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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rheinsberg, that has quite a lot of the interesting historical content (and more coming regularly), organized nicely with lots of lovely tags so if there's any subject you are interested in it is easy to find :D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rheinsberg, that has quite a lot of the interesting historical content (and more coming regularly), organized nicely with lots of lovely tags so if there's any subject you are interested in it is easy to find :D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: MacDonogh Reread II
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
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
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
*chokes*
He is the very model of a Hohenzollern therapist!
...I totally lost it here.
Re: MacDonogh Reread II
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
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.