cahn | Frederick the Great, discussion post 6

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...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

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From:

selenak

Difference between hitting puberty with FW as king and with Fritz as king?

Probably. I mean, Heinrich, his own wife aside, had no problem interacting with women socially and liked a good deal of them - his court in Rheinsberg always also had ladies in waiting, not just gents. So he could have at least played at romance, or experimented as a youth. Yet the only one reporting gossip linking him romantically/sexually with a lady is Lehndorff in that entry of the Countess starting her seduce-Heinrich campaign, and he's of course ultra alert to any Heinrich gossip, true or false. Otherwise no one seems to have believed he was getting it on with a woman. That is probably the result of Heinrich growing up at a court where he simply does not have to and where, on the contrary, the reigning monarch and his set are all about the ~~gay~~ manly bonding. (Which is of course why it comes as such a double shock, betrayal and complete surprise when Fritz insists Heinrich must marry. Not just to Heinrich. According to Ziebura, AW sent a "what even? We all know about Heinrich & women, just think of how the poor lady will be neglected!" letter to Wilhelmine who sent a somewhat cynical and snarky reply back along the lines of "as opposed to which other Hohenzollern wife, including your own?". Ziebura didn't quote the letters directly, though, she just paraphrased them, and ended the relevant passage with "AW had to admit her point".)

Fritz would definitely have approved of your use of the Tiergarten. Its lovely.

Re: Lehndorff, must report a bit of research of my own, hunting for a portrait. Which proved a bit tricky. Because the Lehndorff residence, where family portraits are kept, Steinort, is of course in East Prussia, today Poland. And there was one major upveal even before the Russians got there. Because a descendant, one Heinrich von Lehndorff, was directly involved in Operation Valkyrie as a key conspirator with Stauffenberg & Co. - Steinort is just 50 kilometres from Hitler's hq where the assassination attempt went own, too - and got executed for it, with his daughters and wife flung into prison for the remainder of the war.

Now, there are some paintings depicting our guy, but frustratingly, one one seems to be available online in colour. The rest is photographed in black and white. Like this one, depicting him with portaits of his parents (remember, dad died shortly after he was born, hence the old fashioned periwig):

Or this one, depicting him as a young man in the 1750s:

We do have a photo of a family portrait in colour, because it's a Tischbein (Tischbein = the fashionable painter of the late 18th & early 19th century) and in Berlin. This one actually got its own essay in a Tischbein exhibition, and shows him with his second family (2nd Mrs. Lehndorff, new kids, and favourite niece, aka the one Thiébault made the "grand confiturier du cour" crack to); he was in his later 50s then:

Double drawing with second Mrs. Lehndorff:

And here's a portrait of the first Mrs. Lehndorff, the one who died young as did her four children:

I also found out where the name "Ahasverus" came into the family. This was the fault of one Gerhard (Ahasverus) von Lehndorff, this guy, a passionate 17th century traveller (and writer of travel books) who got himself even involved with pirates once. He was actually renamed himself Ahasverus, not after Xerxes but according to his wiki entry after the eternal Jew. Being a fellow world traveller and all.

Edited Date: 2019-12-22 11:34 am (UTC)

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Oh, wow, this is amaaaazing! Really good research, and thanks for sharing the fruits. We've come a long way from "Lehndorff who?" thanks to you.

Per Wikipedia: "At least from the 17th century the name Ahasver has been given to the Wandering Jew, apparently adapted from Ahasuerus 'Xerxes,' the Persian king in the Book of Esther, who was not a Jew, and whose very name among medieval Jews was an exemplum of a fool. This name may have been chosen because the Book of Esther describes the Jews as a persecuted people, scattered across every province of Ahasuerus' vast empire, similar to the later Jewish diaspora in countries whose state and/or majority religions were forms of Christianity."

Did not know this!

Well, if our guy was named after a guy who chose his nickname after the Wandering Jew because he was wandering around getting involved with pirates, that's a cool origin story.

From:

cahn

I am finally coming around to say how awesome all these pictures are :D Yay for portrait detective work! Also for finding out where the Ahasverus came from. That makes a lot more sense than naming himself after Xerxes :P :)