cahn | 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,

rheinsberg, that has quite a lot of the interesting historical content (and more coming regularly), organized nicely with lots of lovely tags so if there's any subject you are interested in it is easy to find :D

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

mildred_of_midgard

ETA: Even if Fredersdorf weren't a commoner, I can't imagine Fritz would have wanted to share!

Haha! It would only work if Fredersdorf were super reluctant and only willing to make the great sacrifice for his prince. But even then, Fritz would have to propose it, and...no.

Love the mental image, though.

(am I projecting twenty-first century religiously-conservative attitudes on this??

Maybe? I'll let

selenak weigh in on 18th century mores, but I feel like it's the act of non-procreative-and-church-authorized sex that's the problem, not the baby-making per se. I mean, masturbation is also off the table, and we have the Biblical "he who lusts in his heart after a woman is guilty of adultery" prohibition that I feel that FW totally bought into, and the idea that chasing women makes you not only a sinner but effeminate and weak and likely to spend money on them, all of which I feel were a bigger deal to FW than any inadvertent babies. Though he certainly wouldn't want him or his son financially supporting these wages of sin, that's for sure.

Fertile SD, though, definitely an example on Fritz's mind. "I had sex with her twice! I even managed to ejaculate once. She must not be fertile and there's no point in continuing. ~~Yay!~~ I mean, that's terrible. Nobody panic, though: Mom and Dad more than made up for my lackluster procreating efforts! I'm sure to have nephews and great-nephews in droves."

Edited Date: 2020-02-04 06:05 am (UTC)

From:

selenak

Haha! It would only work if Fredersdorf were super reluctant and only willing to make the great sacrifice for his prince. But even then, Fritz would have to propose it, and...no.

Gustav: whereas I had no problem getting myself obeyed in that department. Sure, my guy put everything in writing and had it deposed to the Swedish Academy, so the entire world eventually found out, and sure, Mom hit the roof when brother Charles told her about it, but hey! An heir was had!

SD's fertility contributing to Fritz coming quickly to the conclusion that EC isn't fertile and hence he's not obliged to try anymore: Sounds very likely! And you know, they're not the Habsburgs, but the Hohenzollerns of Fritz' generation otherwise procreated quickly if they tried. Wilhelmine got pregnant in her first year of marriage, same with the other sisters, AW might have been a negligent and indifferent husband to Louise but the first two kids happened quickly, and then the later two with a gap but still, they happened. Ferdinand/his niece produced offspring, too. So Friedrich and Heinrich being the two exceptions from the "marry, multiply" rule rather points to the obvious element in common as the reason...

By which I don't mean the gayness - that never stopped Philippe D'Orleans from getting both of his wives pregnant multiple times, even though not all kids survived - but the stubborn " you can make me marry her, Dad/Fritz, but you can't make me have sex with her!" attitude.

feel like it's the act of non-procreative-and-church-authorized sex that's the problem, not the baby-making per se. I mean, masturbation is also off the table, and we have the Biblical "he who lusts in his heart after a woman is guilty of adultery" prohibition that I feel that FW totally bought into, and the idea that chasing women makes you not only a sinner but effeminate and weak and likely to spend money on them, all of which I feel were a bigger deal to FW than any inadvertent babies.

Yes. He doesn't seem to have been worried Fritz would inflict lots of bastards on the royal line even when thinking Fritz/poor Doris Ritter were an item. He had that midwife test her for virginity, not pregnancy. Also WHORES. Both FW and his son had a lot to say about men being ruled by same - meaning usually, but not exclusively Louis XV. With FW, "no whores!" is on the Opening paragraph of the Political Testament. With Fritz, of course, some of the Catt (memoirs) quotes are now suspicious, but I just read, courtesy of Mildred' algorithm, in the diary:

page 406: His Majesty was very tired. We talked about Berlin and the way of life. I let many things pass. There is a lot of coquetry, he tells me, among the great world. I say to them one day: Ladies, you do what we do everywhere; but do try a little more decency. I do not say anything. I tolerate these intrigues if they are a result of passion; but when it's out of interest, it's awful. I prefer one who pays, than one who is paid. I have often said to husbands who came to complain: You are doing something stupid, it will be disclosed.

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Gustav: whereas I had no problem getting myself obeyed in that department.

Oh, I didn't mean that Fredersdorf would be reluctant to obey Fritz. I meant he'd have to make a big production out of how he was reluctant to sleep with EC and was ONLY doing it to to obey Fritz. So as to assuage Fritz's jealousies. Much like how he had to marry a NURSE to keep Fritz chill about sharing.

He had that midwife test her for virginity, not pregnancy. Also WHORES

Which reminds me, you told us that MT's sex policing banned all extramarital sex, but made an exception for illegitimate mothers, to prevent infanticide and abortion. My sense is that the major objection in the past was to unsanctioned lust, rather than the irresponsible procreation of much of today's discourse. Of course, for *women*, foisting a bastard on your husband was a huge problem with extramarital sex, but that was much much less of a problem for men who wanted to have extramarital sex.

I prefer one who pays, than one who is paid.

Says the man who was on the prowl for a sugar daddy all through the 1730s! :P I guess it doesn't count if you just flirt and don't put out? Or more to the point, it doesn't count if you're *Fritz*.

Edited Date: 2020-02-05 05:02 am (UTC)

From:

selenak

prefer one who pays, than one who is paid.

Says the man who was on the prowl for a sugar daddy all through the 1730s!

But Mildred, that's the point! Of course he likes people who pay better. He always did! The ones who get paid surely are the competition!

More seriously, those 1730s activities do make that high and mightiness about the Marquise de Pompadour awfully hypocritical. Not just on Fritz' part, but on the part of many of his biographers. "The greedy mistress of Louis XV" and so forth. I do remember that letter to Wilhelmine saying "Eh, you can offer her this and that sum" (if she persuaded Louis to change alliances again), I suppose, and that Madame la Marquise turned the offer down.

From:

mildred_of_midgard

But Mildred, that's the point! Of course he likes people who pay better. He always did! The ones who get paid surely are the competition!

ROTFLOL.

Remember this?

Fritz: Suhm, please read Seneca's chapter on indifference to wealth.
Fritz: Great! Now that you don't care about money, can I have yours?

:DDD

More seriously, in a lifetime of hypocrisy, there is little that Fritz was more hypocritical about than money. If you ask me, he's trying to compensate for a deprived childhood. Anyone trying to take money that could be his is a trigger that emotionally puts him back in a place where he has to live without books and music and adequate food.

I think his obsession with good food, what he described as "disorderly cravings, like a pregnant woman," and his apparent inability to keep from bolting it (even when he had no trouble skipping meals or living on tight rations) stems from the same source.

Oh, sheesh, I think that quote may be from Catt's memoirs. ANYWAY, it's probably something Catt observed, even if Fritz wasn't as self-aware as he's made out to be. (In addition to possibly revise my opinion about his slut-shaming, I'm having to revisit the evidence for his self-awareness. Also, one wonders if Catt the devoted fan would have put "like a pregnant woman" in his hero's mouth, even after the breakup.)

And that, oddly enough, is one of the reasons I think Fritz may actually have had a low sex drive. Because once Dad was dead, and even at Rhinesberg, he should have been all over the boyfriends in an incontrovertible way.

And maybe he was, and we're viewing it through a lens of 250 years of homophobia on the part of people determined to preserve their hero's reputation. Maybe he was bedding down left and right with Marwitz and Glasow and Claus and Darget and Fredersdorf and Algarotti, and he just had to preserve some plausible deniability, by claiming his relationship with Algarotti was purely intellectual, Marwitz wasn't anything to write home about, etc.

But the fact that it remained so deniable, and the fact that he spent that much time denying it, and the fact that people like Heinrich or Algarotti leave us in no doubt about their sexual activity, and the fact that there are so few candidates and he spent relatively little time with them (even Fredersdorf and he are frequently separated after 1740), and the fact that Trenck absolutely would have talked...it kind of makes me think he'd figured out that he liked the idea of sex better than the act.

But I may revise this opinion after rereading Blanning, who spends a lot of time arguing that Fritz was homosexually active into the 1750s. I'll see how convincing his arguments are.