cahn | Frederick the Great discussion post 9

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frederick the great

Frederick the Great discussion post 9

...I leave you guys alone for one weekend and it's time for a new Fritz post, lol!

I'm gonna reply to the previous post comments but I guess new letter-reading, etc. should go in this one :)

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Casanova continues to sound amazing. I wish the only non-bastardized edition of his memoirs were available in e-book form. But even the Gutenberg edition is on my to-read list, since I figure it'll be better than nothing.

This reader is deeply glad you wrote your memoirs and they were published, Casanova! Will promise to read them with indulgence. ;)

Fritz wasn't supposed to live the life SD should have had via marriage

Very true. No self-insert effect here. (No, that was Dad's job.)

she probably was her best self through the final one and a half decades of her life.

No doubt. If SD and EC had been able to swap husbands, I think all four of them would have been much happier people (possible gay husband issue aside), and the kids would have been much more traumatized.

Instead, FW forces Fritz to marry FW's ideal wife, and SD does her level best to force Wilhelmine to marry SD's ideal husband, because nobody is allowed to live their best lives here. Hohenzollerns. Hannovers. Sigh.

that's another reason why it's good Fritz never got to see Wilhelmine's manuscript

Fritz having to deal with the cognitive dissonance of Mom being a different mother to him and his one-soul-separate-bodies* sister is absolutely a thing that comes up in my reincarnation AU plotting. He spends a lot of time on it in therapy.

* Possibly a reference to the following quote attributed to Aristotle by Diogenes Laertius (though Diogenes was writing some 500 years later and not always good about his sources, that's never stopped anyone from using this quote or bypassing Diogenes and attributing it straight to Aristotle):

To the query "What is a friend?" his [Aristotle's] reply was, "A single soul dwelling in two bodies."

How she'd have reacted to the big Fallout if she'd lived through 1757/58

Chronology reminder for those who would benefit:
June 18, 1757: First major Fritz defeat, forcing the Prussian army to retreat out of Bohemia.
June 28, 1757: SD dies.
July 29, 1757: Fritz and AW fall out over how AW handled his part of the retreat.

Fritz: Possibly not in a good mental state in July of 1757. Possibly should not be allowed to talk to people.

And of course:
June 12, 1758: AW dies.

God knows. Presumably she'd have sided with Fritz there, too, but maybe tried to plead for reconciliation?

I was wondering about that. Have we talked about her relationship with AW? I remember her using the toddler to try to get the deserter's life spared, but oddly not much else.

First: Oh, Fritz.

I'm glad they got to have at least some positive long-distance interactions in the form of exchanging fruit.

Good job improving your condolence letters, Fritz! I'm not sure whether this is a sign of improved skill/emotional maturity or just reflects his differing opinions/lack thereof on the person involved, but nonetheless.

LOL at the Agatha Christie plot. EC would be least suspected but amply motivated! This would be a wonderful reveal.

Also, Mildred, is there a Charles-Émile/Karl Emil among the boyfriends

Not that I know of! I saw this when I was compiling and uploading the letters, and I was hoping you would know what the appeal of this name was all about. I only found one predecessor in the Hohenzollerns, and he doesn't seem like someone Fritz would go for (although an ideal son for FW). I will keep an eye out for possible candidates, though.

but what Fritz' beef with Jacques aka Jakob/James is, I don't know. Not wanting to piss off his one remaining ally the Hannover cousin in England?

Maybe? Total 180 after the war started, if so. And I guess "Jacob" is the eponymous name for the Jacobites, but the claimant who caused the most trouble fifteen years ago was named Charles, and he's still around making occasional noise, so...

I don't know. Fritz's taste in baby names takes me by surprise.

a rare concerned "get well" letter that does not include "live for me!"

Almost certainly, if you ask me, because he's not actually emotionally invested in her living. I suspect his better condolence letters to her are also when he had no emotional investment (unlikely the brother who'd been driving him crazy and he just *needed* to get that rant out of his system to all parties, ring theory be damned).

Mr. Micromanagement thinking through which rooms are most suitable for a child is oddly...nice.

Lol. No coffee bean is too small to be ground!

In addition to all the wonderful content-ful excerpts and summaries you provided, I also wish to present the array of Fritz's excuses for not writing to her, which constitute 15 of 117 of the letters (and don't include the excuses for not visiting her):

I leave you to judge whether, in these conditions, we are able to write long letters.

You will learn by all the news of the day the progress that has been made here, and besides I am led to believe that you do not take much interest in it; so I refer you to public news, begging you to believe me all yours.

I will no longer be able to write to you.

I will only tell you in two words that everything is fine here...I am so overwhelmed with a dreadful headache that it is impossible for me to tell you more.

I don't have time to tell you more.

If I don't write to you often, it won't be my fault, because we have little time traveling.

I have much to do; another time, my letter will be longer.

f I haven't written to you for a long time, it's because I didn't have time for me.

If I hadn't been tired, I would have thanked you myself. However, I will take my time to do it at the first opportunity.

The multitude of cases has prevented me from writing to you so far; It is therefore to take leave of you that I address this letter to you.

I only have time to assure you of my perfect friendship, to tell you that we are all doing very well, and to ask you to return them included to their addresses.

Communication is not yet as free as you think.

I am currently so overloaded with work, that I hardly have a moment left for me; which obliges me to finish my letter.

I would thank you for it in more detail, if the legions of affairs gave me the time.

And of course, the very last letter he wrote to her:

I am very much obliged to you for the vows which you deign to make; but a high fever which I took prevents me from answering you.

De facto unmarried Fritz!

General thoughts on this book: I got the impression that Zinsser is a rather more careful writer and historian than, oh, Bodanis. (Disclaimer: I have only read the kindle sample of Bodanis directly, although of course I've referred extensively to mildred's excellent writeup.) She is very careful to distinguish between things that she is taking from primary sources (mostly letters) and things she is totally making up from circumstantial evidence, which are usually clearly marked as such (e.g., "Perhaps she would have..." or "It could have been that...") which I super appreciated. I am, however, not discounting the always-real possibility that she has her own axes to grind that also make her not as reliable a secondary source as she might be. One of her axes clearly is that Zinsser is frustrated by and arguing against previous "standard" bios of Émilie; I'm not sure whether she had a manuscript of Bodanis' book (they seem to have come out the same year) but Bodanis seems to say pretty much all the things she's arguing against. She also includes a lot of cultural and historical context, which was great for people like me who know nothing about the historical period. (At one point she mentions that noblewomen had so much fancy clothing on that they often just... did their elimination where they stood, instead of trying to maneuver over a chamber pot, and servants cleaned it up. Is this true?? And if so, how is it that everyone in fandom doesn't know this??)

Zinsser is unfortunately not super good (it seemed to me) about chronology or signposting what she's going to talk about and where; for example, there's this essay she submitted about fire to the Academy of Sciences that

mildred_of_midgard mentioned, which Zinsser mentions fairly early on in passing and then doesn't follow up on for another chapter or two. In the interim I was going "...what?? I really want to know about this!!" and was surprised when it showed up again in much more detail, at that point in proper (I think) chronological context. However, I was very pleased with the biography from my perspective of knowing a little from mildred about Emilie in particular and a lot (relatively speaking) about associated figures of the period.

Also, Zinsser clearly doesn't think much of Voltaire. I must say that she backs this up with quotes (of which one or two in the following) and she certainly convinced me, lol. Relatedly, although as far as I can tell she understands quite well what's going on historically speaking, she's writing a bio of du Châtelet and not of Voltaire, and she will spend a chapter talking about du Châtelet's book on physics and one page talking about Voltaire and Fritz. (Which I thoroughly approve of.) And in general she is way more interested in talking about du Châtelet's accomplishments than about gossipy sensationalism, which honestly I am a fan of (as long as I get some gossip, lol).

General thoughts about Émilie: I get the impression from this book that her real strength was in synthesizing what other people had done into a coherent whole (e.g., her Institutions of Physics textbook, her translation of Newton). Which is really impressive but not the sort of thing people tend to be remembered for (at least, I tend to have stuck in my mind people who have made specific discoveries) so I will grudgingly give history a pass for not really remembering her. (See also: Algarotti, who I think suffers from not exactly the same problem but a related kind of problem, in that the kind of thing he was good at -- being good at lots of things -- is not the sort of thing history tends to remember these days.) That being said, there appears to have additionally been a problem of people attributing all her work to MEN, which is NOT OKAY WITH ME. :)

Edited 2020-01-22 05:45 (UTC)

In the following synopsis, "Bodanis" will generally speaking be quotes from mildred's excellent writeup of Bodanis' book :) When I am giving my own opinions (as opposed to what I think are Zinsser's opinions), I will either indicate that it's me, cahn, speaking, or put it in square brackets :)

Bodanis: Young Émilie likes reading books and talking about intellectual matters. Dad encourages her; Mom resents and discourages her. Mom wants to lock her in a convent. Dad manages to keep her out.
Zinsser: Dad wouldn't have had time! He was busy with his job! Also, schooling in a convent for a little while was something everyone did and it wasn't weird or bad. Her mom was probably mostly in charge of her schooling, so probably encouraged her. [One of her cites for this is mom and Émilie arguing over a Biblical point, which is supposed to show that mom was encouraging of Émilie expressing her own opinion. I dunno, though, it could just be that mom was being resentful and trying to prove Émilie wrong? Unsuccessfully, as it turns out. Anyway, I'm not totally convinced by her here, but at least she shows her source, or at least one of them, so we can draw our own conclusions!]

Bodanis: [fencing, card counting stories]
Zinsser: not mentioning fencing or card counting at all. No sensationalistic gossip here! At least, not about non-sex things. Does mention that Voltaire had a whole pile of money (mentions veeeery briefly his government bonds thing, but does not go into detail, which, I guess, this is not a Voltaire bio) and helped the du Châtelets with money; apparently they were not great at not spending less than they eraned.

Bodanis: She ends up married to a decent man who likes having an intelligent wife and is willing to let her do her own thing as long as he can have his own affairs on the side and they don't have to interact much.
Zinsser: This is true, but let me append that this marriage was considered a partnership, especially in terms of raising their children to have good positions in society, and she did a bunch of stuff like have basically power of attorney and arrange sale of properties, etc., and she went to Brussels (later, with Voltaire) to negotiate a settlement over contested properties. Cite: Voltaire letters talking about how much Émilie got done! (Also she wanted her son to learn physics. This is a plot point later on.)

Bodanis:She has a couple kids with her husband, and an affair with a nobleman. It's fun, but she wants more emotional depth. They stay friendly exes.
Zinsser: She was kinda frivolous at this point in her life, I think. Backed up by a reminiscence where she talks about how she was neglecting her genius and understanding. We don't really know why she decided she wanted to study more math. Also, how's this for sensational gossip: Émilie wrote a note saying she wanted to die over this nobleman (who then talked about (a probably made-up story) how he saved her from suicide) and everyone laughed at her and her family was mad at her for being sensationalistic. Have affairs, but don't be in the news about them!

Zinsser:Anyway, one of her sons died and she started getting more serious, so I guess I don't really disagree about her wanting more emotional depth. Then there's Maupertuis! She started studying math with him. Maupertuis was OK at math, I guess, but mostly was in it to be ambitious, and he didn't have the natural talent or interest that Émilie did. Also, there is totally no evidence that he and Émilie had sex! Just, you know, super emo letters, because as we all know ~~from Lehndorff~~, that century was an emo time! [Zinsser says that Émilie wrote similarly affectionate language to others, but does not give quotes.] Maupertuis's portrait was in her bedroom at the time but that is also totally not evidence!

Me: ...I don't know about that, it seems to me that if you had a portrait of someone in your bedroom --
The ghost of Fritz, in the back: *raises hand*

Zinsser: ANYWAY. Then she and Voltaire were introduced and had extremely spark-inducing intellectual conversations and wrote extremely flirty letters and they were definitely "courting" and in love but there is totally no evidence they had sex at this point either! Voltaire wrote flirty letters to lots of guys! And Émilie was never jealous of any of the guys, except Fritz! So you can't judge by flirty letters.

Let's have a quote showing how much cooler Émilie is than Voltaire: "Clairaut [her tutor after Maupertuis, whom Zinsser likes a lot more, or possibly I just like him a lot more because he seems more interested in math]... wrote to a friend when he first began giving lessons to her and to Voltaire that she was 'altogether remarkable,' while he could not even make the other understand what mathematics was."

Voltaire has a warrant out for his arrest, so Émilie arranges for him to stay at Cirey. Eventually, she shows up there. NOW, FINALLY, I am willing to concede that they definitely had sex. She calls it le paradis terrestre and lots of people show up and hang out and do music and science and math and poetry with them, including Algarotti. [Yes, Algarotti totally appears in this book! And while I was looking up stuff in the book for this writeup, I found that Zinsser says Voltaire also calls him a swan, "Mi caro cignio di Padova."]

Me: Wow!! Wouldn't it be great if I had a place like that where I could talk with people about things I'm interested in ~~or other people have totally gotten me interested in~~, like history and opera and reading pedagogy, and geek out about things -- oh. :D ~~totally calling DW The Earthly Paradise from now on~~

Zinsser: Voltaire is the worst! "He repeatedly brought her unwelcome publicity, fears of retribution from her cousin, and ridicule from the wits of the court and the salons." Okay, maybe not on purpose, but COME ON.

Voltaire: Émilie is the best! She is a "lady whom I look upon as a man."
Me: *eyes him dubiously*

Bodanis: when Fritz sends Keyserlingk on a supposedly social visit, Émilie locks away the most incriminating play, and Keyserlingk leaves disappointed.
Zinsser: Ditto.

Bodanis: Meanwhile, the Academy of Sciences is offering a prize for the best submission [on fire]. Voltaire decides to enter.
Zinsser: Probably because he wasn't part of the Académie française because he kept making people angry at him, and was thinking he could slide into it sideways from the Academy of Sciences. Not because he actually liked science.
Bodanis: Émilie will help. ...She sits at her desk late into the night, coming up with a much better submission, because she can already tell Voltaire is not a scientist.
Zinsser: Yep. For instance, they do these experiments where they burn different kinds of things. Some of them lose mass and some of them don't change at all and some of them gain mass. And Voltaire's like, "This clearly shows Newton is right about fire being just like other matter in that it has mass!" And Émilie is all, "My dude, you really suck at drawing conclusions from experiments."

Voltaire: Math is hard!! Science is hard!! Also boring!
Émilie: *rolls eyes*

Algarotti: *writes physics book featuring a marquise who isn't very smart*
Voltaire: Émilie is much smarter than that! You are like a goddess! A goddess who illuminates truth for geniuses like me!
Émilie: Thanks, but I'd way rather be a physicist than a goddess.

Bodanis:Then FW dies! Émilie can't keep Voltaire fully away from Fritz, but she does her best.
Zinsser: Oh yeah, later on I'll mention Voltaire was in Prussia around this time, and Émilie was jealous and worried. Eh, whatever. Who cares what he and Fritz are up to.
I've mentioned before that Émilie wanted to teach her son physics. Couldn't find a good textbook, especially since everyone was still rather confused by momentum and kinetic energy. So she wrote her own! She synthesized Descartes, Newton, and Leibniz together. Kinetic energy is a thing! (Hotly debated topic at the time, and one where she was definitely taking an underdog stance.) By the way she used a French translation of Wolff that Frederick of Prussia sent to Voltaire "made for him by one of his closest intimates at court." [Suhm?? :D]
Also sends Fritz a copy, because Very Proud of this book.
The Secretary of the Academy of Sciences tries to make fun of her and her book. She totally pwns him.
Me: Émilie I <3 you!!

Bodanis: Voltaire and Émilie have another breakup. Émilie has a bit of a breakdown, starts losing money when she gambles, binge eats, stops doing science. :-(
Zinsser: Not sure what you're talking about here? Anyway, it's WAY more interesting to talk about Emilie's translation of Newton's Principia, so I'm gonna do that. It's actually a translation and commentary and expansion. It is AWESOME.
Oh, okay, have some gossip.

Voltaire: I am too old for sexual relationships, being 47 and all, "the twilight of my days." [He lived to be 83.] Nay, I only want pure love unsullied by physical considerations.
Émilie: I'm not really happy about this, but I love you, so, okay.
D, who happens to be walking by at the moment: He means he doesn't want sex with her, huh?
Voltaire: *has affair with niece*
Émilie: ????
Voltaire: Uh, yeah, D was right. I meant I didn't want sex with you. Um. Open relationship?

Then Voltaire gets people mad with him again (this is, as mildred said, a recurring theme) and Émilie decides that Lorraine is a good place to hang out, with deposed Polish King Stanislaus, as in mildred's writeup.

Émilie: And there's this nice guy here, Saint-Lambert, and since Voltaire and I have an open relationship... heeeeey. This guy is pretty great at sex. This is great!
Voltaire: When I said we had an open relationship, that didn't mean YOU were supposed to be having sex with other people!

Bodanis: Things start falling apart between her and her new lover.
Zinsser: I know that's what everyone says, but I've redated the letters, since a bunch of them aren't actually dated and were just kinda mixed up, and with my new redating I postulate that they were just fine, thanks. But can we just talk more about her Newton translation? Cause it's really cool. And then she had Saint-Lambert's baby.

Voltaire: Émilie just had a baby and I wrote a play. I am "one hundred times more fatigued than she."
Me: *facepalm*
Zinsser: I know, right??
Émilie: Well, I may have just had a baby yesterday, but gotta correct those printer proofs of my Newton translation! Not gonna correct themselves, are they!
Five days later: *packages up all her papers*
Six days later: *dies* (probably from a blood clot)
:(

Epilogue:
Voltaire: It's so saaaaad she was so greeeeeeat I'm the saaaaaddest it's all about meeeeee OK gonna go hang out with Fritz now
Saint-Lambert: *quietly has a breakdown and possibly never quite entirely gets over Émilie's death, and seems like he really loved her*
Zinsser: *does not quote Fritz about Voltaire's grieving but clearly kinda agrees with him*

(I know I am way behind, and I'm going to be working (hopefully tomorrow) on catching up, but... Elisabeth Christine! :D )

and that I will contribute in all that will depend on me to her happiness, and that by my friendship I will try to soften the heaviness of her loss, as much as such losses can be softened; that I look to her children as my own, and that she can count on me to take the greatest care of them,

This is downright nice, really! Especially for Fritz. Especially for AW's death, omg. Not a single "He really sucked and I was so great for putting up with him!!" in there.

Prince Karl-Emil is is, the only one of the Hohenzollern to be called that.

...was Fritz just trolling EC? It is exactly the kind of thing he would do :P "Don't bother me, just name him, uh --" *sees two soldiers, one of whom is named Karl and the other of whom is named Emil -- "Charles-Emile, OK?"

She was old and sickly; now, she is sheltered from all the misfortunes that plagues humanity, and however long we live, we take the same path, one a little earlier, the other a little more later.

Honestly, I think this is pretty great, for Fritz. EC being religious, she could potentially read into it some nice comforting things. (I mean, which he doesn't actually mean! But still.)

Mr. Micromanagement thinking through which rooms are most suitable for a child is oddly...nice.

Yes! I thought it was rather touching too <3

This is even more hilarious knowing how much he wrote everyone else. (I mean, I know other people got "I don't have time to write much" letters, but (a) I think they got longer ones than hers anyway, and (b) they were a much smaller proportion of total text, lol.) Poor EC! Well, I dunno, maybe she was happier like that. I hope so!

Instead, FW forces Fritz to marry FW's ideal wife, and SD does her level best to force Wilhelmine to marry SD's ideal husband, because nobody is allowed to live their best lives here. Hohenzollerns. Hannovers. Sigh.

Yep. Relatedly, Wilhelmine biographer Uwe Oster thinks that one reason why she dragged out telling Fritz or anyone else why she wanted Marwitz (female) married and preferably gone was that SD (and Charlotte) had kept harping on the "beggar prince" she'd married during that home visit in 32/33, and she herself knew that Bayreuth was a tiny principality, nothing to write home about, but she could tell herself (and told the family during said disastrous visit)that at least she had a husband who loved her and was devoted to her, and that they were happy with each other. (As opposed to, err, most other Hohenzollern marriages, especially Mom's.) That they were happy together. Admitting Margrave/Marwitz was taking that away, so she keeps silent about it and instead insists that Marwitz continues to be her good friend and she's just deserving of a good husband (who happens to be Austrian) and of course that makes it all worse.

(I mean, I don't think Fritz would have been thrilled about a Prussian noble & Austrian marriage in any case, especially during war time, and would have taken offense, but presumably much less so if she's explained about the affair first?)

SD and AW: from I could gather, there's not much data there to say. I mean, what I learned from biographies and later letter references is:

1.) The story where she makes him plead for the deserter. Does involve the threat he'd get spanked with a rod if he doesn't do it, and the person explaining to little AW what "hanged" means when he asks isn't SD, so not great pedagogy there, but okay, a man's life is at stake.

2.) Pöllnitz' description, rendered in Fontane's Oranienburg chapter of the Wanderungen, and also in Ziebura's AW biography, about how after AW had gotten Oranienburg from Fritz and had it ready for reopening (remember, F1 palace shut down for decades during FW's time), he threw a three day party for his mother with all those baroque court masques and ceremonies and big fireworks spelling out her name at the end which FW would have hated and she adored. Biographies mention she enjoyed her time in Oranienburg so much that she kept going there each summer for a while for every year from this time onwards. (Biographies don't say whether AW also had to throw a party this big every year, but I wouldn't be surprised, because according to Lehndorff during the peace years parties and court masques etc. were a thing for the divine trio.

3.) AW's memorandum on how he'd distribute the budget money if he were King which he wrote when trying to make himself useful on economic matters at least since foreign policy was not an option contains the interesting factoid when it comes to budget for the royal family, in that he thinks the reigning Queen should get more money for her household than the Queen Mother. Now, as we know he wasn't any more in love with Louise than Fritz was with EC, but apparantly he did think that something was off there.

4.) When she's dead, AW's (as recorded in letters to Ferdinand) reaction is the same as the one from all the other Hohenzollern sibs - "we no longer have a mother", terrible blow, sadness, etc.". (When Lehndorff catches up with him in January/February 1758, he mentions they talk a bit about the late SD, too.) (Definitely a safer topic than the very much alive Fritz for Lehndorff to raise, I'd think.)

The problem is that from FW, we have all the letters to various tutors and stewards on how to raise the kid, we have little AW's letters to him (as we have little Wilhelmine's and Fritz'), and we have anecdotes from observers like the Pastor Freilinghausen who reports the "pleading for deserter" story or the envoys who mostly focus on FW (not least because all that indulgent cuddling and joking is such a contrast to you know what). If there are comparative letters from SD to the tutors, or from young AW to SD, then either they weren't archived or if they were the biographers haven't used them. You can only speculate based on what isn't there. For example, how come it takes older brother Fritz in the later 1730s to notice young AW is severely behind in his education and to encourage him that books are cool? I mean, it's obvious why FW doesn't mind, as long as AW likes playing with toy canons as a small child and succeeds in all the drilling he gets as a Hohenzollern prince later on, FW is happy and on the contrary thrilled that there's a son he doesn't have to worry about secretly getting himself educated in ways he doesn't approve of.

But the thing is, Ziebura notes that before he starts corresponding with Big Bro, it's notable AW's French vocabulary and spelling is way less certain than that of his siblings at a comparable age. (He then catches the improve yourself educationally bug, and works on it; it's not that he's more stupid than the rest, it's that his tutor, who probably was scared as hell of FW and had the example of Fritz' tutors in mind, didn't try to push his student to any kind of learning.) And that is something that SD should have noted and objected to, as a matter of pride as much as because of affection, what with French as the international court language and language of all "refined" people. (Later, she is down on her Braunschweig daughters in law precisely because they're not educated enough.)

Now perhaps she was simply worn out from the Fritz and Wilhelmine related battles with FW. But if Fritz via a long distance relationship manages to inspire his younger brother to grab a book or two and improve on his French letter writing by, well, letter writing, you'd think SD could have managed at closer range. So it's possible she basically was relieved here was one child who didn't cause any argument with her husband and made him happy, but it didn't make her feel close to the child in question, especially since while FW was alive she seems to have developed a siege mentality along with "you can only love one of us". (And AW definitely loved Dad back, because why wouldn't he?)

There is, of course, also the way all the boys were educated to consider. The girls remained with her longer, but the boys starting with age 4 got their own household, at by the time they are 12 were treated as junior members of the army complete with drills. So of course we have far more data on how the boys interacted with their father and/or each other. And all four never said a critical word about her and come across as venerating her all their lives. (Remember, when Heinrich during the last years of his life moves into Wusterhausen, he puts up a portrait of SD along with a portrait of AW in his bedroom.) So again, it's equally possible that SD was very fond of AW, and we just are lacking lost letters etc. to back that up in quotes.

Charles-Émile/Karl-Emil: okay, if you don't have a crossreference, I'm with

cahn - Fritz probably got inspired by two random soldiers.

re: Baby names - you know what's missing in his "as long as it's not..." list? Francois/Franz. On the one hand, MT's husband. On the other: Voltaire! (Can't decide whether that would be a pro or a con at that point.)

"Ring Theory": explain, please?

Excuses for not writing: ha. (Especially, as Cahn says, given how much he's simultanously writing to everyone else. Including Amalie who is, due to war time, living in close proximity to EC.)

What you said elsewhere about EC having been FW's idea of an ideal wife: on the one hand, yes, that's very apparant. She's utterly devoted, no matter how little of Fritz she gets, she's loyal, when she writes to him "you can count on me, Sire" , she means it. Biographers have often noted that FW's notion of marriage wasn't that of an aristocrat but of a burgher, hence insistence on marital fidelity on both sides and living together, not apart, and Lehndorff, frustrated with his boss, notes more than once she would have been happier as a burgher's wife. A married-to-FW EC would never have questioned his judgment, or used the kids as weapons in marital warfare. And of course they'd been on board with each other's religion.

I'm still not sure the reverse would have worked out, i.e. an SD type of wife for Fritz. Sure, she'd have been fine with living apart, and wouldn't have cared about what he got up to with valets or French intellectuals. But there's no way she'd have put up with playing second fiddle to his mother and sisters. She'd have had very definite ideas about how their heir (whether that potential heir would have been the son of their siblings or maybe the result of a half hearted try at marital life in the early days) should be raised and whom he should marry. And the first time she'd gotten a condolence letter like the one about brother Albrecht from him, marital warfare would have ensued.

Not a single "He really sucked and I was so great for putting up with him!!" in there.

Says something about Fritz that we regard this as a standard to meet in condolence letters. :) More seriously, what also impresses me is that these reassurances which EC is supposed to give Louise are in fact what Louise needs to hear in this situation. Because her future really entirely depends on Fritz. For all she knows, he could plan on sending her back to Braunschweig (just to save expenses) and just keep future FW2 because he needs an heir. (And that's leaving aside something EC doesn't know about yet, the altered last will in which AW includes the "I want Mina to raise my kids, Louise can get a pension and move elsewhere" stunner.) So Fritz instead of writing one of his usual "woe is me" letters and instead focusing on reassurances to Louise about her and her children is really impressive.

Consideration for little Friederike: including the detail that the upper rooms - which they use as guest quarters for people of rank - are cold (since they're currently unused). As anyone who's ever visited a palace or mansion in months other than the height of summer can tell, "cold" means really cold. (Hence all those big fireplaces.) It's a neat detail showing Fritz' human side, since the only one who is affected by this consideration is really little Friederike. (Who is a girl of questionable parentage, given the state of affairs between FW2 and Elisabeth, and utterly unimportant to the succession.) (Also, great contrast to FW's Spartan way of raising kids.)

That is a wonderful write-up! Thank you so much!

negotiate a settlement over contested properties

That actually even makes it into Pleschinski's editorial remarks on the Fritz/Voltaire correspondance, since it comes up repeatedly.

Have affairs, but don't be in the news about them!

*nods* Sounds familiar even from a generation later. In terms of how the aristocracy handled sexual conduct. I'm thinking of Lady Melbourne, Georgian aristocrat, embodying the principle that once you've provided your husband with an heir who is undoubtedly his kid, you're free to do as you please, versus her daughter-in-law Caroline Lamb. Whose husband William was a younger son of Lady Melbourne's - though the older brothers would eventually die and leave him with the titile, which is how William ends up being Lord Melbourne, Queen Victoria's first PM. Everyone knew that William was in fact not the biological son of Lord Melbourne. This was cool by society and the family. However, Caroline's affair with Byron was a major upset to her mother-in-law not because she had said affair but because she had it so very publically, involving following Byron everywhere, having public jealousy fits and making one public suicide attempt after Byron had broken off the affair.

Me: ...I don't know about that, it seems to me that if you had a portrait of someone in your bedroom --
The ghost of Fritz, in the back: *raises hand*

ROTFLOL. Ah, but him and MT were special. Maupertuis wasn't Émilie's best enemy now, was he? Anyway, I can see the point that this was an era where emo language and flirty letters were a thing not always signalling actual sex. Still, it seems that we don't have concrete evidence one way or another, i.e. neither that she had or that she hadn't sex with him? (Of course, it's hard to prove a negative.)

Voltaire: Émilie is the best! She is a "lady whom I look upon as a man."
Me: *eyes him dubiously*

He said this after her death, too, remember, in his letter to Fritz. And as I observed then: joining the club of men here who think there's no higher compliment you can pay a woman, including of course Fritz himself (who does this to Wihelmine frequently, which she laudably shoots down by insisting she is, in fact, a woman and does not want to "be excepted from my sisters"), John Lennon (told Yoko this as the ultimate compliment when starting to get serious with her; Yoko, living post-Freud, did draw a conclusion about his sexuality here), and C.S. Lewis (fell in love late in live after having written more than one essay about how male friendship was the best and couldn't be shared by a woman, because eros and qualities of the mind don't mix, cue falling for female poet, which provides the basis of the movie Shadowlands, told his wife Joy he loves her for her male qualities, had her ask him how he'd like it if she told him she loved him for his female qualities). What I'm getting at: it makes me eyeroll at all the gentlemen in question, but it is also a trope, complimenting a woman for being totally like a man. Voltaire is anything but unique here.

Algarotti: *writes physics book featuring a marquise who isn't very smart*

Since I have read the dissertation about his networking now, I can add this was Algarotti's big bestseller which made him known in most European countries, "Newtonism for ladies", in which Newton is explained by male character to female character who gets the Watson role. Algarotti wasn't inventing this constellation; there had been a previous successful book by another author in which there was also a female aristocrat to whom science got explained.

(This trope was so successful that as late as the late 19th/early 20th century, George Bernhard Shaw can spoof it with "The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism".)

Anyway, Algarotti was simply using a succesful literary formula, but dissertation says that given he was also hanging out at Cirey, some people did of course speculate whether he was basing the Marquise in the book on Émilie, depicting her as a dilettante.

re: Saint-Lambert, does Zinsser provide any evidence for him possibly never getting over Émilie? Because I've checked his wiki entry, and, with the caveat that it's wiki, says, with citation (a pal of his), that "to all appearances soon recovered from his grief". Also that he ended up in yet another love triangle involving the other most famous French writing intellectual of the period, Jean-Jaques Rousseau; the lady in question, Sophie d'Houdetot, wiki says, in the end prefered Saint-Lambert. Like Émilie, she was also married and in an amiable relationship with her husband who lived with her and Saint-Lambert to the end of their days. Again according to Wiki. Now, none of this is incompatible with Saint-Lambert having loved Émilie sincerely, because you can love more than one person at the same time, and obviously you can fall in love again after someone's death without this invalidating the previous emotion, but it makes me question "never moved on".

re: Voltaire - the impression I got from the letters is that he grieved exactly like Fritz did. Which, yes, "woe is meeeeee!", but that doesn't mean the grief itself is faked or less valid than quiet grief. Unless we're thinking Fritz never really grieved for Wilhelmine, his mother, Suhm, and, of course, his dogs. (Which btw at least one "Deconstructing Fritz" biographer totally does think, but I disagree.)

Edited 2020-01-22 12:48 (UTC)

Mildred, your putting up the Voltaire in Prussia saga at

rheinsberg reminded me of yet another proof Fritz had a type. I mean, we've seen evidence of this already when it comes to his batmen. But checking whether Lehndorff had anything interesting to say about Henri de Catt, I came across this bit about Catt's predecessor:

I had forgotten to mention that the Abbé Prades, whom his majesty always kept with him in the field, has fallen out of favour. He stands accused of having handed over secrets of his master; others say he's simply been indiscreet with the King's works. In short, the King had him arrested after the battle of Roßbach in Leipzig, and some time later he was sent to Magdeburg Fortress, where he still remains. His Majesty took in his place a certain Catt, a Swissman, whom the King has met in a strange manner. When the King was incognito in the Netherlands and was bored on the boat going from Amsterdamm to the Hagues, he found on this ship this Herr Catt with his young pupil. He adressed him and found him to be a man of wit. When now Prades fell out of favour with him, he wrote to Catt that he should come and take Prades' place. The man answered modestly that his Majesty might not find him so much worthy of applause in such a position as he had done on the boat back then. His Majesty, however, insisted. Now he's with the King, and the King is satisfied with him.

Now, German Wiki tells me a bit more about Prades than English wiki does, including this bit: As a lecturer and private secretary to Frederick II, de Prades had a very close relationship with the Prussian king. In his pride on this influence, he dropped the remark "le roi m'a dit" ("the king told me") so often that he was finally called at the court only "l'abbé le roi m'a dit".

At the beginning of the Seven Years' War, de Prades was convicted of espionage for France and imprisoned in Magdeburg in 1757. Diderot and Voltaire were dismayed by de Prade's betrayal of Frederick. Diderot said to his mistress Sophie Volland, "What a reprehensible person!" and Voltaire concluded a reflection on the case in a letter to Frederick II with the words "Oh, best of all possible worlds, where are you!"

(German wiki, you should know that if Voltaire uses this particular quote, he's being sarcastic, not dismayed, but apparantly you don't.)

After the end of the war, de Prades was exiled by Frederick II to Silesia. With more than 30,000 livres, which he had taken from his fellow prisoners during his time in Prison in Magdeburg via gambling and with his church income, he led a comfortable life with his own servants. In 1782 he died in Glogau.

Okay. Several points.

1) Wow, Magdeburg is really getting crowded during the 7 Years War. I guess Prades didn't meet up with Trenck?

2) Just how many people fired/arrested for spying, indiscretion or both do we have now?

3) So Fritz has one lector he was previously very close to imprisoned in Magdeburg for spying & indiscretion....and then, just one month later, he tells the next lector all about the most horrible time of his life (so far)?

*sideeyes Catt again*

ETA: In case you're wondering how Prades got his job in the first place,

cahn, German wiki says both Voltaire and D'Argens reccommended him to Fritz. Somehow this does not surprise me in the least.

Edited 2020-01-22 12:52 (UTC)

A few remarks on something Mildred uploaded to the Fritzian Library, to wit, Rheinsberg by Andrew Hamilton, two volumes, volume 1 about Fritz, volume 2 about Heinrich, both from 1880.

Now: to me, one of the most interesting things to compare this to are the Rheinsberg chapters from Fontane's Wanderungen, not least because they're both contemporaries (Hamilton read and sometimes quotes Fontane, even), coming, however, to quite different conclusions about some of the cast. (Notably, but not exclusively, Heinrich.)

This is because Hamilton's Fritz is Carlyle's Fritz. Carlyle's biography is the one by far most often quoted, usually with great admiration. Meaning: we're talking about Fritz the Übermensch here, endlessly chill, surrounded by unworthy mortals. (Hamilton near the end uses the brief description Goethe gives about visiting Sanssouci in Fritz' absence; remember, during his one and only trip to Berlin with Carl August, when he sneakily had Carl August having lunch with Heinrich as part of the "keep Carl August out of the Prussian army") campaign Anna Amalia had initiated, all of which also happens in the aftermath of Fritz' anti German literature book. In the original Goethe quote, he simply talks about birds, monkeys and even hearing the dogs bark. He says dogs. "Hunde". There is no reason to assume Goethe is talking about anything but the actual, real life, Frederician dogs. In Hamilton's rendition, the dogs are "miserable curs", and are meant metaphorically as descriptions of the unworthy Hohenzollern siblings critisizing their great and wonderful brother.)

This quote alteration to make a point isn't a single aberration. I mean, I realise Hamilton in 1880 doesn't have access to a lot of the sources published later, such as the Marwitz letters or for that matter Lehndorff's diaries, or the erotic poetry. But even with what he does have access to, such as the Preuss edited correspondance which forms the basis of the Trier archive, the editorializing is amazing. In his account of the AW matter, for example, the following happens:

The King's brothers: are all doom and gloom about the war, working themselves up into a frenzy that Prussia is doomed just because of their general anti Fritz attitude

AW: is like a rabbit in the spotlight unable to do anything because of this defeatist gloom, despite Fritz and Winderfeldt trying their best to advise him and get him going.

Fritz: is strict but fair with the casheering.

AW: goes home in even more defeatist gloom and dies.

(Any intermittent verbal abuse by Fritz via correspondance, or refusal to see AW? Does not happen.)

Fritz: writes lovely, kind letter to Heinrich. (Hamilton quotes only the sentences like "I fear for you, I wish you long life and good health" or "I know the tenderness you had for him", but leaves entirely out anything that makes Fritz sound bad, i.e., the majority of the letter.) Heinrich, in his usual anti-Fritz hysteria, for some reason reacts badly to this kind message. And so forth, and so on.

This is basically how Hamilton presents their entire relationship other than the very beginning when he admits Fritz is a bit strict, in Heinrich's own interest, about Heinrich's sloppy behavior with his regiment. Otherwise, Fritz is endlessly chill and friendly and patient, and Heinrich is mean and petty and hysterical throughout the decades of their relationship.

Hamilton also claims that after their bust up post War of Bavarian Succession and resumption of correspondance one and a half year later, Fritz only writes to Heinrich about literature and history anymore, and no more politics, because Heinrich has clearly disqualified himself as someone who can be trusted with political matters. How he can say this when the Trier correspondance has quite a lot of political post 1781 subjects (Fritz' conviction that Joseph is the coming menace of Europe, debates as to whether or not it's possible to talk the French out of the Austrian alliance when Heinrich in 1784 visits France for the first time, ever rising irritation with nephew Gustav in Sweden) is beyond me, except that it fits with the picture he wants to convey of Heinrich despite having some abilities ruining his own life with his totally unwarranted irrational hate for his brother.

Foreign diplomacy? Eh. Heinrich travelled to Sweden just for family reasons, and then Fritz had to practically force him to go to Catherine next, and then he just got feted there, and fine, he and Catherine got along really well, but politically all the action was between Fritz and Catherine and Heinrich was just sort of there. And later he had to be practically forced to go to Russia again. (Ziebura and Christian von Krockow: quote letters showing that Heinrich, while in Sweden, angled for an invitation from Catherine, Catherine asked Fritz, Fritz couldn't refuse and wrote I am very annoyed that I hadn't heard about the invitation earlier; I could have familiarized you with so many issues before hand..)

Also: Heinrich's entire foreign policy, says Hamilton, can be summed up by "alliance with France" (since comments on Russia and Sweden on his part do not exist in Hamilton's world, neither before nor after Fritz' death), and the sole reason why he was advising this even post revolution was because he was such a Francophile that even a French Revolution was okay by him. Now Hamilton does admit that Heinrich was simultanously very generous to the French émigrés - the royalists fleeing revolutionary France - in need of support and keeping up the interest in and contact with revolutionary France, which lesser beings like myself would interpret as proving an ability to differentiate between support for refugees and discounting the entire republican experiment, something that also fits with Heinrich's attitude re: the overseas former colonies and his reaction when Steuben wants to make him King there. But no, it's all Gallomania by a limited man who could never see the big picture in the way his great brother could.

Now, in the first volume, dealing with Fritz in Rheinsberg, this doesn't matter. Also, Hamilton has a fluent, and often amusing style. Though you may raise an eyebrow or two when he assures us that Fritz totally intended to live happily after with Elisabeth Christine. Yes, he originally objected to the marriage, and may have said something about planning to ditch her, but see, they were so happy in Rheinsberg, and what kind of a bastard fakes that while secretly still planning to ditch his lovely devoted wife? Not the future Überking. Gifting her Schönhausen was just meant as nice present, but Fritz totally was planning to continue living with her as they'd one before, it's just with first all the travelling in 1740, and then the two Silesian wars, he hardly was ever home, and enstrangement happened, and that is why they ended up living apart. But he wasn't planning on any of it in 1740! Or before!

Still: Volume 1 is a highly readable description of Rheinsberg both in Fritz' time and in Hamilton's visit time. There's just the occasional eyeroll inducing observation (Émilie is "greedy and selfish" when keeping Voltaire from Fritz, dontcha know, for example), while otoh there's a lovely write up about Fritz/Suhm (though not as lovely as Mildred's, naturally). It's in the second volume when the 19th century Frederick-the-Great worship truly strikes. And the fascinating thing is: the actual Prussian, Fontane, is way more able to keep a balance here. Now part of this is that Fontane has a softness for supporting characters - hence his rendition of the Katte saga focusing on Katte, not Fritz, and his Rheinsberg chapter having somewhat more Heinrich than Fritz, while the Oranienburg chapter of course is focused on AW - but he likes his Great King as well as the next Prussian and has a lot of Fritz anecdotes sprinkled across all the Wanderungen. It's just that he doesn't like him flawless. So you get this:

AW died...

Fontane: Heartbroken.
Hamilton: In a self induced fog of depression. Which he was in ever since getting command. Got there by incomprehensible doom and gloom caused by anti-Fritzness.

The Obelisk is...

Fontane: since Heinrich's commentary on his brother's memoirs got burned, just this. The voice of his majesty's opposition. I'm translating all the inscriptions, though, to show you how highly Heinrich thought of these people; it wasn't just about his brother(s). The Zieten epitaph is my favourite. And look, there's the inscription where Heinrich, in case any 7 Years War veteran feels left out, says he's just being subjective motivated by friendship, and does not mean to imply other veterans not listed are less heroic. Talk about courtoisie. I *heart* Heinrich.

Hamilton: a gigantic outcry of a warped existence. Okay, yes, he was sorry about AW, but guess what, I'm pretty sure he was even sorrier because he'd hoped Fritz would die in the war and he'd become the power behind the throne to King AW. That's what he was really sorry about. I'm not translating any individual inscriptions except the one about the selection being motivated by personal regard and not meant to put down other veterans as less deserving, because coward much?

Listed Heinrich's boyfriends are...

Fontane: Kaphengst the rough trade and the French comte, also known as "a last sunbeam". Kaphengst: guess some people just fall for their opposites. Am glad the French emigré guy worked out, though!

Hamilton: Just for the record, no one is gay in my volumes. Certainly not Fritz the chill. Heinrich might be, I'm using some coded language here, but mostly these favourites are examples of his inner weakness. Not at all comparable to those wonderful friendships mentioned in volume 1! Warped guy will have his favourites, what can I say. The French comte was sort of okay, though.

Seriously. Theodor Fontane, citizen of Bismarck ruled Prussia-and-Germany, has not only more sympathy for guys with critique for their monarch, who, gasp, might be in the wrong now and then, but also writes with sympathy about m/m "relationships of the heart", as he calls him. Andrew Hamilton, Brit or American (couldn't tell): doesn't quite hero worship on the level of Peter III but definitely subscribes to the "Fritz was right, everyone else was wrong" newsletter, has edited out any and all signs of pettiness or capacity for emotional cruelty from the picture of his hero, and certainly any signs of relationships marked by anything other than fondness and generosity (on the side of Fritz). Meanwhile, Heinrich ends up as the caricature of his brother, after some good beginnings warped into nothing but pettiness and hate. With a very few exceptions, as him being nice to French exiles, but that's just because he's a Gallomaniac. Which brings me to:

"German literature? No such thing."

When Fritz does it, this is....

Tragic, but look, there's that one quote of his from the letter to Voltaire about the dawn of a maybe future great age for German culture. If he'd lived longer, he would totally have changed his mind! How could he not? He was Frederick the Great!

When Heinrich does it, this is...

Typical for his narrow-mindedness. I mean, seriously, the guy lived into the age of Goethe. And did he notice? He did not. Kept playing French plays and reading French books till the end. How ridiculous was that?

In conclusion: read the first volume for your Rheinsberg research, skip the second.

He says dogs. "Hunde". There is no reason to assume Goethe is talking about anything but the actual, real life, Frederician dogs. In Hamilton's rendition, the dogs are "miserable curs", and are meant metaphorically as descriptions of the unworthy Hohenzollern siblings critisizing their great and wonderful brother.

omg. I can just imagine that Fritz himself would be all "uh, why are you being so hard on dogs?? Dogs are awesome!!"

Fritz: writes lovely, kind letter to Heinrich. (Hamilton quotes only the sentences like "I fear for you, I wish you long life and good health" or "I know the tenderness you had for him", but leaves entirely out anything that makes Fritz sound bad, i.e., the majority of the letter.)

*headdesk* THAT LETTER.

Though you may raise an eyebrow or two when he assures us that Fritz totally intended to live happily after with Elisabeth Christine.

Because the One King was so het, yeah, I get it. EC probably just wasn't good enough for him. *facepalm*

I'm translating all the inscriptions, though, to show you how highly Heinrich thought of these people; it wasn't just about his brother(s). The Zieten epitaph is my favourite. And look, there's the inscription where Heinrich, in case any 7 Years War veteran feels left out, says he's just being subjective motivated by friendship, and does not mean to imply other veterans not listed are less heroic. Talk about courtoisie. I *heart* Heinrich.

Aww, I *heart* him too! And you too, Fontane. <33333333 But not Hamilton :P

In his pride on this influence, he dropped the remark "le roi m'a dit" ("the king told me") so often that he was finally called at the court only "l'abbé le roi m'a dit".

Heeee!

Voltaire concluded a reflection on the case in a letter to Frederick II with the words "Oh, best of all possible worlds, where are you!"

(German wiki, you should know that if Voltaire uses this particular quote, he's being sarcastic, not dismayed, but apparantly you don't.)

Wait, do we have this letter from Trier? If so, what's the context of the reflection?

However, Caroline's affair with Byron was a major upset to her mother-in-law not because she had said affair but because she had it so very publically, involving following Byron everywhere, having public jealousy fits and making one public suicide attempt after Byron had broken off the affair.

Ah, that's really interesting! I knew about Caroline Lamb and Byron, thanks to my awesome high school English lit teacher (who would have been the first to cheerfully agree with being a gossipy sensationalist into the bargain), but I didn't know the larger context.

Ah, but him and MT were special.

HEE.

Still, it seems that we don't have concrete evidence one way or another, i.e. neither that she had or that she hadn't sex with him? (Of course, it's hard to prove a negative.)

Yeah, I think that is what Zinsser is saying, that there's no concrete evidence but that other biographers have gone ahead and assumed a lot of sex everywhere based on the flirty language. But yeah, it doesn't seem that there's evidence they weren't having sex as well. Zinsser seems pretty invested in challenging the assumptions of other biographers, so I think she may sometimes come across a little more strongly because of that.

told his wife Joy he loves her for her male qualities, had her ask him how he'd like it if she told him she loved him for his female qualities

Hee, excellent, go Joy :D

But yeah, I was also thinking about Fritz and Wilhelmine. And usually Voltaire says things like this in the middle of several other things that are (to a twenty-first century reader) rather nice :)

Anyway, Algarotti was simply using a succesful literary formula, but dissertation says that given he was also hanging out at Cirey, some people did of course speculate whether he was basing the Marquise in the book on Émilie, depicting her as a dilettante.

Huh, interesting! I don't think Zinsser talks about the formulaic part of it. She puts in a lot of context in general, mind you, but she does seem to often be a little sensitive to slights against her girl. Which I understand!

re: Saint-Lambert, does Zinsser provide any evidence for him possibly never getting over Émilie?

Hm, that's my error, I was overstating the case. Probably more accurate to what Zinsser said is a softer statement of it seems that he may have been permanently affected by her death, and she does talk about Sophie d'Houdetot. I think in particular Zinsser wants to counter the impression that Saint-Lambert didn't really care about Emilie or that he thought of her as just a sex buddy. She cites that his writing after that had a "singular dryness" and that d'Houdetot admired him as a man who lived entirely guided by reason, suggesting to Zinsser, at least, that the tenderness and passion that Emilie talks about were no longer in evidence -- although if she talked about Saint-Lambert's writing before that, I don't recall, so this may be fairly weak evidence. She does have strong evidence for a (temporary) breakdown after Emilie's death, though.

re: Voltaire - the impression I got from the letters is that he grieved exactly like Fritz did. Which, yes, "woe is meeeeee!", but that doesn't mean the grief itself is faked or less valid than quiet grief. Unless we're thinking Fritz never really grieved for Wilhelmine, his mother, Suhm, and, of course, his dogs. (Which btw at least one "Deconstructing Fritz" biographer totally does think, but I disagree.)

I definitely got the impression that Zinsser thinks quiet grief is more valid, in any case :) Although this may also be a case where she wants to rehabilitate people and ends up sounding a little stronger than perhaps intended -- as I started saying above, she says that in previous bios Saint-Lambert comes across as nothing more than a gigolo and that it's all about Emilie and Voltaire's divine love, so she may be trying to be especially strong in pushing that Saint-Lambert has sincere grief, and doesn't feel the need to push Voltaire's grief. But also I got the definite impression that she just doesn't really like Voltaire that much, and is happy to emphasize the things he said that support her dislike :) To be fair, she also quotes a lot of nicer things in the book, like a quatrain that is supposed to be by him, but which he denied:

The universe has lost the sublime Emilie.
She loves pleasures, the arts, and truth.
The gods gave her their soul and their genius
Only keeping for themselves immortality.

For you: These are the main passages from Fontane's "Rheinsberg" chapters in which he unabashedly proclaims his affections. (See, that's why body switching with Lehndorff would be something he'd take in stride!) Bear in mind that he's of course speaking of his own present. The later 19th century Prussia and Germany not only was very much at peak Fritz veneration, the new Empire also ideologically speaking legitimized itself as a sort of long distance follow up to the Prussia of Frederick the Great. There was the problem that all Hohenzollerns living then (or now, for that matter) are in fact the descendants of AW, not Fritz. But that got usually ignored - see also Wilhelm II declaring himself not just a successor but a descendant of Fritz, as in "no descendant of Frederick the Great would ever surrender" (during WWI); when AW's defense essay finally got published, it was promptly declared mistaken and unworthy. As for Heinrich, he was on the one hand a military hero but on the other the life long critic of his brother, and in a Germany where authoritarianism is emphasized more and more, not less and less, you don't want stories about critisizing the greatest national hero. So Heinrich got talked about less and less in Fontane's present, too.

Anyway, here's Theo about Heinrich:

When one steps back into the open to walk across the castle courtyard, the park and the lake, one cannot fend off the question, how is it that this wise, witty Prince Heinrich, this general sans peur et sans reproche, this human heart inspired by the most noble sensations while serving in war, is so little popular. You go to a village school and test it. Every day laborer child will know of Zieten, of Seydlitz, of "Schwerin with the flag", but the main teacher himself will only be able to explain stutteringly who Prince Heinrich was.

In the same place where he lived and reigned, created and donated through almost two human age, he is a half-forgotten one, simply because his brother's star is shining before him. And part of that misfortune will remain. But on the other hand, it is not improbable that the next fifty years will bring the merit and sound of the name more into harmony. In a word, the prince was missing the poet until this hour. From the moment that song, narrative, play will take him among their figures, the Prince-Heinrich-Rooms in the Rheinsberg Castle will begin to revitalise, and the castellans of the future will know what will be in this and that window niches happened, who handed over the flower box and under which chestnut tree the prince drank his tea and rose with a joyful "oh soyez le bien venu" when Prince Louis stopped at the castle gate and jumped out of the saddle laughing.*

(*Prince Louis = Louis Ferdinand, son of brother Ferdinand, Heinrich's favourite nephew. Died young, but thankfully after him.)
(...)

It must be admitted (and I have already pointed out in the chapter "The Church of Rheinsberg") that something specifically French in custom, habituation, expression, as well as the small measure of that Brandenburg gruffness that we have in Frederick the Great, despite his Voltaire crush, so clearly recognizable and so admired, will always stand in the way of Prince Heinrich making it into folklore. But he is even missing that more modest part of popularity, to which he has absolute claim. His repliques were not in the style of the older Tauentzien, when Tauentzien was asked to hand over Wroclaw, under threat that "the child will not be spared in the womb".* But if in his answers Heinrich did not resemble Richard Lionheart, who smashed a duty-thick iron with his sword, he was like Saladin, who cut through the silk scarf thrown into the air with his half-moon blade. He was rarely gruff, vulgar never.

(*Tauentzien the Older said "Well, it's a good thing then that none of my men are pregnant.)
(...) (Fontane translates each of the 27 plus AW inscriptions into German)

Thus the names of the twenty-eight who made the prince's election, a choice in which he himself felt that it was partisan. Why he added the following lines to the dedication already quoted, which speaks of the "Prussian heroes":

Leurs noms gravés sur le marbre
Par les mains de l'amité,
Sont le choix d'une estime particuliére
Qui ne porte aucun préjudice
A tout ceux qui comme eux
Ont bien merité de la patrie
Et participent l'estime publique.

Their names engraved on the marble
By the hands of friendship,
Are the choice of a particular esteem
That does not cause any harm
To all those who like them
Have shown their merit for the fatherland well
And share public esteem.

No prejudgment, then, against all those who also took part in the "estime publique". These words of consideration are spoken in the spirit of Prince Heinrich. He gives his opinion and gives it in part (diplomatic enough) only by remaining silent, but even this silence seems to him to be hurtful again, and he adds a mitigating "without prejudgment". This refers to the absence of three names in particular: Winterfeldt, Fouqué and Wedell. On one side there is a "Wedell", but this is an older general of the same name, who fell at Soor as early as 1745, not the Wedell, who was sent off as the king's darling and confidant eater to defeat the advancing Russians count Dohna in the command, and who was beaten the next day, for all his bravery, at Kay. He is missing, as Winterfeldt is missing, whereas all those who have been affected by the disgrace of the king on one occasion or another can be quite sure to see their account balanced at this obelisk. So the Duke of Bevern, von der Marwitz, Colonel of Wobersnow, Prince August Wilhelm himself. Each of these medallion inscriptions is important and, as long as the "critical commentary" that the fronding prince is said to have written about his brother's great book of history remains a mystery, can be regarded as a hint and a brief outline of what is said to be in that "commentary".

The most beautiful words are undoubtedly addressed to Zieten, which is why I cannot help but repeat them here:

"General von Zieten achieved a happy and honorable age. He won in every battle. His belligerent sharpness, united with a heroic bravery, ensured him the happy outcome of every fight. But what lifted him above all was his integrity, his unselfishness, and his contempt for all those who enriched themselves at the expense of the oppressed people."

Intimacy and true veneration speaks from every line. The old Hussar has remained the winner here as well.

Found it! I'm so proud. It is, indeed, in Trier.

Fritz had written, in May: "You wanted to know to know the adventures of the Abbbé de Prades; these would make a big volume. To satisfy your curiosity, it will suffice to know that the Abbé let himself be seduced, during my stay in Dresden, by a secretary whom Brühl had left there when he departed. (...) He played this beautiful trick on me at the same time I had secured him a big profit in the Cathedral of Breslau."

Voltaire replies in June 1759. The remark in context. Good old Voltaire starts out his letter with poetry:

"I know you, you seem difficult,
But you like a bit of impurity,
When you add the purity of style,
for Maupertuis, coated pitch-resin.(...)
Ah! It was he who deprived me of the day,
Since it was he who took your sight away from me.

That is all I can answer, me slender and decked out in a sweating to the eyes, to the cleverest of kings, and to the loveliest of men, who constantly scares me, and who cries that he is scratched. Slash MM Daun - the Austrian Field Marshal - and Fermor, but spare your old, skinny victim. (...)
You are a legislator, a warrior, a historian, a poet; but you are also a philosopher. After having dabbled all your life in heroism and in the arts, what do you take to the tomb? An empty name that no longer belongs to us. Everything is vanity, as the other Solomon said, the one not from the North. To Sans-Souci, to Sans-Souci, as soon as you can.

So De Prades is a dog, an Achitophel? What? He betrayed you, when you overwhelmed him with goods. Oh best of all possible worlds, where are you? I am a Manichaean like Martin.
Your Majesty reproaches me with his very pretty lines for sometimes caressing the infamous. Eh! My God, no; I only work to root infamy out, and I succeed a lot among honest people. I will have the honor of sending you, shortly, a little piece that won't leave you indifferent.
Ah! Believe me, Sire, I was all made for you; I am ashamed to be happier than you, for I live with philosophers, and you are only surrounding yourself with murderers in shortened clothing. To Sans-Souci, Sire, to Sans-Souci! But what will your devil of an imagination do with it? Can it live with retirement? Yes, you are made for everything."

(That is the end of the letter as given in Trier.

Achitophel: Ahitophel or Ahithophel was a counselor of King David and a man greatly renowned for his sagacity. During Absalom's revolt he deserted David (Psalm 41:9; 55:12–14) and supported Absalom.

Manichaean: I'm assuming he's refering to Manichaeism, but the context here beats me. No idea who Martin is supposed to be. St Martin the former Roman soldier who parted his cloak to help a beggar? That makes no sense.

Edited 2020-01-22 18:58 (UTC)

I must report my failures as well. I was holding off on replying to today's comments because I was heads-down on the Heinrich correspondence manual cleanup and I was Going! To! Finish! today and get you guys the letters! A few minutes ago, I finished the manual cleanup, completely forgot my mental note to back up the file (you see where this is going), ran the script for the next step, the script deleted the file, and I lost 3 days of time-consuming work.

*weep*

Why I wasn't backing up the file every HOUR or at least every day, I do not know. But I definitely meant to back it up as soon as I was done with the three days of cleanup.

It will hopefully take a little less time to redo than it did in the first place, since I did make improvements to the process as I went along, to speed things up, but depending on my mood, I may continue to be behind on comments for a bit, while I beat this thing into submission.

I was SO! CLOSE!

Quick note before I go back to wrangling the OCRed Heinrich political correspondence: Martin the Manichaean is a Candide reference.

Found it! I'm so proud.

Well done! We too are proud of you. :D

Oh no! :( I'm sorry, backup shenanigans are THE MOST FRUSTRATING thing!

Turns out the Trier Archive crossreferencing index ordered by characters is really gold. Not that it proves anything, considering Fritz never met Émilie, and while D‘Argens had met Émilie at least once (in 1747) and knows Voltaire, he hardly was either‘s father confessor, but: here‘s Henri de Catt, noting down the two of them (D‘Argens and Fritz) gossipping about Émilie on November 3rd 1758, i.e. nearly a decade after she died:

„They talked of Madame la Marquise du Chatelet, that she let herself be fucked“ - the French term used is „baiser“, which can mean either „kiss“ or „fuck“; Fritz uses it in this double sense in the Algarotti orgasm poem as well - But only by mathematicians or poets; that she did it with Maupertuis, which was the beginning of the hatred between him and Voltaire, who was jealeous.“

Again, proves nothing but contemporary gossip, though there‘s at least some chance either guy - Fritz or D‘Argens - is basing their conclusion re: the Voltaire/Maupertuis feud on some actual observations re: Voltaire‘s feelings. What it also proves is of course that conducting a three front war and being hammered down with a series of deaths (AW, Wilhelmine, Fredersdorf) that year doesn‘t stop Fritz gossiping about his dead rival (for Voltaire)‘s sex life.

Well spotted!

Not that it proves anything, considering Fritz never met Émilie, and while D‘Argens had met Émilie at least once (in 1747) and knows Voltaire, he hardly was either‘s father confessor

Reminder for

cahn: both knew Maupertuis, of course, since Maupertuis was at Berlin/Potsdam and president of the Academy of Sciences for several years.

Now, he might have been too discreet to confirm or deny, and there's a good chance that if you're an unconventional woman in the 18th century, you've been accused of having sex that you haven't had, and not in a sex-positive way, but it's also possible that our misogynist romantic rival antihero had some insider info.

being hammered down with a series of deaths (AW, Wilhelmine, Fredersdorf) that year

That year? It's only been 3 weeks since Wilhelmine died and he lost Hochkirch!

I guess he needs a distraction.

More golden Trier archive index crossreferencing quotes: Barbe „Babette“ Cochois, the dancer and actress who first lived with D‘Argens and eventually and most scandalously for the Ancien Regime times married him, and who co-authored several of his later books with him as well as having learned several languages so she could do research; this really interesting sounding lady, who had of course already lived with D‘Argens in Prussia (specifically, on the Sanssouci grounds, where Fritz had given him living rights and a house) writes a condolence letter to Elisabeth Christine after Fritz‘ death. And EC (supposedly scandalized by Algarotti once upon a time in Rheinsberg, but here not sounding scandalized at all) writes back. Bear in mind that D‘Argens has died before Fritz, so they‘re both widows now, the former actress and the Queen:

I have always, my dear Marquise, distinguished your late husband as a
a very estimable man, and above all by his attachment to the late King,
my husband of glorious memory whose death plunges me into the most
severe pain. Rest assured that I am very sensitive to the sympathy that
you show and I will always be delighted that having fulfilled all your
duties towards your husband, you are rewarded by all the
possible happiness. These are the feelings that I will always have for you.
Your good Queen: Elisabeth

:( It's my own fault.

If only I had a monkey I could blame. ~~Crackfic where Mimi was framed.~~

Have made good progress on recouping our losses; have backed up; will continue tomorrow.

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

Page 11 of 15

Frederick the Great discussion post 9

Re: D‘Argens according to Giacomo Casanova

Re: Tangentially...

Re: Mr. and Mrs. King: Fritz - Elisabeth Christine: The Correspondance

Émilie du Châtelet: Daring Genius of the Enlightenment (Judith P. Zinsser) - general thoughts

Émilie du Châtelet: (Judith P. Zinsser) - synopsis

Re: Mr. and Mrs. King: Fritz - Elisabeth Christine: The Correspondance

Re: Mr. and Mrs. King: Fritz - Elisabeth Christine: The Correspondance

Re: Tangentially...

Re: Mr. and Mrs. King: Fritz - Elisabeth Christine: The Correspondance

Re: Mr. and Mrs. King: Fritz - Elisabeth Christine: The Correspondance

Re: Émilie du Châtelet: (Judith P. Zinsser) - synopsis

The case of the indiscreet reader (the other one)

Andrew Hamilton: Rheinsberg

Re: Andrew Hamilton: Rheinsberg

Re: The case of the indiscreet reader (the other one)

Re: Émilie du Châtelet: (Judith P. Zinsser) - synopsis

Re: Andrew Hamilton: Rheinsberg

Re: The case of the indiscreet reader (the other one)

Re: Fritzian library

Re: The case of the indiscreet reader (the other one)

Re: Fritzian library

Maupertuis, or: Gossipy Sensationalist of Prussia

Re: Maupertuis, or: Gossipy Sensationalist of Prussia

Re: Mr. and Mrs. King: Fritz - Elisabeth Christine: The Correspondance

Re: Fritzian library