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! - The Koser take

[selenak]

Koser says: Glasenapp According to a protocol made on August 30 and the people in question testifying to this, Glasenapp got the order to arrest Kappe in the morning of August 16th between 6 and 7 am. The postmaster Borchward says the order arrived on August 15th at 9 pm in the evening, but the guy in charge overlooked the "Per Estaffette", i.e. the remark that this was an urgent matter to be handed out at once. Auditeur Rumpf testifies that Katte wasn't surprised (nicht konsternieret) when getting arrested by Pannewitz. Koser then says that while tradition gives several reasons why Katte didn't use the time to flee, his testimony at the interrogation of August 30 says he and Lt. Holtzendorff got leave to visit Malchow on August 15th. Koser does not say whether that was where they actually went. According to the interrogation from the 30th, Katte received Fritz' letter from Triersdorf on August 8th or 9th.

Banning: what do you want to bet he didn't bother to research anything related to AW beyond his casheering? I mean, Ziebura's biography was the first for centuries (since the 18th) as far as I know, because for all that the entire later Hohenzollern family was descended from AW, they were embarassed about this because they drew their acclaim from the Fritz connection - see also Willy the obnoxious claiming "no descendant of Frederick the Great will ever surrender" - and historians rehashing the fact their actual ancestor died in disgrace and in arguments with the great national hero was the last thing they wanted. Post WWII, of course, no one cared anymore for the longest time. So I bet Banning just thought "well, if FW liked him, he really must have been just like FW" without a) looking at the actual evidence, and b) considering that the traits Fritz shared with Dad ensured their distance, not their closeness.

Headcanon: Voltaire and AW were switched at birth. :P

Alas, I need reasonable dates even for my crack fic. How about: Grandpa F1 had a fling with Mme Arouet? Especially since her husband was odious anyway?
Jeanne and Fritz: there's an encounter that would be fascinating. In some afterlife of legends. Would he or would he not resist quoting Voltaire's Pucelle? Whatever would she make of his attitude towards religion? Would she, as a female warrior, be an honorary man in his pov?

That's an excellent quote, though.

Voltaire always delivers.

Scandal that never happened: seriously, you have less incriminating quotes from the Borgias. There but for the grace of Fritz' orientation and Wilhelmine's possibly low sex drive go they.

Re: Katte! - The Koser take

[mildred_of_midgard]

Koser: Thank you, that was exactly my reading too. I was going crazy because Lavisse writes, "There is a legendary story about the arrest of Katte...Koser dispels this legend (Appendix, p. 232), but I cannot explain to myself that Katte could have been able to destroy papers at the time of his arrest, bei der Arrestirung, as the Kopenick trial stated," and unless my German is worse than I think, I don't see where he dispels it, just questions it.

Let's also remember that if Natzmer & co. *did* delay, neither they nor Katte are exactly going to spell this out during the trial. If anything, it reads to me like somebody was busy coming up with an explanation for why there was a delay between the order was received and when Katte was arrested, and not surprised when he was arrested.

Without having seen all the documents that came out of the trial, if we know that the order arrived in the evening of the 15th and the postmaster had to testify that as to why was an UTTERLY accidental delay in delivering it...it kind of sounds like there was an investigation as to why there was a delay?

Maybe it wasn't Natzmer delaying, maybe it was some sympathetic party at the post office, but it does sound like Katte had some warning and some time to destroy things. Also, word of mouth may have traveled ahead of the official written order.

Lavisse also says Katte "went to pass the day of the 18th of August in the country, through the permission of Field-marshal Natzmer...He was arrested the following morning." And again, unless my German was very much worse than I thought, it read to me like Koser said he got permission but didn't specify that he acted on it, and that he was arrested on the morning of the 16th, not the 19th.

But I'm also reading Lavisse in translation, so I should check the original.

Okay, the French version has the 15th, so at least that's a typo by the translator, not Lavisse. It does say, "Il était allé passer la journée du 15 août à la campagne," which reads to me like he left, but okay. And "Koser détruit cette légende," so aside from the date, Lavisse's reading of Koser and mine are different. All I see Koser saying is 1) that there was some kind of a delay, but the parties involved, not being suicidal, told FW it was accidental and definitely not the fault of the parties who were supposed to do the arresting. And 2) that Katte had sought permission to leave, which does imply that he might have been trying to get out of Berlin even before the arrest came.

Blanning: Has read Ziebura, though! Cites her bio of AW 4 times. (Blanning's bio is 2016.) I think he's just getting too distracted by superficial similarities and being influenced by what FW was thinking, i.e., "This kid is willing to do things my way! Which means he'll be just like me and I don't have to worry if he becomes king!" as opposed to "Being willing to do things someone else's way is a sign that he couldn't be more different than me. It's the kid that I want to strangle all the time that's like looking into a mirror."

"Without considering that the traits Fritz shared with Dad ensured their distance, not their closeness," definitely. I mean, even Voltaire said nature had never produced a father-son pair as completely unlike as Fritz and FW, and I had to "Well..." at him too. And he said this after being arrested at Frankfurt, too!

Alas, I need reasonable dates even for my crack fic

Wilhelmine didn't. :P Brother Voltaire indeed. But yes, if Voltaire's father thought he was a bastard anyway, why not a Hohenzollern bastard! :D F1 is obviously just as capable of producing insane terriers as FW1.

Would he or would he not resist quoting Voltaire's Pucelle?

Would not! Between religion, misogyny, Voltaire, and a general tendency to underestimate other people, I fear it would be a long time in the afterlife before Fritz appreciated her enough to promote her to honorary man.

That said, the reason I like developing my afterlife worldbuilding in my head, other than allowing all my faves to meet (and I did devote a bit of mental page-space to Fritz + Jeanne a while back), is that eternity is enough time for people to grow and change. And given how problematic all my faves are, growing and changing is something I'm highly interested in having them do. :P

Scandal that never happened: seriously, you have less incriminating quotes from the Borgias. There but for the grace of Fritz' orientation and Wilhelmine's possibly low sex drive go they.

Me: *imagines if Fritz were het/bi and they both had at least average sex drives*

Oh, yeah. Hard to see it not happening. Especially since while they might have bought into societal taboos, they at least both wouldn't have been dissuaded by religion. (Schulenberg: "But adultery! The commandments!" Young Fritz: "But as long as my future wife and I are both committing adultery, it's fair! Open marriage FTW.")