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: Voltaire memoirs I

[selenak]

Which is interesting, because Fritz and FW are like glass half empty/glass half full: do you want to emphasize the differences or the similarities? I think the picture is incomplete with only one.

Same here. Since Voltaire never knew FW, though, I‘m not surprised he didn‘t see it. (And that is a key difference to the Peter the Great/Alexeij constellation, or for that matter to the Hannover cousins with their own father-son dramas.)

Voltaire‘s take on the FW vs Wilhelmine scene: I think W nearly getting thrown out of the window is about as likely as FW being personally present at Küstrin to supervise Katte‘s execution, i.e. Voltaire‘s dramatic instincts get the better of him. Nonetheless, it must have been a harrowing scene and undoubtedly FW did hit her. (As mentioned in another comment, that‘s my guess as to what Heinrich means when mentioning the „ one particular bad memory“ from when he was four that reading Wilhelmine‘s memoirs brought up in him again, since in both her account and that Fritz gives to Catt it‘s mentioned the younger siblings were present, and even if little Heinrich probably saw oldest sister not every often and didn‘t have an actual relationship with her, it must have been frightening as hell to see FW scream and punch at her.

BUUUURRRRNNN. Love the Leibniz and Candide throwback, Voltaire.

Me too, and I‘m glad the English translator caught it and rendered it accordingly.

Re: „Frederic the Third“ - how he comes up with that one is beyond me. It‘s not even right if you count the Hohenzollern as Margraves instead of Kings - Grandpa F1 was F3 by Margrave counting, for example.

Incidentally, fast forward to the late 19th century, Bismarck founds a German Empire, of which the King of Prussia becomes the first emperor, and since he‘s a Wilhelm, that‘s no numeration problem - none of the Emperors of the Holy Roman Empire (which Napoleon had officially dissolved) had been called Wilhelm before, so he‘s officially Wilhelm I. But decades later, his son, the unfortunate liberal hope of Germany, Friedrich, who doesn‘t even rule for a year because he has (probably) throat cancer, finally makes it to the throne. Now, does he get counted as Friedrich IV, putting himself in the HRE tradition, because there had been three Friedrichs there? Or as Friedrich III, as by the count of Prussian kings, despite the fact F1 and F2 never were emperors? Doomed Friedrich the son-in-law of Queen Victoria wanted the former, but Prussia First ministers insisted on the later. So he became F3 and died before the year was over.

Fritz vs Emilie: definitely comes across as him seeing her as competition!

The snobbery re: Fredersdorff is typical. And probably due to the fact Fredersdorff did just forward his letters instead of rewarding Voltaire‘s grovelling by making good weather for him with Fritz.

Re: Voltaire memoirs I

[cahn]

So I am super enjoying in these discussions that I get two points of view on these things :D (And, of course, sometimes they agree but they are things that one person might have just not got around to saying :) ) -- in particular, here, I appreciate having your informed perspective that Voltaire was probably just over-dramatizing (which, once you say so, is obvious, and I'm sure that was obvious to mildred_of_midgard, but I don't know how to evaluate the historical sources well enough :) )

Re: Voltaire memoirs I

[mildred_of_midgard]

I don't know if it would have been obvious per se to me (other than FW being present), but his memoirs are so widely quoted that I had already read biographers calling him out on the Wilhelmine episode. Although, it might have been obvious after reading the whole thing and going..."You really have no idea about recent Prussian history, do you?" He gets the bare outlines correct, but the details are so wrong it's like a Frenchman showed up in Prussia for 2 years and tried to write about it from memory some number of years later. :-P I mean, Wilhelmine gets flak for detail, but there's a world of difference between the overdramatization and unreliability of her accounts and the unreliability and overdramatization of Voltaire's.

So I am super enjoying in these discussions that I get two points of view on these things :D (And, of course, sometimes they agree but they are things that one person might have just not got around to saying :) )

Multiple points of view on the Katte execution coming soon! (I'm fleshing out my textual criticism a little, including adding another source and making sure there's both the original French or German text and an English translation of each source, which should buy us some more time before I'm ready to post.)

Re: Voltaire memoirs I

[selenak]

I mean, Wilhelmine gets flak for detail, but there's a world of difference between the overdramatization and unreliability of her accounts and the unreliability and overdramatization of Voltaire's.

Quite. In this particular case, Wilhelmine‘s account is also backed up by one Guy Dickens, Englishman, who in the very week this happened wrote home to GB that FW had: dragged his oldest daughter by her hair across the room, punched her a couple of times with his fist in the face, on the breasts and in the stomach. (Then as mentioned in all accounts but Voltaire‘s SD‘s lady in waiting intervened successfully.) All this in full few of the younger siblings and the servants, whom Dickens had this story from. Since Dickens‘ letter was unavailable to Wilhelmine when writing her memoirs in Bayreuth, I assume the reason why her account and his account mention the same details is because that is what happened.

ETA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melchior_Guy_Dickens