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rheinsberg, that has quite a lot of the interesting historical content (and more coming regularly), organized nicely with lots of lovely tags so if there's any subject you are interested in it is easy to find :D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rheinsberg, that has quite a lot of the interesting historical content (and more coming regularly), organized nicely with lots of lovely tags so if there's any subject you are interested in it is easy to find :D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