![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
Frederick the Great discussion post 12
Every time I am amazed and enchanted that this is still going on! Truly DW is the Earthly Paradise!
All the good stuff continues to be archived at![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
rheinsberg :)
All the good stuff continues to be archived at
rheinsberg :)
Re: Peter-Michael Hahn
This was one of the guys where EC got the Terrible Horrible Condolence Letters (TM) when he died, right?
No, those were Franz and Albert. Ferd(inand) survived, won fame in the war, and was the recipient of most of EC's letters home from her time as Crown Princess onwards. (Which change from "omg, my new husband is the best ever, I'm so in love!" to "I'm sitting like a prisoner here while everyone else is off to the countryside" to "...and now me and Louise didn't even get a condolence letter!"
The reviews of the 2007 publication: they're basically all advertising by "come for the two Fritz is rude to EC stories, stay for the Prussian court gossip, pen portraits of personalities and vivid descripton of the homefront in the 7 Years War". Now if it were me, I'd use the "stay for the "Heinrich and me: A Rokoko Queer As Folk AU" pitch, but hey...
More depressingly, I suspect several factors coming into play here, among these: a) potential readers only casually interested in Frederick the Great before reading the diaries might hardly remember he had siblings other than Wilhelmine, and b) among readers who are well versed enough in their Prussian history to be able to list most of Fritz' important battles in correct chronological order and know their Ziethen from their Seydlitz, there's probably a sizable continget who are still in homophobic denial and the type to write indignant "it was all Voltaire's slander!" comments. I doubt your avarage newspaper reviewer is aware there's a thriving Fritz slash fandom who'd be into a bi chamberlain in love with his younger brother.
Re: Peter-Michael Hahn
I admit that a year ago, before I started refreshing myself by reading bios and Wikipedia, and certainly before our salon, my "Quick: enumerate Fritz's siblings!" reaction would have been, "He had a brother whose son inherited! The brother must have had a name, but damned if I know what it is." I'm trying to remember if I would have remembered even Wilhelmine that many years after last reading up on Fritz. EC I knew about, but the siblings were all blanks in my mind.
(Truly, our salon is an earthly paradise.)
to "...and now me and Louise didn't even get a condolence letter!"
To the disappeared-from-the-archives "...and now I realize I didn't know how good I had it when I didn't get condolence letters!" inflammatory letter.
I doubt your avarage newspaper reviewer is aware there's a thriving Fritz slash fandom who'd be into a bi chamberlain in love with his younger brother.
Clearly this is a situation that needs to be remedied!
Re: Peter-Michael Hahn
And I had even seen some movies back in the day. But in "Der Thronfolger", the younger sibs are little kids, Amalie in "Mein Name ist Bach" had only registered as "Not Wilhelmine" and Heinrich in the scene from "Der große König" which I saw as part of a seminar about propaganda movies ("Der große König" was the most popular of the Nazi propaganda movies using Frederician subjects, and was the last time Otto Gebühr starred as Old Fritz) registered only as "the one who was in the army". That scene actually is on YouTube, btw, which is sort of illegal since it's one of the 22 Nazi movies still prohibited to be shown in Germany outside of a teaching context. (I.e. you can show them when doing university presentations where you discuss their propaganda strategies and the like, but you couldn't put them on tv or in the cinema.)
Otoh, I bet you could have listed key battles and generals, whereas yours truly, having gone to school after the "no more glorification of the military!" change of mind had come about, could not have said more "and then he invaded Silesia, and then there was another war in Silesia, and then there was the Seven Years War. And I definitely could not have named anyone from the Sanssouci intellectual circle other than Voltaire, with the awareness that this had ended badly (somehow).
Re: Peter-Michael Hahn
Wilhelmine: I have one *brother*, and also I occasionally see some rugrats running around that I'm told I'm related to.
Otoh, I bet you could have listed key battles and generals
Twenty years ago, absolutely. One year ago, without having refreshed myself on Old Fritz since then? ...Definitely Mollwitz and Schwerin, in detail, and I would have remembered some of Leuthen but possibly forgotten the name if you put me on the spot (though as soon as I saw it, it would have triggered a flood of memories).
And I definitely could not have named anyone from the Sanssouci intellectual circle other than Voltaire, with the awareness that this had ended badly (somehow).
He had an intellectual circle other than Voltaire? And same, it ended badly because two prima donnas sharing the same stage is a bad thing, is what I remember from high school days (and I would have used that metaphor). Anything about shady financial deals with Hirschel or pamphlets with Maupertuis, whooosh, gone.
Re: Peter-Michael Hahn
SO TRUE
*was confused the entire time as to whom she was talking about at any given moment; I should go back and read it again now*