Frederick the Great, discussion post 14
Apr. 7th, 2020 09:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cahnCheck out the opera clips at Rheinsberg!
(both the real-life place, whichselenak found out hosts a festival for young opera singers! and the community ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
rheinsberg)
Also! our fandom has been producing lovely fic at a rapid clip (okay, well,selenak has):
Sibling dysfunction: Promises to Keep and My Brother Narcissus
Sibling dysfunction PLUS sibling M/M love triangle: The moon flies face to face with me
VOLTAIRE! Between the hour and the age
(both the real-life place, which
selenak found out hosts a festival for young opera singers! and the community rheinsberg)Also! our fandom has been producing lovely fic at a rapid clip (okay, well,
selenak has):Sibling dysfunction: Promises to Keep and My Brother Narcissus
Sibling dysfunction PLUS sibling M/M love triangle: The moon flies face to face with me
VOLTAIRE! Between the hour and the age
Re: The Heinrich discussion thread
Date: 2020-04-28 09:56 pm (UTC)I feel like this problem is potentially solvable if someone found in the archives a Marwitz getting dismissed around this time and reinstated soon after, but if such documentation is still extant, nobody seems to have found it and recognized it. Good job uncovering the suppressed Fritz letters, though!
- Ziebura's observation that Fritz would target someone and begin giving them a hard time, in hopes that they would rise to the challenge and give as good as they got, only he didn't realize he was punching down, reminds me of one of the hot-or-not reports you translated for us, from 1742, "He can't resist needling and maliciously mocking where he notices ridiculousness, but he doesn’t mind getting a reply, even a strong one, as long it is a good one."
I also relate super hard to this, because I really enjoy a good bantering and instinctively try to provoke people into them, only I did eventually, unlike Fritz, realize that there are people you can do that with and people you can't. You don't even need absolute power for it to be a problem, you just need to be a TA, but if you *do* have absolute power...fix-it fic where he doesn't get absolute power!
- I'm skeptical about her arguments that his handwriting indicates his mood. What I need for that to be meaningful are different samples written at different times and some evidence that there's not only correlation but causation. This is considered pseudoscientific in general and I'm not seeing any evidence of greater rigor here.
- Pöllnitz giving Heinrich away when he sneaks off--deliberate, or inability to keep his mouth shut for five minutes?
In general: Oh, Fritz. (I have a feeling that's going to be my reaction in every update.)
Re: The Heinrich discussion thread
Date: 2020-04-29 07:22 am (UTC)and being screwed over by Fritz, and you named Seydlitz the syphilitic (who gets honored and praised on the obelisk) as a case in point.Good job uncovering the suppressed Fritz letters, though!
I mean, I can see why Preuss, who thought that it was a good thing the 19th century populace at large wasn't capable of reading French anymore and thus could not read their King's less than 19th century ethics conforming letters, left them out. (No question of the Hohenzollerns of the day sanctioning these letters getting published, either.) How to annotate those letters as a 19th century historian? Even Richter of "he loved Fredersdorf as a father" fame in the 20th century would be stumped, surely.
Pöllnitz giving Heinrich away when he sneaks off--deliberate, or inability to keep his mouth shut for five minutes?
Honestly, I couldn't say, plus, in addition to "wanting to carry favour with the King" and "inability to keep his mouth shut", there's the third option of "just lives for the inevitable drama". Either way, Heinrich doesn't appear to have had a long term grudge against Pöllnitz as a result. (And Heinrich was quite capable of long term grudges, ahem.) For example, it was his idea to take Pöllnitz along on the ill fated nostalgia trip to Wusterhausen so he could provide them with anecdotes about ye olde days. (If Pöllnitz still had an instinct for drama, he ended up quite satisfied there, too.)
Re: The Heinrich discussion thread
Date: 2020-04-29 08:25 am (UTC)Oh, right! I remember that now. Ha, as we pass 1.2 million words of discussion, we have to have the same conversations over again, because I forget. ;)
Yeah, she is stating a *lot* of speculation as fact in this paragraph.
How to annotate those letters as a 19th century historian? Even Richter of "he loved Fredersdorf as a father" fame in the 20th century would be stumped, surely.
I'm choking on my hysterical laughter as I try to imagine.
Either way, Heinrich doesn't appear to have had a long term grudge against Pöllnitz as a result.
*nod* That had occurred to me too, and specifically the Wusterhausen trip. Perhaps that's an argument for "can't keep his mouth shut" accidental revelation, where you just have to quietly sigh and remember that Pöllnitz's best trait--his garrulousness--is sometimes his worst trait
and lock him up after dinner.(If Pöllnitz still had an instinct for drama, he ended up quite satisfied there, too.)
That's putting it mildly!
Re: The Heinrich discussion thread
Date: 2020-04-29 09:24 am (UTC)I'm choking on my hysterical laughter as I try to imagine.
Preuss: ZOMG, Koser, help me out here. What to do?
Koser: Any chance Voltaire forged those letters?
Preuss: I'm afraid not.
Andrew Hamilton: Fellows, ease up. They're only incriminating Heinrich. There's nothing in it to gainsay our deeply held conviction of Frederick the utterly straight.
Preuss: While it's true no one hero worships Prince Heinrich anymore, and in fact I've made it clear that his critique of his noble brother is based on envy, there's no way our royal and now also imperial house is going to license printed proof of his gayness. He was a Hohenzollern.
Koser: Besides, I hate to say this, guys, but the King going on about Prince Heinrich drinking rivers of lust of his beloved and so forth does not look like his reproving his younger brother for such tendencies. I mean, just think of how with what deep moral sincerity King FW would have responded to the discovery of one of his sons in the arms of a page!
Hamilton: Well, he's mocking him. Frederick believing in education via taunting is consistent and was his type of tough love. Clearly, he hoped Henry would shape up and not drink rivers of lust. Well, not from Marwitz the page.
Preuss: Oh God, this reminds me. The Hohenzollern aren't the only ones I'd upset by including this in my edition. The Marwitz family will be on my case for all the Wilhelmine letters anyway.
Koser: Maybe.... maybe this was a literary project? The King and Heinrich collaborating on a novel? Roleplaying, like in the later case with Princes August Wilhelm and Heinrich about going to war with the Brits and Austrians? I mean, the King does say he's going to write a novel!
Preuss: Yes! This has potential. He wanted to write a satiric novel about the moral depravities of the French. Whom he hated, despite liking their language and literature, because at heart he was ful of German moral sincerity. After Küstrin, anyway.
Hamilton: Hate to say this, guys, but this theory is not going to sell outside of Germany. Best not print those letters at all. I certainly won't when describing Fritz the chill and infinitely patient with his insulted-for-no-reasons younger brother.
*nod* That had occurred to me too, and specifically the Wusterhausen trip. Perhaps that's an argument for "can't keep his mouth shut" accidental revelation, where you just have to quietly sigh and remember that Pöllnitz's best trait--his garrulousness--is sometimes his worst trait
and lock him up after dinner.Having just looked it up, Heinrich even mentions Pöllnitz visiting him in the early 1750s when he's rented a residence in Potsdam after having been given permission by Fritz post marriage agreement. So if he was socializing with Pöllnitz only a year or two after being ratted out, he definitely did not think Pöllnitz had been acting maliciously.
Re: The Heinrich discussion thread
Date: 2020-04-29 12:30 pm (UTC)This one I did think of! If you're willing to toss Heinrich to the wolves and write Lehndorff off as an unreliable source, you can get a mocking, homophobic, extremely het Fritz out of this, if you put on your 19th century glasses.
I mean, just think of how with what deep moral sincerity King FW would have responded to the discovery of one of his sons in the arms of a page!
Koser: And as we all know, that never happened
on January 21! I myself state that FW was afraid of Fritz trying to escape...out his probably second-floor-or-higher window, at night, in winter, in the snow.Koser: Maybe.... maybe this was a literary project? The King and Heinrich collaborating on a novel? Roleplaying, like in the later case with Princes August Wilhelm and Heinrich about going to war with the Brits and Austrians? I mean, the King does say he's going to write a novel!
This one I did *not* think of, and it's brilliant! It's not going to sell outside of Germany, but it's brilliant! Just the sort of comparative text historiography you'd expect of Koser. ;)
So if he was socializing with Pöllnitz only a year or two after being ratted out, he definitely did not think Pöllnitz had been acting maliciously.
Yeah, makes sense. It's possible Pöllnitz didn't even know Heinrich wasn't supposed to be there (because Heinrich wouldn't confide this to the most talkative man in Berlin)? And he came back mentioning that he'd seen Heinrich, and Fritz was all, "You saw him *where*? Uh huh, yeah. I can see I'll be having a word with my other self."
Re: The Heinrich discussion thread
Date: 2020-05-01 03:32 am (UTC)Hamilton: Well, he's mocking him. Frederick believing in education via taunting is consistent and was his type of tough love. Clearly, he hoped Henry would shape up and not drink rivers of lust. Well, not from Marwitz the page.
HEE.