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cahnSo for anyone who is reading this and would like to learn more about Frederick the Great and his contemporaries, but who doesn't want to wade through 500k (600k?) words worth of comments and an increasingly sprawling comment section:
We now have a community,![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
rheinsberg, that has quite a lot of the interesting historical content (and more coming regularly), organized nicely with lots of lovely tags so if there's any subject you are interested in it is easy to find :D
We now have a community,
rheinsberg, that has quite a lot of the interesting historical content (and more coming regularly), organized nicely with lots of lovely tags so if there's any subject you are interested in it is easy to find :D
no subject
Date: 2020-01-25 07:40 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-01-25 09:57 pm (UTC)I'd like to give your fandom a try too, although yeah, I have the same problem of not enough bandwidth, at least right now :)
no subject
Date: 2020-01-26 05:37 pm (UTC)Jacobites
Date: 2020-01-26 05:53 pm (UTC)Then I got back into 18th century history 6 months ago, this time emphasis Fritz rather than emphasis Jacobites, and I returned to that book. Because of health reasons, I can no longer read physical books, so I asked for a Kindle copy for my birthday in October. I got about halfway through a reread before concentration difficulties kicked in and stopped me, but I still used it extensively for fic research for the treat I co-authored for Yuletide! And it's still on my reread list along with all the other items I got halfway through before November.
It's very bad about citing sources, and I don't consider it terribly reliable, but it's full of useful information, and it's the best I've got right now, given all my limitations. I'm glad I hung onto it for all those years.
I've been lowkey afraid
All of which is to say, if we ever move on from Fritz and some of my limitations lift (which includes people buying me books to report on), I might be able to regurgitate more than anyone ever wanted to know about the Jacobites and learn a whole lot of new things in the process.
I have actually learned one new thing about the Jacobites in the last year, which is that an actualfax descendant of Charles Edward, evidently not a crazy pretender after the throne, turned up about a year after I left the Jacobite fandom and stopped following new developments re claimants.
Yet, regardless of what 'rights' he may have, Peter Pininski...has never expressed a desire to challenge the House of Windsor.
He commented: "I would dearly like to stay right away from Stuart claimant-type charlatanism, because it’s not what I find interesting."
Contrast the almost certainly fake descendant who *is* after the throne.
Okay, I need to stop.
Re: Jacobites
Date: 2020-01-26 06:28 pm (UTC)So the fandom I am into is the 1925 book The Flight of the Heron by D K Broster, which is an extremely slashy book about the true love of a redcoat officer and one of the Cameron lairds, set during the '45. Am in the middle of writing a long fic about them. But obviously it's a tiny fandom (though much of the fic that exists is extremely good!), so I am diving headfirst into research where I might, in a large fandom, simply have kept to reading fic. I really knew nothing of this subject beforehand. Here are some books I've read so far, and I'm a third of the way through Christopher Duffy's The '45 which I find extremely readable, and then I have The Jacobite Clans of the Great Glen 1650-1784 by Bruce Lenman lined up.
ETA: *rereads comment* Clearly I should use the word "extremely" less. *facepalm* Also, bless university interlibrary loans.
Re: Jacobites
Date: 2020-01-26 06:54 pm (UTC)It was a massively educational endeavor and was responsible for me learning a surprising amount about history, including at least one thing that the otherwise learned
Okay, if you want a rundown of my plot, I find it entirely hilarious in hindsight. (I admit I knew at the time that it was implausible. Behold the field in which I grew my fucks, and see that it was barren. :P)
Our antihero I have described as a crossover between Joan of Arc and Alexander the Great. She explicitly models herself on Joan, because she's looked around Europe and decided Charles Edward will be desperate enough to listen to military advice from a woman (behold the field, etc.), then puts him on the throne of Great Britain. Once she has that momentum behind her, she uses this as a mere stepping stone on the path to ever greater glory, and I forget the order in which she conquered all the other countries, but you can take my word for it that it was glorious. :D
As I recall, I gave Fritz the honor of actually fighting her to a draw and status quo ante (see how historical I am? lol) during his lifetime, and a secret treaty in which she or her descendants get to inherit Prussia after he dies. Then, after marching her Prussian army to Vienna, she gets to be elected HRE! "Elected," obviously.
She knows better than to invade Russia (she's a time traveler from the future who has the huge advantage of having studied everyone's tactics and strategy, natch), so she marries her granddaughter off to Alexander and tells her, "This country has a long history of women ruling. You know what to do."
I think Napoleon came out of one of her military schools, and then tried to start a revolt and he briefly ruled France, but by then she had decades of conquest experience under her belt, and of course had memorized his campaigns from when she lived centuries in the future (22nd or 23rd century?), and she kicked his butt handily.
*laughing so hard tears are coming out of my eyes*
You can see that self-restraint was not a feature of 15-yo me, but if you want to know why I've been able to regurgitate so much European history despite not taking a single history course other than AP US history in high school, I have to say years of fic research sticks in your head better than most things you're formally taught.
And that is my history with the Jacobites and 18th century history. :D If I hadn't decided to occupy my bored and understimulated high school brain with researching and writing that historical AU, we wouldn't be here having this lovely 700k word conversation today!
Re: Jacobites
Date: 2020-01-26 07:43 pm (UTC)And I know what you mean about how much you can learn from fic research, or indeed from anything where you learn for fun rather than from formal schooling (says the amateur bryologist).
Do you have any especial recs for books relevant to the '45 that I might miss?
Sadly I don't think The Flight of the Heron is available in electronic form. But next year it goes out of copyright, so I'm sure it will eventually end up on Gutenberg. Meanwhile, I have bought myself a (cheap, actually) first edition so that I can record the book for Librivox the minute the copyright goes out (I'm a podficcer). So if you like audiobooks you could listen to it then. : )
Re: Jacobites
Date: 2020-01-27 03:36 am (UTC)SO. MUCH. FUN. \o/
Do you have any especial recs for books relevant to the '45 that I might miss?
I was actually thinking about that before you asked, you know. And I came to the conclusion that while I could name a bunch of books I read, I no longer remember what was in each of them, and even if I did, I definitely don't trust my 15-17 yo's judgment.
For fiction recs, though, if you want to read about 18th century Highlanders, including but not limited to the '45, I can recommend Diana Gabaldon with caveats. If you don't know her, she has an 8-doorstopper series and several novellas, that contain vast amounts of historical research, and also vast amounts of historical error. Even my 16-yo self was spotting errors left and right, and other people have bounced right out of her depiction of post-WWII Scotland in the opening chapters of the first volume. (She later admitted that chapter was entirely inaccurate.)
But I've enjoyed the characterization and writing style greatly, especially in the earlier books. Sequelitis is definitely a thing in this series. Will probably still pick up book 9 when it comes out, though.
There's also a show called Outlander based on the books (how far they've gotten, I don't know), which I have not seen but which a lot of people like. The protagonist is female, the book is sex positive, and the show apparently does female gaze well.
Trigger warnings for all the things, especially torture and graphic rape of main characters. Equal opportunity rape, fwiw: male on male, male on female, female on male...but if you're at all squeamish, don't go near this series.
So if you like audiobooks you could listen to it then. : )
Sadly, audiobooks don't work for me, but good for you! Maybe I'll have a solution to the book disability problems by then (one can hope I eventually do).
Re: Jacobites
Date: 2020-01-27 07:59 am (UTC)Re: Jacobites
Date: 2020-01-26 07:00 pm (UTC)Haha, our overused word on the Fritz side is "amazing".
Also, bless university interlibrary loans.
Indeed. I started out having only my parents' Compton's Encyclopedia set, plus the library of a very unacademic high school, but for one glorious summer my parents were willing to take me to the public library every weekend, and the public library would let me ILL books from the university. Any birthday or Christmas money I acquired was immediately spent on history books from the local used bookstore, and I got a very small handful of trips to the university library itself for school reasons (and yelled at by my parents, but fuck that).
If I had the ability to read physical books today, I'd be ILLing like crazy for Fritz (I'm keeping a wishlist for if that changes), but as it is, all I can say is "bless Google Books." (And bless our royal reader
Also bless Google Maps, Google Translate, Google Drive, Google Cloud Vision (for OCR), and of course Google Search. (I've joked to my wife that this is a very Google-enabled fandom!)
Re: Jacobites
Date: 2020-01-27 07:06 am (UTC)Re: Jacobites
Date: 2020-01-27 04:08 pm (UTC)Re: Jacobites
Date: 2020-01-31 06:13 am (UTC)Some biographers, ugh
Date: 2020-01-25 11:07 am (UTC)Indeed. It's in Jürgen Luh's biography Der Große which is in general a "he didn't love anyone, except possibly Fredersdorf, he was too emotionally crippled for that and all those letters (not just to Wilhelmine but also to his friends) saying otherwise are just rethorical posing" takedown. Which strikes me as the reverse of the 19th century worship Preuss engages in, and just about as insightful in the complexity of human emotions.
Spreaking of Preuß, though: good grief. Every time I take a look, I'm thrown out again by the sheer mid 19th century nationalism of it all. Starting when after explaining with Fritz & family were raised with French as a primary language, he assures his 19th century readers that while Fritz may have loved French literature as a result, he despised "alles Welsche und die Welschen" - which term, as used in 19th century Germany, covers not just the French but also the Italians and any Latin-European people. Says the man who will soon list all those various Frederician friendships with Frenchmen and Italians.
And later on, he laments how the One King keeps getting maligned as an aggressor, when really, he never was the aggressor in a single war in his life. It was all either righting wrongs to Prussia (Silesia 1), defending his allies (Silesia 2) or defending German freedom (guess what). The later, btw, is a case in point of how attitudes had shifted from one century to the next. Fritz himself certainly sold the 7-Years-War as him defending German freedom of religion in his propaganda, among other things, i.e. himself as the champion of Protestantism which otherwise would be crushed under Habsburg tyranny. When triying to get the other German principalities on your side, that's the smartest argument to make, given that the 30 Years War is still just a century plus ago. But "freedom of religion" is no longer the selling argument in a century in which national feelings start to get increasingly more toxic all around, preparing the ground for the hell of the 20th century, which is why I find it hard to take the dispassionate attitude which is necesssary when such paragraphs keep coming up. Preuß is here ascribing ideas of nationalism to a mid 18th century mindset that just weren't there.
I was morbidly curious how invading Saxony is defending German freedom, but of ourse it's because the Saxons secretly are already yearning to become Prussian citizens and it's just the corrupt aristocracy, i.e. Saxon PM Brühl & Co., that's at fault for forcing Fritz to invade them. Bear in mind here what we've mentioned about the Saxon regiments forced into Prussian service who promptly deserted. At Prague, they even shot their Prussian officers while doing so. Mind you, Fritz won Prague regardless. But: Dead Prussians: 14 300 men. Dead Austrians: a thousand soldiers less. All of which was already well known at the time of Preuß' writing. Whereas, say, a contemporary loyal Prussian subject like Lehndorff who doesn't doubt the "the King was right, he had to attack first, the Saxons would have stabbed us in the back otherwise" and the "the King is a genius!" premise, is also able to later in the war (which of course he sees the results of first hand) go "so maybe the King shouldn't have insulted all the powerful women in Europe all the time?" and "the Austrian generals are called cowards by us, but can't help but notice they lose way less people and have provoked the King in some rash costly battles" . And of course when the dust is settled, Lehndorff, with all the relief and joy about the war ending and all the admiration for the the King and Dearest of All Princes he has, can make a diary entry (February 5th 1763) saying: Thus all our misery is over. But if one recalls the countless victims this war has cost, how many provinces were devastated, how many families have been ruined, and all just so that all the rulers can go back the status quo ante, one wants to scream. Now the question of the coinage has to be solved. If the King doesn't help with this as quickly as possible, we're all ruined. The prices for all goods have all risen so far that we're facing a permanent state of debt.
And when you compare this to one century later Preuß - and not just him - going on about how wonderful and heroic and necessary the war was, having learned all the wrong lessons from it, and you know, as a reader, it will just get worse, you want to scream, too.
Seriously, just one sentence or two wondering whether it was all worth it on Preuß' part would make this easier for me to stomach. He can still root for Fritz! (Lehndorff does, too.) Just - good lord, man, stop trying to sell this as having benefited the then non-existing German nation.
And speaking of historical attitudes, unsurprisingly, Preuß is also one for slut-shaming. With the Marquise de Pompadour and Elisaveta, naturally (he can't with MT and in general has a sort of begrudging Frederician respect for her, but SHE WAS WRONG and couldn't see Fritz' historic mission). When he's sneering about Louis XV along the lines of "and then that woman even became some de facto minister - and what kind of a man gives his commoner paramour he's not even sleeping with anymore important governing responsibilities, huh?", the, err, Prussian parallel does not seem to occur to him, but well, join the club, Preuß. He's also snide about Émilie. None of this is surprising in a 19th century historian, I know, I know, and I've often come across this before, but for some reason, this time around it just keeps throwing me out. In conclusion, it will be a long while till I properly read that multi volume biography.
Re: Some biographers, ugh
Date: 2020-01-25 10:03 pm (UTC)Whereas, say, a contemporary loyal Prussian subject like Lehndorff who doesn't doubt the "the King was right, he had to attack first, the Saxons would have stabbed us in the back otherwise" and the "the King is a genius!" premise, is also able to later in the war (which of course he sees the results of first hand) go "so maybe the King shouldn't have insulted all the powerful women in Europe all the time?" and "the Austrian generals are called cowards by us, but can't help but notice they lose way less people and have provoked the King in some rash costly battles" .
<3 Or, I mean, it could just be that Lehndorff is the best :D *sparkly hearts him* No, but seriously, I get your meaning. And we know that he's loyal and not a particularly radical thinker, at all.
he can't with MT and in general has a sort of begrudging Frederician respect for her
I gotta say that the MT-fan part of me is doing the mental equivalent of sticking my tongue out at him. Everyone has to accept that MT was awesome! (I mean, more of me is sad about the slut-shaming. I'm just saying.)
Re: Some biographers, ugh
Date: 2020-01-26 05:32 pm (UTC)None of this is surprising in a 19th century historian, I know, I know, and I've often come across this before, but for some reason, this time around it just keeps throwing me out. In conclusion, it will be a long while till I properly read that multi volume biography.
I don't blame you. Unsurprising is one thing, but wanting to immerse yourself in it is another matter.
What I was hoping, since Preuss was the one who led us to Münchow Jr.'s letter, was that he would be a useful set of primary source material (5 volumes of source material; yes, much of it made it into his correspondence collection now on Trier, but I got the impression there was some non-overlap), but now I see exactly how all that selection of material for the Oeuvres happened. Marwitz letters? Cut. Voltaire wanting to commit suicide because of the way he was treated in Frankfurt? Cut.
Sigh. Between him and Catt, it's been quite a morning. To quote Fritz himself, writing to Algarotti, "With age I feel more and more incredulous when it comes to histories, theology and physicians. There are few known truths in the world, we look for them, and while we do so, we satisfy ourselves with the fables that are created for us, and the eloquence of charlatans."
I was morbidly curious how invading Saxony is defending German freedom, but of ourse it's because the Saxons secretly are already yearning to become Prussian citizens
Oh, for fuck's sake.
Well, I'm sorry he's such a letdown, and thanks for dipping your toe in the waters of German nationalism for us. I'm still hopeful we'll have more Münchow moments where he leads us somewhere interesting, even if the commentary isn't worth reading cover-to-cover.
Re: Some biographers, ugh
Date: 2020-01-27 07:30 am (UTC)Also, with his basic belief that Fritz can do no wrong and is truth incarnated, he tranfers errors. Remember, in the 7 Years War, one of Fritz' most efficient propagana writings was a supposed letter from MT to the Marquise de Pompadour calling her "dear sister". This was, depending on your pov, forgery in the service of political propaganda or satire, but it definitely wasn't the real deal. (We do have the entire correspondance between the Marquise and Vienna documented. The only direct letter of hers to MT, and not the other way around, was thanking her for the present of an ebony cabinet. Otherwise, Reinette corresponded with Kaunitz (basically Austria's PM,
Or: like I said, I noted - and was surprised - that he quotes from Fritz' conversations with Catt (naming Catt's memoirs as the source) before these were published, then found the explanation in the preface (the memoirs were in the Prussian State Archive and Preuß was given access to them). I don't blame him for being thrilled - getting your hands on such a document with lots of surely authentic Fritz conversations, what a find! But it means that he accepts anything Fritz says here (or that, as we now know, Catt has him say) without question, including the AW-editing-out-of-history thing where Heinrich, not AW, is declared by Fritz to have been FW's favourite. (Which Preuß with his access to the state archive, which I assume back then had the same FW letters Ziebura and other modern biographers whote from, could have counterchecked. But if the One King says it...)
Re: Some biographers, ugh
Date: 2020-01-27 04:02 pm (UTC)Yeah, he definitely seemed to be the most source-oriented guy I could find so early, which is why I grabbed him. Well, like you said, maybe more gems will turn up. And maybe it's worth scrolling through the five non-bio volumes just to see if there are any sources in there that we don't have access to through Trier, or if it's all just Fritz correspondence that he later published.
Re: Some biographers, ugh
Date: 2020-02-02 04:32 am (UTC)I'm still amazed that Fredersdorf rather than Wilhelmine was the exception. After years of abuse and faking love with the one person who stood by him and suffered with him, he suddenly acquired the ability to love at age 19, while imprisoned? But then never used it again?
Oh, wait, I'm trying to make sense of the senseless. Never mind!
But seriously, if he was going to only ever love one person, it would be either SD or Wilhelmine, imo.
Re: Some biographers, ugh
Date: 2020-02-02 08:37 am (UTC)Jürgen Luh, like Judith Zinsser with Voltaire vs De Lambert, is put off by all the French written Rokoko emo in the letters to Wilhelmine, Suhm et al and qualifies it as posing and rethoric, written with an eye to posterity, whereas he sees the secret German emo in the Fredersdorf letters as possibly genuine, seeing as it was decidedly not written for anyone but Fredersdorf to read. Somehow, the fact that Wilhelmine and Fredersdorf (and Suhm, and Algarotti, and just about anyone who's sick) gets the "live for meeeeee!" in whatever language, does not seem to be a shared factor here.)
I should add here that actually the 1926 editor of the Fredersdorf letters, who is the oppposite of a Deconstructing Fritz biographer like Luh, also suggests the relationship with Fredersdorf was more genuine (FATHERLY FATHERLY FATHERLY) love, but not for Luh's reasons - he just doesn't consider Wilhelmine worthy. Fredersdorf, after, all, never had lunch with MT, nor did he carry on corresponding with perfidious Frenchmen who broke our national hero's heart!
But seriously, if he was going to only ever love one person, it would be either SD or Wilhelmine, imo.
Oh, agreed. BTW, the passage in Seckendorff's diary quoted below about SD hating on Wilhelmine up to the mid 1730s and telling FW "odious stories" about her, which Seckendorff Jr. wonders might spoil things for her with her son (it didn't) did make me wonder. If Wilhelmine by not encouraging Fritz to make a run for it and escape the abuse (because she was afraid it would fail, because she didn't want to be left alone in hell, for a variety of reasons) did something which, as with Katte, in his subconscious he resented her for yet could not express, even to himself, why (so it might have come out much later in the 1740s during their crisis)... it could also be possible that Fritz blinding himself (as he had to) to the fact that while Best of Mothers might do all she could to please him (as per Mantteuffel), she was abusing his sister, also caused such a subconscious resentment gathering reaction inside Wilhelmine which in turn contributed to her cathartic memoirs writings (with their critical deictions of 1730s and early 1740s Fritz)? (And they were cathartic for her; after their reconciliation, she never seems to have doubted his emotions for her again, as if she'd gotten all out of her system.)
Incidentally: SD being so hostile towards her oldest daughter that foreign ambassadors notice it - still revenge for Wilhelmine having failed her (in her eyes) by not holding out for the English marriage, or awareness that when the next regime comes, it's not EC who is going to be her competition for royal woman most important to the next King? In any case, what all the verbal abuse through the early 1730s reminds me of is also Fritz' behaviour to AW in the year between the casheering and AW's death. Yes, FW was the chief royal role model for wanting the crown prince who has failed you (in your eyes) broken and submitting by an admission he was utterly wrong and you were utterly right, but what SD was doing with Wilhelmine had more scapegoating in it. It could never be SD's fault for having asked the impossible from her daughter (and driven her children into a war with their father they couldn't win), it was Wilhelmine's fault that she failed to become Queen of England.
Re: Some biographers, ugh
Date: 2020-02-02 05:33 pm (UTC)Okay, at least there's some coherence to the argument. Thank you for clarifying. I still don't buy it, and like you said, he freaks out and uses "Live for me!" to all parties, and as I will always point out, that's the line that Wilhelmine said worked on *him*...maybe the guy is just emo and had a lot of people taken away from him by force, and he's not good at letting go.
If Wilhelmine by not encouraging Fritz to make a run for it and escape the abuse (because she was afraid it would fail, because she didn't want to be left alone in hell, for a variety of reasons)
This. And the fact that whether it succeeded or failed, her hell would become a lot worse.
did something which, as with Katte, in his subconscious he resented her for yet could not express, even to himself, why (so it might have come out much later in the 1740s during their crisis)
caused such a subconscious resentment gathering reaction inside Wilhelmine which in turn contributed to her cathartic memoirs writings
I couldn't agree more. I have always thought that both the siblings had some deeply buried resentment toward each other that couldn't find any outlet except in a big explosion, and that that contributed to their willingness to assume the worst of each other in the 1740s.
(And they were cathartic for her; after their reconciliation, she never seems to have doubted his emotions for her again, as if she'd gotten all out of her system.)
Gotten it out of her system, yes, and reliving the early years might have stirred up the memories that made it easier to reconcile.
Also, just to quote MacDonogh one more time, about the reconciliation: "Wilhelmina must have worked the gall out of her system by then: she had used it as ink for her memoirs." :)
still revenge for Wilhelmine having failed her (in her eyes) by not holding out for the English marriage, or awareness that when the next regime comes, it's not EC who is going to be her competition for royal woman most important to the next King?
Interesting, could be!
Yes, FW was the chief royal role model for wanting the crown prince who has failed you (in your eyes) broken and submitting by an admission he was utterly wrong and you were utterly right, but what SD was doing with Wilhelmine had more scapegoating in it. It could never be SD's fault for having asked the impossible from her daughter (and driven her children into a war with their father they couldn't win), it was Wilhelmine's fault that she failed to become Queen of England.
Oooh, yes, this is very accurate. Fritz definitely had a distinct lack of role models admitting to mistakes, and that must be a big part of his hurry to scapegoat.
Elisabath Christine
Date: 2020-01-25 12:43 pm (UTC)Gisela Langfeld, who wrote the preface to the 2007 reprint of Lehndorff's diaries, points out that on one of the occasions when he must have reread his diaries much later in life and scribbled little observations on the margins - like commenting his first "It's all over between Heinrich and me, woe!" entry with "nope, still friends now when we're in our mid 60s!" - , he also writes re: one of his harsher entries on EC's boringness that now that he's happily retired, he finds he was unfair towards her, simply because he felt miserable in his job, and that coloured his judgment.
This being said, I think nobody, including defenders like Thiébault who writes a lot of nice things about her, have ever made a case for EC having been a riveting conversationalist or blessed with great charm. Ziebura in her biography of the three wives distills it to: both EC and Louise suffered from the get go from various disadvantages aside from the fact their husbands didn't want them. They were shy, either stuttered or lisped - comments on this in various memoirs and diaries are ambiguous enough for it to even have been no more than dialect. For example, Lehndorff notes that when the Queen and her sisters (a younger one in addition to Louise) were together, they spoke "incomprehensibly; it is supposed to be German but I can't make out a single word of it" - which does sound to me as if they were talking Plattdeutsch, a northern German dialect sounding a lot like Dutch. When they first got introduced to the Hohenzollerns, they froze and weren't able to say anything, which came across as dumb, rude or both to this not collection of by and large not very kind people. And they evidently didn't get the kind of education that would allow them to make interesting or at least witty conversation. Now, EC tried to learn all this during the Rheinsberg years to please her husband, but the result can't have been that impressive, because one of the things Lehndorff complains about is that dinners with her tend to take really long because she talks a lot "without having anything interesting to say". (The poor woman evidently was a in a "damned if she does, damned if she doesn't" type of situation - at first she was dismissed as boring by her in-laws when she didn't make conversation, and then she was dismissed by her courtiers as boring when she tried, but without the gift for bonmots or interesting narration.) (And of course, as a courtier you had to stay for as long as the Queen wanted you there, until she officially ended the meal/party/ gathering. Cue resentful Lehndorff who'd rather be at home with a good book and/or alone with EC's brother-in-law.)
Ziebura thinks one reason why while pre AW's death both Braunschweig sisters were treated identically while post AW's death Louise's cedit with everyone starts to go upwards while EC still is stuck in the role of boring, and now also whiny queen as far as her in-laws and parts of her court are concerned, until the later 1760s, is that even with an unconventional court like the Prussian one where the King is only present intermittendly, everyone does take their cues from the King. Who is consistently kind to Louise post AW's death, and that allows her to gain in confidence and florish, and because she avoids becoming partisan for one particular family member, she becomes everyone's calm point and confidante. (Plus, as Lehndorff approvingly notes, her dinners tended to be short, not endlessly long.) Which EC couldn't be; EC, being human, resented, for example, that Amalie got so much more of Fritz' attention and thus relationships between them were somewhat terse, and she also felt somewhat outclassed by Mina, the one in-law whom all the Hohenzollerns had been instantly impressed by (because Mina was beautiful, gracious and witty when arriving) and thus avoided her when she could in their younger days. (Post mid 60s it became academic due to Heinrich's break-up with his wife.)
Another EC disadvantage in her particular role must have been that she didn't have a natural (or learned) "presence" and couldn't command attention in a room, which was expected from a Queen. It's this factor which Lehndorff in his "SD versus EC" compare and contrast after SD's death hones in on. Unfortunately, this wasn't something that could be helped. I mean, you can learn the social graces, but the ability to draw attention to yourself not in an irritating but in a impressing way is much, much harder to aquire.
On the plus side, EC had evidently the ability to be kind to her subordinates (usually; when she snaps at Lehndorff after SD's death in public, she apologizes to him a day later, which is another problem, because on the one hand, it shows she noticed she's hurt him, otoh, Queens don't apologize to courtiers), her investment into various charities was long term and doesn't seem to have been just out of boredom but because she really wanted to help people, her reply to the condolence letter from the Marquise d'Argens, formerly a dancer & actress, is without snobbery and very human instead, and she manages decades of life with the Hohenzollern without strangling a single one, starting with her husband. All of which is anything but given in the position she found herself in for decades. Just for comparison: two of Fritz' sisters responded to their miserable marriages and illnesses by sinking in non-stop depressions and stopped interacting with the outside world. Whereas EC never stopped reaching out to people; she must have had an optimistic core and a lot of resilience.
In summation: the ways in which she was remarkable were there, but they don't translate to something you could easily render in fiction, not least because they went in tandem to the ways she came across as dull.
Re: Elisabath Christine
Date: 2020-01-31 05:53 am (UTC)Can I say once again how much I love Lehndorff <3 Like. Catch a Hohenzollern in a million years saying that he was unfair towards anyone :P (Well, okay, maybe Wihelmine if you caught her at just the right time, but even my fave isn't nearly as sweet as Lehndorff.)
But poor EC! It sounds like she was not at all cut out to be a queen, possibly at all, but certainly particularly in the cutthroat shark tank of the Hohenzollerns. And might have done at least slightly better (as Louise indeed does) if she hadn't been, well, married to Fritz :P
and she manages decades of life with the Hohenzollern without strangling a single one, starting with her husband.
Well, I mean, she is already doing better than I would have done in the situation :P
In summation: the ways in which she was remarkable were there, but they don't translate to something you could easily render in fiction, not least because they went in tandem to the ways she came across as dull.
Boo :P I was thinking I would like to get fic of her, but yeah, it doesn't sound like it could be done easily in a way that would actually be interesting.
Henri de Catt
Date: 2020-01-26 06:12 am (UTC)So I went back to the German preface to the edition of Catt's original diary you uploaded in the Fritzian library, which was where I had the "anonymous pamphlet" bit from. And because the preface is quite extensive on how Catt beefed up the diaries to the more twice the size memoirs, I thought I'd transcribe & translate the most interesting passages. BTW, the preface also explains the "nach Ausfertigung eigenhändig" from the letters - part of Henri de Catt's and Prades and all the lectors before and after job was that if Fritz wanted a letter on a literary, non-political matter, he gave them the rough outlines, they wrote a concept for the letter in perfect French, he wrote down the final version in his own hand.
Now, as to De Catt' use of his source material - both hish own diary and other source material - and his rearranging. The preface says, referring to Henri de Catt as "the author":
Moreover, the author has, where his diaries testified the subject of conversation to him, given said subject a liberal treatment; he has grown out of already existent crystals entire sparkling creations. Where the diaries render the words of the King verbatim, the memoirs stick to them faithfully; but it happenes in a chonological reordering, so that statements which belong to different days and different conversations get thrown together, i.e. get connected through an always aptly invented transition.
The author also put certain statements, especially the flood of characteristic traits, witty ideas and anecdotes which he had jotted down in his exercise books from a variety of sources, in the memoirs into the mouth of the King, even if the diaries did not give him the right for this. Especially in the time before and after the battle of Kunersdorf when Catt had been left with Prince Heinrich's army by the King, the diaries (p. 394 ff.) are rich with stories of the type mentioned, which our author thus has heard from others, not from the King. At one point, the diaries name explicitly someone else, Secretary Eichel, as the source for a story (p.417), which in the memoirs is ascribed to the King.
(Sidenote by me: if Catt talked to Eichel, who of course knew that Fritz had the Catte trial files ordered up upon becoming King and resealed, and also knew a lot about Küstrin, that gives him another valid source.)
(...) The memoirs are more than twice the size of the diaries. As much as the original material was stretched via rearrangement, the difference in size isn't explainable by this alone. The author has used other material in addition to his Diary.
Something that surprises in the military lessons he has the King give him is the incredibly accuracy of numbers. Are we supposed to believe that the King, when he after lunch talks to his companion about military matters of the morning (...) already has the exact numbers at hand when the report by troops involved usually took longer than that? Certainly not, and thus it is no surprise that the "military crash course" has only been given to the Catt of the memoirs, not to the Catt of the diaries. (...)
A comparison between the work which at the current state of research is still the basis for all studies of the 7-Years-War proves an great equivalance between Tempelhof's depiction of the 1758 campaign and that in Catt's memoirs. The second volume of Tempelhof's history was published in 1785; thus there was the chance for Catt to draw his military wisdom from this source. If his description of the battle of Zorndorf has an impressive similarity to the description given by Tielcke in 1776 in the second volume of his "Beyträge zur Kriegs-Kunst und Geschichte des Krieges von 1756 - 1763", one could further suspect that our author borrowed from the Saxon Colonel as he had done from the Prussian Major. But Catt did not speak German, he would have to get the works of Tempelhof and Tieclke translated for himself. He was, however, not in need of this; he was the owner of a French written journal about the campaign of 1758 which is still among the material in his archive and this very extensive manuscript has proved, in a German version, the source for both these military writers. (Footnote says where Tielcke and Tempelhof got it from; from a collection of 7 Wars Material made by the secretary of the late von Wobersnow and from a partial publication in a miltary journal named "Bellona" in Dresden, 1781 ff, respectively.)
Catt isn't above borrowing literal phrases from this material and rendering it as the King's military expertise in his memoirs. Not enough that Friedrich has to narrate the facts evening for evening, even his strategic judgment is that of the military Anonymous. A fleeting mistake of Catt's in the use of his source then has the consequence that the King in the memoirs mourns for a General on June 17th, 1758, who in real life on that day simply got a strong reproof. (...)
With the year 1759, this oracle (the anonymous military journal) ceases to be available. But the author of the memoirs knew how to help himself. When Glatz fell on July 1760, the war files of Fouque and thus also the letters of Frederick the Great to this general had been captured by the enemy. In various printings fragments of this correspondance got in print and thus known to the public soon after the ending of the war. One of these editions was owned by Catt; he used them for 1759 in a similar way as the military journal for 1758. Whatever the King writes to Fouque in confidence, he tells in the same confidence to his reader. In the "Recuiel" of the letters to Fouque Catt also found a copy of the memorandum the Prince of Prussia had written as a justification of his behavior in the Bohemia campaign of 1757; it gave Catt the possibility to describe the argument between the Prince and his royal brother.
When the letters to Fouque end, Catt helps himsef for the second half of 1759 with the King's "Histoire de la guerre des sept ans", which he seems to have known before its publication in the "ouevres posthumes". Finally, he used the correspondance between the King and the Marquis d'Argens for the third and fourth part of his memoirs in a similar thorough way as he did the letters to Fouque. He seems to have had a copy of this correspondance at his disposal; at least there have been letters to the Marquis used which are missing in the edition "Ouevres Posthumes".
Catt took the stones and pebbles for the mosaic forming his memoirs thus from this series of recognizable quarries. (...) Thus when the memoirs let the King describe the history of the Prince of Prussia's sickness exactly with the words used in an anonmously published biography of the Prince. (Footnote here says "See p. 104, p. 170" which I take it is a reference to Catt's memoirs. But doesn't say which anonymous biography.) In other cases, you can see he used the official military dispatches as they had been given out from Berlin and later collected in anthologies. (....)
Catt repeatedly shows the weakness of memoir writesrs to put their own person in a beaming light. Thus inevitably the author knows the King basically much better and can judge him much better than he knows himself. (p. 128, 233) (...) Whenever there is an important moment happening in Friedrich's life, Catt is there as a witness and confidant. When the news of the death of the Prince of Prussia arrives, Catt is according to his memoirs the first to whom the brother speaks of his pain; whereas the diaries proof that the reader wasn't even received by the King in the first four days after the arrival of the mournful news. When three months later the sister, the Margravine of Bayreuth dies, according to the Memoirs the King immediately must speak to Catt, who gets woken up for this at 2 am; once the King dismisses him three hours later, he sends immediately a letter of condolence, which after all the verbal condolences given in the previous pages seems somewhat redundant, but which makes the recepient send for him again only fifteen minutes later, only to receive him in the evening for the third time and this time for four hours. Whereas the diaries prove that Catt had first written the condolence letter before the King ever talked to him, which makes sense, and then showed up in the afternoon at the regular hour (p. 195).
Preface writer gives some more examples, none of which are related to Küstrin and Katte. Which, incidentally, is curious; you'd think if Catt added that without a basis in his diaries, it would be much more worth mentioning than his letting Fritz give him a military crash course. But maybe that's our gossipy sensationalist priority speaking.
Also: while Henri de Catt's memoirs and diaries - along with his other papers and Collection of 7 Years War material - weren't published yet, Preuß did have access to them because at that point they had ended up in the Prussian state archive, and he was allowed to use them for his biography. Which explains why he quotes from them in a biography published in the mid 19th century when you told me the memoirs themselves weren't published until a few decades later.
Re: Henri de Catt
Date: 2020-01-26 05:15 pm (UTC)This in turn makes it much less likely that Fritz was Voltaire's source. If we could believe Catt, then I was willing to conclude that Fritz had an account that he ran through with people he wanted to confide in, and given the strength of his feelings for Voltaire and the fact that they lived together for over two years, I was willing to believe Voltaire was one.
But now I think the Katte episode in Voltaire's memoirs is just more of Voltaire's vague outsider perspective on Prussian history, and Catt is using Voltaire. I'm also much more willing to place real weight on the one or two linguistic similarities between the passages, especially the description of Keith and Katte as "aimable."
Certainly not, and thus it is no surprise that the "military crash course" has only been given to the Catt of the memoirs, not to the Catt of the diaries. (...)
Yeah, I admit I was deeply surprised to see the military course when I first read the memoirs. I think this is another Holy Grail: being instructed in tactics and strategy by Frederick the Great!
Damn. This whole preface just blows Catt's reliability out of the water. We need to read that diary. *moves OCR higher on priority list*
Also, I'm now treating him like a 20th century biographer whenever I cite him saying Fritz said something. Maybe this is from a primary source, maybe it's historical fiction.
BTW, the preface also explains the "nach Ausfertigung eigenhändig" from the letters - part of Henri de Catt's and Prades and all the lectors before and after job was that if Fritz wanted a letter on a literary, non-political matter, he gave them the rough outlines, they wrote a concept for the letter in perfect French, he wrote down the final version in his own hand.
So is Fritz's elegant French prose that the Voltaire correspondence translator praises actually his? Because my impression was always exactly this, that Fritz needed a lot of help with his prose French, not just his poetry, and while I know he could be witty on his own, the "worthy of him getting listed as a great French writing author" that you quoted surprised me. Content: sure; style: ? Of course, I've never been sure and am still not sure how much of the prose help was just spelling vs. actual word choices.
Also, lol, much of your Yuletide treat went like that. I provided the rough outlines,
(Sidenote by me: if Catt talked to Eichel, who of course knew that Fritz had the Catte trial files ordered up upon becoming King and resealed, and also knew a lot about Küstrin, that gives him another valid source.)
Valid but not Fritz-original, interesting.
Also, "Catte trial", lol. I see I'm not the only one who mixes up the names! (I can't count the number of times I've had to delete and retype one of their names, and I've probably missed at least one instance.)
You know, Fritz, for such a dog person, your cat collection is surprisingly large. ;) (At least one German documentary creator thinks Fritz was drawn to Catt because of the similarity of his name to Katte, which I'm skeptical of, but it is an interesting coincidence.)
Preface writer gives some more examples, none of which are related to Küstrin and Katte. Which, incidentally, is curious; you'd think if Catt added that without a basis in his diaries, it would be much more worth mentioning than his letting Fritz give him a military crash course. But maybe that's our gossipy sensationalist priority speaking.
Preface writer may also not have had a specific source he could point to. The only one I can point to is Voltaire, but if Wilhelmine was using that pamphlet, I would love to see a copy of that pamphlet to see if Catt could have been drawing on it at all.
Preuß did have access to them because at that point they had ended up in the Prussian state archive, and he was allowed to use them for his biography. Which explains why he quotes from them in a biography published in the mid 19th century when you told me the memoirs themselves weren't published until a few decades later.
That makes sense, yes.
Re: Henri de Catt
Date: 2020-01-27 07:38 am (UTC)Also, I'm now treating him like a 20th century biographer whenever I cite him saying Fritz said something. Maybe this is from a primary source, maybe it's historical fiction.
*nods* Yes, it seems unless any given Fritz statement can be counterchecked with also being in the diary, we have to put it into double quotes.
For a compare and contrast: my guy Boswell of course in his biography of Samuel Johnson drew heavily on the diaries he kept while knowing Johnson. Which is why the first sixty Boswell-less years of Johnson's life form about a third of the book, and the next fifteen or so years the rest. But Boswell didn't put something in Johnson's mouth he hadn't actually said. For the first sixty years, he did his research and names his sources. And Henri de Catt could have easily have written something like "Memoirs of Frederick the Great in the 7-Years-War) where he used all the additional information he'd gathered but not in added, invented conversations, just in the narrative, saying "I also learned from Eichel that..." or "later, I read in a military report that...". It would still have made for an incredibly interesting book for historians!
To quote Voltaire, "Vanity, as the other Solomon, the one not from the North, said, all is vanity".
ETA: So is Fritz's elegant French prose that the Voltaire correspondence translator praises actually his?
My thoughts precisely. Now, on the one hand, I suspect it deserves to be credited to Prades, Catt, Thiebault et al, but on the other - he didn't have them yet when he was crown prince. And his French then was good enough that Voltaire remarked on it approvingly to third parties. (Okay, this was when they did the mutual admiration hyperbole thing, but still.) For what it's worth, in the German translation, the writer of the Fritz letters does have a distinct voice, so to speak, it doesn't sound like several people writing. But if he always gives them an outline and then when copying the elegant version in his own hand presumably adds or leaves out, the ultimate voice is still his.
Re: Henri de Catt
Date: 2020-01-27 08:09 pm (UTC)Was thinking of that, but I'm pretty sure I've read somewhere that he already had people helping him with his French, and if you think about who he had with him at Rheinsberg, it's plausible.
That said, *everyone* agrees he was an entertaining and witty conversationalist, even people who don't approve of his politics, so there's that in his favor.
For what it's worth, in the German translation, the writer of the Fritz letters does have a distinct voice, so to speak, it doesn't sound like several people writing.
That's one thing I was wondering about. I'm still not sure how strong a conclusion we could draw based on that even if it's true of the French original, but it is good to know. I'm just going to leave a mental question mark around the question of how much of Fritz's style is his own.
To quote Voltaire, "Vanity, as the other Solomon, the one not from the North, said, all is vanity".
Haha, omg, I was reading your line just above about how Catt could have just named his sources, and I thought, "But it wouldn't have suited his vanity nearly as much!" Then I saw you were quoting Voltaire on vanity and nodded approvingly, and then...
the other Solomon, the one not from the North
And then I died. Laughing. What year is this quote from? I'm going to guess post 1753, but you tell me.
On Catt's vanity: "Thus inevitably the author knows the King basically much better and can judge him much better than he knows himself," is extremely true, and I now have to reevaluate my sense of Fritz's self-awareness, which is partly based on Catt patting-self-on-back quotes.
I even started to question whether his account of the Voltaire letters is accurate. Now, we know from Fritz's actions and his correspondence that Fritz definitely trash-talked Voltaire's personality and was hopelessly smitten with him anyway. I'm betting Catt both heard Fritz trash-talk Voltaire, and saw him passionately read letters from and write letters to Voltaire. But how much do you want to bet Catt moved up the timing to make it more dramatic? "No sooner had the king finished telling me that Voltaire was absolute scum, than he got a letter and I watched him devour it with his eyes." Especially since the context here is Catt patting himself on the back for knowing the King better than he knew himself.
One thing I have to say I've *always* been highly skeptical of is Catt's reports of Fritz's uncertainty around the idea of immortality of the soul, prophecy, etc. This is coming from a diehard Protestant who would *love* to believe Fritz wasn't *really* convinced of his materialism.
So I can see I'm going to be doing some extensive historical revisionism now that Catt's shortcomings as a source have come to light. I'm glad we stuck around in this fandom long enough to be turning up all these things we had no idea about back in August, or even November!
Re: Henri de Catt
Date: 2020-01-27 08:23 pm (UTC)But, but!! Selenak just posted us that lovely set of Fritz-Wilhelmine letters where he seems pretty certain that he doesn't have an immortal soul. Like, certain enough that he doesn't even need to be particularly vehement about it, which to me is a pretty big indicator.
That is to say, (a) yup yup Catt seems to be an incredibly unreliable source, and (b) all hail
Re: Henri de Catt
Date: 2020-01-27 08:31 pm (UTC)That said, no, I didn't believe Catt before (partly, I admit, because of my own biases which run counter to his, but partly because he was my only source on this and his wishful thinking motivations were writ large in red ink), and I don't believe him more now (with even better reason).
In any case, all hail
Re: Henri de Catt
Date: 2020-01-27 08:57 pm (UTC)(Yay Rheinsberg! :D )
Re: Henri de Catt
Date: 2020-01-27 09:03 pm (UTC)I don't see any evidence that he changed his mind or even had uncertainty after 1740; that reads like 100% wishful thinking on Catt's part. Especially since so much of his argument is "Well, *I* think he sounded uncertain, mostly because he sounded so extremely certain and vehement that I don't think he'd keep arguing with me unless he wanted to be convinced."
Riiiight. Works both ways, Catt. Maybe you're uncertain, did you think of that? No, of course you didn't.
Re: Henri de Catt
Date: 2020-01-28 07:41 am (UTC)It's from this letter which I unearthed when looking for context re: Voltaire's reaction re: de Prades. Voltaire is writing in June 1759, among other things:
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.
Re: Henri de Catt
Date: 2020-01-28 06:36 pm (UTC)Fritz, for the sake of a man who can knock out one one-liner after another like this, I will forgive you all the boyfriend bad judgment in the world. 5 out of 6 is not bad, and the 6th had serious redeeming qualities.
(Please work on your readers and batmen, though, seriously.)
Speaking of readers, I'm now questioning everything. "If they had raised me instead of humiliating me, I would be a better person"--is that Fritz's self-awareness or Catt's commentary?
CAAAATTTT! Why you do this to me??
Re: Henri de Catt
Date: 2020-01-29 10:21 am (UTC)CAAAATTTT! Why you do this to me??
I know. It's such a good quote. But it could almost be too good, and the result of Catt having had 20 years to contemplate Fritz. Otoh, this is the kind of thing which should be counter check-able with the diary.
One thing that argues for it being authentic, imo, is the use of "They". If Catt had invented the quote, writing after Fritz' death, he would have let him say "my father". FW is dead for many decades, his fame has long since been eclipsed by his son's, who is everyone's One And Only King, so no trouble to be expected there. Otoh, Fritz to young new reader Henri de Catt would say they, despite it being clear whom he meant.
Re: Henri de Catt
Date: 2020-01-30 02:01 am (UTC)Well, good news: I've done a proof of concept, and OCR + translate on the diary is going to be perfectly doable. The really tedious part is going to be cropping the images to remove all that stuff in the margins (like dates) that would confuse OCR + translate. Fortunately, unlike the correspondence, there's only about a hundred pages.
If the margins were all the same size [ETA: I mean from one image to the other, even if the top, bottom, left, and right margins were different from each other], I could do it with a single line of code, but alas, the margins are different on each page. Soooo, I either learn how to do something mathy that sounds fascinating but beyond my cognitive capacity at this time (but not at a normal time, dammit, but at a normal time I wouldn't be doing techy stuff in my spare time; I like my hobbies to be different from my day job), or I manually crop images.
In my current state, 100 manual image crops it will be! Hopefully I don't also have to manually set the permissions on each image, but I will if I have to. [ETA: do not have to manually set permissions! Got the one line of code approach to work.]
Oh, the downside will be that if you want to know the date for a given entry, you'll have to look it up in the original file. But I'll leave in the page numbers so it's at least easy to find.
Hoping this won't take more than a couple days, although it partly depends on how many images I can bring myself to crop in one session before I wander off and do something else. ;) And also how many comments
with the magic K wordcome in!Re: Henri de Catt
Date: 2020-01-30 01:08 pm (UTC)Re: Henri de Catt
Date: 2020-01-31 05:51 am (UTC)Re: Henri de Catt
Date: 2020-01-31 02:39 pm (UTC)Image-cropping is done, though, as is OCR, and manual cleanup is underway. After that, translation should be very quick. I'm trying to go line-by-line with the manual cleanup, 1) since it's much shorter than the correspondence, 2) since we care much more about the details. I may end up taking a few days just for the sake of doing small sessions of higher quality cleanup without my eyes glazing over.
In cropping, I spotted a very exciting-looking paragraph in which Fritz is at Küstrin and SD is having the kids line up, Dad is whaling on them, the governess is intervening, etc., but my poor French couldn't tell if this was from Fritz's mouth or a story Catt heard around camp. It's definitely not in direct discourse, though. I may be able to tell once I get to line-by-line cleanup. If not, the translation will tell us!
Re: Henri de Catt
Date: 2020-02-02 03:48 am (UTC)Remember in another comment I mentioned Catt's sudden code-switching?
Partway through, he decides he's going to start switching between French and Latin in the same sentence.
It gets even wilder. He quotes Fritz uttering a sentence that goes, word by word, French, Latin, Latin, Latin, French, French, Latin, and then in the very next sentence, which is Catt's, Catt decides to one-up Fritz and go French, French, French, Latin, Latin, Greek, with the last in the Greek alphabet, no less (p. 374).
Look:
»Mais possum finire tragoediam quand je volam.« Je le vis in parvula δόξᾳ.
"But I can end the tragedy when I want." I saw it in a small [...]
I assume this is Fritz showing Catt the little box of opium. Is this like sensitive information that we have to put in code? In case some French speaker happens to come along and not be able to figure out Latin? But just in case they can figure out Latin based on their French, let's make absolutely sure they don't know where the opium is kept?
The problem with this: δόξᾳ doesn't mean box. In all the dictionaries I've checked, I've not been able to find any definitions other than the ones I was familiar with: judgment, opinion, vision, glory. How on earth does that make sense in context? It should mean box or other type of container. Another layer of code here?
Help?
Anyway, now Catt's just decided that...what's the French + Latin equivalent of Franglais?...is the way to go. Look: "Vidi regem. Mihi dit quod multum pro Keith, et sa résolution etc." Latin, Latin, Latin, French, Latin, Latin, Latin, proper name, French (probably), French, French (p. 375).
Oh, wow, the Émilie gossip entry is amazing and ridiculous. It's November 2, 1758. Fritz is "très fatiguée" and they gossip instead of talking about important things. Good distraction, I guess?
She wanted to do an experiment on fire, burned a whole forest, told her husband it was a demonstration in his honor (like fireworks, I guess), so he had a good view. Uh uh. Took a hot bath to see at what point she couldn't tolerate the heat any more. Okay, maybe. Was waiting on Voltaire to come back from Prussia, he was late because he had a scheme to make money (sounds plausible so far), went to Brussels to meet him, didn't see him, assumed he was unfaithful, took opium. She was stopped? "On l'arrêta." Entry ends there.
WTF.
Now it's November 8 and things have just gotten interesting again. I wish I were more confident in my French. I can tell what's being said but not who's saying it. *Fritz* (???) just said laws were unfair to women, that men get to force women to put up with stuff they won't put up with themselves, and that if a man is unfaithful, that exempts a woman from being faithful? Catt disagrees? This would all make sense, especially given Fritz's attitude toward nephew FW's wife, except for the part where he prefaces it with, "I know I will never make laws, but." What do you mean, you'll never make laws? You mean you'll never make *this* the law, that women can be unfaithful if their husbands are? (But not vice versa, which is still a double standard.) If not for that line, I'd be sure it's Fritz taking the side of women and Catt disagreeing, but what is Fritz doing saying he'll never make laws?
Anyway, now we follow the proto-feminism up with a comment from our Fritz on how this one woman is really hideous. End of entry.
Gold star, you tried?
Anyway, tiny possibility that when Fritz, before he got married, said "she can do what she wants and I'll do what I want," he actually meant he would have let her produce an heir with some discreet Prussian noble from an appropriately old family (Katte cousin? :P), and it was EC who noped right out of that?
Honestly, as long as it was Fritz's idea, I think he'd be fine with it. It's EC doing it of her own accord that he'd flip out about, especially if he could argue that he was being faithful in the sense of not having mistresses. (Remember, we had this convo about the MT marriage.)
Also, worth mentioning that Catt feels the need to comment on the pretty girls in practically every village he stays at.
Okay, more cleanup tomorrow! Soon I'll have the translation up so you can see all for yourselves. (For now, you can check the French, I mean French-Latin-Greek, if you want.)
Re: Henri de Catt
Date: 2020-02-02 05:17 am (UTC)Was waiting on Voltaire to come back from Prussia, he was late because he had a scheme to make money (sounds plausible so far), went to Brussels to meet him, didn't see him, assumed he was unfaithful, took opium. She was stopped? "On l'arrêta."
OK, so, this sounds like a mashup of stories to me -- Zinsser talks about the story that I alluded to in my writeup, where she had a fling (~1728) with this older military guy the Comte de Goesbriand (this was before Voltaire), he broke up with her (possibly for another girl), she said she wanted to die, and Goesbriand told a story of how she had taken opium but he saved her. Zinsser is very skeptical of whether that last part actually happened (as opposed to Goesbriand making it up), but she says that the story was retold as late as 1748. Anyway, I would not be at all surprised if Fritz had heard that story and was recounting it to Catt, and that it got garbled at some point in transmission, though whether at the point of Fritz or at Catt I couldn't say.
Re: Henri de Catt
Date: 2020-02-02 04:45 pm (UTC)Re: Henri de Catt
Date: 2020-02-02 07:23 pm (UTC)Now Catt's decided to throw English into the mix! French, Latin, Latin, English, French, French, French, Latin, Latin, Latin, Latin.
j'étais factus pro you, mais sum honteux quod sim felicior Te
Even wilder, he's quoting Voltaire's "best of all possible worlds" letter. At some length. In a mishmash of languages. OMGWTFBBQ.
›Vous êtes le plus malin des rois; vous me déchirez et vous vous plaignez que je vous égratigne. Vous êtes roi, vous êtes poète, musicien; mais vous êtes philosophe. Comment pouvez-vous vous plaire au carnage! Allons à Sans-Souci, à Sans-Souci! L'Abbé était donc un Doëg, un Achitophel que Votre Majesté comblait de bien? Oh, voilà le meilleur des mondes possibles ! Croyez-moi, Sire, j'étais factus pro you, mais sum honteux quod sim felicior Te. Quel plaisir pouvez-vous goûter, entouré toujours de nobles meurtriers en habit écourté? A Sans-Souci, à Sans(-Souci)! Mais que fera là votre diablesse d'imagination? Vous êtes philosophe.‹ Signé:
›Votre grammairien de Potsdam.‹
I mean, when I was in sixth grade, I used to render individual words in the middle of a sentence in my diary into dwarvish runes in case my sisters decided to go through my diary. But this is special.
Also, this is interesting: both Catt and (I checked) the letter in the Fritzian library have "Doëg", whom Wikipedia tells me is an Old Testament figure who informed on David to Saul. Ah, Trier footnotes Doëg as a reference to 1 Samuel 22. And Achitophel to 2 Samuel 15. So I think a small correction needs to be made to
I feel like we can more or less keep up with these people in the Classics, but we need far more French literature and Biblical acumen than I for one have. Thank goodness for Google and Wikipedia.
Re: Henri de Catt
Date: 2020-02-03 08:30 am (UTC)Re: Henri de Catt
Date: 2020-02-02 07:54 pm (UTC)You know Fritz had a totally paternal love for Fredersdorf, three years his elder? He's now being paternal toward Voltaire, seventeen years his elder!
Voltaire: *writes whiny letter about how Fritz doesn't love him*
Fritz: *responds like a tender father who wants to lead his son back onto the right path*
That's Fritz for you, always the tender father and chill older brother.
Re: Henri de Catt
Date: 2020-02-03 08:42 am (UTC)Fritz: *responds like a tender father who wants to lead his son back onto the right path*
Could this possibly be a summary of my favourite Voltaire/Fritz Exchange from the Seven Years War, as quoted here, to wit:
Voltaire (in May 1759):
I admit to be very rich, very independent and very happy; but you are the one thing I am missing in my happiness, and soon I will die without having seen you again; you hardly care, and I try to work on not caring, either. I love your verses, your prose, your ésprit, your bold and firm mind. I couldn't live without you, nor with you. I do not speak to the King right now, to the hero, that is the business of monarchs. I speak to the one who has bewitched me, whom I have loved and who never ceases to infuriate me.
To which Fritz replies in July 1759 (war time mail being slow): You are indeed a unique creature; whenever I want to be angry with you, you speak two words to me, and my accusations die in the tip of my pen. (...) I know very well I have adored you for as long as I didn't regard you as a pest and a villain; but you have played so many dirty tricks on me - but let's no longer talk about this; I have forgiven you everything in my Christian heart. All in all, you've provided me with more joy than grief. I take more enjoyment in your works and only feel a little of the scratches. If you didn't have any flaws, you could make the human species look far too inferior, and the universe would have good cause to be envious of your qualities. As it is, one can say: Voltaire is the most beautiful genius of all centuries, but I am at least more calm, more agreeable and more soft hearted than he is. And this comforts a common man over the fact of your existence.
Re: Henri de Catt
Date: 2020-02-04 03:50 am (UTC)He showed me a letter from Voltaire which begins:
Caesar appeals to Caesar, Solomon to Solomon. He had refuted the bishop who had attacked the King on a point in his history, on the edict of Nantes. This was of little interest to the King. He complained about the way tractabatur ab ipso [he was treated by him]; complained about this old ambassador, pleaded the cause of his poor unhappy niece who had been frightened to see this letter, quam ipse solus scribere poterat [which only he could have written]: »I am on the lands of France; I would have been lost if this letter had been seen at my house. So treat me with mercy and not strictly. One more word, he said, for whom should we be most interested, who should we love most: a wise king, philosophical, tolerant, generous, or a tyrant who persecutes a bishop? My health is so weak, my eyes are so bad that I am no longer sensitive to anything, not even your heart. Basically you are only a hero for all soup/pottage (?), a genius assassin who has never liked the fool Voltaire. They call me, he said, in Gallia Borussius [Prussian]. I pride myself on this title.
The King replied as a tender father who wants to bring his son back to the right path.
If you have a better translation of this letter, I'm stuck on a couple points. I tried googling "héros pour tout potage" and only got this letter.
Re: Henri de Catt - or rather, Voltaire
Date: 2020-02-04 09:27 am (UTC)Tonchin: Calvinist Swiss doctor, testifies Ferdinand is really really sick, will after Voltaire's death also testify Voltaire died in blood, shit and vomit and declaring himself to be in hell, which goes against everyone's else's descriptions. Oh, and for "Mastiff", read: Maupertuis. No, Voltaire still hasn't let that go. Also, that little animal parable at the end as a summing up of the Fritz/Voltaire relationship is so very Voltairian. Behold:
In whatever state you are, it is very sure that you are a great man. It is not to annoy your majesty that I write to him, it is to confess me, on condition that he will give me absolution. I betrayed you; here is the fact. You wrote me a letter half like Marcus Aurelius, your boss, half like Martial and Juvénal, your other boss. I first showed it to a little French minaudiere from the court of France, who came, like the others, to Geneva, to the temple of Aesculapius, to be cured by the great Tronchin, very great indeed, because he is six feet tall, beautiful and well made; and if Monsignor Prince Ferdinand, your brother, was a woman, he would come to be healed like the others. This minaudière is, as I think I said to M., the good friend of a certain duke, of a certain minister; she is very witty, and so is her friend. She was delighted, she kissed your letter, which would have made you worse, if you had been there. Send it immediately to my friend, she said; he loves you from his childhood, he admires the King of Prussia, he thinks nothing like the others, he sees clearly, he is real chivalry which unites spirit and arms. The lady says so much, that I copied your letter, cutting very honestly all the Martial and all the Juvenal, and faithfully leaving all the Marcus Aurelius, that is to say all your prose, in which however your Marcus Aurelius kicks us hard, and claims that we are ambitious. Alas! Sire, we are pleasant people for having ambition. Finally I cannot help but send you the answer that was given to me. I can betray a duke and peer, having betrayed a king; but, I implore you, do not pretend. Try, Sire, to decipher the writing. One can have a lot of spirit and very good feelings, and write like a cat.
Sire, there used to be a lion and a rat; the rat was in love with the lion, and went to pay him court. The lion gave him a little kick. The rat went into the mousetrap, but he still loved the lion; and one day seeing a net that was being stretched out to catch and kill the lion, he gnawed at a mesh. Sire, the rat humbly kisses your beautiful claws in all humility; he will never die between two Capuchins as did a mastiff of Saint-Malo in Basel; he would have liked to die near his lion. Believe that the rat was more attached than the mastiff.
See, that's whyh he was Wihelmine's fave among her brother's boyfriends. Fritz, of course, spots the contradiction between Voltaire rooting for French/Prussian peace and still having it in for Maupertuis. Maybe that's what de Catt qualifies as "paternal"?:
Think that kings, after having fought for a long time, finally make peace; will you ever be able to do it? I believe that you, like Orpheus, would be able to descend to hell, not to weaken Pluto, not to bring back the beautiful Émilie, but to pursue in this den of pain an enemy whom your resentment has only too much persecuted in this world. Sacrifice your vengeance, or rather sacrifice it to your own reputation; may the greatest genius of France also be the most generous man of his nation. Virtue, your duty, speak to you through my mouth; do not be insensitive to it, and do an action worthy of the beautiful maxims that you deliver with so much elegance and strength in your works.
Re: Henri de Catt - or rather, Voltaire
Date: 2020-02-05 04:46 am (UTC)Yeah, I had gone looking for the letter in Trier and not found it. However, I found the whole thing just now! It's a letter that was previously unpublished, but the original letter turned up in Voltaire's hand, and was published, with commentary, in a journal article in 1928. I've uploaded the pdf into the library, in the "Une lettre inédite de Voltaire à Frédéric II.pdf" file.
Futhermore, French wiktionary turned up "pour tout potage," which is evidently an idiom meaning "only", "without anything else." Also, Voltaire's original phrasing was "un grand homme pour tout potage," not Catt's "un héros pour tout potage." The word "héros" does turn up later in the sentence, which makes sense if Catt is reproducing this from memory.
Furthermore, Catt's "un assassin de génie" is Voltaire's "génie universel," which is a little bit different!
The 1928 article tells me that Fritz's reply had already been published, and I've tracked it down to this one.
Detective work complete: Voltaire's letter, Fritz's reply, French idiom. :D
Also it's really easy to get distracted, because Voltaire and Fritz at this point in their relationship are really damn enjoyable to read, what with the needling and complimenting in perfect balance.
I bet!
Re: Henri de Catt
Date: 2020-02-02 08:47 pm (UTC)Yeeeeaaaahhh, I'm gonna go with Fritz never talked about Katte to Catt or Voltaire. And now I'm really leaning toward Catt reading Voltaire's memoirs (he must have! regardless of whether he borrowed from them), and expanding and correcting the Katte passage a little, and putting it in Fritz's mouth. Since we now know, thanks to our wonderful reader's summary of the Catt preface, that Catt pulled from multiple sources and had no shame about putting things in Fritz's mouth.
Which means now we're down to one 1737 letter, where Fritz has complaints about Katte, as his sole communication that we've turned up so far.
40 more pages of Catt to go, plus some passages from the first 60 that I didn't really read, but I'm not expecting any surprise Katte confidences at this point.
What a downer.
Re: Henri de Catt
Date: 2020-02-03 12:50 am (UTC)It's not Katte, but it's close! I'm stiiiill skeptical about the Katte passage not being lifted from Voltaire (he definitely fudged the date, because Maxen is late 1759, not early 1758), but we'll see how the last 25 pages go.
Re: Henri de Catt
Date: 2020-02-03 08:52 am (UTC)Re: Henri de Catt
Date: 2020-02-04 04:25 am (UTC)Nothing in the last 25 pages of Catt that I could see that convinces me Fritz talked about Katte, but the diary's up, so now you can check yourself. I only read parts of the French and skimmed quite a bit, and I haven't had time to read through the entire translation, so I'm sure there are at least some goodies I'm missing, even if not Katte ones. (I didn't see "If they had raised me instead of humiliating me" or "I have to be won over with praise," both of which could be Fritz talking or Catt putting his opinions in Fritz's mouth. Agree with you that the impersonal sounds more like Fritz, though.)
Oh, btw, speaking of Fritz's imprisonment conditions, I was starting to think I had hallucinated (or read in fanfic) the line where Fritz said he preferred starving at Küstrin to starving at Wusterhausen (which is corroboration of Wilhelmine's accounts of going hungry), but Lavisse had it: Fritz to Grumbkow, as reported by Sauveterre, French ambassador to Prussia (French Rottenburg's replacement, I think).
More evidence, if that's reliable (and god knows it sounds like him), that Fritz was taunting his captors because he didn't think anything worse than imprisonment was in the cards.
So I still think offering his life for Katte's in August was less of a literal offer than a bargaining ploy. "You'll have to kill me, and I don't think you're going to kill me, so you'll give me what I want if I just don't back down, right? I'm really good at not backing down." Only when he gets the news about Katte's imminent execution does he seem to panic and realize he's in over his head. And then he starts offering his life, his rights to the succession, whatever it takes.
</3
Re: Henri de Catt
Date: 2020-02-03 08:51 am (UTC)So is this pre Kunersdorf, since the German preface writer said Fritz left De Catt there with Heinrich's army and that's where some of the key stories come from?
Pity the preface writer also says De Catt and Heinrich didn't get along, otherwise I'd have wondered whether he tried pumping him for stories, too. But no love lost there, ergo no likelihood of Heinrich telling him the gory tale of Dad's return home.
Re: Henri de Catt
Date: 2020-02-04 05:18 am (UTC)Yes, indeed. The entry in question is July 29, 1759, and Kunersdorf is August 12.
Pity the preface writer also says De Catt and Heinrich didn't get along, otherwise I'd have wondered whether he tried pumping him for stories, too. But no love lost there, ergo no likelihood of Heinrich telling him the gory tale of Dad's return home.
Interesting! I only recall positive things from the memoirs about Heinrich, both from Catt and from the words that Catt puts in Fritz's mouth. Maybe I'm misremembering, or maybe we have another source on them not getting along. Does the preface writer name one?
Re: Henri de Catt
Date: 2020-02-04 10:30 am (UTC)(BTW, courtesy of your algorithms, I can see the diary does include a Shorter version of Fritz being complimentary about Heinrich before he arrives. This is in September, i.e. post Heinrich's visit to Wilhelmine, pre her death, the "day" Fritz will later thank Heinrich in writing for. Writes diariest Catt:
17. Yesterday Prince Henry came to the King. I was introduced to him by General Lentulus. "Have you seen my brother," said the King to me; "He is a kind (aimable) man. I tell you without prevention. We don't see a war like this. It is true that, since the battle of Hochstädt, there have not been any more bloody than those I have given. It is true that the Turks are making movements. It will be a battle for me, if they really work."
I wouldn't translate "aimable" with "kind" - it's "liebenswürdig" in German, but "lovable" in English is not the same thing. "Charming" is better, imo. (Lehndorff calls Heinrich "liebenswürdig" a couple of times in his diaries and I always concluded the original word must have been "aimable".)
Anyway, the Catt Diary preface writer from 1884 cites Thiébault as the source for Heinrich and Catt not getting along, with "volume I, page 209"as reference in his footnote, but I just checked both the original French and the German edition at the Bayrische Staatsbibliothek, and can't find a remark to that effect. I also had entered "Catt" into the search machine and didn't come up with something in case it wasn't in the Heinrich chapter of Thiebault's memoirs, but no luck. Maybe I'm missing something, or there's a glitch. However, I see that the writer of the Seydlitz and Zieten fanfiction also has Heinrich frowning at Catt, so Maybe she has found something?
At a guess, it probably was at heart a case of The Anti versus The Devoted Fan (which Catt pre breakup certainly was).
Re: Henri de Catt
Date: 2020-02-05 05:06 am (UTC)Re: Henri de Catt
Date: 2020-02-08 05:39 am (UTC)You know, it did occur to me that it's suspiciously like the English word "box", especially if you flip the delta around. But I immediately decided that was me being Anglocentric, why on earth would Henri de Catt use English-Greek code, etc.
But now that I know he has no problem throwing random English words into his diary, that's totally what I think it is! And I do think it's code, because he doesn't want everyone knowing where Fritz keeps his suicide device.
And it occurs to me that one thing I used to do in my own very secret diary was throw *random* words into dwarven runes, just so potential snoops wouldn't home in on the secret words and only the secret words.
And this *is* the first time he starts code-switching. I now think maybe he's covering his tracks with random languages, so his diary doesn't have exactly one sentence in other languages in the midst of all-French diary. Because the very next entry is one sentence of code-switching.
Against this idea is that it then takes him another month or so to start code-switching again, at least from my skimming. But then he starts doing it regularly.
So I wonder if it just gave him the idea, or if he was covering his tracks by trying to sprinkle other languages through a mostly all-French diary?
The further you get into the diary, though, the wilder he gets, I can tell you that. Whatever else was going on, I think he started having fun.
ETA: No, I'm wrong. Just three days later, he's code-switching again. Yeah, he might be covering his tracks.
Re: Henri de Catt
Date: 2020-02-03 03:41 am (UTC)1) A variation on Fritz's Pöllnitz line:
"Voltaire is like a bird or parrot that should be put in its cage when you're tired of it; but you have to be careful, when you speak, that he doesn't repeat your last words."
Ahahaha, well, Fritz, maybe if all your words weren't things you didn't want repeated... :P
2) Aww, look, direct discourse account of how Wilhelmine taught bb!Fritz to love reading! <3 Even the sneaking out at night to read episode is there.
Re: Henri de Catt
Date: 2020-02-03 08:27 am (UTC)re: 1), and that, right there, is why Voltaire/Fritz probably wouldn't have worked out even if they had been a bit less similar in their flaws. For all of Voltaire's many many character deficits, he was a genuine free spirit - we do have that as an expression in German, "Freigeist" -, and remind one till his dying day. (Not giving in to psychological terror by church officials is a good demonstration of that.) Sure, he was vain as well and loved to be flattered, but you couldn't cage him or own him, no matter how much money or accolades were involved. And Fritz, however enlightened a monarch he was, was at his core a despot who needed to control people. And Voltaire was the ultimate uncontrollable person of his age.
Now that I've read a bit more about the FW and Gundling relationship: it seems like a counterpart/caricature/nightmare version of this. Martin Stade, the GDR author on whose novel the film "Der König und sein Narr" is based, seems to have the tale to get around GDR censorship and make a point on why intellectuals even if they tell themselves they can influence powerful people for good and can't resist the attraction of power, of getting close to power, inevitably end up debased, humiliated, corrupted or any version thereof. But even Stade's fictional interpretation aside, looks like people did of course wonder why Gundling didn't make more than the two escape attempts. (Though this strikes me like asking an abused wife "so why did you only run away twice, never mind the beatings afterwards got worse?") And one explanation named is that Seckendorff does actually name him as someone FW listens to (in between abusing him), and that Gundling might have kidded himself that by staying, he could change FW and the country for the better. Stade has the "no wars of aggression, they are evil!" in the 1722 Political Testament be a direct Gundling quote, but whether that's invention or based on a source, I don't know.
Re: Henri de Catt
Date: 2020-02-04 05:04 am (UTC)And Fritz, however enlightened a monarch he was, was at his core a despot who needed to control people. And Voltaire was the ultimate uncontrollable person of his age.
Agreed. That's why, when you shared the quote about Fritz liking EC because she was so docile, I thought about replying, "And for once this isn't misogyny, it's legit control freak Fritz's criterion for the people he wants around him."
(Though this strikes me like asking an abused wife "so why did you only run away twice, never mind the beatings afterwards got worse?")
Right? The explanations aren't mutually exclusive, though: if you're stuck in a situation--I know I keep harping on rationalization, but it's something traumatized people do. (Also non-traumatized people. There's just so much neuroscientific evidence that a lot of our thought processes start in the limbic system, and then on top of that we build a superstructure of rational thought, whose whole purpose is to back up our emotions.)
Anyway, if Gundling was thinking about leaving but couldn't bring himself to try it again, he might very well come up with reasons why it was worth staying, in spite of everything. When at base, the real reason might just be plain old fear.
Re: Henri de Catt
Date: 2020-02-03 10:26 pm (UTC)A couple final observations:
1) It's 1760, and Fritz has just dreamed that he's about to be carted off to Magdeburg for not loving his father enough.
Iiiinterestingly, in the diary it's not his sister of Bayreuth, but his "sisters", plural, that he asks why.
He also has another dream, where there's a flowerbed full of so much porcelain that he doesn't dare walk on it.
2) Oooh, it's Fritz grudgingly giving MT her due: » Il faut avouer que la reine de Hongrie a des talens, qu'elle est capable, qu'elle s'applique; on ne peut lui refuser «, disait-il, » cette justice.«
Nothing about whores.
3) Fritz on how terrible war is: you have to admit the obstinacy of the Queen and me cause a great deal of "mal" (evil, trouble, however you want to translate that).
What I like about this quote is that instead of going on about how it's harder to make nasty women back down than brave men, he's putting himself and her on the same level.
Enjoy!
ETA: In order to not pass Google Translate sentence fragments, I had to make sure page breaks aligned with sentence breaks. This means I had to move some page breaks around and sometimes create new paragraph breaks. So if something appears on the top of page 400 in the document in the library, and you need to look it up in the original pdf, it may actually appear on the bottom of page 399, and vice versa.
Oh, and the page numbers given are the page numbers of the pdf, not the book. Subtract 44 to get the page number of the book.
Collected answers from the last post
Date: 2020-01-26 11:02 am (UTC)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.
Also ROTFLOL. Don't forget Joseph! Joseph the Rational Fanboy, and Fritz the A+ Troll. (What do you think Peter III had in his bedroom?)
:) Well, firstly, Joseph having a Fritz portrait in his bedroom was something I've made up for the crack fic. I don't think he'd have gotten away with it in rl while Mom was alive. And afterwards he was out of his fanboy phase, though still impressed, of course. Mind you, he later did put up a portrait of Catherine there - after meeting her - so....
Secondly, you reposting the Casanova descriptions has reminded me that not only did Fritz have the MT portrait in his bedroom but that, according to Casanova, he had one of Barbarina as well as of D'Argens sister-in-law, who was also a dancer. The later two were Penses, so he might have had them for the artistic value and because Pense was the court painter whom he paid anyway. The MT portrait he actively asked for. So I maintain arch nemesis specialness!
Re: owner of the original "Sans Souci" trademark:
Per MacDonogh, "Sans Souci" was a childhood nickname of sister Charlotte, but for all I know, he's thinking of some other Charlotte. Would you happen to know, O Knowledgeable About the Siblings?
Nope, not mentioned in the bios I've read so far, at least not that I recall. However, I have not read...
Speaking of the siblings, having you read Pangels' Königskinder im Rokoko? He cites it a lot, but I have no idea if it's outdated (1976) or a good resource or what.
That. Though my local libraries probably have it. Aaaanyway, if Mantteuffel calls his country estate "Sorgenfrey", I doubt he did so after one of the Hohenzollern sisters who was already married off to Braunschweig by the time he started to hang out with Fritz. So my money is still on him for having come up with the name first, for now.
He could have Fritzplained so many things, Heinrich!
Well, he tried his best once Heinrich actually was in Russia. Probably while going via Suhm's old letters. ;)
(Can't help pointing out that Fritz's favorites were better, though. :P)
No contest if we're talking about his long term guys (minus Voltaire), but as we've seen, the witty pretties...
Incidentally, I should say that Heinrich's boyfriend disasters did have talents other than money wasting (and presumably sex); Mara really was a top musician (found an admiring reference in Lehndorff when Mara is still a teen in AW' s employ; Heinrich took over some of AW's staff that Louise wouldn't, including the artists, but since it was war didn't actually live with them until later; and then he financed Mara the musical studies in Paris, after which he did get involved with now grown up Mara, which, well, da capo al fine). Kalkreuth made a military career under FW2 and FW3 up to Field Marshal. (And, probably resentful because Heinrich had still dumped him for Kaphengst despite Kalkreuth having gone to the effort of compromising poor Mina, claimed he was the true genius of the Seven-Years-War and had devised all of Heinrich's strategies. Later historians, able to check who was when where and everyone's correspondance, didn't buy it, but Miraubeau did. So also did early historians offended at the Fritz criticism. "So he's claiming the Great King wasn't even that great, huh? Well, he certainly wasn't, it was all the boyfriend!") Tauentzien Jr., he of the teaching an actor to play Fritz at the Comedie Francaise, also made a military career under FW2 and FW3, though not as impressive as his Dad's under Fritz. Kaphengst seems to have been not just a party animal in the obvious sense but, before it got out of control someone with a gift to cheer up any society. (Early on, Lehndorff likes him way more than Kalkreuth, but that, err, changes later. Somehow I do not think it was solely because Kaphengst spent more and more of Heinrich's money...) Which wasn't to be underestimated because Heinrich in the mid 1760s comes across as permanently depressed and in a bad mood, lashing out at people (poor Mina). Not that surprising when you consider the war was over, the post of post traumatic stress had arrived, and essentially he was suddenly without an occupation again. I mean, living the country life in Rheinsberg is lovely, but he wasn't even forty, and going from basically co-commander of the army to gentleman of leisure with no government responsibilities at that age? Equally unsurprisingly, this starts to turn around when by the end of the 1760s he gets to travel abroad for the first time (the Netherlands, Sweden, Russia) and gets to work as a diplomat and negotiator. Cue end of Heinrich the melancholic and bad tempered and return of Heinrich the charming and endearing in Lehndorff's journals.
Which incidentally would imply Thiébault had access to Wilhelmine's memoirs, probably via all those exiled intellectuals at Fritz's court, and Catt didn't.
I noticed Hamilton and Preuß both have it in for Thiébault and call him "unreliable". Possibly because of the similarities to W & P? Anyway, preface editor quotes him snarking about Catt a bit (not in terms of reliability, just that he, T, had to do the actual reading as in reading out loud when Fritz didn't do it himself because Catt's voice wasn't even that pleasant) but cautions that he considers T as somewhat unreliable, too. What the diary editor with all the listing of Catt's alternate sources which I quoted in my comment above never mentions are W's memoirs, or even the possibility of them. Maybe potentially chatty Bayreuth artists just thought Catt would blab to Fritz and Thiebault would not?
On the other hand! Fritz has Voltaire arrested for possessing poetry that Fritz wrote that he doesn't want the rest of Europe to see; sends Voltaire more potentially damning poetry almost immediately after getting back in touch with Voltaire*. I know Voltaire is special, but sometimes Fritz's judgment...
Very true. And Preface writer quotes a couple of non-Catt sources on him being a very likeable fellow when he starts out with Fritz, among them D'Argens (who also assures Fritz he can absolutely trust Catt. Then again, D'Argens had also reccommended de Prades.)
There's also another tidbit Catt and Voltaire have that agrees with W/P/T, to which they don't have access: Fritz thought *he* was about to be executed.
Now this can't have come from Eichel - which, see other comment, preface writer says proded Catt with other information - and thus sounds like a genuine Fritz information.
Oof. Well, my Peter has strong feelings of insecurity around Hans Hermann, the romantic hero who was everything Peter isn't, so while Lehndorff might be able to vent about the Katte clan and feel better, because his beef with them is all events outside Lehndorff's control, Peter's going to be silently dying inside during this part of the convo. If the Kattes are that unworthy, and they *still* have more favor than he does...
Aw, I wouldn't want to cause him further angst. It's just that between Lehndorff coming across in the diaries as liking and admiring him and considering him the true hero of 1730, Lehndorff's general irritation at the Kattes (minus My Amiable Cousin), and Lehndorff's own issues with Fritz not promoting him (or at least transferring him to another job), well...
Re: Collected answers from the last post
Date: 2020-01-26 04:38 pm (UTC)Ah! Because he did keep the book by his bedside (or at least so I've always been led to understand), I thought you knew something I didn't know about something small and easily hide-able. :P (Not a full-length on the wall, obviously.)
Duly noted!
Peter III totally had one, though, change my mind. :P
So my money is still on him for having come up with the name first, for now.
Oh, sure. His is independent. I'm just saying maybe Fritz didn't plagiarize from Manteuffel, but thought of his sister's nickname and decided that would be the perfect name for the place where he wants to chill out
but doesn't know how.Of course, it's also possible Fritz stole the Manteuffel trademark. ;)
No contest if we're talking about his long term guys (minus Voltaire), but as we've seen, the witty pretties...
No argument! (Though while Voltaire may not have been good boyfriend material, or someone Fritz exercised good judgment around, he still had an era named after him, which has to count for something in terms of Fritz's taste.)
Kalkreuth made a military career under FW2 and FW3 up to Field Marshal. (And, probably resentful because Heinrich had still dumped him for Kaphengst despite Kalkreuth having gone to the effort of compromising poor Mina, claimed he was the true genius of the Seven-Years-War and had devised all of Heinrich's strategies.
Oh, wow, did not know this! Thank you for the additional context on the Heinrich favorites.
Which wasn't to be underestimated because Heinrich in the mid 1760s comes across as permanently depressed and in a bad mood, lashing out at people
Yeah, he wouldn't be the first or last to have this problem after a war, or to rise to the occasion when there was a real challenge to play to his strengths.
Therapy for everyone (including poor Mina).
Maybe potentially chatty Bayreuth artists just thought Catt would blab to Fritz and Thiebault would not?
That's exactly what I was thinking. I don't know Thiebault or his relationship with Fritz well enough to make a call, but personally, I wouldn't tell Catt about this.
I see no evidence from the Katte episode, anyway, that Catt had access to those memoirs. Whereas, as you saw, Thiebault is practically a verbatim transcript.
thus sounds like a genuine Fritz information.
Or something they made up or picked up from rumor. It does match W/P/T, though, so I maintain it either has to be rumor (a popular and long-standing rumor because it sounds so dramatic?), or actual Fritz. Actual Fritz does make the most sense to me.
If it's actual Fritz, it either comes to Catt directly from Fritz (which, aside from the date, seems reasonable enough--and he was with Fritz for 25 years), or indirectly, via Voltaire's memoirs or someone else.
Pöllnitz was still alive and in Berlin until the 1770s, but you tell me--you think he would have given Voltaire and/or Catt even a very abbreviated version of the Katte episode? Even a throwaway line about how--*lowers voice* "He thought HE was going to be executed, you know?"--if Catt brought it up in conversation? It seems unlikely to me, but I don't know Pöllnitz that well.
I would like Catt's episode to have been a, perhaps redated, actual conversation, because if Fritz really did believe he was about to be executed, and he did give the same rundown to Voltaire and Catt in person, then I do have a pretty plausible reconstruction of what happened. But see also the comment I'm about to make about that Grumbkow letter.
Aw, I wouldn't want to cause him further angst. It's just that between Lehndorff coming across in the diaries as liking and admiring him and considering him the true hero of 1730
Agreed. And it occurs to me, they would be having this conversation in the 1750s anyway, because that's when the one-who-got-away episode took place, and Lehndorff presumably wouldn't have had a beef with the Kattes before that. And by then Peter's gotten more royal favor and hopefully some closure.
So I'm down for them having this drink circa 1755! After the marriage kerfluffle, and before Peter dies (narrow window in between those two events, poor Peter). When dear cousin has been rudely married to a Katte and Glasow--Glasow!--is accompanying Fritz to the Netherlands, and Peter has been entrusted with administration responsibilities at the Academy and Charlottenburg and Tiergarten, and given an estate at Jägerhof, and has accompanied Fritz to Silesia at least once and gotten at least two bonuses (and my headcanon is this becomes an annual thing 1750-1755), so Peter can be more chill about the Kattes and sympathize with Lehndorff's frustrations. And they can toast their respective wives and kids. <3
Re: Collected answers from the last post
Date: 2020-01-27 08:21 am (UTC)Though while Voltaire may not have been good boyfriend material, or someone Fritz exercised good judgment around, he still had an era named after him, which has to count for something in terms of Fritz's taste.
There is undoubtedly that. (If falling for an unsuitable boyfriend, best fall for still most famous French writer and intellectual of your time.)
I'm not sure what it says about Voltaire's taste that his three most long term relationships were a) Émilie (yay!), b) Fritz (um), and c) his niece (well).
BTW, in the other post you asked about 18th century pov on uncle/niece aside from royalty. (Where evidently it was practiced not just by Habsburgs but by Hohenzollerns. Looking at you, Ferdinand.) (Lehndorff, interestingly, only mentions the fact Ferdinand's wife is also his niece twice, once when sister Sophie is dying and Lehndorff says that Ferdinand - "who was not only her brother but also her son-in-law" was at her side. Now, Lehndorff after the initial loyal enthusiasm about new Mrs. Ferdinand - pretty, vivacious - has a lot of critical things to say about her and the marriage, which between the lines boil down to "Now that he's married, Ferdinand has sworn off palling around with his friends as he used to and prioritizes his wife above and beyond". He also keeps writing "his young wife" as if there was a generational age gap, which there actually wasn't, Ferdinand was only eight years older than his wife. But the one thing he never brings up is the incest question.)
Generally, if you weren't a high ranking noble, or Giacomo Casanova, I think uncle/niece would be seen as incest and frowned on, even in the relaxed-about-morals 18th century. I doubt it's a coincidence that Voltaire and his niece were never "official". And for the longest time, biographers denied there ever was sex. 142 letters from Voltaire to his niece written between the years 1740 and 1750 - which also show when the nature of the relationship changed, which was after she'd been widowed, when she was 32 - were privately owned until 1935, then they "disappeared", and then, in 1957,they appeared on the market again, and were edited and published for the first time. Which was when Voltaire biographers had to reverse judgment. Mind you, according to this archived 1958 article about the first edition of said letters, French historians had already described the relationship as a quasi marriage before. (Also be prepared for an, err, shortened summary of the Voltaire/Fritz fallout.):
Voltaire, insulted by his royal friend Frederick II, retired after the doctor Lamettrie told him of the bonmot that the king used to describe his relationship with Voltaire: if you squeezed the orange, you throw it away. The désastre of this friendship triggered a kind of national satisfaction in France, in which even Madame Denis's terror regime over Voltaire almost transfigured itself into a patriotic act. "It was her (Madame Denis)," wrote the popular French historian Michelet, "who made Voltaire French again."
In fact, Voltaire's niece had no national intentions. A short time after her uncle died in 1778, she sold his famous library, some jewelry and furs abroad for £ 35,000 to the Empress Catherine II of Russia. Then she married - she was now 68 years old - with a former dragoon. The Académie Francaise, of which Voltaire had been a member, very much resented this action of his niece and heiress. In a statement that involuntarily came close to the truth, the academy claimed that the niece's undignified behavior was an insult to the name Voltaire and resembled an "intellectual adultery."
Pöllnitz: in the mystical future when I have more time, I'll collect you some Lehndorff quotes on him. Basically Lehndorff is with Wiki (and Fritz) in describing him as without morals, if at times very entertaining. Unlike Wiki and Fritz, Lehndorff also complains about the older baron's lack of control over his bladder, especially if he has to sit next to him on the same sofa. And adds such stuff like when the court evacuated Berlin, Amalie was nice enough to take Pöllnitz along, which makes our diarist groan because Pöllnitz immediately declared that as the oldest he should be the super-chamberlain over all the other household functionaries. Lehndorff isn't quite annoyed enough to wish Amalie had left Pöllnitz in Berlin for the Russians and Austrians, but he is does wish the man would shut up.
Anyway, if he was in the mood, I have no doubt he'd have told Catt anything. (Which is why I'm sure Wilhelmine didn't actually confide in him about writing her memoirs - he WOULD have told Fritz.)
Re: Collected answers from the last post
Date: 2020-01-27 07:23 pm (UTC)According to at least one source (I want to say Voltaire, but perhaps also someone more reliable, I forget), Fritz used to tease him by offering him money if he would change his religion for the 5th time. I also have a memory of a Fritz quote that Pöllnitz was a good dinner companion but should be locked up afterwards, but again I don't remember the source. Could be from Hamilton's Rheinsberg volume.
Anyway. I'm not getting a strong sense of morals here, is what I'm saying.
Which is why I was thinking in terms of self-preservation, not morals (remember when we weren't sure if Catt maybe didn't write down the bit about Fritz telling him about Katte in the diary because it was that touchy a topic?). But yeah, chatty guy is chatty and I can believe he would have spilled the beans. What makes me think he didn't, to Catt anyway, is that his account and Catt's differ so widely. Fritz thinking he was about to die is almost the only thing they have in common that might not have been public knowledge/rumor.
Whereas Pöllnitz and Wilhelmine seem to have agreed on their stories before writing their respective memoirs, and it's really obvious they are among each other's sources.
Re: Collected answers from the last post
Date: 2020-01-28 07:32 am (UTC)Hamilton does use it; it's also in Pöllnitz' German wiki entry, and I have a vague and hence not ultimately reliable memory the original source was another letter from Crown Prince Fritz to Grumbkow. In any event, Pöllnitz never did get locked up after dinner and kept hanging out with the royals till the end.
(Btw, German wiki entry on Pöllnitz always cracks me up by observing that as a young man in Versailles, he met Liselotte (of the Palatinate and d'Orleans, widow of Philippe the standard setter for gay royalty) in her old age, and they emerged from this meeting with identical impressions - "entertaining, but talks too much".
Re: Collected answers from the last post
Date: 2020-01-31 06:05 am (UTC)LOL! I'm just imagining:
MT: What's this, young man??
ViennaJoe: Moooooom! That's my private stuff!!
MT: Not if you're going to be squirreling away portraits of That Man, it's not.
ViennaJoe: But you gave him your portrait!
MT: That's different.
ViennaJoe: But whyyyyy?
MT: Because we hate each other, that's why!
ViennaJoe: I'm never going to understand you, mom.
Incidentally, I should say that Heinrich's boyfriend disasters did have talents other than money wasting (and presumably sex)
This makes total sense to me -- I mean, I can totally see him going for the talented charismatic disasters :)
Re: Collected answers from the last post
Date: 2020-01-31 02:41 pm (UTC)Heinrich correspondence
Date: 2020-01-26 04:01 pm (UTC)I would like to get Ulrike (there's more than I initially reported, because the form of address changes from "queen of Sweden" to "dowager queen of Sweden") and possibly Catherine the Great, especially because of the overlap with Heinrich and the Polish partition. Also because we should just have the two greats. :D
On to the text itself. It's definitely lower quality than the ones where I didn't have to OCR before translating. I did what I could in terms of cleanup, but it's about a thousand pages, and no way did I check everything. It's still better than what we had, which was hundreds of pages of French.
I had to delete the footnotes, which were mostly in German, and I tried to catch all the references to the footnotes in the text, but if you see a stray number 3 or whatever that doesn't make sense, it's probably a footnote I missed. If something doesn't make sense and you want to see if there's a footnote, or if the text got OCRed wrong, I tried to include the urls for each letter, so you can inspect the original page.
However, because of letters that run to multiple pages, and also overlap of different letters on the same page, and also the inevitable bugs, there are probably missing urls. Fortunately, the urls have a predictable format: http://friedrich.uni-trier.de/de/politKorr/21/265/image, where 21 is the volume number and 265 the page number, so you can manually navigate at will.
Numbers in general the OCR struggled with, so if you see that Fritz had 'go' of something, he might have had 90 of them.
The division into paragraphs may also not exactly match the original.
If you see any truncated, missing, or otherwise buggy letters (like the French is in the translation section), please don't hesitate to draw this to my attention! No bribes required for fixing bugs. :D
Finally, another random thing that cropped up in my reading: Seydlitz dies, and guess what? It's his fault for not listening to his doctors! According to the man who notoriously never listened to a doctor and always said he regretted it when he did. But only der einzige is allowed to know better than the doctors, I suppose.
At least he's writing this to Heinrich and not Seydlitz's widow, although god knows he probably wrote that to her too. :P She was just his NURSE anyway.
Okay, uploading, and off to catch up on the rest of this glorious fast-paced fandom! :D
Re: Heinrich correspondence
Date: 2020-01-27 08:25 am (UTC)Finally, another random thing that cropped up in my reading: Seydlitz dies, and guess what? It's his fault for not listening to his doctors! According to the man who notoriously never listened to a doctor and always said he regretted it when he did. But only der einzige is allowed to know better than the doctors, I suppose.
Well, naturally! Seydlitz of course also made it on the obelisk. Writes Heinrich:
General von Seydlitz distinguished himself from his youth. He was present in all campaigns of the Seven Years' War, and always with honor and glory. Through dexterity, fearlessness, combined with speed and presence of mind, all his war deeds became pernicious to the enemy. Lowositz, Kollin, Roßbach, Hochkirch, Zorndorf, Kunersdorf and Freiberg are his monuments to victory. He was often dangerously wounded. The Prussian cavalry owes to him the degree of perfection which the stranger admires. This rare man, surviving all dangers, died in the arms of peace.
Re: Heinrich correspondence
Date: 2020-01-27 05:38 pm (UTC)Looking very briefly at pt 1: 9567 and 10147 look like they got cut off?
Re: Heinrich correspondence
Date: 2020-01-27 11:46 pm (UTC)And wow, those weren't just any two missing letters, either! One was the announcement of Leuthen, Fritz's most admired victory, and the other was one of the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad condolence letters on AW's death. "You can't expect things to be *perfect* in this imperrfect world, you know; it's not like we expected him to be *immortal*, after all. But please tell me how Wilhelmine is doing
because she's actually important."You're right. If Heinrich had been in the room with Fritz, Fritz would have been strangled on the spot.
Re: Heinrich correspondence
Date: 2020-01-31 06:06 am (UTC)Re: Heinrich correspondence
Date: 2020-01-31 03:03 pm (UTC)Word count
Date: 2020-01-26 05:57 pm (UTC)Nearly 700k! 690,791.
I should cobble together some code to count
Okay, off to 1) read the new Heinrich fic, 2) put together more Rheinsberg posts. No rest for the gossipy sensationalists with scholarly instincts!
Re: Word count
Date: 2020-01-28 04:28 am (UTC)Total words: 168633
Total posts: 50
Sure enough, it's a book! (Total word count in your comments is now just over 700k: 700544.)
Peter Keith
Date: 2020-01-27 03:16 am (UTC)First, a request for subdetective
Is it in fact the site on the corner of Jäger- and Oberwallstrasse where there used to be a royal hunting lodge? (My German skimming abilities, /o\. I haven't Google translated any of this, as I don't feel like retyping it manually.) Per Google Maps, that street corner is pretty close to the Tiergarten, which used to be a royal hunting ground (as I think that article may be trying to tell me in its German words).
Second!
The editor of the Lehndorff diaries is kind enough to provide names and family relations in the index to the third volume, which means much of our work on the Katte family was redundant, lol. :P But it still ended up being useful that we did the legwork ourselves, because it was a key part of me putting together the Katte family trees, which contain far more than the index provides.
So! Guess what Peter's two sons' names are. (I had already decided what I was going to name them if they made it into the fic, and I was spot on to 18th century naming practices.)
Clues: Peter's full name is Peter Karl Christoph, and his father-in-law's name is Friedrich Ernst.
Well, I had decided that the firstborn, born in the early 1740s, absolutely had to be a Friedrich, for two reasons, and also that there was going to be a Karl or Christoph, and one of the kids was going to have Ernst as a second name.
Btw, it does not escape me that Hans Heinrich von Katte's first son to be born after FW becomes king is a Friedrich Wilhelm, and the next one is a Friedrich Albrecht Wilhelm. And that whole family does the mixing of family names on the father's and mother's sides: Hans is a Katte name and Hermann a Wartensleben name, for example. So that's partly where I was getting my naming practices from.
So, first index entry for the von Keith sons: Friedrich; second: Karl Ernst.
Called it! (I admit I was thinking of making the one a Friedrich Ernst so the other could be a Karl Emil, but only as an inside joke that exactly two people would get. ;) )
I don't actually have dates on birth order, but the only one with details on his life in the index is Friedrich. He may simply have been the more intelligent and/or ambitious one, but he may actually have been the firstborn.
The possible older son, Friedrich v. Keith, son of Peter Karl Christoph and Louisa Origana (now the third spelling of that name I've seen), is listed as "preuss. Leg.-Rat 1768, Gesandter am sardin. Hof 1774." Envoy to the Sardinian court, then, and Google tells me the former is Legationsrat, which is some kind of foreign service position.
But anyway,
Re: Peter Keith
Date: 2020-01-27 09:29 am (UTC)Which of course connects with Lehndorff's diary entry re: Frau v. Keith getting a pension instead of Jägerhof, and also with the other diary entry I quoted above re: the need for the King to do something about the destroyed economy.
Also, good to know about the sons! I have to wonder whether any Prussian noble dared to name their kid "Franz" "Joseph" for "Theresia" during those years...
Re: Peter Keith
Date: 2020-01-27 05:23 pm (UTC)Truly, the alchemy is magical and DW is an earthly paradise!
I have to wonder whether any Prussian noble dared to name their kid "Franz" "Joseph" for "Theresia" during those years...
Ahahaha, well, only the ones that wanted a vacation in Magdeburg.
Re: Peter Keith
Date: 2020-01-28 03:22 pm (UTC)Re: Peter Keith
Date: 2020-01-28 04:58 pm (UTC)I like your idea of the "move on" speech. Peter is significantly older and more experienced, after all, and can do a bit of mentoring. In keeping with the line in Lehndorff's diary after Peter's death, where he says Peter was a man of merit who could serve as an example to others. :) Follow that example, Lehndorff!
By the way, per Kloosterhuis' citations, the obituary that Lehndorff says the Academy of Sciences is going to put out does survive, in a private publication. I haven't been able to track it down, but I'd been wondering if it was out there, and I'm glad to know it is.
Re: Peter Keith
Date: 2020-01-28 05:06 pm (UTC)Peter is significantly older and more experienced, after all, and can do a bit of mentoring.
Indeed, and remember Lehndorff in the early 50s still having day-dreams about the King as a father figure (his own father died right after Lehndorff was born, he never knew him), which, post Hotham, he finally gives up? Could also be because he found an actual mentor!
Re: Peter Keith
Date: 2020-01-28 05:17 pm (UTC)Maybe we will manage to track it down one day. Along with Martin von Katte‘s unpublished book about Hans Herrmann.
Life goals!
Re: Peter Keith
Date: 2020-01-27 11:26 pm (UTC)What I did do that was interesting was go looking through Kloosterhuis for anything on Peter Keith, since he's our best source guy for the escape attempt. I got some more dates, names of parents, etc. which is excellent, but the really interesting thing is this:
He's the only person I've ever seen claim that we don't know the first name or identity of the younger page Keith brother who betrayed the escape attempt, and he doesn't even refer to the name Robert. He speculates that's probably Georg Friedrich Wilhelm (1713-1755), or possibly Johann Friedrich (1714-1793). I did not realize there was any doubt on this subject! He cites a Lieutenant von Keith (George) who seems to be in good standing with FW in May 1740 as evidence that crown's evidence brother Keith seems to have had an honorable career as an officer after 1740.
He also writes, "Sein Bruder Peter, an dessen Schicksal Mutter Vigilantia von Keith König Friedrich II. in einer Supplik vom 23. August 1740 erinnert hatte, kehrte im Oktober 1740 nach Berlin zurück."
Now, tell me if I'm interpreting this right,
Because in the political correspondence, Fritz is already on July 7 writing to someone in Hanover to summon Peter back. Hans Heinrich's promotion got priority, evidently, happening in late June, but it doesn't look like Fritz forgot Peter, either.
In other news, like Carlyle, Kloosterhuis says Wilhelmine is way off on the dates of when Peter got transferred to Wesel. Wilhelmine places it circa 1728, 1729 at best, and says it was when he first got his commission. Kloosterhuis cites a letter indicating that Keith was with Fritz in Berlin all the way until January 1730, and believes he may already have been a lieutenant (which Carlyle is certain of). I had been imagining two years of banishment, and need to revise that.
I did wonder why there was so much Keith/Katte overlap in Zeithain, but couldn't tell if it was artistic license (like the date of the Petronella affair) or something he knew from Kloosterhuis that I didn't. This actually does have implications for my Katte+Keith interactions in various AUs that I need to think through. (Going with Wilhelmine's chronology for the sake of the story is still an option, but I need to decide which chronology works better for me.)
(You know how useful it would be if I knew German and we all had better French? I could read Kloosterhuis and Lehndorff on my own, we could all read Catt's diary and reams of correspondence, not to mention satiric-erotic poetry...sigh. But I must say, we're doing a pretty good job of detective work even with our handicaps!)
Re: Peter Keith
Date: 2020-01-28 03:31 pm (UTC)Yep, that's what the sentence says - and implies.
Re: Wilhelmine's dating - wouldn't be surprised. She's writing ten to fifteen years later, about someone she didn't know very well, who to her was only peripherically involved in the big catastrophe, and without access to state archives to countercheck.
Re: Peter Keith
Date: 2020-01-28 07:11 pm (UTC)Agree re Wilhelmine. It's perfectly understandable. I just need to decide whether I want two years of banishment or seven months for fic purposes. It occurs to me that the latter means I can get my OT3 together without having to go AU!
Re: Peter Keith
Date: 2020-02-02 11:13 pm (UTC)Well, Lavisse just told me it was from FW's attempt to get Peter arrested in London! And he linked me to Preuss, whom we conveniently already had in the library (see, I knew he was going to be useful for primary sources!), and sure enough, the sourcebook to volume 2, page 157, FW writes to his staatsminister in London, September 19, 1730: "Von Natur ist derselbe mittelmäßig, doch schmal und mager; etwas blaß von Gesichte, hat hellbraune Haare und schielet stark." [ETA: Koser, contra Preuss, says that should read "Von Statur", not "Von Natur".]
I don't care if Lavisse has inadequate sympathy for teenage abuse victim Fritz, he's <3 about primary sources! [Besides, he has much more than Mitford.]
Also, yay for the ability to edit Rheinsberg posts. ;)
Re: Peter Keith
Date: 2020-02-04 05:48 am (UTC)It's a footnote that the editor of our edition says the editor of the third edition inserted. Our editor says he's reproducing it without comment, since he has no idea what third editor's sources or documents may be.
This is because practically every word is a lie!
Behold the tabloids in their full glory:
Peter went to Portugal, but even that wasn't far enough away from the clutches of FW. Only the vast wildernesses of North America were enough.
Me: Lehndorff! You forgot to mention this! I guess it wasn't as important as Ireland or Scotland in the list of places Peter hid from FW.
He embarked happily, full of hopes, in order to throw himself at the feet of his prince.
Me: I'm not sure if he embarked from Portugal, but okay, sure. He might have. And the rest checks out.
"Quelle surprise!" [Actual quote.] Fritz refuses to admit him into his presence!
Me: I mean, it's possible he couldn't get an audience, but from all my documentary evidence, it looks like Fritz just wasn't in Berlin when Peter arrived, and only passed through briefly on his way to Silesia a month later, and I'm sure he was super busy. IF this even happened.
Fritz wasn't about to honor a rebellious subject who had encouraged the heir to the throne to disobey the king!
Me: Okay, that's Lehndorff's speculative version, but you might notice all the evidence against it, like the Katte family, and also the fact that Fritz immediately made Peter a Hofstallmeister, which is not a trivial position.
All of Peter's relatives get involved! Including his uncle, Milord Marischal.
Me: OKAY. FIRST OF ALL. I understand the urge to make all the major players related, but I DON'T THINK SO. Peter's family has been in Pomerania for generations, Marischal was born in Scotland. Sorry!
Also, I'm generously going with the "relatives" meaning of "parents" rather than the "parents" meaning, because Peter's father is in fact dead at this point, at least if you believe Kloosterhuis's sources.
But! Peter has a trump card. Throughout all his long and difficult journeys, he's kept a letter with him.
Me: Skimming ahead before laboriously parsing the French one word at a time. Oh, are they talking about the nice letter Fritz writes Peter in the 1750s, twice? Oh, no. They're not.
It was written before the escape attempt, and it very conveniently reads, "May I be taken for a rascal, if I ever forget the proofs of devotion given to me by my friend Keith."
Me: I am SO SURE 18-yo Fritz wrote that and Peter kept it.
Marischal presents it to Fritz, on behalf of his nephew.
Me: You really need to ramp up the drama to 11 here, don't you?
Fritz receives it coldly. "I never would have believed he'd give this up." Tosses it into the fire.
I'll just let this speak for itself.
Peter, consumed by the humiliation, is carried off by an illness. [ETA: I'm not braining well enough to come up with a good English equivalent of "maladie de langueur", but it's clear that the illness was directly caused by the humiliation. Fatal enervation? Something like that. Anyway. Died of heartbreak!]
Me: There's a lot of that going around! December 1756, Peter; January 1758, Fredersdorf; June 1758, AW.
Fritz: I can kill you with my
braindispleasure.No sooner is the victim consumed (literally "immolee"), than the royal displeasure lifts! The widow gets a high-ranking position with the queen, the son gets to be ambassador to Turin.
Me: Well, both those things are true, but they were prefaced by a LOT OF favor to Peter that you're just totally neglecting here.
Son gives up ambition, becomes interested in the arts and literature and charity.
Me: Could be, but nothing about your account so far inspires confidence.
Seriously, this is the equivalent of Voltaire's: "And then her father tried to throw her out the window, and she showed ME the mark on her breast!"
It was so awesome and hilarious, though. At first I thought we had more data on Peter, and then I read it, and I was like, "...I can see why people think Thiébault is so unreliable." And then I realized it wasn't even Thiébault. But I had to share it.
Rheinsberg chronology
Date: 2020-01-27 03:20 am (UTC)1709: Wilhelmine, older and most beloved sister of Friedrich, born July 3.
1710: Future Louis XV of France born February 15.
1712: Friedrich born January 24.
1713: Friedrich I of Prussia dies February 25. Friedrich Wilhelm I becomes king.
1715: Louis XIV of France dies September 1. His great-grandson becomes Louis XV.
1722: Augustus Wilhelm, second son of Friedrich Wilhelm I, born August 9.
1726: Heinrich, third son of Friedrich Wilhelm, born January 18.
1727: George I dies June 11.
1730: Crown Prince Friedrich tries to escape his abusive father August 5, is caught and imprisoned at Küstrin. He is required to watch his friend and probable lover Katte executed as an accomplice November 6. Friedrich is pardoned later in the month, but kept under house arrest at Küstrin.
1731: Friedrich remains imprisoned all year. He meets Fredersdorf, future valet and unofficial first minister of Prussia, some time during this year. Wilhelmine marries the son of the Margrave of Bayreuth November 20.
1732: Friedrich is released from Küstrin in February and given his own regiment at Neuruppin.
1733: Under duress, Friedrich marries Elisabeth Christine of Brunswick.
1736: Friedrich moves to Rheinsberg. He begins corresponding with Voltaire.
1740: Friedrich Wilhelm dies May 31. Friedrich becomes Friedrich II. He invites a number of musicians, intellectuals, and artists to his court, including Francesco Algarotti, whom he makes a count. He meets Voltaire in person but does not yet offer him a permanent place at court. Voltaire pays a brief visit to the Prussian court. The Anti-Machiavel, Friedrich's pamphlet on being an honorable ruler, is published by Voltaire in the fall. The Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI dies October 20. Due to the Pragmatic Sanction, his daughter Maria Theresia is supposed to be recognized as heir to the kingdom and her husband Franz supposed to be elected Holy Roman Emperor. However their rule is immediately challenged. Friedrich invades Silesia December 16, beginning the War of the Austrian Succession. It will be over 7 years before all the powers of Europe recognize the Pragmatic Sanction.
1741: Algarotti leaves Prussia for the first time. Joseph, the son of Maria Theresia and future Joseph II, is born March 13. Elizabeth I seizes power in Russia in a coup December 6.
1742: The First Silesian War ends June 11, leaving Prussia in control of Silesia.
1743: Voltaire visits the Prussian court briefly.
1744-1745: The Second Silesian War begins August 15. Friedrich's younger sister Ulrike marries the Crown Prince and future King of Sweden. Future Friedrich Wilhelm II, son of Augustus Wilhelm and nephew of Friedrich, born September 25.
1745: End of the Second Silesian War December 25. Prussian control of Silesia is recognized. Franz is elected Holy Roman Emperor Franz I September 13. Wilhelmine has lunch with Maria Theresia in Bayreuth, thus deepening an already existing rift between her and her brother Friedrich.
1746: Friedrich begins building Sanssouci. Reconciliation with Wilhelmine.
1747: Algarotti returns to Prussia.
1748: War of the Austrian Succession ends with the Pragmatic Sanction recognized.
1750: Voltaire joins the Prussian court.
1752: Heinrich forced to marry.
1753: Voltaire and Friedrich have fought so much for three years that Voltaire leaves Prussia, never to see Friedrich again. Briefly detained in Frankfurt on Friedrich's orders. Algarotti returns to Italy, never to see Friedrich again.
1755: Friedrich makes an incognito trip to Netherlands. There, he meets Henri de Catt, his future reader for 25 years.
1756: Start of the Seven Years' War: Austria, Russia, France, and Sweden against Prussia and a loosely allied Great Britain. Prussia instigates the war by invading and occupying Saxony in August.
1757: Fredersdorf retires due to bad health. Major Prussian defeat at Kolin June 18. Queen Mother Sophia Dorothea dies June 28. Augustus Wilhelm disgraced July 29 over his military decisions and cashiered. Major Prussian victory at Rossbach November 5. Major Prussian victory at Leuthen December 5.
1758: Fredersdorf dies January 12. Augustus Wilhelm dies June 12. Wilhelmine dies October 14. Major Prussian defeat at Hochkirch October 14.
1760: Major Prussian defeat at Kunersdorf August 12. George II dies October 25. His grandson becomes George III.
1762: Elizabeth of Russia dies January 5. Her nephew becomes Peter III. Under Peter III, Russia switches sides in the war and joins Prussia. A coup overthrows Peter III July 9. His wife becomes Catherine II, future Catherine the Great. Peter III dies in captivity July 17. Russia withdraws from the war.
1763: The Seven Years' War ends February 15 in a status quo ante bellum. Prussia remains in control of Silesia.
1764: Algarotti dies May 3.
1765: Franz I dies August 18. His son becomes Joseph II.
1769: First meeting between Joseph II and Friedrich, at Neisse, August 25.
1772: The First Partition of Poland divides part of Poland among Russia, Prussia, and Austria.
1774: Louis XV dies May 10. His son becomes Louis XVI.
1778: Voltaire dies May 30.
1778 - 1779: Joseph attempts to claim Bavaria. Friedrich opposes him. The largely desultory and bloodless War of the Bavarian Succession is eventually concluded by diplomacy.
1780: Maria Theresia dies November 29.
1782: Catt is dismissed from service as Friedrich's reader for financial irregularities.
1786: Friedrich dies August 17. His nephew becomes Friedrich Wilhelm II.
Re: Rheinsberg chronology
Date: 2020-01-27 09:10 am (UTC)1730:
Heinrich moves into AW's household.Peter Keith escapes (after explaining who Peter is), because you want to post something on the Keiths, and thus it is relevant.1745: "Wilhelmine has lunch with Maria Theresia in Emsdorf" (not Bayreuth itself) or "Passing through the principality of Bayreuth on her way to the Frankfurt coronation, Maria Theresia has lunch with Wilhelmine, which deepens the enstrangement etc."
1746: Add "Conflict between Friedrich and younger brother Heinrich over the page Marwitz". Also, possibly: "Friedrich appoints 19 years old E.A. von Lehndorff as chamberlain to Elisabeth Christine".
In the late 1760s, early 1770s possibly some Swedish dates. At least 1771: Gustav becomes King, Ulrike visits Prussia, surviving Hohenzollern siblings unite (and argue), something along that line. It's referred to in several posts.
Those are my ideas for now.
Re: Rheinsberg chronology
Date: 2020-01-27 05:12 pm (UTC)Re: Rheinsberg chronology
Date: 2020-01-27 05:13 pm (UTC)Re: Rheinsberg chronology
Date: 2020-01-27 05:58 pm (UTC)Re: Rheinsberg chronology
Date: 2020-01-27 06:00 pm (UTC)Re: Rheinsberg chronology
Date: 2020-01-27 08:47 pm (UTC)I didn't tag people's names, because then *everyone* would have to be tagged, lol.
Re: Rheinsberg chronology
Date: 2020-01-27 09:42 pm (UTC)Re: Rheinsberg chronology
Date: 2020-01-27 10:43 pm (UTC)Re: Rheinsberg chronology
Date: 2020-01-27 09:49 pm (UTC)Re: Rheinsberg chronology
Date: 2020-01-27 10:43 pm (UTC)Re: Rheinsberg chronology
Date: 2020-01-27 06:02 pm (UTC)(Also I'm seeing what you mean by chronology as characterization. 1762, man. I mean you guys had told me that already but it's something to see the dates just all laid out like that.)
I'd also like birth dates of Fritz's other siblings, not just our problematic faves :)
1727: Is this George I of England? Add in that George II becomes king?
Re: Rheinsberg chronology
Date: 2020-01-27 06:05 pm (UTC)George: Yes, I meant to include George II, good catch! Thanks.
Re: Rheinsberg chronology
Date: 2020-01-28 07:27 am (UTC)Re: Rheinsberg chronology
Date: 2020-01-28 04:45 pm (UTC)Re: Rheinsberg chronology
Date: 2020-01-28 12:38 am (UTC)I was trying to put together a more comprehensive chronology, and then I quickly got daunted, as you might expect, haha. Then I started thinking we should each do mini-chronologies on specific people/topics in our own areas of interest. So we'd have neat little topical chronologies, and when we're done, we could also combine them into a giant ALL THE THINGS chronology! And then people could use either version as needed.
What do you guys think?
Re: Rheinsberg chronology
Date: 2020-01-29 10:04 am (UTC)Re: Rheinsberg chronology
Date: 2020-01-29 05:09 pm (UTC)Re: Rheinsberg chronology
Date: 2020-01-29 05:13 pm (UTC)Re: Rheinsberg chronology
Date: 2020-01-29 05:16 pm (UTC)to people who are not me.We could back-date them, of course. But I'd be in favor of a joint effort working through rough drafts first, and then we can figure out what we want to do with the final products.
Re: Rheinsberg chronology
Date: 2020-01-29 05:44 pm (UTC)probably on Katteknocking the chronology posts off the first page :)Re: Rheinsberg chronology
Date: 2020-01-29 05:56 pm (UTC)Grumbkow and Katte
Date: 2020-01-27 03:50 am (UTC)you are my witness to what I have done for Katte. You know: I did offer my life not once but a thousand times to save his.
"you are my witness"
"not once but a thousand times"
How is Grumbkow a witness? Even allowing for hyperbole, how did Fritz have the opportunity to offer his life on more than one occasion? Every single version of the story we have, he finds out about Katte's execution on the same morning it happened, and though I'm sure he repeatedly begged for Katte's life on that occasion, the only witnesses reported were Münchow and whoever was with him. That isn't the kind of thing I would describe as "not once," but rather "only once, in the heat of the moment, even if in several sentences, one right after another."
But given what we've talked about with Catt, I now think *none* of these stories comes from Fritz's mouth, and even if he talked to Wilhelmine, she obviously has a very skewed picture of what happened. So is the timing way off?
There were only a few days between Katte's sentence and his execution. Five? Okay, FW's decision is dated November 1, execution is 7:45 am November 6. Less than five days. There wasn't a lot of time for Fritz to offer his life more than once. But did he find out before Katte showed up? Did he have time to maybe write a letter? That Grumbkow saw?
Or did he start bargaining before there was a death sentence? It didn't seem like he thought there was that much danger of death, in his letters to Wilhelmine, but maybe there was some bravado.
Was Grumbkow at Küstrin on November 6? I have unreliable secondary sources saying he showed up later in November, when Fritz was pardoned, but I've seen no one say he was there that early in the month.
Or is Fritz just bluffing Grumbkow and rewriting history in hopes Grumbkow goes along with it?
What's going on here?
Re: Grumbkow and Katte
Date: 2020-01-27 08:56 am (UTC)The most likely explanation, though also the most boring one, so setting it aside by now. Mind you, pretty much the sole reason not to assume this is happening is that Fritz isn't King yet. If he was, I'd simply assume he's betting on the fact that no one, certainly not experienced courtier Grumbkow, would tell the King "what are you talking about, this never happened!"
But he's still Crown Prince, and Grumbkow might be wishing to build up good will with the future monarch, but Grumbkow is still FW's man first and foremost, and definitely not above showing FW a Fritzian letter if he'd deem it useful. Hence also all the "what kind of son would I be if I would pal around with someone Dad disapproves of ?!?"
So, assuming Fritz isn't entirely inventing things for rethorical purposes. If Grumbkow had been in Küstrin before or during Katte's execution, people would have noticed and remembered. He was so high ranking in FW's government that there was no way no one would later have mentioned him being there. However: as I recall Der Thronfolger gave FW and Fritz two confrontations post flight attempt and pre Fritz being sent to Küstrin, one where FW doesn't know yet Katte was involved, the other when where he did and it makes him additionally furious. All my Fritz bios are back at the library, so you tell me - isn't it true that they met more than once pre Küstrin? And that the seoond one was also when FW tried to intimidate Fritz into giving up his place in the succession and Fritz went "sure, if you declare me a bastard and my mother a whore" in response (getting himself choked as per "Der Thronfolger")? Because if the script didn't entirely make up the fact FW already knew about Katte's involvement during the second confrontation and brought that up to Fritz, there's a tiny room for Fritz to have offered his life for Katte's.
Then again - that "if you declare me to be a bastard" sounds like something I recall from books, and it also sounds more like Fritz full of bravado but certain nothing worse than prison will happen to either of them, not like Fritz aware Katte could and would die for this and ready to offer his life.
Leaving aside actual confrontations; there is the possibility of letters written between November 1 and November 6 which don't exist anymore, possibly due to Fritz having gotten his hand on the entire Katte file and burned some items, as per Catt. But that would assume that Fritz knew about the sentence, when all the descriptions have him unaware Katte would die until the very morning it happened. But even if that wasn't the case and Fritz removed all the relevant pleading letters later, I think some of the other people, Münchow, Pastor Müller, whose testimonies we have independent from Fritz, would have mentioned it.
So unless Fritz is simply rewriting history, which, see above, most likely and easiest explanation, my money is on something that might have happened pre Küstrin. Not least because of the phrasing "I have never denied Katte". (Like Peter denied Jesus, son of Calvinist FW and thus schooled in the bible?) Perhaps FW offered him the out of blaming Katte wholesale for the desertion, the flight plan, everything, early on, and Fritz didn't. I know FW asked him about who seduced whom later, post Katte's death, and that would be what "I have never denied him" relates to, and it's all mixed up in Fritz' mind. But I'm just suggesting the possibility it might have happened before, and Fritz refused to blame Katte, and that is in this letter alluded to and, combined with offering his life on the day of execution, hyperboled into "offered my life a thousand times".
Re: Grumbkow and Katte
Date: 2020-01-27 10:54 pm (UTC)Agree, but that doesn't mean your or I would remember it off the tops of our heads. There's certainly no guarantee I would.
However: as I recall Der Thronfolger gave FW and Fritz two confrontations post flight attempt and pre Fritz being sent to Küstrin, one where FW doesn't know yet Katte was involved, the other when where he did and it makes him additionally furious. All my Fritz bios are back at the library, so you tell me - isn't it true that they met more than once pre Küstrin?
Yes, that sounds correct to me: one before (August 5/6, immediately after the failed escape attempt, near Mannheim) and one after Keith's desertion was discovered (August 11 in Wesel). But according to the dates I have, FW hadn't even ordered Katte arrested at that point (August 16th), much less had him arrested (August 27th), so I don't think Fritz would be offering up his life yet. Unless Kloosterhuis gives different dates?
Because if the script didn't entirely make up the fact FW already knew about Katte's involvement during the second confrontation and brought that up to Fritz, there's a tiny room for Fritz to have offered his life for Katte's.
Agree, but my unreliable modern sources all agree that Fritz implicated Katte during his first questioning. (You can check the Youth Documents in the library, but I didn't see Katte's name in skimming the interrogation.) It's possible that later he realized that was a mistake, and that Katte's life was in danger, but I don't see any occasions on which he and FW met in person after the 11th, or at least it's not in my highly unreliable secondary sources. So any offer from Fritz to FW after Katte was implicated would have to have been in a letter that we don't know about.
it also sounds more like Fritz full of bravado but certain nothing worse than prison will happen to either of them, not like Fritz aware Katte could and would die for this and ready to offer his life.
All of my secondary sources match this, and some even comment on it: Fritz's communications from before November 6 are full of bravado and a conviction that nothing worse than imprisonment will happen. That's why I would be so surprised if he was offering his life at that stage. Katte hadn't even been condemned yet, though he was in prison.
I also just have a hard time seeing Fritz with his very strong survival instincts and sense of self-interest offering his life in a non-emergency situation where nobody's actually been condemned yet.
possibly due to Fritz having gotten his hand on the entire Katte file and burned some items, as per Catt
I thought of that, but I immediately dismissed it, thinking, that's the one letter he would keep! The one that shows him in a really good light. Unless he said other things in that letter that he's now ashamed of...
But that would assume that Fritz knew about the sentence, when all the descriptions have him unaware Katte would die until the very morning it happened.
Yes, that's what this letter made me suddenly question, especially now that I have no reason to believe Catt's description comes from Fritz. Two of those sources (W and T) have Katte arriving the morning of the 6th and going straight from the coach to the (non-existent) scaffold, so I don't trust them on timing at all. P actually gets that part right (Katte spent the night in prayers), which is interesting.
At any rate, if Fritz actually found out when Katte arrived at Küstrin, i.e. on the afternoon of the 5th, and not when he walked past his window on the morning of the 6th, that would give time for "a thousand times" and a letter, and I wouldn't trust W/P/T/C/V to get it right, or the firsthand Katte-POV accounts to report it.
I think some of the other people, Münchow, Pastor Müller, whose testimonies we have independent from Fritz, would have mentioned it.
Also thought of that, but Münchow Jr's age could be measured in the single digits, we don't have the testimony of Münchow Sr., who was in the room with Fritz, and both Major Schack and Besser, whom Fontane reports, are telling a very Katte-centric story that follows him and report nothing about what went on inside Fritz's room that couldn't be seen by Katte (the kiss throwing, the last words--which we still don't know where Fontane got those from). None of them report any fainting or offers for Katte's life, which our other sources do. And Münchow Jr. doesn't even know about the order FW gave to make Fritz watch and outright denies it, so I seriously doubt he knows about any letters Fritz might have written.
Would that we had Münchow Sr.'s testimony, because he actually interacted the most with Fritz. I know Fontane was interested in Katte's tragedy, but I want to know more about where Fontane got his sources, whether they're still extant, and if there are or were other letters we don't already know about, that would tell us more about Fritz's POV. Because, yes, Fontane, we all focus excessively on his perspective, blah blah, I don't disagree, but we do so without a single reliable account! There's reason to revisit this!
(I also still am deeply curious who leaked Katte's last letters for that pamphlet Wilhelmine was drawing on, but I guess we'll never know.)
Not least because of the phrasing "I have never denied Katte". (Like Peter denied Jesus, son of Calvinist FW and thus schooled in the bible?)
Yes, this is very true. It does sound biblical. I had been wondering, though, if maybe he meant *after* Katte's death, i.e. when Katte was a criminal who had been beheaded for desertion, and you seem to be getting at the same thing just below.
Perhaps FW offered him the out of blaming Katte wholesale for the desertion, the flight plan, everything, early on, and Fritz didn't.
Now THAT'S interesting. Maybe that's what FW wanted to hear, and when Fritz insisted that no, *he* wanted to run away because he hated life under FW so much, that's when FW lost it and decided his son needed to be broken.
It seems unlikely? If only because FW seems to have assumed the worst of Fritz at all times. But then again, we do have that quote from a few years earlier (I think) about other people filling young Fritz's head with ideas that led him to oppose FW. So maybe.
I know FW asked him about who seduced whom later, post Katte's death, and that would be what "I have never denied him" relates to, and it's all mixed up in Fritz' mind.
Yes, I was thinking that Fritz might have meant that he stood by Katte after his death, and you're right that this would be the perfect example. He might have had the "I seduced/corrupted Katte" in mind, and it makes perfect sense to combine that with offering his life.
Memory is also not highly reliable around trauma anyway. It's probably asking too much to get a just-the-facts account out of Fritz on this topic.
It's also worth mentioning that if my sources are correct that Fritz implicated Katte (and others, but none of them died) during his initial questioning, then even if he doesn't know about the misaddressed letter going through the cousin, he's got to be carrying the guilt for that as well, and thus can be expected to insist even harder that he never ever betrayed Katte, no, and always stood by him.
So I like your idea that he's thinking that the way he refused to put the blame on anyone else as the prime mover of the plan (Katte wouldn't even need to have been named specifically, nor would it necessarily have had to have been an explicit bargain, just an option that Fritz refused to take when being asked whose idea it was), both before and after Katte's death, plus the way he offered his life on November 6, together count as "I offered my life for his a thousand times." It's actually quite plausible that Fritz would interpret "refused to blame him for my idea" as "offered my life," which is not all that far from the truth, either.
The September 16 interrogation of Fritz starts on page 50 of the youth documents, if you want to check it out, but this volume doesn't seem to have the earlier interrogations, the one where Fritz supposedly implicated all his accomplices. Those documents may be in Hinrichs' Der Kronprinzenprozess, but I don't have access to an online copy of that. (I'm also not sure if it's any more reliable than Der Katte-Prozess, which you read and reported as a dud.)
Re: Grumbkow and Katte
Date: 2020-02-02 10:53 pm (UTC)"The peril of my life does not disturb me. Only I should regret that some officers, having knowledge of the thing, would be exposed to danger, when they have not committed a fault, but have simply allowed themselves to be inveigled into it by me. If the king promises pardon for them, I will admit all frankly. If not, they can cut off my head before I betray anybody."
And then Lavisse reports, not in direct discourse, Fritz mentioning Katte's name unsolicited. I had seen this before, but not from a primary source, so I didn't know whether to trust it.
But now we have a source is "Report of Seckendorff to the Emperor, August 14, 1730, Förster, III, pp. 1 et seq." And Lavisse adds, "This report must be consulted for the whole history of the attempt at escape."
It's Förster again!...Found it. Okay, yes, there is a report from Seckendorff, and it contains Fritz saying these things, although Lavisse putting it in first person direct discourse is just him livening up the narrative.
Okay, we have Fritz offering his life for Katte et al. (but also naming him as a conspirator) in August! And also saying that he doesn't mind dying, but would mind very much if anything happened to his friends. And saying that he hopes Katte can be saved.
It's like the court martial recommending FW consider the effect of killing Katte on Fritz: hurting Fritz is a feature, not a bug. Fritz, don't tell your father how to get to you! Ugh.
Interesting, it looks like volume 3 has a bunch of primary sources pertaining to volumes 1 and 2.
OMG, there's correspondence from May 1731, pertaining to the possibility of Fritz converting to Catholicism for the Austrian marriage project! Seckendorff and Eugene! Okay, this looks cool. It's going in the library. This part's in volume 3, pp. 28 ff., in German. Seckendorff's report on the escape attempt, also in German, opens the report. Also, I have to say, with all this practice, it's moderately easier for me to skim this font than it used to be. ;)
All right, I thought I was going to have to email our royal patron, but no, I have now found all three volumes and they're now in the library. Volume 3 has the worst scan job ever, but it's better than nothing.
I have to say, Lavisse has his shortcomings, but he keeps leading me to primary sources! That so far say what he says they say, no less.
Oh, hah, one page later in Lavisse: "The next day he was examined by Colonel Derschau, upon the questions prepared by the king." Look at how much more we know than we used to.
Re: Grumbkow and Katte
Date: 2020-02-03 01:11 am (UTC)1.) Fritz doesn‘t say he hopes Katte can be saved but that he hopes Katte HAS SAVED HIMSELF („sich salvieret hat“), and
2.) Seckendorff himself in his concluding paragraph says re: Keith & Katte: „Where (Fritz) has gotten the money from which he has entrusted to Keith and Katte, he has not wanted to admit, he only says this much, that he sold the diamonds from the Polish medal given to him by the King of Poland two years ago, and supposedly is most distressed at the thought that Keith and Katte could be arrested. Of the former one doesn‘t know where he is, but the later has taken the road to Nimwegen, and Colonel du Moulin has been sent after him and is supposed to discover him and arrest him.“.
Meaning: looks like Fritz assumes that Katte, like Peter, has already gotten the hell out of there as per the original plan. And Seckendorff naturally thinks Katte has left, too, and will have to be pursued by du Moulin (Müller?). (Nimwegen is the German name for the Dutch town Nijmegen.) No one seems to think Katte is still in Berlin waiting to be arrested.
Which leaves us with the much debated question as to why Katte didn‘t leave.
Re: Grumbkow and Katte
Date: 2020-02-03 03:34 am (UTC)So basically, it's like Hans Heinrich's letter to his brother Heinrich Christoph: everyone hoping that boy has gotten himself out of there.
KAAATTTEEEE!
Which leaves us with the much debated question as to why Katte didn‘t leave.
2) Yeah. I've seen *so* many reasons given for why he didn't. All I can figure is that there were many reasons for staying, and many reasons for going, and he didn't make up his mind to go in time. Which reasons were foremost in his mind, I do not know (and I look askance at anyone who claims to, as numerous people positively assert one reason or another).
Re: Grumbkow and Katte
Date: 2020-02-03 07:07 am (UTC)If Seckendorff knows, Grumbkow knows, so Fritz has reason to write to Grumbkow „you know how I tried“ etc. Mind you, taunting the comission (if he did and that wasn’t just FW’s impression, remember, Seckendorff is repeating to Eugene what he’s learned from FW) and simultanously asking for Katte‘s life is a better surefire method to get Katte killed, if you ask me...
In the official report to the Emperor, Seckendorff has an early October entry where he says FW told him that he, FW, would have been willing to deal with the whole thing quietly and show fatherly mercy provided Fritz had made a full confession and shown proper repentance after the escape attempt, BUT the fact that foreign powers were involved, i.e. Saxony and England, makes it necessary for him to have war tribunals and make examples.
Seckendorff also advises the Emperor - after relating SD asked for imperial intercession on behalf of her son - to NOT make a plea for mercy (because FW is pissed off enough ); since MT‘s Dad did actually petition for mercy anyway, seems he did not listen, but I‘m not surprised Fritz didn‘t feel obliged to Seckendorff despite all that Austrian money later.
Seckendorff is the first person to refer to Wilhelmine as „The Crown Princess“ in those 1730 dispatches. I‘ve never seen a source use that title for anyone but EC later, and then, during Fritz‘ reign, for Louise, though it‘s more „the Princess of Prussia“, as AW tends to be mostly „the Prince of Prussia“ and not „The Crown Prince“. But Seckendorff writes „The Crown Princess“ not once but several times (as in „The Queen and the Crown Princess“ are afraid the money and letters found with Katte are from them.
Katte staying: yeah. I mean, fiction can‘t do footnotes, so „Der Thronfolger“ had him stay as a gambit to make Fritz give up his plan (since in this version Fritz knows he‘s still in Berlin), and in my own „Fiat Justicia“, I let him stay to save Wilhelmine, but then that‘s meant to be an AU anyway.
ETA: oh, and Seckendorff also writes to Vienna that when Katte gets executed, „the Queen does not pray for him“.
Son of ETA: also wanted to mention that Seckendorff reports Katte to have been executed "under the Crown Prince's window" while he was forced to watch. Again, his main source is FW himself, so I bet Münchow & Lepel left FW with that impression due to careful wording of their report.
And, something I already knew because Ziebura has quoted in her AW biography, Seckendorff also reports on October 9th that FW tries to make Fritz renounce his place in the succession, which Fritz, as we all know, refuses to do, which makes FW even more furious. (It's the same report which also includes Seckendorff advising the Emperor against interceding on Fritz' behalf as requested by SD.) Fritz will offer it, along with everything else, when Katte is about to be executed, but not for the first time it does make me conclude Fritz not only did not really expect anything worse than prison - not that prison, FW style, isn't awful, - for himself and for Katte, but that he is seriously set on ruling one day this early on. Flight attempt or not.
Lastly, Seckendorff reports on November 14th that Fritz will be set free (of the cell, though not of Küstrin) and will get a household again, consisting of "a Prussian nobleman named von Wolden and two Cavaliers, Rowedel and Nazmer, as well as two pages and four footmen for which a "splendid uniform" is already being made.
Re: Grumbkow and Katte
Date: 2020-02-04 01:02 am (UTC)Exactly what I was thinking.
it does make me conclude Fritz not only did not really expect anything worse than prison - not that prison, FW style, isn't awful, - for himself and for Katte
Yeah, every summary I had seen of the lead-up to November 6 has Fritz unhappy but defiant in a way that makes it seem like he wasn't too worried about making things worse. Which is why I was surprised that he was offering his own head so early, but here we have it, documentary evidence! I do think it was largely rhetorical at this date, in that he wasn't expecting them to take him up on the offer literally. But he did want Katte saved and did refuse to blame him.
Mind you, taunting the comission (if he did and that wasn’t just FW’s impression, remember, Seckendorff is repeating to Eugene what he’s learned from FW) and simultanously asking for Katte‘s life is a better surefire method to get Katte killed, if you ask me...
Your caveat about FW as the source is noted, but yeah. I don't blame him for Katte's death, but he was definitely thinking emotionally throughout this whole thing, and I'm not surprised that afterward, he felt the need to insist that he wasn't responsible for Katte's death, to drown out the little voice that must have been telling him about all the things he could have done differently.
Katte staying: yeah. I mean, fiction can‘t do footnotes, so „Der Thronfolger“ had him stay as a gambit to make Fritz give up his plan (since in this version Fritz knows he‘s still in Berlin), and in my own „Fiat Justicia“, I let him stay to save Wilhelmine, but then that‘s meant to be an AU anyway.
Oh, sure, fiction absolutely has to pick something! It's the job of fiction to tell a story. It's categorically asserting in nonfiction that such-and-such was the reason that I side-eye.
I would say it comes down the difference between "the character Katte in my story didn't flee because X," which is called characterization, and "the historical figure Katte didn't flee because X," when X is unknowable. And of course, which reason one chooses for Katte's failure to flee in time to save his life has major implications for characterization. Which is one reason it's so objectionable to pick one in nonfiction and assert it as truth without evidence.
Besides, there's a difference between why he didn't desert per the original escape plan, and why he didn't flee in time when he knew his arrest was imminent. I think the first part is less controversial: he couldn't get leave, it would have been dangerous and complicated, and he was waiting for either a better opportunity to arise, or the whole thing to blow over. But once Fritz was arrested, Peter had fled, and FW had given the order for Katte's arrest, that's when Natzmer gave Katte permission to leave Berlin and gave him a several hour head start, and no one knows why Katte was still there to be arrested. And that's when people start asserting they know why and I side-eye them.
"a Prussian nobleman named von Wolden and two Cavaliers, Rowedel and Nazmer, as well as two pages and four footmen for which a "splendid uniform" is already being made.
Useful little details, thank you!
And, something I already knew because Ziebura has quoted in her AW biography, Seckendorff also reports on October 9th that FW tries to make Fritz renounce his place in the succession, which Fritz, as we all know, refuses to do, which makes FW even more furious.
If you want to see the protocol containing (at least as selection of?) the questions and answers to the original interrogation, from September 16, if it's not in Förster, it's in YouthDocuments in the library, starting on page 50. The question and reply where Fritz refuses to give up the succession are on page 53.
ETA: oh, and Seckendorff also writes to Vienna that when Katte gets executed, „the Queen does not pray for him“.
You mean pray for his soul after he's been beheaded?
Son of ETA: also wanted to mention that Seckendorff reports Katte to have been executed "under the Crown Prince's window" while he was forced to watch. Again, his main source is FW himself, so I bet Münchow & Lepel left FW with that impression due to careful wording of their report.
I just bet they did!
I‘m not surprised Fritz didn‘t feel obliged to Seckendorff despite all that Austrian money later.
Ha, yes, the editor who wrote the preface to one of the English translations of Wilhelmine's memoirs included this gem: "The reader of the Margravine's autobiography will probably feel that when Seckendorff saved Frederick's life the account between them was about even, and that Frederick might proceed to new injuries with a clear conscience."
Re: Grumbkow and Katte
Date: 2020-02-04 10:37 am (UTC)Same here! Hence my quick disillusionment with Burgdorf the GAY GAY GAY biographer.
that's when Natzmer gave Katte permission to leave Berlin and gave him a several hour head start
Presumably the same guy who spelled "Nazmer" is mentioned as a cavalier in Fritz' new household in Küstrin and who will write reports on him to the King? Or more likely a younger relation, if Natzmer the headstart giver was Katte's superior?
You mean pray for his soul after he's been beheaded?
Yes, that's how I understand Seckendorff's remark.
Re: Grumbkow and Katte
Date: 2020-02-05 04:51 am (UTC)You mean in general he asserted unknowable things, or did he have a specific explanation for Katte's failure to avoid getting arrested?
Presumably the same guy who spelled "Nazmer" is mentioned as a cavalier in Fritz' new household in Küstrin and who will write reports on him to the King? Or more likely a younger relation, if Natzmer the headstart giver was Katte's superior?
Yes, Natzmer is a field marshal at this point, has better things to do than live with Fritz. ;) MacDonogh to the rescue: the Natzmer who arrested Katte and helped convert FW to Pietism (apparently a brand that wasn't incompatible with passive resistance to authority) is Dubislav Gneomar. Fritz's cavalier is Karl Dubislav, whom Wikipedia tells me is the son of the former.
Re: Grumbkow and Katte
Date: 2020-02-05 01:47 pm (UTC)The former, with the "never ever had Fritz the slightest sexual contact to a woman, he and Orzelska were platonic pen pals" and the "Wilhelmine wanted Katte for herself!" being the most glaring examples I recall.
Re: Natzmer(s) - thank you for detecting again! Incidentally, I do wonder how those assignments were pitched. "Surprise! You get to be cavalier to the Crown Prince! Could mean closeness to the future King, could also mean losing your head if you get too close, and did I mention, he's currently residing as a sort of prisoner in Küstrin? Off to the Polish border, and whatever you do, keep away from flutes of any kinds!"
Re: Grumbkow and Katte
Date: 2020-02-06 02:07 am (UTC)whatever you do, keep away from flutes of any kinds!"
Lol. Did you say there were multiple "no flutes" letters?
FW: Look, guys. I know you're letting smuggled flutes in. I SAID, no flutes! No handsome flutists, either.
Hille: Easy for you to say. You're not the one who has to listen to the poetry!
You get to be cavalier to the Crown Prince!
I've been meaning to ask, what is the job description of a "cavalier" in this context? Because Peter Keith's son was one for about a week to Amalia (iirc), and I keep seeing it crop up here and there.
Re: Grumbkow and Katte
Date: 2020-02-05 06:58 am (UTC)I agree, and at this date, I would guess we're in the proto-control freak stages. By which I mean, he's not yet at the point where he wants to be king so he can micromanage everything. But he's reached the point where he's internalized that other people having power over him is BAD BAD BAD, and the last thing he wants is a brother with power over him who might treat him like Dad. Especially if little bro is Dad's favorite.
He's supposed to have said to Robert Keith, during the escape attempt, that once he got away, he was never coming back. Do I think that means he definitely wouldn't have? Of course not, he might well have, especially if he could get favorable terms. But I wouldn't be surprised if 18-yo Fritz could imagine life in exile as tolerable, but life in Prussia under a Prussian king would not be.
I think, as time went on, his fear of other people having even the tiniest amount of control expanded, to the point where he had to micromanage everything and keep his brothers and nephews well away from power, just to feel safe. But in these early days, he's only a proto-control freak: no one gets power over *him*, but he doesn't necessarily need power over everyone and everything yet.
Remember when I said Fritz learned that there are kind people and there are people in power, and if you want to be safe, you have to be in power, because people may love you but they can't protect you? I think that's why he won't give up the succession until it's Katte's life on the line. Whom he's also willing to give up his life for. And giving up the succession to let AW have power over him probably feels nearly equally dangerous.
It's also worth mentioning that if I'm right, that if in August and September he's offering his life for Katte because he thinks they *won't* take him up on it, the reason he avoids offering the succession might be because that he thinks they might.
Re: Grumbkow and Katte
Date: 2020-02-07 10:33 pm (UTC)He also dates it to November 4! That makes me wonder about his other dates.
Broccoli, you say?
Date: 2020-01-28 03:08 pm (UTC)Fritz/Voltaire: Again, the easiest answer. They fail, they blame each other for not understanding the other guy wants broccoli, not to mention that Voltaire tries to swindle the casheer and Fritz tries to take the broccoli without paying altogether. But: once the security staff tries to throw them out, they unite in making fun of said security so efficiently that all the disgruntled customers can't help laughing. In the ensueing hilarity, they escape, and promptly start arguing in the car park.
Fritz/Fredersdorf: Well, Fredersdorf passes with flying colours. He has the broccoli ready before Fritz has finished mouthing the "B". Their true problem is that when Fredersdorf wants broccoli and for some reason can't get it himself, Fritz understands Fredersdorf wants broccoli, alright, but he also thinks the gesturing means Fredersdorf has fallen sick and in a panic shouts down the entire store, ordering everyone to get his boyfriend some BROCCOLI.
Fritz/Algarotti: Algarotti understands Fritz wants broccoli, sure, but he thinks broccoli is boring and brings home some dishy alternate vegetable. He's persuasive enough to make Fritz eat it, but that's the reason why Fritz never sends Algarotti out shopping agian.
Fritz/Suhm: Poor young Fritz never got enough pocket money to buy broccoli, so Suhm used to buy it for him as a gift. That way, he's learned all about Fritz' broccoli taste and favourite flavours. Unfortunately, they never make it into the supermarket at the same time to test whether Fritz has any idea what Suhm wants when gesturing; death intervenes.
Fritz/Peter: Talk about getting your signals mixed. Peter thinks Fritz' handsigns mean Fritz wants him to go away and not embarrass him in the supermarket, Fritz thinks Peter just doesn't care about his eagerness for broccoli. It's tragic.
Fritz/Katte: I wouldn't dare. Over to you, Mildred.
Extra bonus: The siblings.
Fritz/Wilhelmine: Wilhelmine of course understands Fritz wants broccoli. The problem is: so does MT, who arrives at the stall at just the same time Wilhelmine does. Instead of scratching MT's eyes out, Wilhelmine starts chatting to her, which an observing Fritz takes as a reason to shout "TRAITOR" across all aisles.
Fritz/Heinrich: Of course Heinrich knows Fritz wants broccoli, it's not like Fritz is in any way subtle about it, what with the ellbowing all other customers in line to the lone open cash register, who are so pissed off that they're ganging up on him. Meanwhile, Heinrich grabs another supermarket employee and persuades them to open another register, emerging with an armful of nicely filled and packaged broccoli bags. However, by then Fritz has managed to make it to the other register with a lone bedraggled broccoli bag, looking like a walking punching bag, but walking, which impresses a passerby so much that he makes a photo which promptly gets tweeted everywhere with the punchline "Hero of the Broccoli War".
Re: Broccoli, you say?
Date: 2020-01-28 06:25 pm (UTC)AHAHAHA, wow, this is great, I'm laughing so hard, you have no idea.
Fritz/Heinrich is the best! Really, that's the best historical analogy I've seen for the Silesian wars. :D :D :D
Voltaire tries to swindle the casheer and Fritz tries to take the broccoli without paying altogether.
Of course they do! When charged with shoplifting, Fritz has his lawyer argue that one of Fritz's ancestors was pressured into selling all his shares in the broccoli farm, meaning Fritz was only trying to right an ancient wrong. But for some reason, the head of the supermarket chain just won't accept this and keeps trying to repossess the broccoli.
ETA: "Fritz's lawyer argues that one of Fritz's ancestors was pressured into selling all his shares in the broccoli farm" reminds me of Good Will Hunting's "Grand theft auto, February '94. Where apparently you defended yourself and had the case thrown out by citing Free Property Rights of Horse and Carriage from 1798."
Grand theft broccoli!
Their true problem is that when Fredersdorf wants broccoli and for some reason can't get it himself, Fritz understands Fredersdorf wants broccoli, alright, but he also thinks the gesturing means Fredersdorf has fallen sick and in a panic shouts down the entire store, ordering everyone to get his boyfriend some BROCCOLI.
You know, that's pretty good for traumatized Fritz!
Fritz/Algarotti: Algarotti understands Fritz wants broccoli, sure, but he thinks broccoli is boring and brings home some dishy alternate vegetable. He's persuasive enough to make Fritz eat it, but that's the reason why Fritz never sends Algarotti out shopping agian.
Okay, so you know what's hilarious, I'm busy putting together a mega-post that I hope to have ready today, and one of the passages I included involves Algarotti sending Fritz broccoli! So when I saw a comment titled "Broccoli, you say?" I thought had you turned up this episode. Since you have anticipated things from this mega-post before. :D
But then it turned out, much, much more golden than that. Props to you!
Fritz/Suhm and Fritz/Peter: my heart breaks. Especially poor Suhm. At least he didn't have to witness the takeover of the cash register where he used to work and still knows people.
Fritz and Peter fail the broccoli test hard. Sadness. :(
Fritz/Katte: I wouldn't dare. Over to you, Mildred.
ROFL. I was reading through and mentally counting: "Okay, five boyfriends down, one to go--oh it's Katte! I can't wait to see what she's done with Katte!"
:-P
Okay, here goes.
By the time Fritz gestures that he wants broccoli, Katte's already looking for their favorite kind. But he's forced to signal that the store's all out and won't be back in stock until tomorrow. Fritz signals back that it's a broccoli emergency and can't wait. After a quick exchange of "Are you SURE?" "YES!", Katte loyally texts a friend who works for a rival seller to smuggle him broccoli, all the while knowing that it's against the rules of this supermarket to bring outside food in.
Unfortunately, he's caught, at which point the batshit supermarket owner, livid over the lost business--"How DARE you bring rival produce into MY store!"--has his security goons beat Katte to death, while Fritz watches in horror from the other aisle. After this experience, Fritz becomes a loyal customer and never ever sets foot in the rival supermarket, nor allows anyone else to. He does, however, remain a defiant lifelong eater of his and Katte's favorite brand of broccoli, and boycotts all other flavors.
How's that?
Re: Broccoli, you say?
Date: 2020-01-28 10:11 pm (UTC)(Of course, this is definitely how I feel about the 18th C in general. DON'T WANT TO LIVE THERE, THANKS.)
Re: Broccoli, you say?
Date: 2020-01-28 10:15 pm (UTC)Re: Broccoli, you say?
Date: 2020-01-30 02:43 am (UTC)[FW] was so sure of being in the right, that to prohibit the exportation of wool [from Prussia], he ordered as the penalty "strangulation."
See? This is how FW runs his store!
I don't want to shop there either.
Re: Broccoli, you say?
Date: 2020-01-29 10:03 am (UTC)Also, the Broccoli/Algarotti coincidence of timing is hilarious. On that note, thank you for making all these McDonogh excerpts for us!
Re: Broccoli, you say?
Date: 2020-01-29 07:19 pm (UTC)Didn't:
- Voltaire
- Algarotti
- Peter
- Fredersdorf (Fritz too busy freaking out)
- Katte (we could make it less tragic--he just gets dragged off for questioning or something)
Did:
- Heinrich!
Re: Broccoli, you say?
Date: 2020-01-30 08:12 am (UTC)Re: Broccoli, you say?
Date: 2020-01-29 07:38 pm (UTC)raven_aorla: I bet Algarotti got a romanesco. They are related to broccoli but are so much more intriguing
me: *googles* Oh, yes!
me: First documented in Italy!
raven_aorla: but look at the fractals, Fritz! I had to!
raven_aorla: "Produces a stunning apple-green whorled head with better taste and texture than most of the finest broccolis. Widely grown and prized in Italy."
raven_aorla: And presumably also loved by math nerds.
Re: Broccoli, you say?
Date: 2020-01-29 08:02 pm (UTC)Lol, indeed I have never actually eaten a romanesco or seen them in RL but the one reference I have seen to them was a picture in a recreational math book :) (I have forgotten which one, could have been one my daughter was reading)
Re: Broccoli, you say?
Date: 2020-01-29 08:05 pm (UTC)I had never heard of them! Or if I had run across them in a fractal context somewhere, which I might have, I had forgotten.
Re: Broccoli, you say?
Date: 2020-01-30 08:09 am (UTC)Re: Broccoli, you say?
Date: 2020-01-28 10:10 pm (UTC)My favorite is Fritz/Voltaire, because they are so hilariously dysfunctional. omg I want to quote the whole thing. Of course they blame each other! Of course Voltaire tries to swindle the store and Fritz just tries to take it! Of course they manage to escape and then start arguing! This is just completely THEM.
Fredersdorf: *sparkly hearts* <33333
Suhm: :(((((((
Fritz/Peter: Awwww this is sad and so true :(
Wilhelmine, on the car ride home: But we were just talking about the weather!
Fritz: STILL A TRAITOR.
Heinrich: awwww Heinrich! :D (I'm glad you didn't do AW, because :( )
Re: Broccoli, you say?
Date: 2020-01-28 10:20 pm (UTC)Fredersdorf is so sparkly hearts, absolutely.
I like how influential my Peter theory is becoming. :D At any rate, regardless of details, we know for a fact there were some failures of communication in the 40s. No broccoli for them. :(
AW: *grimace*
MacDonogh Reread I
Date: 2020-01-29 01:31 am (UTC)It took me several weeks to get through MacDonogh, due to concentration difficulties, but I highlighted passages as I went (benefits of e-books), and now here they are!
This isn't a review or systematic write-up of the book, bu rather a collection of potentially interesting or entertaining things that we haven't already talked about. The caveat I've repeated ad nauseam: MacDonogh is exactly like Wikipedia, in that he contains a lot of good material, not one of bit of which is reliable until you've tracked it down somewhere else. In fact, when I realized Wikipedia relied heavily on him, I suddenly understood a lot about Wikipedia.
But some very good advice I got when starting graduate school was that it's easy to warn people away from this author and that author, but if you only read authors who have nothing wrong with them, you'll never read anything. Read widely and critically.
And with that caveat, here's MacDonogh!
Grandpa Friedrich I:
His second wife, Frederick William's mother Sophia-Charlotte of Hanover (the sister of King George I of Great Britain), seems to have preferred her wranglings with the court philosopher Leibniz to any form of congress with her extravagant husband. She is reported to have told a courtier 'That idiot Leibniz, who wants to teach me about the infinitesimally small! Has he therefore forgotten that I am the wife of Frederick the First, how can he imagine that I am unacquainted with my own husband?'
To understand the lavishness of the conception [of F1's palace], one has only to think that the famous Amber Room of Tsarskoe Selo was designed for the Schloss. Peter the Great went into raptures when he saw it, and Frederick's austere son promptly had it packed up and dispatched to Russia in exchange for a squad of the tall soldiers he loved so much.
Tiny terror FW:
His tutor, Jean-Philippe Rebeur, had no more luck than his parents. The only way he could instill even the three Rs into the boy was by constantly drawing his metaphors from a battery of military terms. The result, as one recent biographer has expressed it, was to put Frederick William 'on a life-long war-footing with Latin, grammar and spelling.'
Tiny terrorized FW?
Extraordinary as it may sound, George had bullied Frederick William as a child, and married Caroline of Ansbach, the woman Frederick William had his eyes on at the time.
I wonder if MacDonogh has got George and FW mixed up, since he likes to mix people up. Or maybe George started it, and FW finished it?
FW inaugurating his reign:
'Gentlemen, our good master is dead,' he told his father’s courtiers. 'The new king bids you all go to hell.'
Size IS everything, according to FW:
When a stag was sighted, there were hunts in the forest at Stern around the king’s modest lodge. The building [Jagdhaus Stern] still exists, its main room of the Tabakscollegium decorated with hunting scenes, the king in person administering the coup de grâce. A more unusual decorative feature are the antlers shed each year by the king's pet stag 'Big Hanss', a present from the Alte Dessauer. Given his royal owner, the beast was naturally also a giant: the king appreciated size above all else.
FW's A+ parenting toward his daughters:
In general he was not overly impressed with girl-children: he was concerned that they might not all find husbands. He even went so far as to describe them as weeds, and to suggest that they should be drowned at birth, like kittens.
And toward his son:
When the British court asked for a portrait of the crown prince to show to Amalia, Frederick William replied unkindly that she should be sent a picture of a 'big monkey, that's what he looks like.'
Voltaire might agree? He used to call his monkey Frederic II and call Fritz "Luc", after his monkey Luc, and say that Fritz was "like a monkey, he bites the hand that caresses him." (Fritz, as we recall, had Voltaire's rooms at Sanssouci decorated with monkeys when after their acrimonious parting.)
"Brother Voltaire" the honorary Hohenzollern indeed!
Fritz at Küstrin:
Frederick William was keen to wean him on to beer, Küstrin beer being apparently rather good. One does not get the impression that Frederick was utterly convinced, and he told his father that he had been drinking champagne, but only under doctors' orders.
Rare moment of frat boy fun at Küstrin:
At the end of September (1731), he received a visit from his mad, bad cousin Charles of Brandenburg-Schwedt. They drank the king’s health and, in a suitably hearty gesture, smashed all the glasses afterwards. To his new friend Frau von Wreech, Frederick confessed the extent of the damage: 'We didn't really drink that much, but we made a great deal of noise, we smashed a few windows and reduced a few ovens to rubble.'
*Not*, note, the mad, bad (and dangerous to know? Or at least to be married to) Margrave Friedrich Wilhelm of Brandenburg-Schwedt that Wilhelmine didn't marry and poor other sister Sophia Dorothea did.
Wikipedia doesn't give me any hints that Charles was actually mad or bad, this one window-smashing episode aside, so I wonder if MacDonogh is getting them confused. Or perhaps that branch of the family could give the main Hohenzollern line a run for their money too!
Fritz getting married:
It was Seckendorff who sent the gossip back to Vienna about the wedding night, 'That the king had to parley and threaten the crown prince to get him into the bridal bed, but that he didn't stay there more than an hour and afterwards was clearly to be seen walking in the valley…'
EC getting married:
The linchpin of Elisabeth's suite was a massive ceremonial bed, a present from the king (she actually slept in a smaller one alongside). Questions were being raised once again as to whether there was any sexual congress between the couple.
Fritz at Rheinsberg nicknaming his friends:
Ernst-Christoph von Manteuffel, for example, was 'Quinze-vingts' because he claimed he was 'too blind to illuminate the prince', or sometimes he was 'the Devil', which played on the diabolic part of his name. There was 'Caesarion', an allusion to the diminutive emperor in 'Keyserlingk', who was also the 'Swan of Mitau', in a reference both to his gracefulness and to the Baltic port near his birthplace. Algarotti was another swan, sometimes of Padua, occasionally Mantua, once or twice Venice. His architect was 'Apollodore' or 'le chevalier Bernin'. Jordan was 'Hephaestion' or 'Tindal'. Grumbkow was referred to as 'Biberius' or 'the Cassubian': he came from Pomerania, like the Slavic tribes of that name. Fouqué was 'Chastity'. The military man was reputed one of the best actors of the court. Lastly, the Saxon envoy Suhm was 'Diaphanes'.
Note on "Quinze-vingts": "After the hospital for the blind in Paris. Saint I Louis’s foundation offered beds for 300 blind men and women: fifteen times twenty. The number was associated with the blind ever after."
I'm not entirely sure Caesarion counts as an emperor, but that's not nearly as bad as not recognizing Hephaestion and struggling to come up with a connection to Hephaestus. I promise you, MacDonogh, Fritz knew who Hephaestion was. (I believe he later acquired a painting of Alexander and Hephaestion for his picture gallery.)
Speculates that "Tindal" may be an allusion to William Tyndale.
He doesn't say anything about Bernin, but I'm guessing Bernini.
Apollodorus is probably Trajan's architect, not the more famous ones that immediately came to my mind when I saw this name.
The architect in question is Knobelsdorff, btw.
Diaphanes is a bit of a mystery, different biographers have different explanations. MacDonogh attributes it to Suhm's open-heartedness. If I ever write my Suhm fic, you'll see my own headcanon.
Fritz with his friends at Rheinsberg:
This circle formed the basis for Frederick's 'Bayard Order', commemorating the famous French knight. No joke was intended. The order existed for the serious study of the arts of war. It had twelve members, including Frederick’s brothers William and Henry and, uncharacteristically, his sister Charlotte. The remainder were close friends. The Grand Master was Fouqué. Deliberations were held in archaic French.
EC can get favors out of FW for Fritz, but doesn't quite pass the broccoli test:
At the beginning of 1736, for example, Frederick William asked her just what was missing at Rheinsberg: 'I wasn’t aware of anything other than mirrors and chairs … I forgot to mention the ticking for the tableware.' A few days later the king plundered his father’s uninhabited palaces and 150 English chairs arrived at Rheinsberg. Frederick, however, had a rather more grandiose conception for his new home, and he put them straight into storage. He did not want any old junk which his father found lying around the royal palaces.
Bielfeld reports on life at Rheinsberg:
Keyserlingk entered the halls like a whirlwind, 'or like Boreas in the Ballet of the Rose'. Bielfeld later encountered the Balt returning from hunting dressed in a nightshirt. 'While he changed, he recited passages from the Henriade to me and long chunks of German poetry, he spoke to me about horses and hunting, performed a few pirouettes … and discoursed all the while on politics, mathematics, architecture and tactics.'
'We see the prince and princess only at table, at play, at the ball, the concert, or other common pleasures of which they participate.' Despite the restricted size of the house, Frederick could elude his courtiers, and concerts were by invitation only. He was generally closeted in his seven-room empire upstairs, but he was occasionally sighted, wearing the uniform of his regiment, Bielfeld regretted his inaccessibility: 'I would freely go some leagues barefooted, at least once a week, to enjoy the delicious pleasure of supping in his company.' There was still a chance to see him amusing himself at the ball: 'The prince dances in a noble and graceful manner. In a word, he loves all rational pleasures, except the chase, the exercise of which he thinks as troublesome, and scarce more useful than chimney-sweeping.'
One day Frederick came down from his ivory tower (it was indeed a tower) and joined in the debauch. Champagne was served and everyone got drunk. Bielfeld had to go out to empty his bladder. When he returned, the crown princess had changed his water for celery wine, which he then, in turn, poured into his wine to dilute it. 'I became joyous.' Frederick made him drink bumper after bumper of Lunel muscat. When Elisabeth broke a glass, it became the signal for a rout: 'in an instant all the glasses flew to the several corners of the room; and all the cristals, porcelain, piers, branches, bowls, vases, etc. were broke into a thousand pieces. In the midst of this universal destruction the prince stood, like the man in Horace, who contemplates the crash of worlds with a look of perfect tranquillity.'
The evening ended badly for Bielfeld: he fell down the grand staircase and passed out. A servant woman mistook him for a dog and kicked him in the guts, calling him by 'an appellation somewhat dishonourable'. The rest of the party had taken to their beds and remained there all day. Such larks were rare at Rheinsberg: 'the prince is very far from being a toper, he sacrifices only to Apollo and the Muses; one day, however, he may perhaps raise an altar to Mars'.
That all sounds lovely, but I hope the "made him drink" wasn't the kind of "made him drink" that FW had done to him. However, in his letter (which I checked), aside from the falling down the stairs incident, he seems to find the entire evening enjoyable, rather than something he later said he didn't want to do (as Fritz did), and even the accident he said he later laughed at, after he recovered. And apparently Fritz came and visited him at his sickbed every day until he did recover. So I'm going to go with "not roleplaying Dad
for once."Early Voltaire letters:
Voltaire was getting to grips with the prince's phonetic spelling, which characterised his French as much as his German: 'auser' rather than 'oser', 'tres' instead of ‘trait’, 'matein' for 'matin', etc. More important, perhaps, his inability to pronounce certain words made it impossible for him to scan his lines: 'amitié' had four syllables instead of three, 'nourricier' three and not four; 'aient' one and not two.
Keyserlingk visits Cirey and has the hots for Émilie:
'when she spoke, I was in love with her mind; and when she didn’t, I was [obsessed with] her body'.
Haven't found the letter for this yet, but haven't looked systematically. Am curious about those brackets.
FW to Pöllnitz in the twilight years of his life:
I am not that worried about living, for I leave behind me a son who possesses all the gifts [necessary] for a good ruler. I should not have said that five years ago: he was still too young then; but, thanks be to God, he has changed and I am satisfied. He has promised me to maintain the army and I am reassured that he'll keep his word. I know he loves the soldiers, he has understanding and everything will go well.
Citation: Carl Hinrichs, Der allgegenwärtige König: Friedrich der Grosse im Kabinett und auf Inspektionsreisen 3rd ed, Berlin, 1943, 41; Jessen, 80.
Have not been able to check this citation.
MacDonogh thinks FW is a big fan of future Frederick the Great:
Austria's ingratitude towards him riled the king at the end. He must have felt a fool to have placed so much trust in Charles VI. He had not even been informed of the marriage of the Archduchess Maria Theresa to the duke of Lorraine, and despite his willingness to fight for them, they had shown no serious inclination to win him Jülich and Berg. On 2 May 1736 he pointed to the crown prince, that Fritzchen who had caused him so much heart- and belly-ache in the past, and with a rare gift of prophecy he said: 'Here stands someone who will avenge me.'
No citation! From the same guy who said the 1722 political testament specifies his heir should try to get Silesia.
Re: MacDonogh Reread I
Date: 2020-01-29 07:25 am (UTC)Ha. Yeah, no. I mean, there's certainly evidence FW was pissed off at the lack of imperial support re: Jülich and Berg, but I don't recall any prophecies of avenging sons in the books I've read. Now Maybe there are some documents proving just this, but McDonogh's brazen Invention re: what is and isn't in the Political Testament doesn't inspire me with confidence. Especially what is in the Testament is a stern warning to his successors that wars of aggression are of the Evil.
Sophia Charlotte's crack about F1: sounds vaguely familiar, I think Crown Prince Fritz might have included it in a Voltaire letter as part of dissing Granddad and talking up Dad.
I wonder if MacDonogh has got George and FW mixed up, since he likes to mix people up. Or maybe George started it, and FW finished it?
Well, George was older. And may have made a taunt? Still, all the other mentions of this I've seen name little FW as the aggressor (and winner of the fight). Though given the personalities involved, I could believe it of either.
Schwedt brothers: have seen referred them to both as "rowdy", but don't recall any negative stories about Karl as opposed to older Schwedt, either, so I'm opting for confusion. The married-to-Sophie one provoked even our Lehndorff into saying the one thing he did right was the timing of his death, because he died when the court was already in mourning (for Ulrike's husband, I think), and thus didn't have to go to additional expenses for the Mad Margrave.
I'm not entirely sure Caesarion counts as an emperor
He doesn't. At best, he counts as a Pharao, since I think Cleopatra made her son nominal co-regent after her other nominal co-regent, the younger brother (not the one she'd been at war with) had died. Also, McDonogh proves he's bad at German, because that name is such a simple, literal pun and translation. Caesarion = little Caesar. Old fashioned German has the -ling as a miminutive form. As in "Däumling", for example. Keyserling = Kaiserling (in modern spelling) = little Caesar. Tolkien would never have made that mistake, because Saxon English does a similar thing. The younger members of Alfred the Greath's family = Aethelings.
It had twelve members, including Frederick’s brothers William and Henry and, uncharacteristically, his sister Charlotte
That is interesting, if true. Not least because it would indicate either AW or Heinrich could have visited Fritz at Rheinsberg. Otoh, Charlotte married the Duke of Braunschweig in 1733, simultanous to the Fritz/EC marriage, and her and the Duke showing up at Rheinsberg is far more likely.
Bielfeld: forgot to say, Hamilton called Bielfeld unreliable on account on him supposedly writing this letters from Rheinsberg years later, not during - some crack about "them having had no earthly recipient" - , but it might just be snobbery because Bielfeld also gets dissed as a jumped up bourgois among nobles by him.
Will comment on all the other goodness as well, must dash, I'm with the AP's right now, very limited online time!
Re: MacDonogh Reread I
Date: 2020-01-29 05:54 pm (UTC)Were they brothers? Wikipedia has them as first cousins, at least if I've got the right individuals. (I might not.) It does say not to confuse Friedrich Wilhelm, Margrave of Brandenburg-Schwedt (Sophie's husband) with his first cousin Margrave Friedrich Wilhelm of Brandenburg-Schwedt, who was Karl's brother and had "Margrave" as a courtesy title.
...Thanks, 18th century.
Also, McDonogh proves he's bad at German, because that name is such a simple, literal pun and translation. Caesarion = little Caesar.
MacDonogh is bad at languages in general--heck, I got that wordplay without even knowing German, it's that straightforward--but I think what he's really bad at is Classics.
What I suspect is going on here is that he's never heard of Caesarion, just like he's never heard of Hephaestion, and he thinks it's a reference to a Caesar's (probably Julius or Octavian) height, hence "diminutive emperor." I seem to remember Octavian wearing platform sandals to appear taller (or being accused of doing same in propaganda), although it's probably giving MacDonogh too much credit for Classics knowledge to assume he even knows that.
And when I said "I'm not entirely sure Caesarion counts as an emperor" I was engaging in sarcastic understatement, because at one point I actually memorized the emperors up to Romulus Augustulus (and yes, that included a bunch of overlapping claimants, not all of whom got recognized by the Senate) and could recite their names off the top of my head, and I knew their major deeds and circumstances of death. I can no longer do that, but I can tell you Caesarion's not on anyone's list.
You and I are researching Fritz with the handicap of not knowing French literature; MacDonogh was researching him with the handicap of absolutely no Classics. (I'm skeptical he knows much about French literature either, but it's hard to know less than I do, so at least there's that.)
Tolkien would never have made that mistake, because
Because Tolkien knew languages, period. Yes, I know -ling from Old English too, because I got my PhD in dead languages, but it's also just not that hard!
That is interesting, if true. Not least because it would indicate either AW or Heinrich could have visited Fritz at Rheinsberg. Otoh, Charlotte married the Duke of Braunschweig in 1733, simultanous to the Fritz/EC marriage, and her and the Duke showing up at Rheinsberg is far more likely.
The other possibility I was imagining is Fritz & co. visiting Berlin, which we know at least he did every winter, and the siblings participating then and perhaps by correspondence as well. But it *is* possible they could visit Rheinsberg.
Then again, it's also possible FW wanted Fritz to invade Silesia, but I don't believe everything I read in MacDonogh. ;)
Interesting re Bielfeld. His letters in the volumes I've checked have dates and recipients, but then my volumes of Catt's memoirs have all these long speeches in quotation marks attributed to Fritz and the dates on which he's supposed to have said them, so Bielfield could be a novelist too.
Re: MacDonogh Reread I
Date: 2020-01-31 08:00 pm (UTC)Just ran across it in my reading of Lavisse (p. 95), with no citation. Much like the "The new king bids you all go to hell" quote. So if it's invented, at least it's not MacDonogh who invented it.
Okay, Lavisse gives it in German, and so I've googled that phrase, and it goes back at least to 1835, Friedrich Wilhelm I., König von Preussen, Friedrich Christoph Förster. Many people like to quote it, but he's the earliest I'm finding.
Oh, look, Förster believes in citations. <3 May 2, 1736. Journal secret, p. 138. Secret diary of whom?
Seckendorf!
*tracks down Seckendorf's journal, omg we need this for so many reasons*
Yep, there it is. "Disant en montrant le prince royal, 'Voicy quelqu'un que me vengera un jour.'" He seems to be upset about the MT/FS marriage. Which makes sense, given the date.
Well, guess what's going in the Fritzian library? :D
He alternates between French and German in the diary, if you want to skim the German entries for gems.
Especially what is in the Testament is a stern warning to his successors that wars of aggression are of the Evil.
I don't consider this necessarily mutually exclusive with FW wanting to get back territory that he feels his ancestors shouldn't have given up. Humans in general and politicians especially are really good at saying that unjust wars are bad, and then coming up with rationalizations for how their own wars are totally just. I'm not saying FW did this with Silesia, but I'm saying he could have. I would need to see evidence that he did, though, before believing that he had a particular interest in Silesia the way he did other territories to which he felt he had a claim. But I won't be surprised if we someday run across a source for MacDonogh's statement that FW was displeased about the Great Elector (?) giving up the claim somewhere, just not in the 1722 Political Testament. Especially if half of what Lavisse is telling me about FW's politics is true.
Re: MacDonogh Reread I
Date: 2020-01-31 08:01 pm (UTC)Ha. Yeah, no. I mean, there's certainly evidence FW was pissed off at the lack of imperial support re: Jülich and Berg, but I don't recall any prophecies of avenging sons in the books I've read.
Just ran across it in my reading of Lavisse (p. 95), with no citation. Much like the "The new king bids you all go to hell" quote. So if it's invented, at least it's not MacDonogh who invented it.
Okay, Lavisse gives it in German, and so I've googled that phrase, and it goes back at least to 1835, Friedrich Wilhelm I., König von Preussen, Friedrich Christoph Förster. Many people like to quote it, but he's the earliest I'm finding.
Oh, look, Förster believes in citations. <3 May 2, 1736. Journal secret, p. 138. Secret diary of whom?
Seckendorf!
*tracks down Seckendorf's journal, omg we need this for so many reasons*
Yep, there it is. "Disant en montrant le prince royal, 'Voicy quelqu'un que me vengera un jour.'" He seems to be upset about the MT/FS marriage. Which makes sense, given the date.
Well, guess what's going in the Fritzian library? :D
He alternates between French and German in the diary, if you want to skim the German entries for gems.
Especially what is in the Testament is a stern warning to his successors that wars of aggression are of the Evil.
I don't consider this necessarily mutually exclusive with FW wanting to get back territory that he feels his ancestors shouldn't have given up. Humans in general and politicians especially are really good at saying that unjust wars are bad, and then coming up with rationalizations for how their own wars are totally just. I'm not saying FW did this with Silesia, but I'm saying he could have. I would need to see evidence that he did, though, before believing that he had a particular interest in Silesia the way he did other territories to which he felt he had a claim. But I won't be surprised if we someday run across a source for MacDonogh's statement that FW was displeased about the Great Elector (?) giving up the claim somewhere, just not in the 1722 Political Testament. Especially if half of what Lavisse is telling me about FW's politics is true.
Re: MacDonogh Reread I
Date: 2020-02-01 06:28 am (UTC)I'm still having a quick look at the journal, which is indeed a wild mixture of two thirds French, one third German phrases, and btw also the source for Fritz' "entertaining during dinner, to be locked up after dinner" remark about Pöllnitz. Made to Grumbkow, and told by him to Seckendorff. Just for added confusion, though, it appears the journal writer is NOT, repeat, NOT Seckendorff the old schemer, later to be kidnapped by mobster boss Fritz so he has someone to trade to the Austrians, but a nephew or cousin. (In the page longe conversation with FW in German, he says "mein Onkel", but in French it's either mon oncle or mon cousin. Which fits with (Friedrich Heinrich von) Seckendorff the old schemer's wiki entry reporting him as governor of Mainz and fighting the French in the Polonian war of succession, and then still in the field in the Russian-Austrian-Turkish war from 1736 - 1739, no longer ambassador to Prussia in 1734, and this journal starting thereafter. I mean, even Seckendorff can't be in two places at the same time.
Other Seckendorff, at a guess, might be Christoph Friedrich von Seckendorff-Adebar, but that's just because the birthdates and dying dates make it possible.
Other Seckendorff does, however, use all the familiar code names - Olympia for SD, Biberius for Grumbkow (I know McDonogh says that's Fritz' nickname for him, but the Austrians definitely got their first), Le Diable for Mantteuffel (ditto). Fritz is, I kid you not, "Junior", if he isn't the Crown Prince.
More in another comment.
Re: MacDonogh Reread I
Date: 2020-02-01 04:37 pm (UTC):D I have to say, I'm much more motivated to go digging through German sources when I know I have someone who can help me get the most out of them!
And Lavisse is turning out to be a cache of small gems. Remember, he's the one who quoted the letter from FW to Lepel ordering Fritz to watch the execution, which allowed us to definitively refute Münchow's claim that there was no such order.
I'm definitely keeping a list of entertaining Lavisse quotes to pass on once I'm done reading, just like with MacDonogh.
which is indeed a wild mixture of two thirds French, one third German phrases
You think that's wild, you should see Catt's diary. Partway through, he decides he's going to start switching between French and Latin in the same sentence. Swear to God he writes "Le Rex voulut," "s'ils nous aggressi erant," and "adjutorem principis Ferdinand, pour voir comme il percuteret Russianos." You can add that to the list of things I was not expecting from the diary.
About 1/3 of the way through the manual cleanup, partly because I keep stopping to read as I go. I've found that Fritz does talk to him about not being allowed to learn Latin! It's not the full direct discourse that's in the memoirs, but the topic of discussion came up. Meaning that he did at least allude to his childhood abuse when talking to Catt.
Just for added confusion, though, it appears the journal writer is NOT, repeat, NOT Seckendorff the old schemer, later to be kidnapped by mobster boss Fritz so he has someone to trade to the Austrians, but a nephew or cousin.
That is in fact far more complicated than I anticipated. I admit I dropped it in the library as soon as I found it and went back to alternating between Lavisse and Catt, hoping that the Royal Reader would pick it up. And indeed, the Royal Reader reads at a truly royal pace!
I know McDonogh says that's Fritz' nickname for him, but the Austrians definitely got their first
To be fair to MacDonogh (who, now that I check his endnotes, cites this journal extensively), he never says Fritz invented the nickname, only that he used it. Much like Algarotti the swan, Fritz is using an existing nickname. Well before Fritz comes onto the scene, MacDonogh writes,
What brought together all three of the main protagonists [FW, Grumbkow, Seckendorff] in Prussian foreign policy and the marriage affair was drink. Seckendorff was a great toper, and his nephew claims that Grumbkow's consumption was no less 'astonishing', a fact generally recognised at the time, for he was known as 'Biberius' to his friends. Seckendorff had the harder head though, and was able to wheedle secrets out of the Prussian minister in his cups; and better still, remember them the next morning.
MacDonogh also says, of the tobacco parliament,
...the Tabakscollegium, where Seckendorff endured countless sessions to find the right opportunities to get his own way. Like Pöllnitz and the Alte Dessauer, Seckendorff did not actually smoke, but stuck a pipe in his mouth all the same and occasionally pressed his lips together to give the impression he was puffing on it.
Fritz is, I kid you not, "Junior", if he isn't the Crown Prince.
OMG. This is SUCH a mobster film! Okay, on to your write-ups in their full glory.
Re: MacDonogh Reread I
Date: 2020-02-04 12:02 am (UTC)Blanning to the rescue: he names the author as Baron Christophe Louis de Seckendorff. Preuss agrees. Apparently, Blanning talks at length about Manteuffel and the Seckendorff diary (and even "Junior"!), and it all went whoosh! over my head at the time. That's why rereading him is next on my list after Lavisse.
We've come so far in so few months!
Re: MacDonogh Reread I
Date: 2020-02-04 10:46 am (UTC)BTW, if the Abbé de Prades was able to clean out his fellow prisoners of their money by gambling, and Lehndorff could visit the legendary schemer Seckendorff as if it was a social call, I assume if you weren't Trenck, Magdeburg imprisonment conditions (for nobles at least) weren't too harsh...
Re: MacDonogh Reread I
Date: 2020-01-31 06:22 am (UTC)Okay, this is super mean but it is HILARIOUS!
'Gentlemen, our good master is dead,' he told his father’s courtiers. 'The new king bids you all go to hell.'
This sounds like a very intriguing work of historical fiction and maybe I shall read it :D
(That is, this sounds like the kind of story that might or might not be true and probably isn't cited but the bio seems very readable and with lots of interesting stories.)
Even I knew about Caesarion, lol! Okay, in my case because of reading Judith Tarr's historical fiction, but anyway.
Re: MacDonogh Reread I
Date: 2020-01-31 02:46 pm (UTC)Isn't it?
this sounds like the kind of story that might or might not be true and probably isn't cited
I just ran into it in Lavisse, so it's at least a story that goes back to the 19th century!
the bio seems very readable and with lots of interesting stories
Definitely lots of interesting stories; readable...well, your mileage may vary, but I find the style very dry. I found Blanning a much more effortless read.
But if it weren't for MacDonogh reporting on Mimi (yes, he got the gender wrong, but none of us knew that story at all!) I don't think I would have gotten intrigued enough to go looking into Suhm, who is now one of my favorite Fritz boyfriends. <3
So deeeeefinitely glad I read him.
MacDonogh Reread II
Date: 2020-01-29 01:34 am (UTC)When the late Field Marshal Grumbkow had written to the crown prince in old age complaining that he had not been addressed as 'your excellency', Frederick had pretended that he was perfectly confused when it came to titles: 'I accord count, marquis, duke, cousin, excellency, brother, etc., to anyone and everyone, without knowing whether I have got it right or not.'
I actually found this letter and it says what MacDonogh says it says!
Fritz refusing to keep a proper court:
What court there was revolved around poor, stuttering Elisabeth: 'it was to her that they went on the appointed times on the fixed days, ministers, generals, envoys and courtiers; it was to her that foreigners and the like made their presentations: the etiquette was entirely with her court'. It must have been stultifyingly dull. Nothing was said, because no one had anything to report. There was nothing much to eat either: one night the wife of Field Marshal Schmettau had to make do with one preserved cherry. The same source mentions a facetious Frenchman quipping later on in Frederick’s reign: 'There is a great gala at the queen’s today … for, as I crossed the Schloss [courtyard] I saw an old lamp lit on the grand staircase.'
SD's chamberlain:
The queen mother was compensated with a small court complete with marshal and chamberlain. The latter was a dullard called Morien. The marquis d'Argens apparently used to amuse himself by lending him the same book over and over again. He managed to get him to read it seven times in this manner. Finally Morien told him, 'Monsieur, I find it admirable. However, if I might be allowed to say, it seemed to me that the author repeated himself from time to time.'
I don't know, the guy sounds kinda witty to me, based on this one quote.
Fritz pays for Voltaire to visit:
"Your miser [i.e. Voltaire] will drink the dregs of his insatiable desire to make money; he is going to get 1300 thalers. His six-day appearance is going to cost me 550 thalers per diem. That is a lot to pay a lunatic; no court jester was ever paid such wages."
For comparison, Peter Keith gets 1200 talers a year at this point, and complains it's not enough to live on in Berlin.
Fritz invades Silesia:
[Maria Theresa] called Frederick the Heretic-king; other epithets were 'the enemy without faith or justice', 'the evil animal' and 'the monster'. Nor was she prepared to cede Silesia: 'Never, never, will the queen renounce an inch of all her hereditary lands, though she perish with all that remains to her. Rather the Turks before Vienna, rather cession of the Netherlands to France, rather any concession to Bavaria and Saxony, than renunciation of Silesia.' It was all music to Frederick's ears. He boasted to Algarotti that in Vienna, 'They say public prayers against me', and soon he would be taken for the Antichrist himself.
Note for
MacDonogh's dating on Fritz being King of Prussia is 1742:
a few months later the beleaguered emperor returned a few favours by changing him from king in Prussia to a more authentic king of Prussia.
Fritz tries to talk Voltaire into joining his court:
At the beginning of September, he went to Aachen to take the waters, hoping to see Voltaire there. His fellow hypochondriac tried to cry off again. In his then state he would be 'like an impotent man in the presence of his mistress', which would not do at all. He was too ill to submit to a cure, he wailed; but in the end he came. The poet lodged in the king’s apartment and they had a four-hour chat, two days running, during which Frederick again tried to convince him to move to Prussia.
If I can just find the source for that passage where Voltaire compares moving to Sanssouci to getting married to Fritz, our shipping will be complete!
Fritz's friends join him at Charlottenburg after the war:
Charlottenburg. His circle closed in around him. It contained some new members: the plump 'Chevalier Bernin' (Knobelsdorff) was now flanked by M. des Eguilles (the marquis d'Argens) and the 'Limping Satyr' (Pöllnitz), the permanent butt of his jokes as a result of his frequent changes of religion. Frederick kept Rothenburg informed of the cronies: 'Pöllnitz is ill; Fouqué is drinking tokay and losing at chess; Keyserlingk is drinking water and writing elegies to his beloved...'
MacDonogh's strong anti-sibling bias is showing:
There were family chores, not least two unmarried sisters, Ulrica and Amalia, who were enjoying what life Berlin and Potsdam had to offer and running up gambling debts. They even had the temerity to ask Frederick to pay them. History does not relate whether he did or not.
The temerity! In a few years, Ulrica's even going to have the temerity to ask him to pay her dowry! Can you believe it? "Optimism" is more the word I would use.
At the same time, the Austrians were clamouring for compensation and Frederick instructed Podewils to see them off. Money was for the arts alone. In a language worthy of his father, he wrote: 'Le roi de Prusse ne paie rien.'"
Well, as Voltaire said in his memoirs, "Like as Louis XII would not revenge the affronts of the Duke d'Orleans, neither would the King of Prussia remember the debts of the Prince Royal."
Mind you, if we're talking language worthy of his father, another biographer says that FW once replied to a request from one of his subjects with "I don't shit money."
Voltaire shows up in 1743:
Although he was as smitten as ever, Frederick was suspicious that he had not been asked for the usual travel expenses and correctly surmised that Voltaire was spying on him. He was therefore hesitant about discussing matters of state with his friend. Voltaire bought off his employers with letters stressing his intimate relationship with the Prussian king, who spent four hours a day closeted in Voltaire’s apartment, where he amply revealed his foreign political 'intentions'.
At least one biographer's figured out who was smitten!
Not content with making a pass at the French ambassador's cook (she fought him off!), he was now making cow eyes at Frederick's sister Ulrica. They acted together, and in their congress Voltaire forgot his place. He wrote her some verses as a birthday present, telling her that he had dreamed of her.
MacDonogh, as we know, claims that Fritz was disapproving, but I turned up that article on how Fritz was actually playing along, and having read the poems, I agree. He seems much more concerned that Voltaire isn't giving him, Fritz, his undivided attention than that he's hitting on Fritz's sister. Now I just want the story of the cook fighting Voltaire off!
Our favorite "can't live with you, can't live without you" ship:
Theirs was a puzzling relationship. There was a permanent friction between them, and Voltaire never ceased to cause problems for the king by his indiscretions, yet they seemed to nourish one another. Despite the bad blood over Ulrica and Voltaire's ham-fisted espionage, Frederick was soon writing to him offering him all sorts of blandishments to take up residence in Berlin.
Fritz and law:
From 31 May 1746, Prussia opted out of imperial justice with the scrapping of the appeals to Vienna. This liberated it from the constraints imposed by German law. Already in 1738 Frederick William had asked Cocceji to draw up a complete legal code. After the demise of the appellate jurisdiction, Frederick asked him again. The results were the Codex Fridericianus Pomeranicus and the Codex Fridericianus Marchius of 1747 to 1748. Appeals went to the king. Voltaire cites the case of a man who had enjoyed a love affair with a she donkey, which was a capital offence. Frederick minuted that the sentence was annulled: 'in his lands one could enjoy freedom of both conscience and penis'. A similar tale is told of the cavalry trooper who was found to have sodomised his horse. Frederick again refused to enact the punishment deemed due in the circumstances: 'The man is a pig', he wrote. 'Transfer him to the infantry.'"
Either all copies of Voltaire's memoirs I have are bowdlerized, or MacDonogh is being creative again. All my copies, French and English, say is that the crime was of an infamous nature, no mention of donkeys.
It's possible, though, since he also mentions the marriage analogy being in the memoirs, and he may just have a copy that I don't.
On the other hand, bowdlerizing Voltaire's memoirs has got to be like bowdlerizing Lehndorff's diaries: surely there's nothing left by the time you're done!
Fritz and MT:
He knew that business remained unsettled between him and Maria Theresa even despite the guarantees of his ownership of Silesia meted out at the Conference of Aix-la-Chapelle, but he never descended to personal insult, beyond speculating on who might wear the trousers in that ménage.
Hmm. You seem to be missing out on the vast amounts of personal insult Fritz descended to, MacDonogh. But good job whitewashing.
This one is interesting because Gundling was FW's court jester/fool:
Maupertuis, freed from Austrian captivity (they had, in fact, treated him with respect), was pestering Frederick for his patent as president of the Academy [of Sciences]: 'that position first made honourable by Leibniz, and rendered ridiculous by Gundling … will be for me, Sire, what you want it to be'.
That's FW for you, always taking the sciences seriously.
Fritz's friends starting to die off en masse:
At the time, he had longed for Rheinsberg and his friends, but Frederick's world had since been made poorer and sadder for the loss of such companions as Keyserlingk, Jordan and Duhan. Jordan's portrait was hung up in his cabinet, and Thiébault tells the story of one of his friends — it is hard to say which — whose coffin was taken into Frederick's apartment, after which it was only with some difficulty that his servants convinced him to relinquish it, for the body had begun to stink.
Another case where I tracked down the citations in the Thiébault memoirs and both passages seem entirely unrelated. One I recognized the pagination off the top of my head (lol), because, of course, it's the Katte episode; the other turned out to be Trenck. I'm starting to think his copies have vastly different pagination than mine, but maybe I'm being too charitable. On the other hand, he's definitely got different paginations on the Oeuvres than I do on Trier. I can often find his quotes, but only by ignoring the page numbers (which are also not letter numbers, in case you're wondering).
Fritz on friendship:
Despite his impossibility on close acquaintance, Frederick felt he could not go on without friends. He took issue with d'Argens' contention in his Nouveaux mémoires that a Carthusian might be happy, despite his solitude. 'I should like to say affirmatively that he is not. A man who cultivates the [arts] and sciences and who lives without friends is a lone wolf. In a word, the way I see it, friendship is indispensable to our happiness.'
Fritz, just because you can't do it, doesn't mean no one can. What is it with you not liking it when people react to things differently from you, and also when they react to things the same way as you? Oh, right, emotional stuntedness.
The Palladion:
Readings of Le Palladion surely raised a few laughs at Frederick’s petits soupers. One or two of his friends must have been indiscreet. Soon there was talk in Paris and Versailles, where the French king voiced a singular desire to lay his hands on a copy. Wheedling the poem out of Frederick became a diplomatic priority. A year later Valory wrote that he wanted to read Frederick's description of his exploits with the Pandurs for himself. Frederick was not prepared to let it go: 'how the theologians, politicians and purists would scream'. When Valory pushed, Frederick sent him his Histoire de Brandebourg instead.
Frederick had given Darget a rough ride in verse: sodomised by so many Jesuit fathers. Perhaps for that reason he wrote him a poem too: 'A Darget, apologie des rois'. In it he admitted that the life of a king’s secretary was not always a happy one. Based on Boileau's Epitre XI, A mon jardinier, it is one of Frederick’s most successful poems.
Tous les jours, par cahier, tu mets ses vers au net,
Et quand tu les lui rends, Dieu sait le bruit qu’il fait:
D’un sévère examen le pointilleux scrupule
S'étend par chaque point et sur chaque virgule;
Là sont les e muets qui devraient être ouverts
Ou c'est un mot de moins qui fait clocher un vers;
Puis, en recopiant cet immortel ouvrage,
Tu donnes son auteur au diable à chaque page.
Every day you put whole books of his verse to rights,
God knows, a thankless task which leads to frequent fights:
The meticulous pedant he alights on a
Misplaced colon or full stop, or a missing comma;
Here is a silent e, which should be stressed
And there’s a missing word which leaves the line a mess;
Then as you copy out the immortal autograph,
You damn its author with every paragraph.
I don't have enough data to express an opinion, but Blanning tells me Darget considered this an inadequate apology. If so, one can hardly blame him!
Also, Fritz, yeah, I'm sure the silent e's are why he's so upset. I really hope he *wasn't* your boyfriend, as Blanning thinks.
Re: MacDonogh Reread II
Date: 2020-01-29 09:23 am (UTC)No, but I think ballerinas and soprano singers will make more. ;) Mind you, that kind of statement makes the "squeezed orange" quote sound authentic, and also fits with father FW's attitude towards intellectuals, see below. Not that Voltairei can't bite back, and then some, but I think this is where the "can't live with" part of the ship comes in.
This one is interesting because Gundling was FW's court jester/fool
Not precisely. He was certainly treated by FW as one. But the poor man was actually a scholar. He was the one who introduced systematic source research to German scholarship; he started out as a top historian before FW humiliated him into treating him court-jesterly, and started years and years of abuse. English wiki has some, but check out German wiki for more of it. He tried to escape twice, was brought back and ended up drinking himself to death. And even then FW did not relent: Gundling died in Potsdam in 1731 from the effects of his stomach ulcers. At the instigation of the king, he was buried in an unworthy ceremony, even blasphemous in the judgment of some of his contemporaries. For years he had had to spend the nights in his room next to a wine barrel that had been transformed into a coffin. In this container his body, grotesquely costumed, was first exhibited in public. The writer David Faßmann, his greatest enemy at the court, gave the sermon on the corpse – the responsible evangelical clergy had refused to take part in the spectacle. Eight tailors then carried the barrel to the city limits (according to other sources the barrel was pulled by pigs), from there it went in the cattle cart to Bornstedt near Potsdam. Gundling was buried in a tomb of the village church there. Later, Frederick William I tried to dispel the suspicion that he had disregarded principles of religion by official depictions of the case. The rebellious clergy were strictly interrogated, but ultimately not punished.
Jacob-von-Gundling-Straße in Potsdam is named after him.
So if I were Maupertuis, I'd probably have been way more sceptical before agreeing to work for any son of FW's.
The temerity! In a few years, Ulrica's even going to have the temerity to ask him to pay her dowry! Can you believe it? "Optimism" is more the word I would use.
No kidding. Why am I not surprised McDonogh has it in for the sibs? Incidentally, if he'd checked Ulrike's letters, then he could not have claimed that:
MacDonogh, as we know, claims that Fritz was disapproving, but I turned up that article on how Fritz was actually playing along, and having read the poems, I agree.
Me too, because I did read that letter in addition to the poems. An Ulrike who writes to Fritz, apropos that poem:
M. de Voltaire will not regret having started a correspondence with me, when he receives the charming reply in verse for which I cannot thank your majesty enough. If he could believe that I was its author, though, his heart would fail him most dreadfully; but he has too much discernment not to know which Apollo inspired me. It is a consolation for the Marquise that I would not always dare to have recourse to this god, since only thus she is sure of keeping her reign.
Is clearly not writing in a situation where Fritz disapproves, but one where he eagerly used the chance to write love poetry to Voltaire. Pity Edmond de Rostand lived after Voltaire, because "Cyrano de Bergerac" comes to mind. *veg*
He knew that business remained unsettled between him and Maria Theresa even despite the guarantees of his ownership of Silesia meted out at the Conference of Aix-la-Chapelle, but he never descended to personal insult, beyond speculating on who might wear the trousers in that ménage.
Hmm. You seem to be missing out on the vast amounts of personal insult Fritz descended to, MacDonogh. But good job whitewashing.
I'm speechless. How it is possible for anyone doing the slightest bit of research to miss all the insults he slung at her before her death is beyond me.
I don't have enough data to express an opinion, but Blanning tells me Darget considered this an inadequate apology. If so, one can hardly blame him!
Quite! No wonder he eventually quit.
Re: MacDonogh Reread II
Date: 2020-01-29 06:31 pm (UTC)You can predict how his take on AW and Heinrich goes.
I had to laugh yesterday at how Fritz "never managed to cure Heinrich of his bile," to which I found myself replying, "Well, no, if you look at the things Fritz tried, those are not usually the things that cure people of bile, it's true."
because "Cyrano de Bergerac" comes to mind. *veg*
Cyrano came to my mind too!
But Cyrano could write good French poetryGundling: Yikes. Yikes yikes yikes. I can see, though, why all my sources just said "jester/fool"; Wikipedia tells me scholarship on him has gone back and forth in terms of how it presents him.
"In February 1714, he was required to deliver a lecture to assembled guests offering arguments for and against the existence of ghosts, while being made to drink heavily."
Now, where have we heard that before?
It's amazing because the Spartans were supposed to have forced helots to get drunk to discourage their citizens-in-training from excessive alcohol, but FW likes drinking himself and likes making other people get drunk.
If Catt's
novelmemoirs can be trusted, all those accounts of Fritz tormenting people, usually Guichard, with pranks (the word we're looking for here is "abuse") make him seem like a very watered-down version of his father. As usual.When I was telling mob boss fic author recently about how George I, FW, and Fritz dealt with people trying to flee with their lovers, and how Fritz only locked people up briefly and didn't kill anyone over it, she said, "Bless his damaged little heart?" and that felt very appropriate. He didn't treat Guichard as badly as FW treated Gundling! It's an improvement!
Therapy for everyone.
So if I were Maupertuis, I'd probably have been way more sceptical before agreeing to work for any son of FW's.
In Maupertuis' defense, Fritz had a good deal of firsthand experience of Gundling's treatment at FW's hands, from being an intellectual himself. He was far from your dream boss, and Wolff was a wise man, but I can see why you would go into it expecting the exact opposite of Gundling's treatment.
How it is possible for anyone doing the slightest bit of research to miss all the insults he slung at her before her death is beyond me.
I was fifteen and I knew he'd had it in for her, and women, personally.
It's weird because MacDonogh is highly critical of Fritz--he's no Preuss--but that doesn't stop him from individual acts of whitewashing. He also just buys into a lot of the longstanding myths, like not wearing anything but a uniform after 1740, except once a year at his mother's birthday or when visiting EC, but to be fair, the reason those are longstanding myths is that everyone bought into them for a long time.
The Fritz/MT relationship, though, there's no excuse for that.
Oh, you know that quote about MT hating whores and having more than one talent? That's from Catt. I can see we're going to have to read the diary.
Re: MacDonogh Reread II
Date: 2020-01-30 01:58 pm (UTC)So very true. But clearly, we're taking the wrong approach her. Fritz the ever chill and ever patient was being a model big brother, repeatedly steering Heinrich away from the wrong boyfriends, marrying him to a beauty and giving exemplary grief counselling to ensure Heinrich would not succumb to depression. He also makes certain Heinrich stays away from dangerous jobs, like King of Poland, and includes him in family gatherings when nephews come to visit. He is the very model of a Hohenzollern therapist!
Speaking of models: the FW and Gundling tale has made it to the screen as the only historical movie in which FW plays a prominent role that has nothing to do with his son whatsoever, Der König und sein Narr. (Haven't seen it, but the script is by one of the foremost GDR writers of the day, Ulrich Plenzdorf, and it has Götz George as FW.) Since chronology is character: I see Gundling died in April 1731, which means his abuse and Fritz' abuse did overlap. Since Gundling's started in 1713, that makes 28 years of it, which was Fritz' age when FW died. Now I would like to think that young Fritz might have felt some empathy for the poor guy, but I fear he probably saw him only as a ridiculous figure as well, and as a member of his father's hated tobbaco round, not as a fellow victim.
Anyway, depending on how much of FW's treatment of Gundling was known outside of Prussia: no wonder Émilie thought Voltaire shouldn't set foot in the country as long as FW was still alive!
Re: MacDonogh Reread II
Date: 2020-02-08 06:08 am (UTC)*chokes*
He is the very model of a Hohenzollern therapist!
...I totally lost it here.
Re: MacDonogh Reread II
Date: 2020-02-08 06:06 am (UTC)This one is interesting because Gundling was FW's court jester/fool
Not precisely. He was certainly treated by FW as one.
Wow. I feel like I keep asking you guys for stories showing FW in the best possible light, and as soon as I start feeling the slightest iota of sympathy, I hear something like this and my sympathy goes into negative amounts.
Hmm. You seem to be missing out on the vast amounts of personal insult Fritz descended to, MacDonogh. But good job whitewashing.
I'm speechless. How it is possible for anyone doing the slightest bit of research to miss all the insults he slung at her before her death is beyond me.
Soooo... but now that I'm behind and catching up on comments after New Developments... how much of the personal insult was from Catt's memoirs? I think one of you said the "three whores" comment was not from there...
Re: MacDonogh Reread II
Date: 2020-02-08 10:42 pm (UTC)You know the place
You get a mild bug for a few days, and in that time Catt's diary gets translated and summarized and his memoirs deconstructed, leading us to re-evaluate Fritz's entire personality, we discover we've been using the wrong memoirs altogether for Thiebault, we turn up other Seckendorff's amaaaazing secret diary, and Mitchell's memoirs turn up with a mention of Katte. And that's just the high points!
ETA: Oh, man, I just checked my word count log, and in the last week, we've churned out 55K words in the comments (not counting Rheinsberg posts). You'd think we'd lose steam after the initial burst, but in December we went from ~100K per month to 200K, and so far, we've sustained that pace for two consecutive months and are still going strong!
I hear something like this and my sympathy goes into negative amounts.
It was SO MUCH worse than I realized, omg.
MacDonogh Reread III
Date: 2020-01-29 01:41 am (UTC)Meanwhile, keeping Algarotti in line was proving difficult. He was showing an interest in one of the king's dancers, Giovanna Corrini, the wife of Jean-Baptiste Denis, who played commedia dell'arte roles and was known as 'la Pantaloncina' as a result. Whether the interest was carnal or not is an interesting question. Frederick evidently thought it was: 'I hope that you have less need of physicians than you do pimps, from the point of view of both diet and pleasure, and that rather than obtaining galbanum from the chemists you are drinking the wine of Aÿ which makes the blood circulate faster and carries happiness to the brain.'
MacDonogh's footnotes:
"Galbanum resin was used for treating venereal diseases. Aÿ is in the Marne Valley, i.e. Champagne."
Re "from the point of view of both diet and pleasure," he says, "Macquereau is the French for both mackerel and pimp."
Immediately following the preceding:
Algarotti knew how to parry this ribbing. He sent the gourmand king broccoli seeds. Frederick was delighted: 'the only way to eat decent stuff, you will have the first'.
Algarotti: the only boyfriend (that we know of) to actually give Fritz broccoli!
Voltaire wants to spy on Fritz yet again:
He once again offered the king his services as a secret agent, but Louis was not interested, and nor was the foreign office in his repeated attempts to renew their relations. Madame de Pompadour was even less impressed at Voltaire’s decision, and never forgave him for going to Prussia. After he left, the French king allegedly quipped, 'That’s one less madman at my court and one more at his.'
Voltaire at Sanssouci:
Summer at Sanssouci was not so bad. In August there was a 'carousel' in imitation of that given by Louis XIV in Paris in 1685; the margravine was the guest of honour. At the party 46,000 Chinese lanterns were lit, and 31,000 soldiers were stationed round the park. There were little armies dressed as Romans, Carthaginians, Persians and Greeks, led by the princes William, Henry and Ferdinand and the margrave Charles of Schwedt. Warlike music was played. At the close, Princess Amalia was there to distribute the trophies.
Despite his minor court appointment at Versailles, Voltaire was treated better in Prussia. He had the right to dine at the queen’s table in Berlin (for all that it was worth — it might have sounded more impressive by report in Paris). He told Madame Denis that he had heard not a word of German spoken so far: ‘our language and literature have made more conquests than Charlemagne’. He wanted her to join him, but she was not at all keen. She told him that she imagined Berlin was like Paris in the age of the first Capetians.
Voltaire replied that the poetry in the opera performed in Berlin was indeed worthy of Hugh Capet. It was unkind of him: it was as often as not written by Frederick!
Notice how he doesn't say it was inaccurate, just unkind. :P
Voltaire at Sanssouci:
Voltaire mocked his own skeletal appearance. It must have been true, or the chambermaids in old Prussia must have been made of strong stuff. On one occasion as he lay in bed, one of these junos mistook him for a heap of dirty linen and picked him up, mattress and all, and threw him on the floor.
Fritz's idea of an intermezzo:
Franz Benda and his family continued to live modestly in their house in Nowawes, across the water from Potsdam, with the rest of their clan of Bohemian immigrants. The present house was built after lightning struck the original building on 22 July 1755. Frederick and Benda were in the middle of the Sanssouci concert, but as soon as the king had finished his adagio he rode over to inspect the damage. Fifty houses had been destroyed by the blaze. Frederick spent an hour and a half at this intermezzo, inspecting the damage and promising financial help, then rode back and finished the concert.
Is this true?
In January 1757, Prussia was expelled from the Holy Roman Empire
The Brits, as
Frederick was something of a heart-throb in Britain even before his victories turned him into a folk hero. On 18 September 1756, the secretary of state, Lord Holdernesse, wrote to Mitchell to tell him: 'Our constant toast here now is, success to the king of Prussia: he grows vastly popular among us...' Frederick's success with the British largely hinged on his disingenuous assumption of the Protestant cause.
Still smitten with Fritz:
From this time [the battle of Prague in 1757] date the first of the pubs called 'The King of Prussia' that used to exist all over Britain. Less than a handful survive; most fell victim to the anti-Prussian feeling at the beginning of the First World War.
It's worth noting there's a town in Pennsylvania (settled heavily, of course, by Germans), still called King of Prussia. It's adjacent to the Valley Forge national park, which means I was about a mile away a couple years ago and never noticed, and it's best known for having the second largest shopping mall in the US. Named after Old Fritz. Go figure!
Catherine is smitten too:
On 20 November 1756 she wrote to Hanbury Williams: 'I read the writings of the king of Prussia with the same avidity as those of Voltaire. You will think that I am making up to you, if I tell you today that I am a profound admirer of His Prussian Majesty.'
Keep in mind the chronology: she won't be empress until 1762, and by then she'll be somewhat more of a middle-grounder where Fritz is concerned, and definitely more concerned with Russia's interests over Prussia's regardless of any personal feelings.
Fritz unhappy about how the war is going:
'Often I'd like to get drunk', he wrote to his sister Amalia in September, 'to drown my annoyance, but as I can't drink I distract myself by writing verses and as long as I am absorbed by this distraction, I don’t feel my unhappiness any more.'
The Prussians have their most one-sided victory, at Rossbach, against the French, who basically just run away despite outnumbering the enemy 2 to 1.
More than 5000 of the allied soldiers were killed or wounded and another 5000 taken prisoner. The tally included eleven generals and a rumour ran round that General de Broglie had died of his wounds in Merseburg. Frederick had lost 169 dead and 379 wounded. Prisoners kept arriving in dribs and drabs. Before the battle a boy had come to Seydlitz to enlist. The cavalry commander had told him he was too young to be a trooper. 'What must I do?' asked the youth. Seydlitz told him to take a French general prisoner. After the battle the boy came in trailing a dejected Gaul: 'See, here is a French general as you ordered.' Keith commented that he had done it as 'coolly as if he had been ordered to buy a pound of biscuit'. He was promptly made an officer. Two peasant girls brought in a French soldier on the end of a lead. Mitchell thought that if there had been two more hours of daylight the French would have been annihilated.
The Prussians score their most famous tactical victory, at Leuthen in Silesia:
Frederick surprised a number of exhausted and wounded Austrian officers in the manor house in Lissa. 'Good evening, gentlemen; certainly you weren't expecting me here, is there any room to spare?' Perplexed, but aware that the Prussian army was not far behind, they led him up to the hall of the manor where dinner was being served. Frederick talked to them politely for a while then found himself a room and settled down to pen letters and dispatches.
Fritz in 1761, looking for help with the war:
In June, Prussian officers were drinking to the health of Musrapha III, their new ally, but despite Frederick's hoping against hope, it was not a military alliance: Turkey was too weak. His new friends were considerate enough, however, to send him a brace of camels in September 1762.
Meanwhile, the gossip mill back in Berlin is hard at work:
A prostitute has accused Porporino of siring her child; the courts declared the child to be his, sentenced him to pay the prostitute 100 thalers and to feed the infant. There was no question of appealing against the verdict, Porporino paid the 100 thalers at once and admitted paternity of the child, which he took away and is having brought up in his house; and he thanked the judges for making good the loss inflicted on him by the Venetian surgeons. This story has spread mirth throughout the city.
Fritz not terribly impressed with Rousseau:
The earl Marischal alerted Frederick to Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who was seeking asylum in Prussian Neufchâtel. Frederick was willing. 'His only sin is having peculiar opinions, which he thinks are good.' He sent him 100 thalers. 'If we were not at war, if we were not ruined, I would have a hermitage built for him, with a garden where he could dwell as he thinks our forefathers lived … He will never persuade me to graze on herbs and to go on all fours.'
Shortly after Peter III's death:
[Fritz] was interested to note the sales of his Poésies divers among the [Russian] officer corps. They had ordered 900 copies: half the print run. He was philosophic about the popularity of his poetry in Russia: 'It is probably only in that country that they take me for a good French poet.'
Fritz roleplaying lightside Dad:
On one occasion his coach tipped over and the king of Prussia was landed in a ditch. He went for the coachman with his cane. The driver shouted at him, 'Don't you believe that I am not a thousand times angrier than you?' Frederick laughed, and forgot his temper.
I've also seen a variant on this anecdote where the retort goes: "And has Your Majesty never lost a battle?" I don't know, if you don't want to get whacked, I feel like the MacDonogh version would work better. But this is all apocryphal as far as I'm concerned.
Fritz meets Wilhelmine's husband's cousin's wife's second husband. MacDonogh says Wilhelmina's stepmother-in-law, but I think he's confusing his margraves. (It's a sad day when I trust Wikipedia over a biography, but confusing people is a specialty of his.)
He met Graf Hoditz-Roswald in Moravia during the Seven Years War, the husband of the dowager margravine of Bayreuth — Wilhelmina's stepmother-in-law. Roswald's gardens were renowned: they were full of concealed fountains that took promenaders by surprise. Behind a wall in a park, Hoditz kept a brothel for his sole use. Frederick visited Hoditz and on that occasion refused to reveal his identity. He came again in 1769, this time in majesty, if that was the word. Hoditz was charmed, and gave a magnificent feast for the king of Prussia. Hoditz had his own little opera at his Schloss and the local peasants acted in his plays. The women also stocked his private brothel. If they so much as looked at another man, he had them locked up and put on a diet of bread and water. Frederick loved Hoditz's conversation, and built a little frigate to bring him up the Oder to Berlin and Potsdam. When he was not in Prussia, the two men sent one another gifts: Brinza cheese, prunes, Istrian wine, champagne, even swans. In later years Hoditz took the place of the earl Marischal.
I like to imagine Hoditz being like crackfic!AW: "The King of Prussia keeps talking about how he misses his dead swan. I know, I'll send him a replacement!"
Fritz hasn't left off writing on behalf of his dogs:
One poem was ostensibly written by his dog Diane to 'wicked Elisabeth', the first wife of the future Frederick William II. Frederick’s purpose is clear:
Une chienne en ce jour vous donne un grand exemple.
j'ai mis au monde deux petits;
Tout curieux qui les contemple
Les trouve comme moi beaux, bien faits et gentils.
Soyez marraine à leur baptême,
Et mes voeux seront accomplis,
Si, madame, dans peu vous en faites de même.
Today a lowly bitch sets a grand example.
I delivered my puppies two;
The curious come and marvel
They're as pretty as me, kind and tough too.
Be godmother and bring them fame,
And all my wishes would come true,
If, Madam, in a while, you did the same.
Fritz and Voltaire snark:
Three years later KPM was issuing busts of Voltaire, 'which resemble you in the old days, perhaps even now', said Frederick. Voltaire peevishly acknowledged the gift of an 'old man in porcelain'. The king thought it a very good likeness and told d'Alembert it lacked only the power to speak. He recommended that the best effects could be had by reciting the Henriade to it and watching it at the same time. Voltaire wanted revenge in the form of a Frederick, but the king of Prussia still adhered to his policy of keeping portrait painters at arm's length, deeming them as adept at flattery as the most refined courtiers. He allowed Anna Dorothea Therbusch, however, to make the familiar bust of him that served as the KPM's model, injecting a little youthful grace into his raddled face. Voltaire received one in good time. Frederick decided that the bust would be more likely to 'ruin an apartment than to decorate it'. The king joked that the sculptress had refused to clothe him in the garb of an anchorite.
KPM is Königliche Porzellan Manufaktur, the porcelain factory where Fritz is effectively CEO, with the power to ban rival products and make people buy his stuff.
Re: MacDonogh Reread III
Date: 2020-01-29 09:38 am (UTC)So he did meet EC after all? Probably not, though, I guess he never used that right.
Is this true?
In January 1757, Prussia was expelled from the Holy Roman Empire
I doubt it, since one of the conditions of Fritz' peace treaty post 7 Years War was for him to vote for Joseph as next Holy Roman Emperor. Which he duly did, and couldn't have done if Prussia had no longer been part of the HRE. Was reminded of this again by browsing through the Heinrich letters, which mention the condition.
There's also quite a lot in those late 7 Years War letters about Fritz hoping the Turks will come through for him and attack Austria again. Which, among so many other things, is especially... something... in light of the fact MT post war was blamed for having allied with foreign powers (France and Russia) and brought them to German soil, despite the terrible memory of the 30 Years War. The last Turkish invasion, as you mention elsewhere, was far more recent. It was also where Eugene of Savoyen had made his name and got a folk song named after him ("Prinz Eugen, der edle Ritter...")
One poem was ostensibly written by his dog Diane to 'wicked Elisabeth', the first wife of the future Frederick William II. Frederick’s purpose is clear:
Sheesh. This reminds me of an apocryphal anecdote which can't be verified but which is used in that still popular novel about Wilhelmine Encke, "Die schöne Wilhelmine", that the following happened in the time just before the FW2/Elisabeth marriage broke down entirely: Fritz sent one of his trusted friends to Elisabeth to tell her that as long as she's discreet, for God's sake, and provides a male heir, it's okay, and maybe choose some discreet and old Prussian nobility type? Whereupon Elisabeth says: oh yeah? If it's my duty to fuck on command for the King, fine, then let's do this right here and now, you and me. Whereupon the trusty old official flees in horror and tells Fritz she's hopeless. (In the novel, the old official is Keith the elder, the Lord Marischal.)
Re: MacDonogh Reread III
Date: 2020-01-29 06:41 pm (UTC)I haven't seen any claims that he did, so yeah. Maybe Voltaire was just trying to sound good when writing home but never exercised the right. MacDonogh also claims that during the 1743 spying episode, Voltaire wrote back to his paymasters that he spent 4 hours a day closeted with the King! to get around the fact that Fritz adamantly refused to discuss anything of political or military significance.
I doubt it, since one of the conditions of Fritz' peace treaty post 7 Years War was for him to vote for Joseph as next Holy Roman Emperor.
You know, I figured that if something as major as Prussia getting kicked out of the HRE was real, I should have heard about it *somewhere* else, but I thought I'd ask you, since there's always the fact that my knowledge is very selective. Since neither of us has heard of this, well, as they say...pics or it didn't happen.
*Wow* is this like reading Wikipedia.
Whereupon the trusty old official flees in horror and tells Fritz she's hopeless.
That is totally hilarious. Like these examples, headcanon until we're told otherwise! (Go Elisabeth.)
Re: MacDonogh Reread III
Date: 2020-02-08 06:14 am (UTC)hee!
'It is probably only in that country that they take me for a good French poet.'
LOL.
MacDonogh Reread IV
Date: 2020-01-29 01:42 am (UTC)Henry was much keener on the idea of territorial expansion than his brother. He had his eyes on [territories enumerated]. Thiébault observed, 'Clearly the First Partition of Poland was his invention.' Frederick did not wholly see eye to eye with his brother. He thought the Russians were unpleasant neighbours, to say the very least, and he did not want them to have any more land than they already had.
The immediate cause of the partition was Frederick’s feeling that the Russians should be kept sweet, which was why he had dispatched Catherine’s childhood friend Henry in the first place.
Childhood friend? Is that true, or is he confusing Henrys again?
Fritz rejecting Henry's initial partition suggestions:
If you are too eager to snatch at trifles, it gives you a reputation for greed and insatiability which I don't want to have any more than I do already in Europe.
Fritz...I hardly even know where to begin with that statement. I'll just leave it there so we can all blink and stare at you.
Fritz and Voltaire after the partition:
[Fritz explained to Voltaire that he] was keen to honour the memory of the region's most famous son, Copernicus, who was buried in the cathedral at Frauenburg. Voltaire was pleased at Frederick's interest in the astronomer: 'Put up a little man on his ashes so that the sun, which he put in its proper place, should come and salute him every day at noon, its rays coupled with your own.'
Frederick began to boast in April 1769 that anyone wanting to set eyes on one of the breed would have to come to Silesia. Elsewhere they had all been 'despotically' banished. D'Alembert enjoyed the joke too. He wrote to the king in June that year: 'It is going to be odd, Sire, that whereas Their Very Christian, Very Catholic, Very Apostolic and Very Faithful Majesties [France, Spain, Hungary, Portugal] are destroying the grenadiers of the Holy See, Your Most Heretical Majesty is the only one to preserve them.'
Fritzplaining how to make German into a literary language:
The basic sounds of German would not do. You could do nothing with sagen, geben or nehmen. Frederick's suggestion was to add an 'a' at the end to give them a down beat: 'sagena', 'gebena', 'nehmena'.
I'll just let this one speak for itself too. (To his credit, at least he acknowledges that even if the HRE and imperial diet decided to promulgate a decree to the effect that these words were to be pronounced this way, everyone would continue doing exactly what they had always done.)
Oh, remember when Fritz sent his Jacobite friend the Earl of Marischal as foreign envoy, and said "I don't give a fuck" when asked if this might offend the English? When Marischal is dying, you can see why he and Fritz were friends:
As the campaign got under way, Milord had seized the moment to die, but not without wit. He summoned the British envoy, Elliot, on 23 May 1778: 'I called you, because I find pleasure in emitting the last sighs of a Jacobite to a minister of King George.'
In case you're wondering about what Fritz liked to eat:
We know the complete menu for one of his last meals, on 5 August 1786: broccoli soup à la Fouqué, beef in breadcrumbs with carrots, chicken with cinnamon and stuffed cucumbers in the English style (Frederick crossed it out and asked for cutlets), little pasties à la Romaine, young roast hake, salmon à la Dessau, chicken fillet à la Pompadour with ox tongues and croquettes, Portuguese cake, green peas, fresh herrings and gherkins.
Broccoli again!
It's worth adding that as he's dying, his doctors are trying to get him to cut down on rich food, and he refuses, because since when did he ever listen to
anyone elsehis doctors? MacDonogh reports his physician telling him in frustration, "The only dangerous enemies Your Majesty has are his cooks."I'm kind of with Fritz? I'm sure he's getting upset stomachs from his diet, but you have to consider the cost-benefit angle, and he's only got a little time left to live. I don't think the 18th century had the ability to come up with a heart healthy diet, I think he's going to have upset stomachs anyway (maybe fewer on a better diet), there's no way he's quitting tobacco, it's probably too late anyway, and I think he should just enjoy one of the few pleasures left to him. By August 5, 1786, he was in too much pain to enjoy reading, and he'd had to give up playing the flute a few years before. Let him eat cake!
Re: MacDonogh Reread IV
Date: 2020-01-29 09:53 am (UTC)Hamilton makes that claim, too, and since his main source for everything is Carlysle, I assume they both got from good old Thomas C., but Ziebura, who is very into the Heinrich & Catherine relationship, reports nothing but Heinrich dancing with her on the same occasion when Fritz sat next to her at dinner. (Evidently he'd brought younger brother along.) They were three years apart (Heinrich was older), and her father was a Prussian general, so it's not impossible, but it would surprise me, given how FW had his kids raised divided by gender.
However, it did occur to me we can simply check her memoirs, which as far as I know are online. If there was more than dancing together on one social evening, I guess she'd have mentioned it, especially since they later on did become friends (as much as politicians can be) as adults. Heinrich's letter to Ferdinand after her death about mourning for as quoted by Ziebura does not mention a childhood Connection:
I am wearing (mourning) in memory of the friendship she's shown towards me, and of her genius. For losing it is a loss to the whole world. (...) She had supreme qualities. I can never forget her attention, her amiability and the power of her mind. What remains now is very small, compared to her. Of course, from a political point of view her death is a stroke of luck for us.
Given the Fritz letter where he complains about not having had the chance to Fritzplain all to Heinrich before Heinrich got invited to Russia, I also doubt the "he send him due to childhood friendship" tale.
How to make German into a literate language: ...yeah. And this is why none of the German writers took him serious on literary matters.
Incidentally, Franconian dialect is a bit like that - lots of "La" added, as in "a wengala" for "ein wenig" (a bit), "Brödla" for "Brötchen" (Bread), "Ach Gottla!" for "Ach Gott!" (oh God), and so forth. Wilhelmine might have told him, since that's what they speak in Bayreuth, but then again, Wilhelmine like the rest of the sibs probably spoke as little German as she could get away with.
Re: MacDonogh Reread IV
Date: 2020-01-30 04:48 am (UTC)Whoops, this should have been a separate quote, with a preface explaining that it's talking about the Papal suppression of the Jesuits, and Fritz's decision to offer them asylum as Catholic monarchs kicked them out.
Re: MacDonogh Reread IV
Date: 2020-01-30 02:05 pm (UTC)Re: MacDonogh Reread IV
Date: 2020-01-30 04:22 pm (UTC)Re: MacDonogh Reread IV
Date: 2020-02-08 06:17 am (UTC)Re: MacDonogh Reread IV
Date: 2020-02-08 06:16 am (UTC)*blinks* What?
If you are too eager to snatch at trifles, it gives you a reputation for greed and insatiability which I don't want to have any more than I do already in Europe.
*chokes*
Antinous
Date: 2020-01-29 03:10 am (UTC)I think it's a fair trade: I give you sibling correspondence, you give me boyfriend research. :D
Re: Antinous
Date: 2020-01-29 10:00 am (UTC)Re: Antinous
Date: 2020-01-29 04:28 pm (UTC)Re: Antinous
Date: 2020-01-29 05:06 pm (UTC)(holy cow that's really strict!)
Re: Antinous - The Reader's Report
Date: 2020-01-29 06:35 pm (UTC)What I've learned:
- the two arms were a relatively recent addition, barely a century there, when it came to be owned by Fritz. When the statue was first rediscovered, the arms were missing - there's a copy existent showing it like that - but by the time they ended up owned by Foucquet, minister of Louis XIV (until his fall, which if you've read Anne Golon's Angelique novels like me you know all about), they're described with arms. (Previous owner was Charles I pre beheading.)
- most prominent owner (but NOT the last one) pre Fritz was Prince Eugene. Our author points out Eugene's open secret homosexuality with a great quote by Liselotte in her splendid baroque informal German: " er incommodirt sich
nicht mitt damen, ein par schonne pagen weren beßer sein sach." ("He doesn't inconvienience himself with ladies, a few beautiful pages would be more his kind of thing.") (Liselotte, widow of Philippe, knows what she's talking about!) At that point, the statue was already known as Antinous.
- Irony of ironies: the (not much of a) battle of Philippsburg features three "Antinous"-owners being present - Eugene, Fritz, and the guy in between, Prince Joseph (!) Wenzel von Liechtenstein.
- Joseph Wenzel was the victim of historical retcons in the Frederician and beyond era until ca. the mid 19th century, because the idea that the statue had come straight from Eugene to Fritz was much more pleasing in terms of ranks, two heroes
both gay. But Joseph Wenzel is the lynchpin. He met and socialised with Fritz at Philippsburg. Was among the Austrians pumped for money by Fritz. Did actually, many years later, get money back from Fritz - post 7 Years War. But he did get it back! Behold. Anyway. Once Fritz invaded Silesia, Joseph Wenzel was in the suddenly in the sucky position of having a third of his posessesions owned by Prussia. While simultanously MT to raise the money her Dad didn't leave her taxed her nobles massively for the war effort. You can see where this is going. Joseph Wenzel, possibly the sole noble who spent his remaining life being both a vassal of Fritz and a vassal of MT (for whom he was fighting) due to the position of his territories, eventually offered to sell the statue to Fritz. In a letter sealed with a seal showing Alexander the Great. Which he never used before or after. Gay iconography: we have it.- Fritz, however, did not accept when the offer was first made, in 1743. He accepted in 1747. At which point Joseph Wenzel had tried to sell it to others, including the Saxons, which is why Algarotti already knew of it. (He was the art collector in Dresden at the time.) Algarotti's return and the purchase of the statue by Fritz happened in the same year, as we already knew via Mildred's beautiful story. There's a letter describing the statue to Fritz which says that Algarotti will be able to confirm how beautiful it is.
- Once he'd decided to buy the statue, Fritz was micromanaging the transport etc. Our author definitely ascribes to the "homage to Katte" theory. He also provides context by naming the books on Hadrian and Antinuous available to Fritz at the time, as proven via the Sanssouci library. (Which has only the early positive descriptions, none of the late era negative ones. All in French translation, btw, Fritz didn't read them in Greek or Latin.)
- FW2 did not immediately remove the statue from Sanssouci once Fritz was dead. He had it moved from Sanssouci to the Berlin town residence in the early 1790s, and placed very near his personal rooms (though in the areas open to the public. Our author points out that in the same room, there were a lot of depictions of loyal soldiers giving their lives for their lords. Which context also can be seen in the light of Prussia's increasing series of military disasters and the need to boost up morale.
- then under FW3 Prussia lost to Napoleon, and thus the statue spent a few years in Paris, along with a great many other art pieces. By which point it was renamed from Antinous to Ganymede, so, still sticking with the gay iconography. Then in 1815 it was retrieved and brought back to Berlin. And only then did the "Praying Boy" name start to get listed in the documents.
There are other interesting things here, like about the (gay) art expert Winckelmann (v.v. famous and important to German classicism) , about Joseph Wenzel's career and how all the references to the statue during Fritz' time emphasized it had come to him straight from Eugene, or about the various people involved in the transport. But these were for me the most important aspects.
Re: Antinous - The Reader's Report
Date: 2020-01-29 07:01 pm (UTC)Much of this had turned up in my research, but there were some interesting new things, especially:
Our author points out that in the same room, there were a lot of depictions of loyal soldiers giving their lives for their lords. Which context also can be seen in the light of Prussia's increasing series of military disasters and the need to boost up morale.
I knew he'd put it near his personal rooms and changed the iconography from homoerotic to self-sacrifice to one's emperor, but not how he'd done it. Evolving iconography in an art historical context is a particular, albeit casual, interest of mine. (It was easier when I could look at art history books, which do not lend themselves well to e-books and are thus almost never converted, and cost a million dollars when they are.)
Once he'd decided to buy the statue, Fritz was micromanaging the transport etc.
Did not know that, should have predicted it. ;)
Knew about Eugene being one of the previous owners but not the immediately preceding owner, did not know about Philippsburg (remember, Voltaire was also at Philippsburg!) or Wenzel (or rather, I suspect I had immediately forgotten everything I skimmed about Wenzel).
Had either never learned or forgotten that it was named Ganymede during the Paris years. When you say "by which point" do you mean it was renamed by the French, or that the Prussians had already renamed it?
In a letter sealed with a seal showing Alexander the Great. Which he never used before or after. Gay iconography: we have it.
Did not know this! Oh, man. That's awesome. So is the quote from Liselotte. Liselotte would know!
He also provides context by naming the books on Hadrian and Antinuous available to Fritz at the time, as proven via the Sanssouci library.
Care to share? I think they were named in the article that drew heavily on this monograph that's in our library, but it's possible the article author was not comprehensive. I think I remember that Fritz had annotated or underlined or otherwise marked the Antinous passage in one of the books, thereby confirming that he knew and was interested in this story specifically?
Our author definitely ascribes to the "homage to Katte" theory.
You know, Fritz, I understand you were badly traumatized, but it would be helpful for us if you could *talk* about these things. Anyway, it remains my headcanon.
Thank you ever so much for the reader's report! I will at some point do an Antinous write-up for Rheinsberg.
Which cahn did not at all predict would help push chronologies off the first page of results. :P.Re: Antinous - The Reader's Report
Date: 2020-01-29 09:05 pm (UTC)Ganymed: actually, he was called that twice. During his first time in France (age of Louis XIV); the first document we have when he‘s referred to as Antinous for sure, says our author, is Algarotti‘s letter while working for the Saxons when Wenzel is shopping him around. Then he becomes Ganymed again for the first time in writing in a catalogue of an art books & copies shop in 1794, the first time reasonably cheap plastic copies are sold. Catalogue is from the Rost‘sche Kunstbuchhandlung in Leipzig. (And it’s definitely this statue, the catalogue even says it’s the one owned by the One King. Simultanously, German tour guide books still call him Antinous as well until 1823, the last time he‘s referred to under that name; during his second time in France, with Napoleon, he was back to Ganymed as well. And then, in the second half of the 19th century, „Praying Boy“ becomes the new designation.
Re: Antinous - The Reader's Report
Date: 2020-01-29 09:11 pm (UTC)Voltaire and his niece
Date: 2020-01-31 05:44 am (UTC)So this came up in conversation in another corner of the Fritz fandom (mob-boss-fic-writing fan) the day before you posted it, and we were wondering: how shocking or normal was it that Voltaire was having an affair with his niece? Was this something that like, royals could get away with because royals were expected to do a certain amount of inbreeding, or was it like, "Well, it's technically consanguinity, but they're not getting married, and who cares, anyway?"?
Well, all I have to go on is Zinsser, who doesn't give a cite for this, but she definitely does think it would have been shocking. She says, "The poet had naively assumed that he could keep his secret from Du Chatelet and from the public, and thus avoid the inevitable ridicule and condemnation the incestuous affair would invite."
But then she goes on to say "no one discovered the illicit liaison until the 1950s, when an enterprising dealer offered at auction some of Voltaire's own love notes," and I thought either you or selenak had said that it was known earlier than that?
Re: Voltaire and his niece
Date: 2020-01-31 06:47 am (UTC)https://cahn.dreamwidth.org/166556.html?thread=1767324#cmt1767324
Re: Voltaire and his niece
Date: 2020-02-02 06:27 am (UTC)Also, you say in that comment, "I'm not sure what it says about Voltaire's taste that his three most long term relationships were a) Émilie (yay!), b) Fritz (um), and c) his niece (well)."
...and... yeah. Quoted for truth :P
Re: Voltaire and his niece
Date: 2020-02-02 04:42 pm (UTC)Re: Voltaire and his niece
Date: 2020-02-03 01:34 pm (UTC)Fritz Tells All: The Austrian Dossier (Seckendorff I)
Date: 2020-02-01 07:34 am (UTC)Dad:
About his Father, Iunior is always very unhappy, since he lets him suffer so much and doesn't give him enough to live in dignity and according to his fancy. Because Iunior frankly confessed to the Devil, that there were days when he doesn't have a penny in his pocket, and that with all of that, in addition to the ordinary expenses, a lot of extraordinary expenses to be made, for
example more than five to six hundred ECU per year in small gifts for the servants of the king (..)
Meaning: Gimme more money, Austrians!
Mom:
To Olympia Junior does the justice that she raised her children worthily, as much as the King had left this in her hands to do so, and besides, the she does everything in the world to please him, Junior.
AW:
Of his brother Wilhelm, he says that the later has a good nature and a lot of common sense, and
should do something good, if he can still get into good hands; but that the bad education he receives endeavours to make him stupid like a real peasant, with the result that you can't look at him without feeling pity. He fears that if this goes on for four or five years more, the bad result will become second nature, and (Wilhelm) will become a truly bitter man because it will be impossible to correct later on.
Heinrich and Ferdinand:
Of his two younger brothers, Heinrich and Ferdinand, he has an even worse opinion, since he judges that they don't have the same good nature that Wilhelm has, and thus they will take all the more easily the bad form which must result from the education given to them. Especially from Ferdinand he says that he has all the bad qualities of the father and that when this great childlike vivacity that he inherited from his progenitor, will have passed, he will become the most wicked child of the king.
Let's pause here for the only moment good old Ferdinand, age six at this point (Heinrich is ten), gets singled out for the prediction he'll exceed in anything. Ferdinand, coming menace, this was your day! Also, Heinrich, what did you do that Fritz deemes you not as good natured as AW? (One hopes for a kick under the table during the winter holidays.)
And what about his sisters?
Between his sisters Iunior gives preference to that of Bayreuth for the strength of her mind, in
saying: "She's a fine fly, who knows more "Long than you think".
I venture to guess this is an allusion to a French saying unknown to us.
He is corresponding with her on literary matters. The Margravine tends to take the party of the philosopher Descartes and Iunior that of Wolff. He promised to show the Devil this correspondance.
For the Duchess of Wolffenbuttel - of Braunschweig-Wolffenbüttel, i.e. Charlotte - he esteems her also very much because of the liveliness of her manners and her laughter. He says: „She is a true Harlequin, who also expresses by her letters her humor and will die joking etc."
Princess Sophie, Iunior judges to have the best heart of the world, and beautiful common sense, but he fears she will be ruined by her husband, the margrave of Schwedt, whom he regards as the greatest fool and the greatest villain of the king's states.
For the Duke of Wolffenbuttel - i.e. Charlotte's husband, EC's brother - Iunior esteems him genuinely, saying he is a good sort. „He is not a big genius," he continued, "but a prince who does not know what it is to act badly, and as a mark of his good heart, you can see that when his fortune changed by his becoming reigning Duke, he did not change his behavior in any way."
For the margrave of Bayreuth, he puts him beneath the Duke of Wolffenbuttel in his esteem, and the other princesses there was not discussed this time. (...)
And now comes something that's especially delicious if, like me, you've read the Pleschinski translated Voltaire correspondance relatively recently. Because remember, Fritz had send Voltaire, in the year 1736, a Socrates head - which Émilie reported to Voltaire as showing Fritz, and then they had the Socrates/Alkibiades exchange? I later fund out what this actually was was not a bust but a golden knob for a walking stick. So imagine my cackling when I came across this gem, just a few lines after the sibling assessments:
Iunior showed the Devil a small present that he intends for him. It's a golden apple for a cane
that he had comissioned to be made. It represents the image of Socrates and there are engraved French verses above, which Iunior composed himself. This composition is most flattering for the Devil: because Iunior in these verses represents himself as Alcibiades and looks at the Devil like Socrates.
Oooookay. *wipes tears from eyes*
So:
1.) Fritz, cheating on Voltaire this early on in the relationship? Also, did you have multiple Socrates images made? I thought you were practically broke? Who was the original intended recipient, Voltaire or Mantteuffel?
2.) Heinrich totally kicked him under the table. Or Ferdinand did, since he gets to be the coming menace. I mean, it's totally true that Heinrich isn't as good natured as AW, but he's also ten at this point, so it's remarkable Fritz gets this opinion of him. Alternate possibility: Heinrich wondered out loud whether Fritz cultivating AW was because Fritz wanted to use AW to cajole favors from Dad?
3.) Younger brothers, your educational day will come. Junior is a man with a mission here, clearly.
4.) So did he have sex with Mantteuffel, and do we count Mantteuffel among the boyfriends or the witty pretties?
Re: Fritz Tells All: The Austrian Dossier (Seckendorff I)
Date: 2020-02-02 12:09 am (UTC)showing him "all the tendernesses imaginable", took him into his room afterwards and there confided in him about this family:
Fritz: I can be the most tender person imaginable when there's money involved!
It's worth spelling out to
Let's pause here for the only moment good old Ferdinand, age six at this point (Heinrich is ten), gets singled out for the prediction he'll exceed in anything. Ferdinand, coming menace, this was your day!
Lolsob. Remember, Joseph is also going to be the menace of Europe as soon as he gets a chance!
You get the impression Fritz is incredibly paranoid and pessimistic, and as Lavisse says, he and Wilhelmine were taught from a young age to look for the worst in people and expect the worst. :/
I venture to guess this is an allusion to a French saying unknown to us.
Unknown to us no longer!
https://www.expressio.fr/expressions/une-fine-mouche
"Un fine mouche", "a fine fly," is someone clever, astute, observant. As early as 1389, used to designate someone good at spying and concealing what they know. It's a bit like English "fly on the wall": someone who can listen and learn without being detected.
Iunior showed the Devil a small present that he intends for him. It's a golden apple for a cane that he had comissioned to be made. It represents the image of Socrates and there are engraved French verses above, which Iunior composed himself. This composition is most flattering for the Devil: because Iunior in these verses represents himself as Alcibiades and looks at the Devil like Socrates.
Are you serious? Are you fucking SERIOUS? Omg, all I can take away from this is 1) Fritz is a troll, 2) Fritz wants an erastes SO BAD
and Suhm is in Dresden :-((((.I thought you were practically broke?
Oh, please, Fritz is only broke because he's a total spendthrift. He runs through money like water and can never get enough. Commissioning golden walking stick heads for
prospective erastesfriends is just one way of running through his money. He's always got a sob story, but let's be real, this is WHY he's constantly broke.Who was the original intended recipient, Voltaire or Mantteuffel?
Both? Fritz playing a numbers game? :P
Heinrich totally kicked him under the table. Or Ferdinand did, since he gets to be the coming menace.
Someone did! Or else somebody (probably Ferdinand) dissed education.
1.) Fritz, cheating on Voltaire this early on in the relationship?
It's not cheating if the other guy isn't willing to commit either!
3.) Younger brothers, your educational day will come. Junior is a man with a mission here, clearly.
Yes, and his educational methods won't make *anyone* bitter!
4.) So did he have sex with Mantteuffel, and do we count Mantteuffel among the boyfriends or the witty pretties?
Well, Manteuffel is, if Wikipedia can be trusted, 60 years old in 1736, thus 36 years older than Fritz (Suhm is "only" 21 years older than Fritz, Voltaire 17). If anyone is playing the witty pretty in this relationship, it's Fritz! Not that Fritz is especially pretty, but I have to imagine being young and Crown Prince is even better.
So I see two possibilities here. One is that Manteuffel, Saxon ambassador, patron of Wolff, that Fritz is showing tenderness to and trying to drum up money from, is a surrogate Suhm. Potential boyfriend with a heavy dose of wishful thinking on Fritz's part. It would help to know at what date Fritz turned sour on him. With everyone lying to everyone else, it's hard to tell.
But aww, poor lonely Crown Prince, what with Katte dead, Suhm only around for a few weeks a year (and soon not at all), Voltaire not willing to give up freaking Émilie, and I'm telling you, Fredersdorf may fill more niches than is humanly possible, but he *does not* satisfy those erastes cravings!
Alternately, what I really think I'm getting here is a "make nice to foreign envoy to get some leverage against FW" vibe. Maybe it's just because I got to this passage in Lavisse today, but I'm reminded of the part where he recounts 14-yo Fritz going to French Rottenburg (Katte's Rottenburg, not Fritz's Prussian Rottenburg), envoy from Paris to Berlin, showering him with unsolicited attentions, and trying to get a conspiracy going. [ETA: I have confirmed my memory that Lavisse and Asprey report one key detail differently: Lavisse says Fritz demanded Rottenburg tell him everything he knew about the King was up to. Asprey says Fritz offered to tell Rottenburg everything he knew about what the King was up to. That's quite a difference!]
Given that it's 1736, and Fritz is systematically trying to get money out of everyone with access to any money--he's *just* moved or is about to move into Rheinsberg--and favors out of everyone, down to AW probably spying on Dad for him, and is even willing to use Grumbkow as long as G can make himself useful...one can read the Manteuffel relationship with a great deal of cynicism.
Quite likely: Fritz starts out hoping that Manteuffel will be another Suhm but conveniently close at hand, gets disillusioned, starts using him, has no hesitation in kicking him out as soon as it's time to invade Silesia. At what point we switch from "hoping" to "disillusioned," I don't know. I don't even know whether it's before or after that October 1737 letter to Grumbkow.
Sex? Not impossible, but imo, unlikely.
I reserve the right to change any and all opinions with more data. :)
Re: Fritz Tells All: The Austrian Dossier (Seckendorff I)
Date: 2020-02-02 07:42 am (UTC)I know! *handkiss*
AW "good natured but mind of a peasant", Ferdinand "most wicked child of the King", Heinrich "bad nature":
Lolsob. Remember, Joseph is also going to be the menace of Europe as soon as he gets a chance!
You get the impression Fritz is incredibly paranoid and pessimistic, and as Lavisse says, he and Wilhelmine were taught from a young age to look for the worst in people and expect the worst. :/
True, though in this instance I think there are some other things going on. To wit, as Fritz himself knows, foreign powers are totally ready to supply a prince with money and use him politically if they can. And he's talking to an envoy. He doesn't want Saxony, or anyone else, hedging their bets on AW instead of him, and certainly not share that money with Heinrich and Ferdinand once they get older (since he has no idea how long FW is going to be around for, and true, now H & F are kids, but Fritz himself was ready to conspire at 14/15, and that's only four more years for Heinrich to go).
...and H & F just kicked him under the table. I totally maintain that happened.
It occurs to me that we haven't quoted yet the famous "how to treat
my brothersprinces of the blood" pasage from Fritz' 1752 Political Testament, which goes thusly:There are a type of hybrid creatures who are neither rulers nor private men, and who are difficult to govern. These are the princes of the blood. Their high origin infuses them with a certain arrogance which they call nobility. it makes obedience unbearable to them, and any kind of submission hateful. If there are any intrigues, cabales or plotting to be feared, it could originate from them. In Prussia, they have less power than elsewhere. But the best method to deal with them consists of putting them in their place with vigour, to treat them with the distinction due to their high origin, to heap ceremonial honors on them but to keep them far away from any business of the state, and to entrust them with a military command only with it is safe to do so, i.e. if they possess talent and a reliable character.
Now granted, "princes of the blood" in Prussia also includes the Schwedt cousins, who are, after all, grandkids from F1's half brothers (courtesy of F1's detested stepmother he accused of having poisoned his older brothers). But somehow I don't think Fritz, writing these lines in 1752 (possibly when he's just returned from celebrating Heinrich's wedding), is not thinking of the Margrave of Schwedt...
Are you serious? Are you fucking SERIOUS? Omg, all I can take away from this is 1) Fritz is a troll, 2) Fritz wants an erastes SO BAD
and Suhm is in Dresden:-((((.See, I'd have put as "Wanted: One Sugar Daddy". :) Well, granted, Voltaire would never have been that. He was supporting a lot of social causes in his life time with the lots of money he gathered, including schools for Swiss peasants, but I really doubt he'd have given his royal Prussian pen pal a single dime at that point. So "erastes" it is.
But aww, poor lonely Crown Prince, what with Katte dead, Suhm only around for a few weeks a year (and soon not at all), Voltaire not willing to give up freaking Émilie, and I'm telling you, Fredersdorf may fill more niches than is humanly possible, but he *does not* satisfy those erastes cravings!
Clearly. Though I agree with you it's likely a mixture of motives, i.e. that and Fritz as ever looking for leverage and money. We should also consider he's gotten pretty good at dissembling (even towards other pros) by then; Seckendorff the Nephew thinks he's really become buddies with Grumbkow (as opposed to use and be used), whereas we know that when Grumbkow kicks it, Fritz is all "yay" in a letter to Wilhelmine.
I'm still cackling about the multiple use of golden Socrates heads on canes and Socrates/Alcibiades analogies in 1736, though.
Re: Fritz Tells All: The Austrian Dossier (Seckendorff I)
Date: 2020-02-03 03:56 am (UTC)This is an excellent point. Especially since, as you said elsewhere, Fritz was having to quash rumors about AW even into the late 1730s.
...and H & F just kicked him under the table. I totally maintain that happened.
Enjoy the kicking while you can, boys! Only a few more years till he becomes king.
keep them far away from any business of the state
Yeah, Fritz's MO is consistently: "Spot a threat a mile away, take pre-emptive action." When it comes to fight-or-flight, he's locked in "fight" mode, and his threat-detector is so oversensitive it picks up on false positive after false positive. And that's why European powers making defensive alliances could count on him to invade at some point.
See, I'd have put as "Wanted: One Sugar Daddy". :) Well, granted, Voltaire would never have been that. He was supporting a lot of social causes in his life time with the lots of money he gathered, including schools for Swiss peasants, but I really doubt he'd have given his royal Prussian pen pal a single dime at that point. So "erastes" it is.
You know, you just went through my exact thought process. :D Obviously, Fritz wants money so bad he'll go through people like Seckendorff and EC. The only part of "Wanted: One Sugar Daddy" I would quibble with is the word "one". "Wanted: As many sugar daddies as possible." ;) But Voltaire's never going to give him money, so I have to assume the Socrates/Alcibiades thing comes out of a craving for an erastes, preferably but not necessarily one with access to ready money they're wiling to make available to Fritz.
Clearly. Though I agree with you it's likely a mixture of motives, i.e. that and Fritz as ever looking for leverage and money.
Indeed. Though I threw the erastes possibility out there for the sake of gossipy sensationalism and in answer to your question of whether he and Manteuffel had sex, what I think was most likely going on was primarily self-interest. I'm sure he would have loved another Suhm, but I don't think realizing that wasn't what he had slowed him down one bit in his quest for leverage and money.
I'm still cackling about the multiple use of golden Socrates heads on canes and Socrates/Alcibiades analogies in 1736, though.
We're all still cackling about that. Hey, when you hit on a winning formula, why hold back? :D
Re: Fritz Tells All: The Austrian Dossier (Seckendorff I)
Date: 2020-02-02 05:07 pm (UTC)Re: Fritz Tells All: The Austrian Dossier (Seckendorff I)
Date: 2020-02-02 08:44 pm (UTC)Re: Fritz Tells All: The Austrian Dossier (Seckendorff I)
Date: 2020-02-08 09:34 pm (UTC)I totally choked at this. Poor Ferdinand! Now I want some kind of Mafia crime AU where the surprise twist ending is that all the plots against mob!Fritz have been orchestrated by Ferdinand!
and also where he kicked Fritz under the tableRe: Fritz Tells All: The Austrian Dossier (Seckendorff I)
Date: 2020-02-09 03:46 am (UTC)He can go by
FredoFerdo.Re: Fritz Tells All: The Austrian Dossier (Seckendorff I)
Date: 2020-02-09 12:37 pm (UTC)With Liars among Liars: The Austrian Dossier (Seckendorf II)
Date: 2020-02-01 09:49 am (UTC)Fréderic Wartensleben me raconte des particularités de Potsdam. Der König ist gesund, sagt er, wünscht zu sterben und hernach wieder auf zustehen, um die Veränderung mit anzuſehen Alexandre veut parier sa tête, que Junior n'a pas donné commission à Lichtenstein, de m'éloigner d'ici. Der Kronprinz hält mich vor unconversabel.
"Friedrich Wartensleben told me of the Potsdam oddities. The King is healthy, he says, wishes to die and to resurrect, in order to get to watch the changes. Alexander wants to bet his head, which Junior did not commissioned Lichtenstein to walk away from here. (? Help me out here, mes amies?) The crown prince doesn't consider me worthy of conversation."
Hence Other Seckendorff increasingly relying on Mantteuffel, I suppose. Anyway, this linguistic mix does make for an odd reading experience. Still, there are all kinds of interesting cross connections, like this one. Remember, Biberius = Grumbkow. The Countess Fuchs may be chief lady in waiting to the current empress, but more importantly, she's the governess of the archduchess Maria Theresia. Orondates = original Seckendorff? Suhm? I honestly don't know. It's not FW, that's clear from the context.)
I know from Biberius, that Pöllnitz wrote to the countess Fuchs, grand-mistress
from the Empress, a twenty page letter with sharp sayings from Orondates. And the Devil will try to ingratiate himself with Pöllnit so that Pöllnitz shows him the letter, which is sure to make for an entertaining reading. "t is very good that Orondates is gone: because with his suspicions he would have ruined everything, and given all the trouble which he enjoyed stirring between the crownl prince and the king, he would soon have put everything into confusion and disunity.
More than it already is, you mean? Anyway, this also makes it look like Orondates = Original Seckendorff:
Borck (the general). He told Biberius that the king according to Gotter sounds friendly towards Orondates: “It's not true that I don't like him. I deem him to be a great General and a reasonable and capable man."
The journal mentions "Katte" repeatedly, but context makes it apparant it's always Hans Heinrich. Also, in 1734, when journal writer Seckendorff arrives, FW has one of his worst dropsy attacks resulting in touching father-son scene on page 11 already:
The Crown Prince is truly touched by the king's situation; there are always tears in his eyes, he's cried his heart out, has worked to get a more comfortable bed for the King; hadn't wanted to leave Potsdam. At last the King has forced him to, and told him not to return before Saturday afternoon. "As long as the king does live, I would give an arm to extend his life by twenty years." The King has called him "Fritzchen" all the time.
In case anyone thinks Wilhelmine is exaggarating Mom's hostility towards her (and EC) in the first half of the 1730s, here's Seckendorff backing her up, on page 69, June 8th:
Olympia. She seems to be very indifferent to the subject of Vitellius' disease, so apparently is tired lying to him, and hoping well for the future; but she could be terribly wrong in her calculation: because, although she hates the crown princess and the later being liked by Junior the most, Olympia at the same time also hates the heriditary princess of Bayreuth and does her ill services with her father, telling him all kind of odious stories about her. And that's where she spoils everything with Junior, who values this Bayreuth sister beyond expression and who, according to appearances, will make make her shine in favour one day.
Well, she won't "spoil everything with Junior" but it supports that at least 1730s Fritz was aware SD was a different mother to Wilhelmine than she was to him. Now I knew via Wilhelmine's memoirs she hadn't given up her English marriage intentions but transferred them to Charlotte, only to be foiled again. Something I've also learned through Seckendorff's diary is that SD then transferred them to Ulrike, no more with the Prince of Wales - who'd tied the knot by then - but a younger brother. No dice, though as we know, Ulrike will be the only daughter to become Queen. And this, Hohenzollern boys, is why your sisters have a different impression of Mom than you do. Not that FW as a father to his daughters was anything to write home about. Voit was the Bayreuth envoy to Prussia.
June 13th: Voit from Bayreuth gets an audience with the King. - "Should I congratulate or send my condolences? My daughter has to let herself be f... better."
: The news question can't have been the birth of his granddaughter, since that girl was already born in August 1732, so I'm assuming it was the death of the old Margrave? Anyway, the FW quote is in German, and either the editor or Seckendorf writes f.... Same word than in English, if you're wondering, with an i instead of an u.
Everyone distrusts everyone else on the court. Discussed is whether or not Fritz gets to join the already sadly senile Eugene at Philippsburg:
28th The king graciously refuses to permit the crown prince permission to join the campaign. Alexander Wartensleben tells me that the King's illness is just pretense, and that father and son are in good standing with each other.
29th: The King gives the Crown Prince permission to join the campaign, under the condition that the two imperials corpses join his etc.
No detail is too insignificant to be noted down for its potential political implication, as when FW orders little Ferdinand to get a Polish page so he picks up some of the language. Potential Prussian designs on Poland? Also, here's other Seckendorff on a much debated topic:
Frederic Wartensleben tells me, that crown prince sleeps with the crown princess, and that he reprimanded Count Truchsess for what the later said about my uncle and me.
On July 6th, FW is having second thoughts again about letting Fritz hang out with Eugene:
The King is afraid that Junior might become too good an Imperial if he leaves him too long with the (imperial) army. (No danger there, FW.)
So what's your opinion on chatty Pöllnitz, FW?
"Pöllnitz is a writer. A writer doesn't have a clue about soldiers. If Pöllnitz tells me about the Ansbach and Bayreuth courts, I believe him; but if he talks about complete an incomplete armies, he doesn't know what he's talking about.
When Fritz is feeling let down by Eugene who has lost most of his memory not being the legendary figure he expected, and the campaign is mostly boring, FW is gleeful:
Judge for yourself whether I shouldn't bee happy that the old guy is made fun off, especially since I can't stand the fact the Emperor and I share a Field Marshal. You may write all this in confidence to General Seckendorff.
While FW will indeed be indignant about not being told of the FS/MT marriage until after the fact, he evidently knew Franzl was a primary candidate for her hand, because in October 1735, i.e. before the marriage, the journal notes:
He charged Gotter with all the demonstrations of submission imaginable for the emperor and as many for the duke of Lorraine. "He should lay himself on the feet of the Emperor and kiss his ass."
FW is also protesting again and again how much he hates the French and how he'd never desert the Emperor for them. This is why Austria trading Lorraine to the French for the Pragmatic Sanction acknowledgment (remember, FS had to give up his dukedom for marrying MT) is regarded by him as as a betrayal (though not as much as the fact MT's dad doesn't back his claim on Jülich and Berg).
In January 1736, relationships between FW and Fritz are on the downslide again:
Biberius tells me about the secrets, that Junior confided in Pöllnitz. The King encourages him to produce children, had him made a marital bed out of velvet. Biberius does not believe, that Junior will survive the father, but that pessimus Wilhelmus will succeed one day.
Pessimus Wilhelmus, the worst William, is of course AW. But mostly FW is busy getting in advance indignant about the impeding marriage and the other claims on Jülich and Berg:
The Emperor treats me and all HRE princes like pushovers, which I certainly do not deserve form the Emperor. God knows I never arlied with France. I always ask myself whether I ever went against the Emperor's interests, and I can't find anything. And now I'm pushed aside for that son of a whore Mantelsack, and I doubt they'll notify me of the Duke of Lorraine marriage!
The Emperor, soothingly, sends some tall guys. Observes Seckendorff the journal writer, in German: "If France had as many tall fellows to offer as the Emperor, Prussia might be French by now, but this wouldn't have any more real effects as the professed allegiance to the Emperor.
And finally, the entry that caused Mildred to track down the journal to begin with, in May:
The king is outraged at the ignominious manner in which the mperial court treated him to what he claims in the matter of the preliminaries of peace, as well as regarding the report of the marriage of the duke of Lorraine, and the way the court still neglects him to this very hour. The king doesn't give a f- about the tall guys that the emperor can give him; he wants to be honored and distinguished as he thinks he deserved by his past conduct, which he always seeks to justify, saying by pointing at the Crown Prince: "Here is someone who will one day avenge me". And
although the king begins to moderate a lot in his passions and speeches, he cannot yet moderate anger when it comes to the negligence of the imperial court towards him,and tears come out of him in anger.
Then follows the amazing "What I really think about my family: By Fritz" entry courtesy of Mantteuffel, which I'm posted above, and that's as far as I've gotten for now. Thought? (Beyond: This has to be the biggest tantrum thrown about not getting a wedding invite in that century.)
Re: With Liars among Liars: The Austrian Dossier (Seckendorf II)
Date: 2020-02-02 12:54 am (UTC)"Friedrich Wartensleben told me of the Potsdam oddities. The King is healthy, he says, wishes to die and to resurrect, in order to get to watch the changes. Alexander wants to bet his head, which Junior did not commissioned Lichtenstein to walk away from here. (? Help me out here, mes amies?) The crown prince doesn't consider me worthy of conversation."
Wow, that is special. My guess: Alexandre (Wartensleben, probably Friedrich's brother and Katte's first cousin on his mother's side) is willing to bet his head (stake his life) that Junior didn't commission Lichtenstein to get me (Seckendorff or Friedrich?) sent away from here (probably court). What my weak French can't be sure of is whether that "que" means he's willing to bet that Fritz *didn't* commission Lichtenstein to get rid of the speaker, which would be my first reading of "que", and presupposes that someone has accused Fritz of doing it, or if it could possibly means the opposite, that he's willing to bet his head that Fritz did. In which case in English I'd expect "if", not "that", but who knows about French.
In the passage immediately before the Alcibiades/Socrates one, I noticed that Fritz disliked someone named Derschau intensely and was hoping Derschau would get a commission to a regiment so he would be sent away by the king and replaced by Alexandre Wartensleben, whom Fritz must like more.
Lichtenstein is Joseph Wenzel, Prince of Lichtenstein, current owner of the Antinous statue, as you informed us, and according to Wikipedia, Imperial envoy to Berlin 1735-1736.
Orondates = original Seckendorff? Suhm?
I'm skeptical it's Suhm, because I have no evidence that Suhm was ever a general, much less respected as one. Who *was* a general--yes, Seckendorff--but also Lichtenstein. Per Wikipedia, "Joseph was primarily a general and was a very successful campaigner. In 1745, he was made Generalissimo in Italy and was victorious the following year at the Battle of Piacenza. In 1753 he was made General Chief Commander in Hungary. In one of the greatest achievements of his career, he reorganised the Habsburg artillery, partially financed out of his own pocket."
And he left Berlin in 1736, if you trust Wikipedia. I don't know the dates of your passage where the writer is glad he's gone, but the timing might line up. Also, all that bit about "suspicions" and "enjoyed stirring up trouble" just doesn't give me a Seckendorff vibe, although god knows what one courtier will accuse another of. I'm still leaning toward Lichtenstein as Orondates.
Okay, now I'm searching for "Orondate" through the text.
Oh, look at that! The first line on the next page after your passage where FW says Orondates is a capable general reads, "car Gotter ne dit pas, que le roi n'avoit pu souffrir Lichtenstein."
So Orondates = Lichtenstein! Detective Mildred is on the case. :D
Oh, and of course, the first use of the name Orondates (p. 56, May 22) is actually footnoted by the editor as the Prince of Lichtenstein. Well, yes, editor, I had figured that out!
June 13th: Voit from Bayreuth gets an audience with the King. - "Should I congratulate or send my condolences? My daughter has to let herself be f... better."
: The news question can't have been the birth of his granddaughter, since that girl was already born in August 1732
Weird, I remember that quote from MacDonogh, but he says it was on the occasion of the birth of the granddaughter. Which makes sense out of context, but you're right, the timing is weird. The old margrave died just one month before, so maybe he's referring to the fact that the new margrave doesn't have a male heir of his body.
The King is afraid that Junior might become too good an Imperial if he leaves him too long with the (imperial) army. (No danger there, FW.)
Ha! Not for lack of trying. MacDonogh reports, on the other side, "Eugene himself had set some store by the meeting. He wanted to eliminate Frederick’s gallic leanings and bring him round to the imperial cause. In the end, however, he found that the French 'poison' had gone too deep."
Don't worry, Eugene, the French aren't going to be too happy with him either! Junior's going to be an equal opportunity offender of nations.
Re: With Liars among Liars: The Austrian Dossier (Seckendorf II)
Date: 2020-02-02 07:49 am (UTC)This is probably the same person whom Seckendorff Jr. later in his Vienna debriefing names as "Derschauer" (as in, Fritz still hates him for 1730) - and this makes me wonder whether it's actually "Dessauer"? (I.e. typical 18th century misspelling?) As in, Old Dessauer, this guy, whom people certainly thought Fritz disliked and assumed would fire but whom he actually kept used to invade Silesia in 1740?
Kudos to you, Detective, for identifying Lichtenstein as Orondates!
Re: With Liars among Liars: The Austrian Dossier (Seckendorf II)
Date: 2020-02-02 05:06 pm (UTC)whom he actually kept used to invade Silesia in 1740
Huh, I thought Fritz left him behind and said it would look bad if he took his tutor to war? (I.e., Dessauer would get credit.) Ah, Wikipedia says, "The prince [Dessauer] himself was not often employed in the king's [Fritz's] own army, though his sons held high commands under Frederick. The king, indeed, found Leopold somewhat difficult to manage, and the prince spent most of the campaigning years up to 1745 in command of an army of observation on the Saxon frontier."
So yeah, Fritz doesn't seem to be a fan.
It seems from that paragraph in Seckendorff that I mentioned, about Fritz wanting Derschau sent away, that Fritz doesn't like this Derschau guy's influence on the King. But one, I don't think the Alte Dessauer is getting sent away by FW any time soon, I think that's a lost cause. Also, it occurs to me that Fritz said "get his own regiment," and the Dessauer should be way past that point.
Okay, searching through the journal, the first instance of "Derschau" is footnoted merely as "colonel and favorite of the king." So it can't be the Old Dessauer, but it could be one of his sons.
Although Wikipedia said Fritz gave the sons high command. Let me read their entries.
Oh, ha, guess what! Not our guy (at least if the editor can be trusted to have the rank right), but one of the Alte Dessauer's sons actually defected to the Austrians in 1743!
I still can't figure out who the colonel who's favorite of the king and Fritz hates is, though.
But okay, from googling, it looks like Derschau is the name of a Prussian noble family. Aha, it must be this guy. Christian Reinhold von Derschau. He was a colonel at the right time, got his own regiment in 1738, and was a close confidant of FW.
Found him!
Re: With Liars among Liars: The Austrian Dossier (Seckendorf II)
Date: 2020-02-02 06:46 pm (UTC)Re: With Liars among Liars: The Austrian Dossier (Seckendorf II)
Date: 2020-02-02 06:52 pm (UTC)Fritz was really kind of a mixed bag, good and bad. (That's why he's my fave, let's be real.)
Re: With Liars among Liars: The Austrian Dossier (Seckendorf II)
Date: 2020-02-03 09:27 am (UTC)Though I have to say, I can now see where the German editor of the Gutenberg version who says he cut down Trenck's three volume Rokoko rants and emo to a one volume book "where nothing of value was lost, and a decent adventure novel gained" is coming from. Some of it is due to a change of tastes and conservatism, sure. As in the cut of the entire dedication to the Ghost of Frederick the Great, which is just so very Trenckian, and all the cuts where Trenck snarks multi directional about the power of monarchs. Also I am amused that where Gutenberg Trenck just says that slanderous rumor has Fritz asleep at Soor and being captured by Austrian Trenck, then released due to a bribe, which he, Prussian Trenck, knows to be false because Fritz wasn't even there, he'd already been up and about since 2 am, English translated Trenck renders the evil rumor he's refuting as the King supposedly being in bed with Demoiselle de Schwerin when Austrian Trenck shows up. (I'm with you, Prussian Trenck: Pure slander, that one.)
But Prussian Trenck also rarely misses an opportunity for an outburst about how his poor, poor children have been robbed of their rights to the Trenck estates due to all the injustice that has been happening to him in his life, he's publishing these memoirs mainly for their sake, or no one suffered as much as him, how everyone knows he's the greatest and most blameless and a model of brave manhood and so forth. If the Gutenberg edition already left me with the impression of "he does protest too much", good lord, does the English edition ever. Hence my slightly greater sympathy for the stiff upper lip favouring Gutenberg edition editor.
Re: With Liars among Liars: The Austrian Dossier (Seckendorf II)
Date: 2020-02-04 06:52 am (UTC)Agreed, but! You could just as easily start off your reign with a "don't fuck with me" example, and Fritz chose to create goodwill instead.
If you ask me, the difference is that he didn't feel any of those people were a threat to him any more, and so he was able to reason about what would serve his interests best.
English translated Trenck renders the evil rumor he's refuting as the King supposedly being in bed with Demoiselle de Schwerin when Austrian Trenck shows up.
Aha! Well, good thing we acquired the English version, even if it is heavy on the rants and emo. The ghost dedication is priceless!
(I'm with you, Prussian Trenck: Pure slander, that one.)
And not even convincing slander! Fritz in bed with a woman in 1745, pfff. I'm still divided on whether he was even still going to bed with men in 1745!
Hence my slightly greater sympathy for the stiff upper lip favouring Gutenberg edition editor.
I find this very amusing. :D
Re: With Liars among Liars: The Austrian Dossier (Seckendorf II)
Date: 2020-02-10 04:49 am (UTC)Yeah, my school French agrees with mildred's first reading ("Alexandre wants to bet his head that Junior has not given a commission to Lichenstein"). But I guess I can't rule out her second reading, although it's not something I've really seen before (in my not-very-large experience of French).
"Should I congratulate or send my condolences? My daughter has to let herself be f... better."
Man, FW.
The Emperor, soothingly, sends some tall guys. Observes Seckendorff the journal writer, in German: "If France had as many tall fellows to offer as the Emperor, Prussia might be French by now
LOL forever. Someday I will get to the Hille tall guys comment, but let me just say here that I find it utterly hilarious how all of Europe knows about FW's tall guy thing and thinks it's as crazy as, well, we do.
Re: With Liars among Liars: The Austrian Dossier (Seckendorf II)
Date: 2020-02-10 04:54 am (UTC)Same, the only reason I came up with it is because it requires context that we don't have to understand why Alexandre is betting his head that Junior *didn't* give him a commission. But it's a very, very elliptical entry, and it's more than likely they've had an argument in which Seckendorf was insisting that Fritz *did* try to get rid of him.
let me just say here that I find it utterly hilarious how all of Europe knows about FW's tall guy thing and thinks it's as crazy as, well, we do.
All of Europe, or at least the heads of state, know about FW's tall guy thing because
a) They send him tall guys to get on his good side (the Emperor, Peter the Great, etc.)
b) They get pissed off when he kidnaps tall guys from their country and starts diplomatic incidents (August, George, many others)
c) All of the above.
But what is really going on here?: The Austrian Dossier (Seckendorff III)
Date: 2020-02-01 12:24 pm (UTC)"(...)because it would make your state now happier, and would save you from many future worries, because when we see that You have no lineage, we will marry your brother William, and then the scheming and plotting will be inevitable" .
Junior agreed to all this; "But", he said, "I can't embrace my wife with passion, and when I sleep with her, I do it rather out of duty than by inclination."
Mantteuffel points out that the earth would be barren if the only children born were born to couples who loved each other, and hey, gird your loins, I hear she's got at least a nice exterior?
Junior: ,, This is true, her form is very pretty; but i have never been in love with her. However, I should be the last man, in the world if I didn't esteem her: because she has a very sweet nature, a more docile woman one cannot imagine, she's excessively compliant, and hastens to do everything she believes can please me. Also, she can't complain that I'm not sleeping with her. I truly don't know why there isn't a child there already."
In case Seckendorff Jr. is slow on the uptake, Manteuffel has a literary hint for him:
The Devil makes me read the Roman History of Des Echarts and points out the character of Junior, who is the same as that of Emperor Hadrian.
On December 1st (still 1736), FW is not a fan of Suhm: Upon hearing of the appointment of Suhm as envoy to the court of Petersburg, the King says: "He's an arch villain, and I'm sorry I didn't hang him while I had him here."
In early 1737, Seckendorff is not impressed with teenage AW: Prince William had a weak spell yesterday at the parade; however he was obliged to dine with us, where he cut a sad figure.
On the other hand, he has a soft spot for coming menace Ferdinand, when it's Ferdinand's turn to dine with Dad and his smoking chums:
Little Prince Ferdinand did not contribute much, other than his kindness to keep the king in good spirits. But above all, this kind child deserves to be reported because, wanting to have something of Biberius, who was sitting next to him, he uses the expression: Your excellence, be as gracious as to give me something of this." To which Bberius replied: "I can't dole out graces; the King alone is capable of providing grace." To which the prince replied: "OH yes, your excellency, but you are Field Marshall now, so you will be able to act gracefully." Biberius couldn't help but show his amusement. The King smiled; but the Beard" - La Barbe, the Beard, is der alte Dessauer, Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Dessau - behaved with the air of a Hercules in his fury.
(Because Grumbkow has been made a Field Marshal.)
Seckendorff Jr. has the bad luck that Original Seckendorff, the Field Marshall, temporarily falls from grace back home in Vienna and has been arrested and imprisoned in Graz, where he'll stay until MT ascends to the throne. (She'll release him.) This means Seckendorff the nephew is called back from Prussia. In Vienna, he first tries to make good weather for uncle and also shares gossip with people bitching about MT's new husband. Remember, they all think Franzl is the future ruler, nobody considers MT will rule, and they aren't impressed by his lack of military prowess. Also, he's a foreigner from Lorraince, so basically half French, and everyone hates the French. So Seckendorff Jr. notes:
Dissension at home. The Duke of Lorraine has all Austrians as enemies. He is at odds with his parents-in-law and they are displeased with him; the archduchess alone stands by her husband. The Duke is very annoyed with Bartenstein and has cause to be. He's only told of the May decisions after his return to the army. Bartenstein has told him to his face that after the Emperor has done him the honor of giving him his inheriting daughter, he was to submit himself to the Emperor's will in everything.
Like I said: Franzl's early life in Vienna was one long humiliation conga. (With the important exception of MT standing by him, as he would stand by her in the years to come.)
On page 206, Seckendorff the nephew is asked to give his assessment on the topic: Fritz: Hot or not? Well, he also has to say whether or not he thinks FW is still trustworthy, but we have our priorities here, don't we?
About the feelings of the King. Myself: "The King has a good heart, he is at his core imperially minded and remembers the dinner in Prague with enoyment." Himself: "Ah, if only his actions would fit with this supposed good heart!" Myself: "One has to bind him by solid and mutually beneficial conditions." Himself: "One has to see how that could be accomplished."
About the person of the Crown Prince. His figure: handsome, looks like a Hannover, wears his own hair, looks pretty masculine, if flabby." "Does he love horses and hunting?" "No, he is a terrible rider and hunter; he loves reading, music, magnificence and "la bonne chère"."
"The good dear? Is this code for something? Anyway, the obvious question is asked: how reconciled are father and son, really?
His relationship with the King his father. "In public, things are well. But there are still needling phrases. Besides, the Prince in his heart has never forgotten his arrest in Wesel, and he hates with an eternal hatred all which contributed, i.e. Derschauer." Himself: "But not Grumbkow?" "No. Biberius is corresponding with him; he sits at his table and drinks from his wine."
His relationship with the Crown Princess. "Good; she's pretty, compliant; they sleep together."
His religion: "That of an honest man; God; all confessed will be forgiven." The Crown Prince loves pomp and grandeur; he'll reestablish all the court offices; he wants to have princes and counts at his court.
See, Seckendorff Jr., with that kind of intelligence it's not surprising poor MT was caught unawares. If she even had time to read the files before he invaded. It's on page 206 ff if you want to read it for yourself.
Anyway: Once it's apparant Uncle Seckendorff isn't going to get out of Graz any time soon, Seckendorff the nephew decides that his career in Austrian services is doomed for now, and requests to be allowed to transfer to Anhalt. Where he'll continue to work for Fritz' brother-in-law, one of the two odious ones. Which is how this volume concludes.
Re: But what is really going on here?: The Austrian Dossier (Seckendorff III)
Date: 2020-02-02 01:40 am (UTC)Oh, that's where that quote's from! And the rest of it I recognize too.
On December 1st (still 1736), FW is not a fan of Suhm: Upon hearing of the appointment of Suhm as envoy to the court of Petersburg, the King says: "He's an arch villain, and I'm sorry I didn't hang him while I had him here."
Ha. While I was tracking down other Seckendorf's diary yesterday, I ran across the episode where FW threatened to hang Suhm while he did have him there, in Carlyle.
As usual, a diplomatic incident starts with FW's recruiters of tall men recruiting men they weren't supposed to, and this time the Saxon officials chased them onto Brandenburg territory, captured them, and imprisoned them. Tracking down Carlyle's source tells me this took place in 1727, and that Mauvillon is writing no later than 1741! And Mauvillon cites the letters between August and FW, so we have primary sources for this episode. Anyway, here's Carlyle:
"Captain Natzmer to swing on the gallows? Taken on Brandenburg territory too, and not the least notice given me?" Friedrich Wilhelm blazes into flaming whirlwind; sends an Official Gentleman, one Katsch, to his Excellenz Baron von Suhm (the Crown-Prince's cultivated friend), with this appalling message: "If Natzmer be hanged, for certain I will use reprisals; you yourself shall swing!" Whereupon Suhm, in panic, fled over the marches to his Master; who bullied him for his pusillanimous terrors; and applied to Friedrich Wilhelm, in fine frenzy of indignant astonishment, "What, in Heaven's name, such meditated outrage on the law of nations, and flat insult to the Majesty of Kings, can have meant?" Friedrich Wilhelm, the first fury being spent, sees that he is quite out of square; disavows the reprisals upon Suhm. "Message misdelivered by my Official Gentleman, that stupid Katsch; never did intend to hang Suhm; oh, no;" with much other correspondence; [In Mauvillon (ii. 189-195) more of it than any one will read.]— and is very angry at himself, and at the Natzmer affair, which has brought him into this bad pass. Into open impropriety; into danger of an utter rupture, had King August been of quarrelsome turn. But King August was not quarrelsome; and then Seckendorf and the Tobacco-Parliament,— on the Kaiser's score, who wants Pragmatic Sanction and much else out of these two Kings, and can at no rate have them quarrel in the present juncture,— were eager to quench the fire. King August let Natzmer go; Suhm returned to his post; [Pollnitz, ii. 254.] and things hustled themselves into some uneasy posture of silence again;— uneasy to the sensitive fancy of Friedrich Wilhelm above all. This is his worst collision with his Neighbor of Saxony; and springing from one's Hobby again!—
I am amused by "more of it than anyone will ever read." Carlyle is fond of stating that the Fritz/Suhm correspondence is boring and no one will ever read it.
That [Wolff] is the staple of the famous Suhm correspondence; staple which nobody could now bear to be concerned with.
And again,
We need not doubt the wholesome charm and blessing of so intimate a Correspondence to the Crown-Prince: and indeed his real love of the amiable Suhm, as Suhm's of him, comes beautifully to light in these Letters: but otherwise they are not now to be read without weariness, even dreariness, and have become a biographical reminiscence merely.
Why do I find this so amusing? Because in the course of my detective work, some time ago, I ran across the following preface to another bio of Fritz, by one John Abbott:
Mr. Carlyle has written the Life of Frederick the Great in six closely printed volumes of over five hundred pages each. It is a work of much ability and accuracy. There are, however, but few persons, in this busy age, who can find time to read three thousand pages of fine type, descriptive of events, many of which have lost their interest, and have ceased to possess any practical value.
In other words, "TL;DR, Carlyle, no1curr."
Right before this in his opening paragraph, Abbott also has a lovely "You couldn't make these people up!" line:
The novelist who should create such a character as that of Frederick William, or such a career as that of Frederick the Great, would be deemed guilty of great exaggeration, and yet the facts contained in this volume are beyond all contradiction.
Quoted for truth.
The Devil makes me read the Roman History of Des Echarts and points out the character of Junior, who is the same as that of Emperor Hadrian.
Ahahahaha. Let's see: Manteuffel, Fritz, Hadrian; Lichtenstein, Fritz, Alexander the Great. Fritz, your orientation is a poorly kept secret. :P
"No, he is a terrible rider and hunter; he loves reading, music, magnificence and "la bonne chère"."
"The good dear? Is this code for something?
Google tells me it means "good food." Which is definitely true of Fritz. His desire to set a good table for himself and his friends is half the reason he's chronically in debt at Rheinsberg, and as we've seen, he was still setting a good table on August 5, 1786. (
His religion: "That of an honest man; God; all confessed will be forgiven." The Crown Prince loves pomp and grandeur; he'll reestablish all the court offices; he wants to have princes and counts at his court.
See, Seckendorff Jr., with that kind of intelligence it's not surprising poor MT was caught unawares.
Hahahaha. Go Fritz. You fool those Austrians!
Which is how this volume concludes.
Volume two seems harder to turn up than volume one was, but it looks like volume one was the interesting one anyway.
Thanks for your write-ups! As usual, our strengths align: I dig things up, you read and report!
Re: But what is really going on here?: The Austrian Dossier (Seckendorff III)
Date: 2020-02-02 07:58 am (UTC)Yes, I've seen it multiple times, too, usually without saying where it was from. Incidentally, do we think he's bluffing (and relying on the fact EC was loyal and would never have told anyone anything to the contrary), or did he try a few times before giving up?
As usual, a diplomatic incident starts with FW's recruiters of tall men recruiting men they weren't supposed to
Am not in the slightest surprised. The Seckendorff diary covers yet another one of these, which I was also familiar with from Wilhelmine's 1730s letters, when FW's recruiters grabbed a bunch of Franconians who were from the Prince Bishop of Bamberg's territory, not from Bayreuth.
LOL about Carlysle. BTW, did FW have a particular beef with Suhm (as opposed to any Saxon envoy) beyond "evidently likes my son a lot"?
Ahahahaha. Let's see: Manteuffel, Fritz, Hadrian; Lichtenstein, Fritz, Alexander the Great. Fritz, your orientation is a poorly kept secret.
I knew you'd like that. :) BTW, if Manteuffel points to Hadrian in particular, what are the chances that Hadrian had come up when he was chatting with Fritz? Which also would argue for Fritz having had Hadrian/Antinous on the brain in the 1730s, which was, of course, when he was finally having the chance to educate himself without paternal supervision.
Never mind about volume 2, I'm not that interested in what's going in in Ansbach if it's a mixture of French and German without a single Fritz or Habsburg encounter to reward me for the effort. ;)
Re: But what is really going on here?: The Austrian Dossier (Seckendorff III)
Date: 2020-02-02 05:16 pm (UTC)That's what I have no idea about. I consider it 50/50 he tried vs. he knew she'd never talk. My confidence that she wouldn't talk is why I have no idea.
BTW, did FW have a particular beef with Suhm (as opposed to any Saxon envoy) beyond "evidently likes my son a lot"?
That I don't know. But I will keep my eyes out. Suhm is my new second-favorite boyfriend.
BTW, if Manteuffel points to Hadrian in particular, what are the chances that Hadrian had come up when he was chatting with Fritz? Which also would argue for Fritz having had Hadrian/Antinous on the brain in the 1730s, which was, of course, when he was finally having the chance to educate himself without paternal supervision.
Exactly what I was thinking! (You know I have Fritz, Hadrian, and Antinous on the brain. ;) )
Never mind about volume 2, I'm not that interested in what's going in in Ansbach if it's a mixture of French and German without a single Fritz or Habsburg encounter to reward me for the effort. ;)
That's what I figured. :)
Re: But what is really going on here?: The Austrian Dossier (Seckendorff III)
Date: 2020-02-03 09:09 am (UTC)That's what I have no idea about. I consider it 50/50 he tried vs. he knew she'd never talk. My confidence that she wouldn't talk is why I have no idea.
Same here. I would say this, though: Fritzian paranoia and control issues make me slightly biased in favor of "they tried a few times early on". Because:
a) As Manteuffel points out and Fritz agrees, as long as he doesn't provide an heir, AW, favourite son of Dad, remains directly after him in the succession. No matter how nice a guy Fritz truly thinks AW is, this is a threat even if you're less suspicious than our traumatized antihero. And remember, Grandpa F1 openly accused his stepmother of having poisoned his brothers, and intending to kill him to make her sons inherit the crown, and went as far as demanding hostages before agreeing to see Father Great Elector. The family tradition isn't great there. (Leaving aside other countries with a tried and true tradition of ambitious younger brothers.) Anyway, a baby would mean added security to Fritz (especially since FW bypassing him in favour of a baby is far less likely than FW bypassing him in favour of growing into teenagehood AW).
b) Can't see Fritz go for the Gustav solution. Even a discreet version of same. Because even if pious EC would be on board with having extramarital sex because her husband told her to, whether or not a threesome is involved, that would give another man really great power over him. And yes, there's a big difference to old Fritz expressing understanding for young Elisabeth and possibly okaying a fling to provide a male heir as long as she's discreet. Not just a few decades more of added cynicism. He's the monarch and the ultimate controller in the second scenario. In the first, Dad is still alive, he himself could be exposed as a voluntary cuckold, which is the very thing men love to ridicule other men for, and who the hell is this potential sperm donor supposed to be whom Fritz would trust to keep his mouth shut and never ever to blackmail him? Fredersdorff is out of the question, since he's a commoner. Suhm? He's maybe the loveliest and nicest of sugar daddies, but he's also working for another country.
Re: But what is really going on here?: The Austrian Dossier (Seckendorff III)
Date: 2020-02-04 02:14 am (UTC)Wrt to a), though, I would present the following data points for the sake of argument:
1) If you believe schemer Seckendorff (if!), Fritz had to be bullied by FW into joining EC on his wedding night in the first place, and he skedaddled as soon as he could. Now, that might just be common gossip and not the report from the horse's (FW) mouth, but if it's true, it suggests Fritz was willing to let the marriage go unconsummated. Might be worth checking Förster to see if he's got that Seckendorff report to Vienna, because MacDonogh cites Jessen for both this quote and the Eugene quote that turned out to be in Förster. So Förster might be Jessen's source.
2) By September 1736, when he moves into Rheinsberg and actually starts living with his wife for the first time, Fritz is already preparing everyone for the possibility that he's not going to have any heirs, and explaining how that's super not a problem. He writes to Manteuffel:
I'm very obliged to you for your wishes concerning my procreation, and I have the same destiny as the deer, which are currently rutting. In nine months, it could turn out the way you hope. I don't know if this would be a good or a bad thing for our nephews and great-nephews. Kingdoms always find successors, and there's no example of a throne that stayed empty.
So, yes, he's *claiming* he's sleeping with her, but he's basically telling everyone to stay chill if no kid shows up, which makes me side-eye his claim so hard. More to the point, he evidently doesn't mind drawing Manteuffel's attention to AW as possible future father of the heir to the kingdom, even if he doesn't want AW or Heinrich getting any money or leverage from Saxony, and even if your interpretation is correct that as late as 1739, there were rumors about FW choosing AW as the heir.
Fritz might not have felt fathering an heir was worth the added security, after all. Or, maybe in those first three years he tried, but had given up by 1736 (and was trying to set expectations correctly now that he was living with her, which he can't have enjoyed the prospect of).
Oh, btw, looking these quotes up in Blanning finally identified for me *which* Wartensleben was one of the 6 "I have loved the most": Friedrich von Wartensleben, who other Seckendorf was friendly with, whom you've referred to in the diary, and who was part of the Rheinsberg circle. Or at least narrowed it down by giving me a first name.
Because assuming it's Grandpa Wartensleben's line, he has two sons named Friedrich, both born around the same time: 1707 and 1709, who are still alive into the 70s and 80s, and hence in 1736. I said elsewhere that Friedrich was Katte's first cousin on his mother's side, but I was wrong, he must be one of the uncles, who was actually Katte's age, because Grandpa Wartensleben was fathering some 17 kids over the course of 32 years. (Which I had noted before.)
Anyway, Friedrich Wartensleben as possible candidate for fathering the heir? He's around at the right place and time, he's Prussian, he's got the right bloodline, i.e. old prestigious noble family close to the king--I was joking about Katte's cousin and thinking of the Katte side of the family, but hey! bonus points for favoring Katte's family--he's the right age, and he's evidently trusted by Fritz. :P Trusted enough to not blackmail him, idk, I don't know the first thing about this guy, but it's a thought.
I still think it's unlikely! But without knowing anything about him, I think he's more likely than Fredersdorf (totally out of the question, I agree), or Suhm the Saxon Sugar Daddy.
Re: But what is really going on here?: The Austrian Dossier (Seckendorff III)
Date: 2020-02-04 05:32 am (UTC)ETA: Even if Fredersdorf weren't a commoner, I can't imagine Fritz would have wanted to share!
Re: But what is really going on here?: The Austrian Dossier (Seckendorff III)
Date: 2020-02-04 06:02 am (UTC)Haha! It would only work if Fredersdorf were super reluctant and only willing to make the great sacrifice for his prince. But even then, Fritz would have to propose it, and...no.
Love the mental image, though.
(am I projecting twenty-first century religiously-conservative attitudes on this??
Maybe? I'll let
Fertile SD, though, definitely an example on Fritz's mind. "I had sex with her twice! I even managed to ejaculate once. She must not be fertile and there's no point in continuing.
Yay!I mean, that's terrible. Nobody panic, though: Mom and Dad more than made up for my lackluster procreating efforts! I'm sure to have nephews and great-nephews in droves."Re: But what is really going on here?: The Austrian Dossier (Seckendorff III)
Date: 2020-02-04 11:06 am (UTC)Gustav: whereas I had no problem getting myself obeyed in that department. Sure, my guy put everything in writing and had it deposed to the Swedish Academy, so the entire world eventually found out, and sure, Mom hit the roof when brother Charles told her about it, but hey! An heir was had!
SD's fertility contributing to Fritz coming quickly to the conclusion that EC isn't fertile and hence he's not obliged to try anymore: Sounds very likely! And you know, they're not the Habsburgs, but the Hohenzollerns of Fritz' generation otherwise procreated quickly if they tried. Wilhelmine got pregnant in her first year of marriage, same with the other sisters, AW might have been a negligent and indifferent husband to Louise but the first two kids happened quickly, and then the later two with a gap but still, they happened. Ferdinand/his niece produced offspring, too. So Friedrich and Heinrich being the two exceptions from the "marry, multiply" rule rather points to the obvious element in common as the reason...
By which I don't mean the gayness - that never stopped Philippe D'Orleans from getting both of his wives pregnant multiple times, even though not all kids survived - but the stubborn " you can make me marry her, Dad/Fritz, but you can't make me have sex with her!" attitude.
feel like it's the act of non-procreative-and-church-authorized sex that's the problem, not the baby-making per se. I mean, masturbation is also off the table, and we have the Biblical "he who lusts in his heart after a woman is guilty of adultery" prohibition that I feel that FW totally bought into, and the idea that chasing women makes you not only a sinner but effeminate and weak and likely to spend money on them, all of which I feel were a bigger deal to FW than any inadvertent babies.
Yes. He doesn't seem to have been worried Fritz would inflict lots of bastards on the royal line even when thinking Fritz/poor Doris Ritter were an item. He had that midwife test her for virginity, not pregnancy. Also WHORES. Both FW and his son had a lot to say about men being ruled by same - meaning usually, but not exclusively Louis XV. With FW, "no whores!" is on the Opening paragraph of the Political Testament. With Fritz, of course, some of the Catt (memoirs) quotes are now suspicious, but I just read, courtesy of Mildred' algorithm, in the diary:
page 406: His Majesty was very tired. We talked about Berlin and the way of life. I let many things pass. There is a lot of coquetry, he tells me, among the great world. I say to them one day: Ladies, you do what we do everywhere; but do try a little more decency. I do not say anything. I tolerate these intrigues if they are a result of passion; but when it's out of interest, it's awful. I prefer one who pays, than one who is paid. I have often said to husbands who came to complain: You are doing something stupid, it will be disclosed.
Re: But what is really going on here?: The Austrian Dossier (Seckendorff III)
Date: 2020-02-05 05:00 am (UTC)Oh, I didn't mean that Fredersdorf would be reluctant to obey Fritz. I meant he'd have to make a big production out of how he was reluctant to sleep with EC and was ONLY doing it to to obey Fritz. So as to assuage Fritz's jealousies. Much like how he had to marry a NURSE to keep Fritz chill about sharing.
He had that midwife test her for virginity, not pregnancy. Also WHORES
Which reminds me, you told us that MT's sex policing banned all extramarital sex, but made an exception for illegitimate mothers, to prevent infanticide and abortion. My sense is that the major objection in the past was to unsanctioned lust, rather than the irresponsible procreation of much of today's discourse. Of course, for *women*, foisting a bastard on your husband was a huge problem with extramarital sex, but that was much much less of a problem for men who wanted to have extramarital sex.
I prefer one who pays, than one who is paid.
Says the man who was on the prowl for a sugar daddy all through the 1730s! :P I guess it doesn't count if you just flirt and don't put out? Or more to the point, it doesn't count if you're *Fritz*.
Re: But what is really going on here?: The Austrian Dossier (Seckendorff III)
Date: 2020-02-05 02:00 pm (UTC)Says the man who was on the prowl for a sugar daddy all through the 1730s!
But Mildred, that's the point! Of course he likes people who pay better. He always did! The ones who get paid surely are the competition!
More seriously, those 1730s activities do make that high and mightiness about the Marquise de Pompadour awfully hypocritical. Not just on Fritz' part, but on the part of many of his biographers. "The greedy mistress of Louis XV" and so forth. I do remember that letter to Wilhelmine saying "Eh, you can offer her this and that sum" (if she persuaded Louis to change alliances again), I suppose, and that Madame la Marquise turned the offer down.
Re: But what is really going on here?: The Austrian Dossier (Seckendorff III)
Date: 2020-02-05 08:11 pm (UTC)ROTFLOL.
Remember this?
Fritz: Suhm, please read Seneca's chapter on indifference to wealth.
Fritz: Great! Now that you don't care about money, can I have yours?
:DDD
More seriously, in a lifetime of hypocrisy, there is little that Fritz was more hypocritical about than money. If you ask me, he's trying to compensate for a deprived childhood. Anyone trying to take money that could be his is a trigger that emotionally puts him back in a place where he has to live without books and music and adequate food.
I think his obsession with good food, what he described as "disorderly cravings, like a pregnant woman," and his apparent inability to keep from bolting it (even when he had no trouble skipping meals or living on tight rations) stems from the same source.
Oh, sheesh, I think that quote may be from Catt's memoirs. ANYWAY, it's probably something Catt observed, even if Fritz wasn't as self-aware as he's made out to be. (In addition to possibly revise my opinion about his slut-shaming, I'm having to revisit the evidence for his self-awareness. Also, one wonders if Catt the devoted fan would have put "like a pregnant woman" in his hero's mouth, even after the breakup.)
And that, oddly enough, is one of the reasons I think Fritz may actually have had a low sex drive. Because once Dad was dead, and even at Rhinesberg, he should have been all over the boyfriends in an incontrovertible way.
And maybe he was, and we're viewing it through a lens of 250 years of homophobia on the part of people determined to preserve their hero's reputation. Maybe he was bedding down left and right with Marwitz and Glasow and Claus and Darget and Fredersdorf and Algarotti, and he just had to preserve some plausible deniability, by claiming his relationship with Algarotti was purely intellectual, Marwitz wasn't anything to write home about, etc.
But the fact that it remained so deniable, and the fact that he spent that much time denying it, and the fact that people like Heinrich or Algarotti leave us in no doubt about their sexual activity, and the fact that there are so few candidates and he spent relatively little time with them (even Fredersdorf and he are frequently separated after 1740), and the fact that Trenck absolutely would have talked...it kind of makes me think he'd figured out that he liked the idea of sex better than the act.
But I may revise this opinion after rereading Blanning, who spends a lot of time arguing that Fritz was homosexually active into the 1750s. I'll see how convincing his arguments are.
Re: But what is really going on here?: The Austrian Dossier (Seckendorff III)
Date: 2020-02-10 05:09 am (UTC)The Devil makes me read the Roman History of Des Echarts and points out the character of Junior, who is the same as that of Emperor Hadrian.
HAHAHAHA
Seckendorff the nephew is asked to give his assessment on the topic: Fritz: Hot or not? Well, he also has to say whether or not he thinks FW is still trustworthy, but we have our priorities here, don't we?
lol forever, I don't get tired of how "Hot or not?" is what all correspondents have to report on (and I know it's because they didn't have cameras, but still)
A Katte Related Correspondance, or: No Mercy Like Hohenzollern Mercy
Date: 2020-02-03 10:26 am (UTC)Your royal majesty will allow gracefully that the fear of my heart causes me to address the matter once more and to cinlude what unhappy Katte has sent me from his imprisonment. For this reason, it was that yesterday, I undertook the most daring audacity and sent a memorandum to your royal majesty in the utmost confidence thath you will mercifully listen to the pleas and pleadings of a very old man. . But because, all-gracious king and Lord, today's removal of the unhappy man makes me desolate, and little wonder that I am heartsick, so my conscience makes me throw myself again at the feet of your royal majesty with this, and my letter from yesterday, and repeat my request. I do not ask for a penalty, but only the life of the unhappy man, so that he can show repentance, so that he recognizes his mistake correctly and can feel heartfelt remorse, serene, and thus his soul can be saved.
The omnipotence God will reward your royal majesty plentiful for listening to my prayers and pleas, if you will show mercy to the old, grieving man who I am.
Your royal majesty can do this without harming Justice, of this I am sure and certain, and even if this was not so, your majesty's hands are unbound and your royal majesty remains free to show mercy. Besides, your royal majesty may consider it worthy of consideration that I have offered my body and life so often in the service of the (Holy) Roman Empire, and have been serving your royal majesty and your house faithfully and honestly, and that the father of the unhappy man has often been ready to sacrifice himself for you, and we are both ready to do so furtherly.
Therefore I live in the most humble confidence that your royal majesty will save a handful of blood which is no use to you and for which we beg you so fervently to give us, and that my grey hair will not see me fall into the grave with so much grief. Once again, I beg you, and remain in the most humble devotion,
To this, FW replied:
My dear General Field Marshal Count von Wartensleben,
I have indeed received your letter. It certainly pains me with heartfelt sorrow that misfortune struck Lieutenant of Katte so deeply, because he is so close to you. However, you know what follows such a crime, which is why I am not propelled to further explain myself than to say than that it is better for a culprit to die according to justice, than for world or the kingdom to fall into ruin. And thus I am not able to provide a pardon, because the well-being of the entire country and myself, as well as that of my family, and of the future make this necessary, which is why no one else must take responsibility; I give the order.
Since this man in puncto desertionis has conspired so far with my son, and has done all sorts of things, including conspiring with foreign envoys, to make this cause succeed, he would have deserved to be torn apart with glowing pliers. But in consideration of the Lord Field Marshal and the General Lieutenant of Katte, I have lessened the punishment to the extent that his head should be cut off to be an example and warning to others.
I remain your very affectionate King Friedrich Wilhelm. Wusterhausen, November 3rd 1730.
Re: A Katte Related Correspondance, or: No Mercy Like Hohenzollern Mercy
Date: 2020-02-04 01:24 am (UTC)I'd also be curious if skimming Preuss, appendix to volume 2, starting on page 149, yielded any goodies. Much of it seems to be the Fritz/FW correspondence that's probably already in Trier, but I did turn up the letter with FW's description of Peter Keith, and it looks like there are quite a few FW communications from 1730-1731. And then hopefully by sticking to the source book, you don't have to read Preuss's opinions on things. :D (I seem to recall you reporting that he was of the "FW was just your everyday strict Prussian dad making Frederick great!" school of thought.)
I remain your very affectionate King Friedrich Wilhelm. Wusterhausen, November 3rd 1730.
So very affectionate. Also, don't forget to pay the executioner, Grandpa, and Dad, when requesting leave to bury and mourn your son, please be considerate of FW's peace of mind.
glowing pliers
ETA in case it's not obvious for
Re: A Katte Related Correspondance, or: No Mercy Like Hohenzollern Mercy
Date: 2020-02-04 02:12 pm (UTC)Preuss Addendum: lots of FW letters re: Fritz in Küstrin, for starters, and also, twice, in September the orders to have poor Doris whipped and "eternally" put in the workhouse. Of interest for fanfiction details: Fritz this early does get a servant, but that guy, not named, is supposed to sleep in town, not in the fortress with Fritz. Given the order is also saying Fritz isn't allowed to correspond yet, or to leave the chamber that serves as his cell, and gets his food the already described way, I wonder what the servant is supposed to do for him? Shave him and cut his hair? *reads further, reaches the Manual FW gives to Lepell* Oh, and clean him & carry his waste products out of the room, right.
There is an extra letter saying "no flutes!" (as in, not the one Fritz had, nor any new ones allowed to be given to him), dated September 8th.
Lepell asks whether Fritz is allowed to get a fork and knives for his food. He isn't. It's supposed to be cut for him before being given to him.
Several letters because FW wants to know exactly where Fritz got his money from and how much debts, since ever new ones are coming to light.
The physical description in the letter to Deggendorff of Peter Keith, which you already know. (Cahn, medium height, pale, thin body, bown hair, cross-eyed. Our Lehndorff also notes the cross eyedness, but adds Peter is good looking, which FW for some reason does not Mention. The reason being only medium height.)
FW seems to be getting the impression Lepell feels somewhat sorry for his prisoner and writes that what Fritz had been attempting was no spontanous "tour de Jeunesse" (he uses the French expression) but a premeditated Enterprise he's evidently been planning for years.
The order to give Fritz a crash course in Prussian economics is from August 1731.
The first letter Preuss has from Fritz to FW from Küstrin is May 1731 (thanks for the Prayer books, I'll be good), FW dictates reply saying essentially "Got your letter, must point out that I tried to make you into a good Christian all my life, but you didn't listen, and even when caught, you still kept lying, you are a false liar to the core and I can only hope that your false heart is now cleansed. We'll see.
Undated letter from FW to MT's Dad, saying, paraphrased,
Dear Emperor,
thanks for dissuading me from killing my son. Woe is me. I tried and tried and tried, and that's what I got. I'm sure you relate. May our families be bffs forever more, your loyal subject, FW.
In August 1731, Wolden - I think one of the FW installed household guys, yes? - assures FW Fritz is absolutely docile now and has learned his lesson. He's sending the "Puncta", uses the Latin word, which "unfortunate Katte" has left (to Fritz? That's the implication I get) via Pastor Müller before his execution and is sure FW will approve of them, and may Fritz never forget them, but he's good now, it's all good now. Can we possibly get some wine for dinner again?
Fritz writes a letter making a suggestion of building and re-foresting something that has been destroyed by fire in Küstrin, and some other matter of factual things, along with expressions of submission and devotion. This impresses FW, who now adresses him as "my dear son" in the replying letter, and adds some useful agrarian tips. At this point, Fritz has the expressed permission to go hunting, and make town visits, but must always be back at night and must not stay overnight anywhere else.
Fritz, sure that he's found the winning formula, in subsequent letters adds more economic and infra structure ideas and reports he's used his new (still limited, but far less so) freedom of movement to go hunting, and also he hopes his father will allow him to wear "the blue cloth" (i.e. the Prussian uniform) again.
By December 1731, it's not only "my dear son" but "your father who loves you from all his heart" (and is delighted as the success of his reforming Fritz project).
The last letter refers to EC as Fritz' bride. I note that the 1732 letters are mostly on things future King Fritz is proving himself with, whereas Förster also has FW-Fritz correspondance from that year but not the same. Förster has a FW to Fritz letter from February 1732, and the tone sounds eeerily familiar if you've read Fritz' letters to his brothers. Also, FW keeps switching between "Du" and "Ihr" in this one, too. (And yes, FW writes "Fritz", not "Friedrich").
My dear son Fritz,
I am very happy that you don't need medicine anymore. But you must still take care of yourself in this great cold which has inconvencienced me and so many others with the flu, so be cautious. You know, my dear son, that I love my children dearly when they are obedient, as you all were in Berlin, that I have forgiven you everything with all my heart, and that I have thought of little else in Berlin than of your welfare, to establish you with the army and to provide you with a decent daughter-in-law, as I seek to marry you within my lifetime. You may well be persuaded, for I have investigated all the princesses of the land in regards of their education and behaviour, and have found a princess, the oldest from Bevern, who has been well raised, modest and humble, as women should be. (...) The princess isn't ugly, nor is she beautiful; you're not to tell anyone, but you may write to your Mama - FW does not write "mother", i.e. Mutter, he writes "Mama" - that I have written to you, and if you get a son, I will let you travel abroad. The wedding can't happen before the coming winter, but there will be multiple times during which you can meet her in all honor and get to know her somewhat. She is a pious person, and this is all very well with you and with the parents-in-law, and may God give you his blessing, and to your successor, and keep you as a good Christian, and always look to God, and do not follow the cursed predestination doctrine, but be obedient and loyal, and then you will fare well here on earth and eternally there, and he who wishes this should say amen. Your faithful father until his death, Fr. Wilhelm.
If the Duke of Lorraine visits, I will let you come here. I believe your bride will come here then, too.
Re: A Katte Related Correspondance, or: No Mercy Like Hohenzollern Mercy
Date: 2020-02-05 05:17 am (UTC)In August 1731, Wolden - I think one of the FW installed household guys, yes?
Yep, per your list and also MacDonogh, who agrees with your list.
He's sending the "Puncta", uses the Latin word, which "unfortunate Katte" has left (to Fritz? That's the implication I get) via Pastor Müller before his execution and is sure FW will approve of them, and may Fritz never forget them, but he's good now, it's all good now.
That's really interesting. I know of Katte writing a letter to Fritz about obeying FW, which I'm sure FW would approve of, and also a last will that, according to Lavisse, ended up in Fritz's hands, but in November. I'd also be surprised if they left Katte's "please obey your father" letter nine months before passing it onto Fritz. You'd think that'd be the first thing they'd want him to see. I wonder if they got Fritz a copy of the letter Katte wrote to *his* father.
Anyway, I'm curious what the "Puncta" represents. I just checked Fontane, and I can't tell.
Of interest for fanfiction details: Fritz this early does get a servant, but that guy, not named, is supposed to sleep in town, not in the fortress with Fritz.
That is of interest! All I knew, which I passed on to
Our Lehndorff also notes the cross eyedness, but adds Peter is good looking, which FW for some reason does not Mention. The reason being only medium height.)
ROFL. See, my background with Peter's appearance went like this:
Biographer (Asprey?): *quotes FW's description, concludes he wasn't good-looking, gives no source*
Me: None of that tells me he wasn't good-looking. I wonder what your source is.
Lehndorff: Cross-eyed, but so good-looking you barely noticed.
Me: See?! Also, aha, Lehndorff's our source for the squint, like so many other things.
FW: The full Asprey description in the "Wanted" poster.
Me: Oh, thaaaat's where that came from. Also, I notice FW doesn't think he's good-looking.
Selenak: Obviously, Mildred, he's of *medium* height!
Me: Oh, duh!
So what we've learned about Lehndorff's taste is that he doesn't mind men of average or below-average height, and he doesn't mind a squint. He also calls Peter "liebenswürdig" a couple of times, just like Heinrich. Hmm. Lehndorff/Peter FWB? :D (Obviously nothing more than that, since Lehndorff lets us know in no uncertain terms when he has feelings for someone.)
Re: A Katte Related Correspondance, or: No Mercy Like Hohenzollern Mercy
Date: 2020-02-05 11:31 am (UTC)Incidentally, since you're as baffled about what the "Puncta" could be - did we ever go over suspects for who on earth leaked Katte's letters to his Father, grandfather and to FW? Because if according to Klosterhuis they were making the rounds in November in Berlin already, and in 1731 ended up in a pamphlet printed in the decidedly anti Prussian Rhineland, without ever a denial saying "nope, not what Katte wrote at all", someone must have.
So: Katte Family: obvious suspects, but would have infuriated FW by doing so. And Hans Heinrich still had more kids to lose.
Anyone from the Küstrin staff, who were in charge of going through all outgoing and incoming mail and sympathized with Katte, thus made copies? Mayyyybe, but again, very risky, and they just watched a guy losing his head at the King's displeasure.
Eichel, who presumably got copies of all three letters for the Archive? Hmmm. Does the most loyal bureaucrat and workoholic of the state have a sneaking "this was not cool, boss!" resister inside? Knowing himself to be the least suspected person ever and getting away with it?
Re: A Katte Related Correspondance, or: No Mercy Like Hohenzollern Mercy
Date: 2020-02-05 11:34 pm (UTC)Yeah, that's why I said FWB, not boyfriend. ;)
I'm with you on the slight crush, though! Serious question: does Lehndorff normally comment on the attractiveness of random courtiers and officers whose death he reports?
Now, we know Heinrich was "as beautiful as an angel," so we have to take Peter's handsomeness with a grain of salt, but what it tells us about is Lehndorff's opinion.
I bet all the Potsdam giants who deserted were "strikingly handsome" in their Wanted dispatches, though!
Incidentally, since you're as baffled about what the "Puncta" could be
Baffled no longer! I dug up Katte's last letter to Fritz, and while I remembered the content, I had forgotten that it was in numbered bullet points. Since I don't think we've shared it with
1. The prince royal may, perhaps, think that I consider him as the cause of my death, and that I die in anger with him, but that is not the case. I acknowledge that, for wise reasons, Divine Providence has decreed that these misfortunes should fall upon me, to bring me to true repentance, and to enable me to work out my salvation.
2. The causes to which I attribute this chastisement of Heaven are, first, my ambition; and secondly, my neglect of the Almighty.
3. I promise the prince royal to pray for him before the throne of God.
4. I beseech the prince royal to banish from his heart any anger that he may feel against the king, his father, on account of my punishment; for he is not the cause of my death, since in this he is only the instrument of divine justice.
5. The prince royal ought not to think that this calamity has befallen me for want of prudence, but rather to recognise in it the hand of God, who confounds the wisdom of the wise.
6. I entreat the prince royal to submit to the will of his majesty; in the first place, because he is his father, and in the second, because he is his king.
7. The prince royal must remember what I said to him one day in Brandenburg on the submission which he owes to his father, refering to the examples of Absalom.
8. The prince royal must remember that I remonstrated with him, in the strongest manner, first at the camp in Saxony, where we originally had the idea of absconding, and where I foretold what has now happened; and secondly, more recently, one night when I called upon him in Potsdam.
9. I again implore the prince royal most solemnly, by the sufferings of Jesus Christ, to submit to his father's will; both on account of the promises contained in the fifth commandment, and also for fear of the law of retaliation, which might some day cause him to suffer the like vexations with his own children.
10. I beseech the prince royal to consider the vanity of human projects planned without God. The prince royal's wish was to serve me and to raise me to dignities and honours; see how these schemes are frustrated! I therefore beseech the prince royal to take the law of God for the rule of his actions, and to try them by the test of His sacred will.
11. The prince royal ought to be certain that he is deceived by those who flatter his passions, for they have in view their own interests only, not his; and he ought, on the other hand, to consider as his true friends those who tell him the truth and oppose his inclinations.
12. I implore the prince royal to repent, and to submit his heart to God.
13. Lastly, I implore the prince royal not to believe in fatalism; but to acknowledge the providence and the hand of God in the minutest circumstances.
If you think this reads like it was dictated by FW, yeah. Down to the rejection of predestination. Remember, FW has a preacher standing by to step into Fritz's cell the moment Katte's head falls, to lead him back to the true faith, and most specifically, the lack of predestination.
It reads like such a perfect and instant conformity to FW's will that I'm not the only one who thinks that it's a performance. He rejects atheism when staring death in the face and reverts to the religion of his childhood? Sure, maybe. He's been raised in a world where fathers and kings have absolute power and perfect obedience is owed to them, and he buys into that? Sure.
He really, really cares, of his own accord, that Fritz not believe in predestination, so much that it's his second-to-last words to Fritz?
Riiiight.
Katte: Fritz, just do what he says or he'll chop off your head too!!!1!!11! #MyInterpretation
By the way,
My source for this document, btw, is page 155 of Waldie's Select Circulating Library in the Fritzian library. I wish I knew what their source was. (Do you happen to know of a better source for this letter,
It still surprises me that he didn't. August 1731? Really? For something that reads like it was dictated by FW, in the hand of the guy who previously supported Fritz's plan, whose execution is meant to inspire a change of heart in Fritz?
Rereading your post, could it be that Wolden is sending to *FW* a copy of the Puncta in August? And Fritz has had it since November? Lavisse also says Fritz has had since the first moment Müller talked to him after Katte's execution. So unless you tell me the German can't possibly mean that, that's what I think is going on here. FW is getting a copy for the first time.
Thoughts on why I think Katte is lying through his teeth up until the moment of his death:
- Either he believes everything in this letter, or he's writing with an eye to FW.
- It seems highly unlikely that he's spontaneously become a carbon copy of FW with no ulterior motives.
- If Katte's getting killed, either it's Fritz's fault, FW's fault, or the will of God to teach Katte a lesson.
- Based not so much on the letter, but on his final words, the way he goes out of his way to comfort Fritz and say he would die for him a thousand times (however that last exchange went exactly), Katte really doesn't seem to be holding anything against Fritz. He really does still seem to love him, enough to be thinking about making him feel better after he, Katte, is gone.
- So either what he and Fritz did was wrong because it was against the will of God, or this is all FW's fault and it's too bad the escape didn't succeed. Saying one of these things leads to Fritz possibly not getting executed too, the only outcome Katte can be working for on that last day. (Even Lavisse reads that letter and thinks he's hoping against hope, maybe even not aware of it, for a last-minute pardon before the sword falls.)
- Atheists don't generally make good martyrs. They're fond of saying, under pain of death, that they never meant it in the first place.
- We have that quote from Katte's teacher, all the way back when he was at school, saying that he didn't try out of a "proper" (religious) motivation, but to please his father. That's at least a good decade of a lackluster attitude toward religion. Atheism/Deism/whatever wasn't a recent discovery after a lifetime of piety.
- His father is going to be pretty pleased to hear that he repented and accepted Christ in his last days, as opposed to the alternative.
- It's hard to be more obstinate than Fritz, and even Fritz gave in and said things he didn't mean in order to stay alive. In Katte's case, first he wanted a pardon (we know he asked for one); then, when that was a lost cause, we know he wanted to increase the chances of his beloved Fritz surviving, at whatever cost.
So I'm just highly suspicious about that whole sudden repentance. That last letter reads just way too good to be true.
But when you report that Wolden writes that he "is sure FW will approve of them"...yeah. I bet!
Re: A Katte Related Correspondance, or: No Mercy Like Hohenzollern Mercy
Date: 2020-02-08 04:56 am (UTC)The last letter from Katte to Fritz is in Preuss, volume 1, page 50.
Preuss (vol 1 p 65), thinks Hans Heinrich's two younger sons died in 1745 and 1748, which would rule out both of them killing each other in 1748. But I kind of trust the Wust people more?
I figured out where all the birth and death dates in Wikipedia come from that contradict the Wust people and Fontane and whatnot: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie. It seems to be a major source for Wikipedia biographical entries.
From Preuss, it sounds like Fritz handed the Field Marshal promotion (document or insignia or whatever) to Hans Heinrich in person. I've been wondering about that for months. Also, Hans Heinrich accompanied him on the trip to Königsberg. I wonder how awkward that was. o.O Good thing Algarotti was there!
Finally, from Katte's last letter:
The prince royal must remember what I said to him one day in Brandenburg on the submission which he owes to his father, refering to the examples of Absalom.
It occurred to me that
Now, everyone is very steeped in the Bible, so, are two people going to come up with this independently? Yes, of course.
And Katte was raised in the 18th century, so did he tell Fritz that it was natural for fathers to be strict and you still had to obey them? I've always thought so. I worked it into fic before I'd even seen this letter.
But how plausible is it that irreligious Katte used the Absalom argument with irreligious Fritz in the pre-escape days? I.e. before Katte decided to go outspokenly 100% religious after apparently a lifetime of not caring?
And what are the odds that Grumbkow, or someone, came and had a talk with condemned Katte? "Look, kid, you're toast. You want to help save your prince? This is what the King wants to hear. 'It's not his fault, check. He's just an instrument of God, check. Don't listen to friends who support you, and only listen to friends who oppose you, because those are the ones who have your best interests in mind, check. Absalom comparison, check. Reject predestination, check.'"
Like, is there anything that FW cares about that isn't on this list? If Katte isn't getting outside hints, he's doing an A+ job of getting inside FW's head.
And if Katte really cares that much about predestination and the fifth commandment and all that...why wait this many months to say it to Fritz? Surely he could have gotten permission to send this exact letter in September or October, if his values and priorities aligned so thoroughly with FW's. But no, in late September he's still going, "Yes, I'd've gone with Fritz if he'd left, I just didn't think he would."
If I were an Agatha Christie character, I'd be suspicious that that November 1 about-face was a little bit calculated.
Re: A Katte Related Correspondance, or: No Mercy Like Hohenzollern Mercy
Date: 2020-02-05 11:36 pm (UTC)No, but here are two points I want to introduce into the discussion.
1) Katte specifically asked Pastor Müller if he could make a clean copy of the letter to his father, and Müller said no, there wasn't time. So Katte asked Schack if he would have a copy made after Katte was gone.
So there was not only incoming and outgoing mail that the Küstrin staff had access to, but there was an actual copy of the letter lying around waiting to be copied! That would have been the easiest letter to leak.
2) The letters to FW and his grandfather were written in captivity in Berlin, so I don't see how they ever could have passed through Küstrin staff hands. I don't know when/where the Fritz letter was written--do you? It reads extremely like a Berlin letter to me (i.e. still hoping for a pardon), but maybe not. Okay, Lavisse doesn't know when it was written, but thinks it might have been that last night in Küstrin. If he doesn't know, probably no one knows.
Okay, so he does give a citation showing where he got the letter from (he summarizes but doesn't quote it): "This sort of testament destined for the prince is inserted in a report of Pastor Müller to the King, Beitrag zur Lebensgeschichte Friedrichs des Grossen, welcher einen merkwürdigen Briefwechsel über den ehemaligen Aufenthalt des gedachten Königs zu Custrin enthält."
I haven't turned up that report (published 1788), but you'd think it would date to before August 1731.
Anyway. It's weird that the letters to FW, the grandfather, and the father all leaked and ended up in the same pamphlet, when they were written in different towns. By the way, can you double check that it's all three of them and only those three in the pamphlet? Wilhelmine mentions a letter to the brother-in-law (i.e., Rochow) along with the letters to his father and grandfather, but none to FW. And if she's working from that pamphlet...
So what I'm getting at is that, unless they were all opened in transit, they must have been leaked when they were in the same place. Which is either the royal archives, or the Katte family home.
Now, mail did get opened a lot back then. And the Katte affair was a big scandal. If you were part of the mail delivery system and got your hands on a letter from the condemned, you might steam open that seal and make a copy too. But if they're all being sent from different places to different places, that seems like a hell of a coincidence.
Eichel seems like a super unlikely candidate to me. Blanning does say (no citation) that he would later disapprove of Finck's cashiering by Fritz for the Maxen fiasco, but it would really surprise me to see him leaking things. Not impossible! But very surprising. He's directly under the King's eye, and it's a huge risk, and keeping documents secret is his job at which he excels. You may be right about "least suspected person ever and getting away with it" for this very reason, and he may be laughing at me from beyond the grave. But I still suspect him least.
The Katte family, as you noted, has other children to lose, and even more significantly to my mind, they seem united in throwing Katte to the wolves rather than risk anyone else. They write letters asking for pardon, but that's not a real risk. That's permissible.
What I'm thinking, and this is wild speculation based on nothing whatsoever, is a shadowy figure, made safer by their very invisibility. Not having the protection of being from a noble family can go either way--you can be disposed of without consequences on the one hand, but on the other, you're not under the royal microscope so much.
So...Katte family servant? Maybe a governess or some loyal retainer who raised Katte as a child? Someone who was angry and rebelling in the only way they could: getting some visibility into this poor guy's fate?
Or possibly, it occurs to me, Katte kept copies, maybe drafts, of all the letters on him when he was taken from Berlin to Küstrin? And they all ended up there, hanging out on the same desk while the clean copy of Hans Heinrich's letter was being made before it was sent?
That actually strikes me as the least unlikely possibility, since before I realized two of the letters were written in Berlin, I always suspected the Küstrin staff, if not Schack himself.
And yes, they just watched Katte's head roll for incurring the King's displeasure. But they're farther away from the King than Eichel, are less under his microscope, and have more plausible deniability. "I left it on my desk to make a clean copy; a servant must have gotten to it." If Eichel tries that excuse, even if FW believes it, he'll have Eichel sacked if not worse in a day, because if three letters got leaked on Eichel's watch, who knows what more sensitive info is going to get leaked, with that kind of security.
And Münchow, Lepel, and/or Schack were sympathetic enough to both Fritz and Katte that they arranged the execution so that Fritz didn't have to watch, while still letting Fritz and Katte have their final exchange, and that was way more risky than leaking the letters, because it had 150 witnesses and couldn't be blamed on the servants. (I suspect the 150 witnesses on the ground weren't aware that Fritz couldn't see it from where he was, and nobody both put 2 and 2 together and talked.)
So I'm still leaning toward Küstrin staff, after considering all the options. Katte family servant would make good fanfic, though. ;) Too bad Fontane didn't think of that, when he was writing the loyal servant bringing Katte's body home for burial.
Re: A Katte Related Correspondance, or: No Mercy Like Hohenzollern Mercy
Date: 2020-02-10 05:17 am (UTC)thanks for dissuading me from killing my son. Woe is me. I tried and tried and tried, and that's what I got. I'm sure you relate. May our families be bffs forever more, your loyal subject, FW.
OMG. gaaaah FW!
You know, my dear son, that I love my children dearly when they are obedient, as you all were in Berlin
*headdesk*
and do not follow the cursed predestination doctrine
Okay, I have to admit I sniggered here, finding that in the middle of all that other stuff which wasn't, I guess, horribly offensive if you didn't know the context. LOL FW, you do rather have a one-track mind sometimes. All the time.
Re: A Katte Related Correspondance, or: No Mercy Like Hohenzollern Mercy
Date: 2020-02-10 05:14 am (UTC)Maaaaan, he's really convinced himself of that line, hasn't he. *shivers*
Re: A Katte Related Correspondance, or: No Mercy Like Hohenzollern Mercy
Date: 2020-02-10 01:55 pm (UTC)(And pre WWII that it was the "saving" of Frederick the Great. Along with the imprisonment and reform treatment.)
(Fontane, who does think FW acted according to the law but has ambiguous feelings about Prussia itself - "beloved and hated Prussia", as he calls it, meaning beloved and hated by himself, not the population at large - puts it a bit differently, that Prussia has two founding Dates, the Great Elector's battle victory (that forms the basis of Kleist's play "Prinz Friedrich von Homburg" which I told you about) and the day Katte was executed, the more crucial date being Katte's death. By which he doesn't mean the usual 19th century "Küstrin made Frederick Great" thing, but that this execution was instrumental for the type of ethics, not just military ethics, which Prussia subsequently had. The kind of pseudo-Roman ruthless subjugation of the individual to "the state". Which, yes. Prussia as Prussia in the sense of what it became had as Krockow and not just him pointed out two true founding fathers, FW and Fritz, and depended on one following the other, and formed by the other.
Again: Young Theo, much as he loved his historical anecdotes, also wrote an article titled "Why Prussia has to go" in 1848.
MT Marriage AU Reborn
Date: 2020-02-03 10:59 am (UTC)The proposal sent by the Crown Prince to Grumbkow is strange, and Grumbkow did well to give his response in such a way, for it seems likely that the Crown Prince suggested such a project to deduce from the replly as to whether the King has any attention of looking for a marriage with an Archduchess. This is enlightening regarding the Crown Prince's falsehood, as is his reply through Hille to Grumbkow that he would have to do violence to his nature in such case, as so far he has little love for the Archhouse. This new project as well as the one from some months ago which came to us via Natzmer, shows how far reaching ideas this young man has, and while these are currently spontanous and not well thought through, he does not appear energy or common sense. Which is why he ought to become more dangerous to his neighbours in time, if he can't be rid of his current principles. Other than the Bevern marriage, there's little or nothing to hope for him right now. The harder the King treats him, the more he'll insist on changing all his father does once it is his time.
Eugene, I'm impressed.
Re: MT Marriage AU Reborn
Date: 2020-02-04 01:10 am (UTC)Ahahahahaa, of course. I still wish I knew whether Carlyle's "Oh no, Herr Muller, nobody but very foolish persons could imagine such a thing of this young Herr" about Muller's son's insistence that Fritz NEVER proposed an Austrian marriage and Catholic conversion was sarcastic or not.
Meanwhile, in 1731, Prince Eugene seems to be far from senile
Yep, MacDonogh says much the same:
Prince Eugene was less senile about one thing, however: he warned Seckendorff against the possible effects of Frederick William's punishing his son. 'The harder the king deals with him, the more stubborn he will become, and in time he will change everything that his father has done.'
I might add that MacDonogh is the one we learned about the Austrian marriage project from--he's good for providing information, just not reliable info!
he does not appear energy or common sense
Could you clarify the verb there?
Re: MT Marriage AU Reborn
Date: 2020-02-04 04:35 am (UTC)Re: MT Marriage AU Reborn
Date: 2020-02-04 05:11 am (UTC)Well, well spotted, Eugene. And from secondhand info, too! Maybe MT would have been caught less unawares if you had been the one reporting on Fritz.
Seckendorff, Jr.: He'll be just like his grandfather.
FS: He's so charming in person. And he sent me a salmon. How bad can he be?
Eugene: Dangerous to his neighbors! Watch out!
Btw, Wikipedia tells me that Eugene thought an army and a treasury would serve MT better than some signatures from European powers, but Karl VI overrode him.
Eugene: No slouch in the energy or common sense department himself.
Re: MT Marriage AU Reborn
Date: 2020-02-04 03:13 am (UTC)(Which Thiébault, I can't tell; I've never been able to track down a single MacDonogh reference, so either he's working from a copy with radically different page numbers than mine, or else, as I sometimes suspect, he's in a parallel universe reading a different author by the same name.)
Re: MT Marriage AU Reborn
Date: 2020-02-04 02:26 pm (UTC)Grumbkow's "How to Succeed at the Court of FW if you're his son" list....
Date: 2020-02-03 04:22 pm (UTC)Oh, and Grumbkow uses "Crown Princess" - Princesse Royale, this letter of instruction is written in French - for Wilhelmine, too.
Or, in rokoko speech:
If the King seeks the opinion of Crown Prince, or his feelings on something, and he foresees, that this opinion does not conform to the King's ideas or principles, it will be necessary to use this phrase: If your majesty does me the honor of asking, I must say my feeling, it is such and such, I may well be wrong, however, and my little experience can make me err easily. It is important to avoid all spirited mocking and all mischievous expressions towards the King, which would cause disadvantages to even the least of the servants, but on the other hand, do get rid of any austere air, reservedness or brooding, which the King has so often complained about. (...)
As to Her Majesty the Queen: I believe that the tenderness and the deep respect that your highness naturally has for
this worthy Princess, does not need to be regulated and governed. However, everything must be done with beautiful
discernment; there is surely no need to recommend to show no preference in what is said to the King; past experience must have taught his royal highness that the suspicions we had in this arena caused much grief to the illustrious mother and the
beloved son.
Whatever tenderness, trust and friendship, the incomparable Crown Princess has the right to claim, and which are due to her in a thousand remarkable places, I still believe that in the beginning it will be necessary to put up certain boundaries. As to the princes, your royal highnesses brothers, you need to show a tender and natural friendship and show your joy when they do their duty well.
As to your royal highness' brothers in law. I believe you will have to treat them on an equal footing without distinction, with
friendship, civility and politeness, accompanied in this with a little seriousness, and in conversation with them, always preach to attach themselves solely to the King and to expect all their advantage and happiness from him.
Now, here's the thing: I previously put Wilhelmine's impression of Fritz when she sees him for the first time post-Katte during her wedding due to them being observed and his having had the year of hell behind him. (Which is also the explanation she has at the time, but her 1740s self wonders whether it starts here.) Especially since the next time they are physically together, they're back to their old footing. And similarly, I put the fact that in his first preserved "regular" letter in the Trier archive, in 1732, he tells her to disregard any impression he's gone cold on her and how can she believe this due to Wilhelmine (like him) having no chill. But here's Grumbkow giving this very pointed advice, and given FW did have a hang up about the affection between his two oldest long post Küstrin - hence him not permitting Fritz to visit Bayreuth when Fritz is en route to Philippsburg, for example, and the need for the two to arrange a secret rendezvous when Fritz is en route back but technically does not stop in Bayreuth (just, as later MT, on the outskirts). So I now think Wilhelmine might not have been just hypernervous and needy in the aftermath of the big catastrophe plus a year and confused PTDSD (without any P in this traumatic stress) with Fritz emotionally withdrawing from her. Maybe he did at least try to provide Dad, Grumbkow and everyone else with the impression he was, in fact, putting boundaries between them. (Made easier by the fact he was traumatized as hell and so was she, in a different way, and they had no real chance to be together at length and talk until the post marriage family visit from hell.)
Förster also has the protocol of the big feet-kissing public submission from that same August of 1731, which was written by Grumbkow for Seckendorff. This one is in German, and seems to be quite close to the real event given FW keeps switching between the formal second person plural and the "Du" when adressing Fritz. (Including, btw, in the "Did you seduce Katte or did he seduce you?" question - that's a "Du" question.) This protocol includes the "what I've done to your mother and sister and Hannover if you'd succeeded" which Mildred has mentioned repeatedly.
"Now listen to the consequences! Your mother would have fallen into the greatest unhappiness, for I would naturally have treated her as if she'd known everything. And your sister I'd have locked up for the rest of her life at a place where she'd never seen the sun or moon again. I'd have gone to Hannover territory with my army, and would have burned everything down, even if I had lost my country, my people and my life for it!"
Fritz then submits and asks to be given the chance to prove himself and win back FW's esteem, FW then asks the Katte question and when Fritz replies "without hesitation" that "I seduced him", FW replies "It pleases me that you tell the truth for once."
Now, I have my doubts whether we'd have gotten a Prussian invasion of Hannover had Fritz managed to escape, because even enraged FW knows better than to start a war with the British Empire. But the SD and Wilhelmine threats would undoubtedly have been carried out. It's hostage taker logic at its most ruthless.
Re: Grumbkow's "How to Succeed at the Court of FW if you're his son" list....
Date: 2020-02-04 12:22 am (UTC)Wow. That's a very persuasive theory. Those poor kids. They have ONE good thing going for them in their lives, and then FW has to go fuck that up too. Start with imprisoning Fritz and pressuring Wilhelmine into a marriage, then put Fritz in a position where he has to be more aloof than usual around her and act like it's his idea. Man.
Also, thanks so much for this write-up. I had seen summaries but never a full translation, and I don't at all remember seeing the advice to have boundaries with Wilhelmine.
But the SD and Wilhelmine threats would undoubtedly have been carried out. It's hostage taker logic at its most ruthless.
Yep. Something that comes into play in my AUs where he makes it.
Let's also remember that Wilhelmine has her own reasons for pent-up resentment of Fritz, not just for being all "the best of all possible mothers" with SD, but for being willing to abandon her to the abuse, in a way that will lead to a worsening of her abuse. And with a plan that obviously poorly thought out, to boot.
Is this Fritz's fault? No, I will defend to the death the right of any abuse victim to get out of an abusive situation, even if it means leaving hostages behind to be punished. But as Wilhelmine psychology goes, I don't think she'd be human if she wasn't hurt at all, just as I don't think Fritz could help being hurt that she didn't support him getting out of there, however valid her reasons (like the fact that that plan was never going to work).
Honestly, props to them both for sticking by each other as much as they did, and in however messed up a way.
Re: Grumbkow's "How to Succeed at the Court of FW if you're his son" list....
Date: 2020-02-04 02:34 pm (UTC)My thoughts precisely. The odds were incredibly against them; like you say, props to them for sticking by each other as much as as they did. I'm so relieved that neither of them died in 1746, I can't tell you, and that they had the additional decade of renewed closeness, long distance as it often was.
Re: Grumbkow's "How to Succeed at the Court of FW if you're his son" list....
Date: 2020-02-05 05:28 am (UTC)God, I hadn't even thought of that. Wow, yes. I'm glad neither of them died then, and also that he never saw her memoirs after her death (or at all).
I also meant to say earlier, well-spotted on your cross-referencing of Grumbkow's advice to Fritz and Wilhelmine's observation of Fritz's unusual aloofness on that occasion. Subdetective insights FTW!
Re: Grumbkow's "How to Succeed at the Court of FW if you're his son" list....
Date: 2020-02-10 05:32 am (UTC)Henri de Catt Unplugged - I
Date: 2020-02-04 05:39 pm (UTC)Definitely no Katte mention, but several times his harsh upbringing is adressed.
As the 1884 editor says in the preface, Henri de Catt massively rewrites his involvement when Fritz gets sibling death news. What is in the diary re: AW (who as in the memoirs has been edited out of Fritz' descriptions of his 1740 Straßburg trip when still alive), is, four days post Fritz getting the news, "spoke of his good heart", a quote I'll get to after Wilhelmine's death, and, much later, the "I totally would have retired from kingship after the war had he lived".
(All his siblings: get a coughing fit)
The actual passage:
21. Called at 7. We talked a lot moral. He often quotes these lines from Agamemnon:, Happy who 'etc. You see, it has been a long time since I thought of these sweet moments that I would find in retirement; I thought of retiring, my dead brother disturbs my plan, because I cannot do it in a time of minority. It is not necessary; my nephew is fourteen, in four years he will be of age. We must put an interval between these worries and death. I still have five years in my body. That is all. I'm losing my fire. Ah, if you had seen me a few years ago! If you saw me in fine weather, you would find me very different.
Bad AW, spoiling Fritz' retirement plans. Sigh.
Which means anything else in the memoirs about AW and his death - and there is a lot - was made up by Catt and/or taken from various other sources, as said in the preface.
Otoh, what I don't recall from the memoirs (though I might have missed it, it wasn't what I was looking for) but which is in the diary is Fritz still indulging in the love letter ghost writing business, even when no sibling and no Voltaire are involved:
I tell him that I had made a verse piece for a beauty. He read it, criticized it. "Oh, I'll make you another one. Have you fucked her?" "No," I said. He composed a page of it in my presence and showed me a dictionary he had made during the last wars.
Now here's a civilian job that, as opposed to flutist, no one has imagined for Fritz: love poetry ghost writer.
Lots and lots of "Voltaire is the WORST!" as per the memoirs, and he keeps coming back to the prediction that Voltaire will die as a repentant son of the church with priests at his side out of fear, he's obsessed with it. My current guess as to why he keeps harping on this is: the idea of being broken. He himself has given in, not out of fear for the afterlife but of his father, but still, he has submitted. So Voltaire, who is so similar and yet not, can't be unbroken to the end. He is, of course, also irked that Voltaire still is war-critical:
Catt quoting Fritz quoting Voltaire happens often, but this is the most interesting passage to me, because it's as good a reconstruction of an authentic Fritz and Voltaire conversation we're likely to get:
Voltaire said to me: "But when you fight, are you not in rage?" - "No, that's when you need the most tranquility." - "But all your wars are the same." - "All the oxen appear as such; but to anyone who sees them up close, there is always a difference." - He (V) was attached to the Marquis de Villars, who, no doubt, had described to him a cavalry attack. - "But all these are heroic actions. You destroy the world and we enlighten it." - "But what is enlightenment? Whether the world is flat or round, what does it do for happiness?" - But you need moral principles, and follow them. However, in ten months I will have defeated the French, the Austrians and the Russians.
Err, not so much, Fritz, but okay. He's really irked that Voltaire doesn't appreciate the military genius enough:
I have had a lot of trouble since morning, so far it is not over. Gentlemen, the scholars laugh at our profession. Voltaire ridicules it. It is bad by the evils it causes: but it takes talent. Voltaire won't listen to anything. He says that reading battles annoys him, that he learns nothing there; but when I read the campaigns of Eugène, Montecuculi, Luxembourg, it gives me a thousand ideas.
The poem Fritz wrote to Wihelmine before her death shows up a lot.
"Come, I made a piece to my sister of Baireuth, on friendship." We talked about Voltaire, on the Henriade, which he found very beautiful, with this one flaw that he did not put his hero in the most touching situations. He said it to Voltaire, and he agreed to it. (...)
I was at 6 o'clock; he showed me the epistle to his Princess. Come, he said, see this epistle you're interested in. I worked on it a little, but I will let it rest for 5 or 6 days.
(I would say that Henri de Catt’s main job is admiring Fritz‘ poetry, but that’s unfair. Also, aw on the phrasing "his princess". Sa princesse indeed.)
So, in the memoirs, Catt gets dragged to Fritz at 2 am when the news of Wilhelmine's death arrives and they keep talking about her for hours three times during a single day. Meanwhile, diary:
18. I learned in the morning of the Princess's death. I wrote this letter to the King - His Majesty sent for me. I saw him sorry for this loss. We hardly talked (...).
To be fair, they do talk of Wilhelmine on other days. However, just because Wilhelmine is also dead doesn't mean AW is forgotten. Just...remembered in that special Fritzian way.
I was after dinner. The King was overwhelmed; his smile always came back to him. He ate nothing. He was just drinking, he was so heated. We reasoned on the price of friendship; how little he indulged. There was talk of his brother, who had caused him much sorrow, in pace ut and in bello. "What consoles me is - without it I would not live."
In peace and in war? Whatever is AW supposed to have done in peace as well as in war, Fritz? There's one upcoming visitor who surely would love to know.
20. I was there at 2. - „Ah, how grieved I am! I don't have time to mourn the loss of this sister. We must hold on. Prince Heinrich arrived, which caused general joy.
I dare say. So how did that meeting go, Henri de Catt?
21. Called at a quarter past five in the morning. His Majesty was very distressed. - »I cried well yesterday with my brother. Here, my dear, it is not the loss of a battle that moves a captain or a warrior, but the death of a sister is irreparable, and what a sweeter feeling than friendship! His Majesty went out at 8 . "I went for some recognaissance of the Austrian camp." I was there in the evening. His Majesty was fine. „Now here I am in force. We will see how it all ends. The massacre at Hochkirchen was terrible. Everything came out pell-mell from the cemetery. Some were slashing their teeth, others were going there with their butts. Marshal Keith, speaking on the eve of the battle to the Margrave, said how the Austrians should attack us and how he would do it himself; we made the rope, them the bow.
As you may recall, Marshall Keith died at that battle. (And is listed on the Rheinsberg Obelisk.)
Meanwhile, yay for Seydlitz, provider of comic relief:
22. I went with His Majesty to take a turn to the left wing. Called, I spoke of these three sentries from whom the guns had been taken. - »This is not surprising, if three sleep in an army. It is good, he said, "that kings are sometimes unhappy. Don't you think we are accurate enough? "- Yes. But I don't see how they surprised us. But these misfortunes happen every hundred years. - General Seydlitz, on the 14th, said to the King: Does not His Majesty want to withdraw the infantry? "But, Seydlitz, I will lose the battle!" Well, may Your Majesty win it, and go away.
------------------------------
The Émilie gossip, which according to the Memoirs was with D'Argens. It is, however, clear that Fritz is the one contributing the garbled suicide attempt tale which Cahn identified to a gossip story about Émilie predating her involvement with Voltaire.
2. Left at 7, arrived at 3:30 in Jauernick; pretty well with a good peasant, from where I had two men decamped. Dined at 7. His Majesty sent for me. She was very tired. They spoke of Madame the Marquise du Châtelet; that she got fucked, but only by mathematicians or poets; that she was tight with Maupertuis, and that this was the beginning of his feud with Voltaire, who was jealous of him. "Maupertuis' physiognomy, says His Majesty, "is the most gloomy I have ever seen, but he is brutally honest man, he never gives in." The Marquise wanting to make an experiment on fire, burned an entire forest and made to admit to her husband, she said that it was a gallantry that she created for him, so that he had a good view. "" She put herself in a very hot bath, to see how far she could sustain the heat. would have remained without her chambermaid, who ran in a timely fashion. "" She was waiting for Voltaire from Potsdam; as he was late, because he still had some scheme to earn money, "said the King," she came to meet him in Brussels. Not seeing him, believes him unfaithful, takes opium."
Ferdinand, once the most wicked child of FW, now gets a different assessment from Big Bro.
4. I was. at 5. He told me that he had mourned his sister, and when in these moments of rest he thought of her, he cried again. He spoke to me with the highest praise of Prince Ferdinand, his brother, of the kindness of his heart; Prince Wilhelm: quoted pieces of Iphigenia which had to do with his situation, the end of the first act: they don't have time to cry; he read some places. This led to the spectacle. He quoted pieces of opera from me.
------------------------------
The hunting passage, which is in the memoirs, though somewhat altered. Here with Latin and dissing of the Schwedt cousins.
He asked me if I liked hunting. - ›Etiam.‹ »Quam delectionem invenis? My father believed that I was a paste which we poterat facere quid volebat. It was not. He wanted me to be a hunter. I was given all the proper education. You had to run: I stopped the dogs; and we had to be careful. If I had stepped on one, the King would have screamed. The stitcher was very comfortable as I stopped. I haven't danced once since turning fifty. I really liked dancing; now I don't like it anymore, but videre juventutem saltantom, hoc mihi arridet. "Mihi dixit from Margrave's father:" he drank in the morning, at noon, after dinner, beat up all his grooms, drank in the evening: was very orthodox ; said to everyone, even to his grooms: "I am the son of the Grand Elector."
The story of FW's return to Potsdam definitely is heard by de Catt when he's Heinrich's army while Fritz is elsewhere. And there's one thing in the diary version which didn't make it into the memoirs which makes me wonder whether, no matter how they got along later on, Heinrich might not have been the source after all. Or maybe not him directly but his sidekick and boyfriend du jour Kalkreuth, whom Catt later mentions talking to in another context. The detail in case: Heinrich himself, what he was doing on that occasion.
When the King was in Kustrin, the Queen mother told her children to throw themselves on the King's knee to beg for mercy. The Princess of Baireuth, as the older one, threw herself before him in the anteroom; she got beaten. Then the family got under the table. Prince Henry stuffed it. (That's the algorithm's translation. Original: " Le prince Henri s'y fourra" - which google has as "Prince Heinrich will get into it"; honestly, I'm a bit lost - I mean, I'd say "got under it, the table, but the family is there already?) The King had a stick, he wanted to beat them. Arrives the chief stewardess, the Countess of Kameke. She spoke. - ›Go away, carrion!‹ Dixit ei Rex. One argues. - ›The devil will take you away,‹ she said, ›if you don't let these children alone!‹ Which she put in a room. The next day the King saw her, thanked her for the madness she had made him avoid. - ›I will always be your good friend,‹ and he was. Grumbkow said to the late King: "You should send this rascal over there", speaking of His Majesty. What horror!
With you there, de Catt, but I wish you'd have clearly said who told you this particular version of the story. Wilhelmine's version in her memoirs, which Henri de Catt couldn't have known (and certainly not writing his diary in 1759) has the intervention by Madame de Kamecke as well, but it has the sibs pleading with their father for mercy after she herself got punched and is dizzy. The other difference is that here the beating threat is to all the children, and Kamecke tells FW to leave the children alone, wereas in Wilhelmine's memoirs she tells FW not to do a Peter I and Philip of Spain with his oldest son. Note the shift in focus, which usually says something about who tells the story and has the memory. Now when I read the Catt memoirs, where Fritz tells this story to Catt, I assumed Fritz had the story from Wilhelmine and it got garbled in retelling. But seeing as Fritz is not the teller in the diary, and Heinrich is the only sibling other than Wilhelmine namechecked (which is edited out in the later memoirs version with Fritz as the speaker), since this version emphasizes the threat to all the siblings (as opposed to the threat to Fritz), and since he's the one person currently near Catt who actually was there that day, I wonder. Though like I said: it's also possible he told his boyfriend, and his boyfriend told Catt. Since Heinrich's boyfriends aren't known for their tact and restraint in general. Because if it's neither Heinrich nor a boyfriend who heard the story from him - wouldn't some other Prussian who got the story through court gossip put the emphasis on the threat to Fritz, current living legend, as Wilhelmine does in her Version, instead of on the kids?
Re: Henri de Catt Unplugged - I
Date: 2020-02-04 11:48 pm (UTC)Bad AW, spoiling Fritz' retirement plans. Sigh.
gah FRITZ
Now here's a civilian job that, as opposed to flutist, no one has imagined for Fritz: love poetry ghost writer.
OMG, okay, I... would not have imagined that, yes.
My current guess as to why he keeps harping on this is: the idea of being broken. He himself has given in, not out of fear for the afterlife but of his father, but still, he has submitted. So Voltaire, who is so similar and yet not, can't be unbroken to the end.
:( That sounds extremely plausible.
Also, aw on the phrasing "his princess". Sa princesse indeed.
<3
There was talk of his brother, who had caused him much sorrow, in pace ut and in bello.
*headdesk* OKAY FRITZ.
"She was waiting for Voltaire from Potsdam; as he was late, because he still had some scheme to earn money, "said the King," she came to meet him in Brussels. Not seeing him, believes him unfaithful, takes opium."
Huh, interesting this came from Fritz. OK, my best guess is still that it's a garbled reference to that earlier story, because it seems weird that the same story would arise about two independent events. Certainly Zinsser never mentions anything of the sort about Voltaire, though to be fair she does seem to regularly leave out some of the more sensationalistic gossip. On the other hand, something that is only cited by Fritz is definitely just gossip. Mildred, did Bodanis have anything about this??
Original: " Le prince Henri s'y fourra" - which google has as "Prince Heinrich will get into it"; honestly, I'm a bit lost - I mean, I'd say "got under it, the table, but the family is there already?
Given the reflexive and the y, I'd translate it as "Prince Heinrich stuffed himself in there." I totally see what you're saying about the shift in focus -- yes, it very much sounds to me like Heinrich's POV, whether it's him directly or via a boyfriend; my thought is that I could totally see him saying to Catt (or boyfriend) something like "all of us got under the table; I tucked myself into a corner of it." Aaaaaand now I'm having a lot of FEELINGS about little Heinrich hiding under the table, curling himself into a little ball crushed in with his family while his crazy dad rampaged and beat up his big sister (and a lot of feelings about the thing you mentioned a while back -- was this Ziebura? -- where he read Wilhelmine's memoirs and was all "yeah, that was a bad year").
FW >:(
Re: Henri de Catt Unplugged - I
Date: 2020-02-05 06:39 am (UTC)Not that I remember, but I had to return the library book, so I can't check.
Aaaaaand now I'm having a lot of FEELINGS about little Heinrich hiding under the table
This.
Re: Henri de Catt Unplugged - I
Date: 2020-02-05 10:36 am (UTC)Clearly, an AU is called for where successfully escaped Fritz has to make a living both as a musician and as a ghost writer, since FW has entirely cut him off from funding, and mean Uncle George won't give him any money, either. And sugar daddy Suhm is out of funds.
OK, my best guess is still that it's a garbled reference to that earlier story, because it seems weird that the same story would arise about two independent events.
Indeed. My guess is that Fritz heard the original gossip and promptly decided Émilie wouldn't make a suicide attempt over any man but Voltaire, so substituted him. This also gives him the opportunity to feel smug as having been the other, excuse, THE ONLY man, since he dates the event as happening in 1743 or 1740 if he claims Voltaire was en route back from Potsdam.
In any event, as I said in an earlier post, Fritz mid 7 Years Old war relaxing by gossipping about the ten years dead competition is surely… something.
Aaaaaand now I'm having a lot of FEELINGS about little Heinrich hiding under the table, curling himself into a little ball crushed in with his family while his crazy dad rampaged and beat up his big sister (and a lot of feelings about the thing you mentioned a while back -- was this Ziebura? -- where he read Wilhelmine's memoirs and was all "yeah, that was a bad year").
"Brings back one bad memory in particular" is I think what Ziebura quotes him as saying; the book is back at the library, so I can't check. Which is why I had him remember it in "Promises to Keep", not knowing Henri de Catt's diary would furtherly back me up in this regard.
Re: Henri de Catt Unplugged - I
Date: 2020-02-05 06:19 pm (UTC)YES PLEASE. Also, sugar daddy Suhm doesn't have any funds that I know of until he joins the Russian court in 1737, so that's plenty of time for Fritz to be in need of a source of income.
This also gives him the opportunity to feel smug as having been the other, excuse, THE ONLY man, since he dates the event as happening in 1743 or 1740 if he claims Voltaire was en route back from Potsdam.
LOLOL. Also, yes, Fritz couldn't imagine her making a suicide attempt over anyone else, no way.
"Brings back one bad memory in particular" is I think what Ziebura quotes him as saying; the book is back at the library, so I can't check.
All I have is your original write-up, which doesn't include a direct quote, but close enough:
Heinrich: Dear Ferdinand, guess what? Big sis wrote her memoirs. Lots of stories I had no idea about, though there was one that brought up a really bad memory from when I was four.
Self: Oh. You mean the hair drag scene where according to Wilhelmine the younger sibs, including you, begged FW for her life?
I have to quote the rest, just because it makes me laugh so much:
Heinrich: Friedrich she describes the way I remember him....
Self: She DOES?!?
Heinrich: ...a paranoid mean-tempered bastard once he got on the throne, though charming as a boy. I guess. Everyone is.
Self: Christ.
Heinrich: Have now been inspired to reread his letters.
Self: Have I mentioned yet you all need therapy?
Re: Henri de Catt Unplugged - I
Date: 2020-02-05 06:32 am (UTC)When a history-rewriter meets a history-rewriter...both (or at least future readers) shall fall into the ditch. (Matthew 15:14)
(All his siblings: get a coughing fit)
Me: *cough*
Otoh, what I don't recall from the memoirs (though I might have missed it, it wasn't what I was looking for) but which is in the diary is Fritz still indulging in the love letter ghost writing business, even when no sibling and no Voltaire are involved:
Oh, it's there! It's extremely there. I remember it distinctly. It goes on for pages, and in fact I think it comes up more than once. (I think maybe Fritz gives Catt a homework assignment and then quizzes him on how it went.) If my memories are correct, Fritz desperately wanted to play Cyrano, and Catt was kinda hesitating to go along with this. I imagined him sitting there with a deer-in-the-headlights look.
Now here's a civilian job that, as opposed to flutist, no one has imagined for Fritz: love poetry ghost writer.
Ha. Back in Küstrin days, Hille wrote to Grumbkow,
You think his passion is music, I wish to God it were so! But he has a stronger inclination: he wants to write verse and become a poet. While he hasn’t a clue whether his ancestors won Magdeburg in a game of cards or whatever, he can count out Aristotle’s poetic rules on his fingers, and for the last two days he has been torturing himself to render into French some German verses that the idiot Wilke has given him.
I kind of get the impression Fritz had more potential when it came to the flute, but he really wished he were better at poetry, which was part of why he was so head over heels for Voltaire, and so desperate to have him, both personally and professionally. One of many reasons, mind you!
He's really irked that Voltaire doesn't appreciate the military genius enough:
I have had a lot of trouble since morning, so far it is not over. Gentlemen, the scholars laugh at our profession. Voltaire ridicules it. It is bad by the evils it causes: but it takes talent. Voltaire won't listen to anything. He says that reading battles annoys him, that he learns nothing there; but when I read the campaigns of Eugène, Montecuculi, Luxembourg, it gives me a thousand ideas.
I remember this from the memoirs, and you know, I'm really with Fritz on this. I don't think skill at waging war is to be glorified over everything else, and I don't think Fritz's wars were justified, and in the past few months, I'm having to revise my opinions of Fritz's own tactical acumen downward, but if Voltaire thinks winning a war doesn't take any kind of skill, he's on crack. And if he thinks all wars are the same...stick to your strengths, Voltaire. (Also, I agree with Fritz that if you had an army, you'd use it every day. :P)
(That's the algorithm's translation. Original: " Le prince Henri s'y fourra" - which google has as "Prince Heinrich will get into it"; honestly, I'm a bit lost - I mean, I'd say "got under it, the table, but the family is there already?)
I pretty much agree with
:-(
With you there, de Catt, but I wish you'd have clearly said who told you this particular version of the story.
Seriously! I love how it's Fritz in the memoirs. Everything is Fritz in the memoirs. Freaking Catt.
Though like I said: it's also possible he told his boyfriend, and his boyfriend told Catt. Since Heinrich's boyfriends aren't known for their tact and restraint in general.
You mean Heinrich dates the kind of people who would coach an actor in Fritz's mannerisms and tone of voice?
Because if it's neither Heinrich nor a boyfriend who heard the story from him - wouldn't some other Prussian who got the story through court gossip put the emphasis on the threat to Fritz, current living legend, as Wilhelmine does in her Version, instead of on the kids?
That's an interesting point. It could be!
ETA: Just to clarify for
Meanwhile, yay for Seydlitz, provider of comic relief:
...General Seydlitz, on the 14th, said to the King: Does not His Majesty want to withdraw the infantry? "But, Seydlitz, I will lose the battle!" Well, may Your Majesty win it, and go away.
It's "Eh bien, que Votre Majesté la gagne, et s'en alla." I.e., Seydlitz said, "Well, may Your Majesty win it," and went away. He didn't tell Fritz to win it and to go away.
ETA 2:
I would say that Henri de Catt’s main job is admiring Fritz‘ poetry, but that’s unfair.
From my partial read-through of the diary, the impression I got was that Catt's main job was to give Fritz a civilian friend to talk to. Sometimes Fritz wants to talk about literature, sometimes his family and childhood, sometimes how the war's going, sometimes his dreams, sometimes philosophy and religion...he's paying for a friend-on-demand here.
Re: Henri de Catt Unplugged - I
Date: 2020-02-05 10:17 am (UTC)I don't blame him. I mean, Ulrike didn't have serious intentions towards Voltaire, so no problem with Fritz taking over there, but young Catt wanted to score, for which perhaps Fritzian poetry wasn't the ideal method. But there's no way you can tell that to your boss.
Hille to Grumbkow: LOL. Now we have the true reason why the Küstrin staff was ready to supply Fritz with Fredersdorf - at least this stopped him from reciting more poetry at them!
Speaking of Fredersdorf, the "Youth of FtG" appendices have the letter from Fritz to Grumbkow, dated 27th December 1731, in which he writes, about his visit to Frankfurt (an der Oder):
Also, the students have performed a serenade for me; you are familiar with these free-spirited minds and know I could not have avoided this happening. Naturally, I will write to the King who I hope will not hold this matter against me, for which I am not to blame, and which I would not have permitted, since I know it might displease him.
Given that Preuss says Fritz spotted Fredersdorf first as part of a student performance for Fritz in Frankfurt, I thought it's good to have it confirmed such a performance did indeed take place. Now Fritz doesn not mention having noticed the flutist in particular, but he wouldn't, not being stupid and needing to continue to placate Dad and bff of Dad.
if Voltaire thinks winning a war doesn't take any kind of skill, he's on crack.
That’s not what he says, though? (Err, is quoted saying by Fritz.) He says, according to Fritz, that he, V, is not learning anything from reading about battles. And seems regard all battles as the same. Which isn’t the same as saying „anyone can fight a successful battle, it takes no skill“.
(Incidentally, of course the last isn’t true, and given the sheer number of French military disasters in, oh, the last two decades – not just against Fritz, mind, let’s not forget Austrian Field Marshal Traun – who von Krockow says became Heinrich’s role model for how to be a good general without encurring heavy losses - pushing the French back across the Rhine, just as he got the Prussians out of Bohemia, in the second Silesian war – I’m sure Voltaire is aware of that.)
What is undoubtedly true is that Voltaire doesn’t rate military skills very highly, or doesn’t regard them as something to be admired, and that Fritz is irked or even hurt by that. What I find fascinating is that in terms of their own epoch, Voltaire is definitely voicing a minority opinion there. I mean, there’s a reason why Fritzmania has grasped England and why young Goethe and so many other Germans in all the principalities are Fritz fanboys at this point. He’s universally regarded as the military genius of his generation in Europe, even by his enemies. That's why they're already calling him Frederick the Great, in his life time. And his military skills are seen as a great, great virtue for a King to have. Now, given that FW has drummed into his sons that military skills are the best thing a prince can have – see also AW’s letter to Fritz post casheering -, and given that this very area, the military, was where FW most doubted Fritz to be capable in, it makes sense that this is a quality/skill of his that Fritz is particularly proud of. And for which he wants praise from his favourite author, not criticism re: the morality of same.
Let's remember 4-yo Henry was the youngest of the siblings (I assume 4-month old up-and-coming menace Ferdinand had nothing to contribute and was spared this scene) and was possibly the last to get under the table. He may even have been grabbed and pulled under by one of the older siblings who was quicker to grasp the danger. Or he, as the smallest, may have just been being squeezed by the others in a tight space.
Yep, lucky baby Ferdinand was probably sleeping in the nursery through all of this. BTW, every single German biography I've (re)read in the last six months which quotes Wilhelmine's description of this event takes her to task for writing "my siblings, the youngest of which was but four" and says "she's totally forgetting baby Ferdinand!" I mean, lesser readers like myself naturally assume Wilhelmine means the youngest of the siblings present, but hey.
Anyway: so we're in agreement that Heinrich, either directly or indirectly (i.e. via boyfriend) is a likely source for this version of the story?
I got was that Catt's main job was to give Fritz a civilian friend to talk to
*nods* Yes, that's, unflippantly, my impression, too. I mean, Fritz gets the occasional visit from civilians like D'Argens, or Mitchell, or Amalie, but that's not the same as having someone on call whom you can rely on to be there all the time you need him to be, and the longer the war takes, the stronger the need must have been.
Re: Henri de Catt Unplugged - I
Date: 2020-02-05 06:48 pm (UTC)Ha! That's awesome. We need to write a sequel to Counterpoint. :P
Given that Preuss says Fritz spotted Fredersdorf first as part of a student performance for Fritz in Frankfurt, I thought it's good to have it confirmed such a performance did indeed take place.
Yeah, my impression is we know the performance took place, we don't know when he met Fredersdorf, but since he and Fredersdorf were in the same place at the same time in December 1731, it may have been there. (What our source is on Fredersdorf being stationed in the regiment at Frankfurt, if there is one, I do not know. I'm actually curious now, what our earliest documentary reference to Fredersdorf is.)
Now Fritz doesn not mention having noticed the flutist in particular, but he wouldn't, not being stupid and needing to continue to placate Dad and bff of Dad.
No, not in a letter where he's having to defend listening to the performance at all!
Fritz: Dear Dad, last night I listened to a musical performance. Don't worry, though, it was ONLY because the flutist was tall. I was so busy looking at him the whole time, I didn't hear a single note. If he were a little taller, I'd totally send him to you, but he doesn't quite make the cut. So...can I keep him?
That’s not what he says, though? (Err, is quoted saying by Fritz.)
Sorry, I was going from the memoirs, not the diary. In the memoirs, Fritz quotes Voltaire thusly:
"What! all this study to learn how to kill men; this is really piteous! Is war then so complicated a business that a wider intellect is needed to understand it than is required to draw up the plan of a poem?"
And then Fritz goes on:
You see that he did not understand in the least what he was chattering about. How, I beg you, would this scamp manage matters if, as so often happens to me, a crowd of reports, usually contradicting one another, were brought in to him, and if it were necessary for him to guess at the plans and tricks of an enemy and to decide promptly in an affair which would be of the utmost importance? M. de Voltaire, M. de Voltaire, you don’t know what you are talking about, and you chatter on this matter as your Lusignan chatters on the stage.
Now, maybe this is memoirist Catt putting words in Fritz's and Voltaire's mouth to refute other things Catt's heard people say about war not requiring intelligence or study (but like you point out, this is a minority opinion), *but*, in the diary, in the passage you quoted, we have Fritz saying, "It is bad by the evils it causes: but it takes talent." [Emphasis mine.] Which makes me think that Voltaire is indeed saying that it doesn't require study or talent, and is as easy as writing a poem. And perhaps, by implication, that it can be done by anyone who can write a poem, namely him. Especially if he thinks all wars are the same (you know, that would make fighting a war much easier).
Remember, Voltaire is a hundred times more fatigued than Émilie after giving birth, because he wrote a play!
I mean, lesser readers like myself naturally assume Wilhelmine means the youngest of the siblings present, but hey.
Lol, omg. I mean, maybe she is forgetting what month the baby was born, but yeah, I'm with you. The youngest sibling IN THIS SCENE. Not Sir-Not-Appearing-In-This-Film Ferdinand.
Anyway: so we're in agreement that Heinrich, either directly or indirectly (i.e. via boyfriend) is a likely source for this version of the story?
Yup.
that's not the same as having someone on call whom you can rely on to be there all the time you need him to be, and the longer the war takes, the stronger the need must have been.
Definitely. Remember, he even sent for Maupertuis to join him in Silesia in 1741 because he wanted a civilian friend to talk to. (And then Maupertuis got captured at Mollwitz and noped right out of working for Fritz until after the wars were over, lol.)
Granted, Fritz offered Catt the job before the war started, but I still get the impression, along with everyone else (Thiebault and the English translation's preface writer), that the lecteur/Vorleser job description was "someone to talk to," not "reader."
Re: Henri de Catt Unplugged - I
Date: 2020-02-06 03:25 am (UTC)I was wondering what you meant by the appendices to The Youth of Frederick the Great, and then I realized I needed to clarify something that I accidentally made very confusing. The two Youth books in the library are unrelated. The one called Youth Documents was just me being sloppy and naming it what I think of it as (in English) rather than by its actual title, which is Allergnädigster Vater: Die Verkruppelung eines Charakters zu Wusterhausen : Dokumente aus der Jugendzeit Friedrichs II.
Really I should have called it "Allergnädigster Vater," but then I would never have remembered to look it up under the letter A. And of course, this was one of the first additions to the library, long before there was a Lavisse book that actually started with "Youth."
Sorry for the confusion!
Fredersdorf
Date: 2020-02-06 04:14 am (UTC)I've now tracked down a story of Fredersdorf's history, how he came to be at Frankfurt in a student performance, etc. as far as the 18th century. It's far from a primary source, but it's the source for Preuss, Hamilton, etc. (Hamilton, btw, gives a detailed account that's basically a translation of what I'm about to link to, in the second volume of Rheinsberg, which is apparently not entirely about how terrible Heinrich is!)
The story includes a few details not in or diverging from Wikipedia and MacDonogh, in that Fredersdorf is the son of the town fifer, his father tries to train him up into his profession, Fredersdorf joins the army instead, hates it, gets a leave of absence, goes to Frankfurt an der Oder to apprentice to the town fifer there in hopes of getting out of soldiering, and is there when the students ransack the town for the finest talents to play for the visit Crown Prince. That's how Fredersdorf gets roped into playing the flute.
Fritz loves his performance, asks who he is, asks Schwerin to release him, Schwerin does, and Fredersdorf becomes one of Fritz's "lackeys for musical entertainment," I kid you not. That's according to Hamilton. There's also a bunch of stuff on his love of alchemy and quack doctors (it's the 18th century, Hamilton, all doctors are quacks!) that I won't repeat.
Hamilton's also got an anecdote, that's in Manger, about how Fritz resisted Fredersdorf's marriage until Fredersdorf was almost on his death bed, Fritz was super freaked out, and a clergyman told Fritz it would be a great relief to Fredersdorf's dying mind if he could be formally married. Fritz allowed it, he was married, and poof! Fredersdorf gets better just like that. :P
Now, we know from Lehndorff that there was a long and public engagement, but at least now we have some idea where the story about Fritz putting up resistance to Fredersdorf's marriage comes from.
I've uploaded the pages I was able to download using my one-page-at-a-time download privileges to the library, and because the following page was Glasow, I included him too. :D Looks like Manger says he was imprisoned in Spandau in 1757 and died in 1758.
Nothing about any embezzlement on Fredersdorf's part, which is what I'm on the prowl for tonight and how I turned this up. Manger just has him stepping down because he's sick.
Oh! I should mention that our author, Manger, was an architect and construction official for Fritz, and *he* got arrested for financial dishonesty in 1786, according to his Wikipedia page, but as soon as Fritz died, FW2 decided to take Manger back and give him promotions and favor. I guess continuing with the theme of doing the opposite of what Uncle Fritz did.
I await any further exciting details at our reader's leisure. :D
Off to do further detective work!
ETA: Nothing on any embezzlements, but turned up some neat, unsourced details:
Despite or because of these diverse activities, Fredersdorf rarely left Berlin and Potsdam. In 1740 he was still in the company of the young king in Strasbourg and Wesel, then it was not until 1751 that a stay of several months in Paris was attested, where he went for medical treatment, but also for the purpose of shopping on the art market there for his royal master. Whether there was also a diplomatic mission, the promotion of a desired Prussian-French trade agreement, is not clear. The following year we find him in Aachen and Spa, where the always ailing Fredersdorf stayed for a cure.
He was on the Strasbourg trip too?? Truly, an embarrassment of riches for the fanfic writer. His secret diary would make an entertaining complement to AW's: the totally oblivious and the guy who knows everything.
Also, did everyone get to go to Paris except Fritz?
Also, the author of that page fell in love with the same passage from the letters that I did, the one where Fritz wants Fredersdorf to come to the window so he can see him as he rides by--but don't open the window, and keep a strong fire going in the room!
Re: Henri de Catt Unplugged - I
Date: 2020-02-10 05:38 am (UTC)LOL! I realize he was probably not either all that interesting or nice, but the two excerpts from his letters that I've now seen (this one and the one throwing shade on FW's giants) have been rather amusing :)
Re: Henri de Catt Unplugged - I
Date: 2020-02-10 05:41 am (UTC)Re: Henri de Catt Unplugged - I
Date: 2020-02-05 08:04 am (UTC)I have yet to read through the diary systematically to see these passages in context, but I'll just note that this is something Fritz obsessed about with other people, like La Mettrie. Whom he was relieved to find *didn't* break, contrary to rumor. Who's the other one I'm thinking of, Rottenburg? Anyway, it's something Fritz worries about. And I think Fritz talks a lot about how hypochondriacal Voltaire is, so I think he has an impression of Voltaire as someone afraid of death. I'm not certain, but that may be relevant.
Re: Henri de Catt Unplugged - I
Date: 2020-02-05 09:32 am (UTC)Oh absolutely. And Voltaire, with his insisting on being on death's door for decades, certainly was hypochondriacal as hell. But it's one of the interesting things about him: I'm sure he was as much afraid of death as the next non-suicidal person, and then some. And he certainly had no illusions about, say, being able to withstand torture, or anything like that. On the contrary, he was prone to cry out when his toes were tread on. BUT. He had no problem going up against the powerful - who could have squashed him easily - not just as a young man, when sharing the illusion of many young men that they're immortal, and all work out well - but throughout his long life. Intermittent stints in prison not withstanding. Yes, being a egomaniac presumably helped with that, but there are any number of egomaniacs who the first few times after being bruised decide to err on the side of caution. Especially those with a sound survival instinct, which he certainly otherwise had. And yet this man fights "J'Accuse" type of publicity campaigns till the very end when he's outraged about something. (That's utterly unrelated to him, one should add, given his readiness to keep up his grudges against good old Maupertuis.) (BTW, note to self: have discovered YouTube has a French movie on one of those late life cases, "Voltaire and Calas", must check out if the time allows.)
I mean, the whole story about his dying has all those facets. Going to Paris int he first place when he knew that he wasn't likely to come back alive (authorial vanity/pride, longing for that long ago left birthplace and city of cities), going to the trouble of bamboozling a priest (because he'd rather not be flung on the dungheap; you'd think a deist wouldn't care that much what happens to his dead body, but nope, Voltaire wants a proper burial) but avoiding actually taking communion; and then when the clergy comes back in greater numbers and armed with an ultimatum, throwing them out, which not only meant no absolution (whether or not he believed that meant anything at this point) but definitely meant no proper burial (as far as he could know, unless the nephews had promised him they'd make it happen regardless). Something else Fritz and Voltaire shared besides flaws and love of literature and satire was the ability to bend under pressure but maintain an inner core that could not be reached and carried them through the extremes.
Tangentially, I also recall a late letter in which Fritz, in reply to Voltaire's nth "I'm old and practically at death's door" says no, I'm old. You won't just survive us all, but amazingly you've managed to stay young through your mind. And there is something to it, in the sense that Voltaire managed to be himself right to the end, argumentative, witty, creative (he kept writing till his last months, too), simultanously very self centred and looking out for others. (He got the news about the success of his final campaign literally on his deathbed.) For all his earlier digs and fears, Fritz must have been glad about that.
Re: Henri de Catt Unplugged - I
Date: 2020-02-05 07:06 pm (UTC)They're always trying to one-up each other, and this may have to do with Voltaire belitting Fritz's military talents more than it has to do with Fritz having bent/broken under pressure when he was younger and become a military man in spite of all his initial resistance.
Which reminds me, who faced physical death calmly and courageously but recanted his atheism and received religious consolation at the end? Katte. Now, whether it was a performance or not, whether *Fritz* thought it was a performance or not, that might have something to do with his lifelong concern over whether his other friends are going to recant at the end.
For all his earlier digs and fears, Fritz must have been glad about that.
Agreed. Incidentally, it's possible that Fritz having a mass said for Voltaire (assuming MacDonogh is right about this) reflects mixed feelings. On the one hand, a final chance to unite with Voltaire in mocking the church, yay. On the other...remember when Fritz lost an argument with Guichard about the name Quintus Icilius, and then decided to nickname Guichard Quintus Icilius for the rest of his life? I can see Fritz having a, "I insisted X, I was wrong, but I'm king so I get the last word" moment when making sure Voltaire got a mass said for his soul after all.
Also, yeah, it is interesting that Voltaire cared what happened to his body. So did Fritz! For all his "I don't believe in an immortal soul, I lived as a philosopher," he was very specific about "and I want to be buried as a philosopher...at home, next to my dogs, definitely not in a church next to Dad with a lot of pomp and circumstance
maybe I should have been nicer to my nephew, oops."Re: Henri de Catt Unplugged - I
Date: 2020-02-08 12:47 am (UTC)From the diary:
Speaking of opera, we searched for a name, but couldn't find it. I withdrew, saying that I would seek, and that, if I did not find it, that would prevent me from sleeping. I was going to bed when he sent me his page with a half-sheet containing the word in question: Abdolonym.
From the memoirs:
Following this conversation, the King spoke of the operas of Berlin, of their virtues, and of the excellent singers he had.
“If I see Berlin again, I will have an opera produced which is all beauty.”
He wished to tell me its name, but he could not remember it. He sought and sought again, and then became impatient.
“This is diabolical,” he said, “I can’t find that name. Good evening. Perhaps it will come to me when I am alone. If I do not find it, it will be impossible for me to go to sleep.”
In the night, at one o’clock, there was a knock at my door. "Who is there?"
"It is the servant. I come from the King. Your master must be awakened. I have brought him a paper to which he must reply."
A candle was lit, and I read these words:
“I have found the name: it is Montezuma. I shall now be able to sleep quietly. Do the same. With the idea that you might be restless about this name and not able to sleep, I wished to spare you a bad night.”
It was not so bad, for I was sleeping quietly, and, awakened, it was not possible for me to go to sleep again. I thanked the King, however, on the following day for his kind intention."
Now, I have *always* been surprised and slightly skeptical Fritz forgot the name of an opera for which HE had written the libretto just a few years before, and not only that, but it was his and Graun's most acclaimed collaboration. But okay, these things happen.
The real upshot of this account, for me and tumblr fandom, has always been: "If Fritz can't sleep, he assumes no one can sleep, and if he's going crazy trying to remember the name of something, he assumes it's driving everyone else crazy. Well-meaning but lacking in emotional intelligence
and possibly theory of mind."Now we not only have a different opera, but it was Catt who said *he* wasn't going to be able to sleep if he couldn't think of the name, and he was only *about* to go to bed when Fritz sent him the name.
Everything else so far could be passed off as vanity + trying to make a more exciting narrative, but are you TRYING to make Fritz look bad? In return for firing you?
WTF, Catt.
(Also, this is why I put that searchable copy of volume one of the memoirs together; finding things like is infinitely easier.)
Re: Henri de Catt Unplugged - I
Date: 2020-02-10 05:42 am (UTC)Re: Henri de Catt Unplugged - I
Date: 2020-02-10 10:09 pm (UTC)(Seriously, so much of my armchair psychologizing was informed by Catt's memoirs, and having to pull out this part and that part leaves SO MANY HOLES that I don't know what holds water any more.)
Henri de Catt Unplugged - II
Date: 2020-02-04 05:40 pm (UTC)Alas! as the great ones are served. We aspire to be with them, we enjoy it. If they demand something painful from us, we get disgusted. I saw this Prince who by himself, by the circumstances, where he is, deserves the most to be cherished, the most capable: and I saw a crowd of ignorant people criticizing all his steps, his camps , its maneuvers, its provisions, its particular conduct; lend him views he didn't have; complain about any preference; I have seen people incapable of acting by the third hand, making them conceive of the most advantageous ideas, pushing themselves, believing themselves to be great men, being mysterious on small objects, indiscreet on important ones.
And also:
Men are strange; they have pleasure in lowering the King, in order to raise the Prince; others vice versa; but are we reasonable? The Prince acts sparingly; but he has to answer, the army is not his. And will we condemn his brother who, master, can do more? and can we not risk a few, to hope to win a lot? By pushing people this way, they are wasted or saved, and, the troops having suffered enough, the campaign does not go so quickly.
There's a Lehndorff mention in the camp gossip!
In a masked ball Madame de Bentinck came with lots of currency and portraits. There was M. de Lehndorff, chamberlain of the Queen, in a basin of a balance, in the other a feather which carried it, with this inscription: ›Lighter than a feather;« - by M. Danckelman like Diogenes, with a lantern, with this inscription: ›Hominem quaero.‹ - Maupertuis, who had fallen out with her, said to him: ›People have a false mind and a wicked heart; you, Madame, have a wicked mind and a false heart. ‹
Once Fritz and Catt are reunited, Fritz makes it clear who's the military genius around here by a reminder of his most admired battle, that of Leuthen:
When the King left for Leuthen, he wrote to his brother what he wanted to do. ›I will march on them, I will try to get them out, I will beat them. I will besiege Breslau, I will take it. You will say to me: this design surprises you, and you may think that only despair today gives birth to it. I apologize for your mistake.
As you might recall, by the end of 1759, Fritz takes over command in Saxony again, sends Finck to entrap the Austrians against everyone's advice, including Finck's and Heinrich's, and it's a disaster.
In the evening, I was from 3 and a half until 9. He was very distressed, came back to the same idea. - "So I will have brought my misfortune to Saxony!" I tried to distract him, but this image always returned. - »See how unhappy I was: treated harshly by a father, locked up alone for three months in a room; at noon I was brought to eat by a small window, I was given a shirt at the same time, and then I returned the plates of my food. I only had Bossuet on Variants and Basnage. Misfortune has always pursued me; I was only happy at Rheinsberg. Ah, if this peace comes, can anyone blame me for living a little for myself, for withdrawing and living in peace?
He does make peace time plans. These somehow include THE WORST coming to visit again:
"If Voltaire came to see me, it would be rare, and I would prevent any bother." - He made the plan of the building he would like to have. "There would be no vanity, no stools, but each would have armchairs."
Meanwhile, someone keeps being Fritz critical:
This Kalckreuth, adjutant of the Prince, jeers with a sneer: "And here is Silesia lost!" I would punch someone who would tell me, my sister is dead, I have no homeland at all.
If it's any consolation, Catt, we don't know whether Heinrich ever hit Kalkreuth, but he will dump him for Kaphengst at a point when Kalkreuth definitely does not want to be dumped.
Prince Ferdinand here is EC's brother, Ferdinand of Brunswick. Catt doesn't say who his source for the following story is:
After Kolin's unhappy affair, which it was believed we could not recover from, Grant came to Henckel, adjutant to Prince Heinrich. The latter announced it to the Prince, who sobbed. He was dispatched to Prince Ferdinand, who was in command; all were in tears. Orders were given to assemble to consult on the retreat. Prince Ferdinand did not say a word and he only wept. - ›This won't do,‹ said the Prince (Heinrich); ›It is necessary to make a decision.‹ It is essential to make yourself known. - ›I can not.‹
›Well‹, dixit princeps, ›I will make a retirement plan.‹ - The King is announced: the Prince goes to meet him, he takes him by the hand, squeezes him; ›Ah, my frater!‹, And he continues. They then enter the room and we sob on both sides. The Prince dixit, quod optimum esset, to make a retirement plan. - "Not possum," ait Rex, "sed crastina die prope meridiem." - ›This hurries!‹ - "Well, do it, mi frater!" - Here it is. - "It will be good, no doubt," said Rex. - The next day the Prince's adjutant was announced to the King, who made the King say if, on leaving, it would not be good to have the march beat and the flags displayed. - »Yes!« - We did it. Marshal Keith was vigorously attacked, he was cannonaded in his tents; but he escaped. Prince Ferdinandus Brunsvicensis in calamitate is admodum sensitilis.
I'm leaving the Latin, btw, because it cracks me up. "Well, do it, mi frater!" and all.
And here's an FW anecdote from none other than Eichel:
The late King, said M. Eichel to me, had brought with him M. de Schumacher, private counselor. - ›I have an important secret to communicate to you, it must not be disclosed. If that happens, one of the three of us will have spoken." Two days after the adviser comes, hears grenadiers talking about this affair; he was surprised, said Mr. Schumacher. He is very worried and surprised. The King said to them: 'How could it be that the affair had transpired? ‹M. Schumacher complained. Councilor Eichel said to him: "Let Your Majesty Remember if he did not speak of it." - "Yes", he said, "I am thick in the head; I told Grumbkow, I had this weakness. ‹-
Grumbkow, not known for his discretion? Tsk.
The two MT mentions are great, and as opposed to the memoirs version, come without "at leaset she hates whores", which makes me wonder whether de Catt isn't the one who has an anti sex worker bias? To recapitulate:
It must be admitted that the Queen of Hungary has talents, that she is capable, that she applies herself; we cannot refuse her, "he said," this justice. "
and
It must be admitted that the Queen's obstinacy and mine do much harm. What a cruel war! We only wreak havoc. "- In the evening, the enemies set fire to the outskirts of Pirna.
As Mildred said, it's the way he equals them both, rather than presenting himself as the menaced party, that makes it feel both honest and poignant.
Still hankering for a "Well done, son" from FW:
He thought he was in Strasbourg with Marshal Daun, who was suddenly transplanted to Charlottenburg, where his father was. There he found old Dessan. - "Did I behave well?" - ›Yes‹, said the King, ›yes‹. - »Well, I'm happy; your approval is worth me better than that of the whole universe. "- The French are announced. - "Should I attack?" He said to Prince Anhalt - and he awoke.
Fritz, somehow I don't think your memoirs will have the wished for effect on your family. Given, you know, Heinrich's copy of it with hand written comments was supposedly so incendiary that it got disappeared from the state archives:
I composed my memories for my family. People will talk a lot about me. It can find out the reasons that made me act. Let the public say what they want! What do I care! It is important to me that my family is happy with me. If I made mistakes, it's because I know what men are like.
And lastly, one more Voltaire statement. Can't tell whether this one is meant as a diss or an endearing story:
Voltaire, on leaving, gave three copies of Louis XIV to the cook and the servants.
Louis XIV = Voltaire's "The Age of Louix XIV", one monumental work in terms of histories because it didn't just focus on the monarch and his battles but tried to draw the picture of en entire era, its culture and society. This was according to Pleschinski the first of its kind and changed the way people thought history could be written. When Fritz, years later, writes "I am content to have lived in the Age of Voltaire", he's also alluding to this work in addition to paying a compliment to his frenemy. (And coining a phrase, as this is what the Age will be called in France.)
But, like I said, I can't tell whether he tells that anecdote to -
a) make a point about writerly vanity - i.e. "Voltaire thinks so much of his work, he even hands out copies to the servants
b) reporting a slight against himself - i.e. "here I was thinking Voltaire giving me copies of his works means he thinks I'm special, but guess what, he even gave them to the staff!"
c) telling an "aw, Voltaire" type of anecdote, i.e. "Look, he's not always a meanie; he did give copies of his masterpiece to the servants as a farewell present".
Re: Henri de Catt Unplugged - II
Date: 2020-02-05 05:50 am (UTC)And how would you do that, exactly, Fritz? Do tell. :P Because your track record doesn't exactly inspire confidence.
I'm leaving the Latin, btw, because it cracks me up. "Well, do it, mi frater!" and all.
Yeah, Catt's random forays into Latin, Greek, and English in his diaries are weird and hilarious. I would totally get it if it were entire sentences, but he goes word by word, and that's just bizarre.
The two MT mentions are great, and as opposed to the memoirs version, come without "at leaset she hates whores", which makes me wonder whether de Catt isn't the one who has an anti sex worker bias?
You know, I think he might be. Check out this passage:
Before dinner I went to the King...He found that men were unjust towards women; that we allowed ourselves to be disturbed and that we did not suffer from them. - »I know that I will never make laws: but those for women are not fair. An infidelity of the husband exempts the wife from being constant. "- I denied it. "Everyone has his ideas."
So one, it sounds like Catt has way less sympathy for women having sex than Fritz. Two, I have now found yet *another* occasion on which Fritz is supposed to have said that if his father forced him to get married, he could do what he wanted, and it would be fair because he'd let her do the same. Now, as you pointed out, would he have done it if it came down to his reputation? Maybe, maybe not. But there are now four occasions, decades apart, on which he's espoused the belief that if the man cheats first, the woman is off the hook.
And here it's Catt who's got less liberal, more standard ideas. So maybe that MT backhanded compliment was more Catt than Fritz. Fritz is straightforwardly, if grudgingly, giving her her due in the diary.
Oh, speaking of Catt and women, I mentioned that the Seven Years' War is like his tour through the female population of Central Europe? If, per Paul, it's better to marry than to burn, I get the impression this guy is burning, and according to Wikipedia, he's going to marry in 1761.
Given, you know, Heinrich's copy of it with hand written comments was supposedly so incendiary that it got disappeared from the state archives:
Hahaha. Also the comment about how he had to put up an obelisk to honor the real heroes of the war, "about whom his fucking memoirs say nothing."
And lastly, one more Voltaire statement. Can't tell whether this one is meant as a diss or an endearing story:
Voltaire, on leaving, gave three copies of Louis XIV to the cook and the servants.
I'm not certain either, but reading the entire entry, Fritz seems to be talking about the importance of applying yourself to philosophy and learning things yourself, not just accepting what you're told. And he starts talking in particular about women: women who study philosophy, women who have intrigues but decently (which he seems to find acceptable). And if you put this into context with one of Fritz's writings on how society and parents let women down by not having them be educated as a matter of course, which results in them spending all their time on love affairs and their appearance...maybe he's saying, "Look, even Voltaire thinks women and/or lower class individuals should educate themselves."
Émilie, at least per Bodanis, had the same observation that the women at court who were frivolous and shallow were so only because they weren't given better options. Obviously, she was more sympathetic to the women than Fritz, but he was at least on the right track.
There's a Lehndorff mention in the camp gossip!
I noticed! Lehndorff *and* Countess Bentinck!
Re: Henri de Catt Unplugged - II
Date: 2020-02-05 11:15 am (UTC)Verily. I don't think putting Voltaire in a birdcage after dinner is a viable solution... (All kidding aside, I do find it oddly touching he still believes Voltaire will come back, post war.)
So one, it sounds like Catt has way less sympathy for women having sex than Fritz.
It does, and I'm tentatively revising my opinion on Fritz' propensity for slut-shaming as being at least partially based on Henri de Catt's unreliable memoirs. (Mind you, there are still the "three whorse of Europe" quotes which don't come from de Catt. But in terms of his general attitude towards female sexuality, it looks like a case can be made!)
Oh, speaking of Catt and women, I mentioned that the Seven Years' War is like his tour through the female population of Central Europe? If, per Paul, it's better to marry than to burn, I get the impression this guy is burning, and according to Wikipedia, he's going to marry in 1761.
Marries the sister in law of AW's private secretary, don't forget. Who suddenly finds himself singled out by Fritz together with only one other as the sole two decent people around AW who weren't "evil advisors" councelling him against Big Bro in the memoirs, without any basis of this in the diaries whatsoever.
But yes, Catt definitely does not live chaste himself in the 7 Years War.
Re: Henri de Catt Unplugged - II
Date: 2020-02-05 07:45 pm (UTC)He can keep Pöllnitz company. :P
But yes, that "can't live with you, can't live without you" is touching. Also, Fritz is kind of used to people leaving and coming back after the war is over, and of course he's also used to Voltaire specifically coming and going. So it doesn't really surprise me that he didn't know what we know, that they were never going to see each other again, despite having a quarter of a century in which to do so.
It does, and I'm tentatively revising my opinion on Fritz' propensity for slut-shaming as being at least partially based on Henri de Catt's unreliable memoirs.
Same. I'm having to tentatively revise a lot of things.
But it does seem like not having to worry about commandments about adultery or original sin and so forth helped Fritz out in this account. I'll share a quote to this effect soon, in my Lavisse write-up.
By the way, let me tweak Google Translate's "He found that men were unjust towards women; that we allowed ourselves to be disturbed and that we did not suffer from them" that I quoted above. He's saying that men permit themselves to stray from the straight-and-narrow but don't allow (suffer) women to.
(Mind you, there are still the "three whorse of Europe" quotes which don't come from de Catt.
Where do they come from, out of curiosity?
But yes, Fritz is definitely a huge misogynist, but in keeping with him being a fascinating mixed bag of good and bad, he has some surprisingly liberal ideas about women.
On the one hand, women are inferior, smell bad (Fritz, no one can even approach you without sneezing, and also, how have your nasal passages not been incapacitated already? I defy you to convince me that you can smell anything), shouldn't be allowed to be in charge of anything (unless it suits him), should never rule over men, etc., etc., *but*, they should be educated as a matter of course in a way that they're not currently, should be free to have affairs if their husbands are cheating on them, and in general can be allowed to have love affairs as long as they're conducted discreetly and motivated by passion. And it's not totally their fault that they're obsessed with looks and love affairs. (He doesn't seem to get that in a world where men have all the power, a woman's ability to attract a man become a means of survival, he seems to think it's just frivolity in the absence of being able to think about philosophy and literature, and he doesn't want women benefiting from their affairs *cough*, but okay. It's a start.)
Fair For Its Day, as TV Tropes would say.
Marries the sister in law of AW's private secretary, don't forget. Who suddenly finds himself singled out by Fritz together with only one other as the sole two decent people around AW who weren't "evil advisors" councelling him against Big Bro in the memoirs, without any basis of this in the diaries whatsoever.
Of course! Who else would he marry but the sister of a really upstanding guy who was one of Fritz's favorite people?