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rheinsberg, that has quite a lot of the interesting historical content (and more coming regularly), organized nicely with lots of lovely tags so if there's any subject you are interested in it is easy to find :D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

No kidding. Why am I not surprised McDonogh has it in for the sibs?

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 poetry~~

Gundling: 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 ~~novel~~ memoirs 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.

From:

selenak

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."

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!

From:

cahn

and giving exemplary grief counselling to ensure Heinrich would not succumb to depression.

*chokes*

He is the very model of a Hohenzollern therapist!

...I totally lost it here.