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cahnIn the last several months, as anyone who reads this DW knows, mildred_of_midgard and selenak and I have been part of this quite frankly amazing Frederick the Great fandom, and I sort of assumed that the two people in this fandom who actually knew anything, mildred and selenak, were going to write fics for Yuletide, and I (who know nothing except what they've told me in the last several months) was going to awesomely enjoy reading them. In fact, mildred wrote a Fredersdorf fic for selenak's prompt which I betaed, but then mildred's medical issues got bad enough to interfere with her writing fic (making the beta edits would have involved a substantial amount of rewrite), and she wrote a post lamenting she wasn't going to be able to produce any yuletide fic. Meanwhile, I had two fics that I was pretty sure were from selenak, and I thought it would be a shame for her to write us fic and for her not to get any :(
So then mildred and I had this (very paraphrased) conversation (mildred_of_midgard has her own account here, and she has promised to reproduce the actual conversation in comments to this post):
me: You know, we should really write something for selenak! Now that I've read what you wrote about Fredersdorf, I think I could take a stab at her Fredersdorf prompt, if you edited and otherwise helped me out with historical stuff and also if you don't mind it being way more about music than something you would write.
mildred: YES GOD YESand also oh you sweet summer child thinking you know enough to write this. [Mildred was far FAR nicer than this in real life.] For starters, here are 3500 words [really!] of things I know for a fact you don't know about Fredersdorf.
me: ...I was clearly overoptimistic. But I can work with this. Um, also, all the creativity-generating bits of my brain are already being used for my assignment, so can you also come up with an idea for the fic and also answer all my historical questions?
mildred: Sure! While I'm thinking about this, have 2k more words of historical grounding! Ok, and here are some ideas too. In fact, here's a whole plot for you!
me: Great! *writes 4k words of the plot*
mildred and me, more-or-less in unison: You did all the hard parts!
Then mildred fixed all my extensive historical errors and was fortunately able in between various medical woes to add various parts like the entire Wilhelmine subtheme and the entire last scene, and we deleted some of my words, and then I wrote some more paragraphs about music at her request and edited some of her stuff. I estimate that I probably ended up writing ~4.5k of the final fic, and mildred ended up writing ~ 2k of it (does that sound about right?) Of course that does not count the... I have no idea how much historical consultantcy stuff mildred ended up writing in the end, but I imagine it was significantly upwards of 10k :P And of course she wrote the detailed endnotes :D It also does not count all the words written in comments to the google document where we argued things like that Fredersdorf should be more zen than mildred wanted to write him and less zen than I wanted to write him :)
Although mildred and I mostly agreed on things, I had final veto power (and I did wield it a couple of times), so any remaining problems should be thought of as mine :) I'm very curious, though, as to how evident the collaboration was, and how evident the seams were, as I think mildred and I have very different writing styles, but it went through enough editing passes and discussion that I suspect much of the differences got at least somewhat smoothed out?
Counterpoint for Two Flutes
mildred_of_midgard and selenak and I have been part of this quite frankly amazing Frederick the Great fandom, and I sort of assumed that the two people in this fandom who actually knew anything, mildred and selenak, were going to write fics for Yuletide, and I (who know nothing except what they've told me in the last several months) was going to awesomely enjoy reading them. In fact, mildred wrote a Fredersdorf fic for selenak's prompt which I betaed, but then mildred's medical issues got bad enough to interfere with her writing fic (making the beta edits would have involved a substantial amount of rewrite), and she wrote a post lamenting she wasn't going to be able to produce any yuletide fic. Meanwhile, I had two fics that I was pretty sure were from selenak, and I thought it would be a shame for her to write us fic and for her not to get any :(So then mildred and I had this (very paraphrased) conversation (
mildred_of_midgard has her own account here, and she has promised to reproduce the actual conversation in comments to this post):me: You know, we should really write something for selenak! Now that I've read what you wrote about Fredersdorf, I think I could take a stab at her Fredersdorf prompt, if you edited and otherwise helped me out with historical stuff and also if you don't mind it being way more about music than something you would write.
mildred: YES GOD YES
me: ...I was clearly overoptimistic. But I can work with this. Um, also, all the creativity-generating bits of my brain are already being used for my assignment, so can you also come up with an idea for the fic and also answer all my historical questions?
mildred: Sure! While I'm thinking about this, have 2k more words of historical grounding! Ok, and here are some ideas too. In fact, here's a whole plot for you!
me: Great! *writes 4k words of the plot*
mildred and me, more-or-less in unison: You did all the hard parts!
Then mildred fixed all my extensive historical errors and was fortunately able in between various medical woes to add various parts like the entire Wilhelmine subtheme and the entire last scene, and we deleted some of my words, and then I wrote some more paragraphs about music at her request and edited some of her stuff. I estimate that I probably ended up writing ~4.5k of the final fic, and mildred ended up writing ~ 2k of it (does that sound about right?) Of course that does not count the... I have no idea how much historical consultantcy stuff mildred ended up writing in the end, but I imagine it was significantly upwards of 10k :P And of course she wrote the detailed endnotes :D It also does not count all the words written in comments to the google document where we argued things like that Fredersdorf should be more zen than mildred wanted to write him and less zen than I wanted to write him :)
Although mildred and I mostly agreed on things, I had final veto power (and I did wield it a couple of times), so any remaining problems should be thought of as mine :) I'm very curious, though, as to how evident the collaboration was, and how evident the seams were, as I think mildred and I have very different writing styles, but it went through enough editing passes and discussion that I suspect much of the differences got at least somewhat smoothed out?
Counterpoint for Two Flutes
Collaboration
Date: 2020-01-01 04:10 pm (UTC)Meanwhile, I had two fics that I was pretty sure were from selenak, and I thought it would be a shame for her to write us fic and for her not to get any :(
I know, I really wanted to write her something! And now I know that the confusion over me having a gift/not having a gift was because one of the 2 big ones she wrote was supposed to be for me (probably the Katte lives one?), but then I wasn't signed up so I couldn't have a gift in the Main collection. (And then she went and wrote me a Madness treat, omg.) So I'm extra glad you decided to ask me if we could do the thing I'd secretly been wanting to do. :D
mind it being way more about music than something you would write.
Mind? MIND?!! I had spent the entire month of November telling myself that it would be completely unreasonable of me to ask you to write the hard parts of my fic for me--especially what with you having a family and a job and an actual Yuletide assignment--because I desperately wanted there to be more and better music than I was qualified to write! When I got your email, it was like the universe was looking out for me. "Here," says the universe, "I'll hold your hand."
and also oh you sweet summer child thinking you know enough to write this.
LOLOL, that was *your* reaction to me info-dumping a gazillion words at you; I never thought that! I wouldn't let you write a historical biography of him and market it as nonfiction, but I wouldn't let me do that yet either. :P I always believed you totally had this and you were gonna do great as long as you had a fact-checker, and I was just giving you data so you could pick and choose from, and hopefully get some inspiration. I am a big believer in creative license with historical fiction, anyway.
mildred and me, more-or-less in unison: You did all the hard parts!
Hahaha, look, any time you want info-dumping and plotting, I've got unlimited amounts of that in my brain! Writing scenes that people want to read is the hard part. :P
I estimate that I probably ended up writing ~4.5k of the final fic, and mildred ended up writing ~ 2k of it (does that sound about right?)
Yes, I added up the large chunks I wrote after we posted (of course I did :P), and mine came to about 1.8k, so yours would have been about 4.6k. I imagine the sentences and paragraphs I contributed to your chunks and the ones you contributed to my chunks about even out.
My chunks: Hille cutting their session off, the letter smuggling scene, Fredersdorf fretting over inadvertently implying that Fritz should move on and forget about Katte (lol, this was me making him less zen), and the second half of the last scene, i.e. after the coat.
Oh, about Hille: a tiny amount of creative license was used, in that in late 1730, he was impatient with Fritz and his music and poetry, but seems to have warmed up to him at least a little bit by a year later. I'm not 100% sure he would have come down that hard on him in November 1731, but I still wanted to include it to show what Fritz had to put up with during his stay at Küstrin. And I'm not 100% sure it's wrong, either. (This was way too nitpicky to put into an author's note, even for me. ;) )
I have no idea how much historical consultantcy stuff mildred ended up writing in the end, but I imagine it was significantly upwards of 10k :P
What I'm about to post comes to about 19k, so yeah. :P
It also does not count all the words written in comments to the google document
Yeah, I feel like there were another 5-10k in there, plus later emails that don't really make sense without the working draft as context, so I'm not going to post them.
where we argued things like that Fredersdorf should be more zen than mildred wanted to write him and less zen than I wanted to write him :)
Hahaha, yeah, I still think it's hilarious we could produce like a thousand words of text with no substantial discussion, and had thousands of words of discussion around "his heart pounding." :P
so any remaining problems should be thought of as mine :)
I was planning on saying the opposite on this post! Namely, that you can't possibly be held accountable for any historical errors, seeing as how all your history came from me. So I take full responsibility for those, and my brain weasels are still whispering at me that I missed a huge and obvious one that
I also think it's totally hilarious that you came up with a workaround for making the flute solos available in November 1731 instead of 1732.
she has promised to reproduce the actual conversation in comments to this post)
Yes. Yes, I will. :) Everyone prepare for inbox flooding!
Re: Collaboration
Date: 2020-01-03 06:07 am (UTC)Ha! I didn't mean to take blame for any history errors -- I will happily put all of that on you! :) -- but more any writing oddities :)
And hee, yes, you were far too kind to think something like "you sweet summer child," but that was definitely how I felt about myself, lol.
I also think it's totally hilarious that you came up with a workaround for making the flute solos available in November 1731 instead of 1732.
Lol, I am very protective of my flute solos!
Re: Collaboration
Date: 2020-01-04 07:40 am (UTC)Okay, writing oddities can be yours, history errors can be mine. :D
I do feel that our writing styles are fairly similar, I mean considered within the set of all writing styles I've seen on AO3, but there are definite differences, and I would have done a lot more prose tinkering if I hadn't been considering it primarily your fic, so yes.
Re the flute, when we were writing the fic, I was operating from a biography that said that Fritz started playing around the age of 16, meaning he had only been playing for a couple years before he was locked up, and we know he didn't get much opportunity to practice during those couple years (see also: Katte and Quantz hiding in a closet). I have since encountered a statement in a different biography that he started playing the flute as a small child, but only started getting lessons from Quantz around age 16/17. So he would definitely have been almost a year and a half out of practice when he met Fredersdorf in our fic either way, but how proficient he was before getting locked up, I actually don't know.
everything specifically about flute was basically me googling about it
Still way ahead of me!
Re: Collaboration
Date: 2020-01-06 05:23 am (UTC)Yeah, I feel like I know enough about music that I knew the questions to ask even if I didn't know that much about flute specifically, you know? There's a threshold at which one just doesn't even know what to ask to get useful google answers (see: me and Frederick the Great before the last several months :P :) )
Happy Fritzmas
Date: 2020-01-01 04:14 pm (UTC)Oh, and also, I forgot to wish everyone a (belated) happy Fritzmas! You both made my Fritzmas a sheer delight. <333
The emails
Date: 2020-01-01 04:21 pm (UTC)Sent: Dec 1
Soooo.... I've been putting off this email for a while because my actual yuletide assignment has been making me panicky, but I *think* I'm seeing the end of it (I am not actually AT the end, but now I can at least see the end visible and have hope that I will get there by the deadline)
I feel like we should give selenak something for yuletide! I thought that (again if I have time) maybe given now that I know a little more about your take on Fredersdorf, I'd be able to write something, probably kind of short (and with a lot of flute-playing, probably), and then have you edit/rewrite the heck out of it. I suspect even in your current medical state you'd be able to edit and rewrite and fix historical errors :P
Or we could presumably do the reverse to your fic (I could mess with it and then you could edit my edits) but I suspect you'd prefer to keep it until you can look at it again yourself :)
:)
Re: The emails
Date: 2020-01-01 04:25 pm (UTC)Sent: Dec 1
[Part 1 of this email--it exceeds DW comment character limits]
Omg, you are an amazing person, and I would *love* to try to help you produce something for selenak! Also, I am delighted and impressed that you've gotten so quickly to the point of feeling like you could take on a fic at all, even with a historical consultant. Go you! :D Also, your actual YT fic is going to be great, I totally believe in you! *cheers*
I have to admit, I've been thinking that if I had someone to write the musical parts, my Fredersdorf fic would be a million times better, and I've been wishing you and I could co-author something for her. I have mixed feelings about the prospect of you editing my fic directly--I would love the idea if I were in any state to be more of an active partner, but I'm not, and I'm so unhappy with that fic I want to shred it and start over. On top of all the things we've discussed about it, I'm also getting increasingly uncomfortable with some of the chronological liberties.
But if you wanted to cannibalize that fic and/or use it for a jumping-off point, without actually modifying the file itself, I'd be totally happy with that, and actually delighted if it ended up being able to provide anything that was of use to you. If I ever do manage to go back to writing Fritz/Fredersdorf hurt/comfort, I'm pretty sure my next attempt will be almost unrecognizable in terms of the draft I showed you, given the number of changes I want to make. So whatever you wanted to take from it is not going to conflict with my future work on the subject, and therefore you're welcome to it.
At any rate, whatever you choose to do, if you end up having time, or if you decide to write a fic even after Yuletide, I'm happy to provide as much help as my brain currently allows me to. Anything you come up with will be wonderful simply by dint of having actual music in it!
As a starting point, here are some facts about the chronology of Fritz at Küstrin and about Fredersdorf, that you can use or ignore at will. I will be the last person to say that a fic needs to be perfectly historically accurate--fiction needs come first--but having the background may inspire you or at least help you feel more confident writing a fic on the subject. Which, again, go you!
[ETA: Oh, god, this got long. How did that happen? :P It's going to take you longer to read this than to write your own fic. Anyway, here is a reference work, thoroughly salted with my opinions, which you can consult at will. Ahem.]
Chronology of Fritz at Küstrin
August 5 is the failed escape attempt.
Late August or early September (I'd have to check, and I'm tired) is when he arrives at Küstrin.
November 6, 1730 is when Katte is killed.
Late November 1730 (I've seen different dates) is when Fritz is pardoned and released from the fortress. My having Fredersdorf visit him in the fortress in 1731 was the biggest of the liberties, and the one that I'm second-guessing. As fiction, it's more dramatic, but for someone who knows the history, I don't know how much it breaks the suspension of disbelief.
We don't know when or how Fritz and Fredersdorf first met, and we don't know when Fredersdorf started visiting regularly. We don't know to what extent FW was aware of these visits. Sometime in 1731 is everyone's best guess, but early 1731 or late 1731, no one is quite sure.
After November 1730, Fritz is kept in "prison" in the town of Küstrin, under strict supervision with people standing over him every minute of the day enforcing FW's very strict regimen for his rehabilitation. But it's a proper house/apartment which he gets to furnish (within reason/frugality) pretty early on, not a prison per se. (A prison by any other name...)
He's no longer in solitary confinement, but has a servant who sleeps at the foot of his bed (almost certainly not Fredersdorf). He's allowed very limited visitors, who are only allowed to speak in German, on very specific topics like economics (only German economics--no foreign countries), manufacture, etc. NO FRENCH. No literature, no music (at least at first). No women, obviously. (Um, FW, you may be barking up the wrong tree here.)
Huge amounts of religious instruction. They are still trying to beat predestination out of his head. Calvinists across Europe are starting to see the young Crown Prince as a martyr, because he refuses to give up his belief, even in prison and under duress. (LOLOLOL) They start writing him fan mail, and FW gets worried about a Calvinist plot to put Fritz on the throne. This, plus our DW convo on the subject, is the context for Fritz's "The only reason I still believe in predestination is to give my father's minions something to talk about. I'd rather have an argument than a sermon," in the draft of my fic that you read.
Contact with the outside world is limited to two letters every three months, from his immediate family. He was smuggling letters to and from Wilhelmine like crazy, and Fredersdorf is suspected by historians of helping. Before Katte's death, Fritz managed to smuggle out at least one letter in invisible ink (using lemon juice) to Wilhelmine.
Candles are limited, for frugality's sake and because he's not supposed to stay up late reading anyway. One lovely anecdote that I left out of my fic, was that this guy visited him, and even stayed the night. When a soldier who was in charge of Fritz came to extinguish his candle at night (I've seen 7 pm and 9 pm given), as per the king's orders, Fouqué supposedly said, "Very good, you followed orders with respect to the Prince's candle. But the King has nothing to say about my candles," and then lit a couple of his own candles, for Fritz to use. He and Fritz were pretty close, and you'll see his name on my emotional isolation chronology. (Carlyle also mentions reports that the guys who would extinguish Fritz's candles would blow them out, as per orders, and then immediately relight them, because Fritz's entire childhood is full of anecdotes of people following the letter but not the spirit of FW's orders.)
Totally against orders, Fritz is writing reams of illicit sarcastic verse in French, because he's at least as into poetry as he is into music.
My tidbit about Fritz not being allowed to bundle up: I do not have any evidence that this was a condition of the Küstrin rehabilitation regimen, but, it was something FW notoriously did to Fritz as late as 1728, and we know that in August 1731, Fritz's clothes were shabby, so I took a bit of a liberty there that I think is fair for fiction.
He does not appear to have been starved or beaten after being released from the fortress in November 1730. People are apparently sneaking him food, and his jailers are looking the other way.
Even so, the regimen is severe enough that Fritz's governors ask for permission to lighten it before he loses his mind. It gradually gets better.
Around April he gets permission for letters outside the immediate family.
April is also when Fritz proposes the whole marriage to an Austrian Archduchess project that has everyone WTFing. (How's that for your martyr, Calvinists?)
In May, he gets his first letter from FW, and in August, FW visits him. This is the big reconciliation. Fritz throws himself at his father's feet (literally) and starts kissing his feet and crying, renounces predestination, admits that he seduced/corrupted (you've seen the ambiguity in the German word) Katte and not the other way around, and so on. FW is rather more lenient than Fritz expected, once he's had a chance to berate him and give him that speech about how he would have locked SD and Wilhelmine in deep, dark dungeons for life if Fritz had made it to England.
Fritz comes out of this encounter in shock, going, "OMG, my father's not that bad! He used to beat me for trifles, and then he comes to visit me in prison after my escape attempt and I'm expecting the worst, and he's like, 'Don't do it again.' Maybe he loves me after all." (FW's attempt to play both good cop and bad cop finally pays off, after threatening to kill his son, making him watch Katte die, enforcing a rehabilitation regimen on Fritz that probably would have broken him if people hadn't been willing to mitigate it, and then summing it all up with, "Don't do it again." The unexpected relief I think messes with Fritz's mind.)
After August, Fritz gets a lighter regimen and is allowed to go boating or hunting (we all know he hates hunting with a passion, but at least it's not the same old, same old prison walls). Still no females, and his servant has to sleep with him at all times. (I know nothing about this servant except that, with FW's luck, he was probably hand-picked by FW to be extremely gay. :P)
At the end of August, Fritz gets a brief visit to Berlin to see Wilhelmine before she's married off in November. His regiment has been given to younger brother AW (now 9 years old), and his room in the palace has been emptied of all his stuff, his books and papers burned, and redecorated in FW's taste. Then he promptly gets shipped back to Küstrin for more rehabilitation.
August or September is also apparently when Fouqué got to pay that visit and light some candles.
On February 26, 1732, Fritz is finally released from Küstrin, having agreed to marry EC. He's never met her, but hasn't heard much that he likes about her, and he's not happy. Then he gets a regiment at Ruppin, where he gets to try to kidnap tall shepherds for Dad. He gets Fredersdorf released from the army to come be his valet. He's just turned twenty.
He may or may not have met Fredersdorf until December of 1731. I personally put it earlier in the year for fic's sake, because that's when all the juicy stuff is happening. (Although the marriage negotiations with EC are in full force starting in November, so if you want Fritz ranting and threatening to commit suicide rather than marry her when he meets Fredersdorf, now's the time.)
On Fredersdorf
Background
Fredersdorf is three years older than Fritz, a commoner, and the son of an army musician from a peasant family. He plays the oboe in the regiment at a town not far from Küstrin. Fritz somehow gets permission for him to come visit him and play the flute for him while he's in prison, then gets to keep him as valet. Fredersdorf was apparently extremely good at the flute, good enough to be able to accompany Quantz in later years at Fritz's court.
We know Fritz was super classist in the same way he was super misogynist, and that he made exceptions for non-nobles the same way he made exceptions for women. He was actually weirdly inconsistent, being a freemason and professing belief in equality and brotherhood of men across class lines, but increasingly autocratic as he got older and more embedded in absolute power, and always prone to spouting off classist remarks. There may be even fewer non-classists in the 18th century than non-misogynists--he did not invent classism. But it's worth knowing that he's making an exception for Fredersdorf not only in that Fredersdorf only speaks German, but in general that he's lower class (these facts are related, of course--well-educated members of the upper class spoke French).
It's debated whether Fritz ennobled Fredersdorf. That's how little we know about Fredersdorf. But we do know he gave him that estate at Zernikow that Fontane visited, and that has been described as a huge exception on Fritz's part, even more than giving him a title would be, because he was otherwise absolutely opposed to non-nobles getting their hands on noble property.
Responsibilities
Once Fritz becomes king, Fredersdorf is officially promoted to chamberlain, but unofficially his job is best described as "just do everything." He controls the palace, the treasury, the secret service, who gets an audience with Fritz and who doesn't, what official paperwork makes it through to Fritz and what doesn't, everything. Now, the way Fritz micromanages his kingdom is by never meeting with any officials. They write reports, they submit the reports to him, he reads them and notes his decisions in the margin, and sends them back. Almost nobody gets to talk to him. Except Fredersdorf. Fredersdorf gets to filter which reports make it onto his desk. Then he gets to sit down with Fritz in the wee hours of the morning, when everyone else is asleep, and go over the reports with him. That is an immense amount of power to have in, not just an absolute monarchy (France is an absolute monarchy, where, as you know, Louis does very little), but an absolute monarchy micromanaged by one person. That is an immense amount of trust from Fritz. In the hands of an uneducated (or not Classically educated, anyway), German-speaking, commoner.
Digression: The other biggest exception to not getting to meet with Fritz is, of course, Eichel. Eichel we know almost nothing about except that he's an even bigger workaholic than Fritz. Fritz likes to attend concerts, read books, play the flute, have long dinners with friends like Algarotti and Voltaire. Eichel just wakes up earlier than Fritz, does paperwork all day, takes a nap in the evening, resumes doing paperwork until bedtime. He sits in a room in the palace and nobody except Fritz sees him for months or years at a time. Dies unmarried and fantastically rich (we're not sure how, because Fritz sure didn't pay that well).
Fredersdorf, in contrast, has a life outside of work. He's also a workaholic, but like Fritz, he has a greater range of interests. You saw the report from Fontane that selenak posted; I won't repeat it. I'll just elaborate that alchemy ends up being one of his interests, and his correspondence with Fritz reveals that he would try to talk Fritz into get-rich-quick deals that Fritz occasionally went along with and then regretted.
And as I've discussed recently in our chats, secondary sources keep telling me Fredersdorf was found guilty of small-scale embezzlement and dismissed dishonorably in 1757. While on the one hand, Fritz was known for scapegoating the innocent, on the other, if it's true, it doesn't seem inconsistent with Fredersdorf's apparent lifelong obsession with money. Plus Fredersdorf might well have justified it to himself on the grounds of his salary not being equal to the amount of work he was putting in (a totally typical situation with Fritz, who later saw a lot of his best people poached by Catherine the Great). I am still trying to look into this; the primary sources I've found so far say that Fredersdorf stepped down voluntarily, but they wouldn't necessarily have been privy to all the details.
Re: The emails
Date: 2020-01-01 04:26 pm (UTC)Sent: Dec 1
[Part 2 of this email--it exceeds DW comment character limits]
You know something? As I write all this, it occurs to me that I went on that spiel to you about how Fritz trusting Fredersdorf and getting close to him was not as exceptional as it's sometimes made out to be. He had that long list of people he loved and was quite clingy with, and whom he trusted, even if he was prone to quarreling and becoming estranged from them. And I think that's a fundamentally correct assessment. But in addition to the class and language differences that make Fredersdorf an exception...Fritz trusted him *politically*. It seems to me that that's the real exception here. The very first thing Fritz did on accession was pay his mother lots of honors, give her a bigger budget and more importance than the queen (which was unusual), tell her that she should never address him as "Your Majesty," because being her son was much more important to him, and the words "my son" were music to his ears...and make sure she was far, far away from the center of power, so that she could have absolutely no political influence at all. He dedicated his entire life to making sure no one could influence him politically, and kept his personal life and political life wholly separate. Only Fredersdorf that I can think of straddles the two spheres so thoroughly. And that is truly astounding.
I'm inclined to think that Fredersdorf being lower class actually had something to do with it. I think it made him much less of a potential threat than someone like AW, who could easily get a party behind him if given the chance. (I'm convinced Fritz's refusal to ever train an heir or let his heir even know what was going on was paranoia about putting anyone in a position to make a power grab.) Fredersdorf was wholly dependent on Fritz for whatever power he had. But while that accounts for Fritz's lack of paranoia, it doesn't account for the positive trust. Something made Fredersdorf special in that regard. And Fredersdorf being so special is why we all want fic. <3
Voltaire
If you want a snarky quote that's almost certainly from from Voltaire, when he visited Fritz's court, he wrote:
There is a chancellor, who never speaks, a master of the hunt who wouldn’t dare harm a quail, a grand master who does nothing, a steward who would he hard pressed to tell you whether there is any wine in the cellars, a grand equerry who hasn’t the power to have a horse saddled, a chamberlain, who has never handed him a shirt, a grand master of the wardrobe, who doesn’t know the identity of the court tailor; the functions of all these high-faluting offices are exercised by one man, who is called Fredersdorf.
He was mocking the fact that Fritz had the least elaborate court in Europe (and Voltaire was coming from Versailles), but also calling attention to the fact that Fredersdorf had all the jobs.
Personality
There's too little data on Fredersdorf to get a real direct read on his personality--outside reports are mostly people, like Voltaire, jealous of his influence with Fritz, and he doesn't seem to have let the usual suspects get to know him very well. We know he was musical, hyper-competent, a workaholic, and evidently fairly reserved. He didn't have a fancy education--never even spoke French--but he must have immediately hit it off somehow with Fritz, both because Fritz was largely a man of first impressions, and because they didn't have a lot of time to gradually get to know each other. Evidently, they met, and next thing you know, Fritz is requesting his repeated presence. I'm guessing music must have had a lot to do with that--I'm not actually clear on the timeline of when Fritz started getting music back in his life, either with FW's permission or without. If he in fact met Fredersdorf before he was even given his flute back, it might have been a case of, "OMG super good flautist GIMME NOW," and then they got to know each other during those meetings.
When I try to construct a picture of Fredersdorf, I end up working backward from what I know of Fritz and what he valued in people. That leads me to guess that Fredersdorf has to have been intelligent in a way that shows despite his lack of education, and probably not tongue-tied in the presence of royalty, because Fritz made snap judgments on whether you were quick-witted enough to be worth talking to or not. But he also has to have been..."something" enough to live practically in Fritz's pocket for twenty years and not have any conflicts significant enough to register in the pages of history, and to have Fritz still asking him to come to the window so he can see him ride by, after those twenty years. What that "something" might be is open for debate. Canonically, I suspect knowing when to keep his mouth shut had a lot to do with that. My take on him is "quiet and thoughtful." Personally, I like to think of him as a keen observer, with some emotional intelligence, who never confronted Fritz outright, but would figure out how to tell him what he didn't want to hear in such a way that he was willing to hear it, at least from someone he trusted.
In my fic draft, you mentioned you read my take on him as "sweet." What I was really going for there, and as I mentioned I was struggling to depict anything the way I wanted it, was cautious and reserved, while also feeling his pity for Fritz starting to turn into real affection. Cautious and reserved because the class differences would make you default to being formal under normal circumstances, and then you add Fritz being in disgrace to that, and the situation becomes super complicated. And I think Fredersdorf must have managed to get in Fritz's good graces by navigating a complex situation without putting a foot wrong until the trust was already there. As noted, I think some of that had to do with Fritz being desperate and lonely, and willing to assume the best of intentions, because otherwise he has *no one*.
Sexuality? Got me. Canonically, he was tall and good-looking, so Fritz was suspected of being attracted to him even by contemporaries (Prussian Pompadour), but who Fredersdorf himself was attracted to is an open question. Getting married in 1753 could mean he was straight, bi, or gay in a heteronormative society where marriage brought a lot of benefits. It tells us nothing except that by that point in his life, he found being married preferable to living in Fritz's pocket year round. That may have had to do with him being so sick and Fritz constantly being on the move. Or he might have been wanting a break. I can't tell. As noted, the fact that Fritz was so resentful of other people's successful romantic and sexual relationships doesn't necessarily imply that he didn't have one himself, but it does make me wonder. But pretty much anything you write here will be plausible, anything from willing to tolerate a homosexual prince for the prospects of advancement, up to being head over heels in love with said prince and terrified of being the next Katte.
Religion? You may notice in my fic, set in 1731, I made him a Christian who's chill enough to be open-minded about Fritz's differences of opinions. This is an educated guess based on his class background. What his take on religion might have been during the later years at Fritz's court, I don't know. He might have been prime for conversion to freethinking once he was in a primarily freethinking circle. He might have kept his religious beliefs (Fritz would personally mock organized religion, but he didn't cut you out of the inner circle just on the basis of you being devout). Or he just might not have cared. The one thing I think we can deduce is that he was no FW, but you've got a lot of room to work with if you want to address that aspect at all, or just have it in the back of your mind as you write. (You may notice I deliberately had him think in terms of Biblical parallels rather than Classical ones.)
And there you have my take on Fredersdorf. Do with it what you will. I hope it was helpful at all. :)
Re: The emails
Date: 2020-01-01 04:27 pm (UTC)Sent: Dec 1
Ahahaha, well, I haven't tried yet, so you should leave off complimenting me until then :P And, whoa, your notes make it clear I was clearly being a little arrogant to think I could take this on, I didn't know any of this! (Well, okay, some. But not nearly enough.) On the other hand, your notes are basically even more complete than a fic, so I thiiiink with that I should be able to produce something that could become a passable fic with a looooot of editing. And thank you for the permission to cannibalize your fic! That will help a lot. I think between us we can co-author something she will like :)
...now to finish my assignment so I can actually work on this! I am thinking I'll probably get to the point of starting next weekend-ish, at which point you will probably get a lot of panicked questions :)
Re: The emails
Date: 2020-01-01 04:28 pm (UTC)Sent: Dec 1
Nooooo, you can tell one musical note from the other, and that's the important part here! (My Achilles heel.) I'm just supplying background detail. And honestly, it's there for you to take advantage of, and maybe so you can ground your fic in some kind of context, but I wouldn't feel bound by anything particular in it, or to adhering to it overall. If they're playing music and you have some idea what Fritz is going through (and you know from previous discussion what he's recently gone through), and what kind of relationship Fritz and Fredersdorf are working toward, I think that's plenty good enough. :) In my fic, I was absolutely conflating a bunch of stuff that happened at different times into a single moment in time, just as I did with "Pulvis et Umbra." Even if I rewrote it, I would probably keep at least some of the conflation for literary purposes.
your notes are basically even more complete than a fic
Yes, that was the idea. :) My notes are all the research consolidated for you in one place; you can use whatever 1% ends up being useful.
In case I didn't make this part clear enough: the rehabilitation regimen at Küstrin is centered around two things: 20% religious instruction, and 80% training Fritz on the administration of a kingdom FW-style. And administration is where I think FW had the biggest influence on Fritz. I don't think it was necessary to beat it into him this way, but Fritz's ruling style ends up almost identical to FW's: centralized micromanaging government by marginalia, only more so. And that's not an accident.
Oh, and at Sanssouci, Fredersdorf's room is adjacent to Fritz's, and I'm told they shared a tent on campaign. (Though Fredersdorf was canonically not present at Soor in 1745, but was back in Berlin; otherwise I would have included him in the dog fic. I'm almost glad he wasn't, because Fritz's letter to Fredersdorf about the dogs was one of my major sources for what actually happened.)
I should be able to produce something that could become a passable fic with a looooot of editing. I think between us we can co-author something she will like :)
I agree! Between your music and my history, we can do it. And remember the two cakes principle. Any new Fritz fic will be welcome fic, not just by selenak but by me. <3
Until then, I await your panicked questions with eagerness! I may not be able to write fiction, but I can supply basically unlimited amounts of unpolished non-fiction on demand. :D And best of luck with your assignment. You got this!
Re: The emails
Date: 2020-01-01 04:29 pm (UTC)Sent: Dec 2
Hey. Aaaaactually. Can you find a reasonable composer for me that Fredersdorf might be playing on the flute for Fritz? It just has to be someone from the right time period who would have composed flute music, and that Fritz wouldn't haaaate. It's too bad we don't have that book selenak had, with all the music/concerts Fritz was going to :P Though it would make sense if this was something you didn't care enough to have any kind of idea about. :)
Re: The emails
Date: 2020-01-01 04:30 pm (UTC)Sent: Dec 2
I can try! The first thing that comes to mind is to see who Quantz was influenced by, as Quantz was Fritz's teacher starting in 1728/1729, and was someone whose work and judgment Fritz respected all his life. (He makes it onto the emotional isolation chronology too.)
For a Quantz influence that looks promising, Wikipedia gives me this guy, who was known for writing pieces that required virtuosic skills, and in particular, this piece, one of his only secular works, which was written in 1723 and considered innovative in having a flute solo.
I'll see if I come up with anything better, but that seems to be a starting point. The only question in my mind is whether Fredersdorf would know about it out in the middle of nowhere in Prussia 8 years later, but that can be handwaved, right?
All of which reminds me, I can paste you a huge chunk from Blanning's bio, on Fritz and the flute, which gives you some ideas about his preferences, strengths, and weaknesses. Blanning is light on most other detail, like politics, but strong on Fritz's artistic side, for which I'm grateful, since most of my sources go the other direction. One thing to keep in mind, which I forgot to mention in my last write-up, is that Fritz, although immersed in music by his mother from a very young age, is still a beginner when it comes to playing the flute. He's only just started in 1728/1729, had intermittent lessons that he had to hide (I think I've shared the anecdote where Katte was keeping guard while Quantz instructed him, then both Katte and Quantz had to hide in a closet while FW berated Fritz), had difficulty finding time to practice in secret, and has been in prison with no flutes for some number of months. So Fredersdorf is presumably much better than he is at this point. So here's Blanning:
"At the other end of the scale from opera was Frederick’s solo and solitary flute-playing in his bedroom-cum-study. From the moment he first heard the virtuoso Johann Joachim Quantz play at Dresden in 1728 until he lost his teeth in old age, a flute was never far from his side. The Austrian ambassador reported that immediately on rising at— or before— the crack of dawn, Frederick paced up and down playing his flute while waiting for his coffee to appear. Once the morning military and political business had been completed, he returned to his inner sanctum and his instrument until it was time for the main meal of the day. He told d’Alembert that he never knew what he was playing, but that his improvisations helped him to think. Every evening, starting between six and seven o’clock, there was a private concert lasting around two hours and usually attended only by the seven to ten musicians involved, although occasionally guests were admitted. At these, Frederick performed three to five concertos and a number of sonatas, composed either by himself or by Quantz. He then listened to another performed by Quantz, occasionally a solo piece for cello, and usually an aria, which brought the concert to a conclusion. As this suggests, Quantz played a central role in Frederick’s life, so much so that it was said that Prussia was really ruled by Mrs. Quantz’s lapdog, for Frederick did what Quantz told him, Quantz did what his wife told him, and she was in thrall to her pet. A better indication of his importance was the 299 flute concertos he composed for Frederick, denied his third century only by his death in 1773. The bereaved Frederick now abandoned the orchestral concerts, henceforth confining himself to solo performances with keyboard accompaniment.
"By all accounts, Frederick was an accomplished flautist. This can be inferred from the works written by or for him and is confirmed by the select few who actually heard him play. Among them was Charles Burney, whose expert opinion must be treated with respect. He wrote of the concert he attended at Potsdam: 'The concert began by a German flute concerto, in which his majesty executed the solo parts with great precision; his embouchure was clear and even, his finger brilliant, and his taste pure and simple. I was much pleased, and even surprised with the neatness of his execution in the allegros, as well as by his expression and feeling in the adagios. In short, his performance surpassed, in many particulars anything I had ever heard among Dilettanti, or even professors. His majesty played three long and difficult concertos successively, and all with equal perfection.'
"Also authoritative was the verdict of Johann Friedrich Reichardt, not least because in general he disliked both Frederick and his regime. He criticized Frederick’s playing of the fast passages, because he tended to lag behind the orchestra, despite the musicians’ best efforts to adjust their tempo, but acknowledged that in an adagio 'he really was a great virtuoso… It was unmistakable that he felt what he played; melting transitions, exceedingly nuanced accents and little melodic embellishments expressed very clearly a sophisticated and tender feeling… His entire adagio was a gentle effusion and had pure, graceful, often moving, singing tone— the surest proof that his performance came from his soul.' The distinguished music teacher Karl Friedrich Zelter, who numbered Mendelssohn among his pupils, recorded that Frederick’s keyboard player Karl Friedrich Christian Fasch, 'who served the King for thirty years and outlived him by fourteen, told me repeatedly that he had only ever heard an adagio performed in a truly moving and elevated manner by three virtuosi. The first was his friend Emanuel Bach on the keyboard, the second was Franz Benda on the violin and the third was the King on the flute.'
"Like his tutor Quantz, Frederick was a composer as well as a performer. Despite his father’s opposition to anything so “effeminate,” he had been given a solid grounding in thorough bass and four-part composition from the age of seven. His most ambitious orchestral works— four flute concertos and a symphony in D major— he composed while still crown prince. By 1738 he had reached the painful conclusion that he would never acquire the necessary technique to make a mark in this genre and gave up, a decision probably hastened by the presence in his household of a genuinely top-flight composer, Carl Heinrich Graun, not to mention the occasional visits of Quantz, his superior both as a performer and a composer. From then on he confined himself to operatic arias, courtly dances and especially flute sonatas. By the time he abandoned composition altogether, on the outbreak of the Seven Years’ War in 1756, he had composed 121 of the last-named. Not one was published in his lifetime; they were all written just for him and Quantz to play. These agreeable if lightweight and unoriginal pieces are available in many different recordings and filmed performances.
"Frederick and the musicians of his court were making music in the 'galant' style that had come to dominate Europe. By this was meant 'music with lightly accompanied, periodic melodies, and the appropriate manner of performing the same,' as the leading modern historian of the style, Daniel Heartz, has put it. In the place of the complex counterpoint and fugues of its opposite, 'the learned style,' galant music 'means seeking to please' (Voltaire). This it certainly does, as the numerous recordings of Frederick’s compositions testify. His musical team was also the center of galant theory, as C.P.E. Bach, Quantz, Agricola, Friedrich Wilhelm Marpurg, Johann Philipp Kirnberger and Johann Georg Sulzer articulated the style’s objectives. In the words of C.P.E. Bach, music should express human nature, for it is the language of the emotions (Affekten). It holds up a mirror to the emotional world of humankind with the task of 'transforming the heart into a tender sensibility' (sanfte Empfindsamkeit). The 'gentle tears' it called forth were not self-indulgent emotionalism but promoted virtue. In other words, galant music sought the same sort of effect achieved by Samuel Richardson’s hugely successful contemporary novels. Frederick was very much part of this world of sensibility, as his letters to his sister Wilhelmine demonstrate, telling her, for example, that a piece of music he had written was inspired by the pain of separation from her, which accounted for its melancholic character.
"So Frederick had music in the opera house, concert room and even bedroom. He also took it to war with him, not just his trusty flutes (which Fredersdorf took care of) but selected musicians too, who no doubt cursed their fate as they looked forward to the privations inseparable from campaigning. Among them was Fasch, who accompanied Frederick on the portable keyboard which was always part of the royal baggage train. Of Parisian manufacture, it could be dismantled into three sections for transport. Following his triumphal entry into Dresden after the defeat of the Saxon army at the battle of Kesseldorf on 15 December 1745, one right of conquest he was quick to exercise was the command to the Saxon musical establishment to stage Hasse’s opera Arminio the next evening. This was duly performed, with the composer directing and his wife, the star soprano Faustina, singing. Both husband and wife were then obliged to perform chamber concerts for Frederick each evening during his nine-day sojourn. Back in the city during the winter of 1760– 61, he found that five years of devastating war, during which the Prussians had lived at Saxon expense, had destroyed the musical establishment, and so was obliged to send for his own orchestra from Berlin. The musical establishment was also deployed as a weapon of foreign policy. When Frederick met the Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II at Neisse in Silesia in August 1769, he had a temporary theater erected for the performance of comic opera, both to entertain himself and to impress his visitor. 66 An operatic troupe also accompanied him for the return fixture at Neustadt in Moravia the following year."
I'm taking this to mean that the composition I linked you to is more in the learned style than the galant style, but it might serve to impress Fritz with Fredersdorf's skill.
There's also this guy, who was friends with Quantz, and who published some pieces meant for amateurs on the flute, including, in 1728, a set of six sonatas for two flutes, if you want Fritz and Fredersdorf to be playing something together that might be at Fritz's level.
Re Fritz being moved to tears by music: yes, and poetry as well. It made the translator of Catt's memoirs, a stiff-upper-lip Brit circa 1917, extreeeemely uncomfortable, to the point where he had to apologize to his readers in the intro for the way Fritz is constantly bursting into tears in said memoirs, over everything from his siblings dying to some passage he was declaiming in Racine, and assure them that you could still respect Old Fritz, because different place and time, haha.
Oh, that quote about Quantz's wife's lapdog, it's worth knowing that that's an old line that goes at least as far back as Plutarch, where we find this quote about Themistocles: "Of his son, who lorded it over his mother, and through her over himself, he said, jestingly, that the boy was the most powerful of all the Hellenes; for the Hellenes were commanded by the Athenians, the Athenians by himself, himself by the boy's mother, and the mother by her boy."
*had to look up what an adagio is, but can read Wikipedia and copy-paste from Kindle with the best of them, lol*
I'll let you know if I find anything else!
Re: The emails
Date: 2020-01-01 04:31 pm (UTC)Sent: Dec 2
Less technical, but some passages relevant to characterization, both set at Ruppin, immediately after Küstrin:
Blanning: "It was also at Ruppin that Frederick was able to devote to music the attention he believed it deserved. Music for him was much more than an agreeable recreation and something to entertain the private man in moments of leisure. Throughout his life, he saw it as an integral part of who he was and what he did. He identified himself with Apollo, the charismatic protector of scholarship and art in general and music in particular. It was an identification which ran through his work as a leitmotif. 15 In 1738 he wrote an eloquent letter to the Count of Schaumburg-Lippe, stressing the centrality of music to a true nobleman’s existence and his active life. He contrasted this with those contemptible Spanish nobles who believed idleness to be the true mark of gentility. Music, Frederick maintained, was unique in its ability to communicate emotions and speak to the soul."
MacDonogh: "He wanted music too, and the best. Frederick was still in contact with Quantz, and through the flautist he heard about the brothers Franz and Johann Benda, who had been in the king of Poland’s service. The Bendas, Bohemian Protestants, were among the greatest virtuosi of the day. The violinist Franz arrived in Ruppin in April 1734, and tells in his autobiography the story of his engagement in Frederick’s little orchestra. Benda rented a room in the town. On the 17th he was practising when the king [note that he was still Crown Prince at the time] came by with some friends. 'They stopped in their tracks, listened for a while and then sent someone up to ask who I was. I immediately went downstairs and presented myself. His Majesty commanded me to come to him that evening where he graciously accompanied me himself on the piano. With that I entered his service.’
"He served Frederick for fifty-three years in all, eventually taking over the job of Konzertmeister from Johann Gottlieb Graun, who had the advantage of having been a pupil of Tartini and Pisendel. 180 Until the composer Carl Heinrich Graun arrived as part of Elisabeth’s dowry, Franz Benda had also to sing tenor. Frederick was putting together a proper ensemble with three more violins, two viola players (one was Johann Georg Benda), a cellist, a horn player, a flautist (Fredersdorf), a harpist, a theorbo, a viol and a harpsichord player. Although musicians all over Europe were getting the message, the king was not to know about Frederick’s orchestra. If one of his spies arrived in Ruppin, Frederick sent out the hunt, and the informer naturally went with it. From time to time he was obliged to hear concerts in the woods or in an underground vault [Future PTSD alert]. Quantz was still on the scene; he was giving Wilhelmina flute lessons too, and was used as a secret go-between."
Re: The emails
Date: 2020-01-01 04:35 pm (UTC)Sent: Dec 3
Oh, look at that. Selenak's take on Fredersdorf this week. How convenient. Not like I was trying to elicit that or anything. :PP
Like I said, her take is fairly close to mine, and of course you're not remotely limited to mine, because like I said, mine isn't what I think happened, it's how I personally fill in a lot of very large blanks that could hold anything. And it's mostly reasoning backward from Fritz psychology, because both selenak and I have so little data on Fredersdorf. [ETA: Oh, look, it's thousands more words elaborating on my lack of data. Imagine if I actually *had* data. :P]
I also think some of my take on the positive aspects fell through the cracks during the discussion of what might have been missing. Fredersdorf is, imo, the closest thing to a successor Katte has (with major differences in their personalities and the dynamics, of course), and the second-closest relationship Fritz has after 1730, with Wilhelmine being in first place. And Wilhelmine and Fritz, of course, hardly ever get to see each other in person after that point (she marries in 1731, while he's still in prison), while Fredersdorf is his valet/chamberlain for most of those years.
Honestly, if Fredersdorf and Fritz really were estranged in 1757 (still waiting for confirmation on that), and if Fredersdorf had lived past their estrangement for more than like 8 months, I think they would have at least partially made back up. I really think that relationship was salvageable from that mistake.
I had a huge "YES" reaction to selenak's phrase "human security blanket." I keep imagining Wilhelmine dying and Fritz desperately wanting Fredersdorf there for comfort, but Fredersdorf had died less than a year before. Ugh. (Instead, Fritz gets Catt, who joined him like 6 months before and barely knows him, but does his best to be comforting. "Better than nothing, and at least a step up from Fritz's attempts at condolence letters to others at times like this" is the impression I get from the memoirs, but there's a lot of "say the wrong thing first, try different things until you get it right" from Catt, that I think would not have been there with Fredersdorf after twenty-seven years.) Btw, I'm also super curious how Fritz dealt with Fredersdorf's death, but I have surprisingly no data on that (yet).
You may likewise remember that when Fritz's dogs disappeared at Soor, my fic has him wishing Fredersdorf were there. And not because he would be dispensing gems of wisdom, but just because he would be there, reliably kind and comforting. I think a lot of what he did was keep Fritz from being alone, in a way that mattered.
(Eichel digression: By the way, notwithstanding them both making it into the "ones I've loved most in my life" list, I, like most people, take Fredersdorf's relationship with Fritz to be a lot more personal, emotional, and intimate than Eichel's. Which you'll see reflected in the dog fic, where it's mostly a work relationship with Eichel, albeit with a lot of trust. That list, remember, is a list of people who've worked for him, whose services he's recommending to his successor. It's not actually a list of people he's felt the most love toward.)
Remember when I said the reason EC didn't get treated worse (and really, it could have been much worse) was because she spent fifty-three years signaling "I am not a threat! I am not a threat!" at Fritz? I could write a whole book about Fritz, his control issues, and his threat levels, but suffice it to say, I think Fredersdorf must have been targeting Fritz's sense of safety in much the same way, only instead of just "I'm not a threat to you; you don't need to hurt me," he managed to actively hit the "You are safer with me than without" buttons. And that's why he was kept on after Küstrin. And selenak's right: that's not something to take for granted, because people often don't want to continue contact with people who've seen them when they were really down, even and maybe especially if they were helpful. I can give way too many examples from people I know.
On a related note to Fredersdorf making him feel safe, there's one paradigm that keeps emerging in my head whenever I do those modern AUs where Fritz gets proper therapy, and that's that he has two modes of thinking. One is that individual people can be caring and trustworthy. The other is that the universe will consistently try to fuck him over if he doesn't fight every step of the way. And this comes out of that dichotomy of his childhood where he learned other people are either kind and impotent, or powerful and abusive. The only way to be safe is to have all the power yourself. And you can be kind to and trusting of other people, as long as they're being caring and trustworthy and not part of the universe trying to fuck you over. Now, which mode he's operating in at any given moment depends entirely on how safe or threatened he feels at that moment. Wilhelmine, by the way, seems to have grasped exactly this. Maybe not in so many words, but we seem to agree on the gist of it. Then if that's true, it follows that Fredersdorf must have made Fritz feel safe, safe enough to act on "I trust Fredersdorf" regularly, rather than "the universe is a dangerous and hostile place that must be fought." Both of which coexisted in his mind and account for all those biographies subtitled with words like "contradiction" and "enigma".
And that's why, when I said I think a key part of Fredersdorf's personality must have been consistency, I was thinking of predictability as the operative aspect. Not boring-predictable, safe-predictable. Predictable as in, not a threat to Fritz's control issues. In fact, predictable enough to be entrusted with some independence of action that most people weren't allowed. "If I let Fredersdorf do something, it'll get done the way I want it done." "If I listen when he has something to say, he's not trying to manipulate me." (Fritz's fear of being manipulated is off the charts; he used to make speeches about it, and most of his actions make sense if you view them through the lens of trying not to let other people manipulate him.) As noted, I think the class differences helped make Fritz feel in control, but largely he despised and distrusted the lower classes (even as he got a reputation for protecting them against exploitative nobles--as long as they knew their place), so the positive trust must have come from Fredersdorf's personality. He must have come across as safely competent, safely well-behaved, safely caring and safe to care for (I agree with selenak about that last part).
And that "safely well-behaved" part I think comes from the ability to straddle a complex social dynamic with complex emotional layers. In the beginning, he was a servant in a classist society, and I suspect the last thing he would have done was start by taking unwanted liberties. And, of course, his boss was paranoid and prone to seeing everything he didn't personally ask for as "unwanted liberties." In the end, Fredersdorf evolved into a Pompadour position of power over nobles and even royals, which is impressive. Knowing Fritz, he must have gotten there both by standing out in welcome ways (music, intelligence, caring) and by behaving himself exceptionally well, so as not to do or say anything offensive. And that's where I think being quiet, reserved, perceptive, unargumentative, and diplomatic probably came in. Fritz loved sparkling wits who were good at repartee, but they didn't stick around nearly as long.
I suspect Fredersdorf was brilliant at watching Fritz's mercurial moods and figuring out when an act of familiarity would come across as "you're more than just the boss, I'm engaging in this act of caring because I care," and when it would trigger those "I'm trying to wrest control away from you" fears Fritz had. I suspect also that Fredersdorf was good at keeping up with changing times in that respect.
Critically, given how long he got it right, and given that his fall in the end was not an interpersonal failure but pocketing money on the side, out of Fritz's sight, I suspect he erred on the side of caution when it came to his interactions with Fritz. I would, if I were wholly dependent on Fritz, emotionally intelligent, and dealing with someone as touchy as that.
And that's where I think (wanton speculation here), that Fritz might have been left craving, maybe subconsciously, some initiative on Fredersdorf's part that he wasn't getting. And that's not Fredersdorf's fault: taking initiative around Fritz was always a dicey prospect. Someone who was never known to have quarreled with Fritz might have refrained from doing something that might have been welcome and might not have. It's possible that he had a few instances where he tried and got shut down. Fritz's control issues must have been extremely at odds with his need for other people to take initiative in caring for him (and also other things like winning battles, but that's a different application of the same problem).
Tiny bit of evidence here: remember how Fritz is covered in snuff all the time? And he agrees it's completely disgusting? He tells Catt that he was slightly less swinish when his mother was alive, but now there's no one left to care. This gives me a vibe of "Fritz wants someone to take care of him but also pushes people away, so those needs aren't getting met."
And it is *interesting* that it's his mother and not his valet. SD being allowed to boss him around when it came to his appearance, like a good, caring mom, probably fulfilled some deep emotional need. And, of course, it started when he was young, and they continued that pattern. It all makes perfect sense. She was *safe* in that respect. But Fritz had his father's "I can freaking dress myself; what, do I look like some kind of imbecile just because I'm king?" attitude toward the idea of requiring servants to wait on him hand and foot. Remember Voltaire's quote that Fredersdorf was a chamberlain who had never handed Fritz a shirt? It might or might not have been literally true, but that was not your average gentleman/valet relationship either way. And it might literally have been true!
Later in life, Fritz apparently (my code word for a biographer who cites a source I haven't looked at) wouldn't even allow his servants to see him naked. I'm not sure whether that was true when he was younger, but either way, Fredersdorf might easily have gotten some "don't go there" messages early on in the relationship that he dutifully followed. Fritz also got contrary when people tried to give him advice on taking care of himself. It is a truism that the most touch-averse people are often the most touch-starved. I don't know that Fritz was literally touch-averse (after decades of physical abuse, it wouldn't be surprising if he was at least particular about people initiating touch with him), but emotionally, there might have been some reflexes that left him craving things he wouldn't let anyone give him, or didn't make anyone feel safe enough to give him even if they would have been welcome in reality.
Fredersdorf, incidentally, comes off as super formal in the letters, and I think given the class situation, there was no possible way he wasn't going to be. Even Fritz used formal language when addressing fellow monarchs. Now, in person, I would be surprised if Fredersdorf was Du-ing him (as we've discussed, selenak and I aren't even sure Katte was, except maybe rarely), but I suspect he was familiar in other, more acceptable ways, that Fritz signaled were okay. And there must have been more of those as time went on.
In conclusion, with Fredersdorf doing a balancing act on a precipice, he might have learned to watch and wait and make a move only when he felt sure. And so Fritz might have been left with an unspoken sense of "I can talk to him and cry on his shoulder and trust him with important and sensitive tasks, and I think he genuinely cares about me and not just the paycheck (I'll keep the paycheck in moderation just so I can be sure [oh, Fritz]), but I really need someone to hold me and tell me they'll never leave me, and I have no idea how to ask for that. So I'll just get really upset if he shows signs of being interested in people who are not me." <-- Actually a fairly common thing when you're emotionally stunted and bad at communication.
I've tried to distinguish between fact, opinion, and speculation, and you can definitely form your own opinions and your own speculation. (And I don't even consider myself limited to this take when writing fiction; I might very well produce several different takes on them in different stories.)
Final tangent: you want my example of an employer/employee relationship that manages to achieve what I consider relationship security? Frodo and Sam. It didn't go to marriage because Tolkien was heteronormative and homophobic like that, but fans regularly take it there all the time. Plus it was based on historical relationships between officers in WWI and their batmen, and some of those were undoubtedly romantic and/or sexual. Critically, Frodo is emotionally mature enough to say, "Oh, you want to get married but you don't want to leave me? Bring your wife here! There's lots of room for kids!" Fritz and Fredersdorf could have gone there, but didn't.
Okay, final final tangent: If you want to know how exceptional I consider Fredersdorf, this might give you an idea. Consider an AU where Katte lives, but Fritz is otherwise equally traumatized. Katte is imprisoned or escapes, and they don't see each other for ten years either way. Even in the AUs where they pick up where they left off, and it's not a Peter Keith situation, even in the AU where Katte was marched out to the scaffold before Fritz's eyes and declared that he died with joy in his heart before getting a last-minute pardon (this was done to mess with Fritz's mind), even in that AU, after he's king and they're reunited, my Fritz sends Katte the message that he can be reader and they can be lovers and that he wants an exclusive sexual/romantic relationship, and there will be music and poetry and philosophy and literature and art coming out of their ears, and Katte *still* doesn't get to talk politics with him. Fredersdorf does. Consider that.
Re: The emails
Date: 2020-01-01 04:36 pm (UTC)Sent: Dec 4
LOL I SAW THAT.Nice job drawing her out. :D I was like, yay, she's writing the fic for me! and now I'm like ...how do you depict someone being kind to someone else? Particularly after first meeting them?
Alternatively, how does he signal that Fritz is safer with him than without, as you say above?
That's a serious question.
possibly it's not a good idea for two people who are probably on the spectrum to co-author a piece about someone with super-high emotional intelligence-Bringing him stuff that showed some thought? Like, food he actually liked, music selected with some care, ...? But I'm sure other people did that too :P
-Reacting "correctly" when Fritz says something weird or off-kilter - whatever that means -- that's a separate question, I will think about that a bit more... actually from what you guys are saying about touch, it might be interesting to do somethign with that in the fic. Hm. If he always follows Fritz' lead with touch. Hmmmmmmmmmm.
-Hmm, if you say Fritz talks politics with him and no one else... what about Fredersdorf makes him an OK person to discuss politics with?? (This is a question I'm actually interested in in general, so feel free to bring it up on the public post? Of course I can't because selenak doesn't know you've sent me all this info on Fredersdorf :P :D )
Another music question. Only if you feel like it! Can you go find selenak's old comments about her "Fritz and music" book and such? Basically I want the names of any composers Fritz might have played at his court / was known to enjoy. Also: if there is a *duet* he might have played with Katte. (This is not crucial, as given your above comments I'm thinking the easiest thing would have been for _Fritz_ to have composed the duet.)
(lol, we (you) are going to end up writing 20k of research words for a 2k fic.)
Re: The emails
Date: 2020-01-01 04:38 pm (UTC)Sent: Dec 4
[Part 1 of this email--it exceeds DW comment character limits]
That's a serious question.
I know that's a serious question; that's MY question! Why do you think I floundered through a first draft, gave up, and sent it to you with a frantic HALP? It wasn't just my musical ignorance!
I went to bed last night thinking, "I have a really clear idea of how I would *describe* the Fritz/Fredersdorf dynamic, but am lost on how to *depict* it." Especially since I think it was a lot of little things that added up over time. I think they got into a good feedback loop: Fredersdorf didn't make any major mistakes early on, did some small right things, a desperate and lonely Fritz started to open up, signaling that another small familiarity would be welcome, Fredersdorf saw his opportunity and took it, Fritz got the message that he was cared for and opened up a little bit more. This is hard to depict in one short fic!
how do you depict someone being kind to someone else? Particularly after first meeting them?
That's another hard part. That's why I set my fic a little bit later, when the trust has already started to develop. After first meeting the Crown Prince, I suspect Fredersdorf gave him music, cautious formality, and little else except what Fritz asked for.
There's a thought, actually. Fritz never hesitated to ask people to help him out against Dad. In fact, he largely acted like that that's what he thought other people were for, and he certainly didn't owe them anything in return. (This is the mindset of an emotionally stunted child fighting for his own survival, where everything else is a luxury--ballast that gets jettisoned in a storm.)
So here's an idea. Tell me what you think. Fritz had people smuggling letters to Wilhelmine since even before Katte was killed. And like I said, Fredersdorf is suspected of being one later on. So no, he's not the only one. But maaaaybe, since Wilhelmine is sooo important to Fritz, maybe Fredersdorf is the one who says something to the effect of: "Oh, yeah, I have an older sister too, who's very important to me. I will absolutely smuggle this letter out for you." I mean, we have no idea about Fredersdorf's family afaik, but families tended to be large, because birth control wasn't a thing. (Half siblings were also a thing, as women died in childbirth and were replaced.) So maybe he got lucky because he has an older sister, and maybe he doesn't have that "us against the world" relationship with her that Fritz does, but he figures out what Fritz wants to hear. Besides, Fritz doesn't want to hear about Fredersdorf's relationships in detail anyway*, he just wants validation of his own relationships. So maaybe, in half a sentence or so, without taking liberties, boring Fritz, or imposing on him, Fredersdorf manages to signal, "I get you," and then Fritz feels seen.
* Remember, "Fritz talks, Fredersdorf listens" is not just my take, but also what everyone who ever met Fritz said: he dominated every conversation he was in. One biographer sums it up along the lines of "He enjoyed conversation as long as he could provide the bulk of it."
Thoughts? I will try to come up with other ideas too, because that seems like a coincidence of the type I normally don't like (like *everyone* in Zeithain having an FW-like father, ugh).
Though it may come across as less of a coincidence and more of a Fritz being lonely and desperate, and Fredersdorf having the emotional intelligence to deal with it, as well as matching the exact pattern of convos with Fritz that you see in memoir after memoir of people who dealt with him, if the exchange goes something like this:
Fritz: *goes on about Wilhelmine*
Fredersdorf: Yes, older sisters are extremely important. I will take the risk of smuggling this letter for you
with joy in my heart.Fritz: *looks at him sharply* You have one?
Fredersdorf: *manages without lying to communicate that he does, because he does, and that these relationships are soooo important, without actually stating that his sister is the most important person in his world* *most of the action takes place in his head while he figures out the right 1.5 sentences to say out loud to make Fritz feel seen*
Fritz: Yes, exactly. You understand. *continues talking, warming up to Fredersdorf as he goes*
Anyway, I'm just throwing ideas out there. Will try to come up with others.
Also, since music was the key that unlocked the door of their relationship, I think it's likely that Fredersdorf was not simply very good at music (Quantz was presumably even better, but Fritz's relationship with him had more friction), but also low-key passionate about it. It's not just a job for him, just like it's not an upper-class accomplishment for Fritz, but it's integral to his identity. And low-key because Fritz wants someone to agree with him, not someone who makes demands on him to provide emotional labor. He might mirror Fritz's enthusiasm in such a way that Fritz can tell it's genuine and exists outside of trying to flatter him. (Good luck depicting that, lol.)
And you know how Fritz "stress[ed] the centrality of music to a true nobleman’s existence and his active life"? Maybe if you're lower-class but your soul responds to music like his does, you're really a nobleman at heart, just like if you're capable of reasoning, you're obviously an honorary man, not a woman. :P (Wilhelmine: *sigh*) And that's how you end up with the property of a nobleman, contrary to all normal practice and principles.
-Bringing him stuff that showed some thought? Like, food he actually liked, music selected with some care, ...? But I'm sure other people did that too :P
Yes, apparently (biographer again) the entire town of Küstrin pulled together to smuggle Fritz food he liked during the year of 1731. So we've got that, other people smuggling letters, at least one person in power getting him Fredersdorf in the first place so he can have music, the candles from Fouqué and whoever was in charge of extinguishing them in the first place, and the grenadier sobbing when he came to Fritz on the morning of November 6 and apologetically told Fritz he would have to hold his head to the window. "My dear, my poor prince." (Actual quote.) And that's just one year. Fredersdorf must have stood out in other respects, not just being kind.
(By the way, the exact quote regarding his mother, which I ran across while looking for the grenadier quote, is: "When my good mother was alive, I was cleaner, or, to speak more exactly, less unclean. My affectionate mother used to have made for me every year a dozen shirts with pretty ruffles, which she used to send to me wherever I might be. Since the irreparable loss of her which I have suffered, nobody has taken any care of me; but let us not touch that chord.")
-Reacting "correctly" when Fritz says something weird or off-kilter - whatever that means -- that's a separate question, I will think about that a bit more
Definitely worth thinking about, especially when you look at how Fritz's other relationships fell apart. Again coming out of my modern AU with therapy, is a picture in my head of Fritz as someone who very easily feels threatened, including by non-obvious triggers (because the universe is a hostile place that has to be fought), and who initiates a pre-emptive attack whenever he does. You see that in his approach to military strategy, to politics, and to interpersonal relationships. I think it's a fundamental part of how his amygdala deals with threats: fight whenever possible, rather than flight or freeze. Fight obliquely if necessary, but always fight.
If you're interacting with him, this feels a lot like a lot of attacks out of the blue when you didn't do anything wrong. So now you're feeling attacked, and your amygdala gets defensive and angry and resentful, and now you're in a bad feedback loop with him. When what really works is reassurance: getting his threat levels down to where he can be reasonable again. (Ideally without outright capitulating, because that just feeds into his control issues.) Anyway, I was delighted to see from one of selenak's quotes that Wilhelmine understood this! And so I feel like Fredersdorf must have gotten this one right too. Fredersdorf's emotional intelligence might very well have included being able to see an attack as a cry for help instead of a threat. (P.S. I still absolutely do not consider it the job of any of Fritz's subjects to be his therapist. I personally would never have. Feeling threatened when your monarch attacks you out of the blue and trying to protect yourself in an abusive situation is a reasonable act of self-preservation. I similarly don't consider it bb!Fritz's job to appease his father's fears (contra Mitford). I'm just saying, we're trying to get at a relationship that worked, and this is what I think would have worked best.)
This kind of thinking is what lies behind my poorly depicted exchange where Fritz challenges Fredersdorf to betray him to his father, and instead of getting offended and defensive, Fredersdorf calmly and lightly reassures him that he would never betray him. And Fritz wants to believe him, and he takes his cue from Fredersdorf's "this is not an argument, just a declaration of loyalty and affection" tone of voice and body language as much as the words, and he relaxes. And trusts Fredersdorf just that little bit more. And I tried to depict that Fredersdorf is getting used to this, and he's starting to relax, because his reassurances work. He doesn't need to freak out that he's being accused of saying the wrong thing--Fritz wants to be friendly. He just needs that extra bit of reassurance, because hell. He's in prison, and he's there because he was betrayed. Maybe Fredersdorf thinks it's reasonable to need reassurance, and he's grateful Fritz is still willing to believe him, after all he's been through. (Fritz, as you know, goes very quickly from "I'm announcing my escape plans to all and sundry" to "I'm not training an heir, because you can't ever let people know what you're thinking." I've long wondered if Fredersdorf maybe got his foot in the door before the latter had finished solidifying. Which is another reason I like putting their meeting earlier in the year, well before the EC marriage negotiations start.)
Oh, gratitude. Gratitude is a big thing Fritz liked. He, the ultimate ingrate ("other people are there to help me out against Dad, that's nothing noteworthy"), is constantly as king going on about how ingratitude is the worst. I suspect he took Fredersdorf's eventual embezzlement in that light, never mind how much he had asked of Fredersdorf for a moderate amount of pay. But for twenty-some years, Fredersdorf must have sent the message that he was grateful for all the trust and affection.
Other ways in which Fredersdorf's quiet, reserved nature probably paid off: he wasn't prone to quarreling. Fritz hated it when other people quarreled. That's really how it ended with Voltaire, or a big part of it: Voltaire was quarreling with everyone at Fritz's court, and remember when I summarized that episode with Fritz going, "Only I'm allowed to do that!"? I don't think he had that kind of self-awareness, he was repeatedly in denial about his role in all these quarrels or the rampant hypocrisy, but it was definitely his unspoken attitude. Fredersdorf was resented by various people at court, but more for his position than for anything specific he said. He actually seems to have been quietly inoffensive and not gone around provoking people. Although the fact that he got to make most of the non-Fritz decisions meant that some people inevitably took his unfavorable decisions as abuses of power (and I doubt he was immune to that any more than anyone else was), the point is, he wasn't picking fights. I get the impression he was just quietly telling everyone what to do and yes-ing or no-ing their requests, and his decisions were final. And that lack of drama would have helped his relationship with Fritz.
[Oh, other things Old Fritz hated in his later years: young people criticizing their elders; satirists, especially young ones.
Me: Say what now?]
One thing that's worth mentioning, though, is that even if at *no other* point in his life is Fritz touch-starved, when he meets Fredersdorf, he's just finished spending a few months in solitary confinement, followed by however many months of technically non-solitary confinement in significant isolation, spending most of his day with people who might not have been as abusive as Dad, and might have tried to mitigate the punishment, but who really didn't like him. In-person affection is thin on the ground at this point in his life, despite all the acts of kindness.
My impression of Fritz later in life, based partly on his personality and partly on his social context, is that he will caress the people he cares most about, but he's probably not on the receiving end a lot, except in strict reciprocation where that is socially acceptable. So he might have wanted more than he got. This actually might account for a lot of his devotion to his dogs, whom it was safe to cuddle endlessly, and who would compete to jump up on his lap. (Whoever won got to be "queen" for the day and be extra spoiled, which is endearing and possibly also very telling.) I also suspect SD was allowed to be a big exception here--when he saw her, which wasn't all that much.
Re: The emails
Date: 2020-01-01 04:40 pm (UTC)Sent: Dec 4
[Part 2 of this email--it exceeds DW comment character limits]
So it's your call, if you address this, how successful you want Fredersdorf to be in meeting those needs, especially at this early date. My guess is that on a scale of 1 to 10, Fritz probably got like a 2 in terms of the initiative he was craving, emotionally and possibly touch and so on, but a 2 would have been amazing at a time when his life otherwise gave him minus one million on that scale of 1 to 10. Plus Fredersdorf probably gave him like a 9 in terms of what he needed in terms of emotional reciprocation, and those two numbers together are probably enough to account for twenty years.
Btw, I'm incredibly unsatisfied with how I depicted all this in the fic, but the arc that goes from Fredersdorf offering him his coat and being refused, to (after some music and company) Fritz asking for comfort without all the class-based complexities, to Fredersdorf putting his hand on his shoulder and somehow finding Fritz shaking in his arms, to Fredersdorf finally taking enough initiative to put the coat on as an act of emotional rather than practical caring, and Fritz letting him when he didn't earlier...this was my attempt to grapple with all these issues. Fritz would absolutely, at least later in life and probably even now, be like, "No, I'm totally capable of toughing it out" if you wanted him to do something like stay warm, while simultaneously craving someone to take care of him like that from time to time. Based on his comments about SD, it's not clear that he would have actually allowed Fredersdorf to take that liberty. But he so badly wanted to that I found myself unable to resist the urge to scratch that itch. :P Plus maybe the desperation at Küstrin outweighs the "we just met" factor. Although it's also possible, to selenak's point, that the more vulnerable Fredersdorf saw him, the more likely Fritz wouldn't want to keep him as a reminder. That could go either way--deciding which is left as an exercise to the author of the fic. :P
-Hmm, if you say Fritz talks politics with him and no one else... what about Fredersdorf makes him an OK person to discuss politics with??
This is an interesting question. I think the different categories are:
1) Emotional intimacy but no political independence: SD, Keyserlingk, etc.
2) Political independence (up to a point) and information, but little to no emotional intimacy: Eichel, (later) Heinrich, etc.
3) Both: Fredersdorf.
and
4) "I say, 'Jump,' you say, 'How high?'": everybody else.
So my speculative answer to your question isn't going to be very flattering to Fritz, but there you have it. Fredersdorf is lower class, starting from zero. He has no ties, no parties, no family, no one to back him in a hypothetical conflict, no one to push their own agenda. No money. No previous experience with politics. He is quiet and listens when Fritz talks, and is diplomatic and unargumentative. He's also unusually intelligent, and he manages to convince Fritz that he's sufficiently competent and loyal that he doesn't need to be micromanaged. We also know Fritz gives advice and instruction like he breathes: all his life, on every subject.
Logical conclusion: Fritz gets to train Fredersdorf to do everything his way, and then sends him off to do it. When I phrased an example of Fredersdorf coming across as safe as "If I let Fredersdorf do something, it'll get done the way I want it done," I meant this. Fredersdorf ends up being an extension of Fritz's self politically. There were maybe a handful of overworked people just below Fritz in the pyramid of micromanaging who had to review reports and make decisions that Fritz didn't have time to personally review. It was independence, but only up to a point (any given decision was subject to scrutiny at any given time, if nothing else). And Fredersdorf is the only one I'm aware of in this handful who played the flute with Fritz and was so openly adored by him.
The key must be (and this part isn't speculation, but my read on the situation) that Fritz trusted Fredersdorf to make the decisions he would have made if he were there. Fredersdorf, remember, got to decide who got past the front door and into a much-sought-after private audience with Fritz. Fritz trusted him not to waste his--Fritz's--time or be bribable by someone with a different agenda from Fritz's.
This doesn't mean Fredersdorf never got to act as a buffer and soften the impact of suspicious, high-handed king, by presenting someone's case to Fritz in a favorable light. (I can't think of examples where he did off the top of my head, but he was everyone's go-to for this, if they couldn't use someone like Wilhelmine.) It meant that he couldn't let Fritz see him doing this too often in a situation where Fritz disagreed too vehemently. I think he had to be careful to be an extension of Fritz.
Re that embezzlement I keep coming back to: maybe he got tired of being so careful. Or maybe he got overconfident and thought he was indispensable enough for it to be overlooked. I also desperately want to know, again assuming it really happened this way, how long it had been going on before it was caught. I find it significant Fritz was at war when Fredersdorf's dismissal happened. And worse, a war he hadn't wanted. He became suspicious and estranged from Wilhelmine during a war, and made up with her shortly afterward (notwithstanding that kerfluffle over the peace). And he started corresponding with MT's pen pal a couple months after the Seven Years' War ended. (When selenak was like, "How? How did he correspond with MT's pen pal, who was a WOMAN, after Wilhelmine's death?!" I guessed immediately that it wasn't after Wilhelmine's death, it was after he won his war, which was more than four years later. Assuming Trier has anything like their complete correspondence (and their first letter does look like it's coming from near the beginning of a correspondence), I was right.) So if Fredersdorf messed up in even the smallest way, Fritz was going to be unforgiving in 1757, but maybe more forgiving if Fredersdorf had lived until 1763. War always brought Fritz's paranoia to the fore.
Man I hope Fritz wasn't scapegoating the innocent again. Not that I want his BF(F) to have let him down like this, but I have forgiven Fritz infinitely more even worse things, and this was the least of the things Fredersdorf could have done to Fritz, especially since my (unreliable secondary) sources seem to indicate the amount in question was small. It's forgivable. I really hope Fritz had at least something to go on here. He way overreacted to Wilhelmine's actions, but he had legal grounds as Prussian monarch, and her failure to explain during the war must have made it look like she had something to hide. It's quite likely that, if Fredersdorf took even the smallest amount of money, 1757 Fritz would have been like, "OMG I NEED that money for my war, YOU TRAITOR!" and sacked him, while 1763 Fritz, having won against all the odds, might have been like, "Well, the economy is in a shambles and I can't have you taking any more, so no, you can't have your job back, but let's be pen pals again, and I will give you advice on taking care of your health, and yes, you can come visit." I think/hope.
Anyway, that's my take on Fredersdorf and Fritz and politics. I can also try to work it subtly into the public convo so we can see what selenak thinks, but I think this is my actual headcanon and not just a random fanon I'm selecting from many possibilities. I really think Fritz trained Fredersdorf to be an extension of himself: hyper-competent, workaholic, intelligent, loyal, and trusted to have the same priorities. And dependent.
Can you go find selenak's old comments about her "Fritz and music" book and such?
These are the two threads that came up when I searched. Is that what you were looking for?
https://cahn.dreamwidth.org/160700.html?thread=1097148#cmt1097148
https://cahn.dreamwidth.org/163052.html?thread=1268460#cmt1268460
Basically I want the names of any composers Fritz might have played at his court / was known to enjoy.
Yeah, the hard part is that as far as flute pieces go, the two composers I know of that he was playing as king were Quantz, who lived with him and produced unpublished compositions exclusively for Fritz's use, and himself. :P 1730 is also way way earlier than that.
(This is not crucial, as given your above comments I'm thinking the easiest thing would have been for _Fritz_ to have composed the duet.)
At least two fictional pieces by srs bzns writers (aka non-AO3 writers producing published novels and plays in the twentieth century) I've seen do exactly this. Both of them home in on the fact that the composition was not terribly original, and Katte was stuck trying not to flatter but also not be too honest, but as long as you don't make Fritz a Mozart-level compositional prodigy, you don't have to call attention to this part. I think Fritz's limitations as a composer have always been obvious to him, everyone around him, historians, and selenak, no need to belabor the point. Fredersdorf and/or Katte could even be encouraging and genuinely think of it as a good effort from a beginner working under very unfavorable circumstances. (Both authors mentioned were unimpressed with Fritz in all respects and inclined to poke fun at him throughout, not something that applies to either Fredersdorf or Katte.)
(lol, we (you) are going to end up writing 20k of research words for a 2k fic.)
Only 20k? :P FYI: we're at 12k already.
possibly it's not a good idea for two people who are probably on the spectrum to co-author a piece about someone with super-high emotional intelligenceLololol. I was quoting this to my wife, and then explaining what you and I are up to with Yuletide, and then this exchange happened:
Her: Wait. Who has super-high emotional intelligence?
Me: This character we're trying to write. *Pause while I try not to overload her with detail* Not Frederick.
Her: Oh! I was gonna say--
Me: *laughing hysterically at the thought* Oh, no, no, no, no. Frederick was an absolute monarch with PTSD coming out of his ears. Anyone who had a successful close relationship with him for over twenty years, on the other hand...let's just say there was a Darwinian selection process at work. :P
Anyway, since you're interested in help brainstorming depicting the relationship, and not just my services as historical consultant, I will go try to think up some more ideas for the points you mentioned. They are interesting and I am excited and I think we can do this!
Re: The emails
Date: 2020-01-01 04:43 pm (UTC)Sent: Dec 4
[lol, I can't write fast enough to keep up with you -- this was written before getting your latest email.]
This is, as always, GOLD.
I think I have enough to start putting together a couple of scenes, at least, and then I'll probably have more questions :P
Re: The emails
Date: 2020-01-01 04:43 pm (UTC)Sent: Dec 4
Okay! So. I have no further progress on the musical front to report. But I have been trying to brainstorm some Fritz/Fredersdorf interactions as a jumping-off point for discussion. And this is what I've come up with so far. (It's a hard problem!)
1) You suggested, back in discussing my draft, that if Fritz is going to be clingy, I should show that. And I agreed. And the image that's kept coming to mind since then is Fredersdorf observing Fritz is having a bad day, offering to come back some other time, and Fritz, panicky at the thought, blurting out, "You're all I've got!" Then he realizes what he said, and he covers it with, "Musically." I.e., he's the only music Fritz is allowed. Whether that's because the only time Fritz is allowed to play is when Fredersdorf is visiting (the rest of his time is economics, finance, administration, etc., and ofc religion), or whether he's not allowed to play at all, but it's another situation like Fouqué's candles, where no one checks Fredersdorf's pockets when he comes to visit, and everyone goes mysteriously deaf when he's heard playing his own flute in Fritz's room (and if sometimes he's much more proficient than at other times, no one considers themselves qualified to comment on that either), is up to you.
2) I agree that we need to explore or at least touch on why Fredersdorf is willing to take this risk. And it occurred to me this evening that there's that passage I quoted you in this thread, where music is one of the most common pastimes among the upper classes in Europe, a way of signaling how refined you are (FW was such a freaking outlier), but a necessity like air for Fritz. Maybe one part of the reason Fredersdorf is so drawn to Fritz, in the face of all the danger, is that Fredersdorf was expecting that he was being summoned to play for some bored royal who needs entertainment, and instead found himself in the company of a kindred spirit. Maybe he also somehow conveys that to Fritz, his surprise and the way it matters to him. Maybe that's part of why Fritz starts trusting that he's not just there for royal favor, and maybe that's when Fritz starts elevating him above the rest of his class and considering him a noble among the peasants. Maybe Fredersdorf, who plays music for a living in the army, in a country where everyone is in the army, is starved for someone else who sees music as something that gives meaning to life. Maybe it's worth all the risks to him.
3) Then I was trying to find some way of letting Fredersdorf connect to Fritz via sympathy stimulated by their parallel family relationships. And while Fredersdorf might or might not have had an older sister, he definitely had a mother. ;) And I thought, maybe, given all you and I have talked about, Fritz would be more willing to accept care from a surrogate mother, in the absence of his own, than directly from someone like Fredersdorf whom he hasn't known for very long. Then I got stalled on what exactly a peasant woman can do for a prince, even one in prison, whom she wouldn't even be able to visit in person. Food preservatives haven't been invented, and Fredersdorf isn't even from Küstrin, so it's not like she can bake something and Fredersdorf can bring it over while it's still fresh. She probably can't afford to make Fritz any kind of clothing that would make sense for her to give him. But then I had an idea, which allows Fredersdorf to take some initiative, but in a very class-appropriate kind of way.
Maaaybe, at the end of the visit, Fredersdorf mentions he'll be gone for a couple days on leave. Fritz doesn't like it at first, of course, but when he learns Fredersdorf is going out of town to visit his mother, Fritz becomes all approving. And Fredersdorf realizes Fritz misses his own mother so much it hurts. So he mentions that his mom is a great seamstress, and whenever he goes home, she redoes all the mending he's done on his clothes so that you can't even tell it's been mended any more. (This was a problem in European armies of the time: your regiment would issue you your uniform, but because of finance problems, not as often as they should have, and uniforms were worn long past their shelf life in some armies. Also, the Prussian army was an extreme stickler about appearances.) Maybe he offers Fritz, who's sitting there looking pretty shabby himself, the chance to send home with Fredersdorf whatever clothing he can spare for a few days, and Fredersdorf will bring it back looking good as new. Maybe Fritz takes him up on the offer.
THEN I remembered that brown coat. Remember the brown prisoner's coat they put on Fritz on November 6, and then marched Katte past his window to his death in a brown coat of his own, identical to Fritz's? (Obvious message being, "You better shape up, because that could be you.") And afterward, Wilhelmine reports that Fritz wore that coat until it was in rags and wouldn't give it up? I mean, it was all he had of Katte at that point, a coat and one last letter and some flashbacks. And the letter was all, "I'm not saying any of this is your fault, but I did tell you the whole escape thing was a bad idea, and also I advise you to make it up with the King and do everything he says from now on
FW, I hope you're reading this, see what a good example I am, maybe a pardon?" so yeah. A coat. Which Fritz puts around his body in lieu of having Katte there to actually hold him. (Mister Possibly Touch Starved and Definitely in Need of a Hug.) And which is prisoner's garb, and therefore undoubtedly poorly made, and falling apart after being worn and clung to for months on end.Imagine Fritz needing mother love so bad he trusts Fredersdorf with that coat. And imagine Fredersdorf bringing it back mended. Aside from the fact that I now totally hope this happened irl, at a literary level, that might go some way toward explaining why Fritz is so willing to keep Fredersdorf around: he is the closest thing Katte has to a successor, like I said earlier in this thread. And that would likewise symbolize Fritz putting together a new life, maybe not the same, but basically intact, after 1730/1731. With a new BF(F). Which Katte would totally want.
Thoughts?
Oh, while looking for the brown coat passage, I found the primary source for the townspeople of Küstrin banding together to smuggle Fritz food: it's our Wilhelmine! (The things you forget immediately after reading them, sheesh.) "The nobility of the neighbourhood took care to provide him with a plentiful table, and the French Protestant refugees of Berlin sent him linen and refreshments." I'm sure they did, because partway through the year we have records of him complaining about the inadequacy of his clothing to FW, who doesn't let him have new clothes until August. (As you saw in my chronology, lol.) So if Fredersdorf meets him early on in the year, Fritz might very well be open to some free mending from a talented peasant woman whose musical son he's starting to trust.
We can do this! Spectrum or no spectrum!
Re: The emails
Date: 2020-01-01 04:44 pm (UTC)Sent: Dec 4
Huhhhhh. I am liking this! OK, I'm going to start running with this.
Lol, I feel like you're actually doing all the hard parts. On the other hand, the actual writing is the part you can't do right now, so I do have a function :D
Re: The emails
Date: 2020-01-01 04:44 pm (UTC)Sent: Dec 5
Oh, good, I'm glad you like! And you do have two functions: writing, and music! Plus, writing is actually the hard part, not coming up with ideas. I've seen more than one professional author roll their eyes when people come to them and say, "I have an idea, you write it, and we'll split the proceeds 50/50!" Dude, if it were that easy, you'd be writing it yourself.
My drafts folder overflows with ideas from at least a decade of fandoms, and my AO3 page is...much smaller. ;)
So thaaaaank you for proposing the collaboration! Once again, I'm left staring at you in disbelief. "You want me to ramble about my fandom for 150,000+ words? Normally people start looking at their watches 1,000 words in!" And now, "You want me to brainstorm ideas so you can write them? I'm going to wake up any minute now."
One other thing: Fredersdorf is a professional oboist, and he could easily have been one of those people who shows up for drill, plays the required military marches, and is done as soon as he gets off work. Instead, he became proficient at the flute. How proficient he was at Küstrin is actually an open question: good enough to be sent to Fritz on the one hand, but on the other, the pool of available candidates was probably small, he's only 22, it's not his primary instrument, and he has a day job. Maybe he showed a fair bit of skill to Fritz at Küstrin, but mostly his passion, and he only became really virtuosic at Ruppin and Rheinsberg, when Fritz valued it and gave him time and motive to focus on it.
So what I'm getting at is, maybe Fredersdorf's dad is one of those "show up for work and be done with it" guys, and Fritz's dad a "music is of SATAN" guy, and they bond over "Music is LIFE."
Re: The emails
Date: 2020-01-01 04:45 pm (UTC)Sent: Dec 5
I like it. I still headcanon him being better than Fritz at that point (now that you've pointed out he wasn't very good yet either, which makes sense since... he never got to practice)
Re: The emails
Date: 2020-01-01 04:45 pm (UTC)Sent: Dec 5
Oh, I definitely headcanon him being much better than 19-yo imprisoned Fritz! Just maybe not duet-with-Quantz good yet.
Re: The emails
Date: 2020-01-01 04:48 pm (UTC)Sent: Dec 5
So it occurs to me, do you know what Quantz was doing this whole time? Like, I looked him up and I guess he was visiting a couple times a year to give Fritz flute lessons. Did those stop after Katte? Does anyone know?
Also, would _Fredersdorf_ have known, when he met Fritz, that Fritz had taken lessons from Quantz?
I ask because I thought it would be cool if he played something by Quantz, which Fritz recognized because Quantz, and Fritz was all "I took lessons from him" and Fredersdorf was surprised by that and thought it as super cool. Basically, is it plausible that Fredersdorf didn't know, or is this the kind of gossip everyone would know?
Re: The emails
Date: 2020-01-01 04:50 pm (UTC)Sent: Dec 6
Quantz was working for August the Strong in Dresden (home of the Countess Orzelska). August let him go visit SD once in a while in the 1720s, and that's when he started giving Fritz occasional lessons. After Katte....well, the chronology goes like this:
1728-1730: Quantz secret lessons
1729 (probably)-1730: Fritz and Katte love affair
Nov 1730: Katte dies
late 1730-early 1732: Fritz in prison
1732-1736: Fritz at Ruppin
1736-1740: Fritz at Rheinsberg
1730-1741: Quantz at Dresden court, no visits to Berlin that I know of
1740: Fritz becomes king
1741: Quantz joins Fritz's court
1773: Quantz dies, still at Fritz's court
Unfortunately, I don't know how famous Quantz or Quantz's relationship with Fritz would have been in 1731. Since lessons were supposed to be secret, I'm going to guess not very? Fredersdorf kind of lives in a remote part of Prussia and is a random guy in the army as far as court gossip goes, even if he is a passionate flutist.
The other problem is that Quantz was very much a musician working exclusively for a royal patron, and most of his works didn't get published until after he and his patrons were dead. While Fredersdorf might have heard of him, I'm not sure he would have been able to get his hands on a composition? The first published composition by Quantz I can find reference to is in 1734, though that doesn't mean that was the first. It does seem like until 1727 he was doing largely unoriginal compositions, and only after that point did he really have the maturity to start being original.
Furthermore, I found a (secondary) source saying that when he joined Fritz's court in 1741, not only did he agree that all his compositions at Fritz's court would be Fritz's private property, but Fritz also acquired the rights to almost all Quantz's Dresden compositions. This suggests that they hadn't been published or widely circulated.
In sum, 1731 might be a bit too early for Quantz's work to have reached Fredersdorf, even if his name had. So it seems plausible to me that a scene where Fredersdorf is surprised and impressed to learn that Fritz had been studying from the best could work, but I'm less convinced Fredersdorf would be playing something by Quantz.
Did you check out the links I sent you to the composers a generation before Quantz who were influencing Quantz and publishing things that might have been more widely distributed? I know their names are less famous (at least to me?), but maybe it goes something like this:
Fredersdorf: I brought something by so-and-so.
Fritz: Oh, yeah, my teacher Quantz spoke highly of him.
Fredersdorf: Your teacher Quantz?!!
Discussion about Quantz: ensues
Thoughts? Does that work for what you have in mind at all?
Re: The emails
Date: 2020-01-01 04:50 pm (UTC)Sent: Dec 6
That is SUPER helpful, thank you! And Blavet works quite nicely actually, so yes. (I loved the Zelenka but it seems a little fancy :) )
\is listening to all this stuff tonight, lol
Re: The emails
Date: 2020-01-01 04:51 pm (UTC)Sent: Dec 6
Wonderful! I did think the Zelenka might be a little fancy, and Blavet maybe more at Fritz's level. Plus he's got that nice set of sonatas for 2 flutes, if you want them playing together (and/or Fritz remembering playing with Katte).
Heehee. That's awesome!
Re: The emails
Date: 2020-01-01 04:51 pm (UTC)Sent: Dec 6
Haha, I love how much effort we're putting into historical accuracy. Most people on AO3 would have said "Quantz" and been done with it. :P Me, I'm sitting here going, "Well, it was published in 1728, I guess it could have reached a guy without many connections in Frankfurt an der Oder by 1731? Oh, whatever, it's a fic!"
Also, I was thinking that in a month, after author reveals, we should totally paste these emails into a discussion post, both to share the goodies we found and also to have everything in one place, even the parts selenak already knows.
Oh, I missed this in the Wikipedia article. "Blavet turned down a post in Frederick the Great's court, which Quantz eventually accepted after the pay had been increased significantly." So Fritz did like Blavet and did know him by 1740 at least. (Fritz, if you want good people, you have to pay them!)
Re: The emails
Date: 2020-01-01 04:52 pm (UTC)Sent: Dec 6
Hee! Well, it also makes a difference we're writing it for selenak :P Who actually knows the history, and might care!
(Although I do really want to get things right. I just don't usually have a research consultant who can actually help me fix all the things!)
And I agree about putting them in a post!
Re: The emails
Date: 2020-01-01 04:52 pm (UTC)Sent: Dec 6
Indeed, the bar is high! I am doing my best to serve as historical consultant but am slightly nervous given who the recipient is. :P
Re: The emails
Date: 2020-01-01 04:53 pm (UTC)Sent: Dec 6
Oh dang it, I didn't check the dates, glad you did -- the solo sonatas aren't published yet in 1731.Eh, look, I'm just gonna postulate that there was a manuscript floating around of Sonata #1 in 1731 that Fredersdorf happened to get his hands on. :) Since all six were published in 1732, I don't think this is stretching it *too* far. We can write a note about it at the end.
Re: The emails
Date: 2020-01-01 04:54 pm (UTC)Sent: Dec 6
Oooh, you were going for Opus 2, the solos. I was looking at Opus 1, for two flutes. Well, while FW being present at Küstrin in 1731 vs 1730 might make or break a fic for selenak, I don't think the presence of a particular flute solo that she probably hasn't heard of at Küstrin in 1732 vs 1731 is going to. :P Especially with a note.
(The chronologically obsessed author's notes at the end that I'm planning are going to be a dead giveaway that I helped. :P)
Re: The emails
Date: 2020-01-01 05:07 pm (UTC)Sent: Dec 14
1730-1741: Quantz at Dresden court, no visits to Berlin that I know of
Evidently I was wrong: Quantz continued visiting Fritz from at least 1736 (when Fritz moved to Rheinsberg) on. Maybe earlier at Ruppin, I'm not sure. Not that it matters to our fic, but I like to correct my mistakes when I can.
Re: The emails
Date: 2020-01-01 04:55 pm (UTC)Sent: Dec 6
OK, so, how long has it been since Fritz has seen SD? (Let's say since Jan 1732 or so. You'll have to double check my dating when I get the draft over to you, but I *think* I can set their meeting in ~Nov 1731 and it will be OK.)
Re: The emails
Date: 2020-01-01 04:56 pm (UTC)Sent: Dec 6
Fritz saw SD in probably July (maybe June?) 1730, and not again until August 1731. Then not again until sometime in 1732 (I would have to dig to figure out what month, but definitely not before February, and almost certainly not until later in the year). So in January 1732, he hasn't seen her in 5 months, and only that one time briefly in the last 18th months.
You mean you're setting Fritz and Fredersdorf's meeting in Nov 1731, and the fic in Jan 1732?
Re: The emails
Date: 2020-01-01 04:56 pm (UTC)Sent: Dec 6
OK, cool. Yeah, so, if I parsed you correctly it sounded like Dec was the most probable time for them to meet? Actually Dec would still work for the fic, maybe I should just go ahead and make it Dec. Fic is 1/2 their meeting and then a time skip to January, which is when the coat thing will happen. January just because it needs to be before February :P
Re: The emails
Date: 2020-01-01 04:57 pm (UTC)Sent: Dec 6
Well, here's the thing. At least one biographer speculates that December may have been when they met, but nobody knows. Some place it earlier. I personally don't like it at all, because 1) it doesn't give them much time to bond before Fritz leaves, and 2), Fritz is under a lot of emotional stress at this time, yes, but his physical situation is about as good as it gets. By this point--okay, the coat is in tatters, but he's gotten new clothes from FW, so he's probably not visibly shabby enough that Fredersdorf would even offer...I guess unless he's specifically asking about the coat. (Okay, you don't have to have my personal characterization of Fritz, but I feel like if you asked if you target the coat and ask if you can take it away for mending, his visceral reaction is "No!", whereas if you make a blanket offer to help him out with his clothing situation, and the coat is right there in plain sight, he might hesitatingly offer it up, with a lot of "This is THE MOST IMPORTANT thing I own right now," and anyway. My Fritz is incredibly defensive and contrary, but maybe Fredersdorf finds a way, idk.)
But anyway, be aware that by the end of 1731, Fritz's situation is as good as it gets at Küstrin: he's got better clothes, better food, more freedom, more visits from friends who even get to stay the night, he's been on a trip away, and he's being offered a way out of prison. The biggest immediate source of distress right now is the pressure into a marriage he doesn't want, and yeah, that's significant. That was traumatic. But I just wonder if, at this period in his life, he's desperate enough to latch onto Fredersdorf against all the odds like he does. That's why I personally always set their meeting before August.
In favor of a later date, maybe taking and keeping Fredersdorf is his act of silent defiance against the marriage. Maybe it's the only choice he gets to make as to who he has around him, so he takes it. And also in favor of a later date, if he doesn't meet Fredersdorf until November/December, then by implication, he hasn't had music in his life for over a year, barring maybe that one brief visit to Berlin. That has to be brutal.
I go with earlier, but it's your call. I've tried to offer pros and cons in both directions.
Re: The emails
Date: 2020-01-01 04:57 pm (UTC)Sent: Dec 6
Oh! Okay. There's nothing wrong with them meeting earlier. I'm mostly going with "Fritz is emotionally messed up" rather than "Fritz has physical situation problems," and if possible I'd like to place it after August because I think logistics are just easier all around if FW has given permission for Fredersdorf to visit, and I don't really want to get into Fritz-and-FW (which I think has to be part of it if it's set befor eAugust).
So I was under the impression he was wearing this old tatty coat even when he had better clothes to wear -- is that wrong?
he's probably not visibly shabby enough that Fredersdorf would even offer...I guess unless he's specifically asking about the coat. (Okay, you don't have to have my personal characterization of Fritz, but I feel like if you asked if you target the coat and ask if you can take it away for mending, his visceral reaction is "No!"
I am laughing so hard and also mentally high-fiving myself, because just today
while I was supposed to be workingI wrote a bit about how Fredersdorf, early on in their relationship, tries to give him a decent coat to replace the ragged one he has, and Fritz almost literally throws him out of the house. :D(although I am really hoping that he wore this coat even when he had better things to wear so I don't have to cut that bit, lol)
Re: The emails
Date: 2020-01-01 04:58 pm (UTC)Sent: Dec 6
I mean, whatever you're comfortable writing! You're the one actually writing it. (thaaaank you)
If you're specifically going for a less socially isolated, less physically deprived, less end-of-his-rope desperate Fritz (and it's as much the social isolation as the physical deprivation I was going for in my view), I think it's still perfectly possible to use his emotional situation to convey why Fredersdorf despite all the odds. Now that I know you're setting it later, I kind of like the idea of Fredersdorf as Fritz's silent, defiant alternative to marriage.
To be clear: yes, I think Fritz is wearing this coat when he has better things to wear. What I was trying to say is that if it's the only shabby, falling-apart thing he owns, and you offer to mend his clothes, you are specifically targeting this coat. Whereas if everything he owns is a bit the worse for wear, then you aren't. And in that case, he might voluntarily go, "Well, maybe I could wear this one extra-special raggedy thing longer if it were mended [like, maybe it's even fallen apart to the point where it's not wearable, but he still clings to it as a security blanket], but I wouldn't trust it to just anyone." I have a feeling Fritz deals better with things that are *his* idea. But if you want to have Fredersdorf offer to have Mom mend it, and Fritz accept because there's that much trust and Fredersdorf is just that deft, then sure! Not one person is going to read this and go, "Fritz would never do that!"
Alternatively, now that I know you have this early scene written, maybe it starts with Fredersdorf going, "Omg, wtf is that, let me get you something better," Fritz reacting badly...and then at the end, when Fredersdorf is casually commenting that Mom is going to be mending his clothes and looking ruefully down at the state of his uniform, maybe Fritz signals their changed relationship by asking Fredersdorf if maybe surrogate-Mom can mend the Katte coat so he can keep wearing it? And maybe Fredersdorf is absolutely floored by the amount of trust, now that he understands the significance, and signals that he will treat it like gold?
I am laughing so hard and also mentally high-fiving myself
HIGH FIVE TO YOU! I love that feeling. It's the same feeling I had when he fell off his horse and I said, "Nobody say anything!" and then, whaddaya know but all his most veteran generals were like, "Nobody say anything!"
Also, see, you are getting to know the ways of the Fritz. :P I absolutely think much of his making people feel attacked out of the blue was when he himself felt attacked. Fritz's motto in my head is 100% "The best defense is a good offense."
Re: The emails
Date: 2020-01-01 04:58 pm (UTC)Sent: Dec 6
LOL YEP I AM ALREADY THERE
"She's told me that it's better," Fredersdorf said, as if he were speaking of nothing in particular, "to mend a coat before it completely falls apart. It lasts twice as long that way." Then he waited. If it became the Prince's own idea, he would do it; if it were Fredersdorf's, he would not. Fredersdorf had learned that much.
Re: The emails
Date: 2020-01-01 04:58 pm (UTC)Sent: Dec 6
YES YES YOU UNDERSTAND
You don't need me any more, you've got this. :P
Also, OMG, this whole thing is breaking my heart so much I can't wait to read it. <333 Fritz and his raggedy coat and his need for mother-love and Fredersdorf getting him and Fritz trusting him with the only thing he has left of Katte...gaaaahhhh, it hurts so good.
The only thing I would change about that, to make certain it is Fritz's idea, is the "a coat." If they hadn't had that first encounter, then it might work, but later Fritz hates being manipulated, and even at this post-1730 date (especially with the marriage negotiations in full force and not going his way), he's probably paranoid and intelligent enough to pick on something that blatant. But if it's not just Fredersdorf's coat, but also his shirt or his breeches or gaiters or something, that needs mending, then he can be more generic and less pointed. And then the coat part will be totally Fritz's idea.
Fredersdorf had learned that much.
You're so smart, Fredersdorf! *hugs you proudly* You're going to last (more than) twice as long this way. :P
Re: The emails
Date: 2020-01-01 04:59 pm (UTC)Sent: Dec 6
Ooooh. Good pooooooint.
Re: The emails
Date: 2020-01-01 04:59 pm (UTC)Sent: Dec 6
Every other word is perfect, though! I "oohed" and "awwed" at the "as if he were speaking of nothing in particular" and "If it became the Prince's own idea, he would do it; if it were Fredersdorf's, he would not." The phrasing is so perfect it made me glad you were writing it and not me.
Oh, and if we're changing 'the coat' to be more generic, should we also change 'before it completely falls apart' to something like 'sooner rather than later'? It sounds less like a criticism and is likewise less targeted at the only item of clothing in the room that is completely falling apart. Hypersensitive Fritz is hypersensitive. We can prime the reader to be thinking of the coat and call attention to its state, by having Fredersdorf silently observe it in one of the immediately preceding paragraphs. Since we're in his head.
Re: The emails
Date: 2020-01-01 04:59 pm (UTC)Sent: Dec 6
FW is making me laugh and facepalm so hard here. I'm looking at the notes to the Fredersdorf letters, and the editor reports that thing I told you where Fritz asked Dad for better clothes, and Dad said no. What I didn't elaborate was that it was spring 1731 and Fritz actually wanted *lighter* clothes (Poland is a place of climatic extremes), and FW said no. My newly arrived book elaborates: "That is a French habit and degeneracy; in Prussia, one wears the same clothes in winter and summer!" In conclusion, Fritz is always going to be too hot or too cold, except for a few days a year.
Oh, FW. You were born out of your place and time. You would have looooved literally everything I can think of about Sparta. Possibly including the rampant m/m sex. :P
Re: The emails
Date: 2020-01-01 05:00 pm (UTC)Sent: Dec 6
Another question! If Fredersdorf is writing his mom, it's not going to be censored, right? He can write whatever he wants about Friedrich?
Re: The emails
Date: 2020-01-01 05:00 pm (UTC)Sent: Dec 6
Oooh. Very good question. I don't actually know about 18th century Prussia specifically. My understanding of military mail in general, though, is that it is extremely subject to censorship from ancient times until the present day. The last thing you want is your soldiers telling their families where they are/where they're headed, and your enemies getting their hands on these letters. Against this is the fact that they're not currently at war, so the information he can give out isn't going to be very sensitive. But writing about the imprisoned Crown Prince who's just been on trial for his life, and is doing illicit things in prison, when your mail might or might not be censored? I'd be careful, especially if I was already taking risks.
So here's what I'd say. If I were reading someone's fic, without knowing anything about censorship in the Prussian military under FW during peacetime, my default expectation would be at least the possibility of censorship. Maybe not all mail is censored because no one has the time, and they're at peace so no one cares, but if I were Fredersdorf, I'd assume any of my mail could be read at any given time. If a fic departed from that expectation, I as reader would need to be convinced. And our fic is probably too short for such convincing. So I'd hit a red flag right there, if he's giving out information that might not make it past a censor. The way to do it would be to put it in code, but that would require him to have known Friedrich long enough that he's been home to see his mom before and they have a code, and given our timeline, I don't think he's had the time.
Another question that would come to mind: in 1731, is a peasant woman literate? Maybe. Literacy was on the rise, after all, and she is a Protestant. Or maybe the local schoolmaster or whoever translates and writes letters (writing and reading letters for soldiers is a practice with a long and respectable history). But if I just saw a casual assumption that everyone was literate, I'd go, "Hm, modern mindset." My yellow flag as a reader here could probably be assuaged with a well-chosen sentence, but it's something to keep in mind.
What've you got in mind for him to be telling his mom that might not make it past a censor?
Another thing to keep in mind: mail is super important emotionally, because people are separated from their families and living under stressful conditions, but also super costly, and paid for by the recipient. Fritz hasn't changed that yet. So just...a little background there.
More background: money is short on the one hand, both at the individual soldier level and at the higher up level, so new clothes don't grow on trees, but on the other hand, appearance is the single most important thing to the Prussian army. If half a button isn't polished just right during drill, you get publicly caned. Soldiers spent HOURS every day doing each other's hair (and no, it was not a buzz cut but a long pigtail in the back), tending to their uniforms, etc. So this is a little extra context for Fredersdorf's concern for his appearance.
Re: The emails
Date: 2020-01-01 05:02 pm (UTC)Sent: Dec 6
Riiight. OK, that's fine, it just means he needs to be a little more circuitous about what he writes to his mom than I was envisioning. Like, I have in there that he tells his mom how terrible it is that Fritz hadn't gotten to play any music, and implied that he tells her that he's letting Fritz play the flute which I think he's not technically allowed to do. So, maybe not with that. I don't think it's necessary, he can send mail about "I'm playing the flute for the Prince [which at this point is legal] and he's really great and I know you would love him mom" without going into risky detail.
Hmm, can Fredersdorf send home money? Would that be just a super bad idea, lol. Probably he just has to go home for that, eh?
I also have his mom sending him a care package (with the coat in it), is that a bad idea? (Again not necessary, he can figure out the coat some other way.)
Re: The emails
Date: 2020-01-01 05:02 pm (UTC)Sent: Dec 6
Yeah, I would keep illicit behavior out. It's one thing to take a risk on behalf of your beloved prince by smuggling his letters out; it's another to risk him in your own letters.
Can Fredersdorf send home money. I should know this but don't! Searching through my book, I can see a few relevant facts (most of which I had highlighted when reading and promptly forgot, haha):
1) The Prussian army was actually better organized than most (well, duh), and issued new uniforms annually (which would include the Prussian blue coat), rather than every few years like the more chaotic armies I was thinking of.
2) Army pay in Europe was extremely low, lagged behind civilian wages, and in many cases hadn't been seen cost-of-living updates for decades or even centuries. (That scares me.)
3) Prussian soldiers were allowed to work for profit in their spare time, unlike many other European soldiers. This was a total lifesaver.
Sending a coat in the mail: I'm not sure. I would be more useful if I had better research abilities at this time in my life, but all I have in this one book is soldiers risking terrible punishment for selling their shoes or shirt in order to pay the postage for a letter, and Frederick changing that mid-century, but the French not. Suggesting the mail might simply be that expensive in FW's time? I'm not certain if I would trust either coat or money to the mail at this time if I were a common soldier. I'm thinking it might be safer for us to not include something that might have been perfectly possible, than to include something that selenak will know immediately was definitely not possible.
Re: The emails
Date: 2020-01-01 05:02 pm (UTC)Sent: Dec 6
You know, it's gonna be great next month when we can ask her all these questions and she can tell us. :P
Re: The emails
Date: 2020-01-01 05:03 pm (UTC)Sent: Dec 7
YEP. I feel like I'm keeping secrets from her! Good secrets, as I would say to my kids. :D
One more question for tonight. Would Fredesdorf, when speaking of Katte to another commoner (obviously he's not going to talk about him to Fritz), call him "von Katte"? I feel like I want to do this but it may be because of early exposure to, like, The Sound of Music or something.
Re: The emails
Date: 2020-01-01 05:04 pm (UTC)Sent: Dec 7
I know! It feels weird that she talked about Lehndorff's editor explaining away all the crying without reference to me saying the same about Catt's 1917 editor. It took me a minute to remember that was in this email thread to you and she hadn't seen it! (It still feels wrong. :P)
Good question. I've often wondered how often people used the 'von' in casual speech. All my written sources by nobility and royalty refer to him simply as "Katte." Glancing through some of Fredersdorf's letters, in writing, to Fritz, he seems to be pretty darn chatty when referring to people who aren't royalty. French people occasionally get a Monsieur or Madame, but often just a last name, and non-French "von X" people are just "X" as far as I can tell.
I reserve the right to change my mind, but based on that cursory glance, I would say the evidence confirms my first instinct: "Lieutenant Katte" for the first mention, "Katte" afterward.
I've actually been surprised in this fandom how rarely my primary sources use the "von". Though Lehndorff is pretty consistent about "Frau v. Katte." Maybe it's different for women. If this were nineteenth or early twentieth century England, I would absolutely expect the lower classes to refer to their social superior as "Mister Last Name" and the upper classes to refer to the same guy by "Last Name", so it surprises me a bit to see Fredersdorf writing about the nobility to Fritz the same way everyone else does. But there's also a little ditty Fontane reports that children used to sing about the Kattes, and it uses "Ritter Katt", not "von Katt." ("Katt" was a very common, maybe more common, spelling of the name in our 18th century sources.) So I think that tends to confirm everyone using "Katte", even the commoners.
Re: The emails
Date: 2020-01-01 05:04 pm (UTC)Sent: Dec 7
MWAHAHAHA. I wasn't intending to sneak this question [about using vs. omitting "von"] in there to selenak, but when I saw my opportunity, I had to take it. It helps that this is absolutely something I've been wondering for months, because of my own fic writing. :D
We'll see what she says.
Re: The emails
Date: 2020-01-01 05:05 pm (UTC)Sent: Dec 7
LOL. She is going to laugh so hard when she reads this correspondence.
(You guys are amazing. I can't keep up with you at all!)
Re: The emails
Date: 2020-01-01 05:05 pm (UTC)Sent: Dec 7
IKR?
I was just thinking, the sheer volume and speed of this fandom is helpful: we can ask pretty much anything, and none of it stands out as pointedly referring to a specific fic she requested for YT.
Volumes 2 and 3 should be on their way soon, and then she can feed us more of our daily installments of crackfic!
Re: The emails
Date: 2020-01-01 05:06 pm (UTC)Sent: Dec 8
I meant to add yesterday, and selenak seems to be confirming my impression today: after introducing Katte as "Lieutenant [von] Katte," Fredersdorf might also refer to him as "the lieutenant" in subsequent mentions in the conversation.
Watch me ask follow-up questions and make selenak research her own fic. :-P
Re: The emails
Date: 2020-01-01 05:06 pm (UTC)Sent: Dec 8
Okay, we have license to use the "von" or not use the "von"! It's interesting that her impressions match mine, as does her lack of certainty. There's just less data on the non-nobles, and of course writing =/= conversation.
I may or may not be cackling over the success of my cunning plan right now. :-D Wait until she sees this.
Re: The emails
Date: 2020-01-01 05:07 pm (UTC)Sent: Dec 8
And now she knows about Fredersdorf possibly smuggling letters! This may be the first time you've been ahead of her on a Fritz-related historical point. :D Good thing we're prepping her with the historical background to her fic, and not just making her beta it. *glee*
I hope your writing is going well! Looking forward to seeing the first draft.
Emails
Date: 2020-01-01 05:15 pm (UTC)One admiring reader comments
Date: 2020-01-02 06:31 am (UTC)Some observations on this amazing correspondance: you want my example of an employer/employee relationship that manages to achieve what I consider relationship security? Frodo and Sam.
Frodo and Sam was something that I associate with Fritz and Fredersdorf as well, on some level. Not in terms of exact personalities - never mind Frodo's ability to invite Rosie and the kids into his home, God knows what Fritz would have one with the one ring, but he certainly wouldn't have been able to keep it unused for years (Tolkien) or even one year (movies) before the quest even starts, and somehow I suspect the Shire would have ended up going toe to toe with Gondor - but in terms of the type of bond we're talking about. Given Sam's, despite having gotten some education from Bilbo in addition to the gardener training from the Gaffer (i.e. learning how to read and write and poetry), no where near Frodo's level of education yet loves poetry and composes some, it fits on that level, too.
(BTW: during the fallout time letters before the final Frankfurt catastrophe, Voltaire is always careful to include regards to Fredersdorf in his letters to Fritz, too. These strike me as sincere as young Crown Prince Fritz' regards to Émilie.)
even in that AU, after he's king and they're reunited, my Fritz sends Katte the message that he can be reader and they can be lovers and that he wants an exclusive sexual/romantic relationship, and there will be music and poetry and philosophy and literature and art coming out of their ears, and Katte *still* doesn't get to talk politics with him. Fredersdorf does.
That's a fascinating take. Honestly, one reason why I could never write a "Katte and Fritz live, together" AU is that I seriously have no idea what their relationship would be like, because I, too, can't see any version of Fritz that has been going through the same childhood and youth and at least a portion of the flight attempt/"rehabilitation regime" not having massive control issues and clashing even with people he loves, like Wilhelmine. And Katte, as opposed to Fredersdorf, is Prussian nobility - from a familiy which Lehndorff sees as notoriously proud - , no matter how unwillingly, he's served with the military, it's expected of him to seek office and command, and he's bound to have opinions, plus the first time Fritz has an argument with him in public - and even the best relationships do have arguments - how does that work out? Keeping him solely in the artistic sphere might provide one solution.
like *everyone* in Zeithain having an FW-like father, ugh
Hear, hear. To my absolute non-surprise Michael Roes, the author, confessed in an interview to having had a terrible relationship with his own father as well. Now I respect working out your issues in fiction, but there is such a thing as art to it, and everyone having bad dads just diminishes the effect for the reader.
I find it significant Fritz was at war when Fredersdorf's dismissal happened. (...) So if Fredersdorf messed up in even the smallest way, Fritz was going to be unforgiving in 1757, but maybe more forgiving if Fredersdorf had lived until 1763. War always brought Fritz's paranoia to the fore.
Can see that. We really need to find out where the embezzlement story comes from, don't we? Because it makes such a difference as to whether there's a primary source - say, an official letter - or whether it's some memoirist later mention it as a rumor. I mean, if it happened, it must have been hushed up quite efficiently, since Lehndorff, who is attuned to court gossip, doesn't appear to have heard of it at all (whether or not he's projecting in his "Fredersdorf quit because he was jealous of Glassow", he's evidently not familiar with another public explanation than "retired for the sake of his healtlh"), and Fontane, writing in the late 19th century with access to a great many Prussian histories, doesn't bring it up, either. Which makes me wonder where the "heartbroken over the loss of his honor" bit comes from, because again, it evidently wasn't a situation like with AW where everyone had heart of the court martial.
(Voltaire, to Fritz in reply to one of the suicidal letters - "I hear your brother the Prince of Prussia has taken seriously ill and in general isn't doing so well, if true isn't that another reason for you to stay alive?" - ha.)
Anyway, going by rl financial scandals by administration officials who weren't actually in general dishonest people, I suspect even using some money from the royal coffers to speculate with - not necessarily for himself, but to speculate with - without getting explicit authorisation first, which after two decades he could seen himself entitled to, could count as that, and because there's a war now, like you said, it's suddenly way more serious than in peace time.
Oh, FW. You were born out of your place and time. You would have looooved literally everything I can think of about Sparta. Possibly including the rampant m/m sex.
Possibly, since Spartan FW would not have been raised a strict Calvinist and thus would have had no reason to feel guilty for any homoerotic urges.
She is going to laugh so hard when she reads this correspondence.
She's also cooing and squeeing!
Re: One admiring reader comments
Date: 2020-01-02 08:55 am (UTC)<333
Not in terms of exact personalities
Absolutely not. Fritz is a stellar example of what Tolkien was afraid of people *becoming* if they acquired too much power. Crown Prince Fritz -> King Fritz and cases like that are why Tolkien was like, "If Gandalf takes the Ring with the best of intentions, it will end badly."
somehow I suspect the Shire would have ended up going toe to toe with Gondor
AHAHAHAAA, please nobody let Fritz have a ring of power. He already has too much.
Given Sam's, despite having gotten some education from Bilbo in addition to the gardener training from the Gaffer (i.e. learning how to read and write and poetry), no where near Frodo's level of education yet loves poetry and composes some, it fits on that level, too.
You're right, that's an awesome extra parallel, beyond the employee/employer dynamic.
(BTW: during the fallout time letters before the final Frankfurt catastrophe, Voltaire is always careful to include regards to Fredersdorf in his letters to Fritz, too. These strike me as sincere as young Crown Prince Fritz' regards to Émilie.)
Yup. I think they scoped out pretty fast who the other person's SO was.
To my absolute non-surprise Michael Roes, the author, confessed in an interview to having had a terrible relationship with his own father as well.
I can't remember if I read that or had just assumed it, but yeah. Speaking of reality vs. fiction, did you see my Zeithain question in the last post, btw?
We really need to find out where the embezzlement story comes from, don't we? Because it makes such a difference as to whether there's a primary source - say, an official letter - or whether it's some memoirist later mention it as a rumor.
I agree. Having looked at as many primary sources as we have and still not found a whiff of it, I'm treating it as apocryphal until further evidence surfaces.
Which makes me wonder where the "heartbroken over the loss of his honor" bit comes from, because again, it evidently wasn't a situation like with AW where everyone had heart of the court martial.
Agreed, I immediately thought of AW when I saw that, and wondered.
I suspect even using some money from the royal coffers to speculate with - not necessarily for himself, but to speculate with...which after two decades he could seen himself entitled to
That actually makes a lot of sense. And especially if Fritz was off at war and Fredersdorf was in Berlin, I could see Fritz not wanting to hear an explanation that he might have accepted in person, and just sending an order of summary dismissal back.
Of course, we have no idea at this point if this happened at all. Maybe Fredersdorf was really just super sick and only 8 months or whatever away from dying.
So here's a question: I have many data points on Fritz reacting to the deaths of people he loved, but none about Fredersdorf, which surprises me. Do you remember coming across anything where Fritz acknowledged/reacted to Fredersdorf's death?
Possibly, since Spartan FW would not have been raised a strict Calvinist and thus would have had no reason to feel guilty for any homoerotic urges.
That's exactly what I was going for!
She's also cooing and squeeing!
Yay, I'm glad you enjoyed the DVD extras! :DD
Re: One admiring reader comments
Date: 2020-01-02 06:40 pm (UTC)Zeithain question: just answered it.
Do you remember coming across anything where Fritz acknowledged/reacted to Fredersdorf's death?
Nope, but you have to consider: he wouldn't write about Fredersdorf to Voltaire, certainly not in the year when they've just started to correspond again, and probably not to any of the surviving siblings. Catt has no idea who Fredersdorf is. So whom is he going to confide in on however this loss makes him feel? Mrs Fredersdorf is an unlikely possibility. I mean, they must have corresponded if he asked for his letters back and she gave him a few but not all, but I don't think I've seen that letter quoted anywhere verbatim.
As for general gossip: Lehndorff and the other people on the homefront can only speculate. (And Lehndorff speculates wrongly that surely the catastrophe of Hochkirch will distract the King from losing his favourite sister - "the King would have infinitely regretted the death of his Bayreuth sister if it had happened at any other time, but this terrible war puts everything else in the background; his majesty will find it very difficult to make up for the loss at Hochkirch" - so it's not like long distance speculation is attuned to how Fritz is feeling.)
Re: One admiring reader comments
Date: 2020-01-03 04:08 am (UTC)I was thinking Wilhelmine--she's alive for another nine months after Fredersdorf dies, and you did read their correspondence. But perhaps he was far too worried about her at this point to be talking about his problems.
It is true that, unlike when Henricus Minor dies, he can't very well expect his siblings to care--but don't we have that quote where HM dies and one of his officers was trying to console him when he got the news, and--oh, yeah, I just went and looked at the passage you gave us, *and* he puts "my dear Hendrich is dead" in a postscript to an official order to General Tauentzien. I just feel like when Fritz is grieving (about anyone except Katte), everyone has to hear about it. People certainly notice when his dogs die, and I seem to recall he locked himself in his room for a day to cry when Alcmene died. And while Catt has no idea who Fredersdorf is, everyone else around Fritz did, and that never stopped Fritz from telling Catt about Katte anyway. But no, no mention of Fredersdorf in Catt's memoirs, even though Fredersdorf died a scant two months before Catt showed up.
Oh well. I just wish I had data. If you do ever run across any, please do pass it on.
Re: One admiring reader comments
Date: 2020-01-03 04:55 am (UTC)This being said: I‘m reminded that in the entire Goethe/Schiller correspondance, Goethe regularly gives his regards to Mrs. Schiller or asks how she is etc. while Schiller not once as much as mentions Goethe‘s life partner Christiane, whom Goethe would eventually marry when Schiller was already dead, despite on more than one occasion staying at Goethe‘s house, where she was running the household and basically serving him dinner. The difference being that Mrs. Schiller was a born Charlotte von Lengenfeld and a legitimate wife, while Christiane was living in openly unmarried love with Goethe and a born Demoiselle Vulpius, former flower manufacturer worker.
(Then again, Wilhelmine has no problem bringing up Quantz or singer X or musician Y or Algarotti or the dogs in her letters, both to ask after or to report news on.)
It occurs to me that if Fredersdorf dies just two months before Catt shows up, that might be another explanation as to why Fritz is suddenly so chatty about Küstrin to someone he barely knows. His usual confidant is gone, whether or not they had a fallout before his death, and Küstrin is something he can legitimately talk about since despite nobody bringing it up to him on their own initiative, everyone knows it happened. What I mean is: he can voice trauma and grief there - and later cry for dead siblings and for poetry - while also being upset about and crying for Fredersdorf at the same time, just not mentioning him to Catt.
Tangent here: I‘ve had a chance to browse through some of Catt‘s memoirs since you‘ve made it possible for me to, and it strikes me that before AW‘s death, Fritz seems to engage in almost Stalinist revision of history concerning him. He tells Catt that his incognito trip to Straßburg was just with Algarotti as a companion (and Catt even adds a footnote that he later found out AW was along as well but can‘t explain why Fritz didn‘t mention that). At another occasion, when talking about FW as a father, he says while FW was harshest to him, he was harsh to the other siblings as well „except for Prince Henry who was always his favourite“. Which isn‘t just an omission, as with the Straßburg trip, but a direct lie. (Both because every single primary and secondary source agrees AW was always the favourite, and because FW barely seems to have noticed Heinrich existed - as I said in another comment, he‘s listed in the plural of „the princes“ in FW‘s instructions as how his sons were to be raised, not singled out for an individual comment either good or bad.)
Now, as soon as he hears the news about AWs death, Fritz does talk about him a lot (though again with some revised history about how it‘s solely the evil advisors who came between them and he was planning on abdicating in AW‘s favour after the war), but what I‘m getting at is that Fritz is quite capable of editing himself even while Catt has the impression of the King being frank with him and confiding in him.
Re: One admiring reader comments
Date: 2020-01-04 08:43 am (UTC)Lol, unreliable editor is unreliable. I'd forgotten you had the audio version, that's right. Well, I've sent
By the way, I must brag. For those of us whose French isn't up to hundreds of pages, I wrote a script that, if you give it the volume and page numbers you want, will download the correspondence from the Trier website and create a file where all the letters are interleaved in French and Google translated English. It ends up looking like this:
------------------------------
1. A LA PRINCESSE WILHELMINE.
Cüstrin, 1 novembre 1730.
Ma très-chère sœur,
[Original French letter.]
Le Prisonnier.
Translation:
My dearest sister,
[Google translate does the best it can.]
The prisoner.
------------------------------
2. A LA MARGRAVE DE BAIREUTH.
Berlin, 6 mars 1732.
Ma très-chère sœur,
[Original French letter.]
Ma très-chère sœur,
Votre très-humble et très-fidèle
Frideric.
Translation:
My dearest sister,
[Google translate does the best it can.]
My dearest sister,
Your very humble and very faithful
Frideric.
I have a $300 12-month free trial, so am taking requests if anyone wants a particular correspondent or correspondents.
The difference being that Mrs. Schiller was a born Charlotte von Lengenfeld and a legitimate wife, while Christiane was living in openly unmarried love with Goethe and a born Demoiselle Vulpius, former flower manufacturer worker.
Huh. So you're saying Fritz can cry openly over his family, his generals, Keyserlingk, Rothenburg, Jordan, Duhan, and the like, and his dogs, but not Fredersdorf, because he's not supposed to care that much about a commoner?
(Then again, Wilhelmine has no problem bringing up Quantz or singer X or musician Y or Algarotti or the dogs in her letters, both to ask after or to report news on.)
It occurs to me, if Fritz doesn't actually mention Fredersdorf to Wilhelmine, maybe it's another Keith & Katte situation where she doesn't approve of her brother's boyfriends taking his attention away from her? I mean, misogyny and classicism aside, we know how Fritz felt about Émilie and Voltaire about Fredersdorf, and we know Wilhelmine and Fritz might be the scandal that never happened, so...
I‘ve had a chance to browse through some of Catt‘s memoirs since you‘ve made it possible for me to
I'm glad sharing the folder with you has been useful to you! I will keep uploading my acquisitions there, and if there's something you want but can't access, let me know and I'll see what I can do.
Responded to your Catt remarks in another comment, but yes, there is a lot of revisionism, by both Catt and Fritz.
Re: One admiring reader comments
Date: 2020-01-04 10:41 am (UTC)Possibly. Not least because Fredersdorf falls out of several parameters - he's not a bravely fallen soldier (legendary commanders have been known to cry about those before), he's not a Faithful Old Retainer (of whom Fritz could say "he practically raised me" - I'm thinking also of MT having her governess buried in the Habsburg vault, the only non royal to be there, full stop, that kind of gesture), and, pace 1926 editor, he's not a sort of son ("I practically raised him"). I'm not sure there was an official vocabulary available in 1758 for what Fredersdorf had been to Fritz. (Unless you do what Voltaire did and put it sarcastically.) Certainly not to a new Calvinist Swiss reader. To a sister? Hm. "The friend of my heart is dead" or something like this sounds vaguely period appropriate, but then again, Fritz' 1757/1759 basically go "thanks for rooting for me, you're the best!", "Brother Wilhelm totally deserved it, whatever you say!", "Okay, did not see his death coming, but you know, evil advisors" to "want to commit suicide with me?" to "don't die, please don't die!"
It occurs to me, if Fritz doesn't actually mention Fredersdorf to Wilhelmine, maybe it's another Keith & Katte situation
Also possible, though less likely in that she's not likely to have encountered them at the same time with living in Bayreuth and only seeing Fritz very occasionally. We know she did meet Fredersdorf during her Berlin visits because he was in charge of arrangements and it's mentioned in the letters, but that was before seeing Fritz himself, so it's not like her Fritz time was limited due to Fredersdorf also being there (which which had been the case with Keith & Katte). Then again, feelings are irrational, so who knows. Ziebura in one of her books says Wilhelmine had no chill when it came to Fritz, anymore than he did re: the relationships important to him. (Hence also all the "clearly, he doesn't love me anymore!" near the end of the memoirs and the upset letters to brother AW asking him for help and mediation even before the big Fritz outburst apropos the MT meeting .)
Re: One admiring reader comments
Date: 2020-01-04 11:51 am (UTC)Oh...Friiitz.
Wilhelmine had no chill when it came to Fritz
Yeah, I was thinking that we know she complains a lot that he doesn't write to her enough and he's forgotten her, so I think she'd be perfectly capable of holding a long-distance grudge against the Prussian Pompadour. Whether she did or not, idk, but I wouldn't rule it out just because they hardly saw each other.
The first letter Trier has between them that isn't one of the smuggled Küstrin letters goes basically like this: "Hey, sis, I'm marrying this woman I despise, but the good news is, it means now I'm allowed to write to you! [I assume we have letters starting from this date because they didn't have to be destroyed upon reading any more.] But omg, you keep listening to all this malicious gossip and accusing me of forgetting about you. I will NEVER forget you. Stop being so gullible!" And this was March 1732.
But yeah, 1758 was an emotionally topsy-turvy year for Fritz, and maybe he just really couldn't talk about Fredersdorf directly to anyone. That would be incredibly sad, if so.
Re: One admiring reader comments
Date: 2020-01-04 06:27 pm (UTC)The "Want to commit suicide with me?" letter. Explanation: Wilhelmine had made the mistake of sending a depressed letter earlier because she was already very sick. This was a mistake, because:
Erfurt, 17 September 1757:
Your dear letters, dearest sister, are my only consolation. Could heaven reward you for so much nobleness and heroic spirit! Since my last letter, misfortune has been piling up on misfortune. It seems that fate wants to unload all its angry indignation on to my poor state.
I still would bless heaven for its goodness if he only gives me the favor of falling with the blade in my fist. If this hope deceives me, then, you'll admit to me, it would be too hard, I would have to crawl in the dust of this gang of traitors, who are now able to dictate their will to me through their successful crimes. Dearest, incomparable sister, how can I help feelings of revenge and bitterness against all my neighbors, among whom is not one who would not have helped to speed up my fall and did not take his share of the robbery and rejoiced? Can a prince survive his state, the glory of his nation, the honor of his own name? No, dear sister, you are of too noble a mind to reccommend such cowardice to me. Should the precious privilege of freedom be less dear to the crowned heads of the eighteenth century than it once was to Roman patricians? And where is it written that Brutus and Cato would pre-empt princes and kings in high spirits? (...)
Gratitude, my intimate attachment to you, our tried and tested friendship, which never denies itself, all these oblige me to be completely frank to you. No, splendid sister, I do not want to keep any of my steps secret from you, I want to inform you of everything. My thoughts, the heart of my heart, my resolutions, everything. You will find out in good time. I will not rush anything, but on the other hand it will also be impossible for me to change my mind. After the Battle of Prague, the situation of the Queen of Hungary seemed to be of concern to her, but she has powerful allies and still significant sources of aid; I have neither. An accident alone would not throw me to the ground, I have already survived so many: the defeats at Kolin and Jägersdorf in East Prussia; the unfortunate withdrawal of my brother - that would be AW getting court martialed - and the loss of the magazine of Zittau, the loss of all my Westphalian provinces, the misfortune and death of Winterfeldt, the burglary in Pomerania, the Magdeburg and Halberstadt, the infidelity of my allies. And in spite of all these blows, I rise up against the misfortune, so that I can believe that my attitude is still free of any weakness to this day. I am determined to fight against the calamity, but at the same time I am determined never to subject my name and that of my house to shame.
Now you know everything, dear sister, which is basically what is going on in my soul; there you have my general confession. As far as you are concerned, incomparable sister, I do not have the heart to dissuade you from your resolutions. Our way of thinking is quite the same; impossible to condemn feelings that I myself have every day. Life was given to us by nature as a boon; as soon as it is no longer such, the contract expires, every person becomes masters of putting an end to their misfortune at the moment they think it is advisable. An actor who stays on stage when he has nothing more to say is whistled out. The unhappy is pitied by the world only in the first moments; soon it becomes tired of its compassion; then the invective of men sits in judgment, and finds that all that has happened to the unfortunate happened due to their own fault. They are condemned, and finally despised. If I also leave myself to the ordinary course of nature, the sorrow and my poor health will shorten my days in a few years. That would mean surviving myself and cowardly condoning what is in my hands to avoid. Except for you, there is no one left in the wide world who still ties me to this world; my friends, my dearest relatives rest in the grave – in a word: I have lost everything. If your decision is the same as mine, we end together our misfortune, our miserable fate. Those who remain in the world may then come to terms with the worries that will weigh on them, and take on all the heaviness that has been pushing our shoulders for so long.
This caused a prompt reply:
For God's sake, calm down, dearest brother! Your military situation is desperate, but there is a prospect of peace. For heaven's sake, banish all dark thoughts. Do you want to kill so many subjects who place their only hope in your person?
(She also wrote to Voltaire and told him he needed to write some philosophical Fritz-cheering up letters poste haste.) Nearly a year later:
Camp at Skalitz, 4. August 1758. (After he got Heinrich's letter About how she's likely to die and the news about AW will finish any hope she has):
As I hear, dear sister, you are in a very bad state. You can imagine how great my concern, my sorrow, my despair is. If I have ever demanded a proof of friendship from you, if you have ever felt love for me, so I now ask you to put it to the test. Keep yourself alive, and if it is not for your own sake, think: it happens for a brother who worships you, who sees you as the friend of his heart, as his sole comfort. Remember that of all my surviving relatives, you are the one most dear to me. I will find ways and means to get rid of all my enemies; I will, if heaven pleases, save the state from danger; but if I lose you, it is irreparable, and you yourself thrust the dagger into my heart. Everything in the world can change, but the loss of a person like you is an incurable devastation. By all that you hold dear: seek to overcome your own great sorrow, and also to overcome the one we share; but above all, keep yourself alive! My life is tied to yours; without you it becomes unbearable to me. You are my consolation, only to you alone I can open my heart wholeheartedly. Yes, dear sister, either you know me badly, or if you know me, you will gather all your strength to recover. You will appease your worries, you will defeat your body and do everything for your health.
Don't you worry for my sake. You know that business never goes smoothly; but I assure you, you shall receive good news about our war operations. I'm fine and will be fine if I only hear about your improvement. But if I receive bad news from Bayreuth, I will be crushed by my sins.
Re: One admiring reader comments
Date: 2020-01-05 01:29 pm (UTC)Also, wow, the tables are turned. I can't stop thinking of Wilhelmine recording that she and their mother were the only thing that motivated Fritz to live after Katte's death. Now he's trying to use himself to motivate her to stay alive. Unfortunately, that doesn't work as well with tuberculosis as with PTSD. :/
Man. Fix-it fic for everyone. :-(
Re: One admiring reader comments
Date: 2020-01-05 04:47 pm (UTC)Maximum angst. I mean, Wilhelmine's method of venting and self therapy - secretly writing memoirs and not secretly writing operas, complete with giving the one with a killed mother to Mom at her birthday - was definitely less damaging than Fritz' methods but those memoirs were a ticking time bomb. Though I can understand why she didn't go back to them for a rewrite post 1746/1747, when she was reconciled with Fritz and had made up with her husband. (They really end rather abruptly mid first visit with the new Würtemberg in-laws, just after Wilhelmine has deduced the Margrave is cheating on her with Marwitz, and there's no indication that this was a planned ending.) Best not go through that time again, etc; I'm also glad she didn't destroy them, because then where would we be? But it's a good, good thing Fritz never read them.
I can't stop thinking of Wilhelmine recording that she and their mother were the only thing that motivated Fritz to live after Katte's death. Now he's trying to use himself to motivate her to stay alive.
That's why I had them both remember in different stories that they promised each other to never ever die. Incidentally, Lehndorff, who didn't know Wilhelmine very well - just through her Berlin visits in the early 1750s - but of course had heard about her, reports the news of Hochkirch, EC's brother Franz' death, Keith's death and Wilhelmine's death arriving at EC's court pretty much all at once, and his entry offers a pen portrait/mini obituary for all of them from his pov:
Prince Franz, our Queen's brother, has remained on the Hochkirch field. She has been told the news by Count Finkck and is devastated. He was the youngest in her family and entered our - i.e. Prussia's - service early, since he was trained under the eyes of his cousin the Duke of Bevern in Stettin. He was with his regiment in Königsberg in der Mark. He was an able officer, dutiful in service and brave. Tall of figure, he had an ugly face marked by smallbox scars, and he stuttered so badly that you could hardly understand him.
The greatest lost is that of Marshal Keith. He's entered our service ca. 1748 and received 10 000 Taler salary by the King. He had an arresting face, was interesting company and always got invited to the intimate suppers the King held. He didn't value splendor and magnificence very much and gave nearly all his income to his mistress, a Finnish woman named Eva. She had an excellent figure, a quick mind and graceful behaviour, and she fancied an expensive life style. While she used his horses and his cook, he used a public carriage and had his food brought to him from a small cookshop. In our army, he experienced some slights. He could only express himself badly in German, and he was accused of handling his operations too slowly. The late Prince of Prussia loved and appreciated him. His older brother, the Scottish marshal, who is a very different man, was wood into our service by him.
That same evening, Princess Amalie received news of the death of the Margravine of Bayreuth via an express messenger. This princess had been sick for nearly a year, and not really healthy through the past decade; it was, Princess Amalie said, her willpower which had kept her alive. The war, her worries for the King and the loss of the Prince of Prussia used up her remaining life force. Of all the King's sisters, she was the one most like him in mind and heart. She felt only comfortable among famous people, loved magnificence, adored the theatre and composed operas herself. She always wore jewelry and used make up - Lehndorff writes "white and red", but that's what he means - despite denying that she did. Above all she was gracious and always kept her word. Her people did not love her much and claimed that she disliked the small principality and her husbands' subjects. This princess had been born for a throne, just not for the status of a Margravine of Bayreuth.
Re: One admiring reader comments
Date: 2020-01-05 04:57 pm (UTC)Couldn't agree more on both counts.
Lehndorff: those are awesome character portraits, all three! But especially the two I didn't know about as people, just names. Thank you for continuing to share Lehndorff's gossipy sensationalism. He is *such* a treasure hoard of information.
Re: One admiring reader comments
Date: 2020-01-05 06:33 pm (UTC)He does, however, faithfully report this gem:
Juli 11th. I'm busy with reading until 5, and then I escort the Queen to the theatre. They play Amelie by Voltaire. It is a bit odd that while the poet has been arrested in Frankfurt, at the King's insistence, we keep being presented with his plays here, also at the King's insistence.
For "odd", substitute "Fritzian", Lehndorff. Your monarch sees no contradiction there at all. Hasn't he always insistent Voltaire is scum and he only cares about his genius? (It's not like he'll write "letters and greetings are no substitution for Voltaire, if one has had him in persona", oh no.)
Lehndorff's comments on the Voltaire implosion in general amount to "WTF? I mean, WTF?" in the polite Rokoko way, of course.
Re: One admiring reader comments
Date: 2020-01-05 06:47 pm (UTC)Not that I remember. I have a vague memory of EC being shocked by Algarotti's dissing of religion, but this was critically at Rheinsberg, when she and Fritz still lived together. Imagine how she'd react to Voltaire! I wouldn't be surprised if Fritz saw no need to inflict the boring pious woman on Voltaire.
For "odd", substitute "Fritzian", Lehndorff. Your monarch sees no contradiction there at all. Hasn't he always insistent Voltaire is scum and he only cares about his genius?
LOLOLOL
(It's not like he'll write "letters and greetings are no substitution for Voltaire, if one has had him in persona", oh no.)
It's hard when you're in love with someone you know is no damn good for you. And that goes in both directions. As they both seem to have been aware of it and suffered from the eternal tension between what their mind knew and their heart felt.
Lehndorff is the best
Date: 2020-01-06 05:36 am (UTC)I really like the one of Marshal Keith too <3
Lehndorff continues to be the absolute awesomest <3
Re: Lehndorff is the best
Date: 2020-01-06 07:41 am (UTC)I make the aquaintance of the famous Marshal Seckendorff, whom the King had had arrested on his country seat Meuselwitz and ordered to be brought to Magdeburg. Some think the King wants to have someone he can exchange for Field Marshal Moritz, others suspect Seckendorff to have conspired with the Austrians and thus of having been responsible for Hadik taking Berlin. I visit him as often as possible and listen to him with great entertainment. He's still the sly fox he's ever been. Right now, he's wrapped himself in the cloak of piety and has surrounded himself by prayer books. When one mentions his 86 years to him, he says: "I am alive, but not I, Christ lives in me."
Sometimes, however, he forgets hinmself, and then his old doubledealing, his greed, his scheming, in short, all that he's been famous for emerge. He can't forgive the King of having called him an ursurer in his memoirs. "At least," he claims, "I have not been one towards the King to whom I've given 1500 ducats without having gotten a single coin back. Or anything else." He's truly a living chronicle. His imprisonment, he bears with great calm, though he's insisting on his innocence. His manner of living is somewhat poor; he takes his meals from the cookshop and only drinks the wine his friends send him. For his age, he's well off; he can climb stairs without catching his breath. His face is somewhat ordinary, and his speech somewhat distorted through the loss of so many teeth.
See, Lehndorff, you're so good with his that it's doubly frustrating you got along so badly with the Katte clan and weren't interested in learning anything about Hans Herrmann.
Unrelatedly, because I never get tired quoting Lehndorff on the love of his life; in December of 1752, he's basically with him every day and still laments they're not together often enough:
December 6th. After supper, I go back to H. I wish I could always be with him.
December 7th. After dinner, I rush to my heavenly H. and stay there until he has to visit the Queen Mother.
Dember 8th. Dinner with H. How charming he is! The only thing that makes me unhappy is that I'll never have the courage to tell him just how much I love him!
I think he got the point, Lehndorff, considering earlier entries already mention you two tenderly embracing and what not. 1907! Editor: It was the age of Empfindsamkeit ("Sensibility"). Just Rokoko emo. Go with it, readers.
Re: Lehndorff is the best
Date: 2020-01-06 05:34 pm (UTC)I think he got the point, Lehndorff, considering earlier entries already mention you two tenderly embracing and what not. 1907! Editor: It was the age of Empfindsamkeit ("Sensibility"). Just Rokoko emo. Go with it, readers.
LOL forever. So many LOLs.
Re: Lehndorff is the best
Date: 2020-01-06 05:55 pm (UTC)(BTW: one reviewer says "better than Thiébault". I mean, not that I disagree, but I also think you can't really compare someone's memoirs, written many years after the fact and of course focused on the central character the memoirs are about, with a selection from someone's journals written without hindsight.
Re: Lehndorff is the best
Date: 2020-01-06 06:03 pm (UTC)Agree re Thiébault. It wouldn't occur to me to compare them.
Re: One admiring reader comments
Date: 2020-01-02 09:03 am (UTC)The one thing that all my AUs have in common is that Fritz gets Katte out of the army asap and does keep him to the artistic sphere, and that Katte is grateful for it. He can be reader or some such. (Adding some plausibility to that scenario is that does possibly seem to be what Fritz may have been doing with Peter Keith. Heavy use of qualifications because I'm stretching the evidence, but we know he pulled Fredersdorf out of the army to be his valet/chamberlain, and we know Katte didn't want to join the army (and possibly was even planning on leaving it in 1729 and staying in England?). So that's the first thing that always happens in my AUs.)
And keeping their relationship away from military and politics is, in addition to being something they plausibly would both want to do and actually do, my solution to weighting the odds in favor of them having a successful relationship. Katte is no Fredersdorf, and Wilhelmine was on my mind too.
Re: One admiring reader comments
Date: 2020-01-03 06:08 am (UTC)<333333333
So I am extremely curious as to when you twigged to both of us being involved -- I figured that you must have known by the time you read the end-notes, as mildred must have written those, and you would know I would have had to have written the music bits, but was it earlier?
Re: One admiring reader comments
Date: 2020-01-03 06:17 am (UTC)Re: One admiring reader comments
Date: 2020-01-03 07:26 am (UTC)When I actually read it, I became uncertain again at first, because the style reminded me more of Mildred's Frederician pieces, but then the first musical detail showed up, and I thought, nah, it's Cahn!
Re: One admiring reader comments
Date: 2020-01-03 08:15 am (UTC)Looking at the first few paragraphs, they were extremely collaborative: first sentence by cahn, rest of the first and the second paragraph drafted by me and edited by her, then back to her again...it's no wonder you couldn't tell!
Mildred was the one with the letters in her possession
In my possession, but limited ability to read! I think it's hilarious that the volume arrived in time for me to scan and upload for you, and that you read it so fast...stealthily getting you to do historical consulting for your own fic wasn't the plan, but the timing worked out. :D
I will also confess, that although there was a genuine delay in getting Lehndorff 2 and 3 from my friend our royal patron, I got them the same day as I finished scanning the second half of the Fredersdorf volume. With the Yuletide deadline looming, I uploaded the Fredersdorf for you first, and hung onto Lehndorff for an extra day or two until you'd finished reading and summarizing Fredersdorf for us. I still can't *believe* your turnaround time on Fredersdorf and Lehndorff! You went through four volumes and I don't know how many write-ups in a week.
All hail our reader. I'm glad we were able to provide you with a treat, after all the treats and delights you've gifted us with, inside and outside of Yuletide.
all the detailed knowledge in the world
I have to point out to you something that I pointed out to cahn by email. To wit, these excerpts from the comments on my two YT fics:
ladyseesaw on "Care and Feeding": I really appreciated all the little details
You on "Care and Feeding": I also appreciate all those background details
Impala_Chick on "Counterpoint": I really liked all the vivid details in this
subito on "Counterpoint": I liked all the details - in the fic itself and in your end note
You on "Counterpoint": Neat realistic detail [that particular detail was at least collaborative]
No matter what I write: technical documentation, scholarly articles, fanfiction...somebody will comment on "all the detail." Do I relate to the caricature of Old Fritz grinding beans? I do.
Re: One admiring reader comments
Date: 2020-01-03 11:43 am (UTC)When the news about the death of the Prince of Prussia arrives, Catt's memoirs claim he was the first whom the brother talks to about his pain; according to the diaries, however, the reader wasn't even received by the King during the four days after said news arrived at camp. When a three months later the sister, the margravine of Bayreuth dies, the King according to the memoirs at once needs to see Catt, who gets woken up at 2 am for that purpose, doesn't get dismissed again until three hours later; he then sends at once a condolence letter which since he's already given his condolences face to face seems to be superflous, which moves its recipient to call its writer back again fifteen minutes after receiving it, and then, during the third day after receiving the news, for another four hours. In the diary, however, Catt first sends the condolence letter, which makes sense, and isn't received by the King until their usual hour.
Thus says the German introduction. I'm also still Browsing through the English translated memoirs in parallel, and incidentally, disapproving English translator, Lord Rosebery, has a name that sounded vaguely familiar to me, from an Oscar Wilde context. To wit: Oscar's homme fatal, Lord Alfred Douglas, aka Bosie, had had an older brother, Lord Drumlanring, who'd worked as Rosebery's private secretary, may or may not have had a sexual relationship with him and may or may not have shot himself because of it (official explanation: hunting accident), which contributed to the Marquess of Queensberry going extra beserk on poor OW later). Links:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archibald_Primrose,_5th_Earl_of_Rosebery
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Douglas,_Viscount_Drumlanrig
Also, the date of the translation's publication, 1916, makes it the middle of WWI, so no wonder the Fritz loathing is powerful in the introduction and Rosebery tells us that it was his heritage that led straight to the current catastrophe etc.
Re: One admiring reader comments
Date: 2020-01-04 07:30 am (UTC)Same, but we may be in luck! Beginning_Returner over on AO3 says they are comfortable in French and German, have read Catt's diary, and are interested in sharing their observations on how the diary differs from the memoirs. Now we just need to lure them over here. :D (I assume they disappeared because real life took over, but hopefully they will come back.)
he then sends at once a condolence letter which since he's already given his condolences face to face seems to be superflous
OMG, I noticed this, and I noticed the "Fritz wants to talk to me first about his siblings' deaths!" (which didn't jive *at all* with either what I know of Fritz in general or the specifics of what I've heard about his reactions to Wilhelmine's death), and Fritz omitting AW from the Strasbourg trip and Catt's footnote re same, and the part where Henry was the favorite (say what?), and generally after revisiting the memoirs the last couple weeks with my more fleshed out knowledge from our discussions, I have been WTFing left and right.
I would *love* to see a breakdown of how the diary differs from the memoirs. I'm going to go poke Beginning_Returner, especially as I'm about to put up my textual criticism and would love their input.
Interesting re Rosebery, I didn't recognize the name at all. Thank you for the links. I *did* notice it was WWI and the British author was hating on the Prussian king. I mean, he has some fair points re the expansionism! If Fritz were not 200+ years dead, and were only, say, 130 years dead, I'd have to emphasize the disapproval more too. But still. From this distance, I'm happy to admire his good points as well.
Catt
Date: 2020-01-04 08:11 am (UTC)OMG, I noticed this, and I noticed the "Fritz wants to talk to me first about his siblings' deaths!"
Seems Catt couldn't resist the embellishment there. I'm assuming the actual content of what he records Fritz saying about his dead siblings isn't too different in the diary vs the memoirs, or German editor of the diary would have remarked on that as well. But the change in circumstance - one conversation four days after the news in AW's case vs immediate soul-spilling, regular conversation at the usual hour after a condolence letter vs being woken up in the middle of the night and dragged for soulspilling again and again - does make for, if not falsification, and a significantly altered perspective on what the relationship was like.
German editor also says that when in the memoirs Fritz asks Catt to tell him what he, Catt, has heard about his fallout with AW, Catt replies with an almost exact summary of an anonymous pamphlet/ short book about AW which presumably he'd looked up for the memoirs when writing them, since there is no equivalent statement of his in the diary. This, I'd ascribe most to the need for exposition to the intended reader who decades after Fritz' own death and even more decades since AW's might not even remember anymore how many brothers Fritz had, if any, let alone what happened with AW.
What I really want someone to check is how complimentary Fritz is about young future FW2 in the diary versus the memoirs, because all that praise for his future successor he gives to Catt is very much in contrast to all I've seen quoted and reported otherwise. Granted, this is really young FW2 - he was born in 1744, so in 1760 when Catt has Fritz gush over him he's 16 - , and he might still have a guilty conscience because of AW, but still, it does not sound like the uncle who told everyone to tease kid and teenage FW so the later should get over his shyness, and complains about young FW not doing enough of his scholarly homework in his letters.
Conversely: all those dreams Catt reports must be a psychonalyst's catnip. Iin addition to all the dreams you already mentioned, the late in the 7 Years War one where he dreams about his father and the late old Dessau and asks "did I do well?", telling old Dessau their approval means the world to him is sooo telling. Fritz in 1760: still hoping for a "well done, son" from dead FW1 and busy traumatizing the next generation as part of his personal therapy.
On a lighter note, all those instances of "Voltaire is the worst! Did I tell you how Voltaire is the lowest of the low characters yet today, Catt? OMG A LETTER FROM VOLTAIRE!!!!" are awesome. (Am not surprised Catt backs up what I already read in the actual correspondance, i.e. Fritz feeling let down by the first ode to Wilhelmine as not being immortal poetry to make all of Europe weep.)
Re: Catt
Date: 2020-01-04 08:56 am (UTC)That is super interesting, especially in the context of the textual criticism I'm about to post. Because I can find no mention of Katte in the diary, so either he's going from memory, or he looked something up. And his and Voltaire's accounts being so similar, I wonder if they both looked up the same account, relied on the same oral account floating around, or if (this seems unlikely, but) Catt looked up Voltaire's, fleshed it out, and put it into Fritz's mouth. If so, he was writing some historical fiction, because Voltaire's account reads like a summary of Catt's and not vice versa, but...if they didn't both get their account from Fritz, I sort of feel like they may have gotten it from the same place.
Anyway, you'll see what I mean shortly.
Iin addition to all the dreams you already mentioned, the late in the 7 Years War one where he dreams about his father and the late old Dessau and asks "did I do well?", telling old Dessau their approval means the world to him is sooo telling.
I did in fact mention that one, but it was long ago and far away, so it bears repeating. I must mention that I even linked to TV Tropes for the "Well done, son" remark, though! Behold:
"And also that dream where Fritz asked his father what he thought of what he'd done with the kingdom he inherited, and FW said 'Well done, Son,' and Fritz told his father that his approval meant more to him than anything in the universe, UGH, Fritz, please get a therapist that hasn't been invented yet. Also *hug*."
On a lighter note, all those instances of "Voltaire is the worst! Did I tell you how Voltaire is the lowest of the low characters yet today, Catt? OMG A LETTER FROM VOLTAIRE!!!!" are awesome.
I KNOW RIGHT? Hopelessly smitten. The thing is, this isn't actually surprising, or shouldn't be, because even before Voltaire came to stay with him, he was telling everyone how Voltaire was the lowest of the low, and "OH GOD I WANT HIM SO BAD, freaking Émilie. Freaking indissoluble bonds. *pouts*"
And yes, it was fun (I mean, interesting in a tragic sort of way) seeing the ode come up in your summary of their correspondence, having seen Catt's perspective. :(
Re: Catt
Date: 2020-01-04 06:38 pm (UTC)Question: in your "Katte lives" AUs - does Fritz still have that type of relationship with Voltaire? And if so, what on earth does Katte make of it?
Also: who was it again that told Voltaire of Fritz "he's like an orange, I'll squeeze him dry" remark? (That even ended up in Mein Name ist Bach.) Not also Maupertuis?
Re: Catt
Date: 2020-01-04 06:55 pm (UTC)In Voltaire's memoirs, he says that Fritz said it to La Mettrie, who was Fritz's reader at the time. MacDonogh says that recent research has cast doubt on this episode, but gives no source. He does point out a passage that I think I had mentioned to you, where Fritz wrote to Algarotti that Voltaire was the worst, the ABSOLUTE WORST, but that that was irrelevant to why Fritz was desperately trying to get him at his court.
Tangentially...
Date: 2020-01-06 04:45 am (UTC)Yes, but he‘s also not the former PM of, say, Switzerland. If you‘ve risen to the top of the British Empire and you‘re described as a PM who „favoured strong national defence and imperialism abroad“, then you really are sitting in a glass house when talking about other nation‘s expansionism. Not to defend W2 (ever! Worst Hohenzollern of the lot as ruler!), but he got the imperialism bug from both sides of his heritage, I‘d say, not just the Prussian one.
In the - quite good - 1970s British tv series about David Llyod George, there‘s this scene where mid WWI, at the very point when Rosebery is publishing this, the Russian Revolution happens, which means imprisoned and soon dead Romanows and no more Russian allies for Britain. DLG‘s two secretaries are afraid how he‘ll take that, but he‘s actually perky about it, because, says he, now he can sell the Americans on this war and argue it‘s about OMG freedom. „Before, they were under the impression it was just a bunch of corrupt European dynasties duking it out.“ Considering Czarist Russia was THE most backward nation on the continent in terms of human rights, 1970s scriptwriter has a point. And while we‘re at it, WWI era Britain not only - like the rest of Europe - had no voting rights for women - but, unlike, say, Wilhelminian Germany, had the voting rights for men still restricted by financial standing. It wasn‘t until after WWI when all male British citizens could vote, and as for the female vote, that still got limitations inflicted on it - to married women and a certain income - until freaking 1926. Whereas all adult women got the right to vote in Germany in 1919. And just to round it off, because he was under a lot of pressure by the rise of the Social Democratic Party in Germany, Bismarck introduced legal health insurance in 1883. (I.e. from then on, employers were legally obliged to have their workers ensured, both for illnesses and accidents.) Great Britain didn‘t get around to something approaching this until 1911 - when it was David Llyod George as minister of the interior who pushed the relevant law through.
Meaning: the British self image of the beacon of progress vs some backward militaristic nation on the continent was, shall we say, not exactly corresponding to reality....
Re: Tangentially...
Date: 2020-01-06 05:38 pm (UTC)Yes, of course, he also lives in a glass house. It doesn't make his points about Fritz wrong, just hypocritical.
Definitely a useful write-up, though. As you know, I love chronologies, and I did not have all those dates in my head
because they're post-1815.Re: Tangentially...
Date: 2020-01-06 05:58 pm (UTC)*resurrects, whistling "Despite of all temptations to belong to other nations, he remains an Englishmaaaaaan!"*
Re: Tangentially...
Date: 2020-01-06 06:00 pm (UTC)Gilbert and Sullivan are so great.
Fredersdorf gossipy sensationalism
Date: 2020-01-02 10:48 am (UTC)But then, this source (without of course, naming its own sources), says that it's much debated whether Fredersdorf might have been poisoned--accidentally poisoned, that is, by his alchemy experiments. And it was another one of those "Oh, duh, why didn't I think of that?" moments for me. Among other things, alchemy uses mercury. Which was also, of course, a medical treatment back in the day.
Interestingly, now that I refresh myself on the symptoms of mercury poisoning, they are neurological, and a surprising number of them are mental: impaired concentration, impaired memory, anxiety, depression, etc. I don't know if this is consistent with his apparent productivity even in his later years, but if it was gradual, it might have hit a tipping point in 1757. There are also the physical symptoms: numbness, weakness, tremors, nausea/vomiting, impaired coordination.
Continuing with some less sensationalistic gossip, this book (which is "Herrenhaus und Hütten: Sächsische Dörfer am Erzgebirgskamm von 1700 bis 1900") tells me that in 1743, some Saxon noblewoman decided to adopt [yes, adopt] 35-yo Fredersdorf and name him heir to her property in Saxony. He apparently accepted the offer, but said he was too busy with his job duties [I'll bet!] and his estate at Zernikow to administer it himself, so will leave it in the hands of agents. It's doubtful whether he ever set foot on the property.
The source for all this is apparently in the archives in Dresden.
So that's at least a couple new things about Fredersdorf, although still no hint of where the dishonesty accusation comes from, which I believe in less and less with each passing failure to turn up any evidence.
ETA: Forgot to mention, this book subscribes to the belief that Fritz was opposed to Fredersdorf's marriage, until Fredersdorf decides to present it as a nursing opportunity. Again, no sources given, but it does add the interesting (again unsourced) "fact" that the wedding took place less than 24 hours after Fritz gave permission. Of course, it dates the wedding to December 30, and Fritz's letter is dated to "etwa Anfang November" in the correspondence, so...
I'm dubious about all of this, except for the part where Fredersdorf was being cunning in his use of a nurse request, and other people started to catch onto this trick. Now I really want to know how many letters are lying around the archives that go like this:
Your Royal Majesty,
I have found a potential nurse and would like to marry her.
Your
eye-rollingvery loyal subject...Like, Fredersdorf saying, "I'm extremely sick, and you know just how sick I am, and I need a nurse now so I don't die," is one thing. Seydlitz going, "I just recovered from my last wound and am returning to active duty, but, like, what if I get wounded again someday? I should get married now, just in case," is *hilarious*. In a tragic Fritzian way.
Re: Fredersdorf gossipy sensationalism
Date: 2020-01-02 06:04 pm (UTC)"Within 24 hours of Fritz giving permission" can't be right since Lehndorff spots future Mrs. Fredersdorf in society on 15th December 1752 and knows the King will make her a wedding present of 5000 Taler. He doesn't treat Fredersdorf getting married at all as fresh news in the entry.
Love the nurse announcement letter. Clearly, this is why Mara-Schmeling and Barbarina had to elope; they could hardly sell their guys as nurses.
Re: Fredersdorf gossipy sensationalism
Date: 2020-01-03 03:50 am (UTC)This book didn't have any credibility with me before you mentioned this; this just confirms it. Oh, well. I do like their mercury theory!
I do keep seeing references to Algarotti getting STDs, and yes, when I think of mercury, I think of STDs (even before I think of alchemy), so I wouldn't be surprised if Algarotti had tried it too. But Fredersdorf, who was involved in alchemical experiments over the course of several years, might have had very long-term exposure and it might, who knows, have played a role in his death at age 49.
I was thinking of Lehndorff and Hotham too when I wrote that! Hotham isn't a potential nurse, and England's climate didn't attract many people for health reasons, either. But for guys like Seydlitz, it worked like a charm.
Lehndorff: Not a chance
Date: 2020-01-03 05:16 am (UTC)„Your Majesty, Chevalier Hotham has told me wonders about Bath. It‘s practically my only hope for recovering my health. And since he‘s kindly offered to take me there, I thought...
„I wasn‘t aware your health was suffering. Considering all the time you‘ve spent hanging out with my brothers. If you absolutely need to visit a spa, go to a German one. That‘s cheaper.“
Incidentally, yet another reason why Fritz declined Lehndorff‘s emigration-with-Hotham request occurred to me, and it‘s one related to why he was so against Marwitz, female edition, marrying an Austrian count, and why it was so unusual for him to gift the non-noble Fredersdorf with an estate. Due to the death of his older brother, Lehndorff had become heir to the family estate, and Fritz, like his father, was paranoid about any of the Prussian estates getting claimed by anyone not a Prussian noble inside the country. (Which is why FW had made Wilhelmine promise that the Marwitz daughters who went with her upon her marriage would only be married to Prussian nobles.) If Lehndorff emigrates to England with Hotham, chances are he‘ll stay there, will get married there (since marriage isn‘t about love and Lehndorff is now the one who has to continue the family line), and that in turn means a Hannover or a Brit or both could be entitled to a Prussian estate.
(Note that Fritz had zilch objections to either of Lehndorff‘s two actual marriages later, both to Prussian nobles within Prussia.) (At which point Lehndorff also finally got the permission to travel abroad.)
Re: Lehndorff: Not a chance
Date: 2020-01-04 07:20 am (UTC)Hahaha, so Fritzian.
Fritz: But not one in Bohemia, which belongs to THAT WOMAN. (
ETA: Oh, and the inheritance considerations are fascinating. I hadn't realized/had forgotten Lehndorff was the heir to the family estate, and would not have made the connection with the emigration request being denied. But that makes perfect sense!
Re: Fredersdorf gossipy sensationalism
Date: 2020-01-06 05:45 am (UTC)Lehndorffsomeone would have been interested in it and written it down!(and, okay, I just would really like to think that he and Fritz were always on good terms)
Re: Fredersdorf gossipy sensationalism
Date: 2020-01-06 05:14 pm (UTC)I reserve the right to use the embezzlement/speculation story in fiction, though. I sincerely hope it didn't happen in real life, but it does make good drama in fiction. In a fandom where Fritz has already been killed off at age 18 by Dad, nobody gets to throw stones at my break-it fics. :P
Re: Fredersdorf gossipy sensationalism
Date: 2020-01-07 12:04 pm (UTC)Anyway. It may be the case that in December 1731, when Fritz was passing through Frankfurt an der Oder, and the local university students came to perform music for him, Fredersdorf was amazing on the flute, and Fritz went, "Him! I want him!" and got him out of Schwerin's regiment. Now, how Fredersdorf being in a student performance is consistent with him being in the regiment, I don't know, but perhaps
Re: Fredersdorf gossipy sensationalism
Date: 2020-01-07 04:50 pm (UTC)I make only one more visit, to the famous Fredersdorf, who under the title of "valet to the King" has played the role of prime minister for so long. For if anyone deserves this title, he does. At least he enjoyed such renown in the world that I have often seen him surrounded by knights and excellencies who made pretty deep bows to him, and his antechambre was often filled with state ministers and great lords. As far as I was concerned, I never had the cowardice to flatter him, nor did I seek him out except for now, when he no longer is connected to his majesty. His ill health, his jealousy of the famous Glasow, his riches and especially his desire for a quiet life have caused him to beg the King long enough so that the King allowed him to resign his positions. For this man basically filled out all the court offices. He supervised all the buildings, the King's accounts and treasure, all the staff, in short, after the King he was the only one who ruled, and often did so somewhat despotically. He is currently even more sick, the hemmorhoides have nearly devoured him. It is not a little amazing that a common man from the most backward Pommarania without any education could aquire such decency, grace of conduct and quickness of mind. A very pretty face aided him and was the beginning of his fortune, and through his intelligence, he managed to keep and defend such a difficult position as his. Most of all, though, I admire that he was able to withdraw in time, which is such a delicate matter for men who have a position equal to that of a beautiful woman when she notices her looks are fading. I remain with him until 11 in the evening and then return to the house of Frau V. Ingersleben, where I am lodging.
Re: Fredersdorf gossipy sensationalism
Date: 2020-01-07 05:35 pm (UTC)His ill health, his jealousy of the famous Glasow, his riches and especially his desire for a quiet life have caused him to beg the King long enough so that the King allowed him to resign his positions.
I mean. This right here, I am not believing ANY charges of embezzlement until one explains to me how Lehndorff can write this :P
Most of all, though, I admire that he was able to withdraw in time, which is such a delicate matter for men who have a position equal to that of a beautiful woman when she notices her looks are fading.
I had forgotten about this! (Though of course I remembered when I read it again.) Lehndorff, burn :D (In general I think it's a neat word-portrait, though -- Lehndorff really does have a way with drawing these thumbnail sketches of people.)
Re: Fredersdorf gossipy sensationalism
Date: 2020-01-07 05:58 pm (UTC)That's what I'm thinking.
I am not believing ANY charges of embezzlement until one explains to me how Lehndorff can write this
I suppose it's technically possible that it was hushed up so well because of Fredersdorf's position and the embarrassment to Fritz. But then Lehndorff has heard any number of embarrasing-to-Fritz stories. He's heard about Glasow, for starters, when Glasow falls from grace. He knows the Marwitz tale. (Which, granted, as Heinrich's friend he has a great source for, but the Marwitz entry gave me the impression that Lehndorff might actually originally have learned the tale from Marwitz himself.) When the Voltaire-Maupertuis debacle goes down, he notes the various stages - without any intimate details, of course, but he's alert enough to know about each step despite not being a member of the academy. And years later, when Elisabeth the first wife of future FW2 has her scandal, the shocked Lehndorff notes down all the rumors, even outrageous (and false) ones like her wanting to poison future FW2 to rule with a lover. And inofficial Prime Minister Fredersdorf is the only one about whose resignation there's no gossip other than "he was sick, he was exhausted, he wanted to enjoy the private life" plus "he was jealous of Glasow" (which as far as I know, and correct me if I'm wrong, Lehndorff is the only one to report? There's not even a little rumor that it might have been for financial reasons? At a court where most of the nobles would have been only too delighted to say "see, just proves you can't trust commoner upstarts"?
...maybe not impossible, but really really unlikely.
Incidentally, re: Fredersdorf was jealous of Glasow and "fading looks" - do we think Lehndorff is onto something there, or is he projecting (since there's that earlier entry about Fritz' incognito trip to the Netherlands and how he'd have loved to come along at the King's side (like Glasow), or at least to meet the King there (like Catt))? Having read all those letters from Fritz to Fredersdorf and how affectionate they sound till the end of them, I'm tempted to say no, Fritz might have had a soft spot for the pretty (especially when combined with the witty) but Fredersdorf knew that emotionally, Fritz would not trade him in just for aging. Then again, as Mildred pointed out, emotions (and jealousies) aren't logical. Of special interest - which came first, Fredersdorf's marriage plans or Fritz showing an interest in Glasow? Because there might be an answer.
Re: Fredersdorf gossipy sensationalism
Date: 2020-01-07 06:09 pm (UTC)I honestly think he's projecting, between the letters being affectionate right up to the end, as you say, and also just how *long* Fredersdorf had been sick and unable to accompany Fritz on his journeys. I also gathered from Preuss, but could be wrong, that there was another batman in between Fredersdorf and Glasow. I would need to read more closely, but I think the sequence may have been "Fredersdorf got sick, someone named Anderson fell out of favor, Glasow got his turn."
Then again, as Mildred pointed out, emotions (and jealousies) aren't logical.
They're not, but they're often consistent, and if Fredersdorf didn't care about Marwitz or any of the other witty pretties Fritz collected, why would he step down for Glasow? I don't think Glasow was *that* special.
I vote for Lehndorff projecting.
Of special interest - which came first, Fredersdorf's marriage plans or Fritz showing an interest in Glasow?
I would need to check. My guess is Fredersdorf's marriage plans, but I could be wrong.
Re: Fredersdorf gossipy sensationalism
Date: 2020-01-08 07:07 am (UTC)BTW, going back to both German and English wiki for Fredersdorf to check for the marriage date, I have to go wtf again at the utter lack of source citation for the "dismissed for embezzling/died broken hearted about his lost honor", but the entries at least mention that Fredersdorf's bedroom in Sanssouci was directly next to Fritz', is intact and can be visited today. So you must have seen it when you were there, unconsciously?
Re: Fredersdorf gossipy sensationalism
Date: 2020-01-08 09:06 am (UTC)So, as I recall, they started us at the outside of the library and didn't let us into the servants' wings, just told us that they were there, and moved us through the main part of the palace. So I don't think I *have* seen it, something I have been lamenting ever since I read that in Wiki, with a much better idea now of who Fredersdorf is. *Seriously*, I need to go back now that I've had all these fruitful discussions with you and
For example, I must have seen Voltaire's room, but while I knew that Voltaire had come to stay with Fritz, and that they had a forty-year correspondence but a major explosion when they tried to live together, I certainly did not know all the things we know now, like how Fritz had the room redecorated after he left!
I have to go wtf again at the utter lack of source citation
I'll add a "citation needed" to English wiki if you'll add one to German wiki. My unwillingness to dirty my hands with the mess that is Wikipedia does occasionally bend enough to allow me to add a "citation needed." (Ha, I just checked one I added about a year and a half ago, and the unsubstantiated claim has disappeared from the page. Victory!)
Re: Fredersdorf gossipy sensationalism
Date: 2020-01-08 05:35 pm (UTC)I checked with
Re: Fredersdorf gossipy sensationalism
Date: 2020-01-08 04:56 pm (UTC)But, yeah, sick and tired and about to get
a nurse, really Fritzmarried, I don't think jealousy would even have occurred to him.Re: Fredersdorf gossipy sensationalism
Date: 2020-01-07 06:05 pm (UTC)I was going to say, I wonder if the university students performed and Fredersdorf, who was in the local regiment, was associated with them in some way. Like, is it at all possible that he gave flute lessons to the local students? We know the Prussian army was notable for allowing its members to earn some money on the side, and that a lot of soldiers took advantage of this. And we know Fredersdorf's work ethic.
At any rate, no one says that Fredersdorf *was* a student, just that the students performed for Fritz and that may have been the occasion on which Fritz met Fredersdorf. Filling in or otherwise being associated with them makes as much sense to me as anything.
Re: Fredersdorf gossipy sensationalism
Date: 2020-01-07 08:26 pm (UTC)Re: Fredersdorf gossipy sensationalism
Date: 2020-01-07 08:46 pm (UTC)Well, what I'm thinking is that we had him not being virtuosic yet, but I'm not sure you need to be a virtuoso to teach some students who are presumably doing this in their spare time. (I imagine you don't.) Furthermore, I don't know about music, but in general, more important than your own skill level is your communication and interpersonal abilities. You need to have enough skill to know what you're talking about, but you don't need to be Johann Joachim Quantz.
So I absolutely buy Fredersdorf, who might have had significant interpersonal skills, as a good teacher of university students who wanted to do some flute-playing while studying law or whatever.
I don't know how Prussian regiments etc. worked (although it sounds like from what you're saying that it would totally work)
How Prussian regiments worked is that like most of Europe, they paid soldiers very little, but in peacetime, if they weren't on drill, which didn't occupy much of the day, soldiers were welcome to take up whatever civilian jobs they could find in the local town. And Prussian soldiers took huge advantage of this. Many other armies also underpaid and didn't allow side jobs, which sucked.
So I vote for: Fredersdorf teaches university students at the town his regiment is stationed in; Crown Prince comes to town; somebody decides to put on a performance; because it's the Crown Prince they want the best possible performance; they get the guy who's really good to come join them for the performance; Fritz is impressed and immediately steals guy who's really good, much to the students' chagrin. :P And the rest is history!
Re: Fredersdorf gossipy sensationalism
Date: 2020-01-07 09:06 pm (UTC)Fritz is impressed and immediately steals guy who's really good, much to the students' chagrin.
Well, I mean, even if he did come to Fritz every day, what with all his exports lessons or whatever I think Fredersorf would have enough time to still teach some on the side :)
Re: Fredersdorf gossipy sensationalism
Date: 2020-01-07 09:21 pm (UTC)So even if Fredersdorf finds new students (and Küstrin is not a university town, but it does have nobles and well-to-do burghers who might want music lessons) to earn income from, his old students are still going to miss him!
Re: Fredersdorf gossipy sensationalism
Date: 2020-01-07 09:35 pm (UTC)clearly I need to write more fic about Fredersdorf in order to retain this stuffWow, though, I wonder what Fredersdorf thought about that!Re: Fredersdorf gossipy sensationalism
Date: 2020-01-07 09:42 pm (UTC)clearly I need to write more fic about Fredersdorf in order to retain this stuffNo shortage of co-authoring opportunities, just saying!
Re: Fredersdorf gossipy sensationalism
Date: 2020-01-08 08:31 am (UTC)Re: Fredersdorf gossipy sensationalism
Date: 2020-01-08 09:15 am (UTC):D
Re: Fredersdorf gossipy sensationalism
Date: 2020-01-08 11:03 am (UTC)But I still want my "How I survived my first Christmas at the Hohenzollerns" tale, too. ;)
Re: Fredersdorf gossipy sensationalism
Date: 2020-01-08 11:09 am (UTC)Re: Fredersdorf gossipy sensationalism
Date: 2020-01-08 09:48 pm (UTC)And was this literally at Christmas? (Or thereabouts?)
/asking for a "friend"
Re: Fredersdorf gossipy sensationalism
Date: 2020-01-09 04:52 am (UTC)(Incidentally, about the spelling of the Franconian principality - the 17th century French writing folk usually wrote „Baireuth“, or even „Baireut“ but it really was and is „Bayreuth“, hence my using that spelling consistently.)
Re: Fredersdorf gossipy sensationalism
Date: 2020-01-09 05:02 pm (UTC)Re: Fredersdorf gossipy sensationalism
Date: 2020-01-09 06:43 pm (UTC)Wilhelmine's visit home
Date: 2020-01-09 10:04 pm (UTC)(In fact the place where I stopped reading turns out to have been TWO PAGES before disaster Christmas visit! I should have stuck it out just a little more...)
Re: Wilhelmine's visit home
Date: 2020-01-09 10:13 pm (UTC)LOL! I stopped reading rather earlier on when I got hit by concentration issues, but had done a fair bit more skipping around before that.
Re: Wilhelmine's visit home
Date: 2020-01-10 07:09 am (UTC)Fritz is "my brother" until he and AW and Algarotti visit her in Bayreuth, at which point she says she's now switching to calling AW - whom she hasn't seen since he was still a kid and is amazed to find all grown up etc. - "my brother" and Fritz "the King" to avoid confusion. Of course, using first names for everyone would be even less confusing, but such was not the habit of the times. (Have read the memoirs of G1's mother, for example, and she does the same frustrating to Readers thing.)
Of course, first names don't always help. It took me a few letters to check that "Prince Ferdinand" in Fritz' letters to Heinrich during the 7 Years War is actually not their brother but their brother-in-law, EC's brother Ferd (aka the one who won't die in his war). Ferdinand of Hohenzollern is either "my/our brother" (once AW is dead), "my/our brother Ferdinand" or just Ferdinand.
Later on, "the princes my/our nephews" can mean AW's sons, but it can also mean Charlotte's sons. Why oh why does the ancien regime have a thing against first names!
Re: Wilhelmine's visit home
Date: 2020-01-11 04:56 am (UTC)aaaaargh between not using first names and everyone having THE SAME NAME, I am perpetually confused :P :)
(I am behind again on comments already, I know! But I did post v. secret diary excerpt :) )
Re: Wilhelmine's visit home
Date: 2020-01-11 06:43 am (UTC)Prinz - male member of a royal family, mostly son of King and/or Queen, but can be also kid of Queen‘s/King‘s sibling. So for example, in the Hohenzollern case, Fritz’ brother Ferdinand‘s kids would be „Prinz“ or „Prinzessin“ despite Ferdinand himself never being a King. Fun linguistic fact: in the first edition of the Brother Grimms‘ fairy tales, it‘s „Prinz“ and „Prinzessin“ all the way. This first edition was published when Napoleon was still in charge in Europe, and his little brother Jerome was ruling the Grimms‘ home province. (Jacob Grimm was actually Jerome‘s court librarian.) The war against Napoleon brought with it a massive massive rise on that new and fateful emotion, nationalism, now allied to anti-French-feeling (when in the previous century French cultural dominance had been absolute.). So come the second edition post Napoleon, Jacob, who is being side-eyed for having served Jerome anyway (that he needed the money since he as the sole earning member in a family of dependent siblings he headed not withstanding) in the new cultural climate, changes „Prinz“ to „Königssohn“. And „Prinzessin“ to „Königstochter“. Which stays put for all subsequent publications. (I.e. he replaced a term that since it was Latin-derived, German has in common with French, with some old fashioned sounding German term - meaning literally „King’s son“ and „King’s daughter“ that was actually not used before - though it’s partly inspired by Norse mythology, Jacob being a big fan of same - and subsequently got regarded as THE fairy tale term for young royals. In real life, people kept saying Prinz and Prinzessin.
Fürst (and the female, Fürstin) - is a generic term for high ranking person of the nobility. Can be used for, say, Dukes and monarchs alike, is used mostly, but not exclusively, for high ranking nobles actually having political power. For example, when the Prussian ambassador in Vienna gives his report on MT, he speaks of her in the German MT biography I‘ve read the report quoted in as „diese Fürstin“, „this princess“, which incidentally also avoids settling on „Archduchess“, „Queen“ or „Empress“. Posa in DON CARLOS says „Ich kann nicht Fürstendiener sein“ when in English he‘d have to be specific whether he doesn‘t see himself as able to serve a prince, a king or a queen, and probably has to settle for saying he can‘t be a courtier, which is part of what he means but only part.
Re: Wilhelmine's visit home
Date: 2020-01-11 05:00 pm (UTC)waiting for Dad to kick ithereditary prince" before he becomes Margrave.Re: Wilhelmine's visit home
Date: 2020-01-13 09:01 pm (UTC)Re: Wilhelmine's visit home
Date: 2020-01-12 10:23 pm (UTC)If it makes you feel better, so are the historians! We've now seen MacDonogh confuse Elisabeth Christine of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel-Bevern (Fritz's wife) with Elisabeth Christine of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel (FW2's wife)*, as well as Fritz's brother Heinrich with Fritz's nephew Heinrich, and I've seen Peter Keith and Robert Keith confused by the editor of the Allergnädigster Vater volume, who indexes a reference to "Keith" under the entry of the more famous Peter instead of Robert.
* Just to keep things exciting, there was also an Elisabeth Christine of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, who was MT's mother and the aunt of Fritz's wife EC.
Re: Fredersdorf gossipy sensationalism
Date: 2020-01-07 09:46 pm (UTC)Re: Fredersdorf gossipy sensationalism
Date: 2020-01-08 04:48 pm (UTC)My headcanon, now that you have brought this up, is that he was taken aback by suddenly having to relocate, and with some trepidation as to being involved with
crazy Hohenzollernroyalty at all, but alsozenexcited and interested by the prospect, and particularly excited he got to play flute :)Re: Fredersdorf gossipy sensationalism
Date: 2020-01-08 05:12 pm (UTC)Okay, looking back, what I said in the initial write-up was "He plays the oboe in the regiment at a town not far from Küstrin. Fritz somehow gets permission for him to come visit him." I threw a lot of information at you at a time when you were kind of whelmed, and some was bound to fall through the cracks. Anyway! I think it all worked out and what we ended up with was plausible enough. We also didn't spell out to the reader that he'd relocated specifically for this job, just that he was newly arrived in town, so nobody just reading this fic is going to wonder why he's worrying so much about Fritz and not enough about how this affects him. :D
(And indeed I wouldn't have had that whole exchange about oboe vs. flute, as presumably he would have known it was flute unless there was some bureaucratic thing where no one mentioned it to him... which... of course could have been the case :) )
I wouldn't have put it in myself, but I left it in without comment, for two reasons:
1) It allowed us to introduce to the reader the historical fact that he played the oboe at work and the flute for pleasure.
2) It's not implausible that the instructions weren't 100% clear, especially if Fritz hadn't met him before the relocation (which is the scenario our fic uses) but just said "someone find me a good flutist". In fact, Schwerin may not have been entirely sure that Fritz *didn't* also want him to play oboe; we know Fritz would play more than one instrument, especially when he was young and had the time, and maybe Fritz would have been delighted to hear his new musician play oboe as well.
Furthermore, I realize the modern US military doesn't translate perfectly to the Prussian army, but one thing that's historically been prized in a lot of armies and never more than the Prussian army is mindless obedience. Your CO says you're relocating; you're relocating. Maybe Fredersdorf got a say in it; maybe he didn't.
When we were writing this and I was thinking of Fredersdorf's relocation, I was reminded of the time my family was stationed with my dad in Japan. His tour of duty there was up, and the movers were carrying our stuff out the door when my dad got a phone call from his CO.
CO: Hey, Sergeant B, you sitting down? You might want to sit down for this.
Dad: Okay...
CO: You know how we told you you were moving to Kansas? We changed our minds.
Dad: *watches the movers carry stuff out the door, wonders if he's going to have to tell them to bring it back*
Dad: Okay.
CO: You're going to New Mexico instead.
Dad: Okay!
So, it ended up not being a huge difference, but it could easily have been. So I keep having this image of Fredersdorf being told, "Pack your stuff, you're moving to Küstrin tomorrow," and possibly not even being told why until he arrived.
It's quite possible he had already met Fritz when Fritz was passing through his town and knew what was up and was excited about somebody wanting him for his flute! But it's also possible he was like, "...Okay. Guess I'll find out when I get there."
Also, the way I was envisioning it, Fredersdorf was specifically told to bring his flute to play for the Prince. Then he shows up and the Prince is assuming that he plays the flute for the army, and that's when Fredersdorf realizes half the message got garbled, and he doesn't know which half. Did Fritz want the flute or did he want the instrument Fredersdorf was most proficient in? So I think it makes sense that he has the flute and no oboe with him, but then has a brief freakout (yes, I know, I had him freaking out here and you toned it down to be more zen :P) that maybe he brought the wrong one to his first day on the job. But he's in luck, because Fritz loves the flute more than most things in the world. <3
/another excerpt from the "Making of" on the Special Edition DVD. ;)
Re: Fredersdorf gossipy sensationalism
Date: 2020-01-08 06:13 pm (UTC)Subsection "the King and his flute":
https://www.museumsportal-berlin.de/de/magazin/friedrich/seine-flote/
Re: Fredersdorf gossipy sensationalism
Date: 2020-01-08 06:27 pm (UTC)Thanks!
Re: Fredersdorf gossipy sensationalism
Date: 2020-01-09 04:48 pm (UTC)(At one point I had to look up what date flutes became sectioned, so I could figure out if Fredersdorf could easily stuff two of them in his knapsack, lol)
Re: Fredersdorf gossipy sensationalism
Date: 2020-01-09 05:46 pm (UTC)Re: Fredersdorf gossipy sensationalism
Date: 2020-01-09 06:18 pm (UTC)Co-authoring is so educational. We should do it again!
Re: Fredersdorf gossipy sensationalism
Date: 2020-01-13 09:08 pm (UTC)Re: Fredersdorf gossipy sensationalism
Date: 2020-01-09 04:50 pm (UTC)Yeah, sorry! Next time hopefully I will be better about *actually reading* all the historical consultant words :P
no subject
Date: 2020-01-02 11:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-01-06 05:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-01-03 02:05 pm (UTC)To say, I was very impressed by the seamlessness of your collab, and got very emotional over poor bereaved Fritz trying to Move On ;______; I was also super floored by Selenak’s two (two!) lengthy works! Take a bow, Fritz RPF Triumverate!
AND, I am somewhat disappoint at the lack of Fritz/Voltaire bc this was dying to be written. Maybe for next year, or perhaps one or more of you three will write it anyway XD
no subject
Date: 2020-01-03 05:35 pm (UTC)I too am floored by Selenak's not only two (two!) lengthy works, but her short Madness gift which was for me! My own gift! *hugs it madly*
I am delighted by the ability of our fic to make you emotional (this kind of feedback always makes me squee) and also disappoint at the lack of Fritz/Voltaire. But! We are beefing up our Voltaire knowledge (Selenak has helped already by reading the German translation of the Fritz/Voltaire correspondence and summarizing it for us), and Cahn and I are thinking about another collaboration. She says it'll have to wait until later in this year, though. She keeps talking about these strange and mysterious things called family and job and other fanfic, none of which I have at this point. :P
Anyway, no promises, but we'll see what we can do. :)
... is it safe to delurk now, lol?
Ahahaha, well, that depends on what you mean by "safe." Today you hit the eye of the storm, in between the 20k words of fanfic-collaborating email correspondence 2 days ago, and tomorrow's forecast of 17k words pertaining to Katte's death, and probably tomorrow or the next day, the 50 images, with annotation, pertaining to Katte's death. I'm in the Katte's death fandom. :P
(Yes,
no subject
Date: 2020-01-04 12:46 pm (UTC)Ahaha, at the time of my initial post, the deluge did seem to have died down somewhat, though I now realise this is what you meant by “eye of the storm”! I am actually also (very) interested in the Katte death fandom, having gotten here by (1) my adoration of Carlos/Posa/ah, je meurs, l’ame joyeuse (2) having betaed one of last Yuletide’s Fritz/Katte fics (and if I’d managed a historical as well as text/spag beta — and know what I know now — I’d’ve caught the execution-by-sword aspect of things!, and (3) visiting Sanssouci this March, so I do intend to follow along, especially for the flood of images. Also, yay for the Fritz/Voltaire canon review. But first, the death record textual criticisms!
Sanssouci
Date: 2020-01-04 01:19 pm (UTC)HAHAHA. When I said 17,000 words were imminent, that wasn't a typo for 170. :P
In sum: are we going to suddenly become sane? Not any time soon! Will there be a break in the crazy? From time to time. :P
my adoration of Carlos/Posa/ah, je meurs, l’ame joyeuse
That's how we got here! Thank goodness
having betaed one of last Yuletide’s Fritz/Katte fics
Oh, I loved that fic! I agree with selenak's take that last year's YT Fritz/Katte fics were lovely qua fiction, despite departing from historical fact. (I know other people differ, but I would rather read a well-written inaccurate story, than a boring and strictly accurate one.)
Also, I too would have made any number of errors a year ago, or even 6 months ago. My knowledge has progressed in leaps and bounds these last few months. (With eternal gratitude toward
I'm *still* afraid I got something horribly wrong in "Counterpoint."
visiting Sanssouci this March
OMGOMGOMGOMG! I wanna go back! I've been dying to go back for the last several months, I know SO MANY things now that I didn't know then, and my list of things to see is much longer. Also, I didn't pay the extra fee for photography, and as soon as I got inside, I regretted it. It's only a few euros, it's totally worth it!
Okay, so we're going to have to get you a list of things to check out and why you should care. Okay, it's on my Trello list. First things first, though, the Antinous statue. I'll share with you some things that cahn and selenak have read. First, at least the first and third scenes and end notes of one of my own fics: it'll tell you about the Antinous statue.
Then, this comment, especially that slideshow where I made an annotated panoramic view of the Antinous statue and things related to it. Once you've read the relevant parts of my fic, you'll know why you care about the statue and its location. Then you'll "aha" at the pictures.
And finally, this post, which only has a handful of images, but has some commentary.
But first, the death record textual criticisms!
Textual criticisms are posted! I'll get to work on the images pronto. Only one of that flood is Sanssouci (it is in fact a mindblowingly gorgeous picture of that Antinous statue), but don't worry, we'll get you more deets on what to see at Sanssouci. (If nothing else, my upcoming flood of images is so detailed that actually traveling to these other places will become superfluous. ;) )
Okay, so tell me more about this trip to Sanssouci. How far are you having to travel to get there, where else are you going on this trip, how much time do you have (at Sanssouci and on the trip in general), do you speak German or will you have a German speaker with you, will you have a car, how likely are you to end up with time to make unplanned day trips vs. having everything scheduled in advance and no free days? My recommendations and info-dumping will depend on your answers.
Re: Sanssouci
Date: 2020-01-04 02:54 pm (UTC)(1) Stuff about the Berlin trip: I live in South East Asia so it’s a 13 hour flight to Frankfurt and then a domestic hop to Berlin. (I like to fly, though — I’m an attorney, I live on planes for work.)
I’ve been to Berlin before in 2015 to do the tourist stuff, which included Checkpoint Charlie, the walking tour, and lunch at the Reichstag. What we did this time was to spend time with the Wall art, visit a leather club in Kreutzberg, and catch the controversial Yuval Sharon Astroboy production of Die Zauberflote with the cast on wires (I think I was telling
What else should I have seen, apart from more of Sanssouci and grounds, and trying to talk my way into the library? Amazing travel posts, btw, which I will definitely make my way around and be bookmarking for the next time; it definitely looks like you were there at the right season (unlike me)!
FTR, my German is nonexistent. I have some French, but I think it’s as patchy as cahn’s ;)
(2) Ah, another opera/Fritz RPF fandom connection — idk if you were here for the Thomas Hampson discourse, but the great American baritone recently starred as Hadrian in the Canadian Opera’s 2018 production of Hadrian. That’s Canadian tenor Isaiah Bell as Antinous in the clip, and he’s a dead ringer for the (anachronistic) statue!
(3) Thank you for your kind words about M’s story! I also agree that good writing is critical, and that inaccuracy in the name of artistic licence, or, er, insufficient betaing, isn’t the most important thing. That said, research is important too (M and I camp out in the historical end of Les Mis fandom, though more recently our guys have been Bourbon restoration-era), and I am almost as impressed by this large body of research that the Fritz Triumverate has generated as I am by the excellent fic.
(4) Speaking of which, I did not realise until the most recent infodump that Fritz thought it was he who was going to be executed; to be reprieved and then to be told his beloved had been condemned to die instead must have been even more devastating ;;____;; And, to me, the fact that Friedrich I’s explicit orders had been to make Fritz watch the execution would have been a reason for the various conflicting accounts circulating at the time — the fake version would have been the safe “official” story, with the real one emanating eventually as Fritz told his tale, and the various embellishments and retractions organically piling on along the way.
(5) ... I possibly go here now? Darn it, cahn! Er, I’m likely to sit in the intersection of music and history and to be of not much added use on either ends thereof? Although if you need someone to eyeball statutes or jurisprudence, I might be able to assist.
Re: Sanssouci
Date: 2020-01-04 03:37 pm (UTC)What else should I have seen, apart from more of Sanssouci and grounds, and trying to talk my way into the library?
Ahahaha, I didn't try to talk my way in, but I wanted to. :P
I mean, it depends on what you're interested in and why you care, but a lot of the reason I want to go back is to understand better what I'm looking at. But also there were more sites on the grounds that are worth inspecting, like I never even made it inside the picture gallery, or saw the Temple of Friendship. Or the Antinous statue, which was RIGHT THERE.
But, like, I saw the fountain, and took pictures of it, but I didn't know that the spouting water in the middle wasn't there when Friedrich was alive. He commissioned it and spent a bunch of money trying to make it happen, but none of his engineers could figure out the hydraulics. INCLUDING EULER. And we have a passage where Fritz was snarking about the uselessness of math, because the great Euler himself, couldn't get him a proper fountain. The actual vertical flow of water wasn't added until the 19th century, when engineering was a little more advanced.
Things like that. I was going to send you armed with all those anecdotes. Plus a comprehensive list of everything on the grounds that I know anything about, and you could pick and choose what things you thought were worth seeing.
If you had a car and were up for day trips, I would have suggested Rheinsberg, which is a lovely palace about a ninety-minute drive away, where Fritz built a palace and spent the happiest days of his life, and then gave it to his brother Heinrich. Heinrich is buried there, and before he died and after Fritz died, he also hilariously built a spite obelisk to commemorate all the people whom he felt Fritz had screwed over in the Seven Years' War.
And then it would have depended on how absurdly obsessed with Katte you were, and how much fluency in German you had or had access to. If all the planets aligned, I would have considered sending you on an information-gathering trip to Wust for me. :PP I'M SHAMELESS. (I live in Boston, don't speak German, don't drive, and have current major impediments to any kind of travel, so a trip to Wust is not in the cards in my immediate future.)
But instead, I have gone on a cost-free and airplane-free virtual information-gathering trip to Wust, which I will send you on as soon as I can finish organizing and commenting the images I've gathered. :)
idk if you were here for the Thomas Hampson discourse, but the great American baritone recently starred as Hadrian in the Canadian Opera’s 2018 production of Hadrian.
I remember the discussion of the opera, but I don't think I'd seen that clip! Thanks for sharing.
I am almost as impressed by this large body of research that the Fritz Triumverate has generated as I am by the excellent fic.
I am honestly more impressed by the large body of research. You realize that we'll hit half a million words in the next few days, maybe even this weekend, at this rate? :D
I did not realise until the most recent infodump that Fritz thought it was he who was going to be executed; to be reprieved and then to be told his beloved had been condemned to die instead must have been even more devastating
YEEESSSS. :'-(
And his father was still talking about executing him, so he didn't get a complete reprieve for another several days/couple weeks.
And, to me, the fact that Friedrich I’s explicit orders had been to make Fritz watch the execution would have been a reason for the various conflicting accounts circulating at the time — the fake version would have been the safe “official” story,
Yeah, I assume everyone nodded vigorously and agreed that Fritz had totally been in a position to watch, but "Oops, he fainted right before it happened!" and that no one went around announcing that they'd deliberately made sure Katte was executed on the other side of a wall from Fritz. What was new to me after doing this close reading was that Fritz never seems to have known otherwise either. He obviously knew there was no scaffold, but he doesn't seem to have ever realized that the intent wasn't to follow his father's orders. And so he spent his whole life believing that he came within seconds of watching Katte's head roll. (I mean, the only reason he didn't was that everyone was nicer than FW and was willing to act as a buffer against the abuse as best they could.)
The close reading has been sooo informative, as well as opening up a whole bunch new questions.
Tiny correction: Friedrich Wilhelm I. Friedrich I is Grandpa, not Dad.
(5) ... I possibly go here now?
HIIII! Yes you do! And if there's one thing we've learned from
Meanwhile, off to work on a different infodump! But welcome!
Oh, let me ask: how closely have you been following along with our half a million words of discussion? I don't want to repeat things you already know, but I do want to point you to the right place for anything that might be of interest to you that we've already gone over. Like my slideshow.
Re: Sanssouci
Date: 2020-01-04 09:50 pm (UTC)Also, 15 euros, holy cow. It was 3 euros in 2012! (Still totally worth it, I say.)
The weather was also definitely better when I was there (early September), but for that reason I suspect it was also much more crowded. I remember barely being able to move in the palace or see much of anything past the crowds. It was a really nice day for exploring the grounds, though.
Oh, haha, partway through this post, starting with "Many years ago," you can see how big of a deal it was for me to get to Sanssouci in the first place. It might make you laugh.
trying to talk my way into the library
We need to find out if there's a list of his books. That would be incredibly useful. Also, they need to hand you a copy of that list at the front door, if they're not going to let you in. Seriously! Don't they know I have
super detailedfic to write?Re: Sanssouci
Date: 2020-01-05 06:14 am (UTC)Re: academic pretext -- don't you guys have some use you could put these 500,000 words to?
Re: the dubconning of fannish researchers into visiting Wurst -- I'll bite; what's in Wurst? I await the infodump! And, actually, M (1) is a medieval fragments academic and (2) visited Sanssouci in order to write that Yuletide fic; though she doesn't live in Paris anym (she's moved on to take up a postdoc in Scandinavia) she definitely still travels to Europe so she might be up for it...
Re: Sanssouci -- I'm very charmed by the fountain engineering details! I'm assuming you've linked all the relevant Katte details in here. I'm keen on Voltaire and noted the room which he used when he visited; is there more stuff on him? Oh! And, actually, I saw the Fritz playing the flute painting in the Alte Nationalegalerie in Berlin, and took a pic of it for M. Happy to send it across if you're on discord!
Re: resources -- actually, idk if you guys want to be on discord rather than email...
Re: what else to link me to -- I am currently reading along, so don't feel the need to point me specifically to anything atm. I will put my hand up as needed, though I'm currently lying low for the incoming ;)
Re: Sanssouci
Date: 2020-01-05 07:42 am (UTC)(Printed in Cologne, btw. The Rhinelanders never liked Prussians all that much - still true, btw - and were only too ready to share scandalous reports on FW's tyranny.)
Wust - not Wurst, Wurst means "sausage" - is the Katte Family seat where he's buried. The former family seat has been used as a school building since 1947. (In 1945, the family lost the property for the obvious historical reason.) During the summer holidays, there's an international summer school/Workshop offering English language classes in literature, music, theatre and art, which I think would please Katte and Fritz. (The current patron of this summer school, btw, is Bernhard Schlink, whose novel "The Reader" you may have heard of, due to it being filmed by Hollywood.
https://www.sommerschule-wust.de/
"Our" Katte is buried in the eastern crypta of the church. More here.
Re: Sanssouci
Date: 2020-01-05 10:26 am (UTC)Ooh, Potsdam docu centre! Heh, I am sure the collective minds here could rustle up some serious-sounding research intentions that would be relevant to a physical inspection of the books? Albeit that I am willing to believe the German authorities/academic institutions are much more rigorous than the UK ones...
Re: Sanssouci
Date: 2020-01-05 10:48 am (UTC)Re: Sanssouci
Date: 2020-01-05 10:41 am (UTC)I almost made a comment about sausage too, but decided against. ;)
English language classes in literature, music, theatre and art, which I think would please Katte and Fritz.
Except for the English part. :P But Katte, who is less of a snob in my head than Fritz, says it's his family seat and they can teach English if they want.
Re: Sanssouci
Date: 2020-01-05 06:46 pm (UTC)Bogdan Krieger: "Friedrich der Große und seine Bücher", published 1914. Which the Bayrische Staatsbibliothek (inter alia) has, but not, alas, in digitized form. Maybe an American library does, though?
Re: Sanssouci
Date: 2020-01-05 07:05 pm (UTC)Re: Sanssouci
Date: 2020-01-05 07:43 pm (UTC)Meanwhile, Jean-Jaques Rousseau is present in Fritz' library, too, but "only" via 38 volumes. Then I got daring and tried Beaumarchais, but nope, the author of Figaro didn't make the cut, only a today unknown earlier namesake who wrote a book called "Histoire generale De L'Allemagne".
Oh, and there is a personal Hand written copy of the French translation of Christan Wolff's book that was made for Fritz by Suhm in 1736. (The one Voltaire thought back then Fritz himself had translated.)
Re: Sanssouci
Date: 2020-01-05 07:57 pm (UTC)Aww. This is important information, cataloguers!
The one Voltaire thought back then Fritz himself had translated.
The one we're glad Mimi the monkey didn't destroy the only copy of!
Re: Sanssouci
Date: 2020-01-07 03:59 am (UTC)Cette guenille est reservé
Pour le Sottisier d‘Apollon
C‘est Rome et la France sauvée
La première par Ciceron
Et la seconde par un c-. (I can‘t tell whether Voltaire, Lehndorff or 1907 editor is doing the - instead of the obscenity.)
D‘une Pucelle ainsi trouvée.
Vous dont Ciceron est jaloux
Guerrier, Poète, Humain et Sage,
Sachez qu‘un Homme tel que Vous
Est plus rare qu‘un pucellage.
Re: Sanssouci
Date: 2020-01-07 09:48 am (UTC)Fritz: *has never let being uninformed stand in the way of spouting off an opinion*
Re: Sanssouci
Date: 2020-01-05 08:43 am (UTC)Re: academic pretext -- don't you guys have some use you could put these 500,000 words to?
Tbh, I've been wondering if the germs of a journal article lie in my textual criticism post, but that's not quite directly related to the book list. But I am an independent scholar (or was when my health permitted and intend/hope to return) with a PhD, and I'm sure I could come up with some pretext. :D Especially since my background is in Classics and a good chunk of his books are the Greco-Roman classics.
Re: the dubconning of fannish researchers into visiting Wurst -- I'll bite; what's in Wurst? I await the infodump!
Wust (no 'r') is where the Kattes are from! Which is not to say it's where they spent the most time, but it's where you can find the most connections to them (that I know of). Infodump incoming!
Also, hahaha "dubconning," I love it. That's impressive that she traveled to Sanssouci to research a YT fic. I envy that! Man, if not for my health problems, I'd be the one going this March.
Re: Sanssouci -- I'm very charmed by the fountain engineering details!
Somewhere in our 500k words, I quoted the snarky passage on Euler, if you want to look for it or if you want me to dig it up (things like this are what I meant by "how much should I assume you know the material we've already covered?"). And we talked about the Voltaire room somewhere, okay, scattered across this thread, where you'll have to pick out the Voltaire and also monkey parts. Elsewhere, we confirmed that Mimi the monkey was female and the biographer (as usual) didn't know what he was talking about when he made her male.
Oh, and there's an anecdote about Voltaire lying in bed and the maid who came into his room thought it was empty, so she lifted up the bedding and dumped on the floor--startling both Voltaire and herself! I'm actually not 100% sure it was the bed at Sanssouci and not one of Fritz's other palaces (Sanssouci was his summer residence), but let's just say it was Sanssouci.
I'm actually in the YT discord, as mildred_of_midgard. I think we want to keep the main Fritz discussion here? But I'm happy to chat with other people there, if I can dubcon them into getting lists of books and going to tiny, obscure villages for me. *angelic look* ;)
Okay, off to finish up my image-heavy infodump!
Re: Sanssouci
Date: 2020-01-05 11:29 am (UTC)On a review of my own correspondence, it would seem that M’s Sanssouci visit post-dated her Yuletide fic, so I mischaracterised her trip there as being for Yuletide purposes; apologies. She was responsible for the Fritz/Voltaire prompt, though, and I am very sure she would be keen on potential fic as well as the canon review of the same! I will see if I can lure her over here, lol, though she is insanely busy with her new position and moving house and other non fandom things :(
No, seriously — 500,000 words of serious research deserves to be made use of for scholarly purposes, esp given your field of study! Or at the very least it could be turned into an abstract for getting-hold-of-primary-materials purposes. /angelic side-eye/
Fine, now I want a sausage XD
I only lurk on the YT discord, but Les Mis has quite an active one used for fic research discussion (currently, for some reason, it’s fixated on Napoleonic era uniforms). Idt cahn is on there, though — I am also not sure if she’s lying low waiting for a lull in all these separate conversations on her doorstep ;)
Re: Sanssouci
Date: 2020-01-05 11:42 am (UTC)They need to make the catalog browsable, seriously. How am I supposed to guess at what Fritz had in his library?
I did see that M was responsible for the Fritz/Voltaire prompt and only sorry we couldn't deliver in time!
Or at the very least it could be turned into an abstract for getting-hold-of-primary-materials purposes.
I think we could write an abstract! I mean, I do suspect the textual criticism work is original and could be turned into something publishable, though I would definitely need a German co-author, for things like the literature survey, and inspecting primary materials. :D
Can I get an invite/link to the fic research discord? That sounds potentially interesting. I mean, even Napoleonic war uniforms are not too far outside my wheelhouse, especially high school me's wheelhouse. I was big into military history--that's how I got into Fritz--studied Napoleon (have forgotten almost all of what I know), and am all about nitty-gritty details like uniforms. (I read muster rolls for fun in high school, I was weird.) I have a book on Fritz's army's uniforms on my wishlist for when my health is better, because it came up during my Yuletide research (the dogs fic I wrote for Madness). I ended up picking something and going with it, but I'd still like to know in more detail.
Idt cahn is on there, though — I am also not sure if she’s lying low waiting for a lull in all these separate conversations on her doorstep ;)
Atm she's on a ski trip for the holidays. I think today is her last day, and then she'll be back and commenting. She's currently got a text file of the textual criticism write-up that I sent her, because it's easier to navigate than DW when you're
on the slopesaway from home. :P She's also got a copy of the Wilhelmine-Fritz correspondence in machine translation that I sent her, of which I'm very proud. :DRe: Sanssouci
Date: 2020-01-05 02:38 pm (UTC)can I get an invite/link to the fic research discord heh, no problem, save in that this comes with a warning for our often mature+-rated kinky discourse on kinky topics relating to kink? I get that in the fandom context this kind of thing is often more incentivising than not, but I’m all about content warnings and informed consent ;) I will shoot you a message on discord, mmk?
And, HOMG, your image post is to die for. I didn’t know if you wanted comments here or there, but it’s so informative as well as beautiful and moving. Look at those illustrations!
PLUS, in the weird ways of fandom, I believe I actually did remark on Praying Boy at the Altes Museum, and I think I took a pic precisely because it reminded me of Antinous — at the time Hampson and his Hadrian would have been very much top of mind for me (together with another baritone cahn loves, Simon Keenlyside, owing to my then imminent Die Zauberflote experience). I will send you my discord pic! So even though I did not know of the link to Fritz/Katte, the piece spoke to me anyway — isn’t that weird and awesome?
Re: Sanssouci
Date: 2020-01-05 03:47 pm (UTC)NOT SORRY! No sorries from me. :P I actually waited two weeks on my textual criticism, for
Also, although our word count has been high, the number of topics is lower than usual, so there will actually be less catching up to do when she gets back, than when we were spamming her on a couple dozen separate topics when she was heads down on Yuletide and church music a month ago.
This fandom moves fast, gotta keep up. :D
get that in the fandom context this kind of thing is often more incentivising than not
Definitely an incentive for me, but thanks for the informed consent. I shall go check out Discord.
And, HOMG, your image post is to die for. I didn’t know if you wanted comments here or there, but it’s so informative as well as beautiful and moving. Look at those illustrations!
Yay, I'm glad you enjoyed it! Replies there are fine; if I don't want replies, I'll say so in the comment. The textual criticism was a bit of an exception, since it was more of a scholarly project that I might someday want to continue outside of DW.
So even though I did not know of the link to Fritz/Katte, the piece spoke to me anyway — isn’t that weird and awesome?
That is awesome! I cannot claim to have been so sensitive to the important pieces: I must have seen it, but have no memory of it at all. *mutters about going back* Well done you!
Academic-adjacent pretext
Date: 2020-01-07 05:34 am (UTC)Re: Academic-adjacent pretext
Date: 2020-01-07 09:19 am (UTC)Admittedly, it was a topic that inspires controversy (although the facts are not controversial: Fritz was not a Calvinist, or at least not as soon as he had the opportunity not to be), and perhaps people care less that Hans Heinrich died on the 30th instead of 31st, but the other problem is that you're not supposed to rely on original research for Wikipedia, and so much of what we're finding wrong is by looking at primary sources. A major secondary source that Wikipedia likes to rely on is MacDonogh, which, *sigh*.
I'm afraid I've also just never in my life been motivated to update Wikipedia in general. Getting into edit wars with people who would rather rely on secondary sources than do actual research is not my thing.
So...sorry?
Re: Sanssouci
Date: 2020-01-07 05:27 am (UTC)ahahaha welcome!! you will be assimilated! :D The more people asking questions, the better! And eventually we'll probably get you reading stuff as well, apparently it worked for me, lol (I seem to be reading about Emilie du Chatelet and Wilhelmine/Fritz's letters right now...)
Re: Sanssouci
Date: 2020-01-07 08:13 am (UTC)...you did not tell me you were running this terrible Borg-like outfit over here! But assimilation has been fairly painless so far, I have to say ;)
Re: Sanssouci
Date: 2020-01-07 09:24 am (UTC)I'm glad assimilation has been painless. We're glad to have you!
Re: Sanssouci
Date: 2020-01-08 04:39 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-01-04 08:43 pm (UTC)It's looking like it wants to be 4 separate comments, totaling ~5,000 words and 57 images. That's a reasonable amount of material for one rather obscure man's execution, right? I mean, I could have put even *more* images, but I limited myself to the 57 most important! (I say this in the most laughing-at-myself way possible.)
[ETA: 6,000 words and 61 images!]
Also, we are at 498,146 words now, so we are totally going to hit the 500,000-word mark tomorrow!
no subject
Date: 2020-01-06 05:47 am (UTC)re: Fritz/Voltaire: Yeah, I know! But hopefully next year :D
Voltaire is on my reading list this year for sureno subject
Date: 2020-01-06 08:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-01-07 05:31 am (UTC)SKIING - ONLY MARGINALLY FRITZ RELATED
Date: 2020-01-07 07:55 am (UTC)The skiing in Utah is best, though -- the year we were at Deer Valley was the year I obtained the ability to take the blue slopes without wanting to throw up. Where in CA were you at?
Re: SKIING - ONLY MARGINALLY FRITZ RELATED
Date: 2020-01-08 05:29 pm (UTC)The Christmas service sounds lovely <3
Re: SKIING - ONLY MARGINALLY FRITZ RELATED
Date: 2020-01-10 04:01 pm (UTC)Dodge Ridge sounds lovely and tiny — 67 trails is definitely more than enough trails for me, though Hub and the kids would disagree strongly ;)
This was the church! So pretty! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_Our_Saviour_(Killington,_Vermont)
Re: SKIING - ONLY MARGINALLY FRITZ RELATED
Date: 2020-01-13 09:07 pm (UTC)Ohhhh, that's a really cute church!
Katte Textual Criticism: Introduction (DO NOT REPLY)
Date: 2020-01-04 11:55 am (UTC)Now, what I'm going to do in this thread is present an analysis of the sources we have for Katte's execution. First, I'll paste the raw source material: Wilhelmine, Pöllnitz, Thiébault, Fontane, Catt, Voltaire, Münchow, and Friedrich Wilhelm, one in each comment. Because Wilhelmine includes large amounts of detail that aren't in any other source and therefore aren't relevant to the discussion, large chunks of her content have been omitted. I will use brackets to signal omitted text.
Next, I'll give a brief overview of the comparative method and how I'm applying it.
Then we get to the meat of the discussion: three comments analyzing the relationship of the texts to each other. In this part, I'm not concerned with which sources are more reliable. I’='m trying to figure out how many independent versions of events we have.
In the final comment, I'll talk about my conclusions, and use my findings to speculate as to what really happened, and how our different authors may have arrived at certain elements of their various accounts.
At that point, I'll open up the thread for discussion.
Katte Textual Criticism: Pöllnitz (DO NOT REPLY)
Date: 2020-01-04 11:57 am (UTC)Karl Ludwig von Pöllnitz was a traveler and writer. He was born in 1692 and died in 1775. He grew up in Berlin, traveled around Europe until 1735, then served at the Prussian court until he died. He knew the royal family quite well, but he was not present at Küstrin on November 6, 1730, nor directly involved in any of the events.
The passage pertaining to Katte's execution is taken from Mémoires pour servir a l'histoire des quatres derniers souverains de la maison de Branderibourg, pp. 246-247. The book was published posthumously, in 1791. Until then, it had languished in a library, perhaps under the assumption that it was merely a manuscript copy of his already published memoirs. I used the Google books version. Translation mine.
Text
La sentence fut envoyée à Berlin. Katt en entendit la lecture sans effroi. Je suis résigné, dit-il, aux décrets de la providence & de la volonté du roi; je n’ai point commis de mauvaise action, et si je meurs c'est pour une belle cause. Il écrivit cependant au roi, & lui demanda sa grâce. Tous ses parens, à le tête desquels étoient son aïeul le maréchal de Wartensleben & son père qui etoit lieutenant général, la demandèrent aussi avec la dernière instance; mais le roi demeurra inflexible. Le major Schenck des gendarmes eut ordre de conduire Katt à la citadelle de Kustrin. Il y arriva à neuf heures du matin, & il lui fut permis pendant tout le jour de s'entretenir avec des ecclésiastiques. Il parut entièrement résigné, & donna de grandes marques de repentance de ses désordres passés; il resta toute la nuit en prières. On avoit élevé un échafaud dans la place de la citadelle au niveau de la chambre du prince royal, dont on avoit abattu & élargi les fenêtres, pour qu'on pût aller de plein pied sur l'échafaud, qui étoit couvert de drap noir. Tout cela avoit été fait aux yeux du prince royal, & il n'avoit pas douté que ces tristes apprêts ne fussent pour lui. Il y fut confirmé le lendemain au matin, en voyant entrer dans sa chambre Loepel, commandant de la citadelle. Mais cet officier ne le laissa pas long-temps dans l'erreur. Il lui dit que le roi vouloit qu'il assistât à l'exécution de Katt, que alloit avoir la tête tranchée. Le prince s'approcha d'une des fenêtres. Peu de temps après Katt parut en habit brun; car ayant été dégradé, il n'osoit point porter d'uniforme. Le prince en le voyant demanda qu'on suspendit l'exécution, & qu'on lui permit d'écrire au roi; qu'il renonceroit solennellement à la succession au trône, pourvu qu'on lui accordât la grâce de son ami. Mais ses pleurs, ses prierès, ses cris ne furent point écoutes: l'arrêt étoit prononcé; il devoit être exécuté. Quand Katt fut assez proche, le prince lui cria qu'il étoit bien malheureux d'etre cause de sa mort. Il ajouta ces mots: Plût à Dieu que je fusse à votre place! Ah! Monseigneur, répondit Katt d'une voix ferme, si j’avois mille vies, je les donnerois pour vous. Il se mit ensuite à genoux. Un de ses domestiques voulut lui bander les yeux. Il n'est pas nécessaire, dit-il. Il leva les yeux, & dit: Mon Dieu, je remets mon ame entre vos mains. Le prince royal ne put point soutenir ce spectacle: il tomba en foiblesse: on le porta sur son lit, où il revint à lui. Mais il étoit si accablé, qu'il ne put se lever. Le corps de Katt demeura tout le jour sur l'échafaud à la vue du prince.
Translation
The sentence was conveyed to Berlin. Katte listened to it read without fear. "I am resigned," he said, "to the decrees of Providence and the will of the king; I have not committed any evil action, and if I die, it is for a beautiful cause." He wrote, nevertheless, to the king, and begged for mercy. All his relatives, at the head of which were his grandfather the field marshal von Wartensleben and his father, who was a lieutenant general, also wrote as a last resort; but the King remained unmoved. Major Schenck of the Gens d'armes was ordered to lead Katte to the fortress of Küstrin. He arrived there at 9 in the morning, and he was permitted to spend the day interacting with clergymen. He appeared entirely resigned, and gave great indications of his repentance of his disorderly passions; he spent the whole night in prayer. As scaffold had been erected in the citadel at the same level as the room of the Crown Prince, in which the windows had been broken down and enlarged, so that the scaffold could be plainly seen, which was covered in a black cloth. All this was done in the view of the Crown Prince, and he had no doubt that these depressing sights were intended for him. He was more certain the next morning, when he saw Loepel, commandant of the fortress, enter his room. But this officer did not let him remain in error long. He told him that the king wanted him to assist at the execution of Katte, who was to have his head cut off. The prince approached one of the windows. A little later, Katte appeared wearing a brown coat; because he had been cashiered, he wasn't allowed to wear his uniform. Seeing him, the prince begged for the execution to be suspended, and to be allowed to write to the King; saying that he would solemnly renounce his succession to the throne, if only his friend was granted mercy. But his tears, his prayers, his cries were not heard: the sentence was pronounced; he was to be executed. When Katte was somewhat near, the prince called to him that he was extremely unhappy to be the cause of his death. He added these words: "Would to God that I were in your place!" "Ah! Your Royal Highness," responded Katte in a strong voice, "if I had a thousand lives, I would give them up for you." Then he knelt. On of the servants wanted to bind his eyes. "That is not necessary," he said. He raised his eyes and said, "My God, into your hands I surrender my spirit." The Crown Prince could not endure this sight: he fell into a faint: he was carried to his bed, where he recovered his senses. But he was so overwhelmed that he could not get up. The body of Katte remained all day on the scaffold in the sight of the prince.
Katte Textual Criticism: Wilhelmine (DO NOT REPLY)
Date: 2020-01-04 12:02 pm (UTC)Wilhelmine was the older sister of Friedrich. She was born in 1709 and died in 1758. She wrote her memoirs some time in the first half of the 1740s, and at least a portion of them during the time she was estranged from Friedrich. This, combined with living in Bayreuth, limited her access to source material, both written and oral.
She was closely involved in the events of 1730, but was not present at Küstrin on November 6, nor ever visited Küstrin, to my knowledge. She and Friedrich were very close, and he may have confided details of his experience to her, but either many months or even years afterward, if he did so in person, or else in a letter that she had to burn, if he did so immediately after the events. In either case, she lacked direct access to his memories when she was writing, some 15 years after the fact.
Her memoirs, from which her account of the Katte affair is taken (pp. 301-309), were very secret, and it is not believed that anyone knew she was writing them during her lifetime, or indeed, until after Bayreuth reverted to the main Hohenzollern line in 1791 and the manuscript turned up among her effects. It was not published until 1810.
I used Google Books for copies of the French original and the 1828 English translation (pp. 205-209).
Text
Sekendorff entreprit aussi de sauver Katt; mais le roi resta inflexible. Son arrêt lui fut prononcé le 2 du même mois. Il l'entendit lire sans changer de couleur. Je me soumets, dit-il, aux ordres du roi et de la Providence; je vais mourir pour une belle cause et j'envisage le trépas sans frayeur, n'ayant rien à me reprocher.
[Katte writes letters to his family.]
[Katte leaves writing on the window of his prison.]
[Katte receives religious consolation and professes repentance.]
Le lendemain au soir, le major Schenk vint l'avertir que son supplice devoit se faire à Custrin, et que le carrosse qui devoit l'y conduire, l'attendoit. Il parut un peu étonné de cette nouvelle; mais reprenant bientôt sa tranquillité, il suivit, avec un visage riant, M. de Schenk, qui monta en carrosse avec lui, aussi bien que deux autres officiers des gendarmes. Un gros détachement de ce corps les escorta jusqu'à Custrin. M. de Schenk, qui étoit fort touché, lui dit, qu'il étoit au désespoir d'être chargé d'une si triste commission.
[Katte and Schenk talk.]
Pendant le chemin, il prit congé des deux officiers qui étoient auprès de lui, et de tous ceux qui l'escortoient. Il arriva à 9 heures du matin à Custrin, où on le mena droit à l'échafaud.
Le jour d'auparavant, le général Lepel, gouverneur de la forteresse, et le président Municho conduisirent mon frère dan un appartement qu'on lui avoit préparé exprès dans l'étage au-dessous de celui où il avoit logé. Il y trouva un lit et des meubles. Les rideaux des fenêtres étoient baissés, ce qui l'empêcha de voir d'abord ce qui se passoit au dehors. On lui apporta un habit brun tout uni, qu'on l'obligea de mettre. J'ai oublié de dire qu'on en avoit donné un pareil à Katt. Alors le général, ayant levé les rideaux, lui fit voir un échafaud tout couvert de noir, de la hauteur de la fenêtre, qu'on avoit élargie et dont on avoit ôté les grilles; après quoi, lui et Municho se retirèrent. Cette vue et l'air attéré de Munico firent croire à mon frère qu'on alloit lui prononcer sa sentence de mort; et que ces apprêts se faisoient pour lui; ce qui lui causa une violente agitation.
M. de Municho et le général Lepel entrèrent dans sa chambre le matin, un moment avant que Katt parut, et tâchèrent de le préparer le mieux qu'ils purent à cette terrible scène. On dit que rien n'égala son désespoir. Pendant ce temps, Schenk rendit le même office à Katt; il lui dit en entrant dans la forteresse: "Conservez vontre fermeté, mon cher Katt, vous allez soutenir une terrible épreuve; vous êtes à Custrin, et vous allez voir le prince royal.–Dites plutôt, lui répartit-il, que je vais avoir la plus grande consolation qu'on ait pu m'accorder." En disant cela, il monta sur l'échafaud. On obligea alors mon malheureux frère de se mettre à la fenêtre. Il voulut se jeter dehors, mais on le retint. Je vous conjure, au nom de Dieu, dit-il à ceux qui étoient à l'entour de lui, de retarder l'exécution; je veux écrire au roi que je suis prêt à renoncer à tous les droits que j'ai sur la couronne; s'il veut pardonner à Katt. M. de Municho lui ferma la bouche avec son mouchoir. Jetant les yeux sur lui: Que je suis malheureux, mon cher Katt! lui dit-il, je suis cause de votre mort; plût à Dieu que je fusse à votre place.–Ah! monseigneur, répliqua celui-ci, si j'avois mille vies, je les sacrifierois pour vous. En même temps il se mit à genoux. Un de ses domestiques voulut lui bander les yeux, mais il ne voulut pas le souffrir. Alors, élevant son âme à Dieu, il s'écria: Mon Dieu! je remets mon âme entre vos mains. A peine eut-il proféré ces paroles, que sa tête, tranchée d'un seul coup, roula à ses pieds. En tombant, le malheureux Katt étendit les bras du côté de la fenêtre où avoit été mon frère. Il n'y étoit plus; une forte foiblesse qui lui étoit survenue, avoit obligé ces messieurs de le porter sur son lit: il y resta quelques heures sans sentiment. Dès qu'il eut repris ses sens, le premier objet qui s'offrit à sa vue, fut le corps sanglant du pauvre Katt, qu'on avoit posé de façon que mon frère ne pouvoit éviter de le voir. Cet objet le jeta dans une seconde foiblesse, dont il ne revint que pour prendre une violente fièvre. M. de Municho, malgré les ordres du roi, fit fermer les rideaux de la fenêtre et envoya chercher les médecins qui le trouvèrent en grand danger. Il ne voulut rien prendre de ce qu'ils lui donnèrent. Il étoit tout hors de lui et dans de si grandes agitations, qu'il se seroit tué si on ne l'en eût empêché. On crut le remaner par la religion, et on envoya chercher un ecclésiastique pour le consoler; mais tout fut inutile, et ses violentes convulsions ne se calmèrent que lorsque ses forces furent épuisées. Les larmes succédèrent à ces terribles transports. Ce ne fut qu'avec une peine extrême qu'on lui persuada de prendre des médicines: on n'en vint à bout qu'en lui représentant qu'il causeroit encore la mort de la reine et la mienne, s'il persistoit à vouloir mourir. Il conserva, pendant long-temps, une profonde mélancolie, et fut trois fois vingt-quatre heures en grand danger. Le corps de Katt resta exposé sur l'échafaud jusqu'au coucher du soleil.
Translation
Sekendorff also attempted to save Katt : but the king remained inflexible. Sentence was passed upon the unfortunate young man on the 2d of the same month. He heard it read without changing countenance. "I submit," said he, "to the orders of the king and Providence; I shall suffer for a noble cause, and I shall face death without fear, having nothing to reproach myself with."
[Katte writes letters to his family.]
[Katte leaves writing on the window of his prison.]
[Katte receives religious consolation and professes repentance.]
The evening after this, major Schenk came to inform him that his execution was to take place at Custrin, and that the coach, which was to convey him thither, was waiting for him. He appeared somewhat surprised at this intelligence: but soon resuming his tranquillity, he with a smiling countenance followed M. de Schenk, who got into the coach with him, besides two other officers of the horse-guards. A large detachment of the same regiment escorted them to Custrin. M. de Schenk, who was much affected, told him that he deeply lamented being entrusted with so mournful a commission. "I am commanded by his majesty," continued he, "to be present at your execution: I twice refused that fatal office. I must obey; but heaven knows what I suffer. Heaven grant that the king's mind be altered, and that I may have the satisfaction of proclaiming your pardon!'—"You are very good," replied Katt; "but I am resigned to my fate. I die for a prince whom I love, and I have the consolation to give him, by my death, the strongest proof of attachment that can be required. I do not regret the world. I am going to enjoy a felicity with out end." On the road he bade farewell to the two officers who were with him, and to the men who composed his escort. He arrived at Custrin at nine o'clock in the morning, and was taken directly to the scaffold.
The day before, general Lepel, governor of the fortress, and the president Munchow, had conducted my brother to an apartment that had been purposely prepared for him on the floor above that where he had lodged. He there found a bed and some furniture. The window-curtains were let down, which at first prevented his seeing what was going on without. A plain brown coat was brought to him, in which he was obliged to dress himself. I forgot to state that a similar coat had been given to Katt. The general, having then drawn up the curtains, pointed out to the prince a scaffold covered with black, and as high as the window, which had been widened and the bars of which had been removed. After this, both the general and Munchow retired. This sight, and the downcast look of Munchow, induced my brother to think that sentence of death was going to be passed upon him, and that these preparations regarded himself, which caused him a violent agitation.
General Lepel and president Munchow entered the prince's room in the morning a little before Katt appeared, and endeavoured to prepare the prince in the best manner they could for this horrible scene. It is said that he was in such a state of despair and grief as had never before been witnessed. In the meantime Schenk was rendering the like friendly office to Katt. On entering the fortress he said to him: "Continue firm, my dear Katt; you are going to undergo a severe trial; you are at Custrin, and you will see the prince royal." "Rather say," answered Katt. "that I am going to have the greatest consolation that could have been granted to me." With these words he ascended the scaffold. My unfortunate brother was then forced to stand at the window. He attempted to throw himself out of it; but was prevented. "I intreat you, for heaven's sake," said the prince to those who were around him, "delay the execution; those who were around him, “delay the execution; I shall inform the king that I am ready to renounce my right to the crown, if his majesty will pardon Katt." M. de Munchow stopped the prince's mouth with a handkerchief. When the prince saw Katt, he exclaimed: "How wretched I am, my dear Katt! I am the cause of your death. Would to heaven I were in your place!'—"Ah!" replied Katt, "if I had a thousand lives, I would sacrifice them all for your royal highness." At the same time he dropped on his knees. One of his servants attempted to blindfold him, but he would not suffer it, and elevating his thoughts to heaven, he ejaculated: "My God! I commit my soul into thy hands!" Scarcely had he pronounced these words, when his head, cut off at one blow, rolled at his feet. The trunk, in its fall, extended its arms towards the window where my brother had been; but he was there no longer: he had fainted away, and the gentlemen about him had laid him on his bed, where he remained senseless for some hours. When he recovered his senses, the first object that struck his eyes was the mangled corpse of poor Katt, which had been placed in such a manner that he could not avoid seeing it. This ghastly object threw him into a second swoon, which was succeeded by a violent fever. M. de Munchow, in spite of the orders of the king, let the curtains down, and sent for physicians, who found the prince in a very dangerous state. He would not take anything that was given him. His mind was so bewildered, and his agitation so great that he would have destroyed himself, had he not been prevented. Religious considerations, it was thought, would soften him; a clergyman was sent for to comfort him: but all in vain; the violent convulsions ceased only when his strength was exhausted. Tears succeeded to these dreadful agitations. It was with extreme difficulty that he was prevailed upon to take medicine. Nothing could induce him to do it, but the representation that he would also cause the queen's death and mine, if he persisted in his own destruction. A profound melancholy fastened upon him for a long time, and for three successive days his life was in imminent danger. The body of Katt remained exposed on the scaffold until sun set.
Katte Textual Criticism: Thiébault (DO NOT REPLY)
Date: 2020-01-04 12:04 pm (UTC)Dieudonne Thiébault was reader to Friedrich from 1765 to 1784. He was born in 1733 and died in 1807. His memoirs, from which his account of the Katte affair is taken (vol 1., pp. 81-83), were published in 1804. He was obviously not an eyewitness to any of the events of 1730.
I used the copy available on the Bayerische StaatsBibliothek website. Translation mine.
Text
M. de Sekendorff voulut aussi sauver de Katt, et il fut secondé par une foule de personnes du plus haut rang. De Katt appartenait en effet à une famille nombreuse, puissante et très-considérée. Il était fils unique du feld-maréchal de ce nom. Toute cette famille revint à plusieurs reprises, et fondant en larmes, se jeter aux pieds du roi, demandant grâce pour un jeune homme auquel la ville et la cour entières prenaient le plus vif intérêt; mais Guillaume fut inexorable. On lut à de Katt sa sentence. Il l'entendit sans changer de couleur. «Je me soumets, dit-il, aux ordres du roi et aux décrets de la Providence. Je meurs pour une belle cause, et j'envisage le trépas sans frayeur.» Le major Schenk l'informa que son exécution devait se faire à Custrin, et que le carrosse qui devait l'y conduire l'attendait. Il y monta d'un air riant, et fut accompagné par ce major et deux autres officiers des gendarmes, et escorté par un gros détachement de ce corps. En arrivant, Schenk lui dit: «Vous allez soutenir une terrible épreuve: vous allez revoir le prince royal.--Dites plutot, répondit de Katt avec véhémence, que je vais avoir la plus grande consolation qu'on pût m'accorder;» et en disant ces mots il descendit de voiture et monta sur l'échafaud.
Cependant Frédéric venait d’être conduit par M. Municho et par le général Lepel dans un chambre au niveau de laquelle l'échafaud était dressé; et au moment où de Katt arriva on leva le rideau de la fenêtre, qui jusque-là avait été baissé. Quelque chose que l'on eût pu faire pour préparer le prince à cet horrible spectacle, inventé pour l'associer au supplice de son ami, rien n'égala son désespoir: il voulut se jeter par la croisée, à laquelle on l'obligea de se mettre. On le retint: «Au nom de Dieu, s'écria-t-il, retardez l'exécution. Je veux écrire au roi que je suis prêt à renoncer à tous mes droits à la couronne, s'il veut pardonner à de Katt! Que je suis malheureux, mon cher de Katt: je suis cause de votre mort; plût à Dieu que je fusse à votre place! – Ah! monseigneur, répondit de Katt, si j'avais mille vies je les sacrifierais pour vous.» En disant ces mots, il se mit à genoux, sans permettre qu'on lui bandât les yeux. Il s'écria: «Mon Dieu, je mets mon âme entre vos mains.» Et comme il achevait, sa tête, tranchée d'un seul coup, roula sur l'échafaud.
A ce terrible moment, Frédéric était sans connaissance. Il ne reprit ses sens qu'au bout de plusieurs heures, et le premier objet qui frappa sa vue fut, par un raffinement atroce, le corps sanglant de son ami, placé de manière à ce qu'il ne pût éviter de le voir. Un second évanouissement succéda au premier, et il ne revint à lui qu'avec une fièvre violente. Malgré les ordres du roi, M. de Municho fit fermer les rideaux de la fatale croisée, et envoya chercher les médicins, qui trouvèrent le prince en grand danger. Il ne voulut rien prendre de ce qu'ils lui ordonnèrent. Il était hors de lui, et dans de si violentes agitations, qu'il se serait tué si on ne l'en eût empêché. Ses convulsions ne se calmèrent que lorsque les forces furent épuisées. Les larmes succédèrent alors aux plus terribles transports. Ce fut avec une peine indicible, et en lui représentant qu'il causerait la mort de la reine et celle de sa soeur Wilhelmine, s'il persistait à vouloir mourir, qu'on vint à bout de lui faire prendre quelques remèdes. Il conserva longtemps une profonde mélancolie, et fut trois fois vingt-quatre heures à toute extrémité.
Translation
Seckendorf also wanted to save Katte, and he was joined by an assortment of people of the highest rank. Katte belonged to a family numerous, powerful, and highly regarded. He was the only son of the field marshal of the same name. The entire family returned many times, and dissolving into tears, cast itself at the foot of the king, seeking mercy for a young man in whom the whole city and the entire court took the greatest interest; but Wilhelm was inexorable. Katte's sentence was read to him. He listened without changing color. "I submit," he said, "to the orders of the king and to the decrees of Providence. I die for a beautiful cause, and I anticipate death without fear." Major Schenk informed him that his execution would be carried out at Küstrin, and that the carriage that was to take him there awaited. He ascended with a cheerful air, and was accompanied by the major and two other officers of the Gens d'Armes, and escorted by a large detachment of this body. On arriving, Schenk said to him: "You are about to undergo a terrible trial: you are going to see the Crown Prince.--"Say rather," responded Katte vehemently, "that I am going to have the greatest consolation that could have been granted to me," and in saying these words, he descended from the carriage and mounted the scaffold.
However, Friedrich had just been led by Münchow and by the general Lepel into a chamber on the level at which the scaffold was erected; and at the moment when Katte arrived, the curtain on the window was raised, which until then had been lowered. This had been done to prepare the prince for this horrible spectacle, devised in order to associate him with the torture of his friend; nothing equaled his despair: he wanted to throw himself out the window, at which he had been forcibly placed. He was prevented. "In the name of God," he cried, "delay the execution. I wish to write to the King that I am ready to renounce all my rights to the crown, if he is willing to pardon Katte! How unhappy I am, my dear Katte: I am the cause of your death; would to God I were in your place!" "Ah! Your Royal Highness," responded Katte, "if I had a thousand lives I would sacrifice them for you." Saying these words, he knelt, without permitting his eyes to be blindfolded. He cried: "My God, into your hands I place my spirit." And as he finished, his head, cut off by one blow, rolled on the scaffold.
At this terrible moment, Friedrich lost consciousness. He did not regain it for several hours, and the first object that struck his view, by an excruciating refinement, was the bloody body of his friend, placed in such a manner that he couldn't avoid seeing it. A second fainting fit followed the first, and he only returned to himself with a violent fever. Against the orders of the King, Münchow caused the curtains to be closed on the fatal sight through the window, and sent for doctors, who found the prince in great danger. He was not willing to take anything that they prescribed for him. He was beside himself, and in such violent agitation, that he would have killed himself if he had not been prevented. His convulsions did not subside until his strength was exhausted. Tears followed these agitation. It was with unspeakable difficulty, and only through conveying to him that he would cause the death of the queen and of his sister Wilhelmine, if he persisted in wanting to die, that he finally agreed to some treatments. He stayed a long time in a profound depression, and was for three times twenty-four hours on the brink of death.
Katte Textual Criticism: Catt (DO NOT REPLY)
Date: 2020-01-04 12:11 pm (UTC)Henri de Catt was Friedrich's reader from 1758 to 1782. He was born 1725 and died 1795. He was not an eyewitness to nor closely associated with any of the events of 1730.
The memoirs from which this passage is taken (p. 35) are based on the diary he kept from 1758-1760. In the memoirs, he reports hearing this account directly from Friedrich on April 25, 1758, and he presents the account in direct discourse. His diary, at least as published, contains no mention of Katte. Memoirs and diary were both published in 1885. He became estranged from Friedrich in 1782. We don't know the exact composition and revision chronology of his memoirs.
I can't actually find the copy of the memoirs and diary that I downloaded from online, but if you want the pdf, just let me know.
The translation is that of F.S. Flint, 1917, available here (pp. 61-62).
Text
»Katte, que je ne pus faire avertir du malheur qui le menaçait, s'opiniâtra à rester, et il fut conduit à la forteresse. Ah, mon cher, quelle déplorable histoire, et à quelle barbarie j'ai été livré dans cette infernale citadelle; personne ne me parlait, et n'osait me parler, on me laissait à moi-même et à mes tristes idées sur mon ami Katte, dont le sort me peinait plus que le mien, on me donnait mon manger par un petit guichet, et ce manger toujours exécrable était exactement ce qu'il fallait pour ne pas mourir de faim; dans la suite, on me mit un plat à mon dîner, et je croyais que tout allait finir, quand un matin un vieux officier entra chez moi, avec plusiers grenadiers, tous fondant en larmes. ›Ah mon Prince, mon cher, mon pauvre Prince,‹ disait l'officier, en sanglotant, ›mon bon Prince.‹ Je crus certes qu'on allait me couper la tête. ›Eh bien parlez, dois-je mourir? je suis tout prêt que les barbares m'expédient, et vite.‹ ›Non, mon cher Prince, non, vous ne mourrez pas, mais permettez que ces grenadiers vous conduisent à la fenêtre, et vous tiennent là.‹
»Ils me tinrent en effet la tête, pour que je visse ce qui allait se passer. Bon Dieu, quel spectacle terrible, mon cher, mon cher mon fidèle Katte, qu'on allait exécuter sous ma fenêtre, je voulus tendre la main à mon ami, on me la repoussait; ›Ah Katte,‹ m'écriai-je, je m'évanouis, et je trompai la barbarie de ceux qui me forçaient à voir ce cruel et ce barbare spectacle.«
Translation
"Katte, whom I was not able to warn of the danger that threatened him, persisted in remaining behind, and he was sent to the fortress. Ah, my dear sir, what a deplorable story, and what barbarity I was made to suffer in that infernal citadel. Nobody spoke to me, dared not speak to me. I was left to myself and to my gloomy ideas about my friend Katte, whose fate troubled me more than my own. I was given my food through a little wicket, and this food, which was always execrable, was exactly what was necessary to prevent me from dying of hunger. Afterwards, I was given one dish for my dinner, and I thought that the end was coming, when one morning an old officer entered my room, with several grenadiers, all weeping. 'Ah, my Prince, my dear, my poor Prince,' said the officer, sobbing, 'my good Prince.' I certainly thought that my head was to be cut off. 'Well, then, speak. Am I to die? I am quite ready for these barbarians to execute me, and quickly.' 'No, my dear Prince, no, you will not die; but permit these grenadiers to lead you to the window and to hold you there.'
"In fact, they held my head, so that I might see all that happened. Good god, what a terrible spectacle! My dear, my dear, my faithful Katte was to be executed under my window. I tried to hold my hand out to him; it was pushed back. 'Ah, Katte,' I cried, and fainted, and I thwarted the barbarity of those who forced me to see this cruel and barbarous spectacle."
Katte Textual Criticism: Voltaire (DO NOT REPLY)
Date: 2020-01-04 12:14 pm (UTC)Voltaire corresponded regularly with Friedrich from 1736 until his death in 1778, and was employed at his court from 1750 to 1753. In 1753, they had a falling out, after which they resumed correspondence but did not see each other in person again.
In 1752, an anonymous pamphlet began to circulate in places like London and Amsterdam, describing Friedrich's court as a place of homosexual licentiousness and Friedrich as a receptive homosexual. Voltaire denied authorship, but when his memoirs were published posthumously in 1784, they reused a lot of the same material. The memoirs contain a brief account of Katte's execution.
I have been unable to turn up a copy of the pamphlet, but the French original (p. 15) and the English translation (pp. 26-27) that came out in the same year are both available on Google Books.
Voltaire was not closely involved with the events of 1730, and his memoirs show a general lack of reliable knowledge of recent Prussian history. Still, since he knew Friedrich personally and Friedrich may have spoken to him about Katte's execution, or he may have heard a version of events in common currency at the Berlin and Potsdam courts, Voltaire is still an interesting and relevant source.
Text
Le Prince était depuis quelques semaines dans son château de Custrin, lorsqu'un jour un vieil Officier, suivi de quatre Grenadiers, entra dans sa chambre, fondant en larmes. Fréderic ne douta pas qu'on ne vînt lui couper le cou; mais l'Officier, toujours pleurant, le fit prendre par les quatre Grenadiers, qui le placerent à la fenêtre, & qui lui tinrent la tête tandis qu'on coupait celle de son ami Kat sur un échafaud dressé immédiatement sous sa croisée. Il tendit la main à Kat & s'évanouit. Le pere était présent à ce spectacle.
Translation
The Prince had been some weeks in his Palace at Custrin, when one day an old officer, followed by four grenadiers, immediately entered his chamber, melted in tears. Frederic had no doubt he was going to be made a head shorter; but, the officer still weeping, ordered the grenadiers to take him to the window, and hold his head out of it, that he might be obliged to look on the execution of his friend Kat, upon a scaffold expresly [sic] built there for that purpose. He saw, stretched out his hand, and fainted. The father was present at this exhibition.
Katte Textual Criticism: Münchow (DO NOT REPLY)
Date: 2020-01-04 12:18 pm (UTC)Below is a letter by a son of Christian Ernst von Münchow, who president at Küstrin during Friedrich's imprisonment. Christian Münchow was, according to some accounts, the one who brought the news to Friedrich that Katte was to be executed, and who was present in the room with Friedrich when it took place. Friedrich also stayed at Münchow's house in Küstrin after he was released from the fortress and was placed under house arrest in the town.
It's not entirely clear what the son's first name is, or when the letter was written. This is the data we have.
The letter is transcribed by Gottfried Gallus in his Geschichte der Mark Brandenburg für Freunde historischer Kunde (vol. 5, pp. 530-532), which was published in 1803. He mentions that the author of the letter was eighty years old at time of writing. The letter by Münchow was written to the author Friedrich Nicolai, to tell him what parts of his book Charakterischen Anekdoten von Friedrich II Münchow believed to be factually wrong. The Anekdoten were published 1788-1792.
I have been unable to find a son of the elder Münchow who would be both alive and 80 years old before 1803. According to Wikipedia, his youngest son, Alexander Christoph von Münchow, would have been 80 years old in 1806, the year of his death. If we assume that Gallus is rounding up, then Alexander von Münchow would have been four years old at the time of Katte's execution.
Biographer Carlyle reports the presence of a seven-year-old son of Münchow who would help smuggle contraband to the imprisoned crown prince. Intriguingly, he reports that the seven-year-old child went back into petticoats, to the wonder of the neighbors, and that these petticoats were used to aid the smuggling. If he was in fact four years old at the time, perhaps he was merely in petticoats and no reversion was needed.
Whether four or seven, his age needs to be taken into account when relying on his memories as an eyewitness of Katte's execution. However, since his father was president at the time, and since, in a passage not quoted in this letter, the younger von Münchow says he later served as a personal page to Friedrich, he was closely associated with at least two people directly involved.
The translation is by
Text
Es ist in der Anekdoten-Sammlung falsch, wenn daselbst gesagt wird, der Kronprinz habe müssen die Enthauptung des Lieutenants von Katte mit ansehen. Er ist nicht aus dem Zimmer des Schlosses gekommen, welches mein Vater zu diesem Arrest abgetreten hatte. Aus diesem Zimmer aber konnte nicht der Richtplaz gesehen werden; eine Mauer, welche den Graben, der das Schloss damals umgab, vom Walle trennte, verhinderte die Aussicht dahin. Katte ward durch eine militarische Wache zum Richtplaz auf den Wall geführet; der Zug ging vor dem Schlosse, und also vor den Fenstern des Prinzen vorüber; der Prinz, in dessen Zimmer der Kommandant General Löpel und mein Vater in diesem Augenblick, ich weiß nicht, ob auf Befehl oder aus eigner Fürsorge gegenwärtig waren, drängte sich zum Fenster, ofnete es, als der Zug ankam, und rufte laut diese Worte: pardonnez-moi, mon cher Katte! Dieser antwortete: la Mort est douce pour un si aimable Prince. Nun trat der Prinz vom Fenster mit thräuenden Augen ab, und setzte sich auf einen Lehnstuhl; eine Ohnmacht wollte ihn anwandeln, mein Vater hatte sich mit Schlagwasser versehen, nöthigte ihn zum Einnehmen, und ehe dies vollzogen ward, lag Katte's haupt schon vom Körper getrennt auf dem Sandhaufen, der von der Ecke des Schlosses, oder des Prinzen Arrestzimmer, etwa 30 bis 50 Schritt entfernet, aber durch eine alte hohe Mauer dergestalt separiret war, daß er nicht gesehen werden konnte. Der Kommandant verließ den Prinzen; mein Vater ließ sich mit verschliessen, und ein Arzt und ein Feldscheer wurden den Tag über im Schlosse von meiner Mutter insgeheim behalten; mein Vater verließ den Prinzen erst tief in der Nacht, als derselbe eingeschlafen war. Wäre ein Befehl gewesen, daß der Prinz die Enthauptung ausehen solle, so hätte es der oft benannte Kommandant, der sehr pünktlich alle Befehle vollzog, um so gewisser gethan, da es sehr leicht war, denn aus dem Arrestzimmer ging eine Thüre und Treppe nach einem am Schlosse, zur Defension desselben an gebauten erhabenen Orte, den man den Weißkopf nannte, und welcher ehemals unter dem Markgrafen Hans zu einem Richtplaz für Statsverbrecher angeleget worden war. Er durfte ja Katten nur daselbst richten, oder den Prinzen zu Zusehen dahin führen lassen. Ich selbst, der dieses schreibet, habe von diesem so genannten Weißkopf, den mir meine Eltern zum Garten und Spielplazze erlaubt hatten, das Blut von Katte in die Höhe sprizzen sehen. Es war auch nur zufällig, daß der Prinz diese traurige Prozession nahe vorbei ziehen sahe. Denn es hing bloss von meinem Vater ab, ob er dieses, oder ein anderes seiner Wohnzimmer, oder gar keines abtreten wollte. Die wahren Arrestanten-Stuben waren gar nicht in diesem 2ten, sondern in 3ten Stockwerk des Schlosses. Mein Vater erbot sich nicht allein dazu, sondern er mußte sich Mühe geben, den Konmmandanten zu überreden, den Prinzen nicht in jene kleine Arrestantenstube zu setzen. Aus dieser hätte er gar nichts von Katte's Zug sehen können. Mein Vater aber hätte es gewiß nicht gethan, wenn er hätte vermuthen können, daß der Ort zur Enthauptung in dieser Gegend gewählt werden würde. Dieser enge Arrest hat nür 6 Wochen gedauert; alsdann bezog der Prinz ein Quartier in der Stadt, und wohnte als Auscultator den Sessionen der Kriegs- und Domainenkammer bei. Er musste in der Folge Referate machen, mit meinem Vater der Königl. Aemter bereisen, und Anschläge davon verfertigen. Man hatte noch einen von ihm perfertigten Anschlag des Amtes himmelstädt und viele Vota von seiner hand bei der Kammer aufbemahrt, welche aber durch das Bombardement mit verbrannt sind. Der ganze Aufenthalt des Prinzen in Küstrin hat nur 1 Jahr gedauert, und nicht einmal ganz voll. So viel ich mich erinnere, etwa 8 bis 9 Monate.
Translation
The claim in the collection of anecdotes that the crown prince was forced to watch Lieutenant v. Katte's beheading is wrong. He did not leave my father's room in the fortress which my father had given to him at that point. From my father's room, you couldn't see the place of execution; a wall which separated the ditch which then was surrounding the keep from the outer wall blocked the view. Katte was led by a military guard to the execution place on the walls. The progress went past the keep, and thus past the windows of the Prince; the Prince, in whose room Commandant Löpel and my father were at this moment, I don't know whether due to an order from above or due to their own concern, pushed to the window, opened it when the sad train arrived, and called out loud these words: "pardonnez-moi, mon cher Katte!" The later answered: "La mort est douce pur un si aimable Prince." Then the Prince, crying, stepped back from the window and sat down on an arm chair. He was about to faint, my father had equipped himself with spirits for such an occasion and made him drink them, and before this was over, Katte's head was already separated from the body and lying on the sand heap which was 30 to 50 paces away from the chamber that served as the Prince's arrest room, but through the old wall so separated that it could not be overseen. The commandant left the Prince; my father let himself be locked up with the Prince, and my mother kept a doctor and a field medic on alert through the whole day; my father only left the Prince deep into the night when the Prince had finally fallen asleep. If there had been an order that the Prince was to see the beheading, the Kommandant who was very conscientious in following his orders would have obeyed it to the letter, which would have been very easy, since there was a door and stairs leading from the arrest room to a higher platform commonly called the Weisskopf - "White head" - and which had been earlier used as an execution spot for treason against the state under the Margrave Hans. All he would've had to do was execute Katte there, or have the prince taken to watch from there. I, who am writing these lines, have watched Katte's blood spray high from this same Weißkopf which my parents allowed me to use as garden and playground.
It was just by accident that the Prince saw the sad procession at all. For it only depended on my father whether he'd give this or another of his living rooms to the prince. The true goal cells for arrested personnel weren't located on this level but on the third floor of the fortress. My father did not just offer his room but he had to persuade the Kommandant not to put the Prince into one of these cells. From said cells, he wouldn't have been able to watch Katte's train at all. However, my father would not have done that if he had reason to suspect that the place of execution would be chosen in this area. This close confinement had lasted for six weeks; afterwards, the Prince was moved into town quarters, and attended as auscultator the war chamber sessions. He had to do reports, had to travel with my father to royal offices, and had to make suggestions. We kept some of his suggestions for the office in Himmelstadt by his hand, but it was burned during the Küstrin bombardment. The entire stay of the Prince in Küstrin only lasted one year, if that. As far as I recall, it lasted only eight to nine months.
Katte Textual Criticism: Fontane 1 (DO NOT REPLY)
Date: 2020-01-04 12:21 pm (UTC)Theodor Fontane was a German writer of the 19th century, born 1819 and died 1898.
In 1862-1889, he published the five-volume Wanderungen durch die Mark Brandenburg, in which he recounted what he was able to find on the events of November 6, 1730. He was obviously not an eyewitness nor knew any of the parties involved, but, being dissatisfied with the more popular and error-ridden accounts by Wilhelmine and Pöllnitz, he examined the sources of eyewitnesses instead.
In particular, he transcribes two letters from people who were present at and closely involved in the execution. One is a letter from Major von Schack, who accompanied Katte from Berlin to Küstrin, was in charge of arranging his execution, and was present at the beheading. The other is a letter from the garrison preacher Besser at Küstrin, who offered Katte religious comfort during his stay there and accompanied him from his cell to his place of execution, and likewise witnessed the beheading.
He gives no dates indicating how long after the events these letters were written, but since the recipient of one (Dubislav Gneomar von Natzmer) died in 1739, the upper bound is one decade. I do not know whether either or both of these letters are still extant, so I am relying on Fontane's transcription.
The original text is taken from this web page, and the translation a collaborative effort between me and Google Translate. Please make corrections as needed.
The source of footnote 49, with Katte and Friedrich's final exchange, is unclear to me, whether it's in the original letter or some other, unspecified, source. The "Katte" spelling, though, makes me think it's Fontane using a different source, though admittedly we don't have Besser's spelling of Katte's name in the excerpt provided by Fontane.
Text
Der nächste Morgen war für die Hinrichtung bestimmt. Eine Relation des Majors von Schack, die derselbe dienstlich an den Feldmarschall von Natzmer richtete, enthält eine genaue Schilderung aller Vorgänge von dem Augenblick an, wo Katte am 5. nachmittags am Küstriner Tore eintraf. Es ist aus dieser Relation, daß ich nachstehendes entnehme.
»... Als wir um 2 Uhr«, so schreibt v. Schack, »an das Thor kamen, fanden wir daselbst den Commandanten. Er hielt uns an und ließ uns aussteigen. Danach nahm er den seligen Herrn von Katt bei der Hand und führte ihn die Treppe zum Wall hinauf, allwo über dem Thor« (es ist das Tor zwischen Bastion König und Bastion Königin; vgl. die Festungsskizze) »eine Stube mit zwei Betten, eines für Katt und das andere für den Feldprediger präpariret war. Der Commandant sagte mir danach, daß wir den Herrn v. Katt auch an dieser Stelle noch in Verwahrung zu halten hätten, und zeigte mir die Punkte, wo unsre Posten am besten auszusetzen wären. Gleicherzeit wies er mir die Königliche Ordre, aus der ich ersah, daß die Hinrichtung am andern Morgen um sieben Uhr stattfinden und mein ganzes Commando (aber zu Fuß) den Herrn v. Katt in einen durch 150 Mann von der Küstriner Garnison zu bildenden Kreis hineinführen solle.
Als ich alles dieses erfahren, ging ich zu dem seligen Herrn von Katt, nicht ohne Wehmuth und Betrübniß des Herzens, und sagte ihm, ›daß sein Ende näher sei, als er vielleicht vermuthe‹. Er fragte auch unerschrocken, ›wann und um welche Zeit?‹ Da ich ihm solches hinterbracht, antwortete er mir: ›es ist mir lieb; je eher je lieber‹.
Darauf hat ihm der Gouverneur v. Lepel Essen, Wein und Bier geschickt, wovon er auch gegessen und getrunken.
Etwas später schickte der Herr Präsident von Münchow auch Essen und ungarischen Wein, wovon er auch genossen. Dann aber nahm unser Feldprediger Müller den dasigen Garnisonprediger Besser mit zur Hülfe und blieb in beständiger Arbeit mit ihm. Von 8 bis 9 Uhr war ich mit den anderen Offiziers bey ihm, und wir sangen und beteten mit. Weil aber die Prediger gern mit ihm allein sein wollten, gingen wir weg. Um 10 Uhr ließ man ihm Kaffee machen, davon er nachgehends drey Tassen getrunken; meinen Kerl (Burschen) ließ ich die ganze Nacht bey ihm, ihm an die Hand zu gehen.
Um 11 Uhr ging ich wieder zu ihm; ich konnte nicht schlafen; aber wenn ich noch so bekümmert und beängstet war, und sah ihn nur, so richtete und munterte seine Standhaftigkeit mich wieder auf. Und ich betete und sang mit bis um 1 Uhr morgens. Von 2 bis 3 Uhr sah man an der Couleur des Gesichts wohl einen harten Kampf des Fleisches und Blutes. Um diese Zeit hat der Prediger ihn gebeten, sich ein wenig aufs Bette zu legen, um für sein Gemüth neue Kräfte zu erlangen, welches er auch gethan, und von 3 bis 5 Uhr geschlafen, wo ihn das Ablösen des Postens aufgewecket. Darauf er communiciret. Wie das vorbey, ging ich wieder zu ihm. Da sagte er mir, sein Zeug, so er bey sich hätte, sollte mein Kerl haben, seine Bibel schenkte er dem Corporal, welcher sehr fleißig mit ihm gesungen und gebetet, insonderheit das oben benannte Lied, so oft er ohne den Prediger allein gewesen.
Wie kurz vor 7 das Commando der Gens d'Armes da war, fragte er mich: ›Ob es Zeit wäre?‹ Wie ich solches mit Ja beantwortet, nahm er Abschied von mir, gieng hinaus, und das Commando nahm ihn in die Mitte; der eine Prediger ging zur Rechten, der andre zur Linken, und beteten und sprachen ihm immer vor. Er gieng ganz frey und munter, den Hut unter dem Arm, nicht gezwungen noch affektirt, sondern ganz naturell weg.
Er war ein Paar hundert Schritte längs dem Wall geführet, und waren die Zugänge des Walls militairisch besetzt, so daß wenig Menschen oben waren. Im Kreise ward ihm nochmals die Sentenz vorgelesen, ich kann aber hoch versichern, daß ich vor Betrübniß nichts gehöret habe, und wußt' auch nicht drey Worte zusammen zu bringen. Bei Vorlesung der Sentenz stund er ganz frey; wie solches vorbey, fragte er nach den Offiziers von den Gens d'Armes, gieng ihnen entgegen und nahm Abschied. Hernach ward er eingesegnet. Darauf gab er die Peruque an meinen Kerl, der ihm eine Mütze darreichte, ließ sich den Rock ausziehen und die Halsbinde aufmachen, riß sich selbst das Hemd herunter, ganz frey und munter, als wenn er sich sonsten zu einer serieusen Affaire präpariren sollen, gieng hin, knieete auf den Sand nieder, rückte sich die Mütze in die Augen und fing laut selbst an zu beten: ›Herr Jesu! Dir leb' ich‹ usw. Weil er aber meinem Kerl gesagt, er sollt' ihm die Augen verbinden, sich aber hernach resolviret, die Mütze in die Augen zu ziehen, so wollte der Kerl, der schrecklich consterniret, ihm immer noch die Augen verbinden, bis von Katt ihm mit der Hand winkte und den Kopf schüttelte.
Darauf fing er nochmalen an zu beten: ›Herr Jesu!‹ welches noch nicht aus war, so flog der Kopf weg, welchen mein Kerl aufnahm, und wieder an seinen Ort setzte.
Seine Présence d'Esprit bis auf die letzte Minute kann nicht genug admiriren. Seine Standhaftigkeit und Unerschrockenheit werde mein Tage nicht vergessen, und durch seine Zubereitung zum Tode habe vieles gelernet, so noch weniger zu vergessen wünsche.«
Außer dieser Relation des Majors von Schack liegt auch ein Bericht des Garnisonpredigers Besser vor, der, wie vorerwähnt, in Assistenz des Feldpredigers Müller, den von Katte auf seinem letzten Gange begleitete. Auf die Angaben dieser beiden »Augenzeugen« (von Schack und Besser) werden wir auch in der Folge bei Lösung schwebender Fragen in allen Hauptpunkten angewiesen sein. Alles andere steht erst in zweiter Reihe. Hier zunächst der Schluß des Besserschen Berichts im Wortlaut
»... So trat er seinen letzten Gang zum Vater an mit solcher freimüthigen Herzhaftigkeit, die jeder bewundern mußte. Seine Augen waren meistens zu Gott gerichtet, und wir erhielten sein Herz unterwegens immer himmelwärts durch Vorhaltung der Exempel solcher, die im Herrn verschieden, als des Sohnes Gottes selbst und des Sankt Stephanus, wie auch des Schächers am Kreuz, bis wir uns unter solchen Reden dem hiesigen Schlosse näherten. An andern, die solchen Gang gehen, habe ich sonst wohl Alteration und Betrübniß ihrer Sinne gemerket, wenn sie dem entsetzlichen Gerichtsplatz nahe kamen, daß ihnen auch öfters der freudige Muth entfallen ist. Ich hatte daher auch meine Obacht, ob der Wohlselige auch etwa eine verborgene Hoffnung in seinem Herzen hege wegen Linderung seines auszustehenden Urtheils, wenn solche aber fehlschlagen möchte, daß ja nicht Kleinmüthigkeit und schüchterne Blödigkeit entstünden. Allein Gott sei gedanket, der ihn mit seinem Freudengeist in seiner letzten Stunde stärkte und unsträflich behielt. Er erblickte endlich nach langem sehnlichen Umhersehen seinen geliebtesten Jonathan, Ihro Königliche Hoheit den Kronprinzen am Fenster des Schlosses, von selbigem er mit höflichen und verbindlichen Worten in französischer Sprache Abschied nahm, mit nicht geringer Wehmuth.49) Er hörte ferner seine abgefaßte Todessentenz durch den Herrn Geheimrath Gerbett unerschrocken vorlesen. Da solche geendiget, nahm er vollends Abschied von denen Herren Offiziers, besonders von dem v. Asseburg, v. Holzendorf und dem ganzen Kreise, empfing die letzte Absolution und die priesterliche Einsegnung mit großer Devotion, entkleidete sich selber bis aufs Hemd, entblößte sich den Hals, nahm seine Haartour vom Haupte, bedeckte sich mit einer weißen Mütze, welche er zuvor zu dem Ende bei sich gesteckt hatte, kniete nieder auf den Sandhaufen und rief: ›Herr Jesu, nimm meinen Geist auf!‹ Und als er solcher Gestalt seine Seele in die Hände seines Vaters befohlen, ward das erlösete Haupt mit einem glücklich gerathenen Streich durch die Hand und Schwert des Scharfrichters Coblentz vom Leibe abgesondert; ein viertel auf acht Uhr, den 6 Nov. 1730. Dabei mir einfiel, was stehet 2. Macc. 7 Vers 40: ›Also ist auch dieser auch fein dahingestorben und hat allen seinen Trost auf Gott gestellet.‹ Ich nahm ferner nichts mehr wahr als einige Zuckungen des Körpers, so vom frischen Geblüt und Leben herrührten. Wenig zusammengelaufene Leute sah man außer dem Kreise, auf dem Walle und in denen Fenstern, und noch weniger von Extraktion waren zugegen, weil viele theils solches nicht gelaubet, theils nicht gewußt, theils es anzusehen Bedenken getragen.
Der Körper und Haupt ward mit einem schwarzen Tuch bedecket, bis er von denen besten und vornehmsten Bürgern dieser Stadt aufgehoben.
49: »Mon cher Katte«, rief ihm der Kronprinz zu, nachdem er ihm mit der Hand einen Kuß zugeworfen, »je vous demande mille pardons«. Worauf Katte mit Reverenz antwortete: »Point de pardon, mon prince; je meurs avec mille plaisirs pour vous.«
Katte Textual Criticism: Fontane 2 (DO NOT REPLY)
Date: 2020-01-04 12:22 pm (UTC)The next morning was designated for execution. A missive of Major von Schack, which he directed to the field marshal von Natzmer, contains a precise description of all events from the moment when Katte arrived at the Küstrin gates on the afternoon of the 5th. It is from this missive that I take the following.
"... When at 2 o'clock," wrote v. Schack, "we came to the gate, we found the commandant there. He stopped us and let us out. Then he took Herr von Katt of blessed memory by the hand and led him up the stairs to the wall, where over the gate" (that's the gate between the König Bastion and Königin Bastion; see the fortress sketch) "a room with two beds, one for Katt and the other for the field preacher, was prepared. The commandant then told me that we still had to hold Herr von Katt in custody at this point and showed me the points where our posts would best be set up. At the same time he showed me the Royal Order, from which I saw that the execution would take place the next morning at seven o'clock, and that I should cause my entire command of 150 men of the Küstrin garrison, on foot, to encircle Herr von Katt.
"When I found out all of this, I went to the Herr von Katt of blessed memory, not without grief and sadness of the heart, and told him "that his end was nearer than he might think." He also fearlessly asked, 'When and at what time?' When I informed him, he replied to me: 'I'm glad; the sooner the better.'
"Governor von Lepel sent food, wine, and beer, which he ate and drank.
"A little later, President von Münchow also sent food and Hungarian wine, which he also enjoyed. But then our field preacher Müller took the garrison preacher Besser with him and stayed in constant attendance with him. I was with him, along with the other officers, from 8 p.m. to 9 p.m., and we sang and prayed. But because the preachers wanted to be alone with him, we left. At 10 o'clock he was allowed to make coffee, of which he drank three cups afterwards; I left my guy with him all night to help him.
"I went back to him at 11:00 pm; I could not sleep; but when I was so worried and stressed, and only saw him, his steadfastness cheered me up again. And I prayed and sang until 1 a.m. From 2 to 3 o'clock, you could see, in the color of his face, his flesh and blood putting up a hard fight. At this time the preacher asked him to lie down on the bed a little, to gain fresh strength for his mind. Which he did, and slept from 3 to 5 o'clock, when he was awakened by the changing of the guard. He communicated this. As before, I went back to him. Then he told me that the belongings that he had with him should be given to my guy. He gave his Bible to the corporal, who sang and prayed very diligently with him, especially the song mentioned above, as often as he was alone without the preacher.
"Since shortly before 7, the command force of the Gens d'Armes appeared, Katt asked me: 'Is it time?' Since I answered yes to this, he said goodbye to me, went out and the military guard put him in the middle; one preacher went to the right, the other to the left, and always prayed and spoke before him. He walked very freely and cheerfully, hat under his arm, not forced nor affected, but completely natural.
"It was a few hundred paces along the wall, and the entrances to the wall were occupied by military personnel, so that few people were up there. The sentence was read to him again in the circle, but I can assure you that I heard nothing from all the sadness, and could not put together three words. At the reading of the sentence he was quite free. When this was done, he asked after the officers from the Gens d'Armes, went to meet them, and said goodbye. Afterwards he was blessed. Then he gave his wig to my guy, who handed him a hat, took off his coat, and opened his neck band, and took off his shirt. Then very freely and cheerfully, as if he were about to prepare himself for a serious affair down, knelt down on the sand, put the cap on and began to pray aloud: 'Lord Jesus! I live with you,' etc. Because he told my guy to blindfold him, but resolved afterwards to pull his hat over his eyes, the guy who was in terrible consternation still wanted to blindfold him, until von Katt waved his hand and shook his head.
"Then he began to pray again: 'Lord Jesus!' He had not yet gotten this out, when the head flew away, which my guy picked up and put back in its place.
"His presence of mind to the last minute cannot be admired enough. His steadfastness and fearlessness will not be forgotten in my day, and through his preparations for death I have learned a lot, that would I want to forget even less."
In addition to this missive of Major von Schack, there is also a report by the garrison preacher Besser, who, as previously mentioned, assisted by the field preacher Müller, accompanied von Katte on his last walk. We will continue to rely on the information provided by these two "eyewitnesses" (from Schack and Besser) in the following when solving pending questions in all main points. Everything else is only in the second rank. Here is the end of the text of the Besser report:
"... So he began his last journey to the Father with such frank heartiness that everyone had to admire him. His eyes were mostly directed to God, and we always got his heart heavenward by providing different examples, such as the Son of God himself and Saint Stephen, as well as the thief on the cross, until with such speeches we approached the local castle. In other people who walk this path, I have often noticed an alteration in mood and sadness when they came close to the appalling execution place, such that they have often lost their joyful courage. I therefore kept an eye out for whether the deceased might also have held in his heart a secret hope of a relief from his impending doom, which, if it fails, then there is no shortage of faint-heartedness and mindless fear. Thanks be to God alone, who strengthened him with his spirit of joy in the last hour and kept it irreproachable. After a long, ardent look around, he finally saw his beloved Jonathan, Your Royal Highness the Crown Prince, at the window of the castle, to whom he said goodbye with polite and friendly words in French, with no less melancholy49. He also fearlessly heard his drafted death essence read out by Herr Gerrath Gerbett. As it ended, he fully took leave of the officers, especially von Asseburg, von Holzendorf, and the whole circle. He received the last absolution and the priestly consecration with great devotion, stripped himself to the shirt, bared his neck, took his wig from his head, covered his head with a white cap, which he had brought along in preparation for the end, knelt on the pile of sand, and cried: 'Lord Jesus, take my spirit!' And when he commended his soul into the hands of his father, the redeemed head, by one lucky stroke by the hand and sword of the executioner Coblentz, became separated from the body; at a quarter to 8 am, November 6, 1730. Then 2. Macc. 7 verse 40 came to mind, which says: 'Thus he too died undefiled, putting all his trust in the Lord.' I also noticed nothing more than a few twitches of the body, which came from the fresh blood and life. Aside from the circle, few assembled people, on the wall and in the windows, saw, and even less of noble extraction were present, because many of them were not allowed to do so, some didn’t know about it, and others were concerned about watching.
"The body and head were covered with a black cloth until they were picked up by the best and most distinguished citizens of this city."
49: "Mon cher Katte", the Crown Prince called to him, after blowing him a kiss, "je vous demande mille pardons". To which Katte answered reverently: "Point de pardon, mon prince; je meurs avec mille plaisirs pour vous."
Katte Textual Criticism: Friedrich Wilhelm (DO NOT REPLY)
Date: 2020-01-04 12:23 pm (UTC)The following letter was written by Friedrich Wilhelm II to Lepel, the commandant at Kustrin, ordering the arrangements for Katte's execution. The letter is quoted by Reinheld Koser in Friedrich der Große als Kronprinz (pp. 236-237), published in 1886, and dated to November 3, 1730. Only the first part of the letter is quoted here.
Translation partly mine (in collaboration with Google Translate), partly Lavisse's in the English translation of The Youth of Frederick. (279-280).
The copy of Koser is taken from Google Books.
Text
Den Montag, als den 6. d. früh um 7 Uhr sollet Ihr von der Garnison 150 Mann commandieren lassen, die den Kreis schließen sollen, vor die Fenster des Cronprintzen, oder woferne ja daselbst nicht Platz genug dazu wäre, müsset Ihr einen andern Platz nehmen, sodaß der Cronprintz aus dem Fenster selbigen gut übersehen kann. Wenn der Kreis geschlossen ist, sollen die 30 Gens d'armes zu Fuße mit Ober- und Untergewehr, nebst dem Prediger, den Lieutenant Katte im Kreis bringen und soll ihm der Oberauditeur Gerbett das Todesurthel alsdann verlesen. Sowie das Todesurthel verlesen ist, soll der Prediger ein Gebet halten, alsdann ihm der Scharfrichter den Kopf abschlagen soll. Auf dem Richtplatz soll der Körper bis 2 Uhr Nachmittag liegen blieben und doppelte Schildwacht dabei gesetzet werden, und um 2 Uhr Nachmittags soll man hübsche Bürger bringen, die den Körper in einen Sarg legen und vor das Thor auf dem armen Kirchhof in der Stille einsenken...[sic] Bevor die Execution angehet, sollet Ihr, der Obrist Reichmann und ein Capitain oben bei dem Cronprintzen gehen und in Meinem Namen befehlen, es mit anzusehen; währender Execution sollen sie bei ihm bleiben, auch nach der Execution, und alsdann sollen sie lassen den Prediger von die Gens d'armes holen, der mit dem Cronprintzen soll sprechen, raisonniren und beten.
Translation
On Monday the 6th, at 7 am, you should have 150 of your men from the garrison close a circle before the window of the Crown Prince, or if this place is not large enough, another must be chosen, where the prince can see it well. When the circle is complete, 30 Gens d'Armes are to walk in full armor [lit. "with upper and lower rifle"], along with the preacher, to bring Lieutenant Katte into the circle. Then chief auditor Gerbett is to read out the death sentence. As soon as the death sentence is read out, the preacher shall lead a prayer, before the executioner cuts off the head. The body should remain in the execution site until 2:00 p.m., and a double guard should be set. At 2:00 p.m., well-to-do citizens should be brought in to put the body in a coffin, and inter it in the paupers' field in front of the gate in silence...[ellipsis in Koser] Before the execution begins, you, Colonel Reichmann, and a captain should go upstairs to the Crown Prince and order him in my name to watch it; they should stay with him during the execution, also after the execution, and then they should have the preacher fetched from the Gens d'Armes, who should speak, reason, and pray with the Crown Prince.
Katte Textual Criticism: The Comparative Method (DO NOT REPLY)
Date: 2020-01-04 12:26 pm (UTC)Disclaimer: my background is not in textual criticism, it's in historical linguistics, but the central method of historical linguistics, the comparative method, was first developed to detect and evaluate the relationships among texts, and the underlying principles of this method are the same in historical linguistics and textual criticism.
According to the comparative method, what counts as relevant evidence for relatedness are shared innovations. That means that if two sources relate something different from everyone else, that might or might not be evidence that the two sources have some source in common. If two sources relate something different from everyone else, but we have external evidence that it really happened that way, that's not necessarily an innovation. They could have arrived at that knowledge independently. But if they make the same mistake, that's interesting. For example, if we have letters in von Schack's hand, and he signs them "von Schack," we assume that he knows his own name. Then any text that refers to him as "von Schack" does not necessarily share a common origin with any other text. Two authors might simply have learned his name and remember it correctly. But if two texts refer to him as "von Schenk," it's likely that this mistake was only made once, and copied after that. Maybe one author got it from the other, or maybe they both got it from somewhere else, but they probably both didn't come up with it independently.
The larger the number of shared innovations, the more likely two texts share a common origin that the other texts don't. It's like a family tree: you and a sibling have more genetic material in common with each other than with your first cousin, and your sibling, first cousin, and you have more genetic material in common with each other than with someone outside your family.
For shorthand, the analysis section refers to each of the texts by the first initial of its author: P for Pöllnitz, W for Wilhelmine, T for Thiébault, C for Catt, V for Voltaire, F for the two sources cited by Fontane, M for Münchow, and FW for Friedrich Wilhelm.
In the following three comments, I will be examining the following claims:
1) P, W, and T have some common origin, because they have a large number of innovations that aren’t shared by other sources.
2) W and T are more closely related to each other than to P.
3) C and V are more closely related to each other than to other sources.
Finally, a note on the limitations of the comparative method: because we're only looking at the texts in isolation, the comparative method groups texts together in a relative manner. It doesn't tell you which was written first, or whether A is using B as a source, B is using A, or whether A and B have some source C, which may not be included in our corpus here in common. For that, one would need to look at external evidence.
Katte Textual Criticism: W/T Shared Innovations (DO NOT REPLY)
Date: 2020-01-04 12:29 pm (UTC)You will notice that it's common for W and T to have the same thing and P something different, and for W and P to have the same thing and T to omit it altogether, but not for P and T to have the same thing and for Wilhelmine to have something different or even to omit it altogether.
Below, I consider the evidence line by line (as opposed to word-by-word, or fact-by-fact), and I group it according to which possible textual relationship it supports and how strongly.
These are the lines where W and T are more similar to each other than to what is written in P. In isolation, each of these is strong evidence that T and W are more closely textually linked to each other than either is to P.
P: On lut à de Katt sa sentence. Katt en entendit la lecture sans effroi.
W: Son arrêt lui fut prononcé le 2 du même mois. Il l'entendit lire sans changer de couleur.
T: La sentence fut envoyée à Berlin. Il l'entendit sans changer de couleur.
P: Je suis résigné, dit-il, aux décrets de la providence & de la volonté du roi; je n'ai point commis de mauvaise action, et si je meurs c'est pour une belle cause.
W: Je me soumets, dit-il, aux ordres du roi et de la Providence; je vais mourir pour une belle cause et j'envisage le trépas sans frayeur, n'ayant rien à me reprocher.
T: Je me soumets, dit-il, aux ordres du roi et aux décrets de la Providence. Je meurs pour une belle cause, et j'envisage le trépas sans frayeur.
P: Le major Schenck des gendarmes eut ordre de conduire Katt à la citadelle de Kustrin.
W: Le lendemain au soir, le major Schenk vint l'avertir que son supplice devoit se faire à Custrin, et que le carrosse qui devoit l'y conduire, l'attendoit.
T: Le major Schenk l'informa que son exécution devait se faire à Custrin, et que le carrosse qui devait l'y conduire l'attendait.
P: Le major Schenck des gendarmes eut ordre de conduire Katt à la citadelle de Kustrin.
W: M. de Schenk, qui monta en carrosse avec lui, aussi bien que deux autres officiers des gendarmes. Un gros détachement de ce corps les escorta jusqu'à Custrin.
T: Et fut accompagné par ce major et deux autres officiers des gendarmes, et escorté par un gros détachement de ce corps.
P: Il resta toute la nuit en prières.
W: Il arriva à 9 heures du matin à Custrin, où on le mena droit à l'échafaud.
T: il descendit de voiture et monta sur l'échafaud.
P: On avoit élevé un échafaud dans la place de la citadelle au niveau de la chambre du prince royal.
W: Le jour d'auparavant, le général Lepel, gouverneur de la forteresse, et le président Municho conduisirent mon frère dan un appartement qu'on lui avoit préparé exprès dans l'étage au-dessous de celui où il avoit logé.
T: Cependant Frédéric venait d'être conduit par M. Municho et par le général Lepel dans un chambre au niveau de laquelle l'échafaud était dressé.
P: Le prince s'approcha d'une des fenêtres.
W: On obligea alors mon malheureux frère de se mettre à la fenêtre. Il voulut se jeter dehors, mais on le retint.
T: Il voulut se jeter par la croisée, à laquelle on l'obligea de se mettre. On le retint.
P: Il se mit ensuite à genoux.
W: En même temps il se mit à genoux.
T: En disant ces mots, il se mit à genoux.
P: Quand Katt fut assez proche, le prince lui cria qu'il étoit bien malheureux d'etre cause de sa mort. Il ajouta ces mots: Plût à Dieu que je fusse à votre place!
W: Que je suis malheureux, mon cher Katt! lui dit-il, je suis cause de votre mort; plût à Dieu que je fusse à votre place.
T: S'il veut pardonner à de Katt! Que je suis malheureux, mon cher de Katt: je suis cause de votre mort; plût à Dieu que je fusse à votre place!
P: Ah! Monseigneur, répondit Katt d'une voix ferme, si j'avois mille vies, je les donnerois pour vous.
W: Ah! monseigneur, répliqua celui-ci, si j'avois mille vies, je les sacrifierois pour vous.
T: Ah! monseigneur, répondit de Katt, si j'avais mille vies je les sacrifierais pour vous.
P: Le corps de Katt demeura tout le jour sur l'échafaud à la vue du prince.
W: Dès qu'il eut repris ses sens, le premier objet qui s'offrit à sa vue, fut le corps sanglant du pauvre Katt, qu'on avoit posé de façon que mon frère ne pouvoit éviter de le voir.
T: Le premier objet qui frappa sa vue fut, par un raffinement atroce, le corps sanglant de son ami, placé de manière à ce qu'il ne pût éviter de le voir.
These are the lines that W and T have in common that are missing from P. In isolation, each of these constitutes weak evidence that W and T are most closely related, because they admit the possibility that P, inspecting the same source as W and T, elected to omit these lines.
P: -
W: Sekendorff entreprit aussi de sauver Katt;
T: M. de Sekendorff voulut aussi sauver de Katt
P: -
W: Il parut un peu étonné de cette nouvelle; mais reprenant bientôt sa tranquillité, il suivit, avec un visage riant
T: Il y monta d'un air riant,
P: -
W: Pendant ce temps, Schenk rendit le même office à Katt; il lui dit en entrant dans la forteresse
T: En arrivant, Schenk lui dit:
P: -
W: "Conservez vontre fermeté, mon cher Katt, vous allez soutenir une terrible épreuve; vous êtes à Custrin, et vous allez voir le prince royal. – Dites plutôt, lui répartit-il, que je vais avoir la plus grande consolation qu'on ait pu m'accorder."
T: "Vous allez soutenir une terrible épreuve: vous allez revoir le prince royal.--Dites plutot, répondit de Katt avec véhémence, que je vais avoir la plus grande consolation qu'on pût m'accorder"
P: -
W: M. de Municho et le général Lepel entrèrent dans sa chambre le matin, un moment avant que Katt parut, et tâchèrent de le préparer le mieux qu'ils purent à cette terrible scène.
T: Et au moment où de Katt arriva on leva le rideau de la fenêtre, qui jusque-là avait été baissé. Quelque chose que l'on eût pu faire pour préparer le prince à cet horrible spectacle, inventé pour l'associer au supplice de son ami.
P: -
W: On dit que rien n'égala son désespoir.
T: Rien n'égala son désespoir.
P: Le prince en le voyant demanda qu'on suspendit l'exécution, & qu'on lui permit d'écrire au roi; qu'il renonceroit solennellement à la succession au trône, pourvu qu'on lui accordât la grâce de son ami.
W: Je vous conjure, au nom de Dieu, dit-il à ceux qui étoient à l'entour de lui, de retarder l'exécution; je veux écrire au roi que je suis prêt à renoncer à tous les droits que j'ai sur la couronne; s'il veut pardonner à Katt.
T: "Au nom de Dieu, s'écria-t-il, retardez l'exécution. Je veux écrire au roi que se juis prêt à renoncer à tous mes droits à la couronne, s'il veut pardonner à de Katt!"
P: -
W: M. de Municho lui ferma la bouche avec son mouchoir.
T: Mais ses pleurs, ses prierès, ses cris ne furent point écoutes.
P: -
W: A peine eut-il proféré ces paroles, que sa tête, tranchée d'un seul coup, roula à ses pieds.
T: Et comme il achevait, sa tête, tranchée d'un seul coup, roula sur l'échafaud.
P: -
W: il y resta quelques heures sans sentiment.
T: Il ne reprit ses sens qu'au bout de plusieurs heures,
P: -
W: Un second évanouissement succéda au premier, et il ne revint à lui qu'avec une fièvre violente.
T: Un second évanouissement succéda au premier, et il ne revint à lui qu'avec une fièvre violente.
P: -
W: M. de Municho, malgré les ordres du roi, fit fermer les rideaux de la fenêtre et envoya chercher les médecins qui le trouvèrent en grand danger.
T: M. de Municho, malgré les ordres du roi, fit fermer les rideaux de la fenêtre et envoya chercher les médecins qui le trouvèrent en grand danger.
P: -
W: Il ne voulut rien prendre de ce qu'ils lui donnèrent.
T: Il ne voulut rien prendre de ce qu'ils lui ordonnèrent.
P: -
W: Il étoit tout hors de lui et dans de si grandes agitations, qu'il se seroit tué si on ne l'en eût empêché.
T: Ils était hors de lui, et dans de si violentes agitations, qu'il se serait tué si on ne l'en eût empêché.
P: -
W: Ses violentes convulsions ne se calmèrent que lorsque ses forces furent épuisées.
T: Ses convulsions ne se calmèrent que lorsque les forces furent épuisées.
P: -
W: Les larmes succédèrent à ces terribles transports.
T: Les larmes succédèrent alors aux plus terribles transports.
P: -
W: Ce ne fut qu'avec une peine extrême qu'on lui persuada de prendre des médicines: on n'en vint à bout qu'en lui représentant qu'il causeroit encore la mort de la reine et la mienne, s'il persistoit à vouloir mourir.
T: Ce fut avec une peine indicible, et en lui représentant qu'il causerait la mort de la reine et celle de sa soeur Wilhelmine, s'il persistait à vouloir mourir, qu'on vint à bout de lui faire prendre quelques remèdes.
P: -
W: Il conserva, pendant long-temps, une profonde mélancolie, et fut trois fois vingt-quatre heures en grand danger.
T: Il conserva longtemps une profonde mélancolie, et fut trois fois vingt-quatre heures à toute extrémité.
These are the lines where P and W are more similar to each other than to what is written in T. In isolation, each of these is strong evidence that P and W are more closely textually linked to each other than either is to T.
P: mais le roi demeurra inflexible.
W: mais le roi resta inflexible.
T: mais Guillaume fut inexorable.
P: Un de ses domestiques voulut lui bander les yeux. Il n'est pas nécessaire, dit-il.
W: Un de ses domestiques voulut lui bander les yeux, mais il ne voulut pas le souffrir.
T: Sans permettre qu'on lui bandât les yeux.
P: Il leva les yeux, & dit: Mon Dieu, je remets mon ame entre vos mains.
W: Alors, élevant son âme à Dieu, il s'écria: Mon Dieu! je remets mon âme entre vos mains.
T: Il s'écria: “Mon Dieu, je mets mon âme entre vos mains.”
P: Le prince royal ne put point soutenir ce spectacle: il tomba en foiblesse.
W: Il n'y étoit plus; une forte foiblesse qui lui étoit survenue,
T: A ce terrible moment, Frédéric était sans connaissance.
These are the lines that P and W have in common that are missing from T. In isolation, each of these constitutes weak evidence that P and W are most closely related, because they admit the possibility that T, inspecting the same source as P and W, elected to omit these lines.
P: Il parut entièrement résigné, & donna des grandes marques de repentance de ses désordres passés;
W: [long speech]
T: -
P: Peu de temps après Katt parut en habit brun; car ayant été dégradé, il n'osoit point porter d'uniforme.
W: On lui apporta un habit brun tout uni, qu'on l'obligea de mettre. J'ai oublié de dire qu'on en avoit donné un pareil à Katt.
T: -
P: Tout cela avoit été fait aux yeux du prince royal, & il n'avoit pas douté que ces tristes apprêts ne fussent pour lui. Il y fut confirmé le lendemain au matin, en voyant entrer dans sa chambre Loepel, commandant de la citadelle. Mais cet officier ne le laissa pas long-temps dans l'erreur.
W: Cette vue et l'air attéré de Munico firent croire à mon frère qu'on alloit lui prononcer sa sentence de mort; et que ces apprêts se faisoient pour lui; ce qui lui causa une violente agitation.
T: -
P: l'échafaud, qui étoit couvert de drap noir.
W: Lui fit voir un échafaud tout couvert de noir.
T: -
P: Tout cela avoit été fait aux yeux du prince royal, & il n'avoit pas douté que ces tristes apprêts ne fussent pour lui.
W: Cette vue et l'air attéré de Munico firent croire à mon frère qu'on alloit lui prononcer de mort; et que ces apprêts se faisoient pour lui; ce qui lui causa une violente agitation.
T: -
P: On le porta sur son lit.
W: Avoit obligé ces messieurs de le porter sur son lit.
T: -
These are the lines that P and T have in common that are missing from W. In isolation, each of these constitutes weak evidence that P and T are most closely related, because they admit the possibility that W, inspecting the same source as P and T, elected to omit these lines.
P: Tous ses parens, à le tête desquels étoient son aïeul le maréchal de Wartensleben & son père qui etoit lieutenant général, la demandèrent aussi avec la dernière instance
W: -
T: De Katt appartenait en effet à une famille nombreuse, puissante et très-considérée. Il était fils unique du feld-maréchal de ce nom. Toute cette famille revint à plusieurs reprises, et fondant en larmes, se jeter aux pieds du roi, demandant grâce pour un jeune homme auquel la ville et la cour entières prenaient le plus vif intérêt.
In sum, there are three possibilities for which two texts are most closely related: P and W, P and T, or W and T. Here is a tallying up of the instances of strong and weak evidence for each:
W and T
Strong: 11
Weak: 18
P and W
Strong: 4
Weak: 6
P and T
Strong: 0
Weak: 1
We see from these numbers that W and T are clearly most closely related. Additionally, W is quite likely to be more closely related to P than to T, in that it's not impossible that T is merely omitting lines in P by chance, but it's unlikely. The one commonality unique to P and T is confirmed by external evidence (Katte's relationship to his father and grandfather and their failed interventions) and could have been obtained independently. It's not a true shared innovation.
Katte Textual Criticism: P/W/T Shared Innovations (DO NOT REPLY)
Date: 2020-01-04 12:35 pm (UTC)Presenting the evidence is complicated slightly by the fact that P, W, and T are overwhelmingly more similar to each other than to any other accounts, to the point where it doesn't make sense to do a line-by-line comparison. The line-by-line comparison in the P/W/T comment, plus the texts reproduced in toto in individual comments, should suffice to show that not only do they share structural similarities at the narrative level, to the exclusion of all other texts, they also share line-by-line linguistic similarities in great number, to the exclusion of all other texts.
So, without repeating the similarities pertaining to narrative and word choice, what I will present here are the shared innovations pertaining to fact, i.e. evidence that P, W, and T are sharing innovations in matters of fact, compared to Fontane's eyewitness sources (von Schack and Besser), Catt, and Voltaire. A dash indicates that there is no relevant comparandum.
In charge of Katte's execution:
F: Major von Schack
P/W/T: Major von Schenk
C: -
V: -
M: -
FW: -
Katte's arrival time in Küstrin and what he does upon arriving:
F: Katte arrives at 2 pm on the 5th and spends the night in prayer and writing to his family.
P: Katte arrives the day before and spends the night in prayer.
W/T: Katte arrives in the morning and goes straight to the scaffold.
C: -
V: -
M: -
FW: -
Katte's execution time:
F: 7:45 am.
P: -
W/T: Shortly after 9 am.
C: -
V: -
M: -
FW: 7 am.
Exchange between von Schack and Katte on arriving in Küstrin:
F: Ich sagte ihm, ›daß sein Ende näher sei, als er vielleicht vermuthe‹. Er fragte auch unerschrocken, ›wann und um welche Zeit?‹ Da ich ihm solches hinterbracht, antwortete er mir: ›es ist mir lieb; je eher je lieber‹
P: -
W/T: "Conservez vontre fermeté, mon cher Katt, vous allez soutenir une terrible épreuve; vous êtes à Custrin, et vous allez voir le prince royal. – Dites plutôt, lui répartit-il, que je vais avoir la plus grande consolation qu'on ait pu m'accorder." [Only insignificant differences between W and T.]
C: -
V: -
M: -
FW: -
Final exchange between Friedrich and Katte:
F: »Mon cher Katte«, rief ihm der Kronprinz zu, nachdem er ihm mit der Hand einen Kuß zugeworfen, »je vous demande mille pardons«. Worauf Katte mit Reverenz antwortete: »Point de pardon, mon prince; je meurs avec mille plaisirs pour vous.«
P/W/T: "Que je suis malheureux, mon cher Katt! lui dit-il, je suis cause de votre mort; plût à Dieu que je fusse à votre place." "Ah! monseigneur, répliqua celui-ci, si j'avois mille vies, je les sacrifierois pour vous." [Insignificant differences between P, W, and T.]
C: "Ah, Katte."
V: -
M: "Pardonnez-moi, mon cher Katte!" The latter answered: "La mort est douce pur un si aimable Prince."
FW: -
Final words of Katte:
F (Schack): ›Herr Jesu! Dir leb' ich‹ usw.
F (Besser): ›Herr Jesu, nimm meinen Geist auf!‹ Und als er solcher Gestalt seine Seele in die Hände seines Vaters befohlen
P/W/T: "Mon Dieu, je (re)mets mon âme entre vos mains."
C: -
V: -
M: -
FW: -
Execution site of Katte:
F: Pile of sand.
P: Scaffold covered in a black cloth.
W: Scaffold covered in a black cloth.
T: Scaffold.
C: -
V: Scaffold.
M: Pile of sand.
FW: -
Execution site of Katte visible from Friedrich's window:
F: No.
P/W/T: Yes.
C/V: Yes.
M: No.
FW: Yes.
Corpse left visible:
F: Covered with a black cloth and removed at 2 pm.
P: Visible all day.
W: Visible until sunset.
T: Visible at least several hours.
C: -
V: -
M: -
FW: Visible until 2 pm.
From the above comparison, you can see that there are cases where T omits something that W and P both have, but with one exception, no cases in which T and P have something that W lacks. The exception is that they both discuss who Katte's relatives are and how they interceded for him. W probably left this out because she already went over his family, back when she introduced Katte. Furthermore, we know from surviving correspondence that the unsuccessful intercessions actually happened. Nor are their any striking similarities in the language of P and T. Therefore, I don't take these passages as evidence of a common textual origin, but a case of both independently reporting well-known facts.
Katte Textual Criticism: Catt and Voltaire (DO NOT REPLY)
Date: 2020-01-04 12:40 pm (UTC)Friedrich is informed of Katte's execution by:
F: -
P: -
W/T: Lepel and Münchow
C/V: An old officer and several/four grenadiers.
M: Löpel and Münchow
The individual delivering the news is crying:
F: -
P/W/T: No.
C/V: Yes, "fondant en larmes."
M: -
Friedrich is physically held at the window:
F: -
P: No, he approaches the window, evidently of his own free will.
W/T: He is "obliged" to place himself at the window, but no mention of physical force.
C/V: Yes, held in place by the grenadiers.
M: No, he approaches and opens it of his own free will.
Friedrich is prevented from:
F: Nothing, but he does blow Katte a kiss.
P/W/T: Throwing himself out the window.
C/V: Thrusting his arm out the window.
M: Nothing.
While there are no obvious linguistic similarities between the texts, with the possible exception of "fondant en larmes" (but this may just be two people independently describing someone sobbing, just as Thiébault describes Katte's family as "fondant en larmes"), there is one interesting similarity in an earlier passage, where Katte and Keith are introduced. Namely, both Catt and Voltaire describe these two men as "aimables":
C: Keith et Katte, aimables tous les deux
V: Deux jeunes gens fort aimables, Kat et Keith
Now, I do not take the description of the officer as "old" as a shared innovation: P/W/T/M all report that it was president Münchow, and he was evidently 59 years old, at least if Wikipedia can be trusted. (There's also his senior position to go by, since that would be less likely to be held by someone very young.) That could be two sources independently reporting the facts. However, Katte and Keith being "aimables" is a matter of interpretation, and, moreover, an interpretation that Friedrich subscribed to. Voltaire had the opportunity to meet Keith when both were members of the Academy of Sciences in Berlin in 1750-1753, but Catt met neither, and Voltaire did not meet Katte. I take this as further evidence that Catt and Voltaire are not independent accounts.
There are also striking similarities, including linguistic similarities, between W and P in their descriptions of Katte when he's introduced, but I'm not analyzing those passages here. I may at another time.
Katte Textual Criticism: Conclusions and Speculations (DO NOT REPLY)
Date: 2020-01-04 12:48 pm (UTC)Pöllnitz, Wilhelmine, and Thiébault are not independent accounts. This fact has important implications when trying to figure out what really happened. In the comparative method, not all sources are created equal. In the absence of any external evidence for the spelling of Schack's name, the naive approach would be to say that if three sources have "Schenk" and one source has "Schack", "Schenk" wins. But one of the tenets of the comparative method is that if all three sources are more closely related to each other than to any other source, they only count as one source.
That means if P, W, and T all report something happening that either contradicts our other sources, or isn't found elsewhere, all three only count as one report.
The comparative method tells us that Wilhelmine and Thiébault are more closely related than any two other sources. It doesn't tell us whether Wilhelmine is drawing on Thiébault (impossible because of chronology), Thiébault is drawing on Wilhelmine (unlikely but not impossible), or both are drawing on some third, unknown-to-us source.
There is no way Thiébault and Wilhelmine came up with language that similar on accident, or even just by talking to the same people. Those passages are textually linked. Wilhelmine and Pöllnitz are probably textually linked, but maybe orally with a relatively short time from oral recounting to writing.
I can't tell what comes from Wilhelmine to Pöllnitz or vice versa. I *really* can't tell what's up with the very close similarities between Thiébault and Wilhelmine. Either he's got a copy of her text in front of him, or there's a third source they're both working with. I really don't see any other way.
By the way, I haven't systematically examined anything other than the Katte execution, but unsurprisingly, from my glances at surrounding text, Thiébault follows Wilhelmine equally closely when talking about Friedrich's later imprisonment and rehabilitation at Küstrin, after the execution. It would be interesting to see just how much material he draws from her or that mysterious third source.
Münchow was most likely only a few years old when these events happened. He claims to have been present, and so it's possible he has vivid visual memories of the events, but they will be incomplete. We don't know how long he lived at Küstrin, but he may be a reliable source as to the layout. But for events that took place that day, words that were spoken, orders that were given, he is at best a secondhand source reporting, decades later, what he heard from his father, and at worst using his powers of deduction when he doesn't have firsthand facts.
Factual mistakes in his account include:
- He underestimates the time that Friedrich spent at Küstrin, which was 18 months (Late August/early September 1730 to February 1732.)
- He deduces from his knowledge of people's characters that Friedrich Wilhelm must not have given the order for the Crown Prince to watch the execution. We have a letter from Friedrich Wilhelm insisting that the Crown Prince must be able to see it "gut". It was not uncommon for him to give an order that his son was to be harmed in some way, and for his subordinates to try to mitigate it as best they could without risking themselves (or in many cases, at risk to themselves). It seems that Lepel was no exception.
It's hard to say what Catt and Voltaire's sources are. Catt's claims to be a written record of an oral account given by Friedrich himself. Voltaire doesn't say where he got his information, but it might well have been from Friedrich. Voltaire's spelling of "Kat" especially looks like a foreigner hearing a story orally and writing it down phonetically as best he can.
What's interesting is that both accounts limit themselves to Friedrich's perspective. Schack and Besser were both outside the fortress when these events took place, so they're good sources for what concerned Katte directly, but they're short on information about Friedrich. W/P/T have gathered material from multiple sources, and present both Katte's and Friedrich's POV. Catt and Voltaire, however, present only Friedrich's POV, which makes it even more likely that they heard the story from him. It's possible C and V are both drawing on some third, written, source. Least likely, but not impossible, is that Catt has read Voltaire's 1784 memoirs and decided to expand on it, filling in dialogue in Friedrich's mouth. There is nothing in his diary that I (with my weak French) can find to indicate that Friedrich talked to him about Katte.
But if C and V do reflect Friedrich's version of events, then I find the differences with the accounts of eyewitnesses Münchow, Schack, and Besser very striking. Most especially, the perennial question of whether the execution site was visible from Friedrich's window or not.
So here follows a possible scenario I came up with that would accommodate all the accounts, and all the external evidence we have about the reliability of each.
First, we've seen from the letter that Friedrich Wilhelm gave the order to Commandant Lepel that Friedrich was required to watch the execution.
In keeping with the part of Friedrich's childhood where everyone tried to shield him from the worst of his father's abuse, I posit that some combination of Lepel, Schack, and Münchow put their heads together and decided: 1) "Hell, no," 2) "We still have to be able to tell the King with a straight face that we made the Crown Prince watch."
They therefore decided on making Friedrich watch Katte walk by on his way to his death, and on executing Katte only a short distance from his window, but blocked from Friedrich's view by a wall. For reasons discussed above, I trust Münchow's memory of the topography of the fortress, which didn't change much over time, much more than I trust his memory of specific events that took place on November 6, 1730, when he was a child. So if Münchow says the execution took place only 30-50 paces away, but with an intervening wall, I'm inclined to believe him. From the perspective of those who made the decision, allowing Friedrich to watch Katte's procession but not his execution would count as an act of mercy, by allowing Friedrich and Katte to say farewell, and sparing him the torture of watching the blood spray.
This would allow all witnesses reporting to the King to agree that Katte was executed only 30-50 paces from the Crown Prince's window, and that the Prince was taken to the window, that he saw Katte, and that his head was held to the window. No need to mention that intervening wall that meant the execution itself happened out of his sight.
I posit that Friedrich, who was not given a lot of information on the morning of November 6, did not know of this plan. He assumed when the officers entered the room that he was to be executed. He was set straight on that point, but when they took him to the window and held his head there, and Katte walked by on his way to his death, he assumed that they were going to make him watch the execution itself. In fact, they may have told him there was an order to that effect. He fainted before he could find out otherwise.
When he woke up, Katte's body was nowhere in sight, so he never did find out that Katte was executed on the other side of a wall.
He almost certainly told people that he initially believed he was about to be executed, since all the sources from his POV, P/W/T/C/V, agree on this point.
Much later, someone who is the source of P, W, and T, whether that's P, W, or a third party, who's never been to Küstrin, imaginatively fills in the blanks and recreates a scene that never happened, by putting together the following facts:
1) There were preparations for Katte's execution.
2) FW and his subordinates in Berlin all agreed on the fact that Friedrich was ordered to watch.
3) Friedrich said he was made to watch.
4) Friedrich said he believed he was going to die that day, before the officer coming into his room set him straight.
All these facts led someone to the conclusion that the preparations must have taken place in sight of Friedrich's window, and that he must have watched them with growing dread and a conviction that they were meant for him. Somewhere along the chain of transmission, someone decided that the preparations must have included a scaffold, like the other executions they'd seen or heard of. We know few people knew of the pile of sand, and none of them was Friedrich.
In reality, Friedrich did not see these preparations, which is why they're not in C & V. Nor did he see Katte's body when he woke up, much less as the first thing he saw. It was out of sight, and it had been covered by a black cloth, which the W/P/T source must have learned about (from some source other than Friedrich) but misinterpreted or misremembered as covering the scaffold.
It appears that the body was removed around 2 pm, as Friedrich Wilhelm had ordered, but that Friedrich would not have known of this.
The only other claim that there was a scaffold, outside of P/W/T, is V. Voltaire's scaffold isn't evidence for any kind of connection between his account and P/W/T, because that's the kind of detail that can be made up independently. Most people in the 18th century would have attended or at least frequently heard of executions involving scaffolds. The scaffold would therefore have been a familiar detail to them, which they would be prone to supplying in cases where one wasn't specified.
In textual criticism, we call this the principle of lectio difficilior potior: the more unlikely detail is the one more likely to be correct. People tend to replace unfamiliar things, like sand heaps, with familiar things, like scaffolds. So given two sand heap accounts and two scaffold accounts, even leaving aside the part where the sand heaps were in the eyewitness accounts and the scaffold accounts the non-eyewitness accounts, we'd be more likely to believe in the sand heap.
Voltaire is also, of course, the only one who says FW was present, but Voltaire is an outsider, writing when outside the country and without access to any archives or probably even many consultants, and gets so many details like this wrong that this particular error is unsurprising.
Katte's last words to Friedrich are similar in spirit but different in letter among our sources. P/W/T ("si j'avois mille vies, je les sacrifierois pour vous.") we know were not present. M ("La mort est douce pur un si aimable Prince.") was present but a small child. I would give a lot to know where Fontane's "je meurs avec mille plaisirs pour vous" comes from. Given the fact that it's in a footnote and the spelling, it does not appear to come from the report by Besser. However, Fontane is dedicated to using adult eyewitness sources in this chapter, so...I wonder.
The one thing I haven't been able to find anywhere except Wikipedia and sources derived from it (tumblr, DW, etc.) is "I die for you with joy in my heart," in French or in English. I would love it if anybody even knew of a modern biography that predates Wikipedia and has this source.
Katte Textual Criticism: Discussion (REPLY HERE)
Date: 2020-01-04 12:51 pm (UTC)I'm dying to know what you all think. Am I stretching the evidence? Am I onto something? Was this all figured out a hundred years ago and just nobody told the English language biographers?
What do people think is going on with P, W, and T, and for that matter, C and V. But especially W and T, since T isn't supposed to have had access to W!
Re: Katte Textual Criticism: Discussion (REPLY HERE)
Date: 2020-01-04 02:20 pm (UTC)I have some new speculation about that. Pöllnitz' manuscript might have been languishing in the drawer when T wrote in Paris, but as Fritz' reader, he could have easily had access to it earlier, and could have made a copy. After all, Pöllnitz had already published several other books, including his earlier memoirs, and his papers would have been of interest to T if he did some research while in Prussia. (Espeically since P was famous for having spicy stories, see also his bestseller "La Saxe Galante".) And as we said on an earlier occasion, P was the go to guy for any of the Hohenzollern siblings for stories and anecdotes, so it would make sense for Wilhelmine to have consulted him while writing her memoirs.
Alternatively: a lot of the artists and intellectuals who'd been living with Wilhelmine and her husband in Bayreuth went to Fritz' court in the mid 60s when the Margrave died and crazy Uncle Christian inherited the lot, sacking all the artists and scholars. Any of them could have told T, who also arrived in Prussia in the mid 60s, that W had written her memoirs if any of them knew. I mean, it's news to Heinrich and FW2 later that she did, but that doesn't mean it was news to everyone. If you were a writer with interest in Fritz, and heard in confidence that his sister had written secret memoirs, wouldnl't you want to hunt that manuscript down? (And not told your boss, who'd wanted it for himself.)
Though I think it's more likely Pöllnitz was the Ur-source for W and T.
As for V and C, I agree they most likely got an account from Fritz and rewrote it from memory years later, which accounts for all the mistakes, plus in V's case embellished it with FW present etc. for reasons of drama.
Re: Katte Textual Criticism: Discussion (REPLY HERE)
Date: 2020-01-04 02:47 pm (UTC)From external evidence you'd think so, but look more closely at the linguistic similarities exclusively between W and T. They pretty much never have different things in common with P that they don't have with each other, and aside from the fact that P and T but not W talk about Katte's family here, T never has things in common with P that he doesn't have with W. But T and W are overwhelmingly similar to each other.
Look especially at the description of Fritz's reaction to Katte's death, at the end of the "W/T shared innovations" comment, and tell me how W and T can be independently drawing on P.
The comparative method tells me that T and W are more closely related to each other than either is to P. And I agree that going purely from external facts, that is a surprising conclusion. It was definitely surprising to me when I sat down and typed up every passage word for word.
W consulting P and them more or less independently creating their memoirs from a shared agreement of what the facts were makes sense, both from linguistic and external evidence. But the stronger similarities between T and W still have to be accounted for.
Your hypothesis that maybe T knew about the memoirs but Fritz didn't is interesting. The timing definitely works, since crazy uncle Christian inherited in 1763, and T started to work for Fritz in 1765.
I could also see how there could be unanimity among everyone who took one look at that manuscript on the subject of: "Uh, maybe don't tell Fritz. By which I mean, definitely don't tell Fritz. In fact, voluntarily rip out your own tongue and eyes with hot pincers before you tell Fritz." In 1763, Wilhelmine was only 4, 5 years dead, he'd just come out of a long war that had ruined his physical and mental health, and his country's economy wasn't in the greatest state.
It's possible that T heard about W secretly in the 1760s, and then when he was writing his memoirs (I don't know when he composed them, but he left Fritz in 1784 to return to France, and the memoirs weren't published until 1804), got a copy of the manuscript.
Re: Katte Textual Criticism: Discussion (REPLY HERE)
Date: 2020-01-04 04:52 pm (UTC)I could also see how there could be unanimity among everyone who took one look at that manuscript on the subject of: "Uh, maybe don't tell Fritz. By which I mean, definitely don't tell Fritz. In fact, voluntarily rip out your own tongue and eyes with hot pincers before you tell Fritz."
Quite. And handwritten copies were a thing. (That's how the Dowager Duchess of Würtemberg got a copy of Voltaire's Pucelle before Fritz did, and, in fact, why we have an Urfaust, i.e. a version of Faust I before Goethe ever published it - a lady-in-waiting to Anna Amalia head him read it out loud and transcribed it for the Duchess. If one of those Bayreuth scholars who ended up in Berlin got chummy with Thiébault and told him about the memoirs in confidence, he could have both made a copy and had a very good reason why he didn't tell Fritz (or anyone else of the royal family, for that matter).
Wilhelmine'd daughter might have known, as some of Wilhelmine's last letters when she had trouble holding a pen were dictated to her, but I don't think so, not least because Wilhelmine didn't seem to have touched the manuscript again after the mid 40s - when said daughter was in Würtemberg being miserable with husband Carl Eugen - , and her daughter didn't return to Bayreuth until the early 1750s.
I briefly wondered whether Wilhelmine could have written the memoirs without anyone in her immediate surroundings noticing, but she totally could have, since she was not only an avid and passionate letter writer (Fritz was her primary correspondant but by no means her only one) but a composer and libretto writer, and she could have just claimed she was busy with letters and/or a new composition. (When the memoirs got published and the first reaction was "anti Prussian forgery!", the fact that there was a manuscript in her recognizable handwriting settled that she was indeed the author, so she did not dictate any of it. Still, she might have said something or let something slip in the presence of a librarian or scholar. Espeically if she tried to find some histories and chronicles for the whole business between, say, her father and the Austrians, or the convoluted English marriage negotiations, and of course the holy grail, anything to do with 1730; going to Berlin was not an option in the early 1740s, so asking a scholar/historian from or around Bayreuth would have been a logical step to take, and even if she didn't tell that person just why she wanted the info, they might have guessed.
I read a Fontane biography last year (he had a big anniversary year in 2019, so there were a lot of Fontane related publications), but alas I don't think it mentioned in detail where he got the Katte related material from. For obvious reasons, biographers put their emphasis on him as a novelist.
Re: Katte Textual Criticism: Discussion (REPLY HERE)
Date: 2020-01-05 01:24 pm (UTC)I mean, Émilie managed to compose a secret submission to the Academy of Sciences *and* submit it by mail without anyone finding out, just by pretending she was tired and going to bed early. I'm sure composing your memoirs without mailing them is equally doable.
so asking a scholar/historian from or around Bayreuth would have been a logical step to take, and even if she didn't tell that person just why she wanted the info, they might have guessed.
That makes absolute perfect sense, especially since Wilhelmine has a lot of information that isn't in Pöllnitz. For example, she's transcribed Katte's letter to his grandfather, and an inscription on the window of the cell he wrote while he was imprisoned there. She must have gotten access to something, if she isn't totally making it up. And yes, that's the sort of thing where someone could totally catch on if you asked enough questions.
For obvious reasons, biographers put their emphasis on him as a novelist.
Don't they know they need to put their emphasis on Katte?? ;)
Re: Katte Textual Criticism: Discussion (REPLY HERE)
Date: 2020-01-05 09:01 pm (UTC)Re: Katte Textual Criticism: Discussion (REPLY HERE)
Date: 2020-01-07 12:22 pm (UTC)One thing that isn't in my write-up, and I may at some point actually type up the passages in question, is that W and P describe Katte, when they introduce him, use such similar language that I don't think they can both be independently recording their personal impressions of him. And that's interesting, because unlike with Küstrin, where neither of them was there, Katte was in Berlin and
I always assumed Wilhelmine was just writing down what she remembered, of course with the benefit of hindsight. And then I wondered...how well did Pöllnitz know Katte? Judging by his letters, he was only passing through Berlin briefly in 1729, long enough to record some things about the royal family, but long enough for Katte to make an impression? I doubt it, unless Fritz was already making a spectacle of himself over his new bf (as far as I know, we don't know exactly when they met).
I've kind of thought all along that Pöllnitz might be getting his info on Katte's appearance and personality from Wilhelmine. Which suggests that it's not that she had a copy of his manuscript when composing her memoirs, but that they were communicating with each other, in person or by letter. Which is kind of what we
anyway suspected, but this might be independent corroborating evidence.
What I really should do is beef up my French enough to read Pöllnitz and Thiébault and see how closely they and Wilhelmine all follow each other in other episodes. My kingdom for a working brain and more time.
Re: Katte Textual Criticism: Discussion (REPLY HERE)
Date: 2020-01-05 09:01 pm (UTC)From the looks of it, you've laid some pretty solid groundwork for your subject of interest. Now if you want to take your research further, I'd say you should cast your net further and check if scholars have conducted similar comparisons and what their conclusions were regarding the source texts you examine. Your work is clear and well put together, as to be expected from a fellow academic!
Catt and Voltaire do have a common thread: Fritz. He could have verbally recounted to them the same rendition of the story-- as time goes on, people tend to solidify a certain rendition of a memory in their minds.
As for the nephew and heir, it seems as though Selena is correct in her evaluation. I assume you've gone through mentions of the future FW II in Fritz's published letters here as well:
http://friedrich.uni-trier.de/de/oeuvres/
Re: Katte Textual Criticism: Discussion (REPLY HERE)
Date: 2020-01-07 06:52 pm (UTC)Thanks! Next up would definitely be a literature survey, but as I mentioned to
Catt and Voltaire do have a common thread: Fritz. He could have verbally recounted to them the same rendition of the story-- as time goes on, people tend to solidify a certain rendition of a memory in their minds.
Yep, that's exactly what I think! I put that forward as the most likely scenario in my introduction to the Catt & Voltaire comment. I also mentioned, in a different thread that I didn't link you to, that Fritz might have had a set version of events he ran through when he wanted to talk about it. That's not unusual, especially for trauma.
As for the nephew and heir, it seems as though Selena is correct in her evaluation. I assume you've gone through mentions of the future FW II in Fritz's published letters here as well:
I think Selena's question was: in his diary, does Catt record Fritz saying nice things about FW2? Or are these possibly words Catt put in his mouth later, after FW2 was king? Because the rest of what Fritz has to say about FW2 is not so complimentary, and Catt doesn't seem to have a problem putting words into Fritz's mouth.
The letters: we have definitely read extensive excerpts quoted by other sources, Selena has access to some of the letters in German translation, I've Google-translated chunks of correspondents I'm interested in, but none of us have the French to have read them all beginning to end. However! This may change, as last week I wrote a program that will generate a single file containing all the letters for a given correspondent, with French and Google-translated English interleaved, which is making reading his correspondence muuuch easier for those of us who don't have adequate French for the original. (We all had about 2-3 years' worth of French in school.)
Re: Katte Textual Criticism: Discussion (REPLY HERE)
Date: 2020-01-07 07:16 pm (UTC)Yes, that's what I meant, though considering FW2 died in 1797, and his son FW3 was as fond of him as FW2 was of Fritz (surprise!), Catt, who as I understand it wrote his memoirs much later than 1797, has at least not the reason of wanting favor from (dead) FW2. Unless he feels sorry for him after the fact, since in the 19th century FW2's reputation was as Fritz had declared it to be when alive (he didn't start to get good press until the 20th century got more Fritz-sceptical).
Correspondants: AW and Heinrich come to mind...
Re: Katte Textual Criticism: Discussion (REPLY HERE)
Date: 2020-01-07 07:28 pm (UTC)AW & Heinrich: will get on it!
Re: Katte Textual Criticism: Discussion (REPLY HERE)
Date: 2020-01-07 08:11 pm (UTC)(In fairness: again, maybe Fritz was feeling both guilty on AW‘s behalf and sentimental. Lehndorff, btw, is very fond of young FW, and says a lot of nice things about him, too, but then Lehndorff isn‘t on the record for dissing him all the time, either, and is consistent there. (He does diss Borck, the man Fritz put in charge of young FW‘s education, though, for making fun of him (FW) all the time when he‘s clumsy and teaching him to make fun of other people when they make mistakes instead of encouraging him to be kind.)
No need to rush, take your time.
Re: Katte Textual Criticism: Discussion (REPLY HERE)
Date: 2020-01-07 08:53 pm (UTC)I agree!
Now, the chronology is that the diary would have been written 1758-1760; the memoirs we don't know when they were composed, but 1786 is suggested as a possible date for the composition or revision; Catt is estranged from Fritz in 1782; Catt dies in 1795 in Potsdam; the memoirs weren't published until 1885.
So there's a very good chance editing was happening when Catt was 1) pissed off at Fritz, 2) sucking up to FW.
So that's why the question is: do the diaries contain these mentions of 1758-1760 Fritz being nice to FW2 when speaking of him to Catt?
teaching him to make fun of other people when they make mistakes instead of encouraging him to be kind
The traumatized previous generation traumatizing the next generation, and on and on it goes.
Re: Katte Textual Criticism: Discussion (REPLY HERE)
Date: 2020-01-07 09:29 pm (UTC)German wiki - but not English wiki - tells me about Catt that „1789 ernannte ihn der König Friedrich Wilhelm II. zum Kantor der Stiftskirche St. Sebastian in Magdeburg“, so basically: gave him a job after the memoirs were written. German wiki also tells me that Catt‘s brother in law Pierre Jerèmie Hainchelin, who died in 1787, was, before becoming a highly regarded and high ranking Prussian civil servant, the personal secretary of, wait for it, AW until AW‘s death. Which presumably is why in the memoirs, Fritz just happens to declare that if AW instead of „evil advisors“ would have had only honest folk like Hainchelin with him, his life would have been calmer and his mind would not have been set against Fritz at all.
*am not sure whether I‘m side-eying Catt or Fritz more now*
Re: Katte Textual Criticism: Discussion (REPLY HERE)
Date: 2020-01-07 09:32 pm (UTC)Also, wow, missed that about Hainchelin. See, the more we dig, the more we find!
*side-eyes everyone*
Re: Katte Textual Criticism: Discussion (REPLY HERE)
Date: 2020-01-08 06:55 am (UTC)Incidentally, on the other end of the scale, blaming "evil advisors" for Fritz' behavior towards AW was also a thing for Lehndorff, who cast Winderfeldt as evil advisor (tm), presumably because Winterfeldt was the one reading out the charges against AW at the casheering. (Also Heinrich couldn't stand him, which was bound to influence Lehndorff's opinion.) "Evil advisors" are really such a useful trope if you want to deflect blame.
But going back to Catt, the list of examples of him being, hm, somewhat economic with the truth keep growing, so I wonder why modern biographers point out Wilhelmine is not always reliable (due to writing from memory, dramatic exaggaration or what not) but not Catt? Why is he always accepted as the horse's mouth? Or did I miss him being presented as flawed as well?
Re: Katte Textual Criticism: Discussion (REPLY HERE)
Date: 2020-01-08 08:52 am (UTC)ETA: I think there's also the fact that there's a long tradition of pointing out that Wilhelmine (and Pöllnitz) are inaccurate: e.g. Carlyle and Fontane do it, whereas Catt's memoirs weren't published until almost the twentieth century. So I think modern biographers are also copying older biographers with W and P.
Correspondents
Date: 2020-01-07 08:23 pm (UTC)Re: Correspondents
Date: 2020-01-07 08:55 pm (UTC)I will generate the files, put everything I have on Google Drive, and make sure you both have access. :D I'm also going to try to dump some other files there as soon as I can get my hands on them.
Re: Katte Textual Criticism: Discussion (REPLY HERE)
Date: 2020-01-06 05:53 am (UTC)Re: Katte Textual Criticism: Discussion (REPLY HERE)
Date: 2020-01-07 11:46 am (UTC)Re: Katte Textual Criticism: Discussion (REPLY HERE)
Date: 2020-01-18 11:28 am (UTC)January 19th 1744: Fritz sends Pöllnitz with plans for the Berlin opera house to Wilhelmine. (As requested by her, since she's planning her own opera house for Bayreuth.) Pöllnitz doesn't return to Berlin but stays in Bayreuth for a while, pleading sickness. Two or so letters later, there's the pissed off "Madam sister" letter about having just learned from Marwitz Sr. that Wilhelmine is planning to marry Marwitz the Lady in waiting to an Austrian. So: we have evidence that Pöllnitz was in fact with Wilhelmine in Bayreuth at the very time she was writing the memoirs and when the enstrangement with Fritz started to heat up in earnest. I'd say the only reason not to assume Pöllnitz knew exactly what she was working on is that he was chronically in debt and knew on which side his bread was buttered. He'd totally have told Fritz, who was the one paying for his living for the last few decades of his life.
Still: want to bet that opera maps weren't all Wilhelmine talked with Pöllnitz about during the winter and spring of 1744 while he was keeping her company in Bayreuth?
Re: Katte Textual Criticism: Discussion (REPLY HERE)
Date: 2020-01-18 11:11 pm (UTC)And like you've pointed out, she wouldn't have *had* to tell him that she was working on memoirs; he was the go-to guy for anecdotes. I also wouldn't be surprised if he got some of his material on Katte's personality and looks from her.
Looks he could have gotten from anyone in Berlin; the exact criticisms of his personality look likely to have originated with Wilhelmine. She writes, "il faisoit l'esprit fort et poussoit le libertinage à l'excès; beaucoup d'ambition et d'étourderie accompagnoient ce vice," and he writes, "Il avoit de l'esprit; mais encore plus de présomption, avec peu de jugement; auffi ambitieux...libertin à l'excès."
It's exactly the kind of overlap you'd expect if they were chatting and making notes later, but not reviewing each other's manuscripts, as I'm convinced Thiébault must have been doing with Wilhelmine's manuscript (and you found us a plausible transmission route for that as well).
Still: want to bet that opera maps weren't all Wilhelmine talked with Pöllnitz about during the winter and spring of 1744 while he was keeping her company in Bayreuth?
I think we know exactly what they were talking about. :)
Re: Katte Textual Criticism: Discussion (REPLY HERE)
Date: 2020-01-19 07:46 am (UTC)Re: Katte Textual Criticism: Discussion (REPLY HERE)
Date: 2020-01-19 02:37 pm (UTC)Wanderungen: Katte at Küstrin
Date: 2020-01-05 12:01 pm (UTC)[ETA: Just to be clear, not one of the pictures in these picspams is mine. I shamelessly stole them from all over the internet and collated them here.]
Note, this will all make much more sense if you've at least skimmed through the textual criticism.
Brief overview: FW gave the order that Fritz was to have a good view of Katte's head rolling. The dominant narrative, thanks primarily to Wilhelmine and Pöllnitz, has been that the execution took place below Fritz's window, and that only Fritz fainting in time spared him from having to see it.
But eyewitness accounts from people outside the fortress in which Fritz was imprisoned, people who accompanied Katte to his site of execution, contradict this. Putting these accounts together, we find that Katte was led past Fritz's window and they got to say their final farewells, but that while he was executed only about 30-50 paces away, the actual execution place was out of sight from the window.
So any story or imagery that has Katte's execution visible from Fritz's window is historically inaccurate. Furthermore, anything that has him executed on a scaffold is inaccurate; eyewitnesses agree there was no room for a scaffold and that he knelt on a pile of sand.
Now to the actual images. I've numbered each one, with its preceding commentary, for ease of reference.
1) In the later part of the nineteenth century, Fontane investigated the question of where Fritz was imprisoned, and where Katte's head fell. He is reasonably confident about Fritz being on the side of the building facing the Oder, on the far left, second floor. He's somewhat less confident about the site of execution, but deduces that it must be in the site marked "v.K." in the image below. Fritz's window is marked with an F.
If you've read the Münchow letter, you'll also notice the Weißkopf directly in front of Fritz's window. Münchow tells us that was a third-floor platform that had a good view over the wall to Katte's execution, from which Fritz could have watched the execution if his keepers had been dead set on following FW's orders to the letter, and from which he himself, young Münchow, watched Katte's blood spray high as a child.
2) So now that we have that picture in our minds, we're ready to take a look at the layout of the old Küstrin town. The first thing to know is that it was destroyed by the Russians in 1945. Wikipedia tells me the bricks were used to rebuild Polish towns elsewhere. It's now a ghost town with nothing but ruins. So when we look at pictures and plans of the town, we have to look at historical documents.
This is a layout of what it looked like in 1921.
3) Next, the same picture with some relevant sites marked. B, over on the left, is the Berliner Tor. Fontane quotes Schack saying that Katte was led in through this gate on the afternoon of the 5th, and that he was kept the rest of the day and the night in a room near this gate.
The next morning, Katte was led out toward his place of execution on a walk that was hundreds of paces long, along the walls. Since Münchow the younger tells us that Katte's execution site was 30-50 pages away from Fritz's window, a walk along the walls that was hundreds of paces must have meant Katte was not kept in the same building as Fritz (not something I had realized before looking at these images). So his last walk must have been an L shape, west along the wall toward the König/Krol bastion, then south toward the Brandenburg Bastion.
I've marked that walk on the map below. Then Fritz's window--last window to the left facing the Oder--as F and Katte's probable execution site as K. Note that this layout is from 1921, and there would have been more structures in 1730.
I've also noted the location of the third-floor (or higher?) Weißkopf platform (W) in front of and above Fritz's window.
4) Here is a closeup of the same, so you can see it more clearly.
5) Okay! Now it's time to look at historic pictures. Here's an old postcard showing the building that Friedrich was kept in, henceforth the Schloss. I can't quite read the annotation that someone else wrote on it: there's a "Quartier" and a "something[stube]", aka "something-room." Perhaps our German speaker can help us out.
Behind the Schloss, you can see the belfry of the church. Check out the layout on the preceding picture and you'll see the church indicated as number 32.
6) The same picture again, now with Fritz's window and Katte's approximate execution site marked. As you can see, the Weißkopf is gone by the early 20th century, as is the wall in front of the Schloss, and probably some other walls that would have made Katte's execution site even harder to see from the window. Also imagine fewer trees.
The large brick structure immediately to the right of Katte's execution site is the Brandenburg Bastion.
7) My impression is the next one is from the 1940s, and as you can see there are no trees. I included it solely for your viewing pleasure, because it's a much better quality picture than the postcard one.
8) Now a closeup of Fritz's window. The individual who captioned this and drew the arrows got Fritz's window correct, but was mistaken about the site of Katte's execution. This is not unusual: Wilhelmine's account has been the dominant one among posterity.
9) And, just to make it extra clear, I've marked Fritz's window, but not the execution site, which doesn't appear in this photo.
10) So that's what it looked like in the first half of the twentieth century. What does it look like today?
Well, first, a map. I've marked Fritz's approximate prison location as well as Katte's approximate execution location. "Zamek w Kostrzyne nad Odra" is "Ruins of Küstrin an der Oder", i.e. the ruins of the Schloss where Fritz was kept.
If you compare this map to the 1921 one, you'll see that the moat is gone.
11) Now here's the satellite view, unmarked.
12) And with Fritz and Katte's locations marked. You can see that despite the fact that everything is in ruins, enough remains that you can make out the old locations of buildings clearly, including the quadrangle of the Schloss that Fritz was kept in. Because he was kept in a corner, this means we can pinpoint his location with pretty high accuracy. (I am not actually sure where he was kept in Küstrin after he was removed from the Schloss, when he was under house arrest.)
13) Now we leave space and come down to Earth. Here's a head-on view of the site, standing out in the middle of the Oder, on the German-Polish border, and facing the old town of Kostrzyn on the Polish side.
The red brick structure is the Brandenburg Bastion. Immediately to the left of it, near those trees, is Katte's approximate execution site. A little further to the left and farther back are the ruins (not visible in this picture) of the Schloss where Fritz was near the execution site but not quite able to see it.
14) The placard in the next picture is Katte's approximate execution site. We're looking southwest, toward the Brandenburg Bastion and the Oder.
15) Now we're looking north toward the ruins of the Schloss, where Fritz would have been when all this was taking place. The Oder is on the left, and Fritz would have been facing it. (Whether the wall was high enough that he would have been able to see it, I do not know.)
16) Here's a closeup of the placard. You can see a big red dot indicating the location, as well as Fritz's window, which you should be able to locate by now, in a smaller red rectangle. This picture isn't high enough resolution to be able to read the text, but some months ago, I did find a picture that was (that I can no longer find) and ran it through Google translate, and it was basically talking about the debate around Katte's execution site. They follow Fontane in their final conclusions, as do I.
And now you don't need to go to Küstrin!
although I still doRe: Wanderungen: Katte at Küstrin
Date: 2020-01-05 04:55 pm (UTC)"Quartier" and a "something[stube]", aka "something-room." Perhaps our German speaker can help us out.
At first I thought maybe "Gerichtsstube", but then I decided "Gesindestube" is more likely.
"Stube" is an old fashioned term for chamber. "Gesinde" are servants. (Not to be confused with "Gesindel", which means rabble.)
So: "court chamber" or "servants' quarters", respectively.
Re: Wanderungen: Katte at Küstrin
Date: 2020-01-05 05:02 pm (UTC)I think you and I have a good division of labor. You have the command of German and the ability to sustain concentration through a whole book, so you read and summarize books for us. I have mad Google skills and no ability to concentrate beyond a sentence here and a paragraph there, so I do the detective work that involves looking things up and compiling information from different sources. :D
So: "court chamber" or "servants' quarters", respectively.
Makes sense, thanks! Plus I feel better now about not being able to make out the letters, lol.
Re: Wanderungen: Katte at Küstrin
Date: 2020-01-06 05:56 am (UTC)on Katteon everything to put these posts together is amazing :)Also, I keep thinking this and forgetting to say it, so I'll just say it here: Fontane is awesome. Go Fontane!
Re: Wanderungen: Katte at Küstrin
Date: 2020-01-06 05:32 pm (UTC)obsessionfocus is definitely unmatched! It's just that the particular projects I keep picking are ones that don't require me to sustain attention on any one thing for longer than a minute or two.Yes, we love Fontane! I wish either he had been in Lehndorff's position (okay, it's not an enviable position to wish on someone) or that Lehndorff had shared his interest in the Kattes.
Fontane-Lehndorff
Date: 2020-01-07 11:35 am (UTC)So, young Theo, involved in the 1848 revolution: Okay, I've just written an article saying Prussia has to go, but this is fascinating for the history lover in me! I seem to have ended up in some court official who knows most of the interesting people. Thank God my French is up to speed. Hang on, Frau von Katte, we seem to have some kind of history, and are you related to Hans Herrmann? Yes, I'm totally accepting the invite to Wust. Meanwhile, what's your husband's take on his cousin? Hang on, this gentleman approaching me looks vaguely familiar... huh. So. Looks like Prince Heinrich and I have some sort of history, too. Hmmmm. You know, my 21st century biographers do point out that while I'm mostly straight, I do have one intense long term relationship with a friend of my youth whom I exchange romantic poetry with, and who knows what else, my kids will ask for my letters back and burn them. Also, I'm into Prince Heinrich as a historical figure. Clearly, a bit of hands-on research is called for. *switches on flirtation mode*
*unlike Lehndorff, Fontane all his life was a causseur, i.e. a brilliant and witty conversationalist*
*Fritz: for the first time notices his wife's chamberlain who hangs out with his brothers all the time*
Lehndorff, straight from Hotham-related depression: Did I just get my escape wish, albeit without dear Hotham? Hooray, no more boring attending to the Queen! Hang on, though: I'm some... educated commoner. Not even a professor but an apothocary! Who - oh my God. These people around me are all commoners who talk about uniting the various German principalities as some kind of constitutional monarchy, and the way they disrespectfully jest about Prussia is just - granted, I did just complain about the King and his harshness. And nobody here seems to need permission to travel. But I am a loyal noble, not a rabble rouser! Though - hello, good looking man with a fascination for literature and me. Well, commoner me. I must admit this is not entirely terrible. Hm....
*back switch*: Ensues.
TF: Okay, ending up in a love triangle with the One King and his brother was taking historical research too far, but on the bright side, seeing as the revolution just failed without me, I now have a wealth of material to write about.
Lehndorff: I'm not sure what inspired Heinrich to finally declare his love for me and suggest I should become his chamberlain instead of the Queen's, but I'm taking it. Also, that was one interesting look into the future. How did that speech go which all those constitution-wishing commoners kept quoting from again? Sire, geben Sie Gedankenfreiheit...?
Re: Fontane-Lehndorff
Date: 2020-01-07 11:55 am (UTC)hands-on research
ROTFLOL
I now have a wealth of material to write about.
INCLUDING THE KATTES YEESSSSS
FRITZ AND HEINRICH NOTICING FONTANE OMMGGGGGG
You are a total crack-fic-writing genius. I can't wait for
nobody here seems to need permission to travel
After my period, so...when did that change? I admit, when I was reading your England vs. Germany chronology, I was thinking
Fritz: I got the vote in 1740. Nobody else got any votes until 1786. (Not totally true, ofc, but with a sizable kernel of truth.)
Re: Fontane-Lehndorff
Date: 2020-01-07 12:40 pm (UTC)I hoped you'd like it. Also, between Fontane being a witty conversationalist, into history into neurotics with a bit of brokenness in them, a triangle would definitely have ensued. Mind you, given that for all his affection for history he could clearly see the rot and all that needed to go, and something of a lack of self preservation skills, it's good he doesn't stay longer than a few exciting months, even in crack fic!
(Self preservation: Middle-Aged Fontane: So, I've been hired as a war correspondant in 1870/71 due to my fluent French and Wanderungen durch die Mark Brandenburg credentials as a Prussian patriot, despite my dodgy revolutionary past. Clearly, this means that between reporting on our victorious troops and the Empire being declared in Versailles, I can make a side trip to Rouen to do some research about Joan of Arc, whom I'm currently fascinated by. It's not like the French, humiliated and all to eager to get their hands on a non-military Prussian, would arrest me. I mean, I'm the descendant of French Huguenots on both sides, my parents had both French first names, and I'm doing research about the French national heroine here, what's not to love? ...I'm totally getting arrested as a spy.
German readers: Free Fontane!
Bismarck: I'm not into him myself, a bit too cheeky, that one, plus we were on opposite sides in 1848, but I can't ignore all those letters, and I'm currently feeling generous, what with having founded an empire which will surely survive really long after me. Messieurs: Free Fontane!)
Permission to travel: Not sure myself, but consider: laws were different in each principality, and Prussia had the strictest. Also, I think laws for the nobility and laws for the commoners were different in Fritz' time, i.e. Prussian non-noble citizens, as long as they weren't part of the army and weren't banished or in debt, could move as they pleased.
Not Prussia, but Saxony: Georg Friedrich Händel could as a young man move to Italy, live there for some years, later move to Hannover and England, without having to ask August the Strong's permission. Otoh, August the Strong's children and mistresses definitely could not come and go as they pleased.
Of course, Napoleon' arrival on the scene changed such a lot. Not only because Napoleon officially disolved the HRE, but because all the German states which were under direct French rule (for example, Westphalia) or were French allies ( for example, Bavaria) either adopted the Code Napoleon or reformed their own laws based on it. This meant, for example, for the first time equal legal status for the Jews, legally binding marriage taking place before a state official, with the marriage in a church an additional, no longer an absolutely necessary ceremony, divorce without needing the head of state's or the churche's permission, etc. And if you were of age and were not in legal trouble, you could definitely travel as you pleased. Now granted, several of these reforms were taken back once Napoleon was defeated for good, but some stayed. Incidentally, German law - and the law of most continental European states - having been developed on the basis of the Code Napoleon is one reason, so a lawyer told me, why even today aside from shared EU law it's far easier to conduct legal cases in other continental states than it is with Britain or the US, who don't share the Code Napoleon basis.
Only after the founding of the Empire in 1870/1871 do we have the same law in all the German states. (Minus Austria, of course.) By then, leaving the country or not - be it for travel or emigration - was certainly your own decision, no matter whether you were a noble or a commoner. But how long before that this was the case in Prussia for the nobles - beats me. Certainly private citizen Theodor Fontane could come and go as he pleased (and could afford), though he was definitely lying low for a while after the aborted revolution and took the assignment to become a newspaper correspondant in England 1852 both because it looked like an interesting, promising job and because it meant he got out of Prussia where post aborted revolution the police was extra strict. (Truefax: While Theodor Fontane reported for the Kreuzzeitung from London, one Karl Marx reported for the Neue Rheinische Zeitung from London. We do not know whether the two ever met.
Re: Fontane-Lehndorff
Date: 2020-01-07 05:28 pm (UTC)Fontane: Ooooh, this is great! Eyewitness accounts of everything! So, Fritz and Heinrich, tell me everything! Separately, of course. *bats flirty eyes*
Fritz: Well --
Heinrich: Yes! Let me explain what it's like to be a Hohenzollern! ...No, there is too much. Let me sum up.
...
Fritz: Eh, he probably had an STD. You can have him, Heinrich.
(okay, I couldn't resist!)
Sire, geben Sie Gedankenfreiheit
:D
Re: Fontane-Lehndorff
Date: 2020-01-07 10:35 pm (UTC)AHAHAHA. 50-tweet threads!
Fritz: Eh, he probably had an STD. You can have him, Heinrich.
We do the best crackfic, we really do. :D :D :D
Re: Fontane-Lehndorff
Date: 2020-01-08 08:16 am (UTC)Wanderungen: Katte-Richtschwert
Date: 2020-01-05 12:05 pm (UTC)And what it tells me is that there are two claimants to be the original sword that decapitated Katte. One is in Berlin, the other is in a museum in Brandenburg. Or rather, was--another article tells me it was since reclaimed by the Katte family and is back among their effects. Which also apparently include a 1729 oil painting by Hans Hermann, which I desperately want to find a picture of.
Anyway! The Brandenburg sword is the more famous of the two, and the only one I could find pictures of or details on. It's also apparently extremely suspicious. It's supposed to have belonged to an executioner named Carl Kühne. Except there's no documentary evidence of an executioner by this name, apparently.
The executioner whom the archives show getting paid for the execution is someone by the name of Heyl, the executioner in Küstrin at the time. Fontane gives the name as Coblentz, and Carl Hinrichs, author of the Kronprinzenprozeß (which I would like to get my hands on; I have a copy of the Katte counterpart if anyone wants to read and summarize it for us), adds that the name was Martin Coblentz and he was from Beeskow. Wikipedia tells me it was not unusual two have a local executioner and also an executioner from somewhere else who actually did the work.
This actually makes a lot of sense, especially combined with another article I found (Google translated from Polish, lol) that said that it wasn't unusual for there to be two swords at an execution, because executioners were often drunk, and not always up to the task of dispatching the accused quickly. So there'd be another one standing by just in case.
All our accounts agree that Katte's head went in one blow, but I am reminded that the guillotine was considered a humane invention in part because it removed this element of chance.
In any case, if you think about what it takes to wield a sword in cold blood, even in the name of the law (and especially if you don't agree with the law), executioners being 1) under the influence, 2) from out of town, i.e. less likely to know the person they're executing, makes perfect sense.
None of this explains why we have a third executioner whose name isn't attested, but okay. There's a good chance this sword has nothing to do with Katte.
But it's the one we know the most about. It was in the Katte family during the nineteenth century, Fontane saw it got sold, there's some story, probably apocryphal, about it being cursed on the guy who bought it (his entire family died), it ended up in the museum in Brandenburg for several decades, and then finally back to the Kattes as of the last couple of years.
In addition to a couple sayings that basically absolve the executioner from responsibility in what would otherwise be cold-blooded murder, it has the names of three victims inscribed on it: Ullrich, v. Catt, and Stelw. We apparently know nothing about the other two.
Now, I was very surprised when I learned this. Is it normal to inscribe the names of victims on the swords that execute them? Then I found Wikipedia, and Wikipedia says no, that's one of the things that makes this sword suspicious.
The final thing you'll notice about this sword is that it has no point; i.e. this is not a sword that will ever be used for stabbing, only cutting, which makes sense if it's not intended for use against anyone who will be fighting back.
At long last, these are the pictures I found, of the sword that may or may not have been used to cut off Katte's head (but the Katte family and the museum have certainly thought so for a good couple hundred years, so it has that history behind it if nothing else).
Attn whoever took the second photo: the sword is nice and all, but I need a head-on shot of the rest of the exhibit! With annotations! Seriously!
Re: Wanderungen: Katte-Richtschwert
Date: 2020-01-05 05:32 pm (UTC)One fascinating historical document: the diaries of the executioner of Nuremberg, one Frantz Schmidt, in Renaissance times. There's an English language book about him, "The Faithful Executioner", about which more here. The diary itself has been published, and I've read it; not an easy reading, and it stays with you. Back then, executioners also doubled as medics for the underprivileged, i.e. the ones not able to pay the more expensive fees for doctors, or were members of scorned professions themselves; it was a second income, and the executioners did have a lot of anatomical knowledge. (Both Frantz Schmidt and Charles Henri Sanson, who started in his family's trade as a teenage assistant during the gruesome execution of the wannabe assassin of Louis XV and ended up as the executioner during the French Revolution, actually had wanted to become real Doctors, but were stuck with their father's jobs due to executioner families having no choice there.)
Since I've also read accounts of bungled executions with many blows necessary - Thomas Cromwell and Margaret de la Pole come to milnd - I'm really glad that whoever killed Katte at least managed to do it in one go.
Second photo: I feel I should know the lady, but my mind is blackening right now.
Re: Wanderungen: Katte-Richtschwert
Date: 2020-01-05 05:42 pm (UTC)Ah, yes, this is true. Thanks for the link to Schmidt, I didn't know him. Fascinating stuff.
Since I've also read accounts of bungled executions with many blows necessary - Thomas Cromwell and Margaret de la Pole come to milnd - I'm really glad that whoever killed Katte at least managed to do it in one go.
Same, and same.
Second photo appears to be Eva von Katte.
Re: Wanderungen: Katte-Richtschwert
Date: 2020-01-05 06:20 pm (UTC)Re: Wanderungen: Katte-Richtschwert
Date: 2020-01-05 06:24 pm (UTC)Which reminds me: I don't suppose we have the sword he handed over without changing color at his arrest? What happened to swords of traitors like that?
Re: Wanderungen: Katte-Richtschwert
Date: 2020-01-06 05:04 am (UTC)Honestly, I have no idea, but considering FW‘s famed thriftiness and the fact he‘d made up the rules for the army, my guess is they were re-used and simply given to someone else. I really can‘t see him allowing some collection of traitor‘s swords - for what purpose? It‘s not even a deterrent like hanging deserters (when commoners) or beheading them (nobles). He might have allowed for some of Katte‘s personal property to be sent to his father if it was something like a miniature painting of Hans Herrman‘s mother or a family bible, but weapons? Especially a sword fit for a Lieutenant of the Gens d‘Armes regiment? Off to reuse it goes, I‘d say.
Re: Wanderungen: Katte-Richtschwert
Date: 2020-01-06 05:29 pm (UTC)Re: Wanderungen: Katte-Richtschwert
Date: 2020-01-06 05:58 am (UTC)Wanderungen: Katte at Wust 1
Date: 2020-01-05 12:22 pm (UTC)But now we're in the village of Wust, the Katte family seat, which is still standing today and about which we actually know stuff. So we're going to do a little walking tour, mostly of the Dorfkirche (village church) where Hans Hermann is buried. First, some pictures of the outside of the church.
1) The church itself dates to about 1200; the tower to 1727, only three years before Hans Hermann's death. This is the front of the church. The street runs north to south, and the church is on the east side.
2) Here we're standing in the church looking dead on at the front door. Note the carvings on the left and right side. We're going to zoom in on them in the next two pictures. (I'm pretty sure the sign on the door gives you the number of the people in charge of tourism to call if you want to go in on a weekend. Embarrassingly, I even have a copy of the number, although it's probably changed in the last few years. OH GOD I KNOW TOO MUCH.)
3) Ahem. Back to sober history, on the left side is a carving of Hans von Katte, who died in 1584. He had a son named Hans, who had a son named Heinrich Christoph, who had a son named Moritz Hans, who had a son named Hans Heinrich, who had a son named Hans Hermann, who was executed in 1730.
4) On the right side is his wife Anna von Wuthenau, who died in 1587.
5) Now we're going to walk around the right (south) side of the church, because we can. And also the internet is an amazing thing. Note the carving under the overhang.
6) The carving is another Hans von Katte, whom the photographer who took this picture tells us died in 1617. Wikipedia gives me a Hans von Katte who died in 1622, is the son of the guy on the front of the church, and is the great-grandfather of Hans Heinrich. Probably all the same guy.
7) Now we continue our walking tour along the south side of the church. We're approaching the crypt. You can see the 1727 tower on the far left, the small overhang lower down, toward the left, under which is that carving of Hans von Katte, and on the far right, an iron fence. That iron fence surrounds the entrance to the Katte family crypt.
8) On the far right is the Katte family crypt, attached to the east end of the church by Hans Heinrich in [I've seen dates from 1706 to 1708]. More on the history of this crypt later. First we're going to go inside and see the graves.
9) The crypt! Hans Hermann's tomb is on the far left as you go in the door. Which is both what Fontane tells us, and what the images we'll see shortly will show us. (Thus telling us that nothing's been moved since Fontane was there.)
10) We approach the entrance to the crypt. The gate is open because we have arranged a visit with the local volunteers in charge of tourism. (I.e., in most pictures, it's closed.)
11) Before entering, we read the legend over the door: Ruhestätte derer von Katte. "Resting place of the von Kattes."
12) Inside the crypt, facing the doors. Two long rows of stone sarcophagi, and one wooden coffin down at the end, on the right. You can see the top of the brown lid peeking over the sarcophagus in front of it, behind the candelabra. That's Hans Hermann's.
See the one in front of the candelabra, with the partial effigy? That's Hans Heinrich's. We'll get a better look at it in a bit.
13) Now we face Hans Hermann's brown wooden coffin down at the end, with the wreath in front of it.
14) Close-up of Hans Hermann's coffin.
15) Notice how everyone else gets fancy marble and sandstone sarcophagi.
16) But Hans Hermann gets the most wreaths!
17)
18) Also, for those of us who've read Fontane's visit to the crypt and opening of this tomb, remember when Fontane said his was a slanted wooden box inside a wooden box? You can just about make out the slanted wooden box under the wreaths in this one.
19) A peek inside the coffin, back when it was opened in the 1980s for restoration. Apparently everyone's body looked well preserved, except for poor Hans Hermann's, which I imagine is nothing but a skeleton by now.
20) Here we have a list of everyone buried in the crypt, including the brothers killed in a duel (1 & 5), Lehndorff's cousin's husband (11), "boot-Katte" (8) mentioned by Fontane as an obsessive collector of boots, and Hans Hermann's parents (3 and 4).
21) Hans Heinrich, Katte's dad.
I found this transcription of the inscription (i.e. I am not guaranteeing its accuracy): Hans Heinrich Graf Katt. Sr. Königl. Majest. in Preussen. Hochbestallter General Feldt Marechal. Des Schwartzen Adler und Johanniter Ordens Ritter. Gouverneur der Vestung Colberg. Obrister über ein Regiment Cuirassirer. Amtshauptmann der Aempter Zedenick u. Lieben Walde. Erbherr auf Wust, Malitz, Gotlin und Schonefeld. Ist geboren Ao MDCLXXXI, D. 16. Octobr. Gestorben im Feldlager bey Gettien D. 30. May MDCCXLI, seines Alters 59 Jahr 7 Monat 14 Tage
Fontane tells us Hans Heinrich's two wives are buried beside him, one on either side. Which on which side, I do not know, but will make an educated guess later on.
22) Now we'll go inside the church.
But first, let's orient ourselves. We enter by the street and beneath the tower. There's a long row of pews on either side of the nave running east, toward the crypt. And in the back is the white box, where the pulpit is.
23) That white box is the patrons' loge, the separate area reserved for the patrons of the church so they don't have to mingle with the rest of the villagers at church.
We see a picture of the inside of the Katteloge here.
24) Notice that relief carving on the wall? The photographer captions it with "Hans von Katte, d. 1716." Somewhere else on the internet I found a reference to him being 11 years old when he died. I'm not certain whether either of those facts is reliable, but we'll discuss him later.
25) And here we are pretending to be Kattes, standing in their loge, looking toward the the street. Behind us, on the other side of the loge wall and the pulpit, is the east crypt. Hans Hermann's little wooden coffin is right up against that wall.
And now you can say you've been inside the church and almost not be lying! If anyone wants more detailed pictures of the mid-17th century interior of the church, check out this guy's page, which is where I stole most (but not all) of my pictures.
26) Stepping away from the church, this is the manor built by Hans Heinrich in 1727, the same year as he commissioned the church tower. Where the Kattes lived before that in Wust, I do not know. Hans Hermann may or may not have had time to visit the new manor before he died, I don't know.
My sources say it's used as a primary school today, and also the location of the annual summer school for studying English (which
DW is complaining this comment is too long, so commentary and a few more pictures in the next comment.
Wanderungen: Katte at Wust 2
Date: 2020-01-05 12:41 pm (UTC)Wikipedia has Hans Heinrich dying May 31 (one-year anniversary of FW's death, for those of you for whom that date doesn't jump out at you) instead of May 30. But I went and dug up more info on Hans Heinrich's death, and found both corroborating evidence of the 30th, as well as new goodies.
In particular, I found a book entitled Briefe aus der zeit des ersten schlesischen kriege, "Letters from the time of the first Silesian War." Now, this is in fact the first Silesian War. FW died May 31, 1740, Fritz inherited, Fritz invaded Silesia in December 1740, he had his first real battle April 1741. Now it's May 1741, Hans Heinrich is in the camp at Gettien, and he's dying.
1) Where is Gettien? Near Brandenburg (so he's not far from home at all). Oh, you know what? We need a map showing everyone where Wust and Küstrin are wrt Berlin! Sorry, I take this information for granted by now.
Wust is too small to show at this resolution, so I put a W over it. Everything else I circled.
I've indicated Potsdam, Kostrzyn (Küstrin), and Genthin, which is the modern spelling of Gettien. I also circled Rheinsberg just so everyone can see where it is, even though it's not directly relevant to this discussion. Both Wust and Küstrin are about 100 km from Berlin, so 200 km from each other (the distance Hans Hermann's body had to travel).
Thus, you can see if Hans Heinrich is dying at Genthin, he's quite close to home. 20 km, it looks like.
Now, those letters from the first Silesian war give me two passages relevant to Hans Heinrich's death. On May 27, "Der General-Feld-Marschall Graf von Katte liegt nebst seiner Gemahlin im Lager bei Brandenburg tödlich krank damieder." "He's lying next to his wife, deathly ill, in the camp by Brandenburg."
Then on June 3, "sondern es ist auch aus dem Lager bey Brandenburg die Nachricht eingelaufen, daß daselbst am 30 passati Abends nach 6 Uhr S. Exc. der General-Feld-Marschall Graf von Katt aus dieser Zeit in die Ewigkeit verjetzt worden." "The news also came from the camp by Brandenburg that there on the evening of the 30th, after 6 o'clock, His Excellency Field Marshal von Katt passed into eternity."
Now, you may not realize it, but these letters contradict Wikipedia yet again! But they are consistent with the dates given in the crypt itself. Namely, that "next to his wife" bit. I had told
Strike 2 for Wikipedia. So I guess she must have been at Wust or in Berlin or somewhere and come to be by her dying husband. He was 59, and judging by "krank," it sounds like he's dying of natural causes rather than a wound (can "krank" be used of a wound?), which also makes sense if he's near Brandenburg instead of in Silesia. Unless perhaps he was on his way home to recover from a bad wound and it got infected or something. But we do know that illnesses run rampant in army camps, especially in the days before the importance of hygiene was discovered, so illness makes perfect sense. Especially at his age.
Oh, Wikipedia also has Hans Heinrich dying at Reckahn (10 km south of Brandenburg, so at least the right general vicinity), and buried in the Garrison Church (where Fritz and FW were initially buried until the Nazis moved them for safekeeping), then removed to the Südwestkirchhof Stahnsdorf in Berlin after the bombing of the Garrison Church. Well, Fontane claims he saw Hans Heinrich buried here in the crypt at Wust, and the Wust people today seem pretty sure that's him, so...strike 3? 4? for Wikipedia.
Now onto his first wife. Hans Hermann's mother. Wikipedia has her dying November 5, 1707 (in Brussels). The image of the list of tombs above has her (4) dying in 1706. Now, this is interesting, because my sources are pretty consistent about the crypt itself being built by Hans Heinrich in 1706/1707, and one mentions that he had to commission it, because his wife died suddenly (she would have been maybe 21 or 22 in 1706) and the normal burial place (my source says tower crypt, but I'm not sure what tower, because the church tower was only built in 1727; unless they mean *under* the tower that's now there) of the Kattes was overcrowded. So that would make sense if she died in 1706. So strike 5 for Wikipedia, probably.
That means she prooobably didn't die of the plague. Also, if you believe Wikipedia (ahahaha), her last child was born October 5, 1706. Dying suddenly in late 1706 would make sense if she died from childbirth, although not so much if she died November 5 instead of October 5. If you assume an off-by-one error on both month and year, she died in childbed. Otherwise, I don't know. She could have fallen downstairs and broken her neck, Amy Robsart-style. It's looking less and less likely that she died of the plague in 1707, though.
There's also that mysterious Hans Katte whose image is carved is in the Katteloge inside the church. My sources say he died 1716, age 11. I can't find anyone in Wikipedia or the genealogy sites that fits that description. However, if you trust the Wikipedia dates for the other kids (ahahaha), there's just enough time for one kid to have been born between Hans Hermann (February 1704) and Luise Charlotte (November 30, 1705) and be 11 in 1716. That would mean that Hans Heinrich named his first and second-born sons, a year apart, Hans. Now, while the Habsburgs were naming all their daughters Maria [Something Else] and calling them "Something Else", this does not appear to have been the custom of the Kattes. They seem to go for one Hans per generation, often but not always the oldest son.
But the timing fits, especially since we know Hans Heinrich was commissioning a crypt in 1706/1707, a manor in 1727, and a church tower in 1727. A carving in 1716 would fit right in.
So did Hans Hermann have a brother close in age who died young? I do not know!
2) Finally, Detective Mildred would like to match up all the tombs to their occupants.
I can't quite get them all with perfect confidence, but I can come close. Using the list posted on the wall of the crypt, assuming it goes in some kind of order, and supplementing it with external sources, my best guess is that, starting with the left coffin on the far wall next to Hans Hermann, it goes: 1) Friedrich Wilhelm (Hans Hermann's half brother who died in a duel), then 2) the blue and white one is Hans Hermann's stepmother, then 3) Hans Heinrich with the effigy that we're sure of, then 4) Hans Hermann's mom, then 5) Friedrich Albrecht, the other half-brother who died in a duel against the right wall. Going back to the left, 6) Hans Hermann's is the brown wooden one.
3) Then against the near wall by the door, there are two tombs behind the group of visitors, whom I believe are 8) Boot-Katte and 9) Marie von Katte (last of the Wust Katte family). You can see a close-up here, though I don't know which is which. In the background is Hans Hermann's tomb and a wreath on the floor in front of it.
Then to the right of the door, 10) the guy who was killed at Jena-Auerstadt, and finally, 11) Ludolf August, Hans Hermann's first cousin who married Lehndorff's "one who got away".
Ludolf August became heir to the Wust holdings after Hans Hermann was executed (1730), Hans Heinrich died in camp (1741), and the two brothers killed each other (1748), at which point (or shortly thereafter, 1751) Fritz started arranging a marriage of an heiress (Lehndorff's cousin) into the Katte family, without caring which Katte she married.
4) Here's a close-up of Ludolf August's tomb, and a glimpse of the one in front of it, Jena-Auerstadt guy's.
5) If you're curious about the 11th tomb, the one inside the church behind the altar, which belongs to Hans Heinrich's dad's first wife, who is not related to any of our Kattes and died before Hans Heinrich was born, it looks like this:
Outstanding questions I would ask and things I would do if I went there/dubconned someone else into going ;):
1. What did Hans Heinrich die of? Why was he at camp near Brandenburg? Did he go to Silesia? Was he on his way back because he was sick? Was he wounded?
2. When exactly did Dorothee Sophie von Katte die? 1706 or 1707? Do we know of what?
3. Where are the previous generations of von Kattes buried? CAN I SEE THEM.
4. Who's Hans Katte, d. 1716? When was he born? Was he the son of Hans Heinrich and Dorothee Sophie? Where is he buried? Do we know what he died of?
5. Match up all the tombs for sure, and get the writing on each one, especially the one on the far right that I think is the brother who died in the duel. He seems to have a lengthy inscription. Do we know any more details on this duel? One of my sources says "over a woman" and another says "over the inheritance."
6. Get good-quality close-up photos of all the info on the walls, including the pictures of the opened tombs.
7. What are all the documentary sources for all this information?? Do they have any other information that is of interest to gossipy sensationalists?
8. Can I kind of maybe just get a glimpse of the 1729 Hans Hermann painting, or even a picture of the same? I just want to know what it looks like, I don't need to see the original or anything. Pleeeeeaaase??
In conclusion, if you ever feel the urge to comment on "all the detail" in a fic, I might have had a hand in that fic. :D
Re: Wanderungen: Katte at Wust 2
Date: 2020-01-05 06:12 pm (UTC)Maybe he wasn't Hans Heinrich's son, but that of his brother, father of Ludolf August the cousin stealer? The one Hans Heinrich's letter About Hans Herrmann's desertion was adressed to? That would explain the use of "Hans". Then again, reusing the names of dead children was definitely a thing, for a long time. See also Van Gogh's parents naming their first born Vincent, having that Vincent die and naming the next male baby Vincent as well. (Who since his father was the Pastor got to walk by the grave of brother Vincent van Gogh every day.) Fritz also had an older brother Friedrich Ludwig (was born before Wilhelmine) and an older brother Friedrich Wilhelm (born after Wilhelmine, but before Fritz), both of whom died as babies.
Re: Wanderungen: Katte at Wust 2
Date: 2020-01-05 06:25 pm (UTC)Then again, reusing the names of dead children was definitely a thing, for a long time.
I agree, and this happened in Hans Heinrich's family (with Luise Charlotte), as well as in my own family (one of my grandfathers was named after a baby that died in infancy), but in this case, the 1704 baby named Hans (Hermann) was alive and well in 1705 when the next Hans was born, and would be alive and well until SOMEBODY had to go and execute him in 1730.
So that would mean two living sons born within a year of each other, both named Hans, for about a decade. One is ours, and one is the one who dies at age 11 in 1716.
So maybe he is the nephew after all, and Hans Heinrich was just really fond of that nephew and devastated when he died, and had a carving commissioned, but he's not buried here because he wasn't from this line.
This is why someone needs to go to Wust and ask! Or I suppose we could try to get in touch with the local historians online. Hmmm.
Fritz also had an older brother Friedrich Ludwig (was born before Wilhelmine) and an older brother Friedrich Wilhelm (born after Wilhelmine, but before Fritz), both of whom died as babies.
Yeah, and Heinrich was Friedrich Heinrich Ludwig, and Wilhelmine was Friederike Sophie Wilhelmine, and Luise was Friederike Luise, and creativity was not really a thing in that family!
By the way, did Fritz have any additional names? I feel like I should know this, but I don't. Having just the one name would be very exceptional, but the only thing I've come across is a "Crown Prince Karl Frederick" in the Countess Orzelska Wikipedia article, which I don't trust without corroborating evidence.
Re: Wanderungen: Katte at Wust 2
Date: 2020-01-05 07:09 pm (UTC)Re: Wanderungen: Katte at Wust 2
Date: 2020-01-05 07:13 pm (UTC)Haha, I can just see FW going, "Look. God. Holy Father. I'll make this simple. All I want is a Friedrich. That's all. Please just let me have ONE FRIEDRICH here. K?"
Re: Wanderungen: Katte at Wust 2
Date: 2020-01-07 05:39 am (UTC)FW: YES!
God: ...Well, okay. Here's Friedrich. Don't say I didn't warn you!
Re: Wanderungen: Katte at Wust 2
Date: 2020-01-07 09:07 am (UTC)God: Be careful what you wish for, you may get it! [I did try to save you from yourself.]
Re: Wanderungen: Katte at Wust 2
Date: 2020-01-12 10:01 pm (UTC)And again!
Also, that's the first depiction of his death I've seen where one of his staff is helping hold him upright so he can breathe. Well done, engraver.
Re: Wanderungen: Katte at Wust 2
Date: 2020-01-13 07:38 am (UTC)Re: Wanderungen: Katte at Wust 2
Date: 2020-01-13 09:51 pm (UTC)Wanderungen: Katte tributes
Date: 2020-01-05 12:50 pm (UTC)2) Close up:
3) Now, where is this thing, you ask? For when you're wandering around the ruins, like you've *totally* spent the last several months looking forward to being able to do someday? *cough* Well, I can't get a direct shot of it in Google maps, but by obsessively comparing the angles on every image at Küstrin that anyone's taken and uploaded, I managed to figure out where it is. The actual picture that allowed me to match a Google maps location to the picture in (1), with the red brick wall surrounded by concrete and a bunch of steps in front, isn't useful in helping you locate it when you visit, but the following picture, which we've seen before, is.
Remember this one? Look at the Bastion Brandenburg, and go to the right. You'll see a little arch-shaped dark spot on the wall. On the opposite side of that, on the inside of the wall, is the plaque. So now you can find it when you go there! (And by you I mean I, because thanks to this post, everyone else has gotten all the benefits of going to this remote ghost town, without any of the plane or driving time or costs. :D)
Now, that whole wall on which you see the arch in the preceding picture, the wall running south of the Bastion Brandenburg to the Bastion Filip? The defensive wall was torn down in 1928/1929 and a park put in its place. It was called the Promenada Kattego* in Polish, Kattewall in German. Katte never set foot on that side of the Bastion Brandenburg, but he is commemorated there, and his plaque is on his promenade.
* -ego is a genitive suffix in Polish, which I was excited to recognize after I studied Russian grammar for all of one week, two at most, back in 2007.
The promenade is one of the few elements at Küstrin that's been restored.
4) Here's a picture from space. I've outlined the Brandenburg Bastion in blue, the Kattewall/Promenada Kattego in yellow, and put a red P where his plaque is on the wall. By now, you should be able to pick out Fritz and Katte's respective locations on November 6 on your own!
5) And a picture of the promenade from Earth.
6) Now a different kind of tribute: some artwork, mostly 19th century, imagining Fritz and Katte's last encounter. You should now be qualified to comment on historical inaccuracies. For example, in this one, they're walking the wrong direction, and Fritz isn't in the last window on the right.
7) Still walking in the wrong direction. But notice the guy behind Fritz, who looks like he's holding Fritz's head to the window.
8) Fritz is not in the last window, and the execution is taking place outside the window.
9) Execution on a scaffold visible from Fritz's window, just as Wilhelmine and Pöllnitz have it.
10) Lovely and moving piece of art, but observe that the execution is happening just outside the window, and that the window is on the first floor. Wilhelmine does describe him being moved to a room on the level at which the scaffold had been erected, for optimum viewing purposes, but we have no reason to believe this is true.
11) Fritz is in the last window, they're walking in the right direction, and there's no sign of a scaffold! Woohoo! Unlike in most of them, though, he's not thrusting his arm out, which we do find in all the accounts. (Interestingly, C & V agree he was prevented from thrusting his arm out, and M, P, & T that he was prevented from throwing himself out. Fontane simply reports that he blew a kiss, no mention of anyone preventing him.)
12) Now, here's the original Antinous/Praying Boy statue, in the Altes Museum in Berlin.
13) Saving the best for last, here's a breathtakingly gorgeous shot (for which I am not responsible) of the modern copy that now stands in situ as Fritz would have seen it in his day. Fritz's grave is a few steps straight ahead and to the left; the statue is facing the library.
He never forgot you, Katte. <3 And we're still setting up plaques and restoring promenades 300 years later.
Fandom: 500k
Date: 2020-01-05 01:00 pm (UTC)Also this.
The Katte War Tribunal Protocol
Date: 2020-01-06 06:32 am (UTC)According to the foreword, they hail from the Schulenburg archives - Schulenburg having been appointed by FW as head of the tribunal.
The military tribunal consisted of: three General Majors, three Colonels, three Lieutenant Colonels, three Majors and three Lieutenants. Fifteen in all. Each of the groups of three gave their judgment in writing. Each considered Katte guilty of the charges - i.e. not notifying the King of the Crown Prince's intention to desert once it was clear Fritz wasn't joking, aiding and abetting instead, corresponding and conspiring with foreign powers, and intending to desert himself.
The reasons each of the groups of three gave for life long imprisonment instead of the death penalty - despite Katte being guilty as charged - were pretty consistent. Not in that order: the intention was not carried through, youth, admission of guilt on the part of the defendant, repentance (the last one wasn't named by all groups, though). I say "not in that order" because the No.1. reason most of the groups of three and thus also the group of fifteen gave for sparing Katte's life was that if Katte dies for this, "the Crown Prince will have to carry this on his conscience for the rest of his life".
Since this was a feature, not a bug for FW, you can see why he wasn't swayed (in addition to having made up his mind before hand), but while I was familiar with the overall conclusion and details such as the tribunal declaring themselves not up to judging the Crown Prince, which only a member of the Royal Family could do, I hadn't known before hand what their named No.1. cause for clemency had been.
In th opening statement in which they pass the responsibility for Fritz' judgment back to FW, they come to the conclusion that: "As these are matters which happened between father and son, since the Crown Prince has shown himself humble towards His Majesty and has submitted to His Majesty's Will completely, has asked for nothing but mercy and has promised to do what the King ordered, and has vowed to become a better person, we as vassals and subjects cannot pass a judgment on our King's son and family, nor can we judge it as a purely military affair."
In the judgment of the Majors, which is the first to be listed, they mention that this: "In his defense, Katte named the evil treatment the Crown Prince has received at his Majesty's hands, but we say that as an officer and a vassal, Katte was not in a position to meddle between father and son, between a King and his successor, but should have reported (Fritz) at once". (This is point 9. in their judgment.) They arrive at the conclusion that "Katte deserves to be brought from life to death by the sword; however we put it to his Royal Majesty to reflect mercifully on the fact that if Katte should be punished by the loss of his life, the Crown Prince will not have a quiet conscience for the rest of his life".
The Lieutenant Colonels are the only ones not using the Fritz argument. They argue for mercy because
1.) This badly planned enterprise has not come to a real execution.
2.) Many follies of youth went into it ("Viel Jugend Projecte darunter gelaufen")
2.) At the interrogation, heartfelt repentance was shown.
Schulenburg as the overall head of the tribunal in his summing up statement says: "Common sense tells me that even with the greatest crimes, there is a difference between those intended and those actually executed, and the punishments for each should differ; the death penalty should be used in the later case but not in the former. And since in the case in question an actual desertion has not happened, I cannot in good conscience and following my oath as judge decide on a death penalty for Katte, but must decide for life long imprisonment."
Peter Keith, btw, is universally condemned to be hanged in effigy, since he's already high tailed it out of Prussia. No debates there. His name is consistently spelled "Kait".
You're already familiar with FW's response. The "...than for justice to leave this world" sentence is the one which concludes this book.
Re: The Katte War Tribunal Protocol
Date: 2020-01-06 12:20 pm (UTC)Rokoko military German is a headache.
Oof. Sorry to hear it. Thank you for sparing us, then!
The breakdown was very interesting, thank you. I had seen summaries before, but nothing as thorough as this.
Since this was a feature, not a bug for FW
That's exactly what I think every time I see a mention of the court martial recommending he consider the effect on Fritz. "No, don't say that! You're only encouraging him!"
Schulenburg as the overall head of the tribunal in his summing up statement says: "...I cannot in good conscience and following my oath as judge decide on a death penalty for Katte, but must decide for life long imprisonment."
If I'm recalling correctly, of the five groups, three voted for death and two for life imprisonment, and Schulenberg's vote for life imprisonment meant it was a tie (3 and 3), and according to Prussian military law, that meant the lighter punishment won out, which is why the final verdict presented to FW was life imprisonment. Is that a correct understanding?
You're already familiar with FW's response. The "...than for justice to leave this world" sentence is the one which concludes this book.
Yep! I had actually skipped to the last page, and I read the last sentence and saw that it was one that I recognized. Man. This whole story.
His name is consistently spelled "Kait".
Interesting! I've seen Keit and Keut in 18c sources, but Kait isn't ringing a bell. I will add that to my mental list. (I'm glad you got away, Peter.)
Thank you so much for your write-up! If you're interested in more summaries on this topic, I might humbly suggest "Der Katte-Prozeß", which is uploaded already (only 50 pages), and I'm willing to obtain and upload a copy of the "Katte, Ordre und Kriegsartikel" monograph that I keep talking about, which seems to be 136 pages.
Re: The Katte War Tribunal Protocol
Date: 2020-01-06 02:30 pm (UTC)If you want a summary:
- yes, FW was brutal, but he was well intentioned
- he was in a horrible psychological and emotional position with his own wife and older children conspiring against him with foreign powers and had to be afraid his entire kingdom would be destroyed if a successor capable of selling out before he even got to the throne came to power
- FW, not the tribunal, acted according to Prussian law at the time
- Whereas Fritz later overrode law if the whim took him (see also: Trenck, see also: Miller)
- FW was the best "inner king" Prussia ever had, and never started any wars
- FW had a conscience, Fritz had none.
No, Doris Ritter isn't mentioned. (The kidnapped long fellows aren't, either, though if they were of course that's a double edged argument, since both FW and Fritz were guilty of gang pressing soldiers.)
Is that a correct understanding?
Yes, though even those who voted for death offer arguments for clemency as well if the King were so inclined.
Re: The Katte War Tribunal Protocol
Date: 2020-01-06 05:08 pm (UTC)Thanks! I guess on to the other one, as soon as I get it uploaded. (You continue to be the best of all possible readers.)
Re: The Katte War Tribunal Protocol
Date: 2020-01-06 08:06 pm (UTC)And no mention of the kidnapped long fellow who deserted but was pardoned because a toddler asked nicely, right? No overriding of the law if the whim took FW, no sirree.
Re: The Katte War Tribunal Protocol
Date: 2020-01-07 04:08 am (UTC)Re: The Katte War Tribunal Protocol
Date: 2020-01-07 05:48 am (UTC)Our Insane Family
Date: 2020-01-07 09:02 am (UTC)Also, at this point, they all believe Fritz is dead, because that's the first thing FW yells when he sees SD. Then he whales on Wilhelmine, the younger sibs try to calm him down, SD is yelling hysterically. Organized interventions would be difficult, at least if Wilhelmine's sequence of events is anything like what actually happened. (We know that the general picture is correct, because it's confirmed by outside sources.)
Once they find out Fritz is actually alive (way to mind-fuck, FW), Wilhelmine reports trying to agree to marry whoever, if Fritz will be spared, but Sonsine closes off her mouth with a handkerchief.
The dysfunction is strong with this family.
Re: The Katte War Tribunal Protocol
Date: 2020-01-11 05:08 pm (UTC)The mensa adventure was when Fritz was a small boy learning Latin, and FW entered the room when he was declining mensa, -ae and started beating his tutor. Fritz hid under the table crying, and then FW dragged him out from under it and beat him too.
Fritz never did learn Latin.
Re: The Katte War Tribunal Protocol
Date: 2020-01-11 05:29 pm (UTC)Considering Catt, for one, had no access to Wihelmine's memoirs, or for that matter to Guy Dickens' report as given to Uncle G2, that Fritz quote looks pretty authentic to me. (Kamecke in the memoirs is the one to tell FW not to do a Peter I or Philipp II.) And again I say, no wonder this is the memory which reading Wilhelmine's memoirs many decades later brings back in Heinrich. Even when you're four and probably don't really understand what's at stake there, it must have been frightening as hell.
(I do regret we don't have an AW quote on this since at eight he was old enough to know what "Fritz is dead! No he's not!" was about, and because his own relationship with FW was so much better, seeing him like this, whaling Wilhelmine, lashing out at everyone must have shocked him to the core.)
Re: The Katte War Tribunal Protocol
Date: 2020-01-11 05:43 pm (UTC)My impression is that he picked up some vocab (probably aided by French being a Romance language) and phrases, but little to no grammar. So he could drop Latin tags and quotes when he wanted, but composing was beyond him. Again, it also depends on how much we trust Catt, but Catt has him being unable to form a simple noun plural. I admit I was surprised at the fic having him being able to make heads or tails of Latin conversation that wasn't a quote he'd recognize, but I could be wrong. He did constantly lament not having learned Latin, but of course, the standards were higher in the 18th century, so that could mean anything.
(I do regret we don't have an AW quote on this since at eight he was old enough to know what "Fritz is dead! No he's not!" was about, and because his own relationship with FW was so much better, seeing him like this, whaling Wilhelmine, lashing out at everyone must have shocked him to the core.)
No kidding. Traumatic amnesia is a very real possibility. (So, of course, is just not wanting to talk about it.)
ETA: For instance, Algarotti is the one who, upon request, composes the one-liner inscriptions for the new buildings in Berlin: "Federicus Borussorum Rex compositis armis Apollini et Musis donum dedit," "Federicus Borussorum Rex Germania pacata Minervae reduci aedes sacravit", "Federicus Borussorum Rex amplificato imperio sibi et Urbi." If he needed help with that, then his Latin is minimal. And that's 1742, so whatever he did at Rheinsberg would still have been fresh.
Notice, by the way, how every one of those can be summed up with the epic rap battle's "I've got creative talents and battle malice." ;)
Re: The Katte War Tribunal Protocol
Date: 2020-01-07 08:28 am (UTC)Oh man :( I'm not surprised that a breach of the applicable military laws (=in this case, for desertion and treason) would come with the mandatory death penalty, but you'd imagine the tribunal would still have some sentencing discretion (especially in instances where there were mitigating factors, e.g. the crime being inchoate as opposed to complete -- i.e. attempted desertion, rather than desertion itself -- plus the deserters being repentant etc etc). If so, then this proposition doesn't hold water.
FW had a conscience, Fritz had none.
This proposition clearly doesn't :(
Re: The Katte War Tribunal Protocol
Date: 2020-01-07 09:12 am (UTC)Yes, and that is what Schulenburg, who headed the tribunal, argues in his concluding statement to FW.
Incidentally, because you probably didn't see the relevant comment a few posts ago, my "Doris Ritter does not get mentioned" is beause simultanous to the entire Katte tragedy, legal minded FW did this:
- have Dorothea "Doris" Ritter, daughter of a pastor with whom Fritz had taken a few (supervised) strolls and with whom he'd played music a couple of times, arrested
- when a midwife and a doctor testified that Doris was still a virgin, have her whipped in public as a whore regardless, in every public place in Spandau
- have her then locked up in a workhouse for three years until she gets pardoned.
Pardoned for the crime of having taken participated in a few musical performances and taken a few strolls with the Crown Prince, mind, though even if she had had sex with Fritz day in and day out, doing this to her would have been no less vile. But the point here is, this was FW using the law - for prostitution, btw, in case you're wondering - to punish someone whom he knew to be innocent of the "offense", simply because that person had befriended his son. Which I haven't yet someone offer a defense for, but then, Doris Ritter is all too often been forgotten in general.
(Voltaire looked her up when in Berlin and felt let down that she wasn't a beauty after those three years in the workhouse - "not a face making it worth getting whipped for a crown prince's sake for". Men, I swear.)
Re: The Katte War Tribunal Protocol
Date: 2020-01-08 04:21 am (UTC)I...did not know this (in fairness to me, it sounds like, as you say, many people do not know this), and it's indefensibly vile (and, wtf, Voltaire!), both as a matter of justice as well as juridical soundness. It was likely also lousy tactics, since it sounds like he only did this not out of any perceived national interest but in order to hurt Fritz :( It was definitely terrible parenting, but for FW this is par for the course, no?
I'm not a German or EU lawyer, but I'm interested in legal history, and Germany's is interesting, with its different states and legal systems; Prussian military legal history is also interesting. +adds to list of topics to read up on
Re: The Katte War Tribunal Protocol
Date: 2020-01-08 08:42 am (UTC)it sounds like he only did this not out of any perceived national interest but in order to hurt Fritz
You can make all the legalistic "FW had a conscience" arguments you want, historians, but FW was out to break Fritz. We have a letter from FW to someone at Küstrin saying, "After he watches Katte's execution, make sure Fritz's heart is really broken."
So yes. Like Katte, Doris Ritter was aimed at hurting Fritz, and giving FW an outlet for his rage. She was virgo intacta (not that this should matter! but in context it mattered), and FW did what FW wanted to do.
Definitely par for the course.
I'm interested in legal history
OOC, how much do you know about pre-Code French legal history? Because I was writing a fic and ran into this question that I posted at little-details, and nobody knew.
Re: The Katte War Tribunal Protocol
Date: 2020-01-08 09:28 am (UTC)Pre-Code, pre-1789 ancien regime is more tricky since the online resources seem more limited, but the standard place to start is a good textbook - eg one of the resources suggested by Harvard's French-centric Continental Legal History course, O. F. Robinson, T. D. Fergus and W. M. Gordon, An Introduction to European Legal History, 2d ed. (London: Butterworths, 1994). Are you near a good law library in Boston/can hie yourself to Cambridge and talk yourself into the Harvard one? In any case, let me review your particular succession question and have a think about how otherwise to approach the search.
Re: The Katte War Tribunal Protocol
Date: 2020-01-08 09:36 am (UTC)Hee, fandom is the best!
O. F. Robinson, T. D. Fergus and W. M. Gordon, An Introduction to European Legal History, 2d ed. (London: Butterworths, 1994)
Thanks! I'll see if I can get this ILLed. Lol, I used to have a couple inside contacts at Harvard, but they moved on, and Harvard's pretty strict about not letting you inside if you're not affiliated. But ILL at the public library usually comes through for me if I have a specific title in mind.
Unfortunately, I have a very very limited ability to deal with physical books, due to chronic pain. I can usually handle 1-5 minutes a day, and I shouldn't do it on too many consecutive days, but if I know what I'm looking for in a book, I can do a small amount of looking something specific up.
Chronic pain -> not working + limited hobby options -> why I have so much time to spend on the Fritz fandom. Also why I might not forever. But for now, I'm going to roll with it. :D
Re: The Katte War Tribunal Protocol
Date: 2020-01-07 05:47 am (UTC)This made me cringe and be really sad and also think "...oh, poor tribunal, thinking that this would not make FW more set on this" and then I read your next sentence :(
Peter Keith, btw, is universally condemned to be hanged in effigy, since he's already high tailed it out of Prussia.
Heh, I like it. Desertion only carries the death penalty if you actually escape out of range of the people who'd carry it out! At least, that was what they were trying to do :(
Re: The Katte War Tribunal Protocol
Date: 2020-01-07 07:33 am (UTC)Re: The Katte War Tribunal Protocol
Date: 2020-01-07 08:53 am (UTC)No mention by the Katte-Prozess guy of how FW follows the letter of the law by giving Katte a death penalty for planned desertion but pardons his son who actually attempted desertion, I assume? No overriding of the law because of emotion there.
It's really amazing how you can select the one time FW followed the letter of the law BECAUSE IT SUITED HIM EMOTIONALLY* and the couple of times Fritz didn't, and hold that up as evidence of FW having a conscience and Fritz not. Talk about cherry-picking your data.
* Even Lavisse was like, "This was partly because FW couldn't handle the thought of Katte and Fritz laughing at him after he was dead." And more than that, I think he wanted to break Fritz without having to kill him. Much legalistic, very conscience, wow.
Re: The Katte War Tribunal Protocol
Date: 2020-01-07 05:26 pm (UTC)Eh, he points out that FW had set up the tribunal to judge both his son and Katte and would have accepted a sentence from them but they refused to give one. He also says that since Fritz (and Katte, and SD and Wilhelmine) were also guilty of high treason because of the conspiring with foreign powers issue, this also justified FW's "should have had him hanged, drawn and quartered" outburst and that FW was in fact being merciful when going for the sword for Katte, rehabilitation regime for Fritz and nothing for SD & Wilhelmine (other than house arrest and marriage).
Something he doesn't mention but which I learned form the Wilhelmine biography I read some months ago: FW actually consulted some Protestant pastors as to whether a man had the right to force his daughter to marry against her will. The pastors, most interestingly for me since this is so against the cliché, wrote back that no, a man did not because while a daughter owed her father obedience, marriage was a sacrament which could not be entered unwillingly. (They used some examples from the early church of female martyrs who had refused to marry their father's choice.) This was about as welcome a letter as the tribunal's had been, and FW of course ignored it. (Or circumvented it by blackmailing Wilhelmine with privileges for Fritz.)
Now remember the predestination doctrine Argument? FW: a big believer in knowing best, like his son, and knowing best most def includes religious authorities as well as Judges.
Re: The Katte War Tribunal Protocol
Date: 2020-01-08 04:59 pm (UTC)That is fascinating! And go pastors, but not FW :P I suppose I can see how FW could have convinced himself he wasn't actually forcing her. "I didn't give her orders! I only gave her a choice. And it wasn't even consequences for her! Just for that terrible boy." GAH.
Re: The Katte War Tribunal Protocol
Date: 2020-01-07 06:47 pm (UTC)I should add, though, that especially during the Seven Years' War, when the Prussian army needed it the manpower they could get, if you deserted and later re-enlisted, it was usual that few questions would be asked.
Re: The Katte War Tribunal Protocol
Date: 2020-01-10 10:12 am (UTC)Then again: the Trenck case is probably the closest parallel rl had to offer, and there, he wasn't without sadism - sitting on one's tombstone and being chained to a wall definitely counts - but didn't go for an execution, and didn't try to use the entire thing to break Amalie but came more across as trying to keep her away from it.
Re: The Katte War Tribunal Protocol
Date: 2020-01-11 05:15 pm (UTC)Maybe, but I agree with you that Trenck--and for that matter, Glasow, who may have tried to poison Fritz--are evidence that he'd go for imprisonment instead. Was reading an account (usual caveats about secondary sources) of his cashiering of generals during the Seven Years' War, and he locked up all the generals who'd surrendered when they weren't supposed to (read: ever, because Fritz is a terrier), and only one got the death penalty. And that one was, maybe predictably, reprieved at the last minute and imprisoned instead.
Fritz was big on harsh discipline, and often unfair discipline, but he was very reluctant to hand out death sentences or even torture. And I doubt he'd have to be talked out of executing the royal; he'd probably do a praeteritio like he did with AW: "I *could* execute you and I would be justified, but I won't." Instead of, "But I really want to execute him!" while everyone is going "NOOO!" at him.
Re: The Katte War Tribunal Protocol
Date: 2020-01-13 09:06 pm (UTC)I think I have "potential endearing story about FW" on my list to reply to, but I'll just say it here and maybe repeat it when I get back to it: I think because of these differing ways I just find it really hard to relate to FW. Like, the good stories make me feel sorry for him, and I do feel like he needs a bunch of hugs
from tall guys, but I'm just never going to feel about him the way I do about, say, Heinrich, who can be totally awful but is also actually endearing to me :)Re: The Katte War Tribunal Protocol
Date: 2020-01-13 09:15 pm (UTC)My Englishmanm, or: Heinrich Who?
Date: 2020-01-06 03:55 pm (UTC)31st December 1755: At the King's court in the morning. I had a very long conversation with the Chevalier Hotham. Even among the English, he is an exceptional mind. But then, this nation is superior to all the others! Rich and free - the true medium through which one can make a mediocre head into someone with ésprit - they enjoy the additional advantage of being taught well in their youth and being allowed to see the world as soon as they leave school. Hotham, for example, is 21 and has alreaedy seen nearly all of Europe. He just comes from having travelled through the entire north. I am amazed how rightly he judges the charactes of the various princes he has encountered.
January 3rd 1756: A very interesting book about astronomy keeps me captivated until the evening. Then in order to practice English I join a society of ten equally minded men.
January 4th: Again at home until the evening. Then I visit the Chevalier Hotham, whom I like very much. Our conversation is very vivacious, and I skip the dinner at Puebla's in order to remain with him alone. I do love him, and he confirms the positive opinion I have formed of his nation.
January 9th. Our princes have a new friend every winter; now it is Herr Bastiani, a former footman, the son of a tailor from Venice. They believe him to be a genius. (...) They favour certain qualities whom they ascribe to whoever has caught their fancy and don't see in those out of favor, and it is not rare that those virtues end up being ascribed to those who show physical advantages at best. I take my dinner much more comfortably with my dear friend Hotham.
January 12th. My reconciliation with Prince Heinrich happens; good reasons cause it. I have been noticing for a while that he's suffering as much from the silence between us as I do.
January 16h. After having escorted the Queen to the opera, I visit Count Reuß. I am here because I find all the ministers from the King's cabinet here, especially Mr. Eichel, our country's Mazarin. Mr. Eichel is a man who connects an immense mind with an agreeable exterior. He works as much as ten m en do, and despite his great power he has kept his modesty. You can see his kindness and benevolence from his face. His way of life is very strange. He works from 4 am in the morning till 2 in the afternoon, then he sits with his friends until 8 pm at a table, and drinks one small glass without ever getting drunk. Afterwards, he works again until mightnight, and then sleeps. I'm spending the evening with my friend Hotham.
January 30th: At Prince Heinrich's, afterwards with my dear Chevalier Hotham. We talk about all manner of things; suddenly we get the idea to ask the King for permission so I can join the Chevalier upon his return to England. This plan keeps me up at night.
February 3rd: My letters go to the King. God may bless them! I am in a state which makes me unfit to go into society. My God, but freedom is a beauitiful thing!
February 4th: I live half in a dream. Chevalier Hotham visits me in the morning, and we inspect four seat carriages. My God, how happy I would be if I could go with him! I'm at Prince Ferdinand's for dinner. Prince Heinrich is very tender towards me. But this does not stop me from feeling a vivid desire to get out of here!
February 5th: I find my dear Hotham delighted by the treaty which the King has made with England. Thus, the peace in Europe is made secure, the King's fame grows even more, and the French get their mouths stuffed.
(This actually was not an minority opinion at the time, since no one not involved in the negotiations saw the Diplomatic Revolution - i.e. the France/Austria alliance MT and the Marquise de Pompadour were working on - coming.)
February 7th. I'm busy writing a second letter to the King. God may bless this enterprise! My state of heart is indiscribable.
February 9th: After I have walked for quite a while with my Englishman and laughed about his qualities that come from a brave heart, I go to dine with Prince Heinrich.
February 11th: I spend a restless night without comfort. But suffering and joy always change places in life, and likewise here I spend a very agreeable evening with my Englishman.
February 12th: I find the most distressful news of the world: Eichel writes to me thath he doesn't believe the King will permit my journey to England and advises me to give up my intention. In the deepest pain, I go to Prince Heinrich for dinner but then quickly return home and ask for my worthy Hotham's company to tell him the terrible news. I must admit that if my heart were receptive for the least joy, it would have felt it faced with the evident sincere pain which this news has caused him.
February 15th: I write a third letter to the King. I have no hope, but I want to do everything possible to me in order not to accuse myself later of not having done so. (...) I am convinced I will never have such an opportunity again to visit strange countries. Oh freedom, freedom, you will always remain the sole true happiness!
February 18th: My dear Chevalier decides to write to the King as well. He does it with the most touching expressions. This gives me some hope back, and puts me ina good mood for the evening.
February 19th. Still between fear and hope. I feel in my heart very special emotions for the King. If he gives me the permission, I will worship him, if not, I will only be able to call him harsh, because all impediments to such a journey could be easily removed.
February 20th: The closer the hour in which the mail arrives, the greater my uneasiness grows. I no longer have the courage to remain with the Chevalier with whom I have been staying, and withdraw to my house. Then the decision about my fate arrives, which will be an eternal source of grief for me. The King lists only bad reasons for his refusal; I feel it, it only happens to hurt me. My God, how easily could the King make himself loved! When I arrived in this world, my heart was full of love for my sovereign, and since then, he has done nothing but cause me pain. He ruined a very good marriage for me, he made me part of the Queen's court against my will, in short, all my plans were spoiled by him. I always kept up a son's devotion to him, I have always hoped he would, in the end, become a father to me, since he's been solely the King for such a long time. But now all hopes leave me, and I fall into the abyss. I cannot describe my position, it is terrible. To give up the journey from which I could draw so many good uses, and, what is worse: to lose such a faithful, sincere, estimable friend as Hotham! No, one dies not out of heartbreak. I spend a terrible night.
February 21st: I hurry to the Chevalier. He is as distressed as I am and decides to leave Berlin immediately. My pain is so visceral when I hear this that I stand as stone next to him, unable to move. With despair in my heart, I watch him leave, lock myself in my room and cry and cry and cry. I feel so lonely in a town in which I have lived for ten years. All whom I once have called my friends appear to me now that I have experienced this English friendship so heartless that I will never trust them again. The sole comfort which remains to me are my books.
Lehndorff makes a short trip to Dresden (with EC's permission) to distract himself. When he returns, he visits AW to catch up with the news.
March 6th: I restart my disagreeable and useless duties. In the evening, I go to the Prince of Prussia where I learn what happened in my absence. Princess Heinrich - i.e. Mina - has gotten permission to visit her uncle in Kassel. It seems this lady is blessed with happiness, and she's won all the world through her behavior. Colonel v. Keith - i.e. Peter - escorts Princess Amalie to Quedlinburg at the orderes of the King. Prince Heinrich is at his country seat. I fear this prince will withdraw from the world altogether; his temper is a melancholic one.
July 8th. Prince Heinrich comes from Potsdam.
July 9th: I had firmly decided not to visit Prince Heinrich unless he explicitly asks me to. Only if one makes oneself into a rarity it's possible to live with princes, it seems. Then, he sends for me three times in a row, and I am mostly content with the way he receives me when I do arrive. My God, why is he so charming! And he would be much more so if only his temper were as constant as his actions are, which do testify to his kindness. These are strange times, we are currently arming up for war without truly knowing our enemies. According to public opinion, with the exception of England all of Europe has become our enemy.
Re: My Englishmanm, or: Heinrich Who?
Date: 2020-01-06 05:28 pm (UTC)I am amazed how rightly he judges the charactes of the various princes he has encountered.
I assume this means he is appropriately gushing toward Heinrich?
The Eichel schedule: yet another case where I found myself saying, "Oh, *that's* where that comes from!" Except the version I have has him taking a nap in the evening, which made sense if he was only sleeping midnight to 4 am. Also, Eichel having friends, what's up with that? News to me. :P Good to know, though.
As for the rest, what can one say, but--Lehndorff. (In the most adorable possible way.) Fritz, you missed your chance to actually have a paternal relationship with someone! Oh, wait, you are doing a paternal relationship--exactly as you learned how to do it. Sigh.
Re: My Englishmanm, or: Heinrich Who?
Date: 2020-01-07 08:18 am (UTC)Interestingly, Lehndorff doesn't report a single comment of Hotham's about Heinrich (or anyone else from the royal family). And Hotham definitely met the lot. (Well, those in and around Berlin, anyway.) Now it could be that Hotham, nephew of a diplomat and at the Prussian court when a crucial new treaty between Fritz and Cousin George is being concluded, knows better, even at the age of 21 and towards a new friend/lover, than to make potentially dicy remarks. Or maybe he makes remarks, be they either gushing or criticial, and Lehndorff doesn't record them, because he's first too busy being newly in love and filled with hopes for an English elopement and then too angsty. Or maybe, being somewhat ticked off at Heinrich in the relevant time span yet still visiting, he doesn't want to hear either praise or dissing of him, and Hotham is intuitive enough to avoid the subject.
Eichel having friends: good for him. Also, I like the characterisation "the Mazarin of our country". I guess this makes Fritz Louis XIV, and Heinrich Philippe d' Orleans? (Since AW is the onle royal brother Lehndorff is never angry towards, and also I can't see him as Philippe in any way.)
Fritz, you missed your chance to actually have a paternal relationship with someone! Oh, wait, you are doing a paternal relationship--exactly as you learned how to do it. Sigh.
Quite. Mind you, I don't think that Lehndorff's collection of slights - losing his cousin to the Kattes, being stuck with a job he doesn't want, being refused permission to travel abroad with his lover, and being generally ignored - was in any way about him from Fritz' pov; he could have been three or four separate people, and the same decisions would still lhave been made. (The Kattes get the heiress because they're Hans Herrman's family, someone has to be EC's chamberlain who isn't a gambler, like Müller, and who comes across as being generally reliable and not using the position to rob her or try to play spy, no one gets to elope to England with their lover and especially not someone who could inherit East Prussian estates. (Though I was wrong that Lehndorff was already the heir in 1756 - his older brother doesn't die until the battle of Hochkirch, news that will reach him about a week after the news about Keith, Prince Franz and Wilhelmine have arrived at court.) Though that argument probably would have made it worse for Lehndorff - at least if the King personally singles you out for his enmity, it proves he noticed you.
...still, if/when I get around to writing a Heinrich story, I'll have to include a scene where Lehndorff says something about hoping the King would be a father to him and Heinrich mentally going "....you know, I do like you, a lot, and that's why I'm not going to comment that ever, because you really really don't want to know what I'm thinking right now".
Btw, have come across this letter from Fritz to Grumbkow in 1737. So: Katte dead for seven years, Crown Prince rehabilitated and given estates and a regiment, but, as I know from the correspondance with Wilhelmine as well (and from that with young AW where Fritz asks his brother to tell him all FW says about him, Fritz), this by no means FW doesn't rant about him now and then:
You, dear Field Marshal, generously took over my defense when the king came to speak of me. Never has an artist had such a bad opinion of his own creation as the king of me. If it is artistic modesty on his part, I must confess that it goes a little far. Rather, I tend to believe that an unfortunate prejudice that he has always cherished against me, and which is rooted by age, makes him judge so badly about my character. Who can say that you cannot go to war with France because you speak French, read the good writers who wrote French, and love the polite and witty people that this nation has produced? I know nothing but my honour. Anything that can be beneficial to her will always be the guiding principle of my actions, and no consideration can dissuade me from doing so.
The artist - piece of art metaphor and Fritz as FW's creation: ouch. Also wow. In many ways he was (and he was his own creation as well, of course, thankfully), though, never more than when he interacts with the younger part of his own family (or valets), and Lehndorff rather lucked out in not getting his wish there, is what I'm saying. Also clearly 1737 Crown Prince Fritz has definite political plans, correspondance with Voltaire about how it's a mystery that Peter I. can be a reformer and a tyrant at the same time and how Machiavelli is the worst not withstanding.
Re: My Englishmanm, or: Heinrich Who?
Date: 2020-01-07 08:42 am (UTC)Oh, I agree entirely. I was just commenting on the "nobody gets to go to England with their lover." But your point about keeping estates in Prussia is definitely a good argument for why not as well.
I think I can speak on behalf of everyone when I say we are really looking forward to your Heinrich story!!
The artist - piece of art metaphor and Fritz as FW's creation: ouch.
Oh. Yes. Ouch. :-(
1737 Crown Prince Fritz has definite political plans
Oh, definitely. Anti-Machiavel notwithstanding, there is an abundance of hints of future Fritz's expansionism, starting in at least 1731, during the rehabilitation course. That was not nearly as much of an about-face as it seemed to Europe at the time, or as it's often been presented since then.
Re: My Englishmanm, or: Heinrich Who?
Date: 2020-01-07 05:53 am (UTC)The thing that struck me about the Hotham passages is that I believe he had strong feelings for the guy, but when he talks about going to England it's only half about Hotham and the other half is about freedom and wanting to leave! My feeling reading this is that he must have subconsciously known that this wasn't a good situation for him, and was grasping at anything that would let him get out of it.
My God, why is he so charming!
heeeeee!
Re: My Englishmanm, or: Heinrich Who?
Date: 2020-01-07 08:42 am (UTC)Oh absolutely. At this point he'd been EC's chamberlain for a decade and he knew that he was stuck with this dead-end job that didn't make him happy, he'd been in love with Heinrich for at least four, possibly five years (i.e. when the diary references to Heinrich change from being respectful and friendly to "dearest", "most wonderful" etc.) and knew this would not get him more than friends with benefits either, as opposed to the exclusive romantic relationship he clearly wanted, and here was someone who not only seemed to be ready to devote himself to him in this exclusive way but also symbolized a new, exciting start elsewhere. Now I don't think Lehndorff would have emigrated on his lonesome - he clearly was someone who thrived on company, and when he finally calls it quits with the Prussian court decades later, he'll have both a family and a new bff (the Polish poet-bishop) to be with in the countryside. Nor was he cold blooded enough to try and attach himself to someone solely because he wanted to leave. But Hotham offered the combination of both his emotional needs, and that must have been catnip to poor L.
heeeeee!
Lehndorff's "I'm totally over him now/ hearts hearts hearts hearts" will never fail to evoke a fond smile from me, either.
Re: My Englishmanm, or: Heinrich Who?
Date: 2020-01-07 08:44 am (UTC)Re: My Englishmanm, or: Heinrich Who?
Date: 2020-01-07 08:06 am (UTC)This whole episode is adorable, and I am here shipping it like UPS, the darlings. Is there fic for them? Do we want there to be?
Re: My Englishmanm, or: Heinrich Who?
Date: 2020-01-07 08:25 am (UTC)Re: My Englishmanm, or: Heinrich Who?
Date: 2020-01-07 08:38 am (UTC)Aww, I am definitely here for 50 years of Lehndorff/Heinrich angsty quasi-married coupledom, and indeed <I>My God, why is he so charming!</I> does sound like a man adorably in love <3
<I>(Mind you: if Lehndorff had managed to elope with Hotham, it would probably have been better for his emotional health)</I>
It would also have been pretty hot, JSYK ;) And then Heinrich would have been wildly jealous, and the King would have been furious and possibly threatening to convene tribunals <i>in absentia</I>, and to my mind Elopement AU would be an interesting place to visit, if not write about...
Re: My Englishmanm, or: Heinrich Who?
Date: 2020-01-07 09:01 am (UTC)ndeed My God, why is he so charming! does sound like a man adorably in love <3
Oh, that's the least of it. Regular Lehndorff entries on Heinrich include, from the early days:
1752, December 1. Depressing supper with the Queen. In the afternoon, I stay at home and have the pleasure of spending a moment with H. What a fortune it is to have someone for whom one lives and with whom one always want to live! Time passes so very quickly with him, and only the idea of not being with him spoils this pure joy.
December 10th: While with the Queen, I manage to talk to H. who embraces me tenderly.
December 11th: At the opera, I have the pleasure of embracing my dearest H. It is he who makes the carnival beautiful for me.
(Note: The Carnival season in Berlin started already at the beginning of December.)
December 13th: Lamberg returns. I am glad, for I like him, and I know this causes happiness to the one I love. Which makes me sad, but I don't show it. For jealousy follows passion so swiftly.
December 29th: I visit the opera, and from there my dearest H. I dine alone with him. My heart feels the whole height of this pleasure as I haven't been able to enjoy it for such a long time. He comes with me to my old flat, where we celebrate stag night. (Polterabend, i.e what you usually do before a wedding.) From there, he comes with me to my new flat, where I sleep for the first time.
January 3rd. In the theatre, I see my dear H. A moment with the Queen, and then I dine with the dearest of all being whom I love so tenderly.
January 6th. The same evening, I see my dear H. Oh, one is never completely happy! I am convinced he loves me, and still I am tormented by the thought I could lose this precious heart. I was invited at Herr von Bredow's, so I briefly went there. I find a big crowd, among others a Herr von Katt, who is not the most agreeable company to me.
January 7th: Grand cour at the Queen's. I stay but a moment and then withdraw with my dear H. How much I enjoy being alone with him! What little reason I have leaves me entirely as soon as this dear creature captivates me. Why is man so weak! Without this passion, I could live as a philosopher. I spend a charming evening with him. We read. This pleasure gets interrupted by the arrival of young Lb (Lamberg?). But as I come with my dear H, I manage to be alone with him again.
January 9th. I dine with my delightful H. After dinner, he reads the tragedy Andronicus. Anything about him is interesting, and anything he does, he succeeds in. He has the gift of shattering me by his reading.
January 11th. I thought I would have to dine alone, but as I sit down at my table, my dear beloved little H. comes to visit me. He is in a charming mood. He organizes the cooking, and seems to enjoy himself. Then he reads the tragedy "Cyrus" to my delight; in short, he is charming in everything he does. I see him again at the Queen Mother's. There, I have reason for jealousy, for it seems to me he talks too tenderly with Maltzahn. This makes me sad, and I go home in a depression. I cannot sleep for the entire night, because I can't stop thinking about them. Through all this night, I had bad luck at gambling, too.
January 14th. After church, I go home and wait till it is time to attend the Queen. There, I see my charming H. Without pausing, I return with him to my flat. He dines with me in an amiable mood and is more charming than ever. My sole grief is that he could feel attracted to M. I can't help but thinking he is when I see them together, and it makes me sad.
January 18th: As this is the Prince's birthday, the court of the Queen Mother's is assembled in full. I am convinced that as many have good wishes for the prince as those where clothing on their skin. For to know him is to love him. I seek out my dear H., embrace him tenderly and await with impatience the next opportunity to be alone with him. (...) I feel something for him I haven't felt for anyone else. Sometimes I wish he was poor, so I could give him anything I have; at other times, I would be ready to do the most humble service if only that meant I could be always with him.
January 24th. To the theatre, where they have some pretty dances. At last to H. whom I love so tenderly. But I tremble at the thought he could change his mind about me. If this should happen, all the joy of the world would be as nothing. I always thought to possess this heart would be the highest happiness. But my eternal unrest proves to me that there is nothing perfect in life. The smallest kindness he shows to another robs me of all my calm. Yesterday I saw him drive away with another. I thought he'd go home to be alone with M, and was in despair. Fortunately, I saw M return only fifteen minutes later and found it he only went with him on a visit.
December 22nd. Prince Heinrich arrives in tight riding pants and beautiful like an angel for dinner.
And there you have the basic problem. Heinrich did like Lehndorff - he must have, because he didn't benefit from the relationship in a political or otherwise way and yet kept the friendship up throughout his life, and it wasn't one sided Lehndorff being there for him in times of distress, either (for example, when Lehndorff's first wife and all of his first four children have died, Heinrich is there for him) - but he also never committed himself to an exclusive romance with him which was what Lehndorff clearly wanted. Instead, he offered solely friends with benefits, while he had his favourites. (Heinrich: as openly gay as you could possibly be.) Who tended to be charismatic bastards whom he spent a lot of money on. So fast forward a decade later, is Lehndorff more chill about his prince? We're in the middle of the 7 years war, it's just two years after Hotham, and:
May 10th: Schwerin arrives, page to Prince Heinrich, the most adorable of heroes, who with the cold bloodedness of an old man and the energy of a youth has contributed so much to the happy conclusion of the battle. Little Schwerin visits me and tells me many fine traits of his master. He himself has had a horse shot underneath him, while Major Ducroit of his regiment has lost both his legs. Fortunately, my Prince was only hit by a bullet in the arm. I daresay never has the son or brother of a King been in such danger and made such a success of it as this prince. And when the battle was finished, he did not rest, but dedicated himself until 10 pm to services of humanity by distributing food and water to the wounded, and organizing their transport. One of the officers of his entourage who had lost a horse he immediately gifted with an English - I take it this is a horse? - and the entire saddle, each of his batmen with 50 Louisdor and golden watches for his pages. Thus he did not think of his own comfort but only of helping others and of rewarding the deeds of the young officers.
In 1762, when the war gets in its final year, Lehndorff is with Heinrich when Heinrich hears about the Miracle of the House of Brandenburg:
On January 31st, I arrive at Hof, a village with a beautiful House belonging to Count Zinzendorf which Prince Heinrich has chosen as his winter headquarters. Seeing this prince again is a particular pleasure for me as I had to forego this joy for the last two years. I find him full of infinite kindness towards me, and the hours I spend with him are among the most pleasant of my life. He is sick when I arrive. I spend the entire day with him and don't leave his room again until mightnight. He speaks with much interest of old times and of our youth. He sincerely wishes for an ending to this cruel war. After all hopes that the King would emerge successful from all those crisis were in vain, there is a sudden beam of hope through the death of the Empress of Russia. For this princess had been personally incensed against the King and sworn his downfall, avenging all the jokes the King has made about her to our misfortune. Her desire has been so much successful so far that the Russians were in possession of (Eastern) Prussia, Pommerania, Kolberg, parts of the Neumark and with their army in a considerable part of Silesia, and they were about to strike the final blow, when to our fortune death fell on her. Her country loses a good ruler, but we are sure to gain from this. Her successor is said to follow a very different policy. (You can say this again.) (....)
After spending 14 days with this dear Prince, I part from him again with infinite regret. He makes me beautiful presents out of porcellain. After a tender farewell, I take the route Wurzen(…)
Re: My Englishmanm, or: Heinrich Who?
Date: 2020-01-07 09:22 am (UTC)...welp, I bet our Lehndorff's heart (felt) the whole height of this pleasure, together with other parts of Lehndorff! It definitely sounded like they celebrated stag night ALL NIGHT, as you would XD
Prince Heinrich arrives in tight riding pants and beautiful like an angel for dinner
AHAHA, I just snorted out loud IRL. Lehndorff is so smitten, I adore it; I also adore that he remains thus.
Re: the whole FWB set-up, maybe princes (or at least this prince) just aren't one-man men with their favourites? But anyway, indeed, there must be fic! Are there also engravings within the amassed pile of srs research?
Re: My Englishmanm, or: Heinrich Who?
Date: 2020-01-07 09:41 am (UTC)Same here, especially since Heinrich really wasn't good looking, not even as a young man. He was homely at best - also small, even smaller than Fritz who wasn't tall. There's a famous anecdote about young Heinrich during one of his earliest commands in the second Silesian war motivating his men to cross a river by jumping right in despite it going to his waist or breast - reports differ - and saying "men, if I can do it, you can!". Post 7 Years War, he also due to a war wound got somewhat cross eyed, which you can see in the later portraits. Most people felt let down when they met him the first time - this wrinkly tiny man is the hero of the 7 Years War? etc. But most people also then once they started talking to him were completely charmed. (We have reports from enough non-Prussians who were in no way obliged to say anything nice about him to testify to this.) Like Big Bro, he must have had tremendous personal charisma, and charm if he cared to use it.
maybe princes (or at least this prince) just aren't one-man men with their favourites
Most 18th century princes weren't, no matter whether they were straight, bi or gay. Two famous exceptions: Dad - i.e. FW, who was faithful to Sophia Dorothea despite the two of them having an increasingly terrible marriage, beause MISTRESSES WERE OF THE DEVIL (so he even says in his political Testament) -, and Louis XVI., husband of Marie Antoinette, who was the first French King for centuries who only had sex with his wife and had no platonic alternate favourite, either. Other than that, though, I can't think of an example if, that is, the relationship lasted longer than a few years. (For example, Joseph II was very much in love with his first wife - who did not love him, but that's another story, she was in love with his sister - and thus faithful to her, but said wife, Isabella of Parma, died young, so I'm not counting ViennaJoe among the 18th century royals who managed sexual/romantic fidelity.)
(Even outside of marriage: Madame de Pompadour was Maitresse en titre for Louis XV. until her death, but by no means his only Mistress during that time, even before physical relationships betwen them ceased.)
It resembles the status of rock star or film star Celebrities today - everyone was always offering - since sex with a prince was one way to secure income and position - so those who managed a monogamous relationship, inside or outside of marriage, were really really rare.
Engravings: I did an icon post, here.
Re: My Englishmanm, or: Heinrich Who?
Date: 2020-01-07 01:49 pm (UTC)"1 May 1753: the most miserable day of my life, because Prince Heinrich is leaving; I go to see him, my heart full of grief. I hurry to my dear prince, what a sorrowful meeting! I leave him without a word, I see tears pouring down his face, the dearest in the world, what a man to be worshipped, what a loss for me, I swear eternal devotion. I return to my home in sorrow and cannot sleep, I write my prince a letter.
2 May I: get a letter from him which makes me burst into tears. I jump on my horse and ride to meet him, but when I see his carriage approaching I get off and hide, otherwise my heart would have burst. I did not think that one person could be so devoted to another; in pagan times they would have made him a God.
Bear in mind that Heinrich isn't leaving the country or going to war at this point, he's just having to attend brother Fritz in Potsdam for a few days. Then again, he and Lehndorff are both in their early to mid 20s. And some of it is Rokoko emo - we're talking about an era where it was normal to sign "your devoted servant" and greet people whose guts you hated with "my dear, most honored cousin and brother", and where the male code of conduct was not just okay with tears, they were expected. (Seriously. Everyone turns on the waterworks all the time. This causes 19th century and 20th century editors no little embarassment.) But Lehndorff after the early crushing days and with the full awareness that his dearest of Princes was a flawed human being after all kept up the affection.
Waterworks
Date: 2020-01-07 10:26 pm (UTC)Re: Waterworks
Date: 2020-01-08 08:13 am (UTC)It‘s interesting, though, that „men/boys don‘t cry“ is such a relatively recent development in human social conditioning. The nineteenth century has a lot to answer for, I suppose.
Re: Waterworks
Date: 2020-01-08 08:32 am (UTC)Indeed. And the early twentieth century has a lot to answer for, taking romantic friendship away.
Re: Waterworks
Date: 2020-01-08 06:13 pm (UTC)ahahahah I mean this is Fritz
But I really like that quote too <3 Hopefully I can share it with my son when he gets older.
Re: My Englishmanm, or: Heinrich Who?
Date: 2020-01-08 09:01 am (UTC)See, now you have me shipping tiny ugly (?) incredibly charismatic Prince Tightpants and his tearful worshipful Diarist Extraordinaire <3
Re: My Englishmanm, or: Heinrich Who?
Date: 2020-01-08 09:12 am (UTC)Welcome! We also ship them!
Oh, by the way, here is a write-up of historians and fans no-homo-ing Fritz. It's not meant to be chronologically accurate, but it does give you an idea of the sorts of mental gymnastics people have gotten up to in defense of their fave's Chaste Prussian Manliness (TM).
Re: My Englishmanm, or: Heinrich Who?
Date: 2020-01-08 10:51 am (UTC)Also, like with Fritz/Fredersdorf, it's the ship to relax with between incredibly fucked up Hohenzollern family relationships (of which Fritz 'n Heinrich certainly takes the cake in the post FW era, since Fritz' idea of self therapy included a "I'll be a slightly milder version of Dad, you'll be me" roleplay with the brother who most resembled him (which he was aware of; he did refer to Heinrich as "my other self" a few times). I think part of the appeal of Lehndorff over the years to Heinrich must have been that he was sane and kind and for all his fondness of gossip (as reflected in the diary) trustworthy. Unfortunately, those same qualities seem to also have ruled out Lehndorff as a favourite, because Heinrich's taste in boyfriends was like Fritz' taste in batmen: terrible. Granted, Lehndorff is biased for obvious reasons, but there aren't exactly dissenting voices to be heard about most of them. So, let this Lehndorff dissing of a Heinrich boyfriend be representative of the lot. The guy in question is called Reisewitz.
This man has had adventures from his childhood onwards. His father was one of the first who declared themselves for the King when our great monarch ascertained his rights in Silesia.
(that's one way to describe an invasion, Lehndorff...)
Consequently, he was a target of the Austrians' fury; his house was sacked, and he and his wife thrown into prison. Our Reisewitz, back then a child, was left to his own devices. He ended up with relations who pitied him and took him in. AFter peace was made, his father moved to Berlin, and the son, who specialized in stupid pranks, became a page to the Prince of Prussia. (Prince of Prussia: AW, Heinrich's older and Fritz' younger brother August Wilhelm.) There, he devoted himself to all the errors of youth, all kind of debaucheries became his specialty. But blind fate provided him with a very pleasant position. When Prince Heinrich formed his first household, he made Reisewitz his master of the horses. Soon, he wasted 3000 Taler for himself which the prince had given him to use for his stables. Generously, the prince forgave him, and even handed him the administration of Rheinsberg, and when he failed to live up to this task as well, the prince took Reisewitz with him as he went to war. There he behaved so utterly without discipline that the prince had no choice but to send him back here, where he could actually lead a pleasant life, if his vices didn't make him incapable of enjoying a quiet existence. He's a windbag of the first order, believes himself to know everything, and keeps trying to lead the conversation.
Re: My Englishmanm, or: Heinrich Who?
Date: 2020-01-09 04:39 pm (UTC)well, okay, I am totally invested in Fritz/Heinrich, not as a sexual ship but as some sort of twisted hateship...
Re: My Englishmanm, or: Heinrich Who?
Date: 2020-01-09 06:28 pm (UTC)ETA: In which selenak and I both simultaneously pipe up with the Fritz/Voltaire love-hateship, haha.
Re: My Englishmanm, or: Heinrich Who?
Date: 2020-01-09 06:30 pm (UTC)But yes, for Lehndorff, it wasn't always healthy due to the unevenness. Still, I guess that if you'd asked him in his old age when he was happily retired that if he could rewrite his life to he never gets closer to Heinrich than respectful courtier to King's younger brother whom he greets at court events now and then, would he do so, he'd have said no. I should probably say something about his relationships with his two wives - which were far better ones than the ones any Hohenzollern had with theirs and are actually good examples of how "marriage following the socially expected pattern" can work out if you're ready to treat your spouse decently. By which I don't just mean not be a jerk, but spend some time together that's not about procreation, take her part when your mother attacks her for not having as many noble ancestors as your own bloodline, laugh together, be ready to comfort when needed, that kind of thing. In neither case was it a passionate relationship, and never mind Heinrich, the ladies don't get passionate outbursts like Hotham of the few months, either, or wistful romantic thoughts like Cousin Frau von Katte, the one who got away. He didn't spontanously fall in love with either; in the first case, because his brother had died, making him the heir, and there was a war going on, the pressure to continue the family line was high, and in the second case, because all the children form the first marriage were dead, there was still the pressure to continue the line. He looked for someone pretty, gentle and from the right class, preferable with a good dowry, and found them. But he liked both women as people, and they seem to have liked him.
(With the caveat that we don't have the wives' testimonies about their marriages - maybe it would have been different from Lehndorff's diary entries, who knows?)
So these were good marriages by the standards of the day, and compared to many others around him, they were looking downright stellar. But he Comes across as having a need for romance and passion, and the great passion of his life happened to be one prince from an insane family with hidden and not so hidden issues. He wasn't as lucky as Fredersdorf in that a) Fritz definitely was ready to commit himself to Fredersdorf, if not monagamously than in terms of emotion and sharing a life together, and b) Frederdorf got the job challenge to end all job challenges out of it. (Boredom ws never one of Fredersdorf's problems!) Then again, in other respects, he was luckier - he had lots of relationships and an emotional life aside from Heinrich, his health didn't get wrecked, and eventually he had surviving children, which he definitely wanted to have. (Not just for the family line, he liked children. His first wife has kid siblings whom Lehndorff spends time with for playing and teaching, and he's also good with AW's kids when he sees them.)
If Fredersdorf and Lehndorff weren't so trustworthy and discreet about their problematic faves, though, Lehndorff's canonical visit at Fredersdorf's could totally be an occasion for them to share a bottle and empathize about being in love with Hohenzollerns who a) get a kick out of playing emotional power games with each other, and b) have a thing for charismatic bastards!
Re: My Englishmanm, or: Heinrich Who?
Date: 2020-01-09 06:38 pm (UTC)Without having read more than what you've so kindly shared with us, I agree.
Fritz definitely was ready to commit himself to Fredersdorf, if not monagamously than in terms of emotion and sharing a life together
<333
and b) Frederdorf got the job challenge to end all job challenges out of it. (Boredom ws never one of Fredersdorf's problems!)
Good lord, no! Whatever Fredersdorf's secret diary looks like, it doesn't contain the words, "I wish I were EC's chamberlain because Fritz is so boring and EC is so exciting." :-PP
If Fredersdorf and Lehndorff weren't so trustworthy and discreet about their problematic faves, though, Lehndorff's canonical visit at Fredersdorf's could totally be an occasion for them to share a bottle and empathize about being in love with Hohenzollerns who a) get a kick out of playing emotional power games with each other, and b) have a thing for charismatic bastards!
Ha! Well, we did write Heinrich and Franz Stephan sharing a bottle and trying to hook up the one's brother with the other's son during the Seven Years' War, complete with cameo from ghost!Philippe d'Orleans, so...stranger things have happened!
R/l Fredersdorf, though, no, I don't see him spilling the beans about Fritz either. It's good to have trusty SOs and friends with benefits. <3
That was also a nice write-up of Lehndorff and his wives, thank you.
Re: My Englishmanm, or: Heinrich Who?
Date: 2020-01-09 10:00 pm (UTC)Fair enough, I do concur with you (and mildred) about that.
I do love his relationship with his wives, and I agree that it shows him as a fundamentally decent human being (well, as far as we can tell), and it certainly stands in contrast to all of the Hohenzollern, sigh.
take her part when your mother attacks her for not having as many noble ancestors as your own bloodline
Awwwww! Go Lehndorff! <3
Then again, in other respects, he was luckier - he had lots of relationships and an emotional life aside from Heinrich, his health didn't get wrecked, and eventually he had surviving children, which he definitely wanted to have.
Huhhhhhh. Until you said that, I didn't think about the possibility Fredersdorf's wrecked health may have been due at least partially to his job. I mean, talk about a high stress job environment! Of course, as mildred likes to remind us, it's not like people didn't have plenty of reasons for having poor health in those days, including the terrible medical care -- but the accumulated stress over years of this can't have helped, and I wouldn't be surprised if it hurt him as well. Man, no wonder he wanted to retire after twenty years of this.
(Not just for the family line, he liked children. His first wife has kid siblings whom Lehndorff spends time with for playing and teaching, and he's also good with AW's kids when he sees them.)
Awwwww, this makes me like him even more :D
Lehndorff and children
Date: 2020-01-10 09:54 am (UTC)I find he's much more amiable when Count Borck isn't around him. The prince is one of those shy beings whose trust one has to win through loving behavior and not through harshness, the way Count Borck does it. I have much affection for this prince. I venerated his father, and thus the son will always be dear to me.
As for his own kids, two bookends:
January 10th 1760: As I get dressed this morning, an urgent messenger brings me the news that my wife has born a son. While this event fills me with supreme joy, I am afraid the child will not live, for it has been born fourteen days too early at least. At once, I hasten to the Countess Camas, who advises me to depart as quickly as possible. (...)
January 11th ff: Without any interruption, I arrive at 6 pm in Magdeburg. The first thing I hear is that the child is so weak that it has been given an emergency baptism. He was named Friedrich Ahasverus Heinrich. I visit my wife, and when they bring me the child I take it into my arms with the greatest joy of the world. In such moments, very strange emotions overwhelm one. I would never have believed it possible that you can feel such intense affection for such poor little creature. For three days, I indulged in the joy of looking at him about a thousand times, and wanted to do nothing but make plans for his future and watch it. But all my hopes were of a short endurance. One morning, they woke me up and told me that the child was dying, and not an hour later, he was dead. I am so unhappy about this that I can't enjoy anything. The poor child, so beautiful and well proportioned, will be buried here in Magdeburg in the Heilig Geist Kirche in a coffin clad in red velved with silver tresses.
For contrast, a joyful entry, which is Lehndorff, after having finally resigned as EC's chamberlain, five dead children, one dead wife and a living second wife (their first shared child died as well, alas, no.5 for him) later, returning home to his estate in 1777 when:
As I climb up the stairs, a pretty boy rushes towards me. While I wonder who he could be, a cry tells me it is my son. This child, who had been so thin and sick that I gave him to Doctor Muzelius and then to my dear niece in Halle for treatment, has changed so much within the last six months that I did not know him at first. I cannot describe my joy. It is as if my soul became one with the child's, so happy did I feel.
Re: Lehndorff and children
Date: 2020-01-11 05:20 pm (UTC)Oh, FFS, Fritz. If Catt is to be trusted at all, you specifically said that *you* have to be won over with positive reinforcement, and that you try to mend your ways to live up to praise, whereas attacking you just makes your faults worse. And of course the "if they had raised me instead of humiliating me, I would be a better person" line that I keep quoting.
Fritz, why must you be so good at insights and so bad at applying them?
ETA: But also "awww" about Lehndorff.
Re: Lehndorff and children
Date: 2020-01-12 07:20 am (UTC)Added to which, he seems to have done a good paternal/avuncular job with Henricus Minor and Wihelmine Minor... but then FW had been a far better father to AW as well. Seems the mutual positive feedback loop strikes again. Future FW2 was the successor with all the expectations that carried, Henricus Minor was not, and of course Wilhelmine Minor wasn't, either. And as Hohenzollerns went, FW2 was avarage, which might have been a disappointment of its own. He wasn't stupid, but he didn't have the eagerness for knowledge Fritz and most of his siblings had (though how much of this was due to it being forced down his throat as a toddler, who knows - I mean, if you're given a top mathematician (Beguilin) as a teacher on Maupertuis' advice when you're four years old, and you're not the scholarly equivalent of Mozart, you're not going to deliver good school results). And he was just okay as a military man, either. Considering the last time Fritz took over the education of a younger relation, this had been Henricus Major who for all their difficulties then delivered on both the hunger for knowledge and the military talent front, it must have felt like a let down.
I wouldn't be surprised if poor future FW2 made him extra angry for being what FW1 had thought Fritz would be - more interested in girlfriends and fun than hard work as a teen and young man, open to the influence of of people flattering him. (Hence Fritz eventually caving and acknowledging Wilhelmine Encke as Prussia's first maitresse en titre since F1's days, because she at least had no political interests and provided FW2 with affection without seeming to want anything but a secure position and comfort out of it.) It's as if being given a distorted portrait - this is how your father saw you - which makes for extra anger.
BTW, Borck the strict Steward/governor eventually lost Fritz' favour and got fired. Why? Because he'd told young FW that his key principle as a ruler should be: "A state can be made happier through the preservation of peace than through the conduct of a successful war." This in the year 1763, I kid you not.
Re: Lehndorff and children
Date: 2020-01-12 09:21 pm (UTC)Oooff, you're right. Wow this whole family is fucked up. Fritz, your decision not to have kids was one of your best. Please see that through in practice and not have de facto kids.
BTW, Borck the strict Steward/governor eventually lost Fritz' favour and got fired. Why? Because he'd told young FW that his key principle as a ruler should be: "A state can be made happier through the preservation of peace than through the conduct of a successful war." This in the year 1763, I kid you not.
Yep, I was actually planning to bring this up. Look, if Wilhelmine isn't allowed to say it, Borck, you're sure as hell not.
Crown Prince Fritz is, but King Fritz has selective amnesia. RHIP.
Re: Lehndorff and children
Date: 2020-01-13 09:12 pm (UTC)Heh. Is he really, or is he sufficiently both perceptive and unselfaware that he doesn't realize that's what it is? (not gonna lie, his lovely & acute perceptivity combined with hilarious unselfawareness is honestly what I love best about him, so that's clearly going to be my vote)
The prince is one of those shy beings whose trust one has to win through loving behavior and not through harshness, the way Count Borck does it.
<3 I can totally believe Lehndorff was a great dad <33
I cannot describe my joy. It is as if my soul became one with the child's, so happy did I feel.
<33333333
Fredersdorf and stress
Date: 2020-01-11 10:09 pm (UTC)Armchair Psychologist Mildred is here to weigh in. :D
So if you look at the literature on the effects of job stress on health, they're actually pretty counterintuitive. The high-powered overachievers at the top with the most job responsibilities have the fewest stress-related health problems; the people lower down, whose jobs appear easier, are more likely to have stress-related health problems.
And the key criteria appear to be:
1) How much control do you have in your job over the things that matter to you?
2) How secure do you feel in your job?
3) How much are you used as a punching bag by the people above you?
People at the bottom of the totem pole, who have to do what they're told and don't have much input in how things are done, live in fear of losing their jobs, and have to put up with verbal abuse, are quietly way more stressed and unhealthy than the people who juggle a whole bunch of responsibilities at once and whose work demands look far more impressive to the casual observer.
So if we judge Fredersdorf's job by those criteria, I'm actually not sure Fredersdorf comes off as a likely candidate for job stress. Of course, I wasn't ever in his shoes, and we don't have his very secret diary, but he strikes me as one of the people who the layperson thinks should be very stressed but the research doesn't back it up.
Heinrich, yes, Heinrich lives in fear of being scapegoated à la AW. Heinrich doesn't have control over the things that matter to him (see
But if Fredersdorf is quietly afraid of losing his job if he's ever less than perfect, then that's possible, but I have no evidence for it. If Fritz is taking out his temper on Fredersdorf when they're alone, then that's possible, but I have no evidence for it. If Fredersdorf is silently seething over how Fritz mismanages things and he could do a better job if he were given a free hand, then that's possible, but I have no evidence for it.
What I do have evidence for is Fredersdorf being near the top of the totem pole, having more independence of action than most people in Prussia under Fritz, and above all, taking on more responsibilities outside of work by choice, such as alchemy and management of his estate at Zernikow (which he could have delegated far more of than he did). This suggests he didn't feel work was using up every moment of his available time and that he had to stress about getting everything perfect or he would lose his job. This suggests he had time and energy left over, and also that he was a high-powered overachiever who actually liked working, and enjoyed the challenge.
Also, even further down the totem pole, having something you're invested in outside of work offers a protective effect against work-related stress. It gives you a chance to have positive emotional experiences and keeps work from becoming your whole life. These people have fewer stress-related health problems, as a demographic, than people who are wholly at the mercy of their work-related emotions.
So...I actually vote against the evidence being for Fredersdorf fitting the profile of someone whose health is run down by work. There are unknowns, but I'd like to think there was enough trust between him and Fritz that he didn't live in fear of being scapegoated, and that he was spared the worst of Fritz's abuse. And there wasn't really anyone else he answered to in the hierarchy.
Now, *alchemy* as the cause of some of Fredersdorf's health problems and eventually perhaps his death is a very interesting hypothesis...
Re: Fredersdorf and stress
Date: 2020-01-12 07:39 am (UTC)That is a very good point, especially about Zernikow and the non-delegation of same. (As opposed to completely reorganizing it and turning it into a floroushing estate.)It's also worth noting that Lehndorff - who does have solid ideas about class - despite his "fading looks" conduct also records being impressed by Fredersdorf's intelligence and graceful conduct. Highly stressed individuals, especially if they also physically ill, aren't known to be charming and graceful in conversation with younger court officials far below them in the hierarchy, even post retirement. Fredersdorf keeping his even temper till the end would also argue for him having lived more or less the life he wanted, with it bringing out the best in him.
Re: Fredersdorf and stress
Date: 2020-01-12 09:43 pm (UTC)This is also an excellent point. The whole study on stress and hierarchy is that stressed middle managers being punched down on from above are more likely to transfer stress down. If not deliberately aggressively, then in an "OMG I'm losing my mind" frantic kind of way. Not be charmingly and gracefully chill.
I'm glad. I'm glad all the evidence points toward Fredersdorf getting to live his best life, at least insofar as the 18th century permitted. <3
See, cahn? He is zen! :D My perception of him is less zen in the beginning, when the only data he's got is "huge class differences" and "FW is a bloodthirsty maniac," and increasingly zen as time went on and he and Fritz got into a good mutual positive feedback loop.
Admittedly, there is another stress personality profile that I haven't mentioned, the "people-pleasing suffering-in-silence dying-inside" profile, and those people do end up gracious and charming to those below them and prone to stress-related disease, but it just doesn't seem to fit what we know of Fredersdorf's personality or situation.
EC would be a better fit, but I like to hope that, even if she was unhappy about the overall structure of her situation, her day-to-day Fritz-free life was calm and reasonably fulfilling. Maybe especially as time went on and she learned to adjust to it and build a life that didn't revolve around her disappointed hopes.
Re: Fredersdorf and stress
Date: 2020-01-13 09:09 pm (UTC)I was also clearly projecting a bit, because my sister is absolutely the "people-pleasing suffering-in-silence dying-inside" sort and the stress has caught up with her. (She's in therapy for all of this, which has helped the mental issues but the physical ones are unfortunately harder to deal with.)
(Connecting back to that post on your DW a while back, she absolutely fits the profile you talked about there: "I'm having tentative thoughts that given environmental stressors and/or after drawing the short straw with regard to mental health genes, people who put other people's needs first are less likely to perpetuate the cycle of abuse and more likely to end up crippled by anxiety/depression/self-esteem problems.")
Anyway, I'm very glad that this doesn't seem to be the case for Fredersdorf! (Although I wish he could have been healthier, sigh. Stop mucking around with mercury, Fredersdorf!)
Re: Fredersdorf and stress
Date: 2020-01-13 09:19 pm (UTC)Ugh, I'm sorry to hear that. My binary there is an oversimplification, but a lot of people do fall into one category or the other. Neither is a happy place.
FWIW, EC lived to be 81, which is pretty good for the 18th century and I hope means she didn't have a ton of stress-related physical problems.
Anyway, I'm very glad that this doesn't seem to be the case for Fredersdorf! (Although I wish he could have been healthier, sigh. Stop mucking around with mercury, Fredersdorf!)
Right?! Sigh.
Re: Fredersdorf and stress
Date: 2020-01-13 09:33 pm (UTC)Re: Fredersdorf and stress
Date: 2020-01-13 09:37 pm (UTC)Re: My Englishmanm, or: Heinrich Who?
Date: 2020-01-07 08:43 am (UTC)I'm going to have to adopt this phrase!
Katte: Ordre und Kriegsartikel (Jürgen Klosterhuis)
Date: 2020-01-09 08:26 am (UTC)Most (to me) interesting bits - and btw, clearly Klosterhuis was Michael Roes' main source for his "Zeithain" novel though they come to radically different conclusions about FW:
Eichel was the one FW dictated the various angry missives in 1730 to. (Should have figured this out, did not.) When Fritz ordered to the tribunal material in 1740, Eichel provided him with it and suggested burning it afterwards; Fritz said no and just had it sealed up again. Our author then does a Tacitean insinuation by observingt that of course we don't know whether Fritz returned all the material to the archives or destroyed some of it which was embarrassing to him. We do know he looked up the material repeatedly in his life, though.
FW2 had it looked up once when he came to the throne, then resealed.
The first non Hohenzollern (or Eichel) to see the Katte and Crown Prince material was Johannes von Müller in 1806; he was the official historian of FW3 and was supposed to write a biography of the great national hero, but then Napoleon, etc.
Preuß also had access to the entire material for his bio.
Mildred, since you asked: Hans Heinrich prä Wust lived in Angerburg.
Our author, based on Martin von Katte, claims Han Herrmann mostly grew up with Granddad Wartensleben in the later's palace in Berlin and that the big life style there influenced him more than Dad's more modest one in Angerburg. Klosterhuis draws attention to the fact that Granddad was an F1 era Prussian nobleman with baroque splendour whereas Dad Hans Heinrich was a good example of FW's remaking of the Prussian nobility into army men and servants to the crown, military first and foremost.
He also says Hans Herrman was most impressed by Great Uncle Balthasar Friedrich zu Vieritz who'd served with the Danes and who when called to serve by FW in 1724 gave him a proud declining of the invitation. (Source citation M v. Katte, Entwurf - like I said, all the Katte family stuff comes from Martin.)
Aunt Melusine the Mistress of G1 was indeed aunt Melusine to Hans Herrmann; her brother Friedrich Wilhelm von der Schulenburg visited him in Halle an der Saale in in 1717 and in 1719. We also have quotes from her on Hans Herrmann, more in a moment.
HH was in school in Halle from age 13 to four years later.
We have teachers remarks, all quoted by Martin von Katte in his 1934 manuscript.
"Katte has followed orders and is eager. But he strives more for his father's sake than due to a proper reason" (here author adds "meaning a religious motivation") - 1718
"Ingersleben wants to be a soldier; Katte tends to poetry and dreaming" ("Poeterey und Träumerei") - 1719
"Katte is in all his matters not eager enough so does not make real progress" (1720)
Hans Herrmann goes to Königsberg for study in 1721, then one year in Utrecht 1722, then back to Königsberg 1723/24 (lectures attended to are law, but also music and painting)
1722/23 Grand Tour. Aunt Melusine compliments him on his elegant French.
Author quotes M. v. Katte quoting letters of Hans Heinrich to his father-in-law (gGandpa Wartensleben) about Hans Herrmann on the Grand Tour: "Freedom does not agree with him, and he's made dangerous aquaintances."
Could have gone either the judges career or diplomatic career like Schulenburg, but joins regiment gens d'armes in the winter of 1726 because of his father's urgings
Later, his regiment commander's judgment on him: "I can't make heads or tails off Katte; sans reproche - i.e. without fail - he seems to be only on horseback or playing the flute".
Eva Sophie Countess the Routtembourg, with to the French envoy: "charmant mais etourdi" - from a letter from her to Hans Herrmann's stepmom, quoted in M. v. Katte.
HH made another big journey abroad in October 1728. Started as a mission for his father to Paris, then on his own initiative to Madrid where he met de Rottembourg (who'd been transfered there), then to London, where he had a fling with cousin Petronella von der Schulenburg. (Roes did not make that up! Which means Hans Herrmann did it with a Hannover cousin, albeit an illegitimate one.)
(Source citation again M v. Katte, who quotes Hans Heinrich telling this to brother Hans Christoph.)
Now, Mildred, you said tumblr said this book claims Hans Herrman wanted to already desert on this journey. This is not true. The exact statement by our author : "Finally, Katte Junior seems to have been inclined to quit the Prussian service and remain at the British court, so his father in the spring of 1729 saw the need to give him a strict order to return to Berlin."
(I.e. he didn't want to desert, he wanted to offficially quit Prussian service and enter the Hannover/British one.)
Author says it's possible that Fritz met Katte as early as spring 1727 in Monbijou when the regiment Gens D'Armes was there a couple of times and noticed his flute playing, according to Rittmeister Christoph Werner von der Asseburg quoted in M. v. Katte, but says there were no close relations betwen them until spring 1729.
Spring 29: there's a possible war with Braunschweig and HH, returned as ordered from England, writes to Dad he's glad to be back and prefers a Prussian war to a French peace. (No war happened, btw.)
Yes, Katte was in Zeithain (he was part of the escort of Margrave Schwedt the Mad, future brother-in-law to Fritz though thankfully not through marriage to Wilhelmine, instead through poor Sophie). According to a Katte family anecdote, they talked about a mistress of Moritz von Sachsen who'd been killed for his sake, Fritz asks "but does loyalty deserve death?", HH replies, "But yes, death is the fruit of loyalty" - Author is sceptical of htis story but quotes the Italian saying: si non e vero si ben trovato.
In addition to the famous FW reply to Hans Heinrich's petition for mercy - "his son is a villain, so is mine; it's not the fathers's fault" , author quotes a later reply (September 24th to renewed petition) saying: "We are both of us to pity, but if all this blood is no good, one opens a vein. It is not our fault."
Brother-in-law Rochow got promoted to Lieutenant Colonel, Hans Friedrich von Katte to Major, both in October 1730, as a reward of their faithful reporting.
Something that made me go "I knew it!" - Absalom comparisons about on the part of FW. Especially Absalom turning the hearts of the men of Israel from David. Because, and here Klosterhuis delivers some indeed fascinating context for 1730:
FW was extra paranoid before Fritz ever tried to escape. Iin January in Potsdam there was actually a desertation conspiracy among 40 (!) members of the Regiment Gens d'Armes - i.e. Katte's regiment. Author says were were religious fanatics. (?) FW had the three leaders of the conspiracy punished as follows: one after being pinched with hot iron hanged; one got hot iron, as well as his nose and ears cut off and was brought back into prison where he died; one was slapped, then whipped by the executioner.
Klosterhuis therefore makes a case that FW did fear a military coup with foreign help come August.
Seckendorff reports to Vienna that the King complains after the first judgment that he thought he'd chosen honest officers for the tribunal but they seek to please "the rising sun" and is still convinced of a military foreign (read: England and France) supported conspiracy against him. The judgment for Hans Herrmann is very much informed by this. (And the earlier precedent from January of the three who were punished as see above.)
FW's letters to Hans Heinrich get kinder in November. "I am heartily sorry, but both justice and necessity demand for your son's crime to be properly punished. As the later was an officer of a regiment which is especially attached to my house and still did not hesitate to conspire in plots directed against the country and its people, I was forced to punish him in order that others may not follow his example and commmit similar crimes. I commiserate with you as a father, but hope you will collect yourself as a reasonable man, and will not prefer compassion to justce, to the welfare of the entire country, and to my quiet state of mind."
The three letters from Hans Herrmann (to dad and granddad and the king) from October and November 1730 - which Wilhelmine quotes form in her memoirs - were quoted in the 1731 anonymous pamphlet about Hans Herrmann's execution and our author says they were already making the rounds in Berlin in November 1730. Who copied and circulated them is unknown.
Klosterhuis does mention Doris Ritter but says that the files themselves do not say whether or not she was a virgin, that's what Guy Dickens the English secretary reports the midwife and Doctor said, and since he's clearly pro-crown prince/anti King partisan, he's not to be trusted and it's more likely she wasn't a virgin. (?) The "not a virgin, I don't think" insinuation seems mostly there so the case of FW the law believer remains intact.
Hans Heinrich asks for four week leave to bury his son and mourn, FW grants it.
Hans Heinrich gets elevated to count and family gets a new emblem granted on 6. August 1740, i.e. exact day of Fritz desertation attempt.
Among the appendices, there are lists of goods found in Fritz' rooms in the palace page (page 120 onwards. These include among the letters seven by SD, twelve by Wilhelmine, but none incriminating. The appendices also include the lists of goods found in Peter Keith's quarters, btw.
And that's it for me. Certainly a very informative book, but I do wish Martin von Katte had published his manuscript, and even more that the original letters survived, because as it is we have transcriptions of transcriptions of transcriptions (and some not even direct quotes but paraphrasings by Martin, then Klosterhuis.) Still, this is far more than we knew before.
Re: Katte: Ordre und Kriegsartikel (Jürgen Klosterhuis)
Date: 2020-01-09 11:48 am (UTC)The unpublished manuscript is: "Hans Herrmann", Manuscript from 1934, transcription by Martin's daughter Maria von Katte in 1997 for the author. No, still not published.
ARGH WHYYY? Come on, Katte family!
clearly Klosterhuis was Michael Roes' main source for his "Zeithain" novel
I had figured that out, based on the large number of things that were in Zeithain and also in this book but that I hadn't found outside this book.
When Fritz ordered to the tribunal material in 1740, Eichel provided him with it and suggested burning it afterwards; Fritz said no and just had it sealed up again. Our author then does a Tacitean insinuation by observingt that of course we don't know whether Fritz returned all the material to the archives or destroyed some of it which was embarrassing to him. We do know he looked up the material repeatedly in his life, though.
Oh, interesting. Our oh-so-reliable Catt says (p. 64 of the translated memoirs, vol. 1) that Fritz says that he *did* destroy a few pages, and sealed up the rest.
Preuß also had access to the entire material for his bio.
That is useful to know!
Our author, based on Martin von Katte, claims Han Herrmann mostly grew up with Granddad Wartensleben in the later's palace in Berlin and that the big life style there influenced him more than Dad's more modest one in Angerburg.
Aha! No mention of spending time in the Netherlands, I take it? I haven't seen that claim outside of Wikipedia.
Klosterhuis draws attention to the fact that Granddad was an F1 era Prussian nobleman with baroque splendour whereas Dad Hans Heinrich was a good example of FW's remaking of the Prussian nobility into army men and servants to the crown, military first and foremost.
I wasn't certain of Grandpa Wartensleben, but this does fit my view of Hans Heinrich. Good to know!
Aunt Melusine the Mistress of G1 was indeed aunt Melusine to Hans Herrmann;
Do we know how she was genealogically related? She can't have been "aunt" in its strict sense of "daughter of grandparents."
"Katte has followed orders and is eager. But he strives more for his father's sake than due to a proper reason" (here author adds "meaning a religious motivation") - 1718
Had seen this quote, consider it evidence (not definitive, obviously) that his final playing by the religious rules at his execution was partly for Dad et al.
then on his own initiative to Madrid where he met de Rottembourg (who'd been transfered there)
Can you tell if they mean "met" as in "made the acquaintance of" or "ran into again"? Because Wilhelmine says that spending so much time with Rottembourg was part of the reason Katte had such elegant French manners, and the 1728 Madrid encounter would not have been enough time for that him to be a major influence. I got the impression from her that Katte spent time with him when he was posted in Berlin.
he had a fling with cousin Petronella von der Schulenburg. (Roes did not make that up! Which means Hans Herrmann did it with a Hannover cousin, albeit an illegitimate one.)
OMMGG, that's hilarious! Wow, that novel is even less fictional than I thought. I gather Klosterhuis is the source for the anecdote about Hans Hermann and his riding a horse into his cousin's (Petronella?) living room. Is there any more detail on that? Gossipy sensationalists need to know!
Also, we now have Trenck, Marwitz, Voltaire, and Katte starting family collections. Which raises the very important question: which sibling was Glasow after? :P
ETA: Also, what does the evidence for the affair look like? Letter from Hans Hermann? Other?
Later, his regiment commander's judgment on him: "I can't make heads or tails off Katte; sans reproche - i.e. without fail - he seems to be only on horseback or playing the flute".
Do we have a date for this? I saw something that said that Katte spent 5 years as a cornet, instead of 3, which is unexplained, but that source also says he joined 8 November 1724, instead of winter 1726. If it was 26, then he spent a normal amount of time as a cornet.
Also, "only on horseback" is consistent with being on horseback even in ladies' drawing rooms. :P Katte: it's nice to be a dedicated cavalry officer and all, but sometimes you are meant to get off the horse.
(I.e. he didn't want to desert, he wanted to offficially quit Prussian service and enter the Hannover/British one.)
Indeed, that was the conclusion I came to after encountering this passage in the wild (i.e. not a paraphrase by someone else) and getting the gist of it from my limited German: "I haven't Google translated the passage closely enough to see if it says he's planning to *desert*, or if maybe he just wants to ask FW nicely if he can leave the service honorably and move to England."
Thank you for confirming it was the latter. 1) That makes infinitely more sense, 2) wow, that has implications for his later attitude toward the escape plan.
Author says it's possible that Fritz met Katte as early as spring 1727 in Monbijou when the regiment Gens D'Armes was there a couple of times and noticed his flute playing, according to Rittmeister Christoph Werner von der Asseburg quoted in M. v. Katte, but says there were no close relations betwen them until spring 1729.
Wikipedia says Fritz & Katte shared lessons. Does Klosterhuis support that? I have found no sources outside Wikipedia.
Yes, Katte was in Zeithain
Yet again, novel is less fictional than thought! (I could tell it was drawing heavily on this monograph, but I couldn't tell *how* heavily.)
"We are both of us to pity, but if all this blood is no good, one opens a vein. It is not our fault."
Hadn't seen that quote, thanks!
Brother-in-law Rochow got promoted to Lieutenant Colonel, Hans Friedrich von Katte to Major, both in October 1730, as a reward of their faithful
reportingthrowing of Hans Hermann to the wolves.FTFY. :P
FW was extra paranoid before Fritz ever tried to escape. Iin January in Potsdam there was actually a desertation conspiracy among 40 (!) members of the Regiment Gens d'Armes - i.e. Katte's regiment.
Had seen this claim, hadn't seen a source for it. Good to know! What is Klosterhuis's source, btw?
The three letters from Hans Herrmann (to dad and granddad and the king) from October and November 1730 - which Wilhelmine quotes form in her memoirs - were quoted in the 1731 anonymous pamphlet about Hans Herrmann's execution and our author says they were already making the rounds in Berlin in November 1730. Who copied and circulated them is unknown.
OOOOHHH, I was wondering where she got those from, in Bayreuth circa 1745! See, I knew this pamphlet was relevant to our extremely serious scholarly interests and they should let us inspect it. :P
Klosterhuis does mention Doris Ritter but says that the files themselves do not say whether or not she was a virgin, that's what Guy Dickens the English secretary reports the midwife and Doctor said, and since he's clearly pro-crown prince/anti King partisan, he's not to be trusted and it's more likely she wasn't a virgin. (?) The "not a virgin, I don't think" insinuation seems mostly there so the case of FW the law believer remains intact.
Oh, FFS.
Hans Heinrich gets elevated to count and family gets a new emblem granted on 6. August 1740, i.e. exact day of Fritz desertation attempt.
OOOHHH I had missed this! I know it was August and about a month after the military promotion, but I had missed the August 6 date. Probably mostly because I usually see the escape attempt date given as August 5 or August 4/5, but of course it was a kind of complicated escape attempt.
I do wish Martin von Katte had published his manuscript, and even more that the original letters survived, because as it is we have transcriptions of transcriptions of transcriptions (and some not even direct quotes but paraphrasings by Martin, then Klosterhuis.)
SAME!
Still, this is far more than we knew before.
Indeed! And all thanks to you! You know, if I do ever manage to write any Katte fanfic, it's going to have a serious amount of oddly specific detail in it. :D
Once again, you have delivered, and you are the very best royal reader. \o/
Martin von Katte: Hans Herrmann von Katte, Eine biographische Skizze aus dem späten Barock, in: Das Lerchennest
Footnote for
Today, the original barn, still standing, is a Fritz museum (heavily geared toward his battles, it seems), and on the side of the building is a plaque (that as I suspected and
Um. You know how I periodically go and collect modern-day visuals for Wust and Küstrin, and eventually compiled them into a picspam? Naturally I did the same for the place Fritz tried to escape from. Google Maps is So. Great. :P
Anyway! Thanks yet again! I've been wanting this one for a while, as you know.
Re: Katte: Ordre und Kriegsartikel (Jürgen Klosterhuis)
Date: 2020-01-09 05:10 pm (UTC)Nope, other than the year in Utrecht.
Aunt Melusine the Mistress of G1 was indeed aunt Melusine to Hans Herrmann;
Do we know how she was genealogically related?
Yes. Hans Herrman‘s grandmother on the paternal side was Eva Maria von Stammer. Eva Maria‘s sister was Anna Elisabeth who had married Gustav Adolf von der Schulenburg. Melusine was the daughter of Anna Elisabeth.
then on his own initiative to Madrid where he met de Rottembourg (who'd been transfered there)
Can you tell if they mean "met" as in "made the acquaintance of" or "ran into again"?
The later. „Traf er wieder“ is what Klosterhuis says.
I gather Klosterhuis is the source for the anecdote about Hans Hermann and his riding a horse into his cousin's (Petronella?) living room. Is there any more detail on that? Gossipy sensationalists need to know!
Alas it wasn‘t Petronella, it was Sophie Charlotte, daughter of Uncle Heinrich Christoph, and Klosterhuis uses the word „Soll er einmal...“ i.el „he supposedly...“, the conditionalis. Source citation again Martin von Katte and either he or Klosterhuis don‘t seem entirely sure the story is true, hence the „soll“.
Also, we now have Trenck, Marwitz, Voltaire, and Katte starting family collections. Which raises the very important question: which sibling was Glasow after? :P
Well, Ferdinand isn‘t yet spoken for by anyone involved with dem Einzigen. Mind you, given that sister Sophie‘s husband the godawful Schwed was so awful and she spent half of her time in and around Berlin, I would wish her a fling, but not exactly with a potential brother poisoner.
And someone really ought to let Voltaire‘s spirit dictate that „How to succeed at the court of Frederick the Great“ list with its „also make a pass at one of his siblings“ item...
ETA: Also, what does the evidence for the affair look like? Letter from Hans Hermann? Other?
Like I said: Klosterhuis in his footnote says that Martin von Katte says Hans Heinrich mentions it in a letter to brother Christoph. Presumably (this is me, not Klosterhuis) in a „you won‘t believe that the boy is up to in London“ manner? Then again, Aunt Melusine is a cherished member of the family, so the Kattes were at least in theory okay with royal mistresses, therefore with sex out of marriage?
Later, his regiment commander's judgment on him: "I can't make heads or tails off Katte; sans reproche - i.e. without fail - he seems to be only on horseback or playing the flute".
Do we have a date for this? I saw something that said that Katte spent 5 years as a cornet, instead of 3, which is unexplained, but that source also says he joined 8 November 1724, instead of winter 1726. If it was 26, then he spent a normal amount of time as a cornet.
It was definitely the winter of 1726 according to Klosterhuis. Source for the remark is a letter from the commander - von Pannwitz - to Grandpa Wartensleben, as quoted by Martin von Katte, still dated 1726, i.e. talking about first impressions of our boy.
(I.e. he didn't want to desert, he wanted to offficially quit Prussian service and enter the Hannover/British one.)
Thank you for confirming it was the latter. 1) That makes infinitely more sense, 2) wow, that has implications for his later attitude toward the escape plan.
Doesn‘t it just? Also, Zeithain puts the Petronella fling during his Grand Tour years earlier (so she can deflower him whereas by 29 HH most certainly was not a virgin anymore), whereas Klosterhuis says it was in the winter of 28/29. Now of course it‘s entirely possible to have an affair with G1‘s illegitimate daughter in winter/early spring and start another with the Crown Prince of Prussia in later spring, but still: fast work, Hans Herrman! And did you or did you not count on Melusine and Petronella as allies if the escape had succeeded?
Wikipedia says Fritz & Katte shared lessons. Does Klosterhuis support that? I have found no sources outside Wikipedia.
Not really. He mentions the possibility of the 1727 encounter as per Martin v. Katte quoting the officer mentioned, but also explicitly says no close contact until 1729. He says they played the flute together, but does not use the word „lesson“.
FW was extra paranoid before Fritz ever tried to escape. Iin January in Potsdam there was actually a desertation conspiracy among 40 (!) members of the Regiment Gens d'Armes - i.e. Katte's regiment.
Had seen this claim, hadn't seen a source for it. Good to know! What is Klosterhuis's source, btw?
I have to correct myself looking it up - it wasn‘t the Regiment Gens d‘ Armes, it was the royal regiment No.5, ,“Gardegrenadiere“, and since the source citation is another book by Klosterhuis titled „Lange Kerls“, I take it these were in fact long fellows, i.e. Potsdam Giants!
OOOOHHH, I was wondering where she got those from, in Bayreuth circa 1745! See, I knew this pamphlet was relevant to our extremely serious scholarly interests and they should let us inspect it. :P
Naturally. BTW, if Wilhelmine took that 1731 pamphlet with her from Berlin to Bayreuth (since I assume it wasn‘t in Bayreuth already), and risked getting and keeping it in 1731 in the first place, despite still being under strict paternal supervision, it would imply that post his death, she had at the very least conflicted emotions about the late Hans Herrmann. (Since she hardly was planning on a career as a memoirist in 1731!)
The "not a virgin, I don't think" insinuation seems mostly there so the case of FW the law believer remains intact.
Oh, FFS.
What I thought. He also calls her a „real life Luise Miller“, which I must admit amused me because it‘s an allusion to Schiller‘s Kabale und Liebe, which I have told Cahn about. (Also made into a Verdi opera, albeit a far more obscure one than Don Carlos, with all the politics taken out and the action transferred from corrupt present day (to Schiller) Würtemberg to some idyllic Tyrolian village.) Luise is the daughter of town musician Miller, in love with Ferdinand von Walter, son of the most powerful man of
Würtemberga corrupt principality most certainly not the one in which Schiller is currently trying to escape military service to the Duke. Ferdinand‘s dastardly father the Präsident von Walter, PM to the nameless Duke, threatens among other things to have her whipped in public as a whore.Indeed! And all thanks to you! You know, if I do ever manage to write any Katte fanfic, it's going to have a serious amount of oddly specific detail in it. :D
Once again, you have delivered, and you are the very best royal reader.
Just you wait until I publish my memoirs.
Re: Katte: Ordre und Kriegsartikel (Jürgen Klosterhuis)
Date: 2020-01-09 06:27 pm (UTC)it was Sophie Charlotte, daughter of Uncle Heinrich Christoph, and Klosterhuis uses the word „Soll er einmal...“ i.el „he supposedly...“, the conditionalis. Source citation again Martin von Katte and either he or Klosterhuis don‘t seem entirely sure the story is true, hence the „soll“.
Oh, but this is still hilarious. Also, it's good to know which cousin, so I don't accidentally get it wrong. Also good to know it's not a confirmed anecdote.
He says they played the flute together, but does not use the word „lesson“.
Per Wikipedia, it was mathematics and mechanics lessons. Now that I think on it, don't they meet during lessons in Zeithain too? (I mean, aside from the nod to the operation that may or may not have happened.) And Fritz hates on math and Katte tries to win him over?
Now of course it‘s entirely possible to have an affair with G1‘s illegitimate daughter in winter/early spring and start another with the Crown Prince of Prussia in later spring, but still: fast work, Hans Herrman!
Indeed! Especially if that was the affair where he learned that women are really not for him, so as soon as he runs into a guy he's attracted to, extra motivation to act on it, consequences be damned.
And did you or did you not count on Melusine and Petronella as allies if the escape had succeeded?
OMG you're right! Wow, what would I do if I didn't have you to point out the obvious to me?
Yes. Hans Herrman‘s grandmother on the paternal side was Eva Maria von Stammer. Eva Maria‘s sister was Anna Elisabeth who had married Gustav Adolf von der Schulenburg. Melusine was the daughter of Anna Elisabeth.
Sheesh! I found both those women and thought the whole "aunt" thing made the most sense if they were sisters, making Melusine Hans Hermann's 1st cousin once removed of an older generation, but then all the genealogy sites were giving me no way of relating Eva and Anna Elisabeth. Well, another victory for Team Find Out Everything About Katte!
Just you wait until I publish my memoirs.
Ahahahaha. I trust they will be more reliable than some other memoirs by readers I could mention.
Re: Katte: Ordre und Kriegsartikel (Jürgen Klosterhuis)
Date: 2020-01-09 06:30 pm (UTC)Someone should! Perhaps someone co-authoring a Fritz/Voltaire crackfic. *looks around for possible candidates in the vicinity*
Re: Katte: Ordre und Kriegsartikel (Jürgen Klosterhuis)
Date: 2020-01-13 09:05 pm (UTC)This is really cute!
(Also made into a Verdi opera, albeit a far more obscure one than Don Carlos, with all the politics taken out and the action transferred from corrupt present day (to Schiller) Würtemberg to some idyllic Tyrolian village.)
I do know of the opera, though I've not seen it, because the Met did it last year with Domingo as the baritone. All the harassment problems aside (they hadn't yet come out at that point), I'm not really very fond of Domingo as a baritone, so I hadn't checked it out yet.
Just you wait until I publish my memoirs.
I giggled :D
Re: Katte: Ordre und Kriegsartikel (Jürgen Klosterhuis)
Date: 2020-01-13 09:04 pm (UTC)>:( GAAAAAAH FW. Clearly writing REALLY TERRIBLE condolence letters runs in the family. "Sorry I killed your kid, but get over yourself, my state of mind is more important, right? RIGHT??"
Hans Heinrich asks for four week leave to bury his son and mourn, FW grants it.
:(((((((((((((((((((((((((((((( (I mean... better than him not granting it, I guess? But, like, I almost feel like this highlights how awful FW is and that even FW actually knows it.)
Re: Katte: Ordre und Kriegsartikel (Jürgen Klosterhuis)
Date: 2020-01-13 09:12 pm (UTC)ZOMMGGG I had missed that! Good catch! Wow. Wow. I think we found the gene for that. :P
I almost feel like this highlights how awful FW is and that even FW actually knows it.)
It's exactly like Fritz going on about how terrible war is and how much he hates it, yet refusing to consider backing down for one single second, whatever the cost.
Re: Katte: Ordre und Kriegsartikel (Jürgen Klosterhuis)
Date: 2020-01-14 12:06 am (UTC)I mean, Fritz's letter to Heinrich I will argue to my dying breath was incompetence rather than malice. "But think how much I love you! It will greatly upset me if anything happens to you! Also I loved our brother too!"
Heinrich: If that's love, it must be metaphysical.
And even the letter to EC about her brother, which I consider much more dastardly, is at least "I tried to save him from himself! It's not my fault he's dead!"
But "I gratuitously killed your son in the face of the official verdict and the pleas from other heads of state, but please stop sending me upsetting letters, ffs."
Wow.
The Fritzian Library
Date: 2020-01-09 02:01 pm (UTC)A couple weeks ago, I moved all my Fritz PDFs from Dropbox (where they were causing me to run out of space, lol) to Google Drive, and shared the folder with
I've added a subfolder called Correspondence, and I've put the .txt files containing the French and Google-translated correspondence for Wilhelmine, AW, Heinrich, and Suhm. Will add others as I go. I haven't done Voltaire yet because that's three volumes and a lot of poetry (which I anticipate may require more formatting to wrangle), but rest assured Voltaire will follow.
Note that any German does not get translated, so you're on your own with that.
Note also that this was produced by code I wrote very quickly, so bugs, usually in the form of missing text, do keep cropping up. Let me know if you notice any problems that I haven't caught yet.
If .txt doesn't work for you, let me know.
Working on getting Preuss from our patron, hopefully this weekend. Speedy subdetective
Finally, while spot-checking the Heinrich correspondence for bugs, I found this: "I forgot to tell you, my dear brother, that it would be good to have old Seckendorff kidnapped; we could take him straight to Magdeburg. He is the architect of all the dangerous projects of our enemies; he is currently at their service, and if nothing else, that will facilitate the ransom of prince Maurice."
Okay, off to work on my Suhm write-up! Taking requests for other correspondents!
Re: The Fritzian Library
Date: 2020-01-09 05:00 pm (UTC)The Heinrich Letters - Our Younger Days
Date: 2020-01-10 02:52 pm (UTC)All this being said: what there is does give a good impresson of Fritz' changing relationship with his younger brother from his pov through nearly 50 years. (If I had only those letters to rely on, I could not guess what Heinrich felt, though.)
First, when Fritz gets to the throne and takes over teenage Heinrich's education, you get Fritz in (still lightside) Dad mode:
Always continue to apply yourself to reason correctly and to do your duty well.
It is with sorrow that I have just learned that you are starting to go idle, preferring entertainment to studies. If you want to please me, you will apply yourself more diligently to the business of reading, which will be infinitely more useful to you than anything else.
If you want to become something in the world, know how to distinguish useful things from pleasant ones, the solid of the frivolous; and that pleasure never prevents you from applying yourself to things that are a thousand times more essential to you than trifles. Think about it, please.
(BTW, I did wonder: just how idle was fourteen years old Heinrich, given that Dad FW had been the ultimate "work work work" urger? Then I thought, well, the sudden lack of paternal pressure combined with the age might have led to a stint of teenage slackerness and rebellion. If so, he got cured quickly of it by Big Bro, not to mention that he imprinted on Fritz' taste in literature for a life time.)
I was delighted to find in your letter feelings worthy of a prince of the blood who, having forgotten himself, now knows how to take the right path. I trust your promises, being convinced that you will rectify the past by a firm application to your studies. This conduct will cause me pleasure, and will serve you to make you happy.
Being victorious in his Silesia invasion - which also got him a lot of hero worship from teen Heinrich and just about still a teen AW (both of whom wanted to come, too) - also brought out a rare playfulness of tone which isn't in the letters often, like:
Be patient in Berlin, dear Henri, because there is not much to do here, only to make arrangements for shops, hospitals, etc. There are illnesses at Neisse, and I prefer to leave you both in Berlin until the time when the army assembles than to expose myself to losing you unfortunately and ill-timed by some illness. Farewell my dear; pay my respects to the Queen, my compliments to the great Wilhelm, my friendships to Amélie, my tenderness to Sophie, and tell yourself that I love you with all my heart.
Let me know about Jordan, and write me trifles.
Then we get a complete shift in tone, from a friendly1745 letter by Heinrich about SD's stay at Oranienburg (which AW has just reopened with a big party for their mother, remember), to several biting salvos from Fritz in 1946 . Because the Marwitz letters from February and March 1746 are not there, and I'm really glad Ziebura included them in her biography and thus I could share them with you, there is no transition. Because unless one has read these letters (in combination with Lehndorff's complete diary entry on Marwitz) which start out semi-teasingly and then turn to vicious sarcasm at top speed, it would be a complete mystery as to why fraternal relations have suddenly achieved sub zero temperatures. Quoth Fritz:
We have nothing to reproach each other with, we have the same coldness towards each other; and since you want it so, I'm happy. It is only my intercession for your love affairs which sometimes softens you towards me, when you need it. Besides, the little friendship that you show me on all occasions does not excite me to make new efforts of tenderness in favor of a brother who has so little return for me. This is all I have to say to you this time, assuring you that I am, my dear brother, etc.
And because this is the year for thick, thick sarcasm, the next letter offers more of same:
If you love me, your friendship must be metaphysical, for I have never seen people like that loved, without looking at them, without speaking to them, without giving them the slightest sign of affection. Happy are the people you love, I want to believe it. If you put me in that number, I can assure you that I live in a deep ignorance of the feelings you have for me. I only know your distance, your lukewarmness, and the most perfect indifference that ever was.
Culminating in the next salvo:
Surely I did not expect to receive a letter from you; but for six whole months that you find it appropriate to sulk with me, that you live in the same house without seeing me and talking to me that unless propriety absolutely prevents you from dispensing with it, nothing should surprise me more. I was even less prepared for the project you are forming.
Which is Heinrich's request to be allowed to go on the Grand Tour, excuse me, on a military research project with foreign fortresses and armies. If I may reconstruct the 1746 timeline:
February/March 1746: 19 years old Heinrich is in love with Marwitz the hot page, Fritz may or may not be in lust with him as well but at the very least behaves like he is, tells Heinrich Marwitz is a cheating gonorhea ridden no good flirt, makes fun of Heinrich's crush in general and ends up using the "I was only joking!" excuse. According to Lehndorff a decade later, then Marwitz gets fired as a page, at Heinrich's pleadings rehired as a guard, and some time later Heinrich breaks up with Marwitz accusing him of dishonesty. Meanwhile, according to the earlier Fritz letter, he doesn't talk to Big Brother for the next six months, until the Grand Tour/Military Research Project Abroad business, which is promptly declined with more sarcasm.
(What I find fascinating: is he actually insulted that Heinrich gives him the silent treatment and doesn't love him for this whole interlude, or is he just pretending to be?)
Not in the Trier archive: the subsequent AW/Fritz argument about Heinrich's behaviour at the Spandau regiment which had Fritz accusing AW of being blindly prejudiced in favor of younger brother and idolizing him, whereas he, Fritz, could see through Heinrich. That certainty of seeing through the other appears to be mutual, though, given that when AW and Heinrich start their RPG in the early 50s, there seems to have been no question as to which of them is able to play Fritz.
(This is all the more remarkable because at this point Heinrich may have had a few early war experiences in the second Silesian War and done quite well there, but then so had AW, he was older, and he was the one who would in all likelihood become the next King of Prussia. So why doesn't he play the role of the King in that RPG?)
Also happening in the early 50s: Friedrich demands Heinrich gets married, Heinrich eventually submits. (This leads to a Fritzian letter on the note of "glad you see sense, you'll be able to pay some of your debts with your wife's dowry".)
Re: The Heinrich Letters - Our Younger Days
Date: 2020-01-11 09:13 pm (UTC)You're welcome! I'm delighted that my coding skills have finally come in handy for other people, and not just my personal curiosity about our word count or 46 years of Fritz's movements. :P
The only complaint I have is directed against the Trier archive itself, which claims to be complete but as we've already found out in the past is really not.
I'm not certain it does claim that. I know I presented it that way initially, but that was in early days when I was much more ignorant. (We've all come a long way since then.) It certainly doesn't claim the political correspondence is complete, since that stops in 1782, and two more volumes have been published since then.
the Trier archive is based on a late 19th century works of Fritz edition, right?
Worse: mid 19th century. 1846-1856. Preuss was the compiler and editor. Some things, like the bulk of the Fredersdorf letters and the orgasm poem, weren't even available at the time.
If so, he got cured quickly of it by Big Bro, not to mention that he imprinted on Fritz' taste in literature for a life time.)
Interesting: Fritz might not have been playing lightside Dad here, but actually Wilhelmine. In Catt's memoirs, he credits Wilhelmine with teaching him to love 1) reading, and 2) work, and says she changed his life for the better. Again and again, you can see Fritz doing what was done to him with the best of intentions. Sometimes with the worst of intentions. But sometimes best.
(What I find fascinating: is he actually insulted that Heinrich gives him the silent treatment and doesn't love him for this whole interlude, or is he just pretending to be?)
Fritz? If Heinrich really was ignoring him and he wasn't just claiming that Heinrich was? Armchair psychology here, but I have to go with genuinely insulted. Fritz was the needy type. [ETA: Or as Wilhelmine put it, "I have always told you the King is very sensitive."]
So why doesn't he play the role of the King in that RPG?
That's an excellent question, now that you mention it. They must have had a realistic take on their respective strengths and weaknesses, i.e. which one was l'autre moi-meme.
Speaking of which! Remember MacDonogh? Winner of the Unreliable Biographer of the Decade award? He actually says "l'autre moi-meme" was Henricus Minor, not Henricus Major.
Which made me super curious to see the original context. I suppose the citation is in a Ziebura book you've returned to the library?
Friedrich demands Heinrich gets married, Heinrich eventually submits.
Is it true that this was the condition for releasing him from house arrest, i.e. eerie roleplay?
Re: The Heinrich Letters - Our Younger Days
Date: 2020-01-12 06:50 am (UTC)Ahhh, okay, that explains it. Of course the Marwitz letters won't make the cut under these circumstances.
Fritz might not have been playing lightside Dad here, but actually Wilhelmine.
Good point. Especially since Dad was all about the work, but anti reading (other than religious, history and economic reading), and the younger brothers' teachers aware of that (and not wanting to get beaten like the Crown Prince teachers), which is why AW and the four years younger Heinrich were on the same level of education before Fritz took over.
Fritz? If Heinrich really was ignoring him and he wasn't just claiming that Heinrich was? Armchair psychology here, but I have to go with genuinely insulted.
So basically "here I am, having taken the trouble to make sure you got the education for free which I had to fight and got beaten for, telling you for your own good that your crush is a slut, and how do you repay me? By sulking - btw, love that he keeps using that word - and ignoring me! How dare you."
Young Heinrich, though, seems to have concluded he'd hit on a winning "how to annoy Fritz efficiently" strategy there, because decades later, he's still practicing it whenever they have a bust up. As in the aftermath of the 7 Years War, when things after the heart warming triple sibling Amalie-Fritz-Heinrich handholding at the victory party quickly detoriate, because, as far as I can tell, the following happens:
October 1763: August III of Poland and Saxony dies. (Fritz to Heinrich: "He never could do anything right, this is most inconvenient.") Poland being a kingdom where the Poles get to vote for their King, several candidates are named. Heinrich - whose civilians considerate behavior has just made him popular with the Saxons, and who has demonstrated military talent against a superior foe - is one of them. Considering Catherine is backing Poniatowski and considering the recent war has demonstrated that peace with Russia is rather essential for Prussia, Fritz absolutely forbids it. Now, one of my biographies has said Heinrich didn't find out he was a candidate until later, but another points out that Lehndorff - by no means a political insider - has heard rumors that Heinrich is a candidate (at a point where Heinrich is in Rheinsberg and Lehndorff is not, so he's not heard it from his bff). Now, there's a sound political reason (peace with Russia) for not going that route, but a suspicous mind could also conclude that Fritz isn't too keen on having his military competent resentment filled younger brother next door as a fellow monarch, who as King of Poland would undoubtedly feel obliged to actually work for Poland, not Prussia. Be that as it may, it's time for the big revue in Spandau again, and this happens:
Heinrich: Not coming. I'm staying in Rheinsberg.
Fritz: You what?
Heinrich: Staying in Rheinsberg. My regiment can parade in front of you without me.
Fritz: If you don't show up in Spandau to salute me in front of your regiment, you can damn well stay away.
Heinrich: Is that supposed to be a threat or an incentive?
One year of fraternal silence: *ensues*
(Lehndorff: All right-thinking men must regret this fallout between two great princes, woe!)
Heinrich's private lifle: Is a disaster, as per usual. Expensive boyfriend Kalkreuther becomes ex boyfriend Kalkreuther, not without that awful last attempt at keeping favour by incriminating Mina. New boyfriend Kaphengst is even more expensive.
Fritz: You know what to do.
Heinrich: Shows up for the next Spandau revue. Saluting Fritz in front of his regiment.
Lehndorff, in his diary, only slightly paraphrased: relations are still somewhat tense between the King and the Prince, but at least they're talking again, phew. Also, the King has sent the Prince a gift. His portrait in a snuff box framed with diamonds. Not sure how the Prince has taken that.
Speaking of which! Remember MacDonogh? Winner of the Unreliable Biographer of the Decade award? He actually says "l'autre moi-meme" was Henricus Minor, not Henricus Major.
Which made me super curious to see the original context. I suppose the citation is in a Ziebura book you've returned to the library?
Indeed, but I remember the context in which she says Fritz first used the term, to wit: mid 7 Years War, - "I can't be here, but my other self will be" re: some front line. Which would make no sense for young Henricus Minor. I also don't recall Fritz after Henricus Minor's death saying anything of that nature in the letters or remembered statements that I've read. A lot of praise for him and a lot about how much he loved him as if Henricus Minor had been his own son, but definitely no "he was my other self". The only direct comparison to someone else I recall is from the letter to Ulrilke you've quoted, and there Minor gets compared to AW (minus the bad qualities), not Fritz.
Is it true that this was the condition for releasing him from house arrest, i.e. eerie roleplay?
Not deducable from the letters; what I recall from the returned biographies is that Heinrich wasn't allowed freedom of residence until he'd agreed to the marriage. For example, in theory Fritz had given him Rheinsberg but in practice he wasn't allowed to go there, nor was he allowed to go anywhere between Potsdam and Berlin where the King didn't say he should reside. Hence him telling Lehndorff that the one good thing about being a married man was that he had the freedom to be a Berliner now. (This was before he discovered Rheinsberg for himself.)
Re: The Heinrich Letters - Our Younger Days
Date: 2020-01-12 09:18 pm (UTC)I mean, none of that *doesn't* sound like Fritz to me.
Heinrich: Is that supposed to be a threat or an incentive?
Heinrich: Shows up for the next Spandau revue. Saluting Fritz in front of his regiment.
AHAHAHA. OMG, those two. I await your hateship fic eagerly.
"I can't be here, but my other self will be" re: some front line. Which would make no sense for young Henricus Minor.
Yep, that checks out. This reminds me of the time MacDonogh said EC had a miscarriage, when I'm convinced he's thinking of the next generation EC. I should start keeping a list of corrigenda.
Heinrich wasn't allowed freedom of residence until he'd agreed to the marriage
Ahh, okay. Thanks.
Re: The Heinrich Letters - Our Younger Days
Date: 2020-01-14 08:56 pm (UTC)Heeeee.
(I
Heeeee.
<i>(I <Lehndorff: All right-thinking men must regret this fallout between two great princes, woe!)</i>
I <3 you Lehndorff <33333333
<i>Fritz: You know what to do.
Heinrich: Shows up for the next Spandau revue. Saluting Fritz in front of his regiment.</i>
AHAHAHAHA OMG. This is going to be in the hateship fic, right? [and then I looked at mildred's reply and she had the same reaction, ha!]
<i>Also, the King has sent the Prince a gift. His portrait in a snuff box framed with diamonds. Not sure how the Prince has taken that.</i>
Lehndorff is great for everything, omg.
Re: The Heinrich Letters - Our Younger Days
Date: 2020-01-14 08:55 pm (UTC)Man, Wilhelmine is my hero.
Re: The Heinrich Letters - Our Younger Days
Date: 2020-01-11 10:20 pm (UTC)Oh, this may be because many of the politically relevant letters to Heinrich, AW, and Ulrike are in the
46 VOLUMES OFpolitical correspondence rather than the personal. For instance, the "none of his father's bad qualities" letter to Ulrike about Henricus Minor's death is in the political correspondence.Unfortunately, only about half the political correspondence has been converted to a text format that could be fed into Google Translate. The other half is scans only, and not scans that would be easy to OCR either (i.e. some of it is single-column and some double-column). I'm also still mad about it ending in 1782, the subsequent two volumes going up to 1783 not being digitized, and the remaining 3 years still unpublished.
Re: The Heinrich Letters - Our Younger Days
Date: 2020-01-14 08:55 pm (UTC)Yes! Thank you mildred! :D
Many both the AW-Fritz and Heinrich-Fritz letters that Ziebura quotes in her various biographies are not included.
Man, I'm really bummed about this -- I was really looking forward to seeing the Heinrich and AW letters. Oh well!
and tell yourself that I love you with all my heart.
This is really sweet!
we have the same coldness towards each other; and since you want it so, I'm happy.
Oooooooof. Wow!
It is only my intercession for your love affairs which sometimes softens you towards me, when you need it.
HAHAHAHAHA yeeeeeah.
The Heinrich Letters - War Time
Date: 2020-01-10 02:54 pm (UTC)In a word, Fortune returned to me; but send me the best scissors you can find, so I can cut off her wings. Please be so kind as to communicate all this news to dear Seydlitz, who, I am sure, takes a sincere part in it. Add on my part that I forbid him to go out before his wounds are healed, and that he must not ride a horse without having the permission of the (medical) Faculty.
Something which also strikes me are the repeated references to other siblings, as in:
My sister Amélie arrived here, which made me very happy; she will be kind enough to stay a week or so here.
(This is why the Hohenzollern are so interestingly messed up. He did want and need the company of those siblings, the more so the older he got, it seems.)
But then AW dies, and on 25th Juni 1757, we get the terrible horrible no good "Just think of that that means to meeeee!" letter to Heinrich about that, which I don't have to quote again. When years later Henricus Minor dies and Fritz writes to Heinrich about that, I really crossed my fingers in the hope he would not, like he did to Ulrike, use the "had all his father's good qualities without the bad ones" sentence. Thankfully, he didn't. Back to 1757: the subsequent Fritzian letters are a bit better, though I agree with Mildred that Fritz is talking to himself as as well as to Heinrich when he writes:
You lost a brother; but you have a whole family that loves you, and you have to keep yourself for them. So do, please, whatever you can imagine best, not to console you, but to distract yourself. I am truly in pain for you, and I am afraid that this sorrow will alter your days, and entirely ruin the little health that you have. I am not writing business to you, because my grimoire will be moreover quite filled with it. Tell me, please, what you know about my sister from Baireuth; I haven't heard from her for a long time.
I've quoted from Heinrich's reply on earlier occasions already, but since it's one of the few letters where he's not politely restrained in the Trier correspondance, here we go again. (Reminder: he's actually in Franconia and thus has visited Wilhelmine in Bayreuth.)
I groaned at the misunderstanding that was between you and my brother. Your renewed reminding me of it aggravates my sorrows; but respect and pain impose silence on me, so that I cannot answer you anything on this subject. My wound will last, while my brother rests safe from misfortune. If he still lived, I would gladly take my days off to wipe out the number of those where you were mad at him. (...)
My sister from Baireuth is near her ending. She cannot write. I fear that she will not recover from this illness. She still is ignorant of my brother's death, and it is feared that this news will cause the little hope that one has of her recovery to vanish.
That does it. Fritz sounds positively pleading now:
We have enough foreign enemies without our family wanting to tear itself apart. I hope that you do my feelings enough justice to not regard me as an unnatural brother or relative. It is now a question, my dear brother, of preserving the State, and of making use of all imaginable means to defend ourselves against our enemies. What you tell me about my sister from Baireuth makes me tremble; she is, after our worthy mother, whom I have most dearly cherished in the world; she is a sister who has my heart and all my confidence, and whose character could not be paid for by all the crowns of the universe. I have been brought up with her since my childhood; so you can count on the fact that between us two, these indissoluble bonds of tenderness and attachment for life reign, which all other bonds and the disproportion of age can never equal. May Heaven give that I perish before her, and that this last blow does not take the life without which I am truly lost (...) If you can, I beg you to tell my dear Sister of Baireuth on my behalf all that the warmest and most tender friendship can inspire in you.
Whether or not Heinrich had meant his "she'll die of the AW news" as an emotional retaliation, he seems to have softened up at that a bit, because just a month later, we get this:
11. September 1758
I give you a thousand thanks for the pleasant day you gave me yesterday. Except for the moment when I saw my sister Amélie, nothing has happened to me for six months that has given me so much pleasure.
Now I seem to remember Catt mentioned Fritz spending a day with Heinrich post AW death which he described to Catt as a good if tearful one, and I was a bit sceptical, but here we have actually back up. At least from Fritz' pov. Of course, ten days later, Fritz is back to fretting about Wilhelmine:
21. September
My dear brother,
We share the Elbe; you have the left bank, me the right; we just have to follow our project. You cannot try impossible things; but I rely on you to succeed in the doable. There is nothing new on this side.
Do not take away from me, I implore you, hope, which is the only resource of the poor. Think that I was born and raised with my sister from Baireuth, that these first attachments are indissoluble, that between us the keenest tenderness has never received the least alteration, that we have separate bodies, but that we have one soul. Think that, after having wiped away so many kinds of misfortunes capable of disgusting me with life, there is only one blow left for me to anticipate which will make life truly unbearable. This, my dear brother, is the bottom of my heart, and I paint for you only a part of the dismal ideas which reign there. My thoughts are so dark today that you will not find it bad that I enclose them in myself.
And I really wish we had some reply letters preserved, which the Fritz letters mention, but we don't, at least not in the Trier archive. What Heinrich felt about all this "I can't live without Wilhelmine!" in the year of AW's death, I have no idea about. I mean, I know he was venting to Ferdinand about Fritz' behavior in the AW matter and also utterly convinced that Fritz would do it to him as well if he gave him the slightest opening for it, but how he felt about Wilhelmine - and Fritz' feelings for her - I have no idea. As late as October and pre battle of Hochkirch, Fritz is still writing:
I receive, heaven be praised! letters from Baireuth that give me hope. There, my dear brother, is a ray of sunshine through a thick cloud. I confess that hope gives me pleasure, and that if I do not find perfect consolation in it, at least I enjoy the illusion as long as it lasts.
It doesn't last long, as we know. On to less angsty things. There's the Mafia don letter about Seckendorff which Mildred quoted already:
My dear brother,
I saw our two nephews in Torgau, and I must tell you that I found the elder greatly changed to his advantage, and the younger charming. (The younger is Henricus Minor, his favourite.)
I'm not talking to you about the roads or the horses, but certainly this trade is not a pleasure trip. I forgot to tell you, my dear brother, that it would be good to have old Seckendorff kidnapped; we could take him straight to Magdeburg. He is the architect of all the dangerous projects of our enemies; he is currently at their service, and if it is not other thing, that will facilitate the ransom of Prince Maurice. Adieu, dear brother; I kiss you.
Yes, you guys are definitely mobsters. Though I can see why neither brother made it into the mobster AU fanfiction. In a Mafia movie, there is no way Heinrich wouldn't attempt a coup at some point and would duly be killed.
Re: The Heinrich Letters - War Time
Date: 2020-01-11 09:25 pm (UTC)What always surprises me is that Fritz puts SD before Wilhelmine. I know he adored his mother, but I genuinely thought he was closer to Wilhelmine. Maybe SD's recent death has left a gaping maternal hole that's still fresh?
Mafia: I laughed so hard, you have no idea. The author of said fic says that she got the idea because there's very little difference between mobsters and monarchs except that monarchs get to legalize their actions. Michael Corleone's inability to walk away from power and ability to rationalize his ruthlessness always reminded me of Fritz, for instance. (See also: Fritz imo not needing an abusive childhood to be "Frederick the Great" in nearly identical ways.)
In a Mafia movie, there is no way Heinrich wouldn't attempt a coup at some point and would duly be killed.
SO TRUE. Damn, now I want a proper Mafia fic/movie based on the Hohenzollerns.
Re: The Heinrich Letters - War Time
Date: 2020-01-12 05:30 am (UTC)He's consistent about it at that point in time, too. As you'll recall, one of the "live for me!" letters to Wilhelmine in that year contains the sentence "remember that of all my living family you are the one I love best" etc.
I know he adored his mother, but I genuinely thought he was closer to Wilhelmine. Maybe SD's recent death has left a gaping maternal hole that's still fresh?
That, and he may be following social norms at least in writing. Loving your parents first and foremost, then your siblings, was the expectation. Moreover, "love" and "am closest to" are two different things. I haven't read anywhere that he describes himself and SD as one soul in two bodies, for starters. Light side Norman Bates, he's not.
Also, I don't doubt that SD after FW's death was the perfect mother for Fritz. (Not for everyone else, ask Amalie, but since Heinrich and AW went out of their way to please her, the boys at least are pretty consistent in adoring her.) With no more marital warfare and a King who made damm sure that she, and not his wife, was treated as the first lady of the country, with all the cultural pleasantries she could ever want she was undoubtedly happy, and I don't think she minded that Fritz was careful to keep her from any political power. I never had the impression that SD cared for actual politics, either interior or exterior; her being so set on the English marriage project was because she wanted Fritz as a Hannover and Wilhelmine to live the life she'd wanted, not because she ever thought through the meaning of a Prussia-Britain alliance. So she was happy, and mothered Fritz in the way he wanted to be mothered, by caring about his shirts and not his politics and absollutely taking his side in any family conflict. (Read: during the enstrangement years with Wilhelmine, but also with the younger sibs. Not a chance of SD sabotaging Fritz in his educational programm the way she fought with FW, or of her pleading to let Heinrich go on the Grand Tour, for example.)
Incidentally, it's that makes me pretty sure the reason why there's no report of any Fritz harshness on Amalie after her big Mom criticism at Wusterhausen, why, on the contrary, Lehndorff reports he's extra nice to her a week later when she's still in the doldrums with Heinrich, is that none of the other siblings, Heinrich included, told Fritz what Amalie had said. No telling tales to Big Bro, it seems. (It's interesting that Ulrike doesn't, either, since she had no trouble in the early 1740s to send Erlangen newspaper cliippings to Fritz to point out there's some Franconian journalist getting published in Bayreuth territory who dares to critisize him, and of course along with SD came down on Wilhelmine at once for the MT meeting. But perhaps telling on Big Sister - who most of the time was Prefered Sister - and telling on littlest sister are two different things in her eyes.)
there's very little difference between mobsters and monarchs except that monarchs get to legalize their actions.
Quite. Given that Horace Walpole famously called Fritz, Joseph & MT as well as Catherine "the most shameless and successful band of robbers" for the Polish partitioning, their contemporaries saw the point, too. (Though again: Walpole, son of a former British PM, sat in a glass house there. Didn't Britain "aquire" India at that point of time, Walpole?)
Fritz as Michael Corleone - it won't surprise you that "I've written fanfiction about Corleone sibling relationships. I see the parallels, btw. You can just about squeeze AW into a Corleone modelled context as some amalgan of Sonny and Fredo; to cast him solely as Fredo would be wrong, because no matter how much or little he's to blame for the Zittau disaster, he never betrayed Fritz, and public shaming is the opposite of public cover up and secret killing. But Heinrich is a real problem, because as we agree the rules of Mafia movies demand a younger brother filled with resentment and not lacking ability or support from the men would need to try a coup. In historical context, of course, a coup would have been impossible; Catherine could succeed with hers because her husband had given a great many people the impression that he prioritized another country's interest over that of theirs and didn't care for Russia. Whereas Fritz was solidly supported both within the army and by the population. I suppose you could imagine a scenario where Heinrich makes his move directly after Kunersdorf, exploiting Fritz' depression and suicidalness, as well as everyone's shock about the lost battle. And the fact that Fritz at that point had written a last will naming Heinrich regent in the case of his death. But that's about the only historically plausible point in time where I could see a coup succeeding. And that's still just in terms of mechanics, not psychology, because part of the passionate hateship was that I'm not sure Heinrich could have willed himself to actually kill Fritz (anymore than Fritz had been willing to kill FW).
Ha! It just occured to me there's one way you can squeeze Heinrich into a Mafia AU, and that's genderbending, if you make him female. Then the strict patriarchal structures - at least if it's a traditional pre present day AU - prevent him/her from ever getting into a Trusted Lieutenant/General position, and the socialisation is completely different to start with. In which case Heinrich ends up as Connie Corleone, and Connie's dysfunctional relationshp with Michael is of course at the heart of my Godfather story.
Re: The Heinrich Letters - War Time
Date: 2020-01-12 09:16 pm (UTC)Very true. And if you do distinguish between "love" and "close to"--and I'm not sure I do, but I can see where other people might--then it makes perfect sense.
(Though again: Walpole, son of a former British PM, sat in a glass house there. Didn't Britain "aquire" India at that point of time, Walpole?)
It has been pointed out that the only thing Fritz did that was so shocking was do to white people close to home what everyone considered unremarkable when done overseas to non-white people.
Fritz as Michael Corleone - it won't surprise you that "I've written fanfiction about Corleone sibling relationships.
It won't indeed, because I had already read it and left kudos!
Agree re Fritz, Heinrich, and coups. Come think of it, poisoning Fritz with an opiate overdose would be particularly evil...
A sufficiently motivated Heinrich could make this look like suicide, is what I'm saying.
Oh, ha. Remember when I was half-jokingly wondering what sibling Glasow was hitting on? AU where it was Heinrich, and Glasow was trying to make his boyfriend regent.
Hmm, the timing. Lehndorff's entry about the Glasow scandal is from April 1757. Kolin, when Fritz starts being suicidal, is June 1757. The letter to Wilhelmine is September. Unless he was also talking suicide before that and I've missed it.
This isn't actually more chronological fudging than I did for "Pulvis et Umbra," where I moved around events from February through June of 1747 as needed for the story.
Genderbent Heinrich is also evil in a different way. Especially since your line "Michael, as a woman, given no opportunity to use that cold relentless mind of his for anything but dinner calculations, would have committed suicide" has always stuck with me.
Re: The Heinrich Letters - War Time
Date: 2020-01-13 03:33 am (UTC)Considering Amalie was the sibling who sort of lived with or near Fritz at least part of the time in the later decades, I wasn‘t surprised that there aren‘t many letters preserved (or at least available, not necessarily the same thing), but what there is does allow us a glimpse at Fritz and his younger siblings (plural, because there are repeated comments on Heinrich, not to mention that Amalie witnessed AW‘s death), especially the 7 Years War letters. First, there‘s a shared one to Amalie and Charlotte at the same time, from very early in the war, Fritz is about to take Prague:
My dear sisters,
I received your letters in the most violent crisis, which prevented me from answering you earlier. I am writing to both of you, not having time to write more than one letter. We have now sketched the work here; it will take a few more knocking shots to complete it. My brother Heinrich has done wonders, and has distinguished himself beyond what I can say; my two other brothers were not at all in the battle; they found themselves in Marshal Keith's army. We have lost the worthy Marshal Schwerin and many brave officers. I have lost friends whom I will mourn all my life; finally, my dear sisters, if happiness favors us now, we will succeed. All the generality, and, according to the say of the deserters, sixty thousand men are confined in Prague; I undertake to induce them to make themselves prisoners of war. It's a terrible business; it takes luck to succeed. My dear Lottine, Duchess of Braunschweig, and you, my dear sister the Abbess, I embrace you both with all my heart.
Here is a letter for our dear mother.
If the year 1758 was awful for Fritz, it was terrible to Amalie, too, who was witness to two of the family deaths, SD and AW both. We know from Lehndorff‘s diary about the arguments with her mother in the weeks before SD‘s death (no food for Amalie from SD‘s kitchen anymore, etc.), but we also know that in the days immediately before the death they‘d reconciled and Amalie was at her mother‘s side when SD died. Her letters to Fritz on this of course do not mention the earlier arguments. Here‘s what she writes and what he replies:
My dearest brother,
I find myself again in the sad situation of increasing your worries. The Queen's weakness always gets worse; she has a little fever every evening; last night, her mind began to wonder, and she didn't stop talking until the morning. I have already had the honor of telling you about the swelling of her legs; the body also begins to grow, and even much, which makes me fear it is dropsy. Her strength diminishes, so to speak, visibly, and the whole state of her health threatens ruin. We can no longer flatter ourselves, my dear brother, that it is possible to keep her with us. Prepare, please, for this awful blow; it will come sooner than we think; it is an inevitable misfortune, which is advancing with great strides. I tried to delude myself for a long time; but now I have lost all hope, and all those who see and surround her are in the same case. I am in despair, my dear brother, to write you such news; my heart is heavy, but I am forced to. Deign to continue honoring me with your memory, this is the only consolation that remains to me, and be persuaded of the most submissive attachment and respect with which I will not cease to be, my very dear brother, etc.
My dearest brother,
I am in despair to write to you that we no longer have a mother. The Queen’s life has just expired. Yesterday evening, feeling very weak, she ordered me to thank you for all the friendship you had shown her; that she would die grateful, and that she would take her tenderness for you to the grave. She also said to me that she hoped that you would be true to this friendship with her beyond her death, by taking care of her court and her servants; that she would die with this confidence that you would not abandon them. I was obliged to promise her that I would write it to you immediately. I can't tell you more; seized and altered as I am, it is almost impossible for me to hold the pen. I will write all the circumstances tomorrow, and commend myself to the honor of your gracious protection, my very dear brother, etc.
My dear sister,
All misfortunes overwhelm me at the same time. O my dear mother! O good God, I will no longer have the consolation of seeing you! O God, O God, what a fatality for me! I'm more dead than alive. I received a letter from the reigning queen, which tells me all this. Perhaps heaven has taken away our dear mother so that she does not see the misfortunes of our house. My dear sister, I am unable to tell you more.
I kiss you with all my heart.
Mildred, the „letter from the reigning queen“ was EC‘s letter not marked as a mourning letter, right?
Now, the Ziebura biographies mention that Amalie wrote to Fritz about AW‘s death, the second family death she attended within the space of months, but there are in fact two letters at Trier, one written immediately after the event itself and one somewhat later. The replies from Fritz aren‘t there.
My dearest brother,
my brother is no longer living; death, a dreadful death has just taken him away from us. A suffocative catarrh ripped him from this world. I cry for a brother, I grieve for a friend. Death was most painful. I did not leave him until the last moment. That is all I can tell you in such a cruel and sensitive moment. I have the honor to be, my very dear brother, etc.
My dearest brother,
It seems that nothing interests as much as knowing the last circumstances of the life of a person whom one has loved dearly, and of whom one bitterly mourns the loss. This is why, my dear brother, I have already had the honor to warn you in one of my letters about the details that you ask me for. But to show you my obedience, I will tell you again. Twenty-three hours of suffering killed my brother. He retained all his presence of mind; he only lost feeling about half an hour before his death. At the height of his anxieties, ready to suffocate at any moment, he made no complaint; his soul was calm in the midst of his pains; resigned to the will of the Supreme Being, he invoked this God who alone could help him. The minister, having made the prayer, asked him several questions to which, not being able to speak any more, he replied with signs and frightful groans which I hope demonstrated the interior satisfaction which he felt from the consolations he had just heard. Finally, this brother in whose place I would have liked to die died. Cruel separation! I was there, I saw it, and I lost him forever. Shortly before he fell ill again, he ordered that he wanted his body to be opened, which was done the next day; the doctors gave me in writing the reasons they suppose to be the cause of his death. This is the paper that I have the honor to send you. I plan to leave for Schwedt tomorrow, to see my sister, to mourn my misfortunes, and to beg Heaven to stop its anger. Yes, we all invoke it for the preservation of your days; live, be happy, my dear brother, do not give in too much to your affliction, think of your health, and be persuaded of the tender attachment with which I have the honor to be, my very dear brother, etc.
As I said, the direct replies from Fritz aren‘t there, but some later letters, including one from September that refers to the day visit he thanked Heinrich for in the Heinrich correspondance:
I begin to calm down; it is not yet a rest assured, but I am in the situation of the sea after a strong storm: the waves are still moved, although the great movements have subsided. I found my brother Heinrich very well; I did not speak of any unfortunate matter. You understand me. The wound is too new for the pain to be aroused by touching it. We beat here a certain Loudon, who fancies himself a Fabius Maximus, who, to well deserve this title, let himself be beat without this bothering him. Here, you would say, a great feat! What do you want, my dear sister? it is a farce after the tragedy. I can only speak to you about events. We take care of it all day long, and things that strike the senses leave more impression on them than reflections. I'm afraid I have already bored you too much. Deign to forgive me, and may the friendship which you show me make you bear my ramblings in favor of the feelings and tenderness with which I am, my very dear sister, etc
No letter post Wilhelmine‘s death, but that may be because he actually ordered Amalie to him post Hochkirch & Wilhelmine as we know from Lehndorff. Lastly, there‘s a 1759 letter:
My dear sister,
Your letter served me as a tonic to strengthen myself against the dangers that surround me. I'm sorry to know you have a fever. I flatter myself that it will only be a slight attack of a temporary illness, which will strengthen your health. Tomorrow we cross the Elbe and march for Görlitz, where we will be on the 8th, to be the 13th in order to confront Loudon, in Silesia. Heaven grant that this much-desired peace will come, even if it is only in the middle of summer! Maybe this month I will hear from you again. If the Russians get involved, our correspondence will be intercepted from the beginning of July. God be conducive to us! I took leave of my brother Heinrich; he accomplishes deeds above and beyond. I can say that I really love him, and that I am grateful to him for his good will. I rely on him. He has spirit and ability, two things very rare to find, and much sought after in present times. Farewell, my angel; forgive me if I don't write you longer; but I am tired, and I have a huge task to accomplish. Kindly receive assurances of the tenderness with which I am, my dear sister, etc.
Re: The Heinrich Letters - War Time
Date: 2020-01-13 09:59 pm (UTC)Well, that's according to some unsourced website talking about Eichel that I probably couldn't find again if I tried, but if they're correct, then, yes, it would be the same letter. It does sound at least like she was the first to inform him.
Thank you so much for the letter excerpts! As royal librarian, I'm going to see if it's at all feasible to fetch the sibling political correspondence letters that have been converted to text.
Re: The Heinrich Letters - War Time
Date: 2020-01-14 09:00 pm (UTC)Re: The Heinrich Letters - War Time
Date: 2020-01-13 08:36 am (UTC)Verily. The Prussian Man's burden?
It won't indeed, because I had already read it and left kudos!
Aw, thank you.
A sufficiently motivated Heinrich could make this look like suicide, is what I'm saying.
Now I'm imagining an Elizabethan playwright - or for that matter good old Schiller, who had no trouble altering history so Jeanne d'Arc dies in battle, not on the stake - let lose and giving Heinrich a "Should I avenge AW, stop a war and kill den einzigen Godbrother, yes or no?" monologue. And Generations of school children having to write essays about all the subjects raised:
"The death of August Wilhelm and the sacrifice of Iphigenia. Heinrich and Clytaimnestra naming their motives. Are they telling the truth or deluding themselves? Compare."
"Loyalty in war time versus tyrannicide. Heinrich does not just contemplate fratricide but the betrayal of his sworn oath as an officer of the Prussian army at a time the ccountry is at war. Does the prospect of ending the war justify Breaking this oath? Can Heinrich claim preservation of the Nation supercedes loyalty to his commander? Does tyrannicide apply when Friedrich is an enlightened Monarch? Discuss."
"How honest about his motives is Heinrich, even to himself? Henri de Catt, who functions as a Greek Chorus in the play, later calls him "envious, scheming wretch" whose "jealousy of the great Friedrich, whose lofty grace he never could achieve" was his true motivation. Is he right? Discuss."
A movie scriptwriter would not bother with a monologues and motivations. Heinrich is a younger brother of a powerful king with issues about his older brother. What purpose does he serve in the character cast if not to scheme and be defeated? And there would be no problem reversing the order of the dates so Glasow can act on Heinrich's behalf. As for a playwright, I predict the following:
1.) Classical version. Glasow is a minor villain who gets dispensed with easily ("Off with his head; so much for Glasow") while the main showdown is between the Brothers.
2.) Revisionist 20th century and onwards Version, first written by Brecht: Glasow is the hero, who starts out as a naive common man full of ideals who gets caught up in the psycho power game between two royal brothers. He first gets disillusioned by Fritz and too late realises Heinrich is not much better, and that he was but a tool and success would not have brought a free Prussia but just a change of tyrant. In the final scene, the actor playing Glasow removes his historical coat and adresses the audience, calling for revolution by the people, since there is no such thing as reformation from above and rulers fancying themselves enlightened monarchs can never be trusted.
(21st century essay theme: "Is Brecht's depiction of Heinrich's and Friedrich's homosexuality as part of their exploitation of the working man homophobic? Discuss.")
Genderbent Heinrich is also evil in a different way.
Well, yes. (Though would make Lehndorff's descendant's life easier, considering they tried to change all the il and lui into elle early into the diaries.) My beta back then wrote "ouch!" beneath that line and said that other than "Because Sonny died for Connie, and his death took any chance Michael had not to live their father's life with it" it was the most haunting line of the Story for her, so I'm glad to hear it works for you this way, too!
Re: The Heinrich Letters - War Time
Date: 2020-01-13 10:05 pm (UTC)Ahahaha. Sounds about right. I mean, we can't let our friend FS carry all the burdens, and his wife, being a WOMAN, sure isn't in a position to help! Prussians to the rescue.
The rest: Wow, just wow. This fandom keeps delivering in new and surprising ways! We now have literature course materials on a play that never existed about an event that didn't happen! I mean, there's an outside chance that Glasow did try to poison Fritz and that he was hoping for Heinrich's gratitude, but there's no way Heinrich was involved.
I love the Classical parallels! Clytemnestra and Iphigenia, wow. Henri de Catt as chorus, OMMGG!! Brilliance, from beginning to end.
success would not have brought a free Prussia but just a change of tyrant
I mean, we've seen Fritz without power and Fritz with power, we've seen Heinrich without power...we haven't seen Heinrich with power, but I'm with Tolkien that handing anyone the Ring of Power and telling them to use it isn't a good idea. "Other self" and all that. Moderately less abusive childhood works in his favor, but that's about it.
Though would make Lehndorff's descendant's life easier, considering they tried to change all the il and lui into elle early into the diaries.)
*snort*
Re: The Heinrich Letters - War Time
Date: 2020-01-14 09:03 pm (UTC)Does the prospect of ending the war justify Breaking this oath? Can Heinrich claim preservation of the Nation supercedes loyalty to his commander? Does tyrannicide apply when Friedrich is an enlightened Monarch? Discuss."
I love this. :D
"How honest about his motives is Heinrich, even to himself? Henri de Catt, who functions as a Greek Chorus in the play, later calls him "envious, scheming wretch" whose "jealousy of the great Friedrich, whose lofty grace he never could achieve" was his true motivation. Is he right? Discuss."
This is totally amazing. I now want ALL the AU Schiller :D (Also all THIS AU Schiller, lol.)
Who is Catt's analogue in Don Carlos, or does he have one? Count Lerma, maybe? (As a lightside version, of course!)
(I thought briefly about writing you a synopsis of the Verdi opera in which Wilhelmine avenges Fritz's death-by-FW for Yuletide -- but it ran aground not only in my lack of time (which was definitely a thing) but also in the part where I didn't feel at all capable of coming up with the Schiller play which Verdi which would be setting to music, even in broad outline :) And then, of course, you produced something much more wonderful for the prompt, so! :) )
Re: The Heinrich Letters - War Time
Date: 2020-01-14 08:59 pm (UTC)Yeah, I agree with the social norm thing. I mean, even in the 21st century I'd say that it's generally thought of as quite weird to say one doesn't love one's mother as much as or more than any other family member. (I know, I know, present company is immune to that sort of social pressure, but it is still a thing.)
it won't surprise you that I've written fanfiction about Corleone sibling relationships.
Ooooooh! *goes to look*
Re: The Heinrich Letters - War Time
Date: 2020-01-14 08:58 pm (UTC)*nods* Yeah, I find that fascinating.
The 1757 letters are all just heartbreaking <3
The Heinrich Letters - Two Old Men in a New Age
Date: 2020-01-10 02:56 pm (UTC)You ask me, my dear brother, in which countries there have been the most virtues. I believe it was at Sparta, as long as the institution of Lycurgus was followed there, in Rome until after the second Punic War, in England in the time of Queen Elizabeth; and, if you want me to tell you the cause, I attribute it to the frugality of manners. We have seen all the monarchies perverted by wealth, which brings luxury; the worldly goods attract consideration, so everyone believes that money takes the place of merit. We do not care about the choice of means to acquire it, it is who will have the most; from then on mores are perverted, and vices and crimes are overflowing. If I am not mistaken, it was Agesilaus who first introduced gold from Asia to Lacedemon, and from then on the old discipline was altered. In Rome, it was all the money brought there from Spain, Carthage, Macedonia and Syria, which softened Latium, and which perverted the citizens. In England, it was wealth which, in Cromwell's time, flooded Great Britain which introduced a frenzied debauchery and the license of morals.
Fritz, this is, err, an original interpretation of the Puritan republic under Cromwell followed by the Restoration of the Monarchy under Charles II.
In general, for men to be virtuous, they must enjoy a mediocre lot, that they are neither too poor nor too rich; add to that that they occupy themselves, and that work distracts them from the malice and nastiness that idleness would hatch in their brains.There is in the mountains of Silesia a population of about five hundred thousand souls, but laborious and simple in its manners; therefore, in the forty years that I have governed this country, I have only signed one death sentence, having only had one man who deserved to be punished. In all our possessions, which contain five million past souls, it almost never happens that, in a common year, there are more than twelve death sentences. The only crime that I cannot eradicate, and the most common, is that of these unhappy women who kill their children.
I mean, it's not that I don't see reasons for critisizing capitalism, but if a highly successful robber of worldly goods does it... (Sorry, still channelling MT sometimes.)
1780s Fritz is also very much in the misanthropic "it's all meaningless" vein, and he knows best about history. Looks like Heinrich mentioned Cardinal Richelieu in a positive manner. This gets instant disagreement:
I see, my dear brother, that, at whatever cost, you want to raise our species. You say that Cardinal Richelieu made Louis XIII tremble; not only did he make him tremble, but he killed his king's mother in exile and poverty, he had Montmorency and many others beheaded; but such bad deeds can only honor the lives of tigers and wolves. Richelieu was haughty and vengeful, I insist on it, and I refuse him the title of great in all his wickedness; I only grant him the title of enlightened minister when he unites with the Swedes to demean Austrian despotism in Germany.
Historical footnotes here: Maria de' Medici, mother of Louis XIII, did die in exile after having lost a power struggle with Richelieu, but no poverty was involved, and that was the end of a long road; she also was as loving and kind a mother to Louis XIII as SD was to Wilhelmine, much preferring his younger brother Gaston and backing several conspiracies against her older son. As for Richelieu's politics in general, I'd say he was no more or less bloody than Fritz, and also prone to seeing himself justified in the same way. ("I have no enemies but the enemies of the State.") He'd have loved the "first servant of the state" designation, considering he himself did not sit on the throne.
However all these are only minorities; what does it matter to the universe whether Germany is divided between fifty princes, or whether it bends under the scepter of a tyrant? These things are important to us, relative to our small interests; they are indifferent to the mass of the universe; the planets will also revolve around the sun, and so will we, whether we are free or slaves. We also see in history that a perpetual vicissitude changes the destinies of empires: some rise, and others fall; this uninterrupted game represents the same scene with different actors. I am convinced that the ants in your garden in Rheinsberg often go to war, my dear brother, for a grain of millet, and that you have no idea of their famous quarrels. We are these ants, and we imagine that the whole universe must have our eyes on us; what am I saying, the whole universe? the celestial court still, with all the choir of the angels and the saints, are occupied only with reading the gazettes of our nonsense. This is how human vanity feeds on visions, and rises to admire in it the masterpiece of nature.
They keep arguing this point, and much as Fritz strikes the "it all doesn't matter" attitude, I get the impression he secretly is relieved Heinrich argues back that it does matter, there's sense in it all, etc. Even the arguing about historical figures though of course he's convinced he knows best. As ever.
As opposed to the Voltaire correspondance, the letters to Heinrich prove Fritz did take notice there was something going on over seas in the soon to be ex colonies. He thinks it's a bit tricky when the new rebels wants to trade, because on the one hand, yay trade, on the other, Britain is an ally, but as long as he doesn't officially open the harbors but unofficially buys the goods, it's fine.
In the preceding decade, Heinrich is a fan of General Paoli, rebel against the French for Corsican independence, which struck me as typical. (In the 1770s, everyone discovered the Corsicans as the oppressed nation to sympathize with - my guy Boswell wrote his first book on the subject.) When he's finally allowed to go to Paris in 1784 (only five more years until the Revolution!), he reports back on the state of the countryside, which causes Fritz to insightfully comment:
The public in France follows this natural common sense right which sees objects without disguise; but the ministers have many other reflections to make, the main one of which concerns their conservation. The influence of the Queen alarms them and contains them, without counting the exhaustion of the coffers, the little credit of the court in finances, and the strange decline of the army, which is almost reduced to nothing.
Indeed. Mind you, both Fritz and Heinrich are biased against Marie Antoinette for the obvious reason - her marriage to Louis makes it impossible to detach France from its Austria alliance, which the brothers would love to do. Thus, MT's marriage politics still stand in their way years after her death. (Fritz thought she would survive him and writes as much to Heinrich in 1778, saying "women refill their oil, while our lamp burns out empty - Lady Theresia (Dame Therese) will survive me".) Something that is inadvertendly funny is Fritz' insistence, post War of Bavarian Succession, of seeing Joseph as the coming menace who will try to conquer Prussia and all of Europe as soon as he, Fritz, as breathed his last:
The evil that I fear will happen when I am no longer; however, it is my duty to dismiss it or entirely annihilate it, if I can. I fear the close ties which may form over time between the Emperor and Russia; I fear that the great Catherine will allow herself to be deceived by the Emperor without noticing it, and that, by making him take one step after another, he will drag her against us; and I confess that I would like to warn the plans of those who would like to ravage and devastate Prussia, Silesia and the Marches.
Seriously, Fritz, I know you couldn't see Napoleon coming, but still, projecting much? Just because he imitated you by invading Bavaria doesn't mean Joseph wants to conquer Europe. As for him bamboozling Catherine...
Unexpectedly touching: Fritz' reaction to the death of Friederike Luise, aka the sister who got married first of all the siblings, who started out as a spirited girl cheeking FW and calling him "unjust" to his face and ended up frozen into permanent depression and ill health by a rotten husband almost as bad as the Schwedt guy:
My dearest brother,
It is the heartbroken with pain that I write to you today. I have just learned of the death of our poor and unhappy sister in Ansbach. This comes back, my dear brother, to what I have been telling you lately, that what is left of our family is shaking up their sleeves. I have always thought of going to Ansbach to see my poor sister again; I never could find the moment. She was a very good and honest person, whose heart was full of integrity. I confess to you, my dear brother, that this distresses me so much, that I will put off another day to answer you.
Back to Heinrich's 1784 journey to Paris, the holy grail of Hohenzollern travel destinations, longed for and never seen by Fritz:
My dearest brother,
When you are in Paris, my dear brother, a multitude of materials appear under the pen; a prodigiously populated city, an industrious nation, are inexhaustible sources from which one draws a hundred pleasant, interesting and instructive things. In this I find myself very backward, and unable to return the favor to you. Shall I speak to you of my vines, which have produced very poor grapes, of our trees, which the cold strips of their leaves, of my garden, which the cold will force me to abandon shortly? What will I tell you about society? I live as a recluse like the monks of La Trappe, on which you have glanced; I work, I walk, and I don't see anyone. But I talk to the dead by reading their good works, which is better than invoking the manes and talking to the Sorbonne and its evil genius, a use that masonry has put in vogue, and that popular superstition adopted. I beg you, my dear brother, to familiarize yourself a little with the Gallic hermits, so that when you return you can live with your old brother, who no longer cares about the world except by a thread. What a fall to leave Paris, and find yourself in Potsdam, at the home of an old rambler who has already sent part of his big baggage to take the lead for the last trip he has left to make. There, you saw busts, you were presented with operas, you heard famous academicians declaim; here, you will see an old cacochym body, whose memory is almost lost, who will annoy you with used words and the nonsense of his gossip. But bear in mind, however, that this old man loves you more than all the fine ésprits in Paris do. Be convinced of his tender attachment and the high regard with which, etc.
Say what you want, the man can write sad, longing letters. We are a far cry from "apply yourself" or "we're both cold". This is one lonely old man writing to one of the few people he does give a damn about, even if that giving a damn about happened very dysfunctionally.
We've arrived in the last year of Fritz' life:
My dearest brother,
I give you a thousand thanks for the wishes that you deign to make regarding my birth day. I passed it very badly, having had a very strong attack of asthma, and of which I am not yet entirely quit. We have here a M. Mirabeau, whom I do not know; he will come to my house today. As far as I can judge, he is one of those effeminate satirists who write for and against everyone. It is said that this man is going to seek asylum in Russia, from where he can publish his sarcasm with impunity against his homeland.
Not just against his homeland. He'll write a book trashing you all, including Heinrich. BTW, Heinrich was in Paris for the second time when Mirabeau's trashy tell all hit the shelves, and according to Thiébault, who visited, reacted to his being described as an incompetent geezer whose military success was just due to his boyfriend Kalkreuth and who was utterly small minded thusly: "For better or worse, I am a historical figure. If Mirabeau's judgment on me turns out to be right, then he has preceded history's judgment but for a few years. If he turns out to be wrong, why should I begrudge him a few days in the spotlight?"
Great nephew Carl August, bff of Goethe, visits in that last year, which is the last public court activity Fritz absolves:
Today we will have the Duke of Weimar here; he goes back home, and I admit that he is far superior to his father, his grandfather, as well as his bisaïeul; to find a suitable man in his family, you have to go back to the famous Bernard de Weimar.
But to the last, he still keeps his black sense of humor:
My dearest brother,
Since the time that I did not have the satisfaction of writing to you, I suffered like a damned of asthma, which worsens at home daily. The doctor, who mixes a little witchcraft, frenzied me today by a demon named assa fetida, who, by means of a cannula, entered my stomach, and rages in guts. It is said that the devil is the sworn enemy of my evil, and that, therefore, for sure, if he wins, I will be possessed by him, or, if he loses his cause, I will continue to suffocate unceasingly, until the moment which will end my sufferings. If I had to choose between these rivals who argue for the honor of enslaving me, I admit that I would prefer the demon, because the funny one has wit, he seduced our first mother and many others; instead asthma is a ruthless executioner who constantly chokes you, and never completes you. Here, my dear brother, is the picture of my puny existence, and I will have to spend a few more days in uncertainty to judge which of these two heroes, by expelling his rival, will secure my conquest. I will not fail to realize this, begging you to count on all my tenderness, as on all my esteem, being, etc.
Re: The Heinrich Letters - Two Old Men in a New Age
Date: 2020-01-11 09:35 pm (UTC)Re: The Heinrich Letters - Two Old Men in a New Age
Date: 2020-01-14 09:03 pm (UTC)AHAHAHAHA
(as usual, I thank you for hte historical contextualization)
I mean, it's not that I don't see reasons for critisizing capitalism, but if a highly successful robber of worldly goods does it... (Sorry, still channelling MT sometimes.)
heeeee! (Keep channeling her!)
Shall I speak to you of my vines, which have produced very poor grapes, of our trees, which the cold strips of their leaves, of my garden, which the cold will force me to abandon shortly? What will I tell you about society? I live as a recluse like the monks of La Trappe, on which you have glanced; I work, I walk, and I don't see anyone.
:(((( Oh Fritz <3 Oh Fritz and Heinrich <3
"For better or worse, I am a historical figure. If Mirabeau's judgment on me turns out to be right, then he has preceded history's judgment but for a few years. If he turns out to be wrong, why should I begrudge him a few days in the spotlight?"
Heinrich is awesome <3
Fritz and Heinrich as generals, according to Christian von Krockow
Date: 2020-01-11 04:54 pm (UTC)So, 1757, there's a Swedish army in Pommerania, in the west, the French beat the English (allied to Prussia), at this point the only European power which is, on July 26th at Hastenbeck, and the Duke of Cumberland (son of Uncle G2) makes a truce and surrenders Hannover. The Austrians are in the south of Saxony and are in Silesia. Berlin gets briefly occupied on October 16th and 17th by an Austrian advance troop.
Was all lost? No indeed. In the hour of danger, Friedrich proved that he was indeed a genius general. At firsst, he beat both the army of the HRE and the French on November 25th at Roßbach. He only had 22 000 men, the enemy nearly twice that many. But in this case, it was a definite and enduring victory. His own losses amounted to 550, the enemy losses to over 10 000 men. (Krockow names the generals distinguishing themselves at Roßbach in addition to Fritz: brother-in-law Ferd of Braunschweig, Seydlitz and Heinrich (who'd commanded the right flank). Only one month later, on December 1757, Friedrich beat the Austrians again at the memorable battle of Leuthen, again with far fewer men. Napoleon, who had investigated Friedrich's campaigns with an critical eye and pointed out several grave mistakes, has said with unlimited admiration of Leuthen: "This battle is a masterpiece of movements, of maneuvres and of determination; it alone would have been enough to make Friedrich immortal and assure him a place among the great generals." (...) But what use were all these victories? At this point, the war had lasted for one and a half years, and it would last more for more than five longer. The enemy could cope with these losses, but the Prussian forces were umistakably getting devoured, the more so the longer the war lasted. Especially the increasing lack of experienced officers couldn't be compensated for anymore. Part of their duty and their honor was to provide an example in battle. Which resulted in increasing losses. 33 Prussian generals died in the first four years. Until the second World War, the Prussian nobility would not pay such a bloody price again.
The more Prussian forces were exhausted, the more important defense instead of attack became - and with it Prince Heinrich. From 1758 onwards, he stepped up as a general of equal rank next to the King. A kind of work sharing developed; when Friedrich was operating on one front, and tried his luck in battle, it was Heinrich's task to keep his back free on the other front. Thus it happened in 1758 and 1759 in Saxony, in 1760 in the east, 1761 in Saxony again.
The war art of the Prince developed from two elements. On the one hand, he sought out and found advantagous positions in which eben a far superior foe could not attack him. "I will most certainly try to attack Prince Heinrich if there is opportunity", in 1760 the Russian commander General Saltykov protested against the accusation of failing initiative. "But so far, he's always taken up such advantagous and unassailale positions taht it has been impossible to lure him into battle." The same experience was made by the Austrian field marshal Daun in Saxony.
On the other hand, a successful defense needs movement. The prince always averted being pinned down, showed up unexpectedly in the enemy's flank and threatened his opponent's supply lines. Sometimes, he even conducted assaults deep behind enemy lines which confused the enemy and brought him rich loot, as early in 1758 from the west till Braunschweig and Hildesheim, later in teh southern west through Thuringia until Bamberg and Nuremberg.
Most of all, though, Heinrich paid attention to keeping his losses low, as opposed to Friedrich. With Friedrich, not only the defeats like Hochkirch in 1758 and Kunersdorf in 1759 but also his successes cost a lot of blood. At his "victory" near Torgau, for example, on November 3rd 1760, Friedrich lost 16 700 men, a third of his army, and the "beaten" enemy, as it had in Prague, a thousand men less. The difference became especially glaring when Friedrich decided to "come to his brother's aid" and took the command from him, in the autumn of 1759, when he wanted to push the Austrians out of Saxony before the start of winter. Against Heinrich's urgent advice, he sent General Finck in the enemy's back. Which resulted in Finck himself getting trapped; Finck had to capitulate on November 21st at Maen with 14 000 men.
"My God, is it possible? Did I bring my bad lack with me to Saxony?" wrote a desperate Friedrich and promptly blamed Finck, exclusively so. Heinrich, who was enraged, wrote bitterly: "From the day he's arrived at my army, he's brought disaster and disorganisation; all my efforts in this campaign and the luck which has favored me so far, all lost through Friedrich." (...) He was, however, anything but soft himself; if he wanted to keep his losses to minimum, he still demanded everything from his soldiers on the repeated violent marches he put them through. He did take care of them, though; few things were more important to him than securing their supplies, and he always planned far ahead to secure good winter quarters. For this, the soldiers loved him and started to trust him like few others. They did willingly what he asked of them. (...)
Post-Fritz defeat at Kunersdorf in the August of 1759: On September 23rd, Field Marshal Daun started to go east from Bautzen in order to crush Heinrich whom he'd believed to be near Görlitz. Heinrich, however, circumvented him, crossed in two nightly marches more than 80 kilometres and suprised the Austrians on September 25th at Hoyerwerda. The Prussians lost only 44 men, the Austrians lost nearly 2000 men, 1800 of which were taken prisoner. Daun returned to Bautzen in such haste that en march, he lost another 3000 men due to sheer exhaustion or desertion.
Such numbers were better than those in most won battles. More importantly, the Prussian army's faith in itself grew again. Mitchell - the English Ambassador, Andrew Mitchell, a great admirer of Fritz and on the front lines with either him and hish brother most of the time - called Heinrich's maneuvre "incredible" and noted: "I had the pleasure of admiring the cold bloodedness and presence of mind with which his royal highness gave his orders during battle, as well as the humanity and benevolence with which he treated his prisoners after the battle. Somewhat later, Mitchell wrote that the Prince had proved " a very great military talent. And though his own constitution is not robust, he still works tirelessly. I can only accuse him of one fault, and that he shares with his brother: he exposes his person far too often to danger." (...) Napoleon later judged similarly, especially about Heinrich's 1761 campaign. However, these were not the kind of glorious - and bloody - battles highlighted in history books.
In an aside, Mitchell points out something which is actually a main feature Heinrich's humanity and benevolence towards the defeated people. It showed itself early, as for example after the battle of Roßbach towards the captured French. Friedrich was far more ruthless, and more than once, the brothers clashed about this. A revenge act like the plundering of Hubertusburg Palace which Friedrich had ordered Heinrich never permitted his men, nor anything like the ravaging of Dresden in July 1760, which without any military benefit destroyed a good deal of the town and irreplacable works of art. (...) Heinrich insisted that the population should be spared if at all possible, and needed to be given the means for survival. No area should be allowed to be turned into a desert, including the hostile Saxony. (...) Heinrich's American biographer Chester V. Easum has written: "Friedrich was the more modern of the two. Through the whole war, the King defended and exercised the totalitarian way of war. The younger brother tried in every possible way to limit the horror of warfar."
The expression "totalitarian" may be wrong here, since it belongs into another age. But there was a difference between attitude and methods, and if Friedrich was really the more modern campaigner, one would like to stay old fashioned with Heinrich. Perhaps this is at the heart of the abyss, the passionate hatred Heinrich had for his brother. "The cruelest beast Europe has produced", the Prince called the King. This, in turn, was what later historians objected to and which made them point out the twistedness in Heinrich's own character But at least the contemporaries and the people concerned saw him differently. When he later, years into the peace, travelled through Saxony en route to Karlsbad, this Prussian was received with applause and shouts of blessing.
Heinrich fought the last battle of the great war on October 29th 1762. Near Freiberg in Saxony, he defeated a superior army of Austrians and HRE troops. 79 enemy officers and 4340 common soldiers were taken prisoners. Typically, Heinrich wrote afterwards to Andrew Mitchell: " I am most satisfied that our own losses were not too great, and there was no bloodshed that could have been avoided."
If one tries to draw a balance, then it has to be pointed out firstly that Prussia was saved because the Czarina Elizabeth died on January 5th 1762 (...) Secondly, it was because of Friedrich, his energy and his dogged determination to endure. Jacob Burckhardt has paid tribute to this when he wrote: "Fates of people and states and entire civilisations can sometimes depend on the fact that one extraordinary man can endure tensions and pressures of the soul and physical hardship in the greatest degree. The entire subsequent history of continental Europe was changed by the fact that Frederick the Great managed to do this from 1759 to 1763 in a supreme degree."
But it also depended on Heinrich. Without his talent as a general which stopped and froze superior enemy forces again and again, Friedrich could not have endured in the later war years named by Burckhardt. In one phrase: the Prince saved the King.
On the other hand, Friedrich's incredible will to persist really was unique. If the King had died in 1759 at Kunersdorf or would indeed have committed suicide, a Prince Regent Heinrich would have gone for a quick peace, even at the price of losing Silesia to Austria again. The Prussian rise would have remained an episode, and subsequent German history would have been inmeasurably different. So the truth is that these brothers, at once so similar and so different to each other, tied to each other for their lives preserved Prussia's new rank as a European super power.
In his way, Friedrich acknowledged his brother's achievement. At a banquet which he gave for his generals soon after the war, he provided a manouevre critique and dispensed both praise and blame, which included himself. At the end, he turned towards Heinrich and said: "Now, Gentlemen, let us toast the one general who did not make a single mistake throughout this entire war. To you, my brother!"
We don't know what Heinrich replied. During the war, he'd once written to their brother Ferdinand that Friedrich would banish and destroy him once he didn't need him anymore, just as it had happened to August Wilhelm. "He's too malicious not to avenge himself for owing me." Did he remember this now? Did he inwardly apologize? Probably not. Most likely, he only bowed to Friedrich in silence.
Re: Fritz and Heinrich as generals, according to Christian von Krockow
Date: 2020-01-11 09:48 pm (UTC)I am far from an expert on military history, it just happens to be a long-standing casual interest of mine, and while I'm aware of numerous controversies (when was Fritz *not* controversial?) surrounding what happened and who was responsible for what, I don't feel the least bit qualified to weigh in on most of them with an actual opinion of my own. I have a reading list on the military aspect of Fritz's life, but unfortunately it'll have to wait until I can concentrate again. Meanwhile, this is a perfect summary of the topic.
Minority opinion: unlike his propensity toward conquest, many of Fritz's weaknesses as a general *do* come out of his abusive childhood, and he would have been a better general and at the very least had lower death tolls per square kilometer of conquered territory without it.
Re: Fritz and Heinrich as generals, according to Christian von Krockow
Date: 2020-01-14 09:04 pm (UTC)FRITZ
STOOOOOOP
Heinrich, who was enraged, wrote bitterly: "From the day he's arrived at my army, he's brought disaster and disorganisation; all my efforts in this campaign and the luck which has favored me so far, all lost through Friedrich."
Heinrich <3
Heinrich's humanity and benevolence towards the defeated people.
<3
So the truth is that these brothers, at once so similar and so different to each other, tied to each other for their lives preserved Prussia's new rank as a European super power.
That's really interesting! Sort of the military/political side to their hateship. (lol, you can tell I'm a gossipy sensationalist, the hateship comes first for me and the consequences for All Of Europe is secondary)
Re: Fritz and Heinrich as generals, according to Christian von Krockow
Date: 2020-01-14 09:24 pm (UTC)STOOOOOOP
I'm told that even Eichel, who was not big on criticizing Fritz in general, thought that scapegoating Finck was unfair here, seeing as how it was *following Fritz's orders* that landed Finck there in the first place.
Notice also how Fritz could single-handedly catastrophically lose Hochkirch and Kunersdorf and not cashier himself, noooo.
Re: The Fritzian Library
Date: 2020-01-12 12:38 am (UTC)It indeed involved more wrangling than the others, as expected. But it's done. I've also uploaded Algarotti, EC, and Maria Antonia. Woohoo!
Lol, just skimming the very short EC correspondence to spot-check it for bugs, I see the bulk of it is excuses for not writing.
I also fetched the list of the remaining correspondents from the site (obviously in an automated way). Here you go:
Catherine II, impératrice de Russie
chevalier de Zimmermann
d'Alembert
Finckenstein
Fontenelle
Gustave III roi de Suède
la duchesse Louise-Dorothée de Saxe-Gotha
la landmargrave Caroline de Hesse-Darmstadt
la marquise du Châtelet
la princesse Jeanne-Élisabeth d'Anhalt-Zerbst
la Reine Sophie sa mère
le baron de Grimm
le baron de la Motte Fouqué
le baron de Pöllnitz
le chevalier de Chasot
le comte de Hoditz
le comte de Manteuffel
le comte de Rottembourg
le comte de Schaumbourg-Lippe
le comte de Schulenbourg
le comte de Seckendorff
le duc Charles de Brunswic
le duc Ferdinand de Brunswic
le margrave Charles
le margrave Henri
le marquis d'Argens
le marquis de Condorcet
le prince Frédéric-Auguste de Brunswic
M. Darget (mai 1749 - 6 septembre 1771)
M. de Beausobre
M. de Camas
M. de Catt
M. de Grumbkow
M. de Hertzberg
M. de Jariges (7 et 8 août 1766)
M. Duhan de Jandun
M. Jordan
M. Léonard Euler
madame de Camas
madame de Rocoulle
madame de Wreech
Marie-Dorotheé, veuve du margrave Albert de Brandebourg
Maupertuis
Maurice de Saxe
Mirabeau (22 janvier - 15 avril 1786)
mylord Marischal
Rollin
sa sœur Amélie, abbesse de Quedlinbourg
sa sœur Charlotte, duchesse de Brunswic
sa sœur Frédérique, margrave d'Ansbach
sa sœur Sophie, margrave de Schwedt
sa sœur Ulrique, Reine de Suéde
Finally, we owe great thanks to
Thank you,
Re: The Fritzian Library
Date: 2020-01-12 03:34 pm (UTC)Otherwise: Amalie and Ulrike.
Oh, and I'm Browsing through the disertation about Algarotti's networking, when a tiny aside cracks me up, to wit, that Algarotti while in Dresden designed a couple of porcellain figurines for "the Queen of Hungary and Bohemia" in 1742, and after successfully completing this commission expressed the hope the Queen of Hungary and Bohemia would commission him to procure statues for her as well. Considering the author some pages earlier when explaining the first Silesian war spoke of "Maria Theresia, the new Empress" (technically not correct, of course), I do wonder wether she realises who the Queen of Hungary and Bohemia in 1742 was. And also why it amuses me mightily that Algarotti, freshly departed from Fritz' court, designs table porcellain for her and wants to do more. Evidently that didn't work out, but now I want the AU where MT steals one Fritz boyfriend after another for her court, starting with Algarotti.
Re: The Fritzian Library
Date: 2020-01-12 05:18 pm (UTC)Now why would Preuss have included that letter? IOW, I grabbed the letters from Trier, but if this one is included, I didn't see it when skimming through. Sigh. Only mutual compliments, mostly predating 1740, that make Fritz look good. Oh, and an argument about physics, lol.
It's uploaded, though, along with Amalie and Ulrike. Keep in mind many of the Ulrike ones are in the PC. I may be able to grab the ones in the first half of the correspondence at some future date, but short of OCR and manual-cleanup (I think I would have to be pretty desperate, though stranger things have happened), not the second half.
I do wonder wether she realises who the Queen of Hungary and Bohemia in 1742 was.
Lol, it's quite possible she does not. From my memories of that dissertation, plus glancing at the footnote giving the source, which is a letter, it seems entirely possible the author just copied what was in the letter and didn't know enough about the political nuances to make the connection.
now I want the AU where MT steals one Fritz boyfriend after another for her court, starting with Algarotti.
That would be an excellent AU! Especially if Voltaire is paid to rewrite Fritz's correspondence, per our discussion over in your space. :D Parnassos in Vienna!
Also, come to think of it, if you look at the places where Algarotti did his networking, Vienna is the big one missing from the list.
Gossipy Sensationalism: The Suhm Installment
Date: 2020-01-09 07:49 pm (UTC)So I got interested in Suhm when he kept cropping up here and there in obscure but interesting episodes, and then finally I saw one biographer say, "Was the relationship homosexual? We don't know, but they sure used the language of romantic friendship in their correspondence."
And now that I've read it, OH BOY DID THEY.
So who was Suhm?
Ulrich Friedrich von Suhm, born 1691, was the Saxon envoy to Berlin from 1720 - 1730. So he worked for August the Strong, and hung out at FW's court.
This makes him a couple decades older than Fritz, who was born in 1712. It also means he was around for Fritz's awful childhood, and is an eyewitness source for some of the accounts of abuse, in the form of reports he sent back to Dresden.
Among them is the forced intoxication episode, as detailed here, where I translated the entire episode in the letter. To the editor's footnote that it's plausible that Fritz set the whole scene up on purpose, it's a lot less plausible now that I know FW did the same to his son-in-law. It's also just not very consistent with Fritz's style, it is entirely consistent with how you'd expect him to behave if he were caught off guard by being intoxicated, and also he spent the rest of his life with an antipathy to intoxication. I genuinely believe this episode would need a noncon warning on AO3. :P
Anyway, during this episode, Fritz is hanging onto Suhm's arm quite tightly, Suhm is one of the ones who puts him to bed, and afterward, he tells Suhm that he intensely disliked the experience of getting drunk.
Yes, Fritz was 16, but non-sexual hurt/comfort is a thing, AND I WANT IT.
Suhm was also no big fan of FW, as one of my sources tells me that FW once threatened to hang him, Suhm fled the country, his boss Augustus scolded him for cowardice and told him to go back, and when he got back, FW said it had been "all a mistake."
Keep in mind that around this time, the French envoy* to Berlin is desperately trying to get recalled to Paris, since getting FW declared insane in a coup isn't working out, and he really, really doesn't like FW.
* Count Rottembourg, the one Katte hung out with and whom Katte later met when Rottembourg was--finally!--posted in Madrid and Katte was visiting.
In 1730, Suhm's wife dies, and he gets released from service and gets a pension. This is all from Wikipedia, so grain of salt as usual. Judging by his correspondence, he divides his time between Berlin and Dresden during this period.
Between 1732 and 1736, after Fritz was released from Küstrin and given his own regiment at Ruppin, Fritz used to come for a few weeks in the winter (presumably the holidays?) to stay at Berlin. During this time, Fritz and Suhm used to sit by the fireside, talking late into the night about philosophy and the liek. I SHIP THEM ALREADY.
Fritz's nickname for Suhm was Diaphane, meaning transparent, letting light through. One biographer speculates there may have been wordplay on "Durchlaucht" (Serene Highness), or some other meaning that's lost to us.
Their extant Trier correspondence starts with Suhm responding to Fritz's request for a translation of Wolff's Metaphysics (the one Voltaire thought Fritz had translated, lol). Much of their early correspondence centers on the contents of Wolff, and the translation process. This is the manuscript that Mimi the monkey sets on fire, which we learn about because Fritz recounted the episode in a letter to Suhm. Fortunately, there was another copy! Unfortunately, someone had to recopy it for Fritz. Said copyist wasn't happy.
Then in 1737, shortly after Fritz moved into Rheinsberg, Suhm gets an assignment to go be Saxon envoy to St. Petersburg. He really doesn't want to go. But he convinces himself it's the right thing to do. Fritz really doesn't want him to go. He fails to talk him out of going. They never see each other again.
Once he gets to St. Petersburg, a lot of their correspondence centers on the loans Suhm's able to get Fritz from the Russians. They use the same code that Fritz uses with Seckendorff and the Austrians: books. Any time you see Fritz asking for a book not by Wolff in the second half of the correspondence, he's asking for money. If he's asking for 12 copies, he wants 12 times that amount. There are also other code words for loans in the form of other things he wants to obtain from the Russians. Oh, and also algebraic problems. Any algebraic problem is just code for "Solve for x, where x is the amount of money I want this time."
Amazingly, one of my sources says Fritz paid it all back within a few months of becoming king, and indeed, one of the postscripts to Suhm after he becomes king is "Ask the Duke (the de facto ruler of Russia at the time, who'd been lending Fritz money for years) where he'd like the money sent." I guess when your boyfriend is getting you money from the Russians, you're in a bigger hurry to pay it back than when Seckendorff is getting you money from the Austrians!
Then FW dies, and Fritz writes to Suhm the same message he writes to all his favorite people: "Dad just kicked it; come be an intellectual at my court!"
Sadly, Suhm had been having health problems for a few years, was very sick when he set out from St. Petersburg to Berlin, made it as far as Warsaw, lingered there for a month--excused from attending the court (remember, his boss Augustus* the Elector of Saxony is also the King of Poland) because of how sick he was--then finally realized he was dying, wrote to Fritz to ask him to take care of his kids, and died, November 8, 1740, without ever seeing Fritz. Not as tragic as Fritz/Katte, not as frustrating as Fritz/Peter Keith, still sad.
* Now Augustus III, only legitimate son of Augustus the Strong.
Fritz, to his credit, had the kids brought to Berlin and paid for their education, along with his sister to help raise the kids, because, remember, Mom died ten years earlier.
This is Fritz writing to Algarotti on Suhm's death: "I have just learned of Suhm's death, my close friend, who loved me as sincerely as I loved him, and who showed me until his death the confidence he had in my friendship and in my tenderness, of which he was convinced. I would rather have lost millions. We hardly find people who have so much spirit joined with so much candor and feeling. My heart will mourn him, and this in a way deeper than for most relatives. His memory will last as long as a drop of blood flows through my veins, and his family will be mine. Farewell; I cannot speak of anything else; my heart is bleeding, and the pain is too great to think of anything other than this wound."
See, if he can write to Algarotti like this about the death of the Saxon envoy with whom he had only had a few in-person encounters in the last ten years (and who, okay, was around when he was a kid but I doubt could be said to have Practically Raised Him), it still surprises me that he couldn't have written to Algarotti or *somebody* about Fredersdorf, who'd been first his valet and then his chamberlain and right-hand man for twenty-seven years, or at least twenty if you discount the last few when Fredersdorf was sick but they were still exchanging those gushing
I mean paternalletters.And Algarotti not only spent several years at the same court as Fredersdorf but had the same official job title--chamberlain to the king--albeit radically different unofficial job descriptions--whereas he wouldn't have known Suhm. Or, now that I remember, at best would have met him in passing in 1739 when Algarotti spent a few weeks at St. Petersburg (because lol, Algarotti went *everywhere*).
So it still surprises me that Fritz can't find anything to say about his grief for Fredersdorf after his death. Maybe, when Lehndorff wrote that Hochkirch would distract Fritz from Wilhelmine's death, he was wrong about that but would have been correct if he'd said the same about Fredersdorf's death earlier in the year, i.e. maybe Fritz was just too busy with the war. Or maybe there's some letter out there that we haven't found, or that's been lost. I still am increasingly suspicious that there may have been smuggled letters about Katte during the Küstrin period that we don't have because they had to be destroyed immediately.
Anyway. Fritz's list of potential serious boyfriends/homoromantic relationships, many of them probably or certainly not sexual, is now up to Keith, Katte, Fredersdorf, Algarotti, Voltaire, and Suhm. 5 out of 6's not bad, Fritz!
You'll see what I mean in the next write-up, where I will summarize and excerpt the correspondence.
The Suhm Letters: Wolff
Date: 2020-01-09 09:12 pm (UTC)So the first part of the correspondence we have is all about the translation of Wolff (*the* major German philosopher of the period, post-Leibniz) that Suhm is producing at Fritz's the translation of Wolff's Metaphysics. You can hear Suhm's gulp, as he immediately plays up how hard it will be but how willing he is to do literally anything for Fritz, and he only hopes it will be good enough.
Fritz: Nah, it'll be great! Look, I checked out the chapter you already sent, looked at the German original, and yours is clearly the best.
Partway through this process, Suhm tries to convince Fritz that German is actually superior to French for metaphysical topics, because it has more vocabulary and less ambiguity.
Fritz: Okay, you've convinced me German has its virtues, but you will never convince me that it's superior to French. Forty years from now, I will dig up a pamphlet that I'm writing here at Rheinsberg, tack on some more anti-German comments, and send it out to join the fray.
Fritz: BESIDES. You're missing the point. Even if German were superior to French, WHICH IT'S NOT, I would still prefer to read it in French, because reading French translations of Wolff means getting letters from you, and letters from you give me warm and fuzzies. You don't seem to understand that if you suddenly decided to stop communicating in anything but Chinese, I would man up and learn Chinese just so I could keep talking to you. <333
Says the man who speaks and writes German to Fredersdorf.
Me: Awwww.
Monkey business
Partway through this, as you may recall, Mimi decides to set the thing on fire, which Fritz recounts with hilarity. As detailed here, where the subthread has some more info on Wolff as well.
Then I must admit to a mistake I made. It is not Fritz who says, "With all my powers of reason, I would have done the same (burn a manuscript if my master were ignoring me)," it's Suhm! So that's hilarious in a completely different way. Suhm is saying, as I understand it, that he would burn the fruits of his own hard labor if Fritz were ignoring him to read it. And that's sweet.
Immortal soul
Their discussions of the content are also interesting. At this early date, Fritz reads Wolff and and announces that he, Fritz, his now convinced that 1) he exists, 2) he has an immortal soul. And he thanks Suhm for making this possible by means of his translation.
Shortly thereafter, Fritz starts to read more widely and ceases to believe in an immortal soul. But at this point, their correspondence is full of Fritz coming up with reasons to believe in the immortality of the soul. At one point, he tells Suhm that he, Suhm, is one good argument for immortality of the soul. Namely, it's okay for most of humanity to be snuffed out at death, but not geniuses like Wolff, Newton, Voltaire, and Suhm.
Now, I get the impression this is something like Lehndorff calling Heinrich "as beautiful as an angel." Not exactly: Suhm seems to have been quite intelligent, whereas Heinrich was downright unattractive. But Suhm was evidently intelligent like you or me, not intelligent like Newton
or Émilie. Anyway, Fritz is head over heels, and it's cute. <3FW
And because he's FW, I have this hilarious footnote from a biographer:
By an edict of 1739—with a notable rebound from the threat of hanging the philosopher sixteen years before—the students of theology were directed to get themselves ' thoroughly well grounded in philosophy and in a rational system of logic, such as that of Professor Wolff.' And in private life too his Majesty, who never did things by halves, suddenly insisted on the use of premises and conclusions. Having received a letter from the commandant of Wesel, General
Dossow, an officer who stood high in his esteem, the King, looking for the flaws in the general's syllogisms, was shocked beyond measure at being unable to find any syllogisms at all. [Mildred's note: I'm sorry, I laughed out loud.]
He carried the letter the same evening to the Tabagje, [the tobacco parliament, where FW and all his friends smoked and drank and chewed the fat--Fritz hated it] and caused it to be read aloud and criticised 'on logical principles.' The whole Tabagje agreed that the writer of it ' raisonnait comme un coffre.' Whereupon the King replied to him :—' My dear General. I have received your letter and seen by it that you must either have been sleepy or drunk, or that you are a confused thinker and form your ideas quite incorrectly. You contradict yourself in your raisonnements. I advise you therefore as a friend, although you are advanced in life, do as I do, learn to think rationally and draw right conclusions, and then you will also be able to reason correctly. ' His Majesty sent a similar reply to a clergyman who had just been promoted to the office of Superintendent (Overseer or Bishop) in some part of the Mark :—' I see by your letter that you studied at Halle, and think yourself a good divine. But I see at the same time that you are a bad logician and form incorrect ideas. I advise you therefore, purchase a copy of Wolff's writings, and above all things learn logic. Then you will not write such preposterous stuff.'
Fritz's reaction to all this: That I should have lived to see the day!
More specifically, he writes to Suhm:
The news of the day is that the King read Wolff's philosophy for three hours of the day, whose God be praised! So here we are at the triumph of reason, and I hope that the bigots with their obscure cabal can no longer oppress common sense and reason. Would you have believed, two years ago, that this phenomenon would happen today? So we see that we must swear nothing, and that the things that often seem to us the most distant are the things that happen the soonest. But what will this philosopher say? Because, with all his rules of probability, I am sure he would never have suspected what just happened. I will tell you even more: Wolff is offered a pension of one thousand ecus, one of five hundred for his son, and a pension is promised to the woman in the event of widowhood. These are all new and amazing things, which however are true.
Wolff: turned down all the offers and stayed the hell away from Prussia under both FW and Fritz, both of whom tried to entice him to come back.
Re: The Suhm Letters: Wolff
Date: 2020-01-10 07:22 am (UTC)FW's late life warming up to Wolff: not doing anything by half indeed. :) I did know that Wolff carefully kept his distance from the son as well as the father, though. Wise man, Wolff.
Re: The Suhm Letters: Wolff
Date: 2020-01-11 05:22 pm (UTC)Agreed! I did know that FW did that about-face late in life re Wolff, and that neither FW nor Fritz could get Wolff to come back. What I didn't know before this write-up was that FW went hunting for syllogisms in other people's arguments after he discovered what a syllogism was. LOL forever.
Re: The Suhm Letters: Wolff
Date: 2020-01-12 03:55 am (UTC)Ugh, major copy-paste error.
Wolff's (*the* major German philosopher of the period, post-Leibniz) Metaphysics that Suhm is producing at Fritz's request
Re: The Suhm Letters: Wolff
Date: 2020-01-14 08:48 pm (UTC)Wolff: turned down all the offers and stayed the hell away from Prussia under both FW and Fritz, both of whom tried to entice him to come back.
And thus we can see that he was, indeed, very smart :D
(And it looks like
The Suhm Letters: Franz Stephan
Date: 2020-01-09 09:31 pm (UTC)Anyway, Fritz uses Suhm as his intermediary to get the salmon to Vienna and to handle all the communications around same.
This results in Suhm writing to Fritz that FS LOVED the salmon, all the more so because he knows how expensive it is, and in recognition of Fritz's generosity, he wants to swear eternal friendship, using Suhm as a go-between.
Which leads to this line from Fritz that I, at least, found hilarious:
Fritz: I certainly did not expect that the salmon I sent to the Duc de Lorraine would be as pleasant to him as it was.
From salmon to eternal friendship, Franzl, that was fast!
Well, enjoy the salmon while you have it, Vienna: future deliveries from Fritz over your borders might not be so pleasant.
Re: The Suhm Letters: Franz Stephan
Date: 2020-01-10 07:32 am (UTC)From salmon to eternal friendship, Franzl, that was fast!
Well, firstly, he had already warmed up to Fritz after their engagement party meeting, secondly, Habsburgs and Lorraines can effuse and go into verbal hyperbole with the best of the Hohenzollern. :) Fritz in his first letter to Franzl after MT's dad is dead is so full of tender concern for a prince whose bff he swears himself forever and all the burdens that prince will carry (since it's clearly not the prince's wife who will do the governing), it brings out tears in one's eyes. (He's totally willing to lift some of those burdens, of course, as well we know.)
Re: The Suhm Letters: Franz Stephan
Date: 2020-01-11 05:25 pm (UTC)He's totally willing to lift some of those burdens
Hahaha. Never let it be said that Fritz wanted to let other people burden themselves with work he could be doing himself.
Re: The Suhm Letters: Franz Stephan
Date: 2020-01-12 09:02 am (UTC)Tangentially related, the Maria Theresia miniseries I told you and Cahn about many a month ago got a follow up this Christmas. Original two parter covered MT up to the end of the first Silesian War, second two parter goes until the end of the Second Silesian War. Is as faithful to history as the first installment, by which I mean not very. (Though I have to retrospectively apologize to the scriptwriters for believing they made that "young MT/Fritz as a potential marriage" thing in the first two parter out of the blue when they just invented who had actually come up with the idea and who supported it.) Somewhat frustratingly, they keep inventing marriage drama for MT and FS, and this installment's most baffling invention is that in order to come up with money for his beloved's army, Franzl secretly through free mason intermediaries sells army equipment to Fritz (who has the money to pay for it). I kept waiting for the material to be at least faulty or something, but no, the scriptwriters actually seem to think this was a viable scheme to make some cash through which the Austrian army can be funded. They never bother to explain why on earth if Franz Stephan can get his hands on all the textiles and gunpowder he can't equip the Austrian army with it directly. They also present MT as being in the wrong at being upset about this when eventually she finds out. You think?
In general, "Maria Theresia", parts 3 and 4, does the "woman hardens her heart in order to make it through critical situation, almost drives everyone who loves her away from her and loses her way ethically as well, then gets shock realisation that leads to reconciliation all around and readjustment of way" storyline I'm none too keen on for female characters even when they're fictional. In this case: MT, estranged from FS and soon everyone else, listens to her confessor and invents the chastity commission - so far so somewhat historically plausible at least - then when being ultra depressed and believing she's lost Franzl for good has a one night stand with a soldier while visiting the troops, at which point she realises it's possible to have sex with person a while still loving person b and we're all flawed and repents her earlier harshness. Then she's pregnant (so I take it Mimi in this 'verse is the product of a one night stand), and her Jesuit confessor, unhappy that the chastity commission is about to be dissolved and that he's lost his old on her, realises it can't be FS's and is about to make a big public accusation when Franzl, who knows symptoms of pregnancy by now, comes through and joyfully declares they're expecting again, which shuts the Jesuit up and ends this round of marital drama with reconciliation all around. Also the newly equipped Austrians beat the French and end that part of the war for good.
Another use of a tidbit of history is in their decision to include Austrian Trenck. (Prussian Trenck doesn't show up and doesn't get mentioned, either. I should add the only Prussians we ever see are the ambassadors, and also the scriptwriters use FW's penchant for tall guys and ascribe the Potsdam Giants to Fritz in the court gossip.) He's introduced as a scoundrel with military talent offering his services, MT against everyone's advice accepts (it's part of the hardening her heart storyline) , Austrian Trenck makes good on his promise to her to conquer Bavaria. Poor historical Field Marshal Traun who drove Fritz out of Bohemia does not exist in this series, it's Austrian Trenck and his pandurs who finally turn the military tide. However, soon reports of war crimes come in. MT refuses to believe them as the key witness against Trenck is his immediate subordinate who'd get his position if Austrian Trenck is condemned, but later on, a raped-by-Pandurs girl who is also a child shows up which does it and Trenck gets arrested, put on trial and condemned though MT because she still owes him for singlehandedly turning the tide insists he doesn't get the death penalty but life in prison. He then decides to die and writes her a final letter that they get each other and he's sorry about letting his men rape the kid but not about anything else because he's lived his life to the fulll in her service, and isn't sorry to let it go now. Like I said, this is all a part of the "OMG what have I done/become?" storyline, in this case the "if I'm twin souls of a war criminal, what does that make me?" section.
They've recast MT for these two installments from the young actress who'd played her as a teenager and in her 20s, and picked an actress who is actually allowed to be heavier and look like in her early 30s MT, but all the other actors are the same as in part one, including MT's mother and FS, so it looks like MT is the only one who aged (and gained weight) between installments, which is weird. (Uneasy lies the head who wears a crown?) Basically: continues to be soap opera styel history, though not boring, either. I'm still boggled they're trying to sell me on "trading army equipment to the Prussians" as a good financial decision, though.
Re: The Suhm Letters: Franz Stephan
Date: 2020-01-12 09:29 pm (UTC)You have retrospectively apologized in the best possible way: writing excellent fic!
Franzl secretly through free mason intermediaries sells army equipment to Fritz (who has the money to pay for it)believing she's lost Franzl for good has a one night stand with a soldier while visiting the troops, at which point she realises it's possible to have sex with person a while still loving person b
I repeat, WHAAAT???
This is a hell of an OOC AU. Who are you and what have you done with FS and MT???
ascribe the Potsdam Giants to Fritz
I mean, it's plausible insofar as cahn and I definitely used "not quite accurate gossip" as a strategy in our Fredersdorf fic, but you mean the Fritz who immediately disbanded the regiment because he thought it was such a ridiculous expense? Or, as Voltaire put it, "The King, his son, who loved handsome men, and not gigantic..."
I'm still boggled they're trying to sell me on "trading army equipment to the Prussians" as a good financial decision, though.
That's so weird. It only makes sense if FS is an amoral war profiteer hedging his bets and trying to get on Fritz's good side in the event the Prussians sack Vienna. I have news for you, FS: gratitude for favors rendered is not Fritz's strong point.
Also, FS having dealings with the freemasons, is that as implausible as I think? What with the pope having banned Catholics from becoming freemasons or having dealings with them just 2 years earlier? I mean, I'm quibbling over the least questionable of his decisions here, but still.
Re: The Suhm Letters: Franz Stephan
Date: 2020-01-13 06:57 am (UTC)The idea of FS using the freemasons to secretly trade equipment to Prussia , the profit of which goes into supplying the Austrian army, and that this whole thing isn’t presented as amoral war profiteering but a clever scheme to get the Austrian army better equipped is still absolutely nuts,and as ooc as MT having a one night stand and rethinking her atititude to human sexuality and marital fidelity. She is presented as shocked when FS tells her he’s a freemason but that comes a second before he confesses to the supplying Fritz with army material, so the later gets the outburst. Which she’s presented as being in the wrong to be upset about. Like I said: the scriptwriter’s logic is not earth logic.
Re: The Suhm Letters: Franz Stephan
Date: 2020-01-13 09:49 pm (UTC)Absolutely nuts and not earth logic, I agree.
Re: The Suhm Letters: Franz Stephan
Date: 2020-01-14 08:51 pm (UTC)what
again, I am glad you watched this to report the crazymaking back so we don't have to :)
Maria Theresia WOULD NEVER
Date: 2020-01-14 08:50 pm (UTC)"woman hardens her heart in order to make it through critical situation, almost drives everyone who loves her away from her and loses her way ethically as well, then gets shock realisation that leads to reconciliation all around and readjustment of way"
MARIA THERESIA???? Come on, if you HAVE to do this storyline then you do you, but with MT????
has a one night stand with a soldier while visiting the troops
I am simultaneously completely appalled by this and also hilariously remembering how much trouble we had convincing MT to have an affair with Franzl already in the MT/Fritz AU because MT WOULD NEVER. (Well, I mean, we concluded there was a possibility with gay husband + long-term love of her life as lover + desperate unhappiness, but even then it was not a sure thing.)
Re: Maria Theresia WOULD NEVER
Date: 2020-01-15 09:58 am (UTC)https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wie_der_Mond_%C3%BCber_Feuer_und_Blut
Re: The Suhm Letters: Franz Stephan
Date: 2020-01-14 08:49 pm (UTC)Re: The Suhm Letters: Franz Stephan
Date: 2020-01-14 08:49 pm (UTC)Re: The Suhm Letters: Franz Stephan
Date: 2020-01-14 09:20 pm (UTC)The Suhm Letters: Russia
Date: 2020-01-09 10:25 pm (UTC)In late 1736, Fritz gets the bad news that Suhm has accepted a commission to go to St. Petersburg as Saxon envoy. He doesn't want to go, and Fritz doesn't want him to go.
Fritz: Normally letters from you are the best part of my day, but this is THE WORST. Can I convince you to stay by telling you how awful it's bound to be? You're going to freeze to death! Your health! How will I live without you? How will you live without me?
Suhm: Please don't. You're only making it harder to do what I know I need to do. Duty and honor call. OH GOD I'M GOING TO MISS YOU SO MUCH.
Fritz: Also, you're totally the wrong person for this job. This barbarous court needs those men who know how to drink well and fuck vigorously. I don't think you'd recognize yourself in this description. Your delicate body is the custodian of a fine soul, spiritual and penetrating. [Actual quote, the first line of which I had seen before in biographies.]
Fritz: Also, I'm pretty sure this means I'm never going to see you again. WOE IS ME.
Fritz: But okay. Go, cross the seas, look for another sky and, if it were possible, another world: my friendship will follow you everywhere, and I will tell myself that the universe has no space that does not become sacred in containing you. Russia will become my Greece, and Saint Petersburg, a place I never deigned to think of, the object of my best wishes. [Actual quote.]
"Russia will become my Greece," I love it so much.
And then Fritz tells Suhm to start numbering his letters so they can keep track of which letter is in reply to which. "This one is letter number 1!" he says. It's super cute.
Money, politics, and the military
In Russia, there's a lot of politics and some warfare, which I'll spare you, and also, since Fritz has a regiment, he has his recruiting quotas to meet, so Suhm does some recruiting in Russia for him. Everybody in the Prussian army had a hard time meeting FW's quotas, especially for tall men, seeing as how they are running out of tall men in Europe, and especially tall men willing to hang out in Potsdam and be paraded around.
Suhm also devotes much of their correspondence to getting Fritz loans, because Fritz goes through money like water at this period in his life. He's been getting money from the Imperial court at Austria via Seckendorff, but he doesn't like it:
Since you are willing to be my agent in Russia, have the kindness to let me have the new edition of the Life of Prince Eugene that is printed there; it will be shorter, the arrangement of the sending will be easier, the agreement with the bookseller, safer, and I will find my account there much better than with these booksellers of Vienna, which print slowly, which give no credit to those who subscribe, and who, in a word, do not suit me.
Remember, books are code for money. One biographer said that the first payment from Seckendorff was like the first drink for an alcoholic, an analogy that I can't see any reason to disagree with. Half his letters to Suhm after his arrival in Russia are "MORE MONEY PLZ," and you know he's simultaneously doing the same thing to EC and Seckendorff.
OH. And early on in the Suhm correspondence, Suhm is doing a bit of "woe is me," and Fritz tells Suhm to count himself lucky he's in Dresden and to read Seneca's chapter on the contempt for riches, I kid you not. Knowing what the second half of their correspondence looks like, I literally choked. Of course, he does say, in effect, "You're so lucky to be in a civilized court, we have to have compensations out here," BUT STILL.
Baby, I thought it was cold outside??
On a more personal note, Suhm sends two accounts of fires to Fritz. One started in his own house, which he inherited from his predecessor. He says if it had happened at night, he and all the neighbors would have killed, but because it was daytime, it was caught quickly, and he only lost some furniture.
Fritz: Who would believe that a house could burn in a country where one would rather be led to believe that everything would perish from cold? [Actual quote]
Then, not long after, there's another fire that burns down much of the neighborhood and stops two houses down from Suhm's.
Fritz: Isn't it enough that it's cold all the time there? Does everything have to keep catching on fire too?? Please come back to the sensible and safe country where I can show you how much I love you.
Tundras and taigas and bears, oh my!
And finally, there's this part where Fritz gives Suhm a list of questions about Russia, mostly about Peter I's reforms. It's interesting that he's writing to Suhm about Peter I around the same time he's writing to Voltaire about Peter I, if I'm remembering
So anyway, the number one question on this list:
I would like to know:
1: If, at the beginning of the reign of Czar Peter I, the Muscovites were as crude [lit "aussi brutes"] as they say.
The next several questions are details on the reforms.
And Suhm writes, in very diplomatic, Fritz-stroking language, something that translates to: "If you think about this for five seconds, you'll realize that I am the DIPLOMAT to RUSSIA, and MAYBE these are not questions I should be answering where the RUSSIANS can read my mail. You think?"
And to his credit, Fritz immediately replied with, "Oh, yes, god, what was I thinking? Thank goodness I can count on you to have a modicum of discretion when I totally forget what discretion is."
Suhm: could maybe have prevented the Seven Years' War if he'd lived a bit longer? Or maybe older, kingly Fritz doesn't admit wrongdoing and is a lost cause. Anyway. Another on-brand moment for our guy Fritz.
Re: The Suhm Letters: Russia
Date: 2020-01-10 08:00 am (UTC)Seneca's contempt for riches: doubly hilarious because even his contemporaries used that to make fun of Seneca, who was one of the richest Romans around courtesy of Agrippina having appointed him as Nero's teacher. Tacitus has some very sarcastic things to say as I seem to recall.
Old Fritz indulges in some Senecan "when nations get rich, morals and strength go down the toilet" grumbling towards Heinrich, too. (Who doesn't appear to by it. I'm guessing here based on Fritz' continues replies because the Trier collection is really faulty with both the AW and the Heinrich correspondance and seems to be missing most of the letters Ziebura quotes in her biographies.) He doesn't go as far as FW in extolling the Spartan life style but raves about modesty, which, granted, also has to be seen in terms of Versailles excess and France being evidently broke in the early 1780s.
I wonder if Suhm's recent appointment to Russia (his new Greece) inspired Fritz's interest in Peter I and hence his correspondence with Voltaire on same. Hmm, I should check the dates on that.
Could be, though given that Peter himself showed up in Prussia during Fritz' childhood and was an object of fascination and a lot of gossip much as Fritz would be later, I'd have thought a general interest predating Suhm's appointment. Fritz really seems to go hot and cold on Peter, though; there's the letter to Voltaire along the lines of "having now read this latest book on him which I'm forwarding to you, I can see he was really not great but a tyrant and only lucked out in his battles and okay, some of the reforms were cool, but omg bloodshed!" , and a few decades later he's telling Catt (according to Catt) "how dare Voltaire critisize Peter and talk up Swedish Carl instead when Peter was really great, Voltaire just doesn't get him the way I do, he has no idea what it takes to be King!" etc. At a guess, the fact that Peter was both a reformer & expansionist general on the one hand and a brutal son killer on the other made it tricky as to whether to identify with him or his son?
Suhm: could maybe have prevented the Seven Years' War if he'd lived a bit longer? Or maybe older, kingly Fritz doesn't admit wrongdoing and is a lost cause. Anyway. Another on-brand moment for our guy Fritz.
The thing is, older Fritz is quite capable to be diplomatic when needs must. Or maybe the 7 Years War taught him something after all. When Heinrich makes his first trip to Catherine, Fritz tells him he'll write letters that can be shown to Catherine and the moment Heinrich is within the Russian sphere of influence, suddenly every single time Fritz mentions Catherine in a letter he's positively gushing about how great she is. We're a far, far cry from "one of the three whores of Europe" and all those other compliments he called Elisaveta. (When Heinrich gets back, these accolades for Catherine in Fritz' letters stop as soon as his brother has crossed the Prussian border again.) So I suspect that Suhm would have made no difference. Fritz would still have kept insulting everyone and flexing his muscles pre 7 Years War, not because he couldn't have acted otherwise but because he didn't want to and hadn't yet gone through the experience of major war losses and staring int o the abyss repeatedly pre eventual victory.
Incidentally, when Heinrich is in St. Petersburg Fritz gives him one of those typical Fritzplaing moments of "let me tell you all I know about St. Petersburg", because it's not like Heinrich is there at the moment and Fritz never will be. At least it's good to know that via Suhm, Fritz did have some actual knowledge of the place.
Re: The Suhm Letters: Russia
Date: 2020-01-11 05:33 pm (UTC)I thought I remembered you saying that much of the Fritz/Heinrich correspondence was in the archives and had never been published? I could be misremembering. But yes, Trier seems incomplete.
I'd have thought a general interest predating Suhm's appointment
Oh, sure, I didn't mean this was the first time he'd taken an interest. Just that maybe he was writing to Voltaire on this specific subject right when he did because it was fresh on his mind because his BFF was in St. Petersburg, his new Greece. But I'd have to look at the dates.
The thing is, older Fritz is quite capable to be diplomatic when needs must.
Oh, Fritz can absolutely do anything he wants, providing that it's *his* idea. What I was impressed by was Suhm getting him to do a quick and easy "my bad" instead of doubling down when someone objected to something he did. I was wondering if maybe Suhm had magical Fritz management skills that could have been subtly deployed at crucial times. But also, this was Crown Prince Fritz, and the stakes were low. King Fritz pre-7 Years is a whole different kettle of fish.
At least it's good to know that via Suhm, Fritz did have some actual knowledge of the place.
Ahahaha, well, unless Trier is faulty again (and I think it's not, because Fritz starts numbering their letters), I don't think he has enough to be qualified to Fritzplain (love that term) to Heinrich about his vague impressions of St. Petersburg 30 years ago! Hopefully he has other sources. :P
Re: The Suhm Letters: Russia
Date: 2020-01-11 08:38 pm (UTC)Oh, interesting, it's the other way around! Voltaire brings up Peter I first, in Feb/March 1737, then again in May. Then you can hear Fritz thinking, "Oh, wait, I know someone in Russia now!"
Next thing you know, July 27, 1737, he's writing to Suhm with a detailed list of questions about Peter's reforms. Aha!
Re: The Suhm Letters: Russia
Date: 2020-01-14 08:51 pm (UTC)LOL! Poor Fritz, Vienna not putting out enough, er, books for you?
"If you think about this for five seconds, you'll realize that I am the DIPLOMAT to RUSSIA, and MAYBE these are not questions I should be answering where the RUSSIANS can read my mail. You think?"
heeee! Go Suhm!
The Suhm Letters: In Sickness and in Health
Date: 2020-01-09 11:29 pm (UTC)Like the Fredersdorf correspondence--like much of Fritz's correspondence--significant page time is devoted to discussions of health. Not quite as much as Fredersdorf's, is my impression, but still noticeable amounts here and there.
Fritz does his usual "Let me teach you medicine; I know all about it, seeing as how I am 1) constantly sick, 2) smarter than everyone else." Suhm, ever the diplomat, responds to that one with, "I'm sure that remedy works great for you, but fortunately for me, my problems are not nearly as bad as yours [what Fritz wants to hear], so I will not be doing that at all. But good for you!"
Fritz is immediately reassured and not at all offended and just says, "Thank goodness! I wouldn't want you to have problems as bad as mine."
Suhm's life expectancy at this point: 1 year.
Fritz's: 47 years.
Suhm, like Fredersdorf, clearly knows how to manage Fritz.
Colic
At one point, Fritz has a bad colic, and Suhm sends sympathies, and then shortly thereafter, Suhm is attacked by a bad colic. And he writes the very sweet, "I wish that my colic could have been in place of yours, because that would totally be worth it. It doesn't seem fair that both of us have to suffer, when I would gladly suffer for you. But then I tell myself that if great kings and princes aren't spared, how could a lowly mortal such as myself expect to be spared. And the thought of being united in suffering with you does make me feel better, so that's something, at least."
Sleep
Very early on in the correspondence, when Fritz gets his first installment of Wolff, he and Suhm have this exchange:
Fritz: I'm so busy with my regiment you wouldn't believe it, ugh. And then I've been sick, so my doctor says I need to get some exercise, get the blood moving. So now I don't have any time for study. But never fear! I have a solution. I will give up sleep!
Suhm: I love how excited you are about my translation. Maybe not do without sleep, though?
Fritz: Give up learning?? Never! What a dastardly suggestion.
Suhm: No! Not give up learning! Keep learning. Just...look after your health while you do? Only because I love you so much!
Fritz: It's so sweet that you care about my health, but don't worry about me. I know what I'm doing.
I...have often wondered what year Fritz did his "can I do without sleep altogether?" experiment. I still don't know, but I kinda feel like it might've been right around this time (1736).
Kids
Part way through their correspondence, Suhm has an acute episode of bad health and is convinced he's on his deathbed. He makes up his will and takes the liberty of naming Fritz as he one the wants to take care of his kids. Not King Fritz, Crown Prince Fritz, who has no money except what he's getting from foreign courts.
He must've heard what a good job 19-yo Fritz did of raising 22-yo Fredersdorf.He recovers, but a few years later, when he is actually on his deathbed, he again asks Fritz to take care of the kids, this time King Fritz. Who does.
Till death do us part
When Fritz invites Suhm to Berlin at the end of June, one month after he becomes king, Suhm asks for permission to be relieved from his duties as Saxon ambassador. He gets permission, and he sets out some time in late August or early September.
It's a slow trip, during which he has to stop and rest, and write letters explaining what's taking so long. Fritz is wonderful and understanding and all "I can't wait to see you, but please take care of yourself."
He arrives in Warsaw at the end of September or early October. He writes to Fritz that he got suddenly much sicker right before leaving St. Petersburg, and knew an arduous journey might be a really bad idea, but he wanted to see Fritz so much that he couldn't wait, and he was sure that actually seeing him in person would cure all his ills.
Then we get a series of letters giving updates on how he's trying to get better but it's not working. One particularly touching note says, "I'm afraid that you're going to tell me to take it slow and arrive when I can, but I want to see you so badly that I would give up half my life if it meant I could spend the other half with you."
Fritz, right on cue: I think it might be a good idea to travel slowly!
Finally, on November 3, Suhm writes that he's been holding out as long as he could, among other things not wanting to break bad news to Fritz, but he also knows that wasn't fair to Fritz, so here he is. He has only a few days, maybe only hours to live, and it's not fair because they were just about to be reunited, Fritz was king and everything was going to be great, and he almost made it, but the will of Heaven was against their happiness. Suhm describes himself as "ship-wrecked at port."
He asks Fritz to take care of the kids, and to treat his sister, who's been acting as the kids' mother in the absence of their mother, as he would Suhm's widow. [Fritz does, as we know.]
Then religious consolation, and finally, The hour is approaching, I already feel that my strength is abandoning me; I have to depart. Farewell. Another tear, it wets your feet. Oh! deign to look at it, great king, as a pledge of the tender and unalterable attachment with which your faithful Diaphane was devoted to you until his last sigh.
He dies five days later, age 49.
Re: The Suhm Letters: In Sickness and in Health
Date: 2020-01-10 08:14 am (UTC)Re: The Suhm Letters: In Sickness and in Health
Date: 2020-01-11 07:38 pm (UTC)I had my own cynical observation (you wouldn't have guessed it from all the capslocking and hearts, but I am capable of reasoning :P), but it was less political and more personal.
Franzl aside (and that was hardly an option for him), I feel like most people who loved or even liked Fritz managed to reconcile themselves to his idea of international affairs. Granted, the occupation of Saxony was far worse than the alliance-betraying of France and then Rossbach, but if, Voltaire, after becoming disillusioned with the invasion of Silesia (and Herstall before that), could end his last letter to Fritz with "Vivez plus longtemps que moi, pour affermir tous les empires que vous avez fondés. Puisse Frédéric le Grand être Frédéric immortel!"; if Joseph could be a rational fanboy ("I know he's terrible, but he's still the best!"); if Maria Antonia, whom Wikipedia tells me had to leave Dresden during the Seven Years' War, could pen pal with him and with MT--then I feel like a Suhm who is actually at Fritz's court could cope with the invasion of Saxony. No, he wouldn't have been happy. But I'm not sure it would have been a dealbreaker.
My cynicism comes in at the prospect of them actually living together, which they never did. Not even when Fritz was crown prince, much less king. There's a good chance that relationship was so uniformly good because it was largely long distance.
That said, there were people who pulled off living at close proximity to Fritz, and I do see some Fritz-management skills peeking through in Suhm's letters. And he is a professional diplomat, so maybe he could have done it. Of course, he was spared having to do it, just as he was spared having to wrestle his Fritz- and Saxony-loyalties.
a lot of which unsurprisingly deserted to the Austrians as a result
Re: The Suhm Letters: In Sickness and in Health
Date: 2020-01-14 08:52 pm (UTC)Re: The Suhm Letters: In Sickness and in Health
Date: 2020-01-14 08:51 pm (UTC)Man, Suhm is GREAT. Also, re life expectancy: :(((((((
"I wish that my colic could have been in place of yours, because that would totally be worth it. It doesn't seem fair that both of us have to suffer, when I would gladly suffer for you. But then I tell myself that if great kings and princes aren't spared, how could a lowly mortal such as myself expect to be spared. And the thought of being united in suffering with you does make me feel better, so that's something, at least."
Awwww! That is really sweet.
The rest of this is just heartbreaking :(((((( I'm glad Fritz took care of the kids and sister <3
The Suhm Letters: Shipping Mode
Date: 2020-01-10 12:29 am (UTC)The early letters
I will tell you this: the opening letters from Fritz and Suhm are like the opening letters between Fritz and Voltaire--they spend so much time professing eternal devotion that, as sweet as it is, eventually you're relieved when they talk about something else. They have two kinds of exchanges. One goes like this.
Suhm: You're perfect! Sublime! Divine!
Fritz: Stop saying that!
Suhm: But it's true! For once, you can tell a prince this and it's not flattery!*
Fritz: But I don't even recognize myself in those descriptions! And then I feel like you must be writing to someone else!
Suhm: Okay, I'll TRY! But you must forgive me the occasional lapse, because I can't help it!
* Historians debate whether it was flattery. I want to believe it was real. I CHOOSE TO BELIEVE.
[ETA: Okay, you know what? I'm going with: it's real, because Fritz was very easy to get obsessed with, and the farther away you lived, the longer you stayed obsessed. And Fritz was not his boss. So it was real. I have spoken.]
Then every so often for the remainder of the letters, he starts gushing about Fritz, and then goes, "Sorry! Sorry. I can't help it."
And then the second kind of exchange:
Fritz: I really want to see you! Hearing from you brightens my day, and your absence keeps Rheinsberg from being perfect.
Suhm: I miss you so much! I can't live without you! May my job situation one day allow me to join you there.
Me, knowing how it's going to turn out: *cries*
Okay, maybe they were able to keep up the mutual love until the end *because* they never lived together, but allow me my dreams, okay?
Classics
Fritz, of course, invokes the standard classical comparisons: "Orestes and Pylades, the good Pirithoüs, the tender Nisus and the wise Achates," right after Suhm arrives in Russia, telling Suhm that no matter how far away he goes, Fritz will never forget him.
Then, after their next major life event, when Fritz is on the verge of becoming king, he again assures Suhm that he won't forget him: you will find in me everything that Orestes ever found in Pylades. [Actual quote.]
Yes, that's right. Fritz as Pylades and Suhm as Orestes, not the other way around.
To which Suhm replies, What! the greatest of kings wants to become Pylades for Orestes! Oh! who will ever be able to say all that is sublime and touching about such feelings?
Love is all you need
When Fritz's brother (presumably AW?) shows up with some companions at Ruppin, Fritz bitches about how inane their conversation was, and how he had to entertain them, when he really wanted to be reading the next installment of the Wolff translation, and how he would gladly have gone two days without food if it meant he could talk to Suhm instead of these nitwits.
PEOPLE ARE STUPID WHY ARE PEOPLE SO STUPID I JUST WANT TO READ BOOKS AND TALK BOOKS <-- Man after my own heart.
And then there was the time Suhm wrote, "I was planning to work on the next installment of the translation for you, but instead I read and reread your last letter a thousand times without being able to get enough of it."
Poetic one-liners
After Suhm moves to Russia, Fritz writes:
When will I see you again, my dear Diaphane? When can we go for a walk under the beech trees and under the elms?
You guys, you may say it doesn't take much, but I must inform you that I have a new ship.
Also, remember how Fritz used to visit Berlin in the winters, and that's when he would see Suhm, and they would sit by the fire and talk for hours? After Suhm moves to Russia, Fritz writes, that first winter without him:
We are leaving next week for Berlin. I will find my chimney fire there, but I will not find there the one whose conversation charmed my soul.
MY HEART. And then he continues:
Remember, my dear Diaphane, that there is in Germany a small country situated in a pretty laughing valley and all surrounded by woods, where your name and your memory will not perish, as long as I live in it.
Live for me
When Suhm is so sick he thinks he's going to die, Fritz writes his usual, "Don't die! Live for me! Think how upset I will be if you die! You're the best proof of immortality of the soul I've got! Losing you forever would be a blow to humanity akin to losing Newton or Voltaire!"
Only this time, Fritz's "get well soon" approach works. Suhm writes, after he recovers, writes:
When my life is odious to me, the interest you deign to take in it would be enough to make it dear to me. I therefore come back with joy to life, since heaven wants it, and Your Royal Highness wants it; but, my lord, suffer it to be henceforth to live only for you, to enjoy the only good that I aspire to, that of possessing your good graces, to be a witness, finally, of your virtues and your glory.
Okay, so far, loyal subject, blah blah. But then, he writes...are you ready for this? We would have a field day watching 1907/1916/1926 editors pass this off as paternal or rococo:
Yes, I said to myself, whatever my fate, I will always be the envy of everyone, as long as Your Royal Highness deigns to keep me with such feelings. You have restored my health, my lord, perhaps life; so it is to you that I owe it, and that I make a vow to consecrate it. Take possession of me, as of property which belongs to you by the most sacred rights. You have given me a peace of mind that nothing in the world is capable of altering, a firmness that nothing can shake, and I feel intimately that I can now be happy in spite of fate. The only thing that can still afflict me is the distance in which the circumstances still condemn me to live away from Your Royal Highness. You are, monseigneur, to express myself figuratively, you are my sun; for, as soon as I am no longer in a position to experience the gentle influence of your rays, I feel a cold creep so deep into my soul, that nothing is capable of warming it.
A couple months later, Fritz gives Suhm a watch, inspiring Suhm to new heights of emotion:
In the transports of joy with which my heart is so intoxicated, what expression would I have left that could respond to the ardor of the feeling with which I feel my soul burning? It's a passion, it's a love. My poor body is too weak to support such a powerful emotion, too weak to feed such a burning fire, capable of consuming it; and the moment when my calm soul is in a peaceful state is the moment when I begin to be able to express weakly, as I do, a slight shadow of the ineffable feelings with which my soul was filled.
It's all rococo emo, just go with it, right?
Seriously. This would not sound out of place in Lehndorff's diary in a passage about Heinrich!
Right?
And that's it from me and Suhm. I like our division of interests: we get to learn all about the dysfunctional families from
Does anyone want to write me Fritz/Suhm fic? *bats eyelashes*
Re: The Suhm Letters: Shipping Mode
Date: 2020-01-10 08:37 am (UTC)On the one Hand: definitely like Lehndorff calling Heinrich beautiful, because Fritz hasn't actually done anything yet to justify any judgment of what type of king he'll be. On the other hand, Voltaire called Fritz "The Salomon of the North" around the same time, with similar (non-)justification, which irresistably reminds me of his later (post break up) comment "such accolades were cheap and cost us nothing" re him and Fritz showering each other with praise in the early correspondance, and Suhm is a professional diplomat writing to the guy who just got on the throne. Still, all the rest of it - from the beginning, i.e taking care of 16 years old distressed Frit to the ending, him setting out on the long journey in a terrible state of health just to see Fritz again - makes me believe he did mean it in the sense of "you're going to be so fabulous, I just know it".
When Fritz's brother (presumably AW?) shows up with some companions at Ruppin, Fritz bitches about how inane their conversation was, and how he had to entertain them
I bet, given it's the 1730s and AW was born in 1722, which means he can't have been more than a child/early teenager. I am more surprised FW let AW visit barely rehabilitated older brother in Neuruppin on his lonesome (yes, with staff, but without FW to supervise). Are you sure it's AW, and he doesn't mean brother as in brother-in-law? Because it would make far more sense if Fritz made that comment about, say, any of EC's Braunschweig brothers, or the notorious Margrave of Schwed. It would make far more sense for them to have visited him (and EC) in the Ruppin/Rheinsberg days than for young AW. (And that's leaving aside Fritz was actively cultivating kid AW with all those educational letters - only two of which have made it into the Trier Collection - and poetry, with their constant "books are cool, get thee reading! Also, you can totally trust me, please report anything Dad ever says about me ever!" theme.)
Suhm comforting drunken Crown Prince Fritz sounds like an ideal h/c scenario.
Re: The Suhm Letters: Shipping Mode
Date: 2020-01-11 08:20 pm (UTC)Oh, yeah. That's pretty standard stuff. I assume courtiers said the same thing to five-year-old Louis XV when he inherited.
makes me believe he did mean it in the sense of "you're going to be so fabulous, I just know it".
I also believe he believed it, as I believe did Voltaire, because he was so educated and enlightened and writing pamphlets about enlightened rule! Such a promising start!
But belief about Fritz's future prospects as greatest of kings aside, I keep wondering how much of the love was meant and how much was flattery or, at best, "accolades that cost us nothing." And I keep coming back to two things:
1) He actually knew Fritz, not extremely well, probably, but for a long time. For twenty years at that point. Unlike Voltaire. And he knew him at the worst period of his life (maybe barring 1758-1760), and his sympathy must have been strong.
2) Like you said, setting out on that long journey just after he'd gotten sick. If he was just flattering a monarch in hopes of a position, the thing to do would have been to try to get better first, not kill yourself in your rush to get there. The offer would still have been open; it wasn't a "move now or lose all hope of your dream job" situation. Fritz was being very chill and not rushing him, telling him to take care of himself, take it slow, etc. He actually offered the position very tentatively, hoping Suhm wanted to come join him but not taking it for granted, unlike his usual "OMG COME HERE NOW" messages.
And Algarotti, who post-1753-breakup was constantly being pelted with demands to know when he was coming back from Italy, started off saying things like, "My doctors say it might kill me to travel, but I'm so committed to rejoining you that I'm going to do it anyway," and then in eleven years never actually got around to doing it. Algarotti, who was almost certainly genuinely infatuated with Fritz, but who was increasingly disillusioned, and who was actually driven by a quest for his dream job and dream boss. And his correspondence with Fritz, post-breakup, is polite and full of encouragement and praise for his military accomplishments, but far from romantic. It reads very much like a "I see no need to gratuitously offend this king" keeping-in-touch correspondence.
Whereas you can watch Suhm set out immediately, drag himself mile by painful mile in the letters, going as fast as he can, against all medical advice and the demands of his body, and only stopping for good when he reports himself being unable to get out of bed and being excused from attending court. He also, if I'm reading the correspondence correctly, decided to submit his request to resign his position at St. Petersburg *before* he even had an offer in hand from Fritz. Wow, rereading more closely, before he'd heard from Fritz at all. The chronology (chronology is not just plot! it's characterization!) goes like this:
May 31: FW dies.
June 14: Fritz writes a letter to Suhm telling him that he's king now and would Suhm like to come?
~June 15: The news reaches St. Petersburg. Fritz's June 14 letter is still on the way.
~June 15: Suhm writes to Dresden asking permission to leave St. Petersburg and go live with Fritz.
June 15: Suhm writes a letter congratulating and praising Fritz. He hasn't received Fritz's June 14 letter yet.
June 29: Fritz gets Suhm's June 15 letter. He thanks Suhm for the compliments, but says what he really was hoping for from the letter was to find out if Suhm wanted to join him. He sounds a little hurt.
July 2: Suhm gets Fritz's June 14 letter. He replies that he hadn't even waited for the invitation but rather, relying on the Crown Prince's promises, immediately started trying to quit his job and is still waiting to hear back on that. Translation: "DUH, I want to be with you. I thought that went without saying."
July 15: Fritz gets Suhm's July 2 DUH letter. He is delighted.
So it seems to me like Suhm was motivated by love rather than a search for a position. Perhaps idealized love, and certainly not love that predicted the next 46 years, but one that was based on something real during the last 20.
ETA: Oh, god, the chronology makes me ship them more than ever now. <33
Suhm comforting drunken Crown Prince Fritz sounds like an ideal h/c scenario.
Personally, I think the drunken Crown Prince Fritz would be very likely to hit my embarrassment squick, but day-after Fritz would be *perfect*. Especially since we know he did have a conversation with Suhm about that episode and stated that he didn't want to get drunk, which suggests he was having very painful emotions after he sobered up.
Are you sure it's AW
Not in the least, hence my question mark in "presumably AW?" I was confused too. Brother-in-law would make perfect sense. Let me go reread the letter and see if it sheds any light.
et l'arrivée de mon frère en compagnie des sieurs de Hacke et de Rittberg
Do those names give you any clues? I know there was a Hacke who was a Prussian officer and one of Fritz's friends--one of the 6 he'd loved the most. But Fritz seems so extremely unhappy and disdainful about everyone involved that I wonder if it's a different one. Or maybe Fritz was just in a super antisocial mood that day, because he had a new installment of Wolff he was dying to read and resented anything that got in the way. Not like I can throw stones. :P
Anyway, hopefully it's more obvious to you who a Hacke and a Rittberg would be hanging out with, since you know much more about the family.
Re: The Suhm Letters: Shipping Mode
Date: 2020-01-12 05:55 am (UTC)Hacke and Rittberg: sorry, I don't know anything. Both names are listed as Prussian noblity but without individual members which would fit the Dates. Lehndorff's diaries have him socializing with a Count Hacke a couple of times and then with his widow who is part of EC's court, but this Count Hacke is mentioned as a friend of the King's, i.e. Fritz, not of AW. (The first time he's mentioned at all, it's in the context of Lehndorff cancelling dinner with him because he'd rather be with dearest H.) No Rittberg anywhere in the diaries. The best I can say is that Ziebura in her AW biography does not mention a trip to Rheinsberg on young AW's part before Fritz gets on the throne, and she's pretty good in detailing all the interactions he has with his older brother through the years. So my money is still on one of EC's brothers coming to visit and annoying Fritz.
Speaking of siblings and Wolff, though, Charlotte's wiki entry reminded me she did her own translation/summary of part of Wolff into French, which is impressive. (It also reminded me that Charlotte took the whole Prussia = Sparta thing very serious, considering she gave both her sons the "come back with your shields or on them" speech when sending them to fight for Fritz in the 7 Years War. ("I forbid you to show your faces again to me until you have done deeds worthy of your birth and Family.") (Lehndorff also notes that when Meeting EC in war times, she said she loved her sons but would gladly sacrifice them if it helped Fritz win the war. Add to this her telling FW2 she cursed the day of giving birth to Elisabeth and her refusal to take Elisabeth back post scandal, and I'm even more amazed Anna Amalia turned out sane and decided to have Carl August raised utterly unlike a Hohenzollern and to scheme with young FrankfurtHans to prevent him from joining the Prussian army.)
Re: The Suhm Letters: Shipping Mode
Date: 2020-01-12 09:47 pm (UTC)Yeah, so that's the same Hacke that's the only Hacke I know of. Brother-in-law is as likely as anything, then. Though it's possible that Ziebura can't tell which brother this is either, and so just omits all reference to this episode. Unless there's enough documentation on AW's side that he couldn't have made a trip to Rheinsberg without it being recorded somewhere.
translation/summary of part of Wolff into French, which is impressive
That is impressive! As is Anna Amalia's ability to intuit parenting out of thin air, apparently. While at a species level, traumatizing children leads to an overall statistical increase in likelihood of them retraumatizing their own victims in turn, and there are solid neuroendocrinological reasons for this, there are definitely individuals who manage to conclude, "Well, that sucked, I wouldn't want anyone else to go through that" and then DO THE OPPOSITE.
Re: The Suhm Letters: Shipping Mode
Date: 2020-01-13 07:49 am (UTC)Probably it would have been recorded, but if that record would still exist - about such a minor incident - is doubtful. I did think of something, but that's still very meagre: teenage AW isn't supposed to go anywhwere without Kreyczen (hope I remember the spelling correctly), aka the Steward/governor whom FW trusts to keep his teen son (and the two younger brothers after him) chaste and away from any lewdness, and of whom AW will later write to brother Ferdinand "Tell him I've got several splendid arses here which eagerly await his big Priapus" re: coming to Spandau where AW is on revue duty.
If Fritz is irritated by his visitors interfering with his reading time, and takes the trouble to list Hacke and Rittberg in addition to "my brother", wouldn't he be likely to list K. as well? Or would he have made an exception for gay Stewards?
(And yes, I know, it wouldn't hold up in court. Very meagre evidence.)
Re: The Suhm Letters: Shipping Mode
Date: 2020-01-14 12:41 am (UTC)Oh, sure. I meant extant documentation that Ziebura would have access to when reporting all AW's movements. What I'm saying is that the argument from silence on her part isn't necessarily sufficient, if it's plausible the only record we have of such a trip would be a whiny letter from Fritz.
hom FW trusts to keep his teen son (and the two younger brothers after him) chaste and away from any lewdness
Ahahahaha. Well, maybe
wouldn't he be likely to list K. as well? Or would he have made an exception for gay Stewards?
Hmm, not sure. Maybe it comes down to how active the guy was in the conversation and how much he contributed to Fritz not being able to get back to his books and his fantasies of walking or "walking" under the beeches and elms with his long-distance boyfriend.
Re: The Suhm Letters: Shipping Mode
Date: 2020-01-13 07:50 am (UTC)Fritz as Pylades and Suhm as Orestes, not the other way around
Hmm. Do we take from this that our warrior king was a bottom in general, or he only wanted to bottom for Suhm? If people want to write Fritz/Suhm fic, this very real question of sexual dynamics needs to be considered, even if they only (extremely not no homo-ly) talk about it, in terms of burning fire and walking (or "walking") under beech trees and under elms et cetera. (How about with Fritz's other boyfriends, I mean, devoted and emo manservants?)
Re: The Suhm Letters: Shipping Mode
Date: 2020-01-13 08:42 am (UTC)Re: The Suhm Letters: Shipping Mode
Date: 2020-01-13 07:14 pm (UTC)Well, we may not have discussed it, but I'm sure you all could have guessed that I have given it ~extensive thought~ and am ready to produce an essay on the subject. :P
It's a tricky question, between control issues on the one hand and wanting to be taken care of on the other.
Yep, the tension between the two is exactly how I approach his relationships as well. There's also sexual topping and emotional topping to consider, also Fritz's low sex drive.
(How about with Fritz's other boyfriends, I mean, devoted and emo manservants?)
Well...you asked!
Suhm and Fredersdorf
Fritz's dynamics with these two are so complementary in my mind that it's hard for me to discuss one without the other.
In a word, I think this discussion has finally given me the ability to articulate what I think Fritz's relationship with Fredersdorf was missing: emotional topping. I think Fritz's urge to be taken care of manifested as a craving for someone to hold him and adore him and reassure him on their own initiative, and I think the situation plus Fredersdorf's personality meant that Fredersdorf was too careful for that. I think he gave Fritz reassurance and emotional intimacy, but in a reactive way. When he took initiative, I expect it was having things ready for Fritz before he asked, maybe offering to play for him, but not, like, petting him.
I discussed this in the email thread with
I also kind of suspect 1740 was the year Fritz decided he just wasn't really into the sex act, as much as he might find men attractive. More on this later.
But that emotional topping that Fritz craved, I think he could get from Suhm. I don't think it was 100% Suhm topping, nor do I think Fritz wanted that. From the letters, I would describe them both as switches (to continue repurposing sexual vocabulary). But I think Suhm was able to *provide* the emotional topping that was probably the only thing missing from Fritz's relationship with Fredersdorf.
Their relationship must have evolved over time, what with Fritz being a child when they met, and in my mind it never actually went sexual, but the formative years of their relationship were teenage abuse victim Fritz needing comfort, and Suhm being twenty years older and a noble and a diplomat and had the self-confidence to provide it. And though it shifted into an intellectual relationship between adults, I think if Fritz ever looked like he needed a hug [like, idk, during that 1732 Christmas visit--because we know these winter holiday visits in the early 1730s were when Fritz and Suhm would hang out], their history meant Suhm could just do it without thinking about it. While Fredersdorf would be in the background unobtrusively making a cup of--well, one would normally make tea, but for Fritz, probably coffee :P--or something. And I suspect, along with
Fredersdorf, though, I think Fredersdorf satisfied Fritz's control needs so thoroughly that Fritz could relax and entrust him with all the most important things in the world. And like I've said, I am not 100% sure that Suhm, as a nobleman so much older and more experienced, would have been able to do that.
Sexually? As noted, I doubt Fritz ever had sex with either, but if he had, ooh. I think he would have let Suhm top at least some of the time (Greco-Roman mores meeting the age difference here would have helped), and he probably would have wanted to let Fredersdorf but wouldn't have been able to bring himself to, between the social differences and his control issues.
Peter Keith
My read on these two is 100% control issues. Fritz tops sexually, emotionally, socially, everything. I mean, not that there was anything going on after 1728, because everything went wrong. But in my AUs where they get to hang out more, or when I develop my wishful-thinking stories where they straighten out their miscommunications in the early 1750s, Fritz's control issues have a stranglehold on him where Peter's concerned, and there's not enough emotional depth for him to be left craving anything different.
Oh,
What We Know
1728: 17-yo page Peter is caught fooling around with 16-yo Crown Prince Fritz, and banished from court all the way to Wesel, near the Dutch border.
1730: Peter is included in Fritz's escape attempt and is meant to meet up with him in England. Well, Peter makes it, but as you know, no one else does. :-(
1730-1740: Peter lives in exile. Fritz seems to know that he's alive and well, but they have no direct communication.
1740: Fritz pardons Peter and summons him back to Berlin. He's in Silesia when Peter arrives.
1741: Peter, through an intermediary, requests both a commission in the army and a raise. He gets the commission but not the raise. He also gets engaged just before going off to war.
1744: Fritz makes Peter an honorary member of the Academy of Sciences and gives him a position as curator.
1750: Fritz gives Peter an unsolicited large lump sum of money and a letter addressed to his mother-in-law talking about how wonderful Peter is.
1753: Fritz gives Peter another lump sum of money and a letter (MIL is dead if you believe Wikipedia, so I don't know who it's addressed to, maybe his wife). He takes him as ADC to Silesia.
1755: Peter gets to escort Fritz's sister to the abbey where she's just been made an abbess.
1756: Peter dies, we don't know where or of what, age 45.
Some unspecified time after 1740: Fritz keeps Peter near the queen mother, if you believe a contemporary who wasn't particularly close to either but was present in Berlin.
Plus this Algarotti write-up up through 1745-1747, which is relevant for comparanda purposes.
What I Think
This whole write-up.
And that's how you arrive at my whole hypothesis where Fritz and Peter, both meaning well, ran into Fritz's control issues and got into a feedback loop of mutual miscommunication.
If I ever get my writing ability back, I'd love to turn this into a fic, because it's really what I think happened, but I can't prove any of it. Self-indulgently, I want to give them a scene that's almost certainly AU, where they're sitting in the carriage on the way back from Silesia and talking, and they figure out what went wrong and achieve closure.
Algarotti
Algarotti is interesting, because he apparently had a strong bisexual sex drive, spent time in the brothels in Berlin, was suspected to have picked up STDs, etc. He was also apparently hugely attractive both in looks and personality.
He developed what was apparently a mutual infatuation with Fritz in 1739/1740, and in 1740, when Fritz was on his trip west, Algarotti rode in his carriage with him and apparently there was mutual caressing and carrying on like Algarotti was a mistress.
So Algarotti has always been my most likely candidate for "actually scored with Fritz." And my totally speculative headcanon here is that they did it once or twice, Fritz didn't enjoy it enough for it to be worth it, and that was what convinced him that he didn't like sex, not even with men.
My headcanon is also that he had a similar experience with the Countess Orzelska twelve years earlier. Basically, on both occasions, Fritz came away thinking, "Well, if I don't like sex with *him*/*her*, I must not like sex with *anyone*." The difference being that with Orzelska, he was left questioning whether maybe he was just inexperienced, and so he had a couple more, probably unconsummated, affairs with women before deciding forcing it wasn't working.
I also think that he was clearly capable of admiring gifted women, but that he was still homoromantic, and that his drop-off in interactions with women that give historians and fans fodder for their no-homoing was when he stopped equating "I enjoy this woman's company" with "I am head over heels for this woman."
Likewise, I think Algarotti inadvertently helped him stop equating "I'm attracted to this person" with "I want to act on this attraction to the point of being sexually active."
Who was on top? Well, it has been pointed out by more than one biographer that Fritz's lifelong battle with hemorrhoids would likely get in the way of frequent anal penetration. And I just really don't see Fritz giving blow jobs. And Algarotti was a people pleaser. And Fritz had control issues.
Conclusion: hand jobs, or Fritz was on top.
Also, I suspect their relationship was largely intellectual and flirting, not emotional intimacy.
Voltaire
One thing I know, though, that's the true reason why he and Voltaire must have kept it at handjobs. Not even blow jobs, because neither of them would ever shut up, and neither of them would ever allow the other one topping. Clearly!
It's so clear that I had independently come up with this! Including the "neither of them would ever shut up." :P
The only thing I have to add is: praise kink, much? (This featured heavily in the Fritz/Voltaire I outlined for Yuletide before I stopped having any hope of being able to write.)
Katte
Saving the best and most complicated for last. I mean, notwithstanding that I ship Fritz with 5 other people, this remains my OTP. :D And as such, they have a deep and multilayered relationship that's hard to predict. And so their sexual dynamics for me depend entirely on which AU they're in.
I do think Katte, between social class and outgoing, charismatic personality, is capable of providing Fritz with an appropriate amount of emotional topping. I think Fritz was delighted when Katte ran around gushing over how much the Crown Prince loved him, and when he wanted to copy that miniature of Fritz and Wilhelmine and then refused to give it up. (I also believe, whatever Katte may have said during his repentant presentation at and after his trial, it wasn't solely or even mostly ambition: it was infatuation that he couldn't publicly admit to.)
So I think Katte will totally feel comfortable grabbing Fritz and squeezing him and gushing over him in private, or putting his arms around him and Fritz's head on his shoulder with a "There, there," when he needs it, and Fritz will eat it all up. And I think Katte is as close as Fritz ever gets to having a relationship on a roughly equal basis.
But sexually...well, in some AUs, Katte shows up again in 1740 and Fritz has already figured out he's not really into sex, "but have fun with your page or hunter." (Based on a letter to Fredersdorf.) "But emotionally you belong to me." Or in others, they're frantically switching and can't get enough of each other. Sometimes Fritz's control issues come to the fore, and Katte has to go along with it while trying to get him back into a place where he can let his guard down enough to bottom again. And in others, sometimes the depth and longevity and near-equality of their relationship means that Fritz's confusion over his sex drive comes to the fore, and then they have to spend a long time trying to figure that out. And in some AUs, they discover that, best of intentions and mutual attraction and all, they just can't figure out a way to be sexually compatible, between Katte having a conventional sex drive and Fritz having an unconventional one.
(They have a lot of AUs in my head, what can I say.)
So, um, you guys know me well enough that you saw the length and amount of detail coming, right? ;)
Re: The Suhm Letters: Shipping Mode
Date: 2020-01-13 09:19 pm (UTC)Re: The Suhm Letters: Shipping Mode
Date: 2020-01-13 10:35 pm (UTC)Katte was executed for treason, true, not for sex, but Keith was banished for something inappropriately sexual, and all of us think FW's suspicions about the Fritz/Katte relationship played a role in his decision to come down so hard on Katte. I mean, except for the ones who think it's because he's the only one in the country who had a conscience omfg.
At any rate, Fritz had just been burned badly when they met, and Fredersdorf's a commoner who might go along with sex if Fritz asked, but probably isn't going to jump headlong into the fire.
Re: The Suhm Letters: Shipping Mode
Date: 2020-01-13 11:32 pm (UTC)Just to clarify, with Orzelska I mean he came away concluding that he must not like sex with women (because she's so objectively awesome that it must be his lack of interest in general), and that same year he starts experimenting with Peter, and the next year gets involved with Katte.
Then with Algarotti, in this purely speculative headcanon, he concludes that he doesn't like sex with men either, i.e. sex with anyone*. Again because Algarotti is so objectively awesome and attractive to everyone, and experienced, and none of Fritz's previous sexual activity with men, such as it was, has really done it for him either. According to this hypothesis, it takes him so much longer with men because he's so intensely homoromantic. And the Algarotti-inspired insight has a lot to do with why he doesn't bother going all the way with the pages and batmen.
* Non-gender-binary not being on the radar here and probably not relevant anyway.
Re: The Suhm Letters: Shipping Mode
Date: 2020-01-13 09:05 pm (UTC)Discuss. :D
Re: The Suhm Letters: Shipping Mode
Date: 2020-01-13 09:27 pm (UTC)Re: The Suhm Letters: Shipping Mode
Date: 2020-01-13 09:29 pm (UTC)Re: The Suhm Letters: Shipping Mode
Date: 2020-01-14 08:52 pm (UTC)Re: Gossipy Sensationalism: The Suhm Installment
Date: 2020-01-14 08:47 pm (UTC)...I would go for that :)
They use the same code that Fritz uses with Seckendorff and the Austrians: books. Any time you see Fritz asking for a book not by Wolff in the second half of the correspondence, he's asking for money.
Oh, lol, I'm glad you said that because this is the sort of thing where I'd be like "gosh, he asks for a lot of books, cool :D"
Any algebraic problem is just code for "Solve for x, where x is the amount of money I want this time."
Okay, see, I find THIS endearing :P :D
Re: Gossipy Sensationalism: The Suhm Installment
Date: 2020-01-14 09:16 pm (UTC)Me too! I'm glad various historians have spelled this out for me.
ETA: I mean, that *is* what you're supposed to think! That's why it was used as the code for secret money changes of hand!
Excerpt from the V. secret diaries of Fredersdorf
Date: 2020-01-11 04:53 am (UTC)Arrived at court. Princess W. seems nice.
Dec 21
OMG. I thought Queen SD was OK, Fritz never talks about her, but last night at dinner she let loose with this random rambling diatribe against Fritz's fiancee. All us servants were trying really hard not to react. Apparently she didn't know the instant dinner was over we were all gonna go gossip?? She then proceeded to yell at Wilhelmine, who was all "OK, mom," and "If you say so, mom."
I asked later in the servants' quarters if she was always like that. "Yeah," they said. "Sometimes worse."
Dec 22
When Fritz talks to King FW he's always either manic or depressed afterwards. Sometimes both! I wasn't aware it was possible to be both. I thought FW hated Fritz, but now I think he hates everyone. He yells at SD, he yells at Fritz, and he alternates between ignoring and kicking Wilhelmine. He mostly just ignores the younger kids, who have also learned to get the hell out of everyone's way. Good job kids.
Dec 23
Okay, now I really think FW hates everyone. Possibly including himself. We all had to watch some random comedians for FOUR HOURS. OUTSIDE. Have I mentioned it's DECEMBER?? FW yelled at anyone who even moved, so it wasn't like he was having a great time either. Wilhelmine was coughing. Every time she coughed she either got yelled at or a death glare. Fritz tried to give her his coat, but of course he got yelled at too. Finally I managed to rustle up a blanket and drape it over her shoulders, and because I'm only a servant I only got half the death glare.
I talked to the comedians afterwards and they weren't very happy about all this either, especially since the King stiffed them on their fee on the grounds that engaging them was "good advertising."
Dec 24
Fritz and Wilhelmine are engaged in something with Seckendorff and Grumkow and borrowing money. I don't even want to know. Oh God. I did talk briefly to Seckendorff. He was all "Well, Wilhelmine will be all right once her father-in-law kicks the bucket." EVERYONE IS CRAZY HERE.
Speaking of crazy... FW came up to me. I'd hoped he hadn't noticed me at all. Maybe I shouldn't have given that blanket to Wilhelmine the other night, but she was really cold. He was all "So... err... you're my son's valet, I hear."
"Er, yes, sire, your Majesty," I said, trying to unobtrusively move away from him.
He stared at me. It was really uncomfortable. "Could be a little taller," he mumbled. (So weird! I'm a lot taller than him.) "But for the boy's first valet hire, not bad, not bad at all. Boy, if you ever want a job here, just let me know."
"Your Majesty. Very much obliged, sire," I said, which was better than "OMG NO" which was obviously what I was thinking.
He stared at me some more, sort of patted me awkwardly on the shoulder, and left.
...now that I write that down, was the King hitting on me???? EW.
Dec 25
Christmas. At this point I wasn't surprised that the Christmas Day service was four hours, also outside. Also, I'm used to the service being about, you know, Christ's birth, but apparently the text the guy was given was all about honoring your father and mother. Fritz spent the whole time passing notes to Wilhelmine. I found one. It said "'Fathers, provoke not your children to wrath.'"
Once we all trooped inside and warmed up, FW and SD passed out presents. From FW, Fritz got an old sock. From SD, Wilhelmine got a dirty handkerchief. Then we had dinner. Apparently FW is experimenting with boiled pudding diets now. It wasn't very appetizing.
FW looked at me once in a while but I pretended to be very very busy with all my valet duties.
Maybe I should invite Fritz to MY house for Christmas next year. It would be more cramped but at least we're not ALL CRAZY.
Dec 26
We are leaving!! Yay!! As we left, FW and Seckendorff were pulling Wilhelmine's husband out the door. FW was going "Come ON, Friedrich, who doesn't like drinking all day?!" and Wilhelmine's husband was all, "ME. THAT'S WHO. I DON'T LIKE DRINKING ALL DAY."
I felt sorry for him, but at least we're outta here!
[if anyone reads this who isn't selenak or mildred, I made up the FW-F convo and Christmas but scarily little of the rest of it is made up]
Re: Excerpt from the V. secret diaries of Fredersdorf
Date: 2020-01-11 08:10 am (UTC)she let loose with this random rambling diatribe against Fritz's fiancee
Count the days free of Hohenzollern crazy you still have, EC, because there won't be many left!
We all had to watch some random comedians for FOUR HOURS. OUTSIDE.
(not to Mildred: In German. Extra burden to F, W and SD.)
Loved Fredersdorf learning from the comedians later that they were stiffed, because FW so would.
FW's awkward coming on to Fredersdorf: GOLDEN. (But so is everything, really!)
Also, poor Fredersdorf, with eight more years of this to come. (Although as we know, Fritz managed to stay happily away in Neuruppin and Rheinsberg most of the time.) Truly, among "getting to know your new boyfriend's family", this has to outdo most other examples, even among royals. (Hephaistion meeting Philip and Olympias, Maybe? But I dimly seem to recall he grew up at least in part at the Macedonian court, so...)
FW might be the worst, Cahn, but you're the best!
Re: Excerpt from the V. secret diaries of Fredersdorf
Date: 2020-01-11 04:58 pm (UTC)Indeed!
FW's awkward coming on to Fredersdorf: GOLDEN.
YESSS. I like how my estimate of Fredersdorf's height is "approximately 5'10" because any taller and he'd have to be
FW's boytoy instead of Fritz'sa Potsdam Giant." :PIt said "'Fathers, provoke not your children to wrath.'"
LOLOL 99% odds this note was passed at least once. Now I want to work this into a real fic.
Maybe I should invite Fritz to MY house for Christmas next year. It would be more cramped but at least we're not ALL CRAZY.
Fritz: YES PLEASE. Can Wilhelmine come too?
Although as we know, Fritz managed to stay happily away in Neuruppin and Rheinsberg most of the time.
Indeed. Ruppin had its pros and cons, but distance from Insane Parents (and Poor Unwanted Wife) is definitely one.
Fritz at Küstrin: I'm locked in a small room and they're feeding me vile scraps and I never get to talk to anyone and there's no music and nothing to read except a Bible...BUT AT LEAST DAD'S NOT HERE.
Hephaistion meeting Philip and Olympias, Maybe? But I dimly seem to recall he grew up at least in part at the Macedonian court, so...
Yup, I believe they met when H was already at court, so he would have had a sense of the royals before he met Alexander. And he still decided to take up with this family. Gotta be made of tough stuff to keep up with Alexander.
Apparently she didn't know the instant dinner was over we were all gonna go gossip??
Have never had servants (ha), but from things I've read, people who do have them get used to talking like no one else is present, because they're so ubiquitous and supposed to be beneath your notice.
When Fritz talks to King FW he's always either manic or depressed afterwards. Sometimes both! I wasn't aware it was possible to be both.
Mildred: *immediately mentally supplies off-page hurt/comfort*
From FW, Fritz got an old sock. From SD, Wilhelmine got a dirty handkerchief.
LOLOLOL This is THE BEST Christmas ever.
OMG, Cahn, thank you!
Re: Excerpt from the V. secret diaries of Fredersdorf
Date: 2020-01-11 06:32 pm (UTC)How tall is that in the metric system, asks this European?
Now I want to work this into a real fic.
Me tooooo.
Gotta be made of tough stuff to keep up with Alexander.
Verily. Though given that Hohenzollern Family insanity is a match for Macedonian Family insanity, doesn't that mean Fredersdorf is as tough as Hephaistion?
Margrave Friedrich of Bayreuth: Ahem. I would like to point out here that this marriage might have been originally my father's idea, but I was the one doing my best to make a success of it. Despite that first visit to Berlin. I served with a regiment in Berlin to make FW happy, only to discover he was worse than my Dad, I heard my mother-in-law call me a beggar prince when talking to my wife, my sister-in-law flirted with me as some kind of a family power game, and that was before my oldest brother-in-law arrived, at which point the earth could have swallowed me and my wife would not have noticed. And that was before the enforced drinking and my father-in-law going so nuts that it almost made me miss Dad and his stick at home. Did I give up? I did not. Yes, Wilhelmine and I had our ups and downs, but frankly, which couple does not? We did remain together, in the same residence, whenever she wasn't visiting her brother. Who, frankly, got only more scary with the years, not in the way his father did but in a way that made me wonder whether I'd find my principality annexed one day when I woke up too late. My point is: decades with that family - I survived them, sane, and on good terms with my estimable spouse who died in my and our daughter's arms. Beat that, Hephaistion!
ETA: Have never had servants (ha), but from things I've read, people who do have them get used to talking like no one else is present, because they're so ubiquitous and supposed to be beneath your notice.
True, but in that section of the memoirs which I named Cahn as a basis, Wilhelmine, despite being something of a snob and blind to what the good citizens of Bayreuth actually think of her and her husband until their town residence burns, still is aghast Mom and Charlotte rant about EC in front of the servants. Which I take to mean that having a go at the future Queen of Prussia in front of the staff is not how SD is supposed to act even by the standards of the day.
Re: Excerpt from the V. secret diaries of Fredersdorf
Date: 2020-01-11 07:14 pm (UTC)Sorry, I should have converted. 178 cm. I keep seeing six feet, or 183 cm, given as the threshold for the Potsdam Giants. Of course, unit conversion is a mess, and nobody can even agree on Fritz's height, giving me numbers between 157 and 170 cm, so grain of salt. But especially in the 18th century, 183 cm seems reasonable as the point at which FW starts getting a hard-on.
Though given that Hohenzollern Family insanity is a match for Macedonian Family insanity, doesn't that mean Fredersdorf is as tough as Hephaistion?
I wouldn't want to be the first to say he wasn't! Actually, their job descriptions seem to have had quite a bit in common, what with Hephaistion being good at logistics and diplomacy, and not so much at generalship. But what I was getting at was that there's a difference between falling in love and then meeting the crazy family (Fredersdorf), or getting to know the crazy family at close range, *then* deciding you're unfazed by the prospect of having them as (metaphorical) in-laws.
I am reminded of the story about my mother meeting her in-laws after a few months of marriage, then turning to my dad and asking why he hadn't introduced them sooner. "Because you wouldn't have agreed to marry me," he answered, and she didn't disagree. And, I hasten to add, my dad's side of the family has nothing on Hohenzollern crazy! (Mom's side is a little closer, actually.) But there are reasons you might not want to carry on those genes.
Hephaistion, though, was all, "Philip and Olympias as in-laws? Eh, nbd." (Evidently, Olympias hated him, but the thousands of miles between them didn't hurt.)
Which I take to mean that having a go at the future Queen of Prussia in front of the staff is not how SD is supposed to act even by the standards of the day.
Well, then! Hohenzollern/Hanover crazy for the win!
Re: Excerpt from the V. secret diaries of Fredersdorf
Date: 2020-01-11 07:19 pm (UTC)that was before my oldest brother-in-law arrived, at which point the earth could have swallowed me and my wife would not have noticed
And that was before the enforced drinking and my father-in-law going so nuts that it almost made me miss Dad and his stick at home
Who, frankly, got only more scary with the years, not in the way his father did but in a way that made me wonder whether I'd find my principality annexed one day when I woke up too late
AHAHAHAHA. Look. Some people do therapy-by-opera. Others do therapy-by-invasion. (Which is not to say that he wouldn't have done the invading without the need for therapy, any more than I think Wilhelmine wouldn't have written libretti. I think ambition and opportunity would have been sufficient. But since he needed the therapy, was he killing two birds with one stone? Hell yes.)
Re: Excerpt from the V. secret diaries of Fredersdorf
Date: 2020-01-13 09:02 pm (UTC)OMG I love this!
I heard my mother-in-law call me a beggar prince when talking to my wife, my sister-in-law flirted with me as some kind of a family power game, and that was before my oldest brother-in-law arrived, at which point the earth could have swallowed me and my wife would not have noticed.
HAHAHAHAHAHA omg this is gold, especially that last bit!
Yes, Wilhelmine and I had our ups and downs, but frankly, which couple does not?
Uh-huh. Would one of those downs be called "Marwitz"?
but in a way that made me wonder whether I'd find my principality annexed one day when I woke up too late.
I mean! If you snooze, you lose
your principalityRe: Excerpt from the V. secret diaries of Fredersdorf
Date: 2020-01-13 09:02 pm (UTC)HAHAHAHA I know right?
LOLOLOL This is THE BEST Christmas ever.
Hee! Fredersdorf is thinking, "Geez, my mom would have at least knit you TWO socks. And probably a matching sweater, too."
Re: Excerpt from the V. secret diaries of Fredersdorf
Date: 2020-01-13 09:10 pm (UTC)You know the note would just read "Colossians 3:21", full stop.
Hee! Fredersdorf is thinking, "Geez, my mom would have at least knit you TWO socks. And probably a matching sweater, too."
OMG YESSSS. <333 Also LOLOL FOREVER.
Re: Excerpt from the V. secret diaries of Fredersdorf
Date: 2020-01-13 09:02 pm (UTC)Haha, I'm delighted (if a little scared) that I can channel FW enough to know how he'd treat those poor comedians :)
Mildred told me for Yuletide that Fredersdorf was canonically tall, and, man. That part wrote itself.
Re: Excerpt from the V. secret diaries of Fredersdorf
Date: 2020-01-13 09:08 pm (UTC)Mildred told me for Yuletide that Fredersdorf was canonically tall, and, man. That part wrote itself.
Sheer brilliance.