The Trier archived correspondance doesn't get vivid until the 7 Years War. Most of the many many letters there are military and political in nature - btw, I do wonder, was Heinrich turning out to be actually good at commanding something that surprised Fritz or did he expect this to happen? Either way, it makes for another shift in the relationship. Because competence does impress our antihero, and it just so turns out younger brother is very competent indeed. Which means poor AW is the only one getting hostile sarcasm about his love life anymore (in the infamous "you're just fit to command a seraglio" letter which is not contained in this collection), while Heinrich gets trusted with battle information. Not just when Fritz can bask in victory, as in the aftermath of the battle of Leuthen (cahn, this was one of his most famous victories against overwhelming odds):
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.
The Heinrich Letters - War Time
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.