cahn | Announcing Rheinsberg: Frederick the Great discussion post 10

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rheinsberg, that has quite a lot of the interesting historical content (and more coming regularly), organized nicely with lots of lovely tags so if there's any subject you are interested in it is easy to find :D

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From:

mildred_of_midgard

Spreaking of Preuß, though: good grief. Every time I take a look, I'm thrown out again by the sheer mid 19th century nationalism of it all.

None of this is surprising in a 19th century historian, I know, I know, and I've often come across this before, but for some reason, this time around it just keeps throwing me out. In conclusion, it will be a long while till I properly read that multi volume biography.

I don't blame you. Unsurprising is one thing, but wanting to immerse yourself in it is another matter.

What I was hoping, since Preuss was the one who led us to Münchow Jr.'s letter, was that he would be a useful set of primary source material (5 volumes of source material; yes, much of it made it into his correspondence collection now on Trier, but I got the impression there was some non-overlap), but now I see exactly how all that selection of material for the Oeuvres happened. Marwitz letters? Cut. Voltaire wanting to commit suicide because of the way he was treated in Frankfurt? Cut.

Sigh. Between him and Catt, it's been quite a morning. To quote Fritz himself, writing to Algarotti, "With age I feel more and more incredulous when it comes to histories, theology and physicians. There are few known truths in the world, we look for them, and while we do so, we satisfy ourselves with the fables that are created for us, and the eloquence of charlatans."

I was morbidly curious how invading Saxony is defending German freedom, but of ourse it's because the Saxons secretly are already yearning to become Prussian citizens

Oh, for fuck's sake.

Well, I'm sorry he's such a letdown, and thanks for dipping your toe in the waters of German nationalism for us. I'm still hopeful we'll have more Münchow moments where he leads us somewhere interesting, even if the commentary isn't worth reading cover-to-cover.

From:

selenak

Re: Preuß,in fairness, he did a lot of original research which later biographers drew from. As the edition of the Katte tribunal protocols says, he was the first biographer to have access to them, for example; earlier writings on the subject had to rely on hearsay and anonymous pamphlets. And there may even be gems there, despite his worhip of his subject, so I'll try intermittently, it's just that I find the 19th century nationalism hard to stomach.

Also, with his basic belief that Fritz can do no wrong and is truth incarnated, he tranfers errors. Remember, in the 7 Years War, one of Fritz' most efficient propagana writings was a supposed letter from MT to the Marquise de Pompadour calling her "dear sister". This was, depending on your pov, forgery in the service of political propaganda or satire, but it definitely wasn't the real deal. (We do have the entire correspondance between the Marquise and Vienna documented. The only direct letter of hers to MT, and not the other way around, was thanking her for the present of an ebony cabinet. Otherwise, Reinette corresponded with Kaunitz (basically Austria's PM,

cahnstill remember it mentioning that the dear sister" letter is the 18th century of an urban legend starting out as political propaganda.)

Or: like I said, I noted - and was surprised - that he quotes from Fritz' conversations with Catt (naming Catt's memoirs as the source) before these were published, then found the explanation in the preface (the memoirs were in the Prussian State Archive and Preuß was given access to them). I don't blame him for being thrilled - getting your hands on such a document with lots of surely authentic Fritz conversations, what a find! But it means that he accepts anything Fritz says here (or that, as we now know, Catt has him say) without question, including the AW-editing-out-of-history thing where Heinrich, not AW, is declared by Fritz to have been FW's favourite. (Which Preuß with his access to the state archive, which I assume back then had the same FW letters Ziebura and other modern biographers whote from, could have counterchecked. But if the One King says it...)

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Re: Preuß,in fairness, he did a lot of original research which later biographers drew from. As the edition of the Katte tribunal protocols says, he was the first biographer to have access to them

Yeah, he definitely seemed to be the most source-oriented guy I could find so early, which is why I grabbed him. Well, like you said, maybe more gems will turn up. And maybe it's worth scrolling through the five non-bio volumes just to see if there are any sources in there that we don't have access to through Trier, or if it's all just Fritz correspondence that he later published.