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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!
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
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 04:43 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 04:44 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!)