Frederick the Great discussion post 11
Feb. 7th, 2020 09:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cahnIn 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!!
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
rheinsberg
rheinsbergcahn
Blanning 2
Date: 2020-02-20 08:48 am (UTC)He had caught Frederick’s eye in 1755 when serving as a private soldier in an infantry regiment at Brieg in Silesia and was made his batman.
Algarotti time!
1) Algarotti then moved to London, where he very quickly made an intriguing double conquest of two aristocrats: Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (daughter of the Duke of Kingston) and Lord Hervey (son of the Earl of Bristol). Not only were these two engaged in an intermittent adulterous relationship, they were also both bisexual. As Hervey’s biographer put it: “They accepted each other for the flawed but interesting human beings that they respectively were, Lady Mary as a woman who at times wanted to be a man and Lord Hervey as the opposite.”
Truly, they are an embarrassment of riches for even the most gossipy of sensationalists. :P
2) Even by the standards of mid-eighteenth-century London, this was an exotic ménage à trois. Love letters circulated in multiple permutations. “I love you with all my Heart, & beg you never to forget the affection I have for you, nor let the affection you have expressed for me grow weaker,” wrote Hervey to Algarotti. “Adieu, My Lord, continue to love me, and sometimes think of me,” replied the latter.
The latter wrote ruefully to Algarotti on 28 June 1740: “There are so few people in the world whom God Almighty has made to be liked or who have made themselves to be loved, that you will not wonder when I tell you I hourly regret one of the few I find so deserving of both. Adieu.”
Yeah, but notice how there are no such quotes from Algarotti to Lady Mary. Poor Lady Mary.
3) Now, Algarotti writing to Voltaire about Fritz (a totally different sensationalist triangle) on the occasion of their first meeting in 1739, when they're still in honeymoon phase and have not gotten disillusioned:
Algarotti wrote to Voltaire: “I have seen, oh me beato, this adorable prince… I cannot put in words the number of pleasures I have experienced!”
4) Then Fritz writes to Voltaire gushing about Algarotti, and Voltaire replies to Fritz with poetry for Algarotti (the amount of Cyrano playing is hilarious):
Cease, Algarotti, to look at other people,
The call-girls of Venice and the rent-boys of Rome,
In the theaters of France and at the tables of Germans,
The ministers, kings, heroes and saints;
Don’t wear yourself out, no longer look for a man:
He has been found. Heaven, which fashioned his virtues,
Heaven, has placed my hero at Rheinsberg…
Bring your wanderings to an end at the foot of Rheinsberg,
The universe no longer counts for anything;
You have nothing left to see.
LOL. Well, Fritz, now it's your turn to play sugar daddy!
A couple of things that raised eyebrows on my part:
1) Trier has Fritz writing a two-liner "come quickly!" to Algarotti after his accession, and Jordan adding a poetic postscript. Blanning, citing a different compilation of Fritz's correspondence, says Fritz added the two-liner, Latin line included.
I've always wondered what was up with some of my sources saying the postscript was written by Fritz and others by Jordan. I'm still confused.
2) Blanning has Algarotti accompanying Fritz to his "coronation" at Konigsberg. Now, my understanding was that Fritz didn't have a coronation, just a much cheaper homage ceremony, so maybe this is shorthand. Given that Blanning has Fredersdorf being introduced in 1730 and Katte being executed by ax directly under Fritz's window, my confidence in his attention to detail is not high.
Oh, on this occasion, Fritz writes "The Orgasm" for Algarotti (as read and discussed at some length in previous posts), and Algarotti...
For his part, Algarotti entertained Frederick with bawdy sonnets and songs by the Venetian patrician Giorgio Baffo, a special favorite being “In Praise of the Bum.”
And supposedly Hans Heinrich was on this trip too. Man, I hope he was in a different carriage or riding on his horse. :P
As discussed, Blanning doesn't know what a literary trope is and concludes that the orgasm poem is not evidence for Fritz/Algarotti, because of the nymph Chloris who features in the poem. ??? Blanning, you're a professor. I guess this is the flip side of the literary scholar concluding Aunt Melusine was a fictional allusion to Fontane instead of a very real person that Katte visited and had an affair with her daughter (according to Hans Heinrich, at least).
Blanning is weird sometimes.
Oh, Blanning's take on why Algarotti left in 1742:
It was probably sensible of Algarotti to move to the less demanding and more luxurious surroundings of the Saxon court at Dresden, where he spent the next five years.
You may remember that the dissertation writer's (she who gives every appearance of not knowing who the Queen of Hungary is) claim is that Algarotti left because he wanted an actual *job* and Fritz had him twiddling his thumbs while he conquered Silesia, whereas August let him do some actual art collecting (although he couldn't leave for Italy right away, because SOMEONE had started a war in Central Europe and made it unsafe to travel).
Blanning cites Manteuffel and the other Seckendorff's diary quite a bit:
On 2 October 1736 the younger Seckendorf confided to his diary that “Junior [Frederick] will not think in such a pacific way when he comes to the throne, but will begin with a sensational stroke [coup d’éclat], even at the risk of being on the receiving end of one himself.” Another well-placed observer, Count Manteuffel, agreed, adding that Frederick was so much more arrogant, lively, bold, devious and unpredictable than his father that the new reign was certain to be much more volatile. That prediction came after receipt of a letter from Frederick, who was at a training camp at Wehlau, which began: “Alas! Must I always have to write to you from a camp of peace, and shall I never be able to address my letter from a battlefield or the trenches? Shall I spend my whole life like one of those swords which never leave the armaments shop and rust on the nail from which they hang?
Guy Dickens agrees:
Guy Dickens reported to London that comparisons were being made between the Prussian and Macedonian armies and posed the following rhetorical question: If Alexander the Great could conquer so much with so few, what might Frederick achieve with so many more? They were all correct. Frederick told his envoy sent off to Versailles in June 1740 to stress his “dynamic and headstrong mindset” and to warn the French that it was in the nature of young people to be enterprising and that their ambition to be heroic had often proved disruptive.
So I remembered Fritz's pre-Silesian conquest of Liège, but I had forgotten his pre-Liège saber-rattling:
Just a week after Frederick sent his warning to the French, he advertised his intentions by intervening in a dispute between the Archbishop-Elector of Mainz and the Landgrave of Hessen-Kassel over the castle and village of Rumpenheim near Offenbach on the river Main. He protested vigorously at the Elector’s preemptive military occupation—“ a rape,” he called it— and threatened his own retaliation if the Mainz troops were not withdrawn forthwith. Needless to say, he had his way.
The Saxons: *all develop simultaneous coughing fits in 1756*
Legal argument that Fritz wasn't required to support the Pragmatic Sanction (which is not the same thing as a claim to Silesia, mind):
Whether these commitments were worth more than the paper on which they were inscribed remained to be seen. The same applied to the international recognition of the Pragmatic Sanction negotiated with such effort and at the cost of so many concessions during the remainder of Charles’s reign. Among the rulers signing a guarantee was Frederick William I, in 1728, in return for a promise of imperial support for Prussian claims to the Rhenish duchies of Jülich and Berg when the current ruler died. This was a promise that could not be kept, not least because a similar undertaking had been given to Saxony and also to the Sulzbach branch of the Wittelsbach dynasty. By 1732 it had become clear that Charles would renege; in 1738 it became certain. Even a man less volatile than Frederick William I might have been enraged. He had always been ambivalent in his attitude to the Habsburg Emperor, and this latest act of bad faith drove him into the arms of France.
Blanning thinks FW would have loved Frederick the Great's wars:
Four years later [1737] he told his son and heir never to trust the Austrians— they would flatter him so long as he was useful and then drop him immediately when he was not. In this respect, Frederick proved to be a chip off the old block that flew in just the direction his father would have wanted.
I don't think this quote is the strongest evidence, but I do agree with the conclusion.
Blanning not inspiring great confidence in his ability to quote from his sources honestly:
Voltaire also observed: “If Machiavelli had had a prince as a pupil, the first thing he would have recommended would have been that he write against him.” That is too cynical. More persuasive was the argument advanced by Friedrich Meinecke that in Frederick humanitarian and power-political impulses coexisted in fruitful tension.
That's LITERALLY what Voltaire said!
Voltaire's LITERAL next sentence is: "The Prince Royal, however, was not master of so much finesse; he really meant what he writ." I knew that when I was fifteen! (I disagreed and thought it was all a cunning plan by Fritz, but at least I knew what Voltaire said!)
To give
Even Frederick William the Great Elector, the most vigorous and successful of Frederick’s predecessors, had found himself at the mercy of the great powers. At the Peace of Saint-Germain in 1679 he had been forced to hand back to the Swedes all the conquests he had made at their expense during the previous five years of victorious campaigning, simply because their ally Louis XIV of France had ordered him to do so.
He had been unfortunate enough to encounter Louis XIV at the height of his power and prestige, a time when a French diplomat could boast that “not a dog barks in Europe unless our king says he may.” Sixty years later, dogs were howling without any reference to Versailles.
And that's as far as I've gotten on this reread. More to come!
Re: Blanning 2
Date: 2020-02-22 10:04 am (UTC)"The callgirls of Venice and the rent boys of Rome" indeed. :) (Algarotti: As if I'd ever have to pay for it. I'm the one getting paid, err, showered with grateful affection!)
Re: coronation - I'm with you, I only ever heard there wasn't a proper one, which is why all the Tumblr art depicting one makes me go "err…".
Oh man, yes, if Hans Heinrich was along en route to Königsberg, one hopes he got to travel in a separate carriage. (BTW, if he was along for the homage ceremony that's yet another sign of royal favour to the Katte clan, and I'm even more baffled at Thiebault's "Fritz did never more than not persecute them" Statement.)
Blanning vs dissertation writer on why Algarotti left in the early 1740s: seeing as Algarotti wasn't the only one to leave, I'm with disseration writer on the intellectuals probably wanting something to do. That, and presumably August of Saxony (or Brühl in his name) paid more.
Re: Blanning 2
Date: 2020-02-22 10:41 am (UTC)I'm pretty sure I had seen that before, but I still don't consider I've seen it from a reliable source. But yes, a bio would be nice. I'd really love to get my hands on her complete correspondence, especially now that I have the high-volume scanner, but the cheapest I can find is $50 each for 3 volumes, and $150 is a leeettle out of my price range right now. It's on my wishlist, though.
If you want her partial correspondence, it's available cheaply or even free, but warning that 19th century editors meddled perniciously.
"The callgirls of Venice and the rent boys of Rome" indeed. :) (Algarotti: As if I'd ever have to pay for it. I'm the one getting paid, err, showered with grateful affection!)
Hahahahaaaa. I mean, I do keep seeing references to him visiting brothels, but I think they keep being traceable back to Voltaire poems, so...Voltaire trying to slander his romantic rival from afar is totally a possibility here. :P
Re: coronation - I'm with you, I only ever heard there wasn't a proper one, which is why all the Tumblr art depicting one makes me go "err…".
Myeaahh. Between you and me not knowing about it, FW not having one, and the likelihood of Fritz spending that much money on something like that...I think Blanning's being sloppy again.
BTW, if he was along for the homage ceremony that's yet another sign of royal favour to the Katte clan
Agreed, although I'm not sure at what date Hans Heinrich stopped being stationed in Königsberg; if he was just returning to the place where he worked, that's a little less special.
Seriously, though, when your boss promotes you and showers favor on you (by his standards) and then you have to listen to his homoerotic banter all the way from Berlin to Königsberg...I hope he was spared that. :P (
(BTW, if he was along for the homage ceremony that's yet another sign of royal favour to the Katte clan, and I'm even more baffled at Thiebault's "Fritz did never more than not persecute them" Statement.)
Very true. It's like, first Fritz promotes him to Field Marshal and personally hands over the protocol, then he takes him to the homage ceremony, then he makes him a count. Then, when his male line dies out without issue, suddenly his brother's kids get an heiress, Lehndorff and his cousin's happiness be damned.
Thiebault: Ungrateful Fritz gave them nothing!
This is also one reason I think Peter's lack of favor was more in Peter's mind than in Fritz's. Though I wouldn't be surprised if the stories have merged by this point, 60 years later, and Peter's lack of adequate recompense (which, as we've seen, gets dramatically escalated in legend to a showdown with Fritz tossing the letter into the fire and Katte expiring practically on the spot from humiliation) has translated into "All 1730 accomplices got screwed over."
I'm with disseration writer on the intellectuals probably wanting something to do. That, and presumably August of Saxony (or Brühl in his name) paid more.
Same. I think Blanning is doing Algarotti a disservice.
Blanning: also drives me crazy by using URLs for his citations and then not even going to the Wayback Machine to make sure they're archived. Twice now I've seen his URLs gone. One was archived, one wasn't. GAH.
Re: Blanning 2
Date: 2020-02-22 04:02 pm (UTC)Seeing as Algarotti is also his professional rival of sorts in that nice Crown Prince Fritz will surely be a generous patron, it's not impossible! (And didn't Algarotti's "Newton for the Ladies" compete with Voltaire's and Emily's "Newton for Beginners" in terms of book sales?
Hans Heinrich's attitude to sexuality: impossible to ascertain, I'd say. Just because he subscribed to the FW school of dutiful service instead of baroque splendour doesn't mean anything. So did (gay) Steuben two generations later. Him being religious might be more of a signifier. Incidentally, this reminds, I very quickly had a look at the two testimonies - Major von Schack and the preacher – and it looks like Fontane excerpted all the key passages for the Wanderungen. However, something the complete texts make clear is that both were letters explicitly written for Hans Heinrich. Both the Major and the Preacher were better at writing condolence letters than certain Hohenzollern (plural), and they keep reassuring Hans Heinrich how brave (without being boastful) his son was, and how strong in the faith in the end. Keeping the intended recipient for the descriptions in mind, I also found it interesting that the Major doesn’t mention Fritz at all, while the preacher mentions Hans Herrmann looking searchingly for him with longing and then seeing „his Jonathan, the Crown Prince“, and then „taking his leave of him in French words“ . (Fontane quotes this as well, but as he doesn’t quote the entire descriptions of either Major or Preacher, I wasn’t aware von Schack doesn’t mention Fritz at all, while the good Pastor does.
Jonathan of course as in David and „your love was sweeter than the love of women“ Jonathan. Which a man well versed in his bible would know. Noteworthy as well: you’d think Fritz would be cast as David in this scenario, given that it’s Jonathan who dies. But no. Katte is David, Fritz is Jonathan.
Re: Blanning 2
Date: 2020-02-22 04:22 pm (UTC)Hans Heinrich's attitude to sexuality: impossible to ascertain, I'd say. Just because he subscribed to the FW school of dutiful service instead of baroque splendour doesn't mean anything...Him being religious might be more of a signifier.
True, and I was thinking of his apparently being religious as something he had in common with FW. Plus just in general being in high favor with FW? Although FW is a notoriously bad judge of who's actually like him and a fit role model for his sons and who's not, so...
However, something the complete texts make clear is that both were letters explicitly written for Hans Heinrich.
Yes, and that surprised me, because Fontane says that Schack's was written for Natzmer. Otoh, Schack might well have written near identical letters to Katte's dad and head of his regiment.
Both the Major and the Preacher were better at writing condolence letters than certain Hohenzollern (plural)
Hahaha. But who isn't, really?
Noteworthy as well: you’d think Fritz would be cast as David in this scenario, given that it’s Jonathan who dies.
I always cast Fritz as Jonathan in my fic (my boys love coming up with Biblical and Classical antecedents), because then you get all the FW-Saul parallels. *Which is interesting*, if you're the garrison preacher at Küstrin making this implied comparison. :P
Fontane quotes this as well, but as he doesn’t quote the entire descriptions of either Major or Preacher, I wasn’t aware von Schack doesn’t mention Fritz at all, while the good Pastor does.
Yes, that was interesting! Thanks for confirming that I hadn't just missed one. I also didn't see Katte's last words spelled out, so I still don't know what Fontane's source is.
Re: Blanning 2
Date: 2020-02-24 10:19 am (UTC)Great point. Also, FW as Saul works very well, though I guess the Potsdam Giants are standing in for David‘s original purpose of distracting the King from his gloom in that case. :) I do wonder whether FW ever saw that particular letter, or whether Müller‘s mail to Hans Heinrich got respected because man of god, bereft father, etc.?
While it‘s frustrating that he didn‘t render Katte‘s words to Fritz verbatim - because he was standing close enough to hear and understand - and instead just says they were in French, at least he says there were final words. And I‘m still intrigued von Schack bypassed the Fritz encounter entirely. Did he believe that his letter, unlike the Pastor‘s letter, would be read and might be shown to the King? (Who might not be keen on what was meant as a punishment - Fritz having to watch Katte die - also afforded an emotional goodbye. Especially if the version including „there‘s nothing to forgive“ applies.)
Re: Blanning 2
Date: 2020-02-24 10:39 am (UTC)HAHAHA. It had occurred to me that the David-Saul relationship is missing from this parallel, but the Potsdam Giants quip is awesome. I guess this Saul sent for Goliath instead of David!
Oh, get this. The version of Katte's final letter to FW that I put in Rheinsberg has an ellipsis in it. Quite by accident, I ran across a fuller version, in French, yesterday, and I saw what was in the ellipsis. Paraphrase: "Saul, David, and Manasseh were all great sinners, and *they* repented, and God gave them grace. You too can be like God, FW!"
So here, Katte's comparing *himself* to both Saul and David, which is interesting.
I do wonder whether FW ever saw that particular letter, or whether Müller‘s mail to Hans Heinrich got respected because man of god, bereft father, etc.?...Did he believe that his letter, unlike the Pastor‘s letter, would be read and might be shown to the King?
Ooh, those are interesting questions! Especially given:
Did he believe that his letter, unlike the Pastor‘s letter, would be read and might be shown to the King?
Yesss. I like it. Maybe both of them were hedging their bets. Although the Jonathan comparison is a little surprising if you're actively worried about the King reading your mail.
I can see not flaunting the fact that Fritz got to say goodbye, and what the final words were, though, but given that all the foreign envoys knew within 5 days, and all of Cologne within a couple months, it's difficult to imagine anyone could keep FW from finding out. I guess neither Schack nor Besser would have taken the fall for that if they were worried about punishment (Münchow and Lepel being the decision makers), so just omitting the fact from their letters would be sufficient to protect them.
Anyway, you may be onto something about the omissions.
I *still* want to know what Fontane's source was.
Re: Blanning 2
Date: 2020-02-28 05:25 am (UTC)Re: Blanning 2
Date: 2020-02-28 01:16 pm (UTC)Re: Blanning 2
Date: 2020-02-28 05:24 am (UTC)Algarotti wrote to Voltaire: “I have seen, oh me beato, this adorable prince… I cannot put in words the number of pleasures I have experienced!”
I am DYING at this triangle. Sensationalist indeed!