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We now have a community, rheinsberg, that has quite a lot of the interesting historical content (and more coming regularly), organized nicely with lots of lovely tags so if there's any subject you are interested in it is easy to find :D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

[selenak]

Aww, I'm really glad to hear 2), I was hoping that had a real horses mouth Basis!

re: 1), and that, right there, is why Voltaire/Fritz probably wouldn't have worked out even if they had been a bit less similar in their flaws. For all of Voltaire's many many character deficits, he was a genuine free spirit - we do have that as an expression in German, "Freigeist" -, and remind one till his dying day. (Not giving in to psychological terror by church officials is a good demonstration of that.) Sure, he was vain as well and loved to be flattered, but you couldn't cage him or own him, no matter how much money or accolades were involved. And Fritz, however enlightened a monarch he was, was at his core a despot who needed to control people. And Voltaire was the ultimate uncontrollable person of his age.

Now that I've read a bit more about the FW and Gundling relationship: it seems like a counterpart/caricature/nightmare version of this. Martin Stade, the GDR author on whose novel the film "Der König und sein Narr" is based, seems to have the tale to get around GDR censorship and make a point on why intellectuals even if they tell themselves they can influence powerful people for good and can't resist the attraction of power, of getting close to power, inevitably end up debased, humiliated, corrupted or any version thereof. But even Stade's fictional interpretation aside, looks like people did of course wonder why Gundling didn't make more than the two escape attempts. (Though this strikes me like asking an abused wife "so why did you only run away twice, never mind the beatings afterwards got worse?") And one explanation named is that Seckendorff does actually name him as someone FW listens to (in between abusing him), and that Gundling might have kidded himself that by staying, he could change FW and the country for the better. Stade has the "no wars of aggression, they are evil!" in the 1722 Political Testament be a direct Gundling quote, but whether that's invention or based on a source, I don't know.

Re: Henri de Catt

[mildred_of_midgard]

2) Me too! Your icon stands. :)

And Fritz, however enlightened a monarch he was, was at his core a despot who needed to control people. And Voltaire was the ultimate uncontrollable person of his age.

Agreed. That's why, when you shared the quote about Fritz liking EC because she was so docile, I thought about replying, "And for once this isn't misogyny, it's legit control freak Fritz's criterion for the people he wants around him."

(Though this strikes me like asking an abused wife "so why did you only run away twice, never mind the beatings afterwards got worse?")

Right? The explanations aren't mutually exclusive, though: if you're stuck in a situation--I know I keep harping on rationalization, but it's something traumatized people do. (Also non-traumatized people. There's just so much neuroscientific evidence that a lot of our thought processes start in the limbic system, and then on top of that we build a superstructure of rational thought, whose whole purpose is to back up our emotions.)

Anyway, if Gundling was thinking about leaving but couldn't bring himself to try it again, he might very well come up with reasons why it was worth staying, in spite of everything. When at base, the real reason might just be plain old fear.