t just has to be *his* idea; you can't force it on him
This reminds me of Ziebura's speculation re: how Fritz thought the whole AW saga would play out - obviously not with AW' s early death. Ziebura thinks that consiidering his personality and the precedent of his estrangement pus reconcililiation with Wilhelmine, not to mention the precedent of his own experience with FW, Fritz expected AW to make eventually a complete submission, i.e. a "you were right, I was wrong, it was all my fault, please forgive me!" and that if AW had done that, Fritz would have played the generous older brother and reinstalled AW in his favor again. But a) AW had his own inner stubborn Hohenzollern, b) his own experience with FW had in no way prepared him for complete submission, because it had never been required, c) otoh FW had conditioned him to regard military honor as the highest of masculine values, and Fritz had just completely destroyed that for AW, and c) Wilhelmine had been selective in her "you were right, I was wrong" submission - she said that about Marwitz (female) and Marwitz only, not about all the other reasons for their estrangement, plus as a woman she'd been socialized differently, she knew you could come back from having submitted and admitted fault.
So, massive miscalculation on Fritz' part. And while AW's death had a medical cause, all the descriptions of it are clear on the fact that it was a massive struggle with Amalie because she wanted him to live and he wanted to die, so it was argument after argument to make him allow doctors in at all, him kicking them out again, Amalie begging and shouting at him to at least try this and that remedy and let them see him again, etc. So: he probably wouldn't have shot himself (aka the thing FW thought was the right thing to do when your father/brother has told all and sunder he thinks you are a dishonorable fuck up) , but he clearly did want to die and took the opportunity once it arose. (That the subsequent pathology report showed blood in the brain, which meant all those remedies wouldn't have helped, was another matter - none of them knew that during those last terrible days.)
Re: Lehndorff: The Bitter Years
t just has to be *his* idea; you can't force it on him
This reminds me of Ziebura's speculation re: how Fritz thought the whole AW saga would play out - obviously not with AW' s early death. Ziebura thinks that consiidering his personality and the precedent of his estrangement pus reconcililiation with Wilhelmine, not to mention the precedent of his own experience with FW, Fritz expected AW to make eventually a complete submission, i.e. a "you were right, I was wrong, it was all my fault, please forgive me!" and that if AW had done that, Fritz would have played the generous older brother and reinstalled AW in his favor again. But a) AW had his own inner stubborn Hohenzollern, b) his own experience with FW had in no way prepared him for complete submission, because it had never been required, c) otoh FW had conditioned him to regard military honor as the highest of masculine values, and Fritz had just completely destroyed that for AW, and c) Wilhelmine had been selective in her "you were right, I was wrong" submission - she said that about Marwitz (female) and Marwitz only, not about all the other reasons for their estrangement, plus as a woman she'd been socialized differently, she knew you could come back from having submitted and admitted fault.
So, massive miscalculation on Fritz' part. And while AW's death had a medical cause, all the descriptions of it are clear on the fact that it was a massive struggle with Amalie because she wanted him to live and he wanted to die, so it was argument after argument to make him allow doctors in at all, him kicking them out again, Amalie begging and shouting at him to at least try this and that remedy and let them see him again, etc. So: he probably wouldn't have shot himself (aka the thing FW thought was the right thing to do when your father/brother has told all and sunder he thinks you are a dishonorable fuck up) , but he clearly did want to die and took the opportunity once it arose. (That the subsequent pathology report showed blood in the brain, which meant all those remedies wouldn't have helped, was another matter - none of them knew that during those last terrible days.)