Frederick the Great discussion post 11

[cahn]

In our last installment, our heroes found that Henri de Catt's memoirs, a major source for current biographers of Frederick the Great, are not to be trusted!!

rheinsberg

Comments

Re: Katte! - Species facti 2

[mildred_of_midgard]

Was not expecting an immediate translation by any means! Whenever you have time, even a summary would be lovely. I've just glanced at the Google translate so far, have not had time yet to go through and stare at individual sentences to try to use my grammar + Google's vocabulary to make better sense of it.

I don't see any Absalom references, but does it otherwise answer your question about whether the person dictating the Puncta knew about the specific occasions on which Katte tried to dissuade Fritz and what he supposedly said on those occasions?

BTW, in general, this reads to me like a typical first confession - admit only something that‘s already been proven but put the best possible spin on it in order to survive. Katte not being suicidal, this makes sense.

It does, and I totally support Katte trying to talk his way out of it, and curse FW!

Re: Katte! - Species facti 2

[selenak]

but does it otherwise answer your question about whether the person dictating the Puncta knew about the specific occasions on which Katte tried to dissuade Fritz and what he supposedly said on those occasions?

Yes. I haven't made a sentence for sentence comparison, but the two instances mentioned in the Puncta - one in Saxony, as I recall - are mentioned here as well, I think.

As for Absalom, we know from the appendices in Forster and Preuss FW used the comparison himself (which I didn't know when I had the official Prussian propaganda use it as an Explanation for Fritz' death in my AU! -, and I think it's incredibly telling as to where the Puncta are coming from. Because Absalom didn't try to escape David. He led an uprising and "turned the hearts of the men of Israel" against his father. This is FW's fear. I doubt it would have occured to Katte on his own.

Re: Katte! - Species facti 2

[mildred_of_midgard]

I doubt it would have occured to Katte on his own.

That's very true. This letter is looking more and more dictated. It must have been written in Berlin, not Küstrin.

Poor Fritz, isn't allowed to be close to his sister the first time he sees her after all this, and can't even get a proper goodbye letter from his boyfriend. Just another message from FW in bf's handwriting (which adds so many layers of painful that it hurts just to think about).

Let's hope that there were some serious coded messages in there, beyond "Just save your head, Fritz!"