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: Fritz as a writer: an early Victorian take

[cahn]

Fritz: She's courageous and determined, despite being a woman.
MT: He's lying liar who lies, but also a smart, capable workoholic and an A plus general.

She's courageous and determined, despite being a woman, and my sister is absolutely not allowed to have lunch with her (I know you said this upthread, but I just have to repeat it at every opportunity because Friiiiiiiitz)

More seriously, this is actually kind of amazing as fallout of the Catt diary -- that we were all so sure that Fritz was horrible about MT, but it seems like at this point at least that primary sources don't seem to have anything super negative about her yet, it was just in Catt's memoirs??

(Zimmermann: But Fritz NEVER BROKE HIS WORD! NEVER EVER!!!! I can't emphasize this enough in my "Fragments!" And he was always gallant to women! You should have married him, not that gloating guy from Lorraine!!!)

lolololol Zimmerman would totally be the fic-writer who woobifies all the villains :D

in public, he and MT presented a united front.

Franzl/MT, my OTP <3 (Franzl, you should just have stayed away from the other ladies!)

Re: Fritz as a writer: an early Victorian take

[mildred_of_midgard]

we were all so sure that Fritz was horrible about MT, but it seems like at this point at least that primary sources don't seem to have anything super negative about her yet, it was just in Catt's memoirs??

selenak had a quote about "she must stink of diapers" back when the subject first came up, but I don't know what the source on that is, and I haven't run across it myself, even in secondary sources. It's not in Catt, though.

There's also Lehndorff's (I think?) account of Fritz holding forth to a captive audience on how awful women in general are and how they smell bad, and everyone fleeing as soon as dinner was over. Which selenak tells me was not unique to Fritz as gay man holding forth on "Women: why they suck."

lolololol Zimmerman would totally be the fic-writer who woobifies all the villains :D

OMG you're right!