Dear lord. Please send Ziebura flowers from all of us.
I guess Pangels was worth it just for the cembalo anecdote, that was *so* adorable.
it won't surprise you that Fritz himself is of course also utterly heterosexual.
I expect nothing less!
Fritz firmly in his replying poem rejected this love. In no uncertain terms.
The best part of this, having read the poem exchange in question, is that Fritz rejected this love in the no uncertain terms of "Forget about my sister! What's she got that I don't? Write me more love poetry, Voltaire! Freaking Émilie."
It's basically: "Gods, don't take my sister from me, take my life instead! Preferably, I want us to die on the same day, and buried in the same tomb, so our dust can intermingle and we're never ever separated again."
Oh, wow. Definitely worth a whole Fritz boot-licking sibling-hating book.
When Biche was pregnant, Fritz wrote in her name to AW, offering him to be the godfather of the pub. What's more, he wrote this letter in German. (!!)Pangels quotes from it. I don't recall it from the Trier archive, btw - victim of algorithm? Or of Preuss' selection?
Preuss, as far as I can tell. Does Pangels give a date? I can double check.
chides Anna Amalia, who apparantly described her Hohenzollern style upbringing in her own memoirs (which I haven't read) as "loveless", hence her determination to raise Carl August (Goethe's bff) differently, as having had no sense of humor.
Ms. Pangels, I feel sorry for your kids, if you have any.
he must have done something right, she admits.
Like be taller than his wife?
Drum roll: EC was taller than Fritz.
*spittake*
Good grief, woman, what possessed you - the ghost of Henri de Catt?
HAHAHA. Well, we hear Catt may have had it in for Heinrich, so maybe! Catt is infinitely more critical of Fritz in the memoirs, though, and "endlessly chill and forgiving" does not describe his Fritz. Ghost of Wilhelmine would have done some of this, but hardly all of it...ghost of SD? Who probably knew all about being taller than her husband? (Was she? Please tell me she was, that would be so awesome.)
Tangentially, I read a few more pages of Asprey, and I spoke too soon in my last write-up. Now that Fritz is king, it's time to talk about how important it was to make Prussia a great European power, because the alternative was continuing to wallow in Austrian humiliation, and how great it was that Fritz learned all these important lessons from Machiavelli so he could live up to his awesome destiny of making Prussia great (for the first time) that his dad had failed so badly at.
Look, Asprey, I'm willing to read about Fritz the great military and even political genius. I realize that this was the dominant narrative of your day. But when you start getting on board with his *program* rather than just his skill, in 1986, I start to ask myself...if you can't do facts (Koser, Preuss) and you can't do opinions (Blanning), what can you do? Lively similes about backward worms and demented insurance salesmen? Okay, I will keep dipping my toes in for that, but don't expect a glowing report in that annotated bibliography that selenak and I should put together someday.
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Re: Pangels in Wonderland
Date: 2020-02-27 02:18 pm (UTC)I guess Pangels was worth it just for the cembalo anecdote, that was *so* adorable.
it won't surprise you that Fritz himself is of course also utterly heterosexual.
I expect nothing less!
Fritz firmly in his replying poem rejected this love. In no uncertain terms.
The best part of this, having read the poem exchange in question, is that Fritz rejected this love in the no uncertain terms of "Forget about my sister! What's she got that I don't? Write me more love poetry, Voltaire! Freaking Émilie."
It's basically: "Gods, don't take my sister from me, take my life instead! Preferably, I want us to die on the same day, and buried in the same tomb, so our dust can intermingle and we're never ever separated again."
Oh, wow. Definitely worth a whole Fritz boot-licking sibling-hating book.
When Biche was pregnant, Fritz wrote in her name to AW, offering him to be the godfather of the pub. What's more, he wrote this letter in German. (!!)Pangels quotes from it. I don't recall it from the Trier archive, btw - victim of algorithm? Or of Preuss' selection?
Preuss, as far as I can tell. Does Pangels give a date? I can double check.
chides Anna Amalia, who apparantly described her Hohenzollern style upbringing in her own memoirs (which I haven't read) as "loveless", hence her determination to raise Carl August (Goethe's bff) differently, as having had no sense of humor.
Ms. Pangels, I feel sorry for your kids, if you have any.
he must have done something right, she admits.
Like be taller than his wife?
Drum roll: EC was taller than Fritz.
*spittake*
Good grief, woman, what possessed you - the ghost of Henri de Catt?
HAHAHA. Well, we hear Catt may have had it in for Heinrich, so maybe! Catt is infinitely more critical of Fritz in the memoirs, though, and "endlessly chill and forgiving" does not describe his Fritz. Ghost of Wilhelmine would have done some of this, but hardly all of it...ghost of SD? Who probably knew all about being taller than her husband? (Was she? Please tell me she was, that would be so awesome.)
Tangentially, I read a few more pages of Asprey, and I spoke too soon in my last write-up. Now that Fritz is king, it's time to talk about how important it was to make Prussia a great European power, because the alternative was continuing to wallow in Austrian humiliation, and how great it was that Fritz learned all these important lessons from Machiavelli so he could live up to his awesome destiny of making Prussia great (for the first time) that his dad had failed so badly at.
Look, Asprey, I'm willing to read about Fritz the great military and even political genius. I realize that this was the dominant narrative of your day. But when you start getting on board with his *program* rather than just his skill, in 1986, I start to ask myself...if you can't do facts (Koser, Preuss) and you can't do opinions (Blanning), what can you do? Lively similes about backward worms and demented insurance salesmen? Okay, I will keep dipping my toes in for that, but don't expect a glowing report in that annotated bibliography that