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Announcing Rheinsberg: Frederick the Great discussion post 10
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,![[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rheinsberg, that has quite a lot of the interesting historical content (and more coming regularly), organized nicely with lots of lovely tags so if there's any subject you are interested in it is easy to find :D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rheinsberg, that has quite a lot of the interesting historical content (and more coming regularly), organized nicely with lots of lovely tags so if there's any subject you are interested in it is easy to find :D
Re: Henri de Catt Unplugged - I
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
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
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
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
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
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