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

[cahn]

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

Comments

FW and predestination

[selenak]

To quote from a biograpy ("Der erste Diener des Staates"), translation from Germain into English is mine:

"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

[mildred_of_midgard]

I'm glad the author agrees Fritz's predestination was an act of resistance and asserting his own identity. I think my surprise was because I expect Fritz to court danger out of sheer resistance like that, but not Wilhelmine. But, idk, maybe I'm just overestimating how much FW was willing to beat his kids up over it, because it's linked so inextricably in my head with Küstrin:

- 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

[selenak]

If it was his own deepest childhood fear they accidentally (?) tapped into, no wonder.

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

[mildred_of_midgard]

Minus the bit about beating up future G2--which I still haven't run across, to my dismay!--that's my impression too. Man, history is everyone having PTSD at each other. (And specifically, punching down.)

Re: FW and predestination

[selenak]

Bit about beating up future G2: it's in his German language wiki entry, though not in the English version, in the subsection "Am Hannoverschen Hof", and said wiki entry does provide footnotes as to the source of that particular story: Peter Baumgart: Friedrich Wilhelm I. (1713–1740). In: Frank-Lothar Kroll (Hrsg.): Preußens Herrscher. Von den ersten Hohenzollern bis Wilhelm II. 2., ergänzte und erweiterte Auflage. Verlag C.H. Beck, München 2009, S. 135.
Karl Eduard Vehse: Preussens Könige Privat. Berliner Hofgeschichten. Anaconda Verlag, Köln 2006, S. 57.

Re: FW and predestination

[cahn]

Ah, thank you. I have always thought (as someone who was not brought up Lutheran, but is sort of Lutheran-by-marriage) predestination can be dodgy in terms of practical implementation for how people regard it, leaving completely aside the theology, and it's interesting to see that play out in practice.

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

[mildred_of_midgard]

Fritz: I JUST WANT TO PLAY THE FLUTE DAD OKAY?? STOP HITTING ME :`(