutheran Protestantism.) "In that doctrine, FW, too had been raised. His teacher Rebeur" - why yes, FW had a French Huguenot teacher, are you suprised? He also had a French nurse and a French governess and actually learned German as a second language - "had terrorized the wild and hot tempered crown prince into obedience. Especially the teaching of predestination, being chosen by God, in wich the middle class self confidence of the Calvinists expressed itself had been Rebeur's main means of frightening his student. His adolescent experience, the deep life long fear not to be one of the Chosen Ones caused Friedrich Wilhelm to reject this particular doctrine which the German version of Calvinism had largely abandoned anyway by the time he'd reached his majority. In his state, predestination doctrine was actively fought. It was completely left out of his son's education plan.
For said son, however, it became a tool to fight his father's expectations. (...) If God predestined the path a person chose, thus Friedrich concluded from predestination, then God had also formed a man's character, so how could another man's will change this character? This claim to his individuality lay at the core of his acceptance of the predestination doctrine."
Re: FW and predestination
- FW has a chaplain standing by in the room while Katte's head is cut off, ready to bring Fritz back to the true faith (foiled by Fritz promptly fainting and becoming hysterical for 3 days).
- Much of the correspondence during the post-Katte rehabilitation period is months and months of FW going WHEN WILL HE GIVE IN ALREADY? on the subject of predestination.
- Rejecting it was one of the first things Fritz was required to do during that reconciliation with his father, in which he falls to his knees and agrees that his father is right about everything and he'll do anything his father wants forever and ever, just PLEASE let him out of Küstrin
so he can go back to sneaking around and doing and thinking whatever he wants.But maybe Wilhelmine didn't feel more unsafe than usual professing it in the lead-up to Küstrin, especially if she didn't do so to her father's face. I don't actually have any accounts of him beating either her or Fritz up over this doctrine specifically. Just being really, really opposed to it.
Re: FW and predestination
I mean, the impression I get is that it went thusly:
*Tiny terror FW beats up future G2, mouths back at M. Rebeur*
R: Good lord, that kid is a handful. How to deal? I know! Predestination! Now, your highness, little boys who are naughty just prove they weren't chosen by God and will go to hell. Let me tell you all about hell. *uses 1700 years of imagery to tap into*
FW *after a lot of nightmares*: That's awful. Screw you, and predestination, and anything French! That all sucks. In MY state, we're going to be good Christians without any of that. MY kids aren't going to learn anything about it.
Posterity: No, your kids are going to afraid of you instead.
Re: FW and predestination
Re: FW and predestination
Karl Eduard Vehse: Preussens Könige Privat. Berliner Hofgeschichten. Anaconda Verlag, Köln 2006, S. 57.
Re: FW and predestination
If God predestined the path a person chose, thus Friedrich concluded from predestination, then God had also formed a man's character, so how could another man's will change this character?
Hm. I don't know that I entirely agree with you (Fritz) logically speaking, although I see your overall point :P
Re: FW and predestination
Re: Wilhelmine
Same!
Haha, I can imagine that Sonsine did that... for about five minutes. Then she can swear to it and Wilhelmine can go off and do her music and gardens. :D
Agree! This is my impression of almost anyone who had anything to do with young Fritz.
FW: Make my wretched son do X!
Sane person: Yes, Your Majesty! Right away, Your Majesty!
Sane person: Okay, Fritz, he's gone. We will now proceed to observe the letter of what he said and do total violence to the spirit.
Fritz: I am coming through my upbringing with my personality basically intact, due to the vast amounts of outside validation telling me it's not me, it's Dad.
Re: Wilhelmine
Trufax: cutting one's hair was the rebellious anti older generation thing to do two generations later at least in the German speaking territories. See also: French Revolution. A shorter cut was cool, longer hair old fashioned and conservative. Heinrich Heine in his his great satiric poem Deutschland: Ein Wintermärchen makes fun of "Prussian tails" (of hair, he means).
Now granted,for female hair the French ancient regime fashion went to elaborate lengths, see also MA's legendary hairdos, but for men, I don't think so. Especially given that the periwig went out of fashion in FW's youth already.
Re: Wilhelmine
And as for the question of cutting--I *thought* soldiers had to have a long but narrow queue in the back but hair cut shorter in the front and on top (both to keep the queue narrow and to make the wig sit easier)? Certainly judging by the pictures I've seen, and my experience braiding my own hair when I had long hair, if you grow all your hair long and braid it, the result comes out approximately three times as thick as those pictures.
But I could be totally wrong about that. I do know FW objected to Fritz's hairstyle a lot, but I agree this particular anecdote seems rather unsubstantiated. It's in keeping with the theme of "spirit but not letter," though, of which there are numerous substantiated examples.
Re: Wilhelmine
Awww, did you wake up to 6,000 words of comments again? SORRY NOT SORRY. :P
Also, thaaaank you both for giving me a venue for pretty much the only thing my concentration will allow me to do these days: flip through works of non-fiction looking for specific things and then ramble about them. It is sanity-saving not to be bored out of my mind while on medical leave.
Re: Wilhelmine
But I am always so excited to hear all this great
gossipdiscussion :DMore illustrations - children paintings edition
Fritz and Wilhelmine
Fritz and his brothers (the order the boys are depicted in: Fritz, Ferdinand, AW, Heinrich).
Re: More illustrations - children paintings edition
Re: More illustrations - children paintings edition
#PolaroidMoment #18thCentury
Also, remember when Thronfolger FW doesn't want his family to fear him? And I quoted an anecdote about him beating up a Jew while shouting, "You should love me! Not fear me!"? A completely different bio says that FW's instructions to young Fritz's governors are still extant, and they contain, "You are to make him afraid of his mother, but of me, never." The biographer describes this as "curious."
Fear--I don't think it works how you think it works, FW.
Re: More illustrations - children paintings edition
I can't decide whether to laugh or cry at this. FW, trying to play good cop and bad cop, and just failing miserably!