Wow, yeah. Whenever biographers get on her case for "acting" like she was afraid of her husband, I'm like, "What acting?!! WTF? Do you know what kind of fear of their husbands women live in even when their husbands *aren't* absolute monarchs? SMH."
Yep. It's entirely possible to critique her own parenting without overlooking that she herself was in a horrible situaton vis a vis FW. A great many biographers are all "but he was offering her a far better deal than most royal and noble wives got, he was into marital love and fidelity, he wanted to be a good husband, and she didn't appreciate it, when if she'd just tried to see things his way..." And that might work if we were talking about Mr. and Mrs. Hohenzollern next door, living today, but SD not only lived in a time where her husband had absolute power over her, but did know, through her mother's fate, what that could mean in a royal marriage specifically.
Incidentally, Raumer also quotes the Guy Dickens report on his conversations with Fritz re: possible flight, and in them Fritz specifically says he wants to go to France first rather than go to England directly because if he goes directly to England he knows his father will immediately assume his mother knew and will make her life miserable. His phrasing is almost identical to the one FW later uses in the submissio protocol. (Fritz does not mention what his father might do to Wilhelmine, but then he's at this point still hoping the Brits would revive the double marriage idea.)
Another things: because Raumer isn't using the Prussian state archive but the British and Danish ones, he evidently didn't have to submit his book to Prussian censorhip. And lo, he's by far the most FW critical 19th century Frederician scholar I've seen. All the others follow the narrative "FW went a bit over the top, yes, but it was a necessarily evil to produce Frederick the Great, and father & son reconciled thereafter, forming a line of future Prussian greatness" and so forth. Meanwhile, Raumer in his narrative texts around the British dispatches has no problem describing him as unjust, wilfully blind, cruel. He does concede FW's relationships to his family are just a part of his story and that he shouldn't be judged by this alone but by what he achieved as a monarch, but, in a rare, rare exeption to the 19th century norm, he doesn't excuse FW. Now, remember what Hahn said re: the historiography? Raumer's volume in a century where everthing Fritz was eaten up and became a bestseller almost sank without a trace.
Mind you, Guy Dickens and his reports have the obvious bias an English envoy would have - for example, when he describes Wilhelmine's wedding, he presents her as white as a sheet and barely able to stand, trembling with loathing for future Margrave, which, well, is not verified by anyone else's description, including hers. (But it's certainly what he would have heard from the SD corner.) And some of his early Küstrin stuff is plain wrong, such as saying he's heard Fritz isn't allowed to shave or have a servant doing it for him, and so his hair, beard and fingernails are growing wildly. (Meanwhile, the FW-Küstrin correspondance includes instructions for everything, including for the servant whose job it was to take care of Fritz' personal hygiene. FW wanted his son broken, but he also wanted him shaved and not living in his excrements.) But he's still a great primary source, even more so for usually saying where he got his intel from.
a sense of how common it was for members of the upper classes to "du" or "tu" (and it sounds like the former was much more common than the latter) each other in private when they very carefully use "Sie/vous" in public.
With the caveat that Goethe and Schiller are a generation later (or two, depending how you count): I really do think it made a difference whether you treated French or German as your primary language, plus the later part of that century saw customs changing, and the newly confident middle class changing styles. When middle-class Goethe leaves Frankfurt for Weimar and falls in love with married noblewoman Charlotte von Stein, which she after a while platonically reciprocates, she absolutely refuses the "Du". (He uses it anyway in his letters after a while.) Frau von Stein uses "Sie" when adressing her husband Josias (and vice versa) all their lives. This is late 1770s, early 1780s. Schiller, who is ten years younger, doesn't even have to fight for using the "Du" for the two noble sisters he falls in love with. By the 19th century, German nobility - which no longer uses French as a primary language - has adopted "Du" for family and romantic relationships even in letters. While in France the shift worked the other way around, and the middle class has adopted "vous" and maintained it for a loooong time; as I mentioned many a post before, Simone de Beauvoir & Sartre said "Vous" to each other all their lives.
Now whenever Lehndorff quotes Heinrich, AW or Ferdinand saying something to him directly, he has them using Sie/Vous, and vice versa, when he's talking to them. Even after years of friendship, and even when AW uses a nickname like "Lehndorfchen" (in a conversation during those last months of his life). This could be because they're royalty and he's not, but he's also referring to his One Who Got Away as "Frau von Katt(e)" or "my cousin Katt", not by her first name. And just like Wilhelmine never refers to her husband by his first name in her memoirs, but as "the Heriditary Prince/The Margrave/My husband", Lehndorff never refers to his wives by their first names in his diaries; it's "Fräulein von Häseler" pre wedding and "my wife" post wedding. He refers to his sisters by their married names, "my sister Isenburg" for example, just like Wilhelmine is "my sister of Bayreuth" and Charlotte "my sister of Braunschweig" among the Hohenzollern.
So, my rule of thumb: if they're nobility, addressing someone who isn't a social inferior, and they're talking French, they're saying "vous". If they're talking German, it depends on how upset they are; I notice that all the Hohenzollern examples for uses of "Du" to family members happen in moments of stress or heightened emotion, like FW switching from "Du" to Ihr and Sie and back during the submission protocol (and indeed in his few letters to Fritz in the 1730s, he's similarly inconsistent there), and "nope, not speaking German" Heinrich using "du" in his shouting match with Amalie.
(It's several centuries earlier, but I'm suddenly reminded that Shakespeare's royalty also usually goes for titles - "my brother Gloucester/Clarence" not "my brother Richard/George", for example. And even a century later, Charles II.'s famous death request of brother James re: Charles' mistresses, makes a class distinction in how he refers to Louise, Duchess of Portsmouth, and Nelly Gwynn, former actress and not nobility. "Take care of Portsmouth, and let not poor Nelly starve." So while the Brits had pretty much given up on "thou" by then, Quakers aside, the nobility still followed continental custom with the distinction.)
remember what Hahn said re: the historiography? Raumer's volume in a century where everthing Fritz was eaten up and became a bestseller almost sank without a trace.
And apparently Hahn, overcompensating in the other direction, didn't buy it either. Why is this so hard, people?!
which, well, is not verified by anyone else's description, including hers. (But it's certainly what he would have heard from the SD corner.)
Ooh, yes, that makes sense.
FW wanted his son broken, but he also wanted him shaved and not living in his excrements.
Indeed. One of their long-standing battlegrounds was that Fritz was careless about hygiene, and FW was fastidious about it, not in a foppish kind of way, but in a spic-and-span Prussian soldier kind of way (my sources said soldiers could get beaten if half a button wasn't polished adequately when they appeared for reviews). I've always thought Fritz's lifelong habits of wiping his ink on his sleeves and basically flouring himself with Spanish snuff might go back a teeeensy bit to this battle for identity against his father. (Soldiers still had to adhere to military standards, but Fritz does what Fritz wants, or sometimes at least the opposite of what Dad wants.)
But he's still a great primary source, even more so for usually saying where he got his intel from.
We love you, Dickens! (I didn't until now, but my inner historiographer now knows that I love you!)
"Take care of Portsmouth, and let not poor Nelly starve."
I had forgotten this quote if I learned it (and I feel like I probably did, since I did read accounts of his deathbed scene). Tongue-in-cheek question: if this is the continental example, does that mean Fredersdorf is "Mike" when Fritz is talking? ;)
I had forgotten this quote if I learned it (and I feel like I probably did, since I did read accounts of his deathbed scene).
In the (rather good) miniseries about him, which you should see in the European version ("Charles II: The Power and the Passion"), since the American ("The Last King") one got trimmed down and censored severely, making mincemeat of some of the political plots and character motivations, the scriptwriters used the line but changed "Portsmouth" to "Louise", since they figured a modern audience would wonder what Charles has against Southhampton and Plymouth that he doesn't name them as well, according to the audio commentary. ;)
Talking of dying British monarch's, SD's brother G2 might have been unwilling to do anything for his nephew (and niece!), but the story of how he responded when his dying wife Caroline told him that she doesn't want him to be alone, he should marry again, is endearing and very 18th century: "Never! I shall take a mistress!"
Tongue-in-cheek question: if this is the continental example, does that mean Fredersdorf is "Mike" when Fritz is talking? ;)
Fritz to AW in 1741, before his first battle: "Take care of Algarotti, and let not poor Michael starve?" ;)
« Non, j’aurai des maitresses! because George II was, when it came down to it, a Gerrman prince, not an English one. Naturally, he spoke French to his dying wife. Whereas his (British) envoys are among the very few who write in their native language (Dickens and Mitchell both write in English, the Hannover Hofrat wrote in French). Seriously though, that's the first endearing thing I've come across from one of the Hannover Georges preceding and succeeding G3 (who might have gotten bad press from the American colonists and gone mad, but as "Farmer George" managed a couple of nice anecdotes and of course had Alan Bennet to popularize him by play and film.
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timeasmymeasure
Re: Katte - Species Facti 2
Date: 2020-03-22 12:40 pm (UTC)Wow, yeah. Whenever biographers get on her case for "acting" like she was afraid of her husband, I'm like, "What acting?!! WTF? Do you know what kind of fear of their husbands women live in even when their husbands *aren't* absolute monarchs? SMH."
Yep. It's entirely possible to critique her own parenting without overlooking that she herself was in a horrible situaton vis a vis FW. A great many biographers are all "but he was offering her a far better deal than most royal and noble wives got, he was into marital love and fidelity, he wanted to be a good husband, and she didn't appreciate it, when if she'd just tried to see things his way..." And that might work if we were talking about Mr. and Mrs. Hohenzollern next door, living today, but SD not only lived in a time where her husband had absolute power over her, but did know, through her mother's fate, what that could mean in a royal marriage specifically.
Incidentally, Raumer also quotes the Guy Dickens report on his conversations with Fritz re: possible flight, and in them Fritz specifically says he wants to go to France first rather than go to England directly because if he goes directly to England he knows his father will immediately assume his mother knew and will make her life miserable. His phrasing is almost identical to the one FW later uses in the submissio protocol. (Fritz does not mention what his father might do to Wilhelmine, but then he's at this point still hoping the Brits would revive the double marriage idea.)
Another things: because Raumer isn't using the Prussian state archive but the British and Danish ones, he evidently didn't have to submit his book to Prussian censorhip. And lo, he's by far the most FW critical 19th century Frederician scholar I've seen. All the others follow the narrative "FW went a bit over the top, yes, but it was a necessarily evil to produce Frederick the Great, and father & son reconciled thereafter, forming a line of future Prussian greatness" and so forth. Meanwhile, Raumer in his narrative texts around the British dispatches has no problem describing him as unjust, wilfully blind, cruel. He does concede FW's relationships to his family are just a part of his story and that he shouldn't be judged by this alone but by what he achieved as a monarch, but, in a rare, rare exeption to the 19th century norm, he doesn't excuse FW. Now, remember what Hahn said re: the historiography? Raumer's volume in a century where everthing Fritz was eaten up and became a bestseller almost sank without a trace.
Mind you, Guy Dickens and his reports have the obvious bias an English envoy would have - for example, when he describes Wilhelmine's wedding, he presents her as white as a sheet and barely able to stand, trembling with loathing for future Margrave, which, well, is not verified by anyone else's description, including hers. (But it's certainly what he would have heard from the SD corner.) And some of his early Küstrin stuff is plain wrong, such as saying he's heard Fritz isn't allowed to shave or have a servant doing it for him, and so his hair, beard and fingernails are growing wildly. (Meanwhile, the FW-Küstrin correspondance includes instructions for everything, including for the servant whose job it was to take care of Fritz' personal hygiene. FW wanted his son broken, but he also wanted him shaved and not living in his excrements.) But he's still a great primary source, even more so for usually saying where he got his intel from.
a sense of how common it was for members of the upper classes to "du" or "tu" (and it sounds like the former was much more common than the latter) each other in private when they very carefully use "Sie/vous" in public.
With the caveat that Goethe and Schiller are a generation later (or two, depending how you count): I really do think it made a difference whether you treated French or German as your primary language, plus the later part of that century saw customs changing, and the newly confident middle class changing styles. When middle-class Goethe leaves Frankfurt for Weimar and falls in love with married noblewoman Charlotte von Stein, which she after a while platonically reciprocates, she absolutely refuses the "Du". (He uses it anyway in his letters after a while.) Frau von Stein uses "Sie" when adressing her husband Josias (and vice versa) all their lives. This is late 1770s, early 1780s. Schiller, who is ten years younger, doesn't even have to fight for using the "Du" for the two noble sisters he falls in love with. By the 19th century, German nobility - which no longer uses French as a primary language - has adopted "Du" for family and romantic relationships even in letters. While in France the shift worked the other way around, and the middle class has adopted "vous" and maintained it for a loooong time; as I mentioned many a post before, Simone de Beauvoir & Sartre said "Vous" to each other all their lives.
Now whenever Lehndorff quotes Heinrich, AW or Ferdinand saying something to him directly, he has them using Sie/Vous, and vice versa, when he's talking to them. Even after years of friendship, and even when AW uses a nickname like "Lehndorfchen" (in a conversation during those last months of his life). This could be because they're royalty and he's not, but he's also referring to his One Who Got Away as "Frau von Katt(e)" or "my cousin Katt", not by her first name. And just like Wilhelmine never refers to her husband by his first name in her memoirs, but as "the Heriditary Prince/The Margrave/My husband", Lehndorff never refers to his wives by their first names in his diaries; it's "Fräulein von Häseler" pre wedding and "my wife" post wedding. He refers to his sisters by their married names, "my sister Isenburg" for example, just like Wilhelmine is "my sister of Bayreuth" and Charlotte "my sister of Braunschweig" among the Hohenzollern.
So, my rule of thumb: if they're nobility, addressing someone who isn't a social inferior, and they're talking French, they're saying "vous". If they're talking German, it depends on how upset they are; I notice that all the Hohenzollern examples for uses of "Du" to family members happen in moments of stress or heightened emotion, like FW switching from "Du" to Ihr and Sie and back during the submission protocol (and indeed in his few letters to Fritz in the 1730s, he's similarly inconsistent there), and "nope, not speaking German" Heinrich using "du" in his shouting match with Amalie.
(It's several centuries earlier, but I'm suddenly reminded that Shakespeare's royalty also usually goes for titles - "my brother Gloucester/Clarence" not "my brother Richard/George", for example. And even a century later, Charles II.'s famous death request of brother James re: Charles' mistresses, makes a class distinction in how he refers to Louise, Duchess of Portsmouth, and Nelly Gwynn, former actress and not nobility. "Take care of Portsmouth, and let not poor Nelly starve." So while the Brits had pretty much given up on "thou" by then, Quakers aside, the nobility still followed continental custom with the distinction.)
Re: Katte - Species Facti 2
Date: 2020-03-23 01:06 am (UTC)And apparently Hahn, overcompensating in the other direction, didn't buy it either. Why is this so hard, people?!
which, well, is not verified by anyone else's description, including hers. (But it's certainly what he would have heard from the SD corner.)
Ooh, yes, that makes sense.
FW wanted his son broken, but he also wanted him shaved and not living in his excrements.
Indeed. One of their long-standing battlegrounds was that Fritz was careless about hygiene, and FW was fastidious about it, not in a foppish kind of way, but in a spic-and-span Prussian soldier kind of way (my sources said soldiers could get beaten if half a button wasn't polished adequately when they appeared for reviews). I've always thought Fritz's lifelong habits of wiping his ink on his sleeves and basically flouring himself with Spanish snuff might go back a teeeensy bit to this battle for identity against his father. (Soldiers still had to adhere to military standards, but Fritz does what Fritz wants, or sometimes at least the opposite of what Dad wants.)
But he's still a great primary source, even more so for usually saying where he got his intel from.
We love you, Dickens! (I didn't until now, but my inner historiographer now knows that I love you!)
"Take care of Portsmouth, and let not poor Nelly starve."
I had forgotten this quote if I learned it (and I feel like I probably did, since I did read accounts of his deathbed scene). Tongue-in-cheek question: if this is the continental example, does that mean Fredersdorf is "Mike" when Fritz is talking? ;)
Re: Katte - Species Facti 2
Date: 2020-03-23 02:24 pm (UTC)In the (rather good) miniseries about him, which you should see in the European version ("Charles II: The Power and the Passion"), since the American ("The Last King") one got trimmed down and censored severely, making mincemeat of some of the political plots and character motivations, the scriptwriters used the line but changed "Portsmouth" to "Louise", since they figured a modern audience would wonder what Charles has against Southhampton and Plymouth that he doesn't name them as well, according to the audio commentary. ;)
Talking of dying British monarch's, SD's brother G2 might have been unwilling to do anything for his nephew (and niece!), but the story of how he responded when his dying wife Caroline told him that she doesn't want him to be alone, he should marry again, is endearing and very 18th century: "Never! I shall take a mistress!"
Tongue-in-cheek question: if this is the continental example, does that mean Fredersdorf is "Mike" when Fritz is talking? ;)
Fritz to AW in 1741, before his first battle: "Take care of Algarotti, and let not poor Michael starve?" ;)
Re: Katte - Species Facti 2
Date: 2020-03-23 07:35 pm (UTC)Ha! That is endearing and very 18th century.
Fritz to AW in 1741, before his first battle: "Take care of Algarotti, and let not poor Michael starve?" ;)
Love it!
Re: Katte - Species Facti 2
Date: 2020-03-24 04:58 am (UTC)Re: Katte - Species Facti 2
Date: 2020-03-25 04:58 am (UTC)