Happy Fritzmas! (*) / Frederician discussion post 7

[cahn]

Frederician fandom is the best! 3 stories in main archive and 2 stories in Madness, eeeeeeee and I have only managed to read my own gifts so far (well, I guess Madness isn't open yet either, but even if it had been I wouldn't have managed to have read them) but they are so goooooood

Also, I would like to apologize on behalf of the fandom that none of us apparently managed any Fritz/Voltaire. Some of us, uh, didn't know enough about Voltaire, and we are Taking Steps to attempt to rectify this in the future if anyone requests it, say, next year. Just saying.

I'm making this post because the last one has an insane number of comments, but I still owe SO many comments on the last post and I kiiiinda would like to read and comment on Yuletide stories for the next week as time permits so I almost hope this post doesn't get much action and then we resume in the new year? (Especially since there is a limited amount of discussion we can do on the fics right now!) :D I was thinking of making another post anyway for reveals.

(*) My husband D came up with this :P :)

Comments

Glasow

[mildred_of_midgard]

I am ashamed to admit I've been misspelling "Glasow" as "Glosow" in many of my comments. I know why, it's because of how often the place-name Głogów cropped up in my map work, and then got stuck in my head. Anyway. Glasow.

Refresher on who Glasow is:

- Fritz's batman.
- Went with him to the Netherlands on the incognito trip.
- Lehndorff really wanted to go with Fritz on the Netherlands trip.
- Lehndorff said Fredersdorf retired because he was jealous of Glasow.
- We're not sure about Fredersdorf, but pretty sure Lehndorff is jealous of Glasow.
- Imprisoned for something, historians debate what.
- Maybe attempting to poison Fritz.
- Maybe unauthorized use of his seal.
- So basically another Marwitz or Trenck, possibly less exciting (but possibly very exciting if only we had more data).

Anyone who wanted to write crackfic that included Glasow, Marwitz, *and* Trenck would have a lot of material to work with. :P Lehndorff's head would explode from all the envy. "Why does he keep picking these charismatic bastards when he could have meeee?"

Attn Lehndorff: You have to make cow eyes at siblings *after* you start working for Fritz, not before.

Re: Glasow

[selenak]

Lehndorff: That's all fine advice, but what about those of us he never notices because they are working for his wife even before they fall for the most adorable of heroes THE Prince a sibling? I never would have used poison or stolen a seal or spied for the Austrians! And I may not have been able to be a batman through no fault of mine but that of a clumsy midwife, but I could be a reader! I love reading and discussing books! Heinrich and I read a lot of books together. His reading of CYRUS ALONE...I am fluent in French! Why the King keeps looking abroad for readers instead to his loyal subjects is beyond me. And now you must excuse me. I am meeting a friend at the opera. It is a good thing that I am a philosopher now, for he will probably bring along some tall, handsome and dastardly mannered creature as well.

Not Lehndorff: How long did Glasow stay imprisoned for whatever it was? And does Catt say anything about him?

Re: Glasow

[mildred_of_midgard]

Ah, Lehndorff! So consistent, so endearing. *hugs* It's true that Voltaire made his cow eyes before getting hired, but Voltaire is exceptional in many ways. You're no Voltaire, Lehndorff, in good ways or bad.

Glasow: All I have is this. No primary sources. "He was seized, judicially interrogated in the presence of the king, and dispatched the following day in chains to Spandau, where he was immured in a dungeon in solitary confinement, and in a short time after ended his days. It appeared so necessary to the king, to keep secret the names of all the persons connected with this crime, that he would not allow him even to be attended by a physician, in his last moments."

Um, hi, Trenck-lite? I guess Fritz does this from time to time. No mention of being chained to a wall or made to sit on his own gravestone, though.

I don't remember Catt mentioning him, but my memory is Swiss cheese for things I wasn't looking for when I read something. Will keep an eye out whenever I revisit Catt, now that Glasow is of interest to us. (That's how I've been picking out the Voltaire quotes. "Oh, yeah, Catt said that too!")

Re: Glasow

[selenak]

Unexpectedly, Voltaire, or rather, Pleschinski comes through for us, via footnote to a Fritz letter from the year 1757, one of the earliest post-fallout. Fritz - currently involved in a three front war he started - compares himself to "a decent citizen against whom Brinviilliers, Cartouches and the Prince of Darkness have conspired". Pleschinski's footnote points out that a) Brinvilliers = la Marquise the Brinvilliers, poisoner whose discovery kicked off the infamous Affaire des Poissons during the age of Louis XIV, and b) adds "in 1757, an attempt to poison Friedrich had failed; the party blamed was the Saxonian Resistance Circle around the Countess Brühl, who was accused to have bribed Friedrich's batman Glasow to poison his drinking chocolate".

(Brühl, male = Prime Minister of Saxony. Which Fritz had invaded and occupied as a preemptive strategy, thereby kicking off the war. The Countess was his wife, I guess.)

Re: Glasow

[mildred_of_midgard]

Interesting, thanks! My secondary sources indicate that the poisoning attempt is possible but not believed by everyone, i.e. may be gossipy sensationalism. I did wonder, when you translated the Münchow Jr. letter, if the poisoning attempt he was referring to was the one by Glasow, in which case we'd have external corroborating evidence. But Münchow is very vague, at least in the passage you gave.

Re: Glasow

[selenak]

Going back to Lehndorff brought Glasow results! Seems during my first quick reading, I must have skipped this Paragraph. 1757, 9 - 12th April:

Easter Holidays. One enters church and leaves it. One only talks of the Glasow matter. This fellow, the son of a soldier from the Brieger Garnison, had been hired as the King's batman a while ago. The King has overwhelmed him with kindness and even made him his valet, so he could come and go into the King's rooms whenever he wanted. The villain has now abused his gracious master's kindness by doing nothing but steal and rob, and even more, he's betrayed the King's secrets by making copies of all the writings he could get his hands on. There's even talk of him having tried to poison the King. At last, his villainy was uncovered by his servant, and he was caught red-handed. They found a lot of money and jewelry with him; rumor also has it he was the Countess Brühl's spy. This lady has been brought across the Polish border a few days after her arrest. There's also a rumor that Count Wackerbart has been arrested and has been brought to Küstrin. In short, we live in extrarordinary times.

I dare say. Now, Lehndorff obviously wasn't present at the arrest, nor is he in charge of the interrogation; he's simply reporting the stories making the rounds at court, and I suppose there's the possibiliity that Glasow was framed. At the same time, "being caught red handed" - auf frischer Tat ertappt - sounds like they caught him incriminating himself by doing some of the things he was accused of. And if he did steal, spy and try to poison Fritz, it would have definitely made the later conclude that it's not paranoia when they're really after you.

At the same time, since Lehndorff reports nothing of the sort about Fredersdorf - and I did run the name in a variation of spellings through the search machine, just to be sure I didn't miss an entry about Fredesdorf - , I'm even more sceptical that wiki is right about the grounds for his dismissal. If batman/valet Glasow the spy/thief/wannabe poisoner was a a sensation, the Prussian Pompadour being accused of embezzling would have easily topped that.

Re: Glasow

[mildred_of_midgard]

Funny timing! I had just finished hunting for Fredersdorf's dismissal in Preuss when I checked my email and saw your notification. In short, I found *nothing*. He says that Fredersdorf was one of the few to retain favor until the end of his life, and that he fell sick shortly before the Seven Years' War. I too am increasingly skeptical. Fredersdorf died on good terms with Fritz; that's my headcanon and I'm sticking to it!

While talking about Fredersdorf, Preuss talks about Fritz's relationships with his valets in general. One, he claims Fritz was verbally *and* physically abusive toward them. Sadly, I'm accumulating enough reports of Fritz being physically abusive that I believe it, and it seems the best one can say is that he was *less* physically abusive than FW.

Two, Preuss enumerates the valets/batmen/lackeys that got dismissed for stealing from Fritz. Glasow is mentioned, of course (in a "more on him later" kind of way), and so are a couple others. Including a Deesen, who was accused of stealing from Fritz, was ordered to become a drum-beater in the army as part of his punishment. Well, evidently he couldn't take the humiliation, and on July 23, 1775, shot himself at Sanssouci.

I can't find any more on this guy, but I was reminded of something you found in Burgdorf: "'The King's love could be deadly. Katte wasn't the only one who lost his life. A young officer, Gregorii, shot himself when Friedrich turned towards a new favourite.' Again, no footnote indicating where this story is from."

Well, I still have no footnote indicating where this story is from, but Preuss, in my experience, is pretty good about at least having sources (he's the one who compiled and published Fritz's correspondence, and his 4 volume bio of Fritz has 5 accompanying volumes of source material), so I wonder if Deesen's first name might be Gregorii, or if Burgdorf might otherwise be reporting the same story under a different name.

Also, "turned towards a new favourite" is completely different from "accused of stealing and dishonored," Burgdorf. Though I agree one might well be the cause of the other (in either direction).

Anyway, I'm going to ask our royal patron for the 9 volumes of Preuss and will get them uploaded. Not that I expect you to read them cover-to-cover! But you'll be able to look things up in them at will.

Re: Glasow

[selenak]

Given Burgdorf declared the Countess Orzelska a life Long platonic pen pal of Fritz (without any letters to show for it), declared any 19th and 20th century historians who were stating Fritz had some romantic interest in her, let alone sex, invented this entirely out of the blue, and stated Wilhelmine fancied Katte herself and was jealous Fritz got him without anything to back that up, either, it would be entirely in character for him to take the Deesen story and embellish it with added sex and dumping reasons.

Fredersdorf died on good terms with Fritz; that's my headcanon and I'm sticking to it!

Same here, until someone finally provides us with a direct credible citation as to where the embezzlement story comes from and why it was so successfully hushed up that one else seems to report on it. It wouldn't be the first wiki article to make a mistake, of course.

Re: Glasow

[mildred_of_midgard]

Agreed. The only offline source I've found so far who mentions Fredersdorf and embezzlement is MacDonogh, the notorious "source? what source?" biographer. In this case, no source given.

Re: Glasow

[cahn]

Fredersdorf died on good terms with Fritz; that's my headcanon and I'm sticking to it!

Same here, until someone finally provides us with a direct credible citation as to where the embezzlement story comes from and why it was so successfully hushed up that one else seems to report on it.

Me too!