Frederick the Great discussion post 9

[cahn]

...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

Comments

Re: Fritz and Wilhelmine Correspondance, Trier Version III - Three Funerals and a Wedding

[selenak]

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

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

[mildred_of_midgard]

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?

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 rheinsberg backlog while I'm at it.

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.