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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 :)
Frederick the Great links
I'm gonna reply to the previous post comments but I guess new letter-reading, etc. should go in this one :)
Frederick the Great links
Legacies
while crossing his fingers Hans Herrmann has already made it out of there), is petitioning for mercy, as summarized by Klosterhuis and yours truly:his son is a villain, so is mine; it's not the fathers's fault - first reaction in August
"We are both of us to pity, but if all this blood is no good, one opens a vein. It is not our fault." September 24th, in reaction to Hans Heinrich's petition. At this point, both Fritz and Hans Herrmann are on trial if I remember correctly, this is before the tribunal passes back the responsibility for Fritz to FW.
November, month of Hans Herrmann's execution: I am heartily sorry, but both justice and necessity demand for your son's crime to be properly punished. As the later was an officer of a regiment which is especially attached to my house and still did not hesitate to conspire in plots directed against the country and its people, I was forced to punish him in order that others may not follow his example and commmit similar crimes. I commiserate with you as a father, but hope you will collect yourself as a reasonable man, and will not prefer compassion to justice, to the welfare of the entire country, and to my quiet state of mind.
>:( GAAAAAAH FW. Clearly writing REALLY TERRIBLE condolence letters runs in the family. "Sorry I killed your kid, but get over yourself, my state of mind is more important, right? RIGHT??"
ZOMMGGG I had missed that! Good catch! Wow. Wow. I think we found the gene for that. :P (...)
But "I gratuitously killed your son in the face of the official verdict and the pleas from other heads of state, but please stop sending me upsetting letters, ffs."
Wow.
Kleist (Prussian noble, very talented, very messed up, will commit a shared suicide not too long after this last drama) has a thing for key events happening when people are asleep:
Kätchen von Heilbronn: Heroine and hero meet each other when heroine is sleep walking and showing up in hero's bedroom.
Die Marquise von O.: Heroine gets nearly raped soldier, saved by officer from rape, faints, a few months later finds out she's pregnant, turns out officer had sex with her while she was subconscious and tried to get himself killed thereafter, being repentant, the two end up married.
Phenthesileia: in a direct reverse to the Greek myth, Phentesieia the Amazon Queen killes Achilles (though she did fall in love with him. Then she starts to eat him with her dogs, I kid you not. "Küsse, Bisse, das reimt sich."
(Young Heinrich von Kleist to middle aged Goethe: Plz stage my play? Goethe: *reads Penthesiliea* Goethe: Nope.)
Prinz Friedrich von Homburg: To quote the wiki summary, slightly adjust by yours truly as there were some mistakes:
Action takes place at Fehrbellin and in Berlin, 1675. The Prince of Homburg, a young officer of the Great Elector (Frederick William, Elector of Brandenburg), is exhausted after a long campaign. Walking in his sleep, he puts on a laurel wreath. Several noblemen notice this, and the Great Elector plays a trick on the Prince, which leads him to declare his love for the Elector's niece, Natalie. He is able to take one of her gloves. After waking from his dream the Prince is puzzled by the glove in his hand. When at the next council of war the plans for the next battle are being discussed, and duties are being handed out, the Prince is thrown into confusion by the appearance of Princess Natalie, who reveals herself as the owner of the glove, and he is distracted to the extent that he fails to take on board his orders, which are not to engage the enemy without a direct order to do so. Contrary to his instructions he attacks the enemy at the Battle of Fehrbellin – and wins.
The Elector however is concerned above all with discipline. Regardless of the victory, he has the Prince arrested for disobeying an order and tried at a court martial, where the Prince is condemned to death. He fails initially to grasp the seriousness of the situation, and starts to be truly concerned only when he hears that the Elector has signed his death warrant. The reality of his situation only hits home when he is shown the grave that has been dug for him. In the famous and controversial "fear of death scene" (Todesfurchtszene) the Prince begs for his life, prepared to give up all that is dear to him in return. When the Elector hears of the Prince's reaction, he too is confused, possibly astonished, but claims to have the greatest respect for the Prince's feeling. Instead of simply pardoning him, however, he sets a condition: if the Prince can genuinely call his condemnation unjust, he will be pardoned. The question raises the Prince to a state of enlightenment: he conquers his fear of death and is prepared to "glorify" the sentence by a suicide. It remains debatable whether he really considers his sentence justified. Nor does it ever come to light to what extent the Elector may have planned all this to teach him a lesson.
Meanwhile, Natalie, without a legitimate order, has recalled Kottwitz's regiment to obtain support for Homburg's pardon. In the face of the general pressure now put on him, the Elector now listens to his officers. Kottwitz is of the opinion that what counts on the field of battle is victory, and that there is nothing with which to reproach the Prince. Hohenzollern goes further and attributes the guilt to the Elector, as he caused the Prince's confusion and consequent insubordination by the trick he played on him, and therefore bears the responsibility himself. Finally the Elector asks the officers if they are happy to continue to trust themselves to the Prince's leadership – to which all say yes.
The Prince learns nothing of his pardon, but is led blindfolded into the open air, in the belief that he is about to be executed. But there is no bullet: instead, the niece of the Elector crowns him with a laurel wreath. The prince faints, then awakes to the thunder of canons. To his question whether this is a dream, Kottwitz replies, "A dream, what else" ("Ein Traum, was sonst"). The officers cry "Into dust with all the enemies of Brandenburg!"
(Der Prinz von Homburg: Nein, sagt! Ist es ein Traum?
Kottwitz: Ein Traum, was sonst?
Mehrere Offiziere: Ins Feld! Ins Feld!
Graf Truchß: Zur Schlacht!
Feldmarschall: Zum Sieg! Zum Sieg!
Alle: In Staub mit allen Feinden Brandenburgs!)
Let me add here that Kleist had what historical basis there is for this actually from "Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire de la maison de Brandebourg“ by Fritz, but the story Fritz tells of the battle of Fehrbellin 1675 is just that Prince Friedrich von Hessen-Homburg interfered in the battle ahead of orders and won it anyway. Anything else is made up by Kleist. And all this agreeing to your own death and that the monarch who condemns you arguing necessity of state despite everyone else disagreeing, that's definitely the Prussian mentality as formed by FW and continued, if slightly altered, by Fritz.
Re: Legacies
On one hand, I like the reversal! On the other hand... my takeaway is that Kleist might, uh, need some help. Which is also how I feel about the synopsis of Prinz Friedrich von Homburg, to be honest! Wow. Although it also sounds totally fascinating and some of it is sort of disturbingly resonant with me.
Re: Legacies
Kleist's Napoleon thing expressed itself, post-Prussian defeat, by young Kleist making plans to anonymously enlist in the French army to either a) kill Napoleon somehow if he got near him, or b) die in his Service. His older sister Ulrike, who was his common sense life saver most of his life, prevented that. The literature expression of Kleist's Napoleon thing was his play about Arminius, aka "Herrmann the Cheruscan", as he was then called, defeating the Roman Varus. Making analogies between the Romans and the French was a thing during the Napoleon years in general, and that's when good old Arminius was rediscovered from the Tacitus entry on the big Roman defeat and made into a national hero which he remained until the end of WWII, after which he was worse Nazi-tainted than Fritz because you can guess what use the Nazis had made of him. Which is why we don't call the battle in question the "Herrmannsschlacht" anymore in German, we call it "die Varusschlacht", and refer to the guy in question as Arminius, not Herrmann, which is a German given to him around the Renaissance days.
Anyway, back to Kleist: probably bi, had messed up relationships with both bff Wilhelm and with a temporary fiancee, was close to his older (half-)sister Ulrike while also increasingly resenting her (she had financial independence due to the parent they didn't share and used the fact she had money and he did not and was dependent on her support more often than not from doing at least some of the stupid suicidal things he wanted to; she also once rescued him, dressed as a man, from a French arrest during his "I'm gonna enlist in the French army and kill/serve Napoleon" phase), which all culminated that when he was about to committ suicide with a lady he hardly knew - who had cancer, that's how they'd found each other as wanting-to-die-people, he first wrote a goodbye letter to a shared cousin in which he complained Ulrike didn't understand him, and then apologizing wrote to Ulrike in his goodbye letter to her "let me take back those harsh words I wrote to Cousin Marie; you always did everything anyone could to help me and more, but the truth is I could not be helped on this earth".