Frederick the Great, discussion post 6

[cahn]

...I think we need another one (seriously, you guys, this is THE BEST) and I'd better make it now before I disappear into the wilds of music performance.

(also, as of this week there are two Frederician fics in the yuletide archive and eeeeeeeeeee)
(huh, only one of them is actually tagged with Frederick the Great even though two with Maria Theresia and Wilhelmine, eeeeeee this is awesome I CAN'T WAIT)

Frederick the Great masterpost

Comments

Re: Lehndorff: This is the end, my friend - I

[cahn]

he had gotten finally permission by Fritz to travel abroad - remember, Prussian nobles have to ask the King for this - and because she is so sick, he abandons this longed for goal and instead goes with her to a spa in the vain hope she might recover. When she dies, Heinrich proves their relationship isn't one sided as a friendship and is there for comfort, visiting, taking him to Rheinsberg and then on a trip to the Netherlands.

Wait, so does this mean he does get to go abroad, with Heinrich? I mean, sucks for Mrs. Lehndorff but at least he did get to travel abroad (and I do like that he cared for his wife <3 )

Elisabeth the former Messalina

Not gonna lie, I crack up every time you talk about Lehndorff thinking someone is MESSALINA

You know, Lehndorff, I rather doubt that. You go, Elisabeth.

:D AGREE! Go Elisabeth!

Re: Lehndorff: This is the end, my friend - I

[selenak]

I do like that he cared for his wife

So do I. I mean, I respect that the Editor had Hohenzollern priorities - so did I when excerpting - but whether or not Lehndorff is yet another neglectful/cold husband or whether he manages to build up a decent relationship does make a difference to who he is as a person. Mind you, in neither of his two marriages he goes into raptures about the wives as he does about Heinrich, and he seems to have done the standard noble thing for the day to look for a combination of right social class + money + good looks rather than fall in love spontanously. But he comes across as a decent husband, by and large, spending time with his wives not just for the purposes of getting an heir or otherwise because he must, and every time either of them gives birth he frets about them as well as the kids. Mind you, I do wonder, of course, what the first Mrs. Lehndorff thinks when being left with Cousin Katharina von Katte at Wust for a while when the court is evacuating - did she have a Rebecca like feeling about either the cousin or Heinrich or both? Or did she and Cousin K have a fond smiles type of conversation about Lehndorff that included his Heinrich crush? If so, we'll never know, for lack of documentation.

Speaking of documentation: something else I found in the digital part of the Bayrische Staatsbibliothek is a digital edition of Dieudonné Thiébault's book about his 20 years with Fritz. (Actually, they have several digital copies - of the French original, and of a first German translation.) cahn, Thiébault was the Frenchman told by Fritz not to learn German under any circumstances as to not to sully the purity of his French. He shows up in Prussia in the mid 1760s and had the job to correct Fritz' French for publication. So he never knew any of the characters described thus far when they were young. First part of the book is "Old Fritz: My Time with him", second part is "His family; one chapter each". (Family meaning those members he actually got to know, i.e. no Wilhelmine, obviously.) And in the chapter on EC, there is a description of Lehndorff, too, misspelled Lendorf, which is the reason why I got alerted to the existence of this copy, because Lehndorff's German wiki entry links it. It's somewhat snide:

Incidentally, Müller wasn't the only old chamberlain of the Queen's; she had another who'd gotten grey in her service, a Count Lendorf, a Prussian, a man of attractive looks, despite having a lame leg. By the way, Lendorf was such a terrible compliment maker that I nicknamed him "Le grand confiturier de la cour". He had a niece who was a lady-in-waiting with the Princess Amalie, a lady both pretty, amiable and spirited. Since she loved her uncle a lot, she didn't like him being referred to by such a nickname, but what to do? I pretended it had been a slip of the tongue on my part, asked her for forgiveness, pointed out to her that many others at the court could be called by similar nicknames and that it wasn't detrimental to her uncle's honor, that it was even a compliment of sorts, and thus finally managed to get her to laugh along.

...See, this is why I'm not surprised Lehndorff comes across as a bit touchy about people "too enamored by their own wit" (as he describes Algarotti) or classifies them as downright malicious (Marwitz). (Lehndorff mentions Thiébault in his diaries, but without any comments on his own impressions of him, just in entries like "M. Thiebault read a speech written by the King about the Sciences".)

Also, niece, I'm disapppointed, because Lehndorff is very fond of you in the diaries and got you this job with Amalie to begin with!

ETA: Forgot: yes, he got to travel abroad, and even was in Paris before Heinrich had the chance to go there. But they shared the Netherlands trip. Which, since Heinrich hadn't brought any boyfriends du jour along and thus Lehndorff basically had him all to himself, minus public occasions, was a highlight of Lehndorff's life (and a direly needed one, as this was after the death of first Mrs. Lehnsdorff and fourth (and until then, last) child. (Future Mrs. Lehnsdorff would have more children, but he couldn't know that.)

Re: Lehndorff: This is the end, my friend - I

[mildred_of_midgard]

Hey, if you have access to Thiébault, can you look something up for me? I have a citation from an unreliable source that reads: "Elisabeth [EC] later claimed to have had a miscarriage. See Thiébault, I, 194."

Is she covering for Fritz or was that marriage consummated or can we not tell? Or is this another case where you look up this ridiculous biographer's source and as usual, it does not say what he says it says? (I'm guessing "she got pregnant by someone else" is not one of the options. :P)

Re: Lehndorff: This is the end, my friend - I

[selenak]

I had read the EC chapter in German which does not feature a miscarriage (or claim of same). Just to be on the safe side, though, I looked up the page you name in the original French edition. It is here. Now my French may not be up to much, but as far as I can tell, there's no mention of a miscarriage there, either. The medical trouble under discussion are EC having ulcers on her foot. The point of the story is showing Fritz being concerned for her. (German equivalent page is here .

Incidentally, that entire chapter is basically: EC and Fritz, the Lightside Version. Thíebault is the source for the "he visited her every year for her birthday and dined with her out of uniform" story. His Fritz is always polite and considerate to her. (Now, given T. didn't come to the court until the mid 1760s, this might actually have been the case as things did get better for her in the last decade of his life.) His EC is an angel of charity, perfectly content with her life, never depressed or rambling. Mind you, the chapter about her mostly is about members of her court - the other chamberlain introduced on the page, Müller, is a chronic gambler, and Thiébault talks about him at length. The justification for this in the EC chapter is to illustrate her kindness as she doesn't fire Müller and provides him with a room and some servants after he's gambled everything away, but it still makes for three pages Müller followed by descriptions of her ladies in waiting and the short Lehndorff paragraph I translated above, and not much EC (beyond emphasizing she's the perfect mild-mannered modest and frugal Queen). (Considering when this was published - meant as reproach to Marie Antoinette, I wonder?)

Re: Lehndorff: This is the end, my friend - I

[mildred_of_midgard]

Now my French may not be up to much, but as far as I can tell, there's no mention of a miscarriage there, either.

So par for the course, in other words. *nod* Thanks. Every time I go to look one of this guy's sources up, I end up silently yelling at the screen/page, "I don't even speak [German/French] and *I* know that's not what it says!" It's amazing how wrong he can be about so many little things in 1999 or whatever.

Oh, you know, I wonder if he's confusing his Elisabeth-Christine-of-Brunswick-married-to-Hohenzollerns, since FW2's wife did have that miscarriage (which Wikipedia says was an abortion). That would be so unbelievably in character of him.

Re: Lehndorff: This is the end, my friend - I

[cahn]

Awwww, I do like that the niece didn't want to go along with him making fun of Lehndorff and only did so after he apparently spent a while convincing her that he meant well (whether he did or not, and it does sound like he was a bit more malicious than he convinced her of).

But yeah, I make fun of him a lot, but I also feel a bit weirdly protective of him! I get to make fun of him but I don't think Thiébault should :P

Anyway, I'm glad he got to travel abroad, and with Lehndorff <33