cahn | Frederick the Great discussion post 12

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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

rheinsberg :)

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From:

mildred_of_midgard

In the sense of forming Fritz into a successor he was satisfied with, he did, though, eventually.

He got some of what he wanted. He never did get the full capitulation, and toward the end of his life, he kept going back and forth on whether Fritz was going to do well or fuck everything up. And as we've discussed, it's an open question how he would have felt about those wars of aggression.

that FW lost in that what he wanted as a young man and father when it all started - to have a "bürgerliche Familie" with a loving wife and children

Oh, yeah, he was definitely miserable. But Fritz also lost in what *he wanted* for a very long time (and to a certain extent, forever, because trauma), so defining FW as the *only* loser here just requires an astonishing amount of special pleading.

I suppose random subject who actually did screamed at "But you're supposed to love me, not fear me!" also provoked FW?

Well, yeah! They were insulting him by cowering in front of him! Naturally that would provoke you into yelling at them and walloping them with your cane. If they had just loved him like they were supposed to, he would have been the most chill and benevolent monarch ever.

Doris Ritter provoked him into every one of those floggings?

Of course! Also, remember, FW executing Katte and flogging Doris and pardoning Fritz is the only one in the kingdom with a conscience! Who always goes by the law, and never his emotions. And also going by the law is the most important thing, as we learned from the period leading up to 1945 in Germany and 1865 in the US and various other examples I could enumerate. The law is all!

*Throws up hands* Historians wanting to be edgy, I swear.

I only wish it were more edgy. And I'm not just talking about Fritz here, but this take I keep running into of "but you provoked him/her/them!"

With you on the vicious cycle, of course, and that it's not the children's job to break out of it or to not start it in the first place.

Btw, speaking of Hahn, I notice he talks about Fritz's self-conscious correspondence that can't be trusted. Is he with Luh on Fritz never loving anyone except maybe Fredersdorf?

From:

selenak

No, he doesn't make such definite claims about Fritz' emotional life. He does treat some things as given - Wilhelmine as the closest sibling, for example, which comes up when he discusses Fritz the art collector and the influence of Wilhelmine's Italian journey - , and thinks Fredersdorf and Eichel were probably the two people Fritz trusted most, while he thinks of the intellectual friends, D'Argens came closest to his ideal for tht type of relationship - clever and gifted and great to talk to and read letters from, but not as brilliant (and thus not needing Fritz' support) as Voltaire, not to mention an easier person to live with, and willing to stay, unlike Algarotti.

He also treats Fritz' homosexuality in general as given (and agrees with the Antinous = Katte theory), without bothering with a "did he or didn't he?" discussion. In the interview, he's asked about this and his reaction basically is, oh, please, and that in the 18th century as long as you were an aristocrat, it wasn't a big deal.

Oh, and he thinks Fritz had an admistration problem in the later years because the circle of people he trusted was dying on him, and he wasn't capable anymore of trusting new people; that's when his micromanagement style became a problem, which in Hahn's eyes it wasn't before.

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Good for him for that much, at least. (The bar, it is low.)

he thinks Fritz had an admistration problem in the later years because the circle of people he trusted was dying on him, and he wasn't capable anymore of trusting new people; that's when his micromanagement style became a problem, which in Hahn's eyes it wasn't before.

That is interesting. Blanning also says that the micromanaging started to fall apart as Fritz got older, but if I'm remembering correctly, he makes it sound like it was due to Fritz getting older or possibly due to the problems just getting more complicated (more territory, post-Seven Years' War, all that). If it was due to having fewer people he could delegate to (Fredersdorf for one was gone), I find that very convincing. Fritz simply losing his grip due to age, well...health problems mounted, granted, but the personality and mental acuity didn't waver one bit, until the last month or so, as far as I can tell.