Yeah, I skimmed the interview, went, "uh huh," and closed the tab. Between these opinions and that unsourced Fredersdorf anecdote, he is a very mixed bag.
I shall restraint on any comment on the victim blaming - seriously, how hard is it not to go the "but the kids provoked him!" route?
It's extremely hard! Nigh impossible, it would seem.
I think attempting his level best to break his son by methods all against the Geneva conventions and thus in today's terms qualifying as torture doesn't qualify this particular conflict as one Fritz couldn't have lost.
I'm sure it would have been a great comfort to Fritz after his father ran him through with a sword, or decided to ignore all good advice and have his son executed, to know that it was illegal and his father would get a slap on the wrist.
In many ways Fritz did lose. Leaving psychic scars aside, for at least twenty-four years he lost day after day in terms of not being able to live the kind of life he quite reasonably wanted to live and could easily have lived if his father hadn't been out to crush his will. He also lost in terms of having person after person that he loved taken away from him.
What does Hahn count as winning, exactly? Becoming king...eventually...is not exactly a resounding victory. Imagine if Fritz had died in 1739 of his own brain tumor. WTF, Hahn.
I'm also a bit stunned to see a qualified historian blithely saying of FW "because he behaved impossibly, unlike any other monarch of his era". Unless you mean just FW's excentricities re: tall soldiers and personal life style.
I also couldn't tell what he meant. Or in what sense FW was the loser here. He was miserable? He didn't get what he wanted out of Fritz? He didn't get to disinherit Fritz? (Poor baby.) He missed out on the comforts of civilization?
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Re: Peter-Michael Hahn
Date: 2020-03-01 07:48 pm (UTC)I shall restraint on any comment on the victim blaming - seriously, how hard is it not to go the "but the kids provoked him!" route?
It's extremely hard! Nigh impossible, it would seem.
I think attempting his level best to break his son by methods all against the Geneva conventions and thus in today's terms qualifying as torture doesn't qualify this particular conflict as one Fritz couldn't have lost.
I'm sure it would have been a great comfort to Fritz after his father ran him through with a sword, or decided to ignore all good advice and have his son executed, to know that it was illegal and his father would get a slap on the wrist.
In many ways Fritz did lose. Leaving psychic scars aside, for at least twenty-four years he lost day after day in terms of not being able to live the kind of life he quite reasonably wanted to live and could easily have lived if his father hadn't been out to crush his will. He also lost in terms of having person after person that he loved taken away from him.
What does Hahn count as winning, exactly? Becoming king...eventually...is not exactly a resounding victory. Imagine if Fritz had died in 1739 of his own brain tumor. WTF, Hahn.
I'm also a bit stunned to see a qualified historian blithely saying of FW "because he behaved impossibly, unlike any other monarch of his era". Unless you mean just FW's excentricities re: tall soldiers and personal life style.
I also couldn't tell what he meant. Or in what sense FW was the loser here. He was miserable? He didn't get what he wanted out of Fritz? He didn't get to disinherit Fritz? (Poor baby.) He missed out on the comforts of civilization?
Because yes to all your examples.