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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
Re: Fritz and Wilhelmine Correspondance, Trier Version III - Three Funerals and a Wedding
No, different one. I told you they were confusing! Katte's Count Rottembourg is the French Count Rottembourg, who died in 1735 in Paris, having not been in Prussia (to my knowledge) since he obtained his much sought-after release from FW in 1728 and sent to Madrid as envoy instead. This is his cousin (I've seen nephew, but I think that's a mistake) Prussian Count Rottembourg who was beloved by Fritz and died in 1752.
I had this passage about Rottembourg's death in mind when I was telling
About Biche, I keep seeing references to a letter from Fritz to Wilhelmine on her death, that goes,
I have had a domestic loss which has completely upset my philosophy. I confide all my frailties in you: I have lost Biche, and her death has reawoken in me the loss of all my friends, particularly of him who gave her to me. I was ashamed that a dog could so deeply affect my soul; but the sedentary life I lead and the faithfulness of this poor creature had so strongly attached me to her, her suffering so moved me, that, I confess, I am sad and afflicted. Does one have to be hard? Must one be insensitive? I believe that anyone capable of indifference towards a faithful animal is unable to be grateful towards an equal, and that, if one must choose, it is best to be too sensitive than too hard.
But I'm not seeing this letter in our library.
On the other hand, I just found yet another error in the Wilhelmine letters, in the form of a letter that didn't get rendered by my script, so sigh. Before you assume Trier/Preuss didn't include something just because it's not in the file I uploaded, always double check the website.
Wow, there is definitely a major bug in the script that generates these letters. This is the second time where I found the entry for a letter duplicated an earlier letter instead of having its own proper text. Very strange.
Anyway, sure enough, the letter where he tells Wilhelmine about Biche's death in late 1751 is in the archive but not in the uploaded file. I'm going to have to dig into this bug and see how many other missing letters I can find.
Meanwhile, I've manually fixed this one and uploaded the revised file to the Fritzian library, so check letters 207ff for the Biche/Folichon letters, and 233 for the death of Biche.
I was advised to smoke certain herbs, which first relieved me; but as I had to repeat the same remedy several times, my ladies kept me company, and we all smoked like dragons.
Haha. I often wonder what these people were smoking, but now I literally wonder what they were smoking! Medicinal cannabis wasn't a thing in Europe yet, or was it?
Re: Fritz and Wilhelmine Correspondance, Trier Version III - Three Funerals and a Wedding
I haven't checked to see if this bug affects any other letters, but Wilhelmine was definitely the first set of letters I generated (per
207ff
216
228
233
253
257
278
282
286
287
292
297
302
307
310
312
318
321
324
326
328
343
And if you've downloaded this file to read on your Kindle or something, you should redownload it.
Re: Fritz and Wilhelmine Correspondance, Trier Version III - Three Funerals and a Wedding
Re: Fritz and Wilhelmine Correspondance, Trier Version III - Three Funerals and a Wedding
I still don't have another explanation than class in combination with nature of the relationship. It would be better if we had comparative data, of Course, but I can't think of another non-noble Fritz was emotionally close to and survived, whom he could or could not have mentioned in his correspondance.
Incidentally: other than Henri de Catt, is he on the record with talking about Katte to anyone? Because given Catt's diary does not mention Katte and I've been busy side-eying him a bit in terms of reliability.
Getting Fritz to talk about Küstrin and Katte is surely the holy grail of memoirists, which could also be why de Catt's general realiability hasn't been questioned more by modern biographers (unlike that of Wilhelmine). They don't want to give up those quotes, because otherwise I guess there are no other.
What I'm getting at: just consider the possibility: if Henri de Catt did invent the Katte statements - whether based on Voltaire's briefer version or not - , then we suddenly have shared parameters again, between Fredersdorf and Katte, as in, Fritz does not talk about either, with anyone.
Biche and the disappeared letter(s): thank you so much for taking the trouble to reupload them! I see the Biche's death letter also has another Voltaire mention (as in, he's the worst, absolute scum, it's only his mind that still seduces me, the word "seduce" being used). If Fritz in the early 1750s is hit by the double whammy of losing his beloved dog and having his relationship with Voltaire implode, yikes.
Haha. I often wonder what these people were smoking, but now I literally wonder what they were smoking! Medicinal cannabis wasn't a thing in Europe yet, or was it?
Honesty, I don't know. But opiates in general already were, I think. (Though the century where everyone is on opium in one form or another is the 19th. Seriously. They even put it in calming syrups for children.) And since I doubt the spa doctors had Wilhelmine smoke tobacco…
But waybe it was just something like waterpipes, to clean out the lungs and nostrils with steam.
Re: Fritz and Wilhelmine Correspondance, Trier Version III - Three Funerals and a Wedding
Not that I'm aware of. And I had considered that Katte and Fredersdorf are the two he doesn't talk about. If that's the case, I feel like class must play a role, because if he doesn't talk about Katte, or if he doesn't talk more about Katte, surely the acute trauma aspect is the biggest factor. And that wouldn't be there with Fredersdorf. (Unless Fredersdorf *did* do something financially less than aboveboard in Fritz's eyes, which I have considered as a possibility for why Fritz won't talk about him, but atm we have no evidence for that and I hope we never do, so I can't exactly invoke it as a reason.)
The problem is that so much of our evidence is indirect. Do we believe Catt? If so, then we can take Voltaire's memoirs as circumstantial evidence that Fritz also talked to Voltaire. In which case he almost certainly wrote or talked to Wilhelmine. But if we don't believe Catt, then maybe Catt was putting a first-person account into the mouth of Fritz, based on a third-person account that Voltaire had come up with (the timing works), and then maybe Wilhelimine was working exclusively from third-person accounts too.
Because I feel like there's an if-then here: *if* he talked to C + V, *then* he surely talked to Wilhelmine at some point. And it would be entirely consistent with the evidence we have to suppose that he wrote to her from Küstrin, she burned the letters immediately, and then when writing her memoirs, she reconstructed events from a combination of accounts that were floating around at the time plus her memories of those long-ago burned letters. Or perhaps he talked to her in person during that visit home he was allowed in 1731. He's clearly not her only source, but his 1731 self may be one of her sources.
But maybe she's going exclusively from rumor and he talked to *no one*, ever (or only Fredersdorf in private?), and Catt's making stuff up again. You're right that the Katte and Küstrin episode would be the Holy Grail, and it is incredibly soon after Catt starts working for him, for a topic Fritz isn't known for sure to have talked about with anyone. I raised an eyebrow the first time I saw Fritz talking about it with Catt, and then both eyebrows when I realized it was a month after Catt started his new job. Either Fritz had a standard account he ran through with people he either didn't want relying exclusively on the many rumors he no doubt knew were floating about, or felt like venting to, or else Catt is a freaking liar. It's just so hard to tell.
(Though the century where everyone is on opium in one form or another is the 19th. Seriously. They even put it in calming syrups for children.)
Yes, exactly. I associate laudanum and other forms of ubiquitous opium with the 19th century.
But waybe it was just something like waterpipes, to clean out the lungs and nostrils with steam.
Perhaps. But I still want to know which "certain herbs" are used for that!
Re: Fritz and Wilhelmine Correspondance, Trier Version III - Three Funerals and a Wedding
I could believe that. It's Katte's name not being in the diary that makes me so increasingly suspicious. I mean, surely if your new boss tells you, one month in, something about THE MOST TRAUMATIC EPISODE OF HIS LIFE, something that all of Europe has gosipped about and knows has happened for many years, wouldn't you have immediately jotted it down with thick letters? You can bet Lehndorff would have. (Lehndorff: I always knew I should have become the King's reader.)
Mind you: not having read the diary myself, I of course can't be sure there isn't a passage in it where Fritz does talk about Küstrin, just doesn't mention Katte by name. Maybe Catt simply did what he did with the AW and Wilhelmine conversations, moved up the time table in order to make himself look more special to Fritz but does not invent the fact they did talk about the topic at all. (That's how I understood the German language introduction - that the diary says Fritz did talk to Catt about his brother and evil advisors etc., just not immediately but four days after the news arrived, and similarly did talk to him about Wilhelmine, but not immediately, only at their regular hour and after Catt had already sent his condolence letter. Did you ask Beginner_Returner whether Fritz talks in the diary about Küstrin (without mentioning Katte by name) at a later point, maybe?
Conversely: I suppose if Catt tells the truth and nothing but the truth, the reason why he didn't immediately write it down was precisely because he had been working for Fritz for just a month. He wasn't sure whether his diary might not be read, and if so, whether he was allowed to make notes about such a deeply private conversation. Especially given that I think somewhere it's mentioned (by Fritz) thath a lot of the young officers are making notes in order to write about the war later on. And keeping a journal really was very wide spread in the era, with an eye to later publication.
So: could be I'm wronging Catt, and he was simply trying to prove himself super discreet and trustworthy with the new boss!
Re: Fritz and Wilhelmine Correspondance, Trier Version III - Three Funerals and a Wedding
My immediate thought was no, not necessarily, and if there's one thing I would trust Catt to remember years later--not accurately, mind you!--without taking notes, it would be something he'd already heard of and been wondering about. So, if he is pulling that up from memory, I wouldn't trust him on detail, but I'd trust him to remember that they talked about it and get at least some of it right (which parts are an open question).
Also, given how dicey the topic was, my immediate reaction was that I might be very, very careful about writing it down, for the reasons you mention. Especially if we trust Catt that he didn't feel safe commenting on it at all while Fritz was talking. (Of course, the alternative is that there was virtually no conversation between him and Fritz on this topic because it never happened, and Catt's just writing historical fiction based on Voltaire's memoirs.)
I of course can't be sure there isn't a passage in it where Fritz does talk about Küstrin, just doesn't mention Katte by name
That has also occurred to me. That's why Catt's diary is on my list of things to see if Google OCR + translate can handle in a useful way. But first I have a gazillion Heinrich letters to clean up. ;) Trying to work my way through the
So yes, there are several possibilities, and only one of them is falsifiable, i.e., he put it in his diary under non-searchable language, such as, "King talks about the time he tried to escape and was imprisoned" or "King talks about the you-know-what that we've all been dying to hear about from the horse's mouth--SCORE!" ;)
Will see what I can do about making the diary more accessible someday.