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: The Bitter Years

[mildred_of_midgard]

FW sounds like a tough father, but nothing in the entries I've read so far reflects his awareness of just how much 1730 was the culmination of all previous things rather than a singular occurance.

Yeah, especially with Fritz talking him up more often than not, and Wilhelmine's memoirs not yet published...Lehndorff may have seen FW in 1730 primarily as ruthless king, not as abusive father. Especially, as you say, with what we'd consider parental abuse being so much more normalized in those days.

(Am looking forward to finding out what he writes about Küstrin.)

Not much. He goes to visit the city ruins, thinks they're very sad, observes the place where Katte was beheaded* and the window Fritz had to watch from, and talks to an officer who told him that he used to snuff out Fritz's candle at 8 pm by orders of the king, then take advantage of the fact that FW technically hadn't told him not to immediately relight it. I want to send this officer a thank-you note.

Anyway, any implicit criticism of FW's harshness seems to be written not only between the lines, but in invisible ink. "This is where Fritz had to watch his BFF get beheaded...you know, like ya do."

* Lehndorff missing his chance yet again! This information has been lost by Fontane's time, and he has to draw a layout of the place and enumerate about half a dozen possibilities and reason as to the most likely. Today, there's an information plaque at the fortress ruins saying that the exact site of the beheading, and whether it was in direct view of Fritz or not, was debated even in the 19th century.

Lehndorff! Look at your priorities!

Re city ruins: It's September 1762 in this entry, and the city was shelled by the Russians in 1758, thus presaging its fate of being burned down by the French in 1814, and shelled by the Russians in 1945, from which last it has never recovered and is a ghost town to this day. Per Wikipedia, the bricks from the fortress were used for rebuilding other Polish cities after the war, which seems like a good use and way more important than the morbid tourism of the interior of the fortress that I wish I could do.