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We now have a community, rheinsberg, that has quite a lot of the interesting historical content (and more coming regularly), organized nicely with lots of lovely tags so if there's any subject you are interested in it is easy to find :D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

[mildred_of_midgard]

Wonderful, thank you! As usual, your speed continues to amaze and awe.

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

[selenak]

Fritz had Pausanias and Cassius Dio, both in hand-bound copies with additional handwritten pages in his library. Alas, the Cassius Dio was a victim of WWII, but the Pausanias is still there; our author says the handwritten remarks are mostly text excerpts. And, as he points out, what Fritz didn‘t own were the more negative Hadrian and Antinous descriptions, as given by Aurelius Victor and in the anonymous Historia Augusta.

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

[mildred_of_midgard]

Perfect, thank you on both counts!