Announcing Rheinsberg: Frederick the Great discussion post 10

[cahn]

So 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We now have a community, rheinsberg, that has quite a lot of the interesting historical content (and more coming regularly), organized nicely with lots of lovely tags so if there's any subject you are interested in it is easy to find :D

Comments

Re: Peter Keith

[mildred_of_midgard]

The Peter Keith write-up is up, with an insane amount of detail. I actually cut out a lot of stuff on the history of the Jägerhof site, which I spent way too much time today reading up on. :P

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, selenak: he's implicitly giving the mother credit for getting Fritz to summon Keith back to Berlin? And implying that Fritz had forgotten about him until reminded?

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

[selenak]

Now, tell me if I'm interpreting this right, selenak: he's implicitly giving the mother credit for getting Fritz to summon Keith back to Berlin? And implying that Fritz had forgotten about him until reminded?

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

[mildred_of_midgard]

Thank you, that's what I thought. I wanted to check before I got indignant on Fritz's behalf. He remembered!

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!