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Fredersdorf
Date: 2020-02-08 11:03 am (UTC)1.) This edition has a very humble dedication to the current Czar - Nicholas - dedicating this book which shows the great, the one, the adored and feared as "a friend and a human being". Dedications of books to sovereigns were in fact on their way out about this time - 1833 is just a bit of a decade more before it's revolution time all over Europe again, including Germany - so that marks our editor as an old fashioned kind of guy.
2.) Burchardt, the editor, then gives us a biographical sketch of Fredersdorf. Said sketch starts with a massive departure from everything else we know about Fredersdorf. In this version, he's the son of a respectable merchant from Franconia, who was also trained to be a merchant when "because of his size he fell into the hands of Prussian recruiters who tricked him into changing the pen for the sword".
Now, seriously, this is all rubbish. Firstly, everyone else, including Lehndorff who actually talked with the man, says Fredersdorff hails from Pomerania, and from the back of Pomerania at that. (And from a poor background.) This is an utterly different province from Franconia. Franconia is where I come from, it's in the south of Germany, and back then it was partly owned by small scale princes like the Margrave of Bayreuth, partly by the church (like my hometown, Bamberg), and partly consisting of free imperial cities, like Nuremberg. It wasn't even under Prussian rule when Fredersdorff was born. (Though once Bayreuth & Ansbach fell back to the main Hohenzollern line, it would be, for a while.) It also has an utterly different dialect than Pomerania, which is in the uttermost east of of Germany, and today partly in Poland.
I should maybe also point out the following, in case you're wondering whether Burchardt is confusing something.
Franconia = Franken (in German). A Region in the northern part of Bavaria, i.e. the south of Germany, which still makes it very southern from Prussia's pov.
Frankfurt am Main = the more famous Frankfurt. Where Goethe was from, where Emperors until the end of the HRE got crowned, where the Frankfurt Book Fair, world's greatest even today, takes place. Used to be a free imperial city, which didn't stop Fritz from having Voltaire and his niece arrested there. Is located in the southern-midwest province of Hesse.
Frankfurt an der Oder = the less famous Frankfurt. Is actually in the very east of Germany. That's where Fritz got serenaded by students, and where he and Fredersdorf supposedly met.
If Burchardt were a foreigner, I'd assume he just confused Frankfurt an der Oder with Franken, but as a German, he shouldn't be able to make that mistake.
As for Fredersdorf's dad being a respectable merchant, that's the first I hear of it and sounds far less plausible than everyone else so far saying he was a musician and that was where Fredesdorf got his musical training pre army. The only thing sounding remotely plausible about this is that he got nabbed by Prussian recruiters for his size. But given the nonsense in the rest of the opening statement, I'm sceptical.
Which is a shame, because on the next page, our editor says Fredersdorf consoled himself about his new unwanted career in the army by playing the flute and thus became a virtuoso, and then the "governor" - Gouverneur, he uses this word - of Küstrin concluded he was just the ticket to cheer up the distressed Crown Prince, who after all also had only the flute as his sole consolation. I assume this preface is thus the source for the story "Fredersdorf was picked by the Küstrin staff to cheer up Fritz". No Frankfurt meeting/sighting mentioned.
Burchardt says Fritz soon started to use Fredersdorf to smuggle out and in letters to friends and relations in general and to Wilhelmine specifically. He also, in a footnote to Fredersdorf's self taught musical virtuoso status, says F made it into history as "der liebliche Flötenspieler des Königs" - "the lovely flutist of the King". He does not provide a citation for that one.
Burchardt does share Mildred's theory that alchemy did Fredersdorf in, saying his passion for alchemy was thus that "he sacrificed a good deal of his fortune and even his physical health" to it.
No mention of any firing in disgrace Otoh editor thinks Fredesdorf lived until freaking 1780, and conducted his office as chamberlain of the King even from his sickbed until then, which, what?
Finally: "Since the death of Fredersdorff, this correspondance, with the exception of the letters which the King demanded back after his death, has remained in the possession of the heirs. The editor has been permitted within the lifetime of the recently died owner to read it, and to make copies of the most excellent ones, and after his death to use it as he (the editor) sees fit. This he fulfills a holy obligation in the sense of the nobly departed by putting these letters into print and recommends them to the German public for their attention."
Okay. Now, this is where yours truly having a PhD in German literature comes in handy. If you'll recall, Fredersdorff's widow married the Granddad of Achim von Arnim, who while a writer himself is mostly famous by being the bff of poet Clemens Brentano and husband of Bettina Brentano (she of the Goethe fandom and one of the few female German star writers of the early to mid 19th century). I just checked with wiki, and yes, Achim von Arnim died in 1831 (Bettina would live on until the 1850s), which means that he's probably the "noble deceased" Burchardt is talking about in a book printed in 1833. And I would furtherly speculate that Fredersdorff suddenly being the son of a respectable Franconian merchant instead of a Pomeranian town piper is entirely to the von Arnim family wanting to beef up their sort-of-relations social ancestry.
The letters: are numbered, not dated, and not always in chronological order (thanks, editor), so you get letters complaining about the alchemy stuff before the letter about the Soor raid and the dead/missing dogs/horses. Also, there are just two or so letters from Fredersdorff, whereas 1926! editor included more, presumably more having been found in the Prussian state archives since then. As for the letters themselves, from what I can see via a quick browsing through - will have to reread the 1926 edition to be sure, am working from memory and under time pressure here -, 1926 editor did not leave any out, with the possible exception of letter Number 35, page 44 f., which goes:
I'm sending you a rare elixir which comes from Theophrast Paracelsus and which has worked miracles for me and all who have taken it, do take from this medicine, but don't take any quackery in addition to it, for he who does loses the male power of love for the rest of his life.
"männliche Kräfte der Liebe" can also be translated as "masculine force of love", or "male vigour" - or less literal, more factual (i.e what is meant) as "male potency", of course. I don't recall that letter from the 1926 editiion, though like I said, maybe I missed it a few months ago when I read it. Anyway, a "you don't want to become impotent, do you?" teasing letter like that would argue for a not so platonic relationship, no?
Various
Date: 2020-02-08 03:06 pm (UTC)"Three whores of Europe": you know, I've never seen a direct citation for this one. It gets quoted in every single 20th century biography that I've read, but without the addendum of "as such and such reports". (Same, btw, with MT's "evil man from Potsdam" - that also gets quoted as a saying of hers about Fritz without "see letter x" or "memoirs y" because it's so often used that it's taken for granted. (Meanwhile, the "but does this hero who has won himself such praise etc..." sentence I let her use in the Yuletide story are from a letter to Joseph the Rational fanboy"; *pats self on back for using actual sourced quote*) All this being said, Fritz' subject and contemporary Lehndorff, when the war is going badly for Prussia, does have an entry where he doesn't quote "three whores" but says that maybe the King shouldn't have insulted all the female leaders of Europe.
The letters to Heinrich, to Voltaire and to Wilhelmine have Fritz casting himself as Orpheus, peacefully minding his own business, and MT, Elizabeth & the Marquise de Pompadour as tihe maenads who after him to tear him apart. There's also the famous description "the league of petticoats" which again I don't think I've ever seen being given with a direct citation. Barbara Stollinger quotes a couple of direct MT directed insults and she's good with citation, but my copy of her MT biography is in Munich, and I'm in Bamberg, so I can't look it up.
"Women smelling bad": depressingly, this seems to have been a historic gay men's trope about women? Because Philippe d'Orleans and his favourites used that one, too. Now how anyone could smell anything in Versailles, between all the bodily waste necessitating the court moving every few months and all the perfumes used is beyond me anyway.
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.
*nods* Agreed. And I think the way he both withheld from and showered his siblings at different times with money also plays into this. (Btw, since McDonogh is wondering: yes, he paid Amalie's debts.) Money isn't just money. Money is power, control and affection. Not always as point blank as as when he sends some and tells Heinrich to get rid of Kaphengst, but the subtext is often there. And of course, he keeps sending food to them, too. (Even to EC in their fruit exchanges.)
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.
I mean, his contemporaries seem to have been in little to no doubt in terms of orientation, even those who were not particularly close to him. It's not just Liechtenstein with the Alexander seal and Manteuffel with the "Seckendorff, read up on Hadrian if you want to understand Junior!" tip, but courtiers like Lehndorff who report matter of factly that Glasow's original in with Fritz were his good looks, and also says of Fredersdorf that "a very pretty face aided him and was the beginning of his fortune". But Voltaire's story about morning fooling around with the pages and cavaliers between breakfeast and work aside, I can't recall a contemporary claiming that he/she knew without the shadow of a doubt that Fritz had actually had sex with any of them. (Though correct me if I'm missing good examples, and if Blanning reports otherwise.)
Thièbault making FW the author if the Fritz/MT marriage idea demonstrating he had zilch idea about FW's hardcore Calvinism:
Yup. He also didn't live at a strictly Calvinist court, and Fritz was pretty chill about religion (I mean, he badmouthed Catholics, but we all know he was willing to pretend to be a Protestant for the sake of winning his wars), so why not FW? I mean, if Voltaire can have FW present at the execution...
Quite. I mean, don't get me wrong: if there had been a way for FW to get a Hohenzollern son of his on the throne of the HRE without religious conversion (or, even better, an Archduchess go Protestant), I do think he'd have jumped on it, which was my justification for making him that tiny but key bit more ambitious in the first MT-Fritz encounter. But the Prussian kings being Protestants was really a key part of their image. Remember, as late as the mid 1750s Fritz asks Wihelmine to make a stop at Geneva on her way back from Italy to squash the rumors that she and the Margrave were converting to Catholicism (that's when she promises to "make my salamaleikums"). Allowing Jesuits in his kingdom was one thing, but having members of his family go Catholic would have been damaging Fritz' standing as the hero of the Protestant faith and he knew it. (Especially since that business wiht the Stuarts must have been on every Protestant's mind in this regard, and that, too, started with first family members converting.
Serious question: does Lehndorff normally comment on the attractiveness of random courtiers and officers whose death he reports?
Not in the death reports, but he does mention attractiveness (or lack of same) when he draws one of his pen portraits. Both for the men and the women. And independent from whether he personally likes them. (For disliked but still described as attractive, see, Glasow, Heinrich's various no-good boyfriends, Ferdinand's wife, and Elisabeth the first wife of FW2, who even after she's shown herself to be MESSALINA to his beloved Crown Prince Jr. rarely gets mentioned without a remark of how pretty she is. See, for example, that entry about spotting her in her exile in Stettin and how she can carry off her extravagant fashion but everyone imitating her just looks stupid.)
This said, he mentions Peter being good looking in both the first entry on him (when Peter is still alive) and in the death entry, in combination of praising him in other regards as well, and that's certainly not standard. (Heinrich's various boyfriends gt a "good looking BUT...." type of description, not "so nice, and brave, and also good looking" the way Peter did.
In regards to how reliable Lehndorff calling someone good looking is, given the "beautiful as an angel" about Heinrich - well, to be fair, he says that specifically about Heinrich in his riding pants, so maybe what he found beautiful on that occasion wasn't Heinrich's face. Ahem. (Having more regular eating habits than Fritz, Heinrich kept his trim figure and in his older years erred more on the thin side than on the plumb side.) Otherwise, Lehndorff's Heinrich crush doesn't voice itself in praising his looks but his charm, intelligence, reading (out loud), and of course Lehndorff during the 7 Years War is delighted to now add "being a great general and looking out for civilians and pows" to his "why I love Heinrich" eloges.
Wilhelmine's memoirs: She should also sue the Boston editor guy who bowdlerized her memoirs and cut out the Dresden episode, oh and also her dad getting punched. Come on. Who *doesn't* want to read about FW getting punched? It's the most cathartic thing in the world after you've gotten through volume 1.
Indeed. The way she introduces this episode also cracks me up: "These memoirs really are all gloom and doom, I realize. So, here's a comic relief episode: how Dad got punched! (Describes it.) I return to my narrative."
OMG, Catt, you fucking liar! Look at this, guys.
*Looks* Tsk. My explanation would be that either Fritz woke him up on another occasion and he merges the two stories, or he changes the story as part of the effort of making himself look better, as the ultimate Fritz Wrangler, endlessly patient and enduring.
Katte!
Date: 2020-02-08 03:26 pm (UTC)Katte's puncta:
If you think this reads like it was dictated by FW, yeah. Down to the rejection of predestination. Remember, FW has a preacher standing by to step into Fritz's cell the moment Katte's head falls, to lead him back to the true faith, and most specifically, the lack of predestination.
It reads like such a perfect and instant conformity to FW's will that I'm not the only one who thinks that it's a performance. He rejects atheism when staring death in the face and reverts to the religion of his childhood? Sure, maybe. He's been raised in a world where fathers and kings have absolute power and perfect obedience is owed to them, and he buys into that? Sure.
He really, really cares, of his own accord, that Fritz not believe in predestination, so much that it's his second-to-last words to Fritz?
Riiiight.
I'm with you. The predestination paragraph seals it. (That it's dictated and Katte's meaning is "just save your head, Fritz, please!") However:
The prince royal must remember that I remonstrated with him, in the strongest manner, first at the camp in Saxony, where we originally had the idea of absconding, and where I foretold what has now happened; and secondly, more recently, one night when I called upon him in Potsdam.
Here I wonder: did Katte mention this in his interrogations, i.e. would FW, or Müller, or both have known this had happened? Or is it something only Katte and Fritz would know about?
Also, possible theory: in addition originally advising against the escape plan, Katte might have said something to Fritz that he now reminds Fritz off under the disguise of telling him to obey his father. After all, to FW this would sound as pleasingly conformist, but who knows what they have said to each other on those occasions? Maybe it was also something along the lines of "the main thing is that you survive, even if you have to play the good son for some years more, and then, when you're king, it will be worth it".
Rereading your post, could it be that Wolden is sending to *FW* a copy of the Puncta in August? And Fritz has had it since November? Lavisse also says Fritz has had since the first moment Müller talked to him after Katte's execution. So unless you tell me the German can't possibly mean that, that's what I think is going on here. FW is getting a copy for the first time.
Remind me again, was this in Preuss or in Forster or elsewhere, so I can look it up again? It's all jumbled in my head now.
Mysterious Prussian Whistleblower/Leaker of Katte's letters:
So...Katte family servant? Maybe a governess or some loyal retainer who raised Katte as a child? Someone who was angry and rebelling in the only way they could: getting some visibility into this poor guy's fate?
I like it! It's easy to forget the servants. Which were ever present and human beings, not machines. When I read that Fritz even during his hard core imprisonment months got assigned a servant to clean him and presumably dress him etc, I was reminded again of this.
Re: Katte!
Date: 2020-02-08 08:35 pm (UTC)Here I wonder: did Katte mention this in his interrogations, i.e. would FW, or Müller, or both have known this had happened? Or is it something only Katte and Fritz would know about?
That I don't know. He was interrogated five times, and I've never been able to find the write-up, though I've seen quotes. I suppose Kloosterhuis would tell us what's out there?
That said, whatever Katte may or may not have mentioned in his interrogations, it remains the case that only he and Fritz know what was really said. I absolutely think Katte encouraged Fritz to just wait it out, try to hide his sneakiness better and be more outwardly conforming, and that maybe FW would tone down the abuse, and they could wait it out, instead of risking everything now. And Fritz went "But that could be THIRTY YEARS! And also I will KILL MYSELF if I have to put up with this one more day!" and Katte went, "Okay, okay, let's stay calm and think this through. If we're gonna go through with this, we have to make it work."
I would be honestly shocked if Katte had never made any suggestions to Fritz that could be selectively rephrased in front of a committee or in a final letter as "Have you tried just going along with what your father wants a little more convincingly
even if you're sneaking books and flutes on the side?"But did the guy who had wanted to leave Prussian service and stay in England a mere one year before, and who was up to his ears in meeting with envoys and acquiring money and helping plot the itinerary really tell Fritz, in Saxony, that he needed to obey his father because THE BIBLE?
By the time we got to that last meeting in Potsdam Katte mentions, the night before FW and Fritz left on the fatal trip, Katte's "strongest remonstrations," at last according to Lavisse, seem to have taken the form of "PLEASE don't leave in the beginning of the trip, PLEASE leave from Wesel! It's so much safer!" Not "But the fifth commandment!"
It's clear that, in this letter and in the interrogations, he has every incentive to downplay the extent of his cooperation and play up the resistance he put up. So we're getting a very skewed picture, and a letter that really appears to be from a liar to a liar.
"Where I foretold what has now happened" is the only part that I find totally convincing as-is.
Remind me again, was this in Preuss or in Forster or elsewhere, so I can look it up again? It's all jumbled in my head now.
It's in Preuss, Vol 2 Appendix, page 170.
Die Puncta, so der unglückselige Katte kurz vor seiner Execution an den Kronprinzen durch den Feldprediger Müller überreichen lassen; übersende gleichfalls. Ich glaube, daß sie Ew. Majestät Approbation haben werden. Gott gebe nur, daß sie der Kronprinz nimmer vergesse, sondern derselben allemahl eingedenk sein möge.
Now, it sounds to me very much like Katte caused the Puncta to be given to Fritz via Müller shortly before his death, which matches what all my sources are telling me. So I'm guessing "übersende gleichfalls" means "ich übersende gleichfalls," and he (Wolden) is also sending it (to FW). Now that "also"--from looking at the beginning of the letter and getting a little help from Google Translate, it looks like Wolden started out by sending some other materials, pertaining to Fritz's debts and also a thanks in Fritz's own hand for the pardon and all that.
So I'm going with Fritz getting it either the day Katte's executed or the day after.
A little native speaker help: is it clear from that sentence whether Katte gave it to Müller just before his death, or whether it made its way to Fritz just before Katte's death? Because if Fritz read it *before* he saw Katte and fainted...I have all sorts of interesting thoughts about that.
Also, re the place of composition, everyone I've seen either says straight out that the letter to Fritz was composed at Küstrin, or that it was probably composed at Küstrin.
Now that I've read it closely, and seen all those Absalom and predestination and "the King is just an instrument of divine justice" elements...I'm kind of leaning toward it being written in Berlin/Spandau/wherever Katte was being held. Because while FW was beating everyone over the headwith his priorities and wishes before the escape attempt, and it probably would have been possible to figure out exactly what he wanted to hear without outside assistance...that letter's so completely perfect and attuned to recent Biblical comparanda like Absalom that it kind of reads like Katte got some pointers. And that was probably in Berlin.
Also, remember that Müller was in Berlin and accompanied Katte on that final ride to Küstrin. So if Katte had had a completed letter in hand, he could have handed it to Müller in the carriage, or when they arrived, and asked him to give it to Fritz. And Müller would have read it and gone, "Wow, I couldn't possibly approve more of this letter," and passed it on.
That would also make sense if the Fritz letter *isn't* in that set of circulating letters to family members, because it neither ended up with the Katte family nor did it need a clean copy made that could have resulted in it getting left lying around at Küstrin, but went straight from Müller to Fritz.
Small problem with the Katte family servant idea now that I've done the escape attempt chronology for
Possibility: stepmom and younger kids were there, and letters got copied and forwarded immediately for their comfort? But if Katte wrote a letter to his father on November 5, it had to be copied, then sent from Küstrin to Königsberg, then from Königsberg to Wust, then copied at Wust along with the other letters and distributed in Berlin...maybe that could happen by November 30. Okay, I just did the math, and the earliest my guesstimate can get that letter from Küstrin to Königsberg to Wust to Berlin is November 22, assuming everything got copied and forwarded the same day. Doable, but pretty tight timing. Especially in winter, with the Katte family servants probably having limited opportunities to copy letters and send them to Berlin without getting caught.
Katte having drafts of all the family letters with him at Küstrin and someone (whether a servant or someone of rank) copying all three and getting them to Berlin seems to fit the timing much better.
And Katte made a *huge* impression on everyone at Küstrin, plus everyone there has plausible deniability. ("I just left it on my desk! Someone must have glanced at it and copied it from memory!" Everyone else: *whistles innocently*) Also, remember that at least one person at Küstrin has already smuggled two Fritz letters to Wilhelmine out, and there will be more smuggling in and out in the days and months to come.
Küstrin staff still has my vote. As long as they had access to all three letters, and that just requires Katte to have kept the drafts that he wrote a couple days prior, before he made his clean copies, they'd have had motive, opportunity, and a demonstrated willingness to do such things.
Re: Katte!
Date: 2020-02-08 10:13 pm (UTC)I'm with you.
Me too. Also, from the last post:
This is what I meant by "possibly not the most comforting thing ever."
Yeeeeah. Ouch. I... it's definitely not surprising to me that Fritz may have had a lot of kind of awful emotional stuff going on *even on top* of the expected awful stuff.
Also, possible theory: in addition originally advising against the escape plan, Katte might have said something to Fritz that he now reminds Fritz off under the disguise of telling him to obey his father. After all, to FW this would sound as pleasingly conformist, but who knows what they have said to each other on those occasions?
I was thinking that too when reading it! That it's plausible deniability about "oh of course we talked about how it was a dumb idea," but if no one else was there, maybe it's supposed to be a code reminder of something else. (Though I was thinking along more romantic lines, myself: that he said something along the lines of, "Remember that I told you that night I'll always love you, whatever happens." Maybe that's too much, but I may just quietly file it in my headcanon anyway :P )
Re: Fredersdorf
Date: 2020-02-08 10:13 pm (UTC)I just checked with wiki, and yes, Achim von Arnim died in 1831 (Bettina would live on until the 1850s), which means that he's probably the "noble deceased" Burchardt is talking about in a book printed in 1833. And I would furtherly speculate that Fredersdorff suddenly being the son of a respectable Franconian merchant instead of a Pomeranian town piper is entirely to the von Arnim family wanting to beef up their sort-of-relations social ancestry.
This makes total sense, and I appreciate your telling us that background :D
*blinks* not in chronological order?! That sounds... confusing.
for he who does loses the male power of love for the rest of his life.
Definitely suggestive, at the very least! (Though I could also see it all being teasing and innuendo rather than actually sexual, as mildred has talked about.)
Re: Katte!
Date: 2020-02-08 10:16 pm (UTC)<3333
YES PLEASE
Re: Fredersdorf
Date: 2020-02-08 11:23 pm (UTC)Mind you, while we know for a fact that the student performance happened in Frankfurt an der Oder, our source on that having anything to do with Fredersdorf is only slightly more reliable, a 1790 guy who says Fredersdorf effectively tricked Fritz into letting him get married on his apparent deathbed, which Lehndorff contradicts.
But at least 1790 guy doesn't think Fredersdorf was alive and helping run the country until 1780!! That's astounding. Like
I guess it means Fredersdorf gets to take credit for much of the post Seven Years' War achievements, and thus makes the Arnim family look better. Seconding
The letters: are numbered, not dated, and not always in chronological order (thanks, editor), so you get letters complaining about the alchemy stuff before the letter about the Soor raid and the dead/missing dogs/horses.
Ooooh. So that's why I thought there might be new-to-us letters, since I didn't recognize any of those pre-Soor letters. Of course, I did notice they were undated and figured they might have gotten shuffled around, but that you would be able to tell us. Pity there weren't more (barring that one that might or might not be), but the intro was well worth it alone.
It wasn't even under Prussian rule when Fredersdorff was born.
Not that that ever stopped Prussian recruiters. :P
The only thing sounding remotely plausible about this is that he got nabbed by Prussian recruiters for his size.
The least plausible part to me about this proposition is how on earth FW let him out of Potsdam to go be Fritz's valet, if he was tall enough to be a Potsdam giant?
Anyway, a "you don't want to become impotent, do you?" teasing letter like that would argue for a not so platonic relationship, no?
While I would be the last person to say it definitely wasn't a socratic relationship, I just don't see this as very good evidence. I feel like even in the tail-end-of-Victorian age we're living in now, with all its taboos around bodily functions, one straight guy could write to another straight guy, "Take this medication but don't mix with this other thing, because it'll make you impotent," and assume with 99% accuracy that other guy doesn't want to lose his virility and would appreciate a warning about medication side effects.
Now, could this exchange be taking place in a context in which Fredersdorf would immediately grasp that Fritz was teasing because *he* has a personal vested interest in Fredersdorf's männliche Kräfte der Liebe? Of course! I just don't see medical advice as evidence one way or the other.
It's also interesting that Fredersdorf persists in all the quackery despite Fritz's warnings, so either he doesn't believe it'll affect his virility, or he thinks it's worth the risk.
Re: Various
Date: 2020-02-09 01:18 am (UTC)ETA 2: The "Queen's and my obstinacy make many people unhappy" passage is also in the memoirs. I had forgotten/missed that when I ran into it in the diary.]
Now, we may dig them up and find they are also unreliable! But so far, undermining Catt doesn't undermine the rest of the quotes. Especially, as
The only quote I have a vague and unreliable memory of seeing recently in French is the one about the fight for Silesia going on for so long because it's easier to make brave men than nasty women give in. Maybe a letter to Wilhelmine? I'm not sure. Anyway, that's why it was so nice to see him equate his and MT's strength of will in the diary, instead of that double standard.
*nods* Agreed. And I think the way he both withheld from and showered his siblings at different times with money also plays into this.
Absolutely, one thousand percent.
And of course, he keeps sending food to them, too. (Even to EC in their fruit exchanges.)
Oh, right, I remembered Wilhelmine's pineapple and Heinrich's fruit but not EC's fruit exchange. (Poor, forgotten EC, lol.) Fritz and FW also exchange food during the 30s, though, am I remembering right? And of course, the memorable salmon to FS.
Also, it occurs to me, when Fritz is released from house arrest to Küstrin to a regiment in Ruppin where he's freer, granted, but his movements are still extremely constrained and he's not free to live his best life, what's pretty much the first thing he starts doing? Growing fruit and obsessing over it. And when he moves to Rheinsberg a few years later, as much as he loves it, he complains that he can't get the same fruit to grow.
I mean, his contemporaries seem to have been in little to no doubt in terms of orientation, even those who were not particularly close to him.
Oh, I have zero doubts about *orientation*. Fritz was gay, no two ways about it. (I've pretty much rejected the bi possibility that I was skeptical about but willing to entertain a few months ago.) Falls in love with men, attracted to good-looking men and wants to have them around. How sexually active, though, is my only question.
(Though correct me if I'm missing good examples, and if Blanning reports otherwise.)
Will do!
Allowing Jesuits in his kingdom was one thing
And long before that, commissioning St. Hedwig's, the Catholic church in Berlin. Oh, wow, Wikipedia tells me two things I didn't know. Though construction began in the 1740s, as I recalled, it wasn't completed until 1773, which is the exact time the Jesuits are arriving in droves. Two, it was the first Catholic church built in Prussia after the Reformation. Wow, Fritz is definitely making a public statement here.
given the "beautiful as an angel" about Heinrich - well, to be fair, he says that specifically about Heinrich in his riding pants, so maybe what he found beautiful on that occasion wasn't Heinrich's face.
True! I didn't get the impression he was looking anywhere above the waist on that occasion. :P
"Up here, Lehndorff. My eyes are up here!"
(Having more regular eating habits than Fritz, Heinrich kept his trim figure and in his older years erred more on the thin side than on the plumb side.)
True. Fritz was plump, I believe, 1731-1756, and then, once the Seven Years' War started, lost weight to the point where Catt comments on the difference between 1755 and early 1758 (and I believe it, even though it's in the memoirs, because of evidence from Fritz's correspondence that he was skipping dinner during the war, and also just common sense), and then I don't think I see any descriptions of him as plump until his death, when his mask looks very, very gaunt. As do many artistic depictions, insofar as they can be trusted (but a number of them do show him plump in the 30s and 40s).
Indeed. The way she introduces this episode also cracks me up: "These memoirs really are all gloom and doom, I realize. So, here's a comic relief episode: how Dad got punched! (Describes it.) I return to my narrative."
That's hilarious! Page 264 in volume 1 in the library, if you want to delight yourself by rereading the passage,
*Looks* Tsk. My explanation would be that either Fritz woke him up on another occasion and he merges the two stories, or he changes the story as part of the effort of making himself look better, as the ultimate Fritz Wrangler, endlessly patient and enduring.
Both of those make sense. Vanity, all is vanity (in both senses of the word when it comes to Catt).
Actual ultimate Fritz Wrangler, endlessly patient and enduring, was too self-effacing to leave us his memoirs. Sadly. But that's what fanfic is for!
Re: Fredersdorf
Date: 2020-02-09 01:31 am (UTC)Not that you would expect one, from this AU!
Despite a focused attempt to dig it up, which turned up most of the recent goodies I've been unloading, I haven't found any signs of disgrace either. However, I'm convinced there's a source that we don't have, because 1) MacDonogh may be unreliable, but he doesn't usually make things up out of whole cloth like Burgdorf, 2) Wikipedia has a very specific quote that doesn't come from MacDonogh. So there's got to be a third source out there, predating 1999. It may be as much of an obvious AU as Burchardt! But it's got to exist.
The two best leads I have so far are a couple of non-public-domain sources that are cited by MacDonogh for the paragraph where he mentions Fredersdorf "pocketing small sums" and that I haven't been able to get my hands on.
- Hans Leuschner. Friedrich der Grosse: Zeit — Person — Wirkung. Pages 79-80.
- Dehio, Handbuch der Deutschen Kunstdenkmäler, Berlin/ DDR, Potsdam, Berlin [East]. Page 474.
I know you're super busy this month, but if at any time, you happen to find yourself in a library and that library has either of these books, you could check out the relevant page and see if what we're looking for is there.
Re: Katte!
Date: 2020-02-09 05:06 am (UTC)Plus, new awful stuff keeps popping up. I mean, we all know about Katte's beheading, and I had read the letter before, but then Grumbkow's "How about being aloof with the ONLY confidant and support system you have left??" comes along to match Wilhelmine's account in her memoirs, and then my heart has to break for Fritz (and Wilhelmine) all over again.
Re: Fredersdorf
Date: 2020-02-09 09:01 am (UTC)It is. At one point, Burchardt even says that letter X ought to come after letter N given twenty pages earlier, and I'm throwing up my hands exclaiming "then why didn't you put it there?"
Maybe the von Arnims numbered them this way, and he feels obliged to reproduce that?
Re: Fredersdorf
Date: 2020-02-09 09:17 am (UTC)It did occur to me that Achim von Arnim's grandpa on the maternal side, whom Mrs. Fredersdorf married as a widow, did in fact work as Fritz' Chamberlain, too. (And may well have lived until 1780.) Though naturally not with the same kind of power as Fredersdorf, let alone the same type of relationship with Fritz. Now, not that I want to be mean, but Bettina von Arnim, née Brentano, was a writer with quite the imagination and none too bothered in rewriting history if the final product justified it, see her book "Goethes Briefwechsel mit einem Kinde". (Which best is described as RPF starring herself and Goethe with the occasional nod to history.) So I could totally see her decide that hey, actual Grandpa of her husband was a nobody no one knows anymore, why not merge him with Fredersdorf and thus make Fredersdorf Achim's ancestor? Hence also the confusion of birthdates. Maybe Burchardt got all his intel on Fredersdorf from her and the late Achim, along with the letters. Unlike us, it's not like he could look up a great many other sources on Fredersdorf.
The least plausible part to me about this proposition is how on earth FW let him out of Potsdam to go be Fritz's valet, if he was tall enough to be a Potsdam giant?
Indeed. So I'm going with your estimation of Fredersdorf's size as just below the Potsdam giant standard.
It's also interesting that Fredersdorf persists in all the quackery despite Fritz's warnings, so either he doesn't believe it'll affect his virility, or he thinks it's worth the risk.
Well, in this particular case, I don't think Fritz actually sent medicine. Paracelsus is a legendary medieval scholar and master of alchemy. I very much doubt that Fritz, whose relationship with his doctors is best described as sceptical, actually took medicine based on a mythical Paracelsus recipe. (I doubt there is such a thing, btw.) My guess is that the "rare elixir" is a bottle of good wine (which has done Fritz and all who have drunk it good), and calling it a Paracelsus-based drought is Fritz kidding Fredersdorf about his alchemy obsession, followed by the kidding about impotence.
This said, in general Fredersdorf not listening to all the Fritz advice about staying away from quackery is interesting. I mean, we know he didn't do his body any favours there, but then again, what Fredersdorf knows that Fritz hasn't studied medicine and is no way a scientist qualified to have an opinion in this matter. Listening to experts over know it alls usually is the smart thing to do (unless we're talking 18th century medicine). In any event, it indicates that Fredersdorf might have been ultra respectful in his few prerserved letters but clearly did have opinions he wasn't willing to budge from in his life with Fritz. (Or rather, where he said "sure thing, your majesty" and promptly ignored whatever Fritz had been advising.)
Andrew Mitchell: First Impressions
Date: 2020-02-09 10:45 am (UTC)For starters, these aren't memoirs in the sense that Mitchell wrote them years after the fact based on his notes at the time and many other sources. These are letters, both official dispatches and private letters, as well as journals Mitchell kept at the time, edited and published in 1850 together with an account of Mitchell's life.
1850 as the date is important. Because it means there isn't a German empire yet. Or a unified Germany. Bismarck is a young man who just fought on the reactionary side of the aborted 1848 revolution, while young Theodor Fontane was involved on the revolutionary side. So when the editor in a footnote about the battle of Rossbach says that was the first event to "light the light of German freedom and unity" in the hearts of the various non Prussian and Prussian German alike, he's writing from a pov where just two years earlier, the first attempt to achieve a unified Germany happened by the first elected Parliament in Frankfurt and had a constitutional monarchy modelled on England's in mind. (And promptly was squashed, with FW4 saying "no way is a Prussian king going to be a constitutional German emperor severely limited in power and owing what little he has to commoners, now, soldiers, go after those revolutionaries!) What our editor has no idea bout is that twenty years later, German unification will happen via a war and from above, as unfree as possible, and that the resulting Empire then will start to see itself as a rival to Britain. No, 1850 editor is writing in an England where there are still all those Fritz pubs and fannishness. He himself is a bit more snarky about Fritz than Mitchell - there's a footnote to a Mitchell letter where Mitchell writes that in Fritz' breast there are competing "a most delicate sense of honor" with "the utmost capriciousness"; the footnote snarks that evidently Mitchell didn't know Fritz as well in 1758 as he thought since clearly as opposed to such men as Mitchell himself or the worthy brothers Keith (the Scots), honor and Fritz were at best nodding aquaintances, if not altogether strangers. But the editor still thinks Fritz is the greatest, and buys into such Prussian propaganda like the MT "dearest sister" letter to Marquise de Pompadour.
Also important to keep in mind, for both Mitchell and the 1850 editor, the French are the worst. Not the pre Peter III Russians (which is certainly the case for Lehndorff, worrying about his family - before they arrive in Berlin - and family estates in Eastern Prussia), or the Austrians (suspicious because of their Catholicism, sure, and not as cool as the Protestant Prussians, but not irredeemable): the French. It's the traditional English/French enmity which in Mitchell's case is heightened by the fact there's an actual parallel France vs England war going on in the colonies and for 1850 editor by the Napoleonic interlude.
Mitchell is an Aberdeen Scot, friends especially with James Keith (who when he writes about his death he laments wasn't "always used" as well as he could have been), is also friends with Lord Auchinleck, father of my guy James Boswell, and thus will be visited by Boswell when Boswell is on the Grand Tour. (See about the Boswell-Mitchell connection here. In this context, he's described as " an Aberdeen Scotsman, creditable to his country, hardheaded, sagacious, sceptical of shows, but capable of recognising substances withal, and of standing loyal to them stubbornly if needful", which is also how he gets across on Lehndorff's journals. (Lehndorff likes him a lot, not just during his Hotham-caused Anglophile phase.) Mitchell's German wiki is far longer than his English wiki entry; it mentions he died in fact in Berlin and is buried there, in the Dorotheenstädter Kirche. He has a marble statue there, financed by his friends, among them Heinrich.
Which brings me to another reason why I don't think the two volumes of Mitchell papers were rewritten in 1850 (ad opposed to selected and edited). These papers reflect from the partial look I took already reflect when he's changing his mind on people, with Heinrich being a case in point, instead of pretending he had the magic benefit of hindsight. Mitchell goes from describing him on December 19th, 1757 in very negative terms and suspecting him of being already up to stabbing Fritz in the back and making a secret separate peace with the French:
My Lord,
I have had some suspicicion that Prince Henry is paving the way to a negociation with France without the knowledge of the Kijng his brother. This Prince is very vain and hates his brother, of whose greatness he is jealous. At the same time he has talents, but more cunning than real parts, and French to the bone. (...) I know the Prince's way of thinking; ambition is his only principle. He imagined (looking upon the affairs of the King of Prussia as desperate) that he should have the glory of making peace.
To a series of "Heinrich is awesome!" letters about the same man starting with September 27th, 1759, about the maneouvre von Krockow describes in detail as quoted by me in the "Fritz and Heinrich as generals" section of the relevant post. Mitchell's most detailed description of Heinrich's circumventing, trapping and defeating the Austrians is in the October 8th letter. On October 22nd in a personal letter, he writes:
"His Royal Highness Prince Henry, whom I had the honour of attending these three months past, has shewed (sic) very great military talent, and though his constitution is not robust, he's indefatigable. I observe but one failing, which is in the blood; he exposes his person too much and upon slight occasions. His character and temper of mind are entirely different from his elder brother, and yet in many respects they resemble each other."
So Mitchell doesn't present himself as infallible in his judgment unlike Henri de Catt; he gives his assessments as he sees them at the time. Doesn't mean he doesn't have an agenda; worrying about Prussia making a separate peace with France is a legitimate British concern, given Fritz, ahem, has been known to dump allies and make separate peace before, Heinrich is a Francophile, and he hates his brother. (He also, like Fritz, loves to hear himself praised.) But he's also open minded enough to go from "ambition is his only principle" to "his only flaw is that he's too damn ready to risk his life in battle, just like big bro".
Incidentally, re: separate peace with France, in addition to Fritz' own track record, there's additional irony that later Mitchell realises he has the wrong sibling trying to make peace with France via backchannels, albeit not behind Fritz' back. At one point, angry about not getting enough money and support by the Brits, Fritz shows Mitchell a peace proposal written by someone whom he says he's 100% sure means well and which suggests a French/Prussian peace including the mutual obligations that France promises to try and make peace between Prussia and Austria while Prussia promises to make peace between England and France. Mitchell says he's pretty sure the writer can't have been anyone but Wilhelmine and that he has the impression that Fritz is sorely tempted. Mitchell, I should add, is still 100% Team Fritz and keeps badgering his government for more support for "his Prussian majesty", as he calls him to differentiate him from "his majesty", aka Uncle George.
Now, of course it's in Mitchell's interests to present himself as being in the confidence of the King to his superiors - that's an envoy's top goal. And it's important to note that the intermittent journals he writes aren't private journals in our sense, or like Lehndorff's diary; they are written so he can draw on them for his later dispatches home, and with the awareness that if pressed for time, he might just send the entire journal.. But I really doubt he would invent a Katte & Küstrin conversation for that purpose; mid 7 Years War, there are other concerns. Which means I do think what he quotes Fritz saying is indeed the horse's mouth. Further support for this is the phrasing. "He talked much of the obligations he had towards the Queen Mother, and of the affection he has for his sister the Margravine of Bayreuth, with whom he has been bred." (In the entry after SD's death news reach the camp.) If you remember, in his letters to Heinrich, Fritz keeps saying "I was brought up with her" or "think that I was born and raised with my sister of Bayreuth". Conclusion: Mitchell is quoting authentic Fritz.
Which also means: either Fritz did think Katte stayed in Berlin for a girl, or he pretends to think that to Mitchell for whatever reason.
Re: Katte!
Date: 2020-02-09 10:52 am (UTC)Re: Katte!
Date: 2020-02-09 10:57 am (UTC)A little native speaker help: is it clear from that sentence whether Katte gave it to Müller just before his death, or whether it made its way to Fritz just before Katte's death? Because if Fritz read it *before* he saw Katte and fainted...I have all sorts of interesting thoughts about that.
The impression I get when reading it is that Katte gave it to Müller just before his death. Also, from what I recall Müller was with Katte all through the night, Katte got executed in the early morning, Müller didn't see Fritz until after, not before.
Re: Katte!
Date: 2020-02-09 11:07 am (UTC)If I find more time, I might to cheer you up get some quotes from 1730s letters from Fritz to Wilhelmine proving that despite what he says to Outsiders like Mitchell or Catt about FW, this did not work, because towards Wilhelmine, he sounds as jaundiced about dear old Dad as ever. Which is presumably yet another reason why Grumbkow (and/or FW) want them apart. Note that Wilhelmine in her memoirs also mentions people keep telling her through the 1730s Fritz has cooled off on her and later that he doesn't love her anymore. At a guess, that might courtiers in Grumbkow/ other FW employees as well.
And that's leaving aside SD as testified by Seckendorff Jr. badmouthing her daughter to her Father. That family...
Lavisse
Date: 2020-02-09 01:03 pm (UTC)If he loved Wilhelmine, that ended with Küstrin. And even before that, she mostly meant to him the possibility of having a sister as Queen of England, and his aloofness on the occasion of her wedding can be partly attributed to him giving up on that idea.
Good grief. Even Jürgen Luh, the other "he didn't love anyone" (except possibly Fredersdorf) guy, doesn't believe Fritz' emotional investment in Wilhelmine (or lack of same) had anything to do with her potential Queendom and its loss. I guess Lavisse doesn't mention why, if Fritz only values his siblings according to their rank (and bringing in their husbands as allies, in the case of the Margrave), Queen Ulrike isn't his favourite?
Royal Reader, you who are so much more knowledgeable about Austria and Imperial politics than I am, I would be interested in your take on the complexity of FW's politics vis-a-vis the Emperor as described in pages 75-95.
Sorry, I'll have to get back to you on that. Darth Real Life, also the absence of my best MT biography, which is excellent in presenting the political backfround for the previous generation. Would say that Young Seckendorff's Journal does contain Vienna being sceptical About FW's general intentions, which is a neat contrast to the Prussian pov of cruelly exploited by the Emperor FW.
Making a habit of executions in front of loved ones: even Henry VIII didn't go that far…
All I see that remotely corresponds to that in the Suhm write-up is "er habe mich so in den Arm gekniffen, daß ich ihn nicht mehr rühren könne," which sounds like Fritz holding Suhm's arm so tight Suhm couldn't move it. You tell me, O German Speaker.
You got it. Fritz is the pincher/hold-tight-er, Suhm is hte one who can't move his arm afterwards. Which absolutely isn't saying either of them couldn't feel anything. Where Lavisse got "this was playacting" from is beyond me.
Damn. I bet he approves of FW's "But consider my peace of mind!" letter to Hans Heinrich. Because indecision and fear of death are totally equivalent!
Now, if I had to make a case for FW to be pitied, I'd argue his tragedy is that he wanted to have not a typical "noble/royal" marriage but a normal one, with faithful spouses and adoring children and a lot of affection, and managed to make his family with one or two exceptions fear him at best and hate him at worst, that he wanted to be a good Christian but managed to distort all the Christian virtues into punishment devices, without getting any of the emphasis on love and comfort, even for himself, for he was plagued by religious fears throughout his life. But I certainly would not go for "Peace of mind"/fears and equalize that with what his children (or poor Gundling) went through in terms of abuse.
Also, lol at the implicit shade-throwing at FW, "recruits about ten feet high."
Do we detect some subversiveness in loyal Prussian subject Hille?
Fritz not loving Katte: sigh. Head. Desk.
Re: Katte!
Date: 2020-02-09 06:34 pm (UTC)All right, after he woke up from the faint, then, Fritz got this letter.
In either case, Fritz has to have read this knowing what we know: that it was a letter from FW in Katte's handwriting, and *also* what Katte was trying to tell him with it. (Including any additional coded messages that Katte worked in.*) And I think that possibly in addition to influencing his own future behavior--complying with Dad, rejecting predestination--there's a very good chance it colored his perception of everything Katte said and did. In other words, this letter undermines Katte's credibility so much that I start wondering how much of the repentance and piety was real, and I sincerely hope Fritz did too.
And then I'm back to Fritz's "One can compel by force some poor wretch to utter a certain form of words, yet he will deny to it his inner consent; thus the persecutor has gained nothing" when endorsing religious tolerance as king. He was compelled to utter a certain form of words to which he denied his inner consent; he has to have known that last letter did not fully reflect Katte's inner consent; that makes the whole Katte performance suspect.
And now I'm thinking that Katte has one more motive for that sudden outspoken piety at the end, if it wasn't genuine. Yes, in the first few days and perhaps even that last night there was the chance of a last-minute pardon. Yes, even as he's being executed, he has nothing to lose and it will comfort his family after he's gone, and we know he cares about that. But if he keeps up the performance to the last minute, and his last words are about Jesus, one, he can sell FW on the fact that his repentance was real and that might make Fritz look better by association (compared to if Fritz's BFF is denying Christ to the end in front of him), and two, he can reinforce that last message to Fritz: "Do whatever it takes to stay alive. You don't have to mean it, just wait him out." And that gives his death extra meaning and purpose.
* I finally, belatedly, got what you were getting at with "Did FW and co. know that Katte tried to talk him out of it on those occasions?"--whose idea was it to include those specific references in the letter? I will try to dig up the documentation and see how much of the "Katte tried to talk Fritz out of escaping" comes from the interrogation vs. this letter, and if there are exact quotations.
ETA: I also love the exclamation point you put in the subject of this thread. ;)
Re: Katte!
Date: 2020-02-09 06:41 pm (UTC)"One can compel by force some poor wretch to utter a certain form of words, yet he will deny to it his inner consent; thus the persecutor has gained nothing" doesn't just apply to religion! It also works for messed-up family dynamics.
By the way, MacDonogh gives the siblings a hard time for their letters that make it clear they're hoping FW dies soon:
During the period of the king’s illness, the tone of Frederick’s correspondence with Wilhelmina took on a sinister, anticipatory air as they waited for the not so old man to die. The letters read like a couple of Hollywood villains planning to murder a rich relative.
And this just makes me so angry. He tried running away from his abuser and things just got a million times worse! Death is the only hope of escape he's got now. I cannot blame either of them for looking forward to it.
Note that Wilhelmine in her memoirs also mentions people keep telling her through the 1730s Fritz has cooled off on her and later that he doesn't love her anymore.
Fritz's letters to her also reflect this: "Stop believing I don't love you! Have some more faith in me!"
And that's leaving aside SD as testified by Seckendorff Jr. badmouthing her daughter to her Father. That family...
:-(
No wonder Fritz turned into the very model of a modern Hohenzollern therapist.
Re: Andrew Mitchell: First Impressions
Date: 2020-02-09 07:29 pm (UTC)It's also great to know that we finally have a reliable-looking source, and I love how you presented the case for it. In terms of both internal and external evidence.
"his only flaw is that he's too damn ready to risk his life in battle, just like big bro".
Yeah, well, he and big bro both have a lot to prove to their respective father figures, living and dead. PLUS big bro gets on your case if you're an officer and you're not ready to risk your life in battle.
Further support for this is the phrasing. "He talked much of the obligations he had towards the Queen Mother, and of the affection he has for his sister the Margravine of Bayreuth, with whom he has been bred." If you remember, in his letters to Heinrich, Fritz keeps saying "I was brought up with her" or "think that I was born and raised with my sister of Bayreuth".
This is a good argument. It's also relevant to something I've been keeping an eye out for recently. You made a good case that "If they had tried to raise me instead of humiliating me, I'd be a better person" *might* be Fritz because he uses the impersonal rather than pinning the blame on his father explicitly. And looking through Catt's diary, he does do that rather often. Though he does sometimes specifically name his father too.
Did you notice any examples of him criticizing his father implicitly through an impersonal or passive in the Mitchell memoirs?
Which also means: either Fritz did think Katte stayed in Berlin for a girl, or he pretends to think that to Mitchell for whatever reason.
Wow. I just...I don't know what to think about this. Surely if Fritz had thought he stayed to protect Wilhelmine, favorite sister, he would have said something? Or maybe it hurts too much, idk. I have no idea what Fritz is thinking here.
The other thing it means, though, is that Fritz *did* talk to people about Katte, at least briefly. It also means that he was forcibly brought to the window to watch Katte, and that he did faint. Everything else in the other accounts is suspect, but they all include the fainting and the dragging (exception being Pöllnitz, who simply has him approaching the window).
Which is interesting, because I'm sure word of the fainting got out, but word of him being dragged and his head being held? Maybe it did because Münchow wanted FW to know that he TOTALLY made Fritz watch, but...if I were trying to get Fritz on FW's good side, I'd say that he watched voluntarily and learned a salutary lesson. Certainly not that he was fighting all the way and lost consciousness before he could even see anything happen.
So this is my current working hypothesis of how it all went down and how information spread.
1) FW orders Lepel to make Fritz watch.
2) Küstrin conspiracy to make it so Fritz gets to say goodbye but can't see the actual head roll.
3) To preserve plausible deniability, nobody says anything aloud to Fritz about how he's not going to have to watch. Münchow may even tell him he's been ordered to make Fritz watch and that the officers with him going to have to take Fritz to the window.
4) Fritz is brought to the window. He says goodbye to a passing Katte, he faints. He may be some combination of unconscious, hysterical, and delirious for so long afterward that word gets out about his state of mind.
5) Münchow's write-up to FW is that Fritz totally watched, and that he fainted *afterward*, and that he's totally learned his lesson.
6) Fritz spends the rest of his life believing he was going to have to see Katte's head fall and that he was only spared by fainting.
7) Fritz also believes, when Münchow comes to break the news, that he was about to be killed.
8) Fritz tells Wilhelmine, Mitchell, and Voltaire about the fainting, and at least Wilhelmine and Voltaire that he initially thought he was about to be killed. Wilhelmine gives Pöllnitz Fritz's account, or at least helps correct the account Pöllnitz has heard floating around. They converge on an account that's nearly identical.
9) Pöllnitz talks to god knows who. The rumor mill is working overtime.
10) *Either* Fritz talks to Catt (although not one month after he starts working for him, lol), *or* Catt gets his info from Voltaire's memoirs after 1784 plus the rumor mill. This is the part I'm divided on. One the one hand, thanks to Mitchell, we're now pretty sure that Fritz *did* have an account he ran through with people. On the other hand, we know Catt is a lying liar who lies. So I'm going to have to do another write-up of the evidence for and against.
11) Thiébault gets his info from Voltaire as well as other sources. Reading Voltaire is extremely likely in his case, because he's publishing 20 years after Voltaire's memoirs came out. That's kind of late for Catt, but not impossible, especially if he was revising after the breakup, and possibly after Fritz's death. Also, when I do my Catt write-up, I'm going to talk about the Katte passage and make a (weak, admittedly) case that it may have been introduced into this part of the conversation at a late date.
Re: Lavisse
Date: 2020-02-09 08:51 pm (UTC)Not his biddable spy? Idk, none of this is earth logic to me.
To be fair, he doesn't say that future queen of England was the only reason Fritz *ever* cared about Wilhelmine, but that losing that possibility sealed the deal on the loss of whatever closeness they'd had before Küstrin, which was where Fritz chose to abandon what little humanity he had left and learn to be the Great. (And Lavisse, unlike Preuss, does not think "the Great" was worth becoming.)
Sorry, I'll have to get back to you on that. Darth Real Life, also the absence of my best MT biography, which is excellent in presenting the political backfround for the previous generation.
Not to worry! You're churning out at a tremendous rate considering everything else you have going on. All hail the Royal Reader!
You got it. Fritz is the pincher/hold-tight-er, Suhm is hte one who can't move his arm afterwards. Which absolutely isn't saying either of them couldn't feel anything.
*nod* Thank you. Mind you, I assume Suhm was writing to August in French, so I hope the German translator got it right, but I think I trust someone doing a literal translation of documents over someone just summarizing.
Where Lavisse got "this was playacting" from is beyond me.
In Lavisse's defense, when I did the initial write-up of Suhm's account of that episode, I noted that the editor of Allergnädigster Vater (YouthDocuments in our library) had a footnote reading "Eyewitnesses expressed the not entirely unfounded opinion that Friedrich's performance was a cleverly calculated comedy."
That was before I knew FW had done this to multiple other people, that French envoys commented on how he liked seeing people drunk, and if you believe Lavisse, that FW had even done it to Fritz on another occasion!
So Lavisse isn't making this up about the comedy, but I wonder who those eyewitnesses are and what they said. It seems very in-character for FW to make someone get drunk and very out of character for Fritz to get drunk voluntarily.
One thing to note is that the eyewitnesses are present when FW is repeatedly insisting that Fritz is faking it. That's bound to influence their thinking. The guy sitting next to Fritz and paying the closest attention to him seems convinced he's really drunk (if he's not just covering for him, that is).
Now, if I had to make a case for FW to be pitied, I'd argue his tragedy is that he wanted to have not a typical "noble/royal" marriage but a normal one
Agreed, I would also point out his childhood, his massive health problems, and the fact that a lot of that drinking may have been meant as a coping device with physical and mental health problems. I would stop short of saying that this means his children are responsible for his moods!
Do we detect some subversiveness in loyal Prussian subject Hille?
He definitely seems to think the Potsdam giants are ridiculous! Which was a majority opinion, I have to say.
Fritz not loving Katte: sigh. Head. Desk.
But he did what Katte wanted, by trying to please FW and act interested in learning more about why predestination was wrong! And he pulled himself together and cracked a joke several weeks later! And he generally moved on and lived his life despite saying on November 6 that he would give his life for Katte! Would he do that if he loved Katte?
Is it not obvious that Fritz was incapable of love or friendship?
Head, meet desk, indeed.
Re: Various
Date: 2020-02-09 11:21 pm (UTC)Especially since that business wiht the Stuarts must have been on every Protestant's mind in this regard, and that, too, started with first family members converting.
I meant to add that this is an excellent point!
Catt and Voltaire
Date: 2020-02-10 01:34 am (UTC)Voltaire
Il était dans sa nature de faire toujours tout le contraire de ce qu'il disait de ce qu'il ecrivait, non par dissimulation, mais parce qu'il écrivait & parlait avec une espèce d'enthousiasme, & agissait ensuite avec un autre.
But it was constitutional with him to do the direct Contrary of what he said or writ; not from dissimulation; but because he spoke and writ with one kind of enthusiasm, and afterwards acted with another.
Catt
C'est que parfois on parlait avec une espèce d'enthousiasme et qu'on agissait ensuite avec un autre bien contraire au premier... ces disparates étaient plutôt la suite de cet enthousiasme que d'un manque de franchise.
Sometimes the King spoke with a kind of enthusiasm, and acted afterwards with an enthusiasm very different from the first...These discrepancies were rather the consequence of this enthusiasm than of a lack of sincerity.
Independent observation or plagiarism? You tell me.
Some points to consider:
- Everybody who knows about the developments of September - November 1740 can independently arrive at the conclusion that Fritz wrote/said one thing and proceeded to do the opposite. Even
- Not everybody has felt the need to observe that he was sincere about what he wrote; in fact, some antis have believed the opposite.
- The word "enthousiasme" occurs nowhere in the diary, although a few places in the memoirs.
Side note: I notice the translator has taken Catt's impersonal and given it a subject.
Catt is also nicer than Voltaire and says "sometimes" instead of "always." As you'd expect given the general tone of their memoirs.
Totally unrelated except for tracking down sources: Catt tells a story about how FW accidentally knocked over a young woman, laughed, then realized she might really be hurt and gave her some money. I swear I've seen this before in a list of FW anecdotes, and recently. I seem to remember encountering it in old-fashioned English. I thought it was Voltaire, but it's not. Also doesn't seem to be Lavisse. Anyone remember if it's in Wilhelmine? Or otherwise recognize the source?
ETA: Ignore me; what I was remembering was just someone quoting Catt. Btw, it's in both the diary and the memoirs, but in Fritz's mouth in the memoirs, of course.
Re: Katte!
Date: 2020-02-10 05:28 am (UTC)I acknowledge that, for wise reasons, Divine Providence has decreed that these misfortunes should fall upon me, to bring me to true repentance, and to enable me to work out my salvation.
Which... looks... if you squint sideways at it... kind of like predestination, to me. I know point 2 assigns an actual Katte-cause making it not!predestination, and I mean, obviously you (by which I mean FW) are supposed to read the whole letter and say "Yeah! You screwed up and God is making all this revenge fall upon you" but I do kind of wonder if there was a reason he did the points like that, where you can read point 1 in a certain way if you don't then go on to read point 2, whereas I feel kind of like it would have been more natural to say as point 1, "The prince royal didn't cause my death, my own ambition and neglect of the Almighty did."
Okay, I know, I am just grasping at straws here to give Fritz as much comfort from this letter as I can wring out of any line of it :P