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Frederick the Great reveal post / discussion post 8
In the last several months, as anyone who reads this DW knows, ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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
Sanssouci
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
(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
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
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
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
(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
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
Re: Sanssouci
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
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
Re: Sanssouci
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
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
Re: Sanssouci
Fritz: *has never let being uninformed stand in the way of spouting off an opinion*
Re: Sanssouci
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
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
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
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
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
Re: Academic-adjacent pretext
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
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
...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
I'm glad assimilation has been painless. We're glad to have you!
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