Frederick the Great discussion post 15

[cahn]

...I have nothing clever to say here, just really pleased this is still going :)
rheinsberg

Comments

Heinrich readthrough!

[cahn]

As of right now I'm behind mildred, because, well, I am terrible at taking notes at things I want to talk about in the Heinrich bio because there's a significant delay between my reading something and getting to the computer, but I stopped short at this line about Kalckreuch (sp? I copied and pasted but I'm sure selenak had spelled it differently) and wasn't able to read any farther until I got to a computer.

"The expression 'dearest' [allerliebst] seems somewhat strange, because the young guard officer was a tall guy of over 1.80m."

HAHAHAHA ...I can name one person to whom it wouldn't sound strange at all! even if he wanted it to (I know it's probably a translation artifact, but I just laughed so hard at "tall guy")

Also, am I reading the bit with Ferdinand and Heinrich right when I parse it to mean that Ferdinand is all "hey, bro, your wife invited me to stay with her, is that OK with you? I mean, of course nothing would happen but you know she's smoking hot" and Heinrich goes "why are you even asking?? of course, anything that's mine is yours, bro!" because all of this is making me feel EVEN WORSE about what eventually happened to Mina :P

/gets on with reading

ETA: Heinrich to Ferdinand on his marriage: "I wish you to remain as constant in your present feelings as I am in mine, only with the opposite sign..." I am facepalming here and I don't even know whom I'm facepalming. I mean, Heinrich of course, though I can't really blame him for getting married given the circumstances. Fritz, I guess. GAH, poor Mina. I bet he would have gotten along with her splendidly, too, if they hadn't been married.

Re: Heinrich readthrough!

[selenak]

Re: Kalckreuth, actually Lehndorff originally confused me by first calling him Kalkreuther and then Kalckreuth in his diaries, but wiki says Kalckreuth.

Re: the translation of that sentence - "allerliebst" is a slightly old fashioned term meaning lovely, cute, which neither then nor now is commonly used to describe tall men. :) Whereas "tall guy" or "tall fellow" is actually a correct translation.

The Ferdinand and Heinrich exchange: yes, you've read that right. And yes, in a kinder AU Mina, if she must marry a Hohenzollern, marries either AW or Ferdinand, either of whom would have worked as a husband (AW because he actually did fall in love with her, and Ferdinand because he was attracted and liked her, and while he eventually completely ended that friendship did so under the specific circumstances of a) having married someone else, b) AW dying and leaving the last will he did, and c) Heinrich taking his post 7 Years War PtSD and depression out on her. I think as a sister-in-law, Heinrich would have gotten along well with her. Or as a lady-in-waiting. In any role but that of his wife.

Ulrich Bräker: The Swiss Perspective

[selenak]

I was waiting for a new post to tell you both about Ulrich Bräker (wiki entry in English just linked). He was a Swiss goatherd, farmer's son and held a lot of other jobs in his life time. The reason why I came upon him is that he provided one of the very very few written testimonies we have of the 7 Years War from a simple soldier's pov - and one who used his first battle to desert. Ulrich (nicknamed Ulli) had been "recruited" by one of those shady Prussian recruiters roaming through not just the Prussian countries. This guy had hired him under wrong pretenses - he said he wanted a servant, and talked a sweet talk of getting around, seeing the world. He also thew money around, paid for new clothing, invited Ulli to share his meals, so our young bedazzled goatherd said yes and ignored everyone telling him THIS IS A PRUSSIAN RECRUITER YOU IDIOT. Even when the man did recruit three more men for the army (but told Ulli that no, you are a different case, you are my dear new servant whom I shall never let go and we'll be always together). (Older Ulrich: Yes, I was that stupid.)

Once they arrive in Berlin (cue short description of Frederician Berlin from a Swiss peasant's pov), of course it's army time for poor Ulli, who when he protests is told, nope, you took the money, ate the food, you're ours by law. (Young Ulli for a hot minute wonders whether he could throw himself at the King's mercy, because surely the great hero of the Protestant faith would never, ever, sanction such practices.) After a brutal fast track military education (which also demonstrates why running away right then would get you captured, especially if you're Swiss, with that very distinct accent in the midst of Brandenburg), it's off to invade Saxony, and we get to the big set piece of the book, the battle description. (It was among the Jessen collection of Fritz and MT in eye witness accounts, which is how I found out about Bräker.) After the battle, there was so much smoke and dead bodies that Ulli realised this was his one chance and he ran. He wasn't the only one. (Despite the Prussians having won the battle.) He made it to the Austrian army, and from there back to Switzerland.

Now, his memoirs aren't the only thing he wrote, as you'll see in his wiki entry. He also, since he later became an autodidact hungry for books, read all 36 of Shakespeare's plays as they became available in German (must have been the Wieland translation, as it's too early for Schlegel/Tieck), and wrote and published a commentary on all 36. Which is charming and fascinating from a scholary pov since people from Ulli's background really did not write Shakespeare commentary in the 18th century. His reactions are unfiltered by any other scholarship, and he hasn't seen the plays on stage, either. He's just read them, and responds to that. Sometimes like current day high school kids (loves Mercutio and the nurse, finds Romeo and Juliet annoying), sometimes in a stark reminder he is of his time (Merchant of Venice: he shudders at Shylock's cruelty, has zilch empathy for him and thinks only a Jew can come up with something like a pound of flesh)... and then there's his take on the Histories, which is why I bring this Shakespeare stuff up. He reads them not in the order they were written but in the order they take place, meaning Richard II - Henry IV, Part 1 and II - Henry V - Henry VI, Parts 1,2,3 - Richard III. Not surprisingly, he loves Falstaff and his gang, and also Hotspur and his wife, while taking against Prince Hal, not just for banishing Falstaff but for having deceived his friends before that. Who even does that? And he doesn't l ike the entire play "Henry V"; this is the first time he's a bit distrustful against Will S. for how he presents history. Were the French really this boastful and incompetent? The English so glorious? Hmmm. And he just doesn't believe Hal has really turned over a new leaf and is this glorious praised militarily succesful king now, and what even is this wooing scene with the French Princess at the end, that's more fake posing from the fake poser Hal that is. Then Ulli reads on with the Wars of the Roses and is increasingly horrified by the country's rulers getting worse and worse and worse (until Richard III outevils everyone else), which makes him posthumously revise his opinion on Hal/Henry V, who looks ever so much better in retrospect. And that's when it hits our Swiss Shakespeare commenter writing in 1780: Hal is Fritz! Fritz is Hal! While yours truly goes.... zomg. He's actually not completely wrong there....

Re: Ulrich Bräker: The Swiss Perspective

[mildred_of_midgard]

THIS IS A PRUSSIAN RECRUITER YOU IDIOT. Even when the man did recruit three more men for the army (but told Ulli that no, you are a different case, you are my dear new servant whom I shall never let go and we'll be always together). (Older Ulrich: Yes, I was that stupid.)

*facepalm* Poor guy.

Prussian recruiting practices, cahn, were some combination of violent and deceitful where enticement didn't work. It did work sometimes! Between the charismatic Protestant hero thing, and the fact that he could actually feed and pay his army consistently, Fritz got volunteers and sometimes even deserters from the enemy. But not enough to keep up numbers. So then we get ruthless recruiting. A lot of people were enlisted by being told that they were going to be officers, and when they showed up, were pressed as simple soldiers, aka cannon fodder. "Too late, you're here!"

The longer the Seven Years' War went on, the worse the manpower shortages, and the more desperate Fritz got.

Fritz: We won the battle! Casualties were as high or higher than the enemy's, plus all those desertions, and I practically need a new army now, but we won!
Heinrich: OMFG YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG
Fritz: But, see, if I make it look easy, no one will be impressed. It's only by going to the brink of defeat and suicide several times during this totally avoidable war that I brought on us, that I will be a celebrity in Europe afterwards for avoiding annihilation by the skin of my teeth. People will come from all over to visit me. Even Napoleon will be impressed and collect souvenirs after my death!
Heinrich: Okay, well, sounds like a risky strategy, but let me know if you need me to be regent for our nephew or anything, after you commit suicide. soon?please?
Fritz: Will do! Meanwhile, recruiters, go find me some more cannon fodder. Whatever it takes. I've got some Polish coin dies to work on here so I can pay them.

[ETA: Just to be clear, Fritz was not consciously trying to do things the hard way in order to make them look impressive any more than he was hoping for souvenir collecting by not-yet-born Napoleon. Or admitting that his diplomacy got them into a tight spot in the Seven Years' War. But 1) he was by his own admission after fame and glory when deciding to conquer Silesia, 2) he insisted on doing things a certain way, even when the cost was high and people like Heinrich were WTFing at him. And in hindsight, the extreme difficulties he had, of which many were of his own making, holding onto Silesia, contributed to how impressed people were with him when he finally succeeded.

He was capable of learning important lessons, like "not gratuitously pissing off Russian leadership," but some of them he had to learn the hard way.

TL;DR: Oh, Fritz.]

(Young Ulli for a hot minute wonders whether he could throw himself at the King's mercy, because surely the great hero of the Protestant faith would never, ever, sanction such practices.)

Austrian Trenck: You totally could! Enlightened bastard Fritz always respects law, as we know, especially international law.

...You know, Fritz is really the ultimate in teflon monarchs.

And that's when it hits our Swiss Shakespeare commenter writing in 1780: Hal is Fritz! Fritz is Hal! While yours truly goes.... zomg. He's actually not completely wrong there....

He's not! I have to say, back when I thought I was going to write a Fritz & Wilhelmine Yuletide fic for cahn (sorreeee), I went looking for a Shakespeare play, so Fritz could say, "Really?" and Wilhelmine could say, "Mom says I have to be on top of this for my upcoming marriage!" And when I decided on Henry V, I was like, "AAAHHH! I need to figure out how to underscore the Fritz/Hal parallels when it's 1729 and they haven't happened yet!"

And then that fic died the death of sleep deprivation and isn't on my WIP list anymore. But. The important thing is that I think Swiss peasant is onto something!

A Marwitz question for the Rheinsberg salon

[iberiandoctor]

Hey, I have a question for the Rheinsberg salon!

Someone cited to me this example of honourable soldierly behaviour: this Marwitz, who apparently refused to sack castles dishonourably for Fritz and Henri. On his tombstone, this is engraved: Chose disfavour where obedience did not bring honour.

How is he related to our beauteous, potentially veneral-diseased, page Marwitz? Did you guys already discuss this and I missed it?

Re: A Marwitz question for the Rheinsberg salon

[mildred_of_midgard]

Good question! In fact, it's such an important topic to our gossipy sensationalist selves that we've discussed it at least three times. :D Most recently last week, but since we were on that occasion repeating a previous conversation precisely because I had forgotten about it in the several-month-long inundation of Fritzian information, missing it is quite understandable.

Short answer: no one knows. We've tried and tried to find out, but no luck.

Otherwise praiseworthy Heinrich biographer Ziebura asserts as fact that they're the same person, but selenak and I don't buy it, and we certainly don't agree it can be responsibly stated as fact. What is known of famous Marwitz's life contradicts what Lehndorff tells us about page Marwitz, assuming Lehndorff is reliable. (Actually, Lehndorff's 1907 editor also says they're the same person, but we still don't believe it. We think people just can't resist making the identification.)

Furthermore, Ziebura packs some other dicey claims into her same paragraph, namely:

- Marwitz was Heinrich's first love. Maybe! But, evidence?

- Marwitz couldn't have had gonorrhea or been cheating on Heinrich, because he had such a respectable military career later!

Me and selenak: You forgot about Seydlitz! Much more military prowess, famed general, honored by Heinrich on the same obelisk, total womanizer, died of advanced syphilis! The one (sexual morals) has nothing to do with the other (military performance and courage).

I should add that in that Marwitz fic selenak wrote you, she managed to write the entire thing without once giving him a first name (that isn't a pseudonym), precisely because we don't have a first name for him, nor do we know where he fits into the family tree. I thought that was clever. Also impressively scholarly for a fanfic. ;)

Two points on the castle-sacking:

- German wiki tells me that there's been a recent scholarly claim that this story is largely apocryphal. I haven't examined the documentary evidence and couldn't say one way or the other, just putting that out there.

- Either way, I don't think it would have been Heinrich ordering the sacking. Heinrich and Fritz were at odds as to how you treat civilians (well, and soldiers, too), with Heinrich way toning down the war crimes relative to Fritz. If I'm recalling correctly, Fritz once put someone else in charge of getting "contributions" out of the Saxon population, because Heinrich wasn't being ruthless enough.

Fun stuff

[selenak]

To balance the sibling dysfunction. Now, the Intoabar ficathon is collecting nominations for its spring round. Since one only needs to write 500 words, it did occur to me that maybe we could join and nominate Prussians to be encountered, but then again: a) better not, rl and all, and also, what I‘m really after is the three of us and any potential guests shooting off the breeze with an age of enlightenment version of this, just speculating, with or without drabbles. You know, like the scenario I suggested of Heinrich running into Barbarina and Schmeling-Mara during his second Paris visit at a Parisian café. Or something that definitely did not happen but would have been fun, or at least fireworks kind of fun, like Èmilie meeting Fritz while in disguise as Emilio. Or something mad like Voltaire, while he‘s hanging out at Philippsburg, finds this all very boring and in search of something to drink ends up running into...no, not Fritz but FW! (Talk about fireworks.)

Or: Peter, definitely in need of a drink in London, Fritz-less, Katte-news-hearing, runs into... Fritz of Wales. (Also in need of drink, what with the happy Hannover homelife.) Or Fritz of Wales and Lord Hervey. Or Lady Mary!

Feel free to come up with 18th century combinations that are way more AU, too...

Re: Fun stuff

[cahn]

Hmmmph, I feel like you've already written the ones I really wanted to see, lol. (Fritz & MT! MT & Wilhelmine!) I will think about it, although I feel like my history isn't strong enough.

Émilie should totally meet Fritz while in disguise as Emilio!

"You remind me of someone I know," the King mused, tilting his head. "A writer, a great writer, one of the great men of his age."

Émilie bit her tongue. What was he trying to say? "Are you trying to make me feel jealous?" A double-edged riposte, that was: the King had no way of knowing that it was he himself she felt jealous of, not of Voltaire.

"Not at all." The King beckoned her closer. "Have you written anything yourself?"

Émilie realized with a start that the King was interested in her -- well, in Emilio -- and was only barely able to restrain herself from laughing. "A few things," she said. "A few works on moral philosophy and scientific mathematics, if it please you."

The King raised his eyebrows. Émilie recognized the expression; Voltaire had the same one, poised between admiration and cynicism. Ah, Voltaire, she thought, you and he are more similar than you know. Except that Voltaire would not have looked at Emilio with exactly the same sort of hunger as did the King. "Would I have read any of them?"

Émilie had sent the King a copy of her monograph on fire, of course. Whether he had read it was another matter -- "Perhaps," she said honestly.

Three Siblings: The Koser Variation

[selenak]

Okay, here's Koser, about Wilhelmine, Fritz and Heinrich in late 1757/ early 1758. Prepare yourself for full biographe romancee emo style:

Truly, a brave woman, this fragile princess with the suffering expression in the infinitely compelling face, so much esprit in her large eyes and the small hint at mockery around her delicate mouth. Sick, upset, sensitive, prone to exaggarete in love and hate, receptive for all touching and elevating impressions as well as for hostile and ugly impulses, she is now swept away by the passionate vibrations which Friedrich's innermost being exudes, as if in ecstasy. She, who could look back on her entire life as if it had been uninterrupted martyrdom knew what suffering was, and all the torments inflicted on her brother, she shared in her soul and almost in her body. If she had compensated herself for the slights suffered in her parents' house by the grotesquely distorted descriptions in her memoirs with a sick echo, if she had been enstranged for years with the bitter emotion of undeserved hurt and scorned devotion from this same brother and had pouted and slighted him, too, as a result, she now lived and wove only in one sensation: she indulged in the pride of her brother whose equal she felt to be, and who responded to her tender sisterly love with touching gratitude. Who could read the correspondance between the siblings without being touched? The sister became to the mature man in his hardest trial again what she had been once to the embittered, stubborn and yet so needful of love boy, who'd been half flighty, half malancholic. We believe his often repeated assurances that he gained strength from this unique - "einzige" - , incomparable sister.

In another way, Prince Heinrich had become his confidant now. In nearly daily interaction the younger brother had since the day of Kolin been the witness to all the tempests which the endless burden caused in the King's breast. Not a silent witness: the Prince didn't easily keep back his own judgment, his difference of opinion; he only kept hidden his anger which the harsh fate of August Wilhelm, connected to him through warm friendship, had given new nourishment to. Heinrich was made of coarser and more linear stuff than Friedrich and Wilhelmine, without their trait of sensitivity and excentricity, calm, cold, sober, always contemplative and cautious, walled off against all spontaneous impulses, not prone to any daring forwardness: both as a human being and as a general and politician. For the harsh political idealism which puts everything at risk and regards death as preferable to a dishonored life, he had as little understanding as Voltaire and used in these embarrassing conversations in which the King, crumbling his hat in his hands, stormed up and down in his room like a desperate man about the same reasons as the Frenchman did in his letters full of worldly wisdom.


What I find most fascinating here: Koser had read everything under the sun available about these people within his life time. Granted, this excluded Lehndorff's diaries, but presumably he went directly to the state archives for the letters rather than relying on Preuss' editions, which means he must have read Heinrich's, err, less than calm utterances to Ferdinand on the subject of their surviving brother. And of course he must have known about the boyfriends, even if he'd have called them "favourites". So where does this image of Heinrich the super chill come from? (It's also the utter opposite of Hamilton's Heinrich the eternally raging for no reason drama queen.) Not to mention that while I think both Heinrich's and Voltaire's relationships with Fritz were partly formed by their similarities with him, the men themselves I don't see as much resembling each other.

(Voltaire: I dare say. No female Kalckreuths, Kaphengsts and Maras in my life.)
(Orieux: *cough* Madame Denis *cough*)

Lastly: Koser does ship Fritz/Wilhelmine, y/y? Even if she was "sulking" during the enstrangement years.

Re: Three Siblings: The Koser Variation

[mildred_of_midgard]

I'm with you: I'm at a bit of a loss here. When you said "coarser," I thought that meant "earthier, more passionate," not "dead inside."

Yeah, I don't know where he's getting this.

Lastly: Koser does ship Fritz/Wilhelmine, y/y?

This is the only part that's easy for me to answer: yes. Yes, he does!

Henckel vs Kalckreuth: It's Glasow Time!

[mildred_of_midgard]

Moving this thread to top-level, since it's starting to get crammed on the right side of my screen.

Some mitigation, huh? Well, I don't think he'd write this about a wannabe assassin

That is a good point that didn't occur to me. Hmm.

Kalckreuth writing, err, dictating years after the fact when most people involved are dead and with the benefit of knowing in hindsight how they developed later, while Henckel is reporting (like Lehndorff in Berlin) white hot sensational gossip.

Yes, with the caveat that writing years after the fact, so far in this fandom, has resulted in some seriously inaccurate data.

Otoh, I still have trouble believing that a) Fritz gave him all of Fredersdorf's jobs

I don't believe it for a minute. Especially that treasurer bit.

or b) that he should have dismissed Fredersdorf in favour of Glasow.

I don't buy that either. As you point out, and as we've pointed out before, Fredersdorf has been chronically ill for years, and he stepped down only about 9 months before he died. I'm with you that people decided that Fredersdorf's stepping down must be a result of Glasow, because of the timing. And like you said, Glasow would have enemies, and that would probably contribute to gossip that he was so powerful and malicious that he drove Fredersdorf away.

At least he didn't drive him to suicide? ;) We still don't know how much the handsome hussar story got exaggerated by people jealous of Fredersdorf.

Still not see him handing over the entire treasury to a 20 years old newbie. I mean, this is King Fritz, not Crown Prince Fritz.

Uh, no. Pics docs or it didn't happen. Also, even Crown Prince/brand-new King Fritz handed the treasury to a guy who was 31 and had been with him for 8 years. I stand by my headcanon that Fritz did a lot of training Fredersdorf to do things exactly the way he, Fritz, would have done them, and that's part of why he was trusted so much.

he thinks this famous high ranking woman is after his shapely ass as well when she does try to sound him out re: Fritz intentions

LOLOL

The only reason why he shouldn't have wanted such a sweet deal to continue is if he was afraid that being physically close to a King risking his life all the time could mean he'd die in battle as well.

Really? Fritz as your dream boss? There are many people who start out thinking working for Fritz is going to be a sweet deal and then it...isn't. Algarotti! I think it was Preuss who said that Fritz had a habit of hitting his valets (not Fredersdorf, I assume) and other servants when he was in a bad mood. Even if not, he is not nearly chill enough for this to be a slam-dunk as a "sweet deal" two or three years into the gig. Especially if you consider:

- gossip notwithstanding, Glasow *doesn't* have Fredersdorf's status, and isn't likely to get it any time soon,
- he started out with a boss in peacetime and ended up with wartime Fritz.

Now, I'm not sure it was the life-risking that's the problem here. Wasn't he supposed to have been in the army when Fritz picked him up? Or was that an unreliable source? But, anyway, wartime Fritz is notoriously in a bad mood, and the people around him take the brunt of it. Some people are exceptions, some people manage just fine, some people consider the price worth the benefits, some people flee, some people decide working for him is the ABSOLUTE WORST.

I would get the hell out of that job if I had the opportunity, and if I were bitter enough, I might decide to bring him down while I was at it.

As to what the occupied Saxons had to offer: I mean, it depends on what Glasow's been bribed to do. If nothing else, they could offer to be more chill. (That wouldn't be hard.) But if Glasow *is* going to do something that's going to harm the Prussian war effort, they could offer to be extremely grateful when they're *not* occupied.

Idk, I can see why you might love Fritz until your dying breath, and also why you might wake up every morning wanting to kill him, or at least get the hell out, depending on your relationship with him.

if the King hadn't in grateful memory of what Glasow had done for him had preferred mercy before justice.

Your father would be so disappointed, Fritz. :P Fiat justitia et pereat mundus!

I went and checked out the relevant Preuss volume in our library, and it looks like it says 22 years to me. But I'm going to snapshot it for you, since I can mostly handle the German, and I can handle the font now, but wow the text-background contrast is killing me.

Re: Henckel vs Kalckreuth: It's Glasow Time!

[selenak]

You're right, it's definitely 22, not 20. Also, it's eerie to read this petition for mercy letter from a father to Fritz. Whether Glasow was the tyrant of the household or a nice guy who couldn't hurt a fly, I'm glad Fritz didn't order him executed.

Also, even Crown Prince/brand-new King Fritz handed the treasury to a guy who was 31 and had been with him for 8 years. I stand by my headcanon that Fritz did a lot of training Fredersdorf to do things exactly the way he, Fritz, would have done them, and that's part of why he was trusted so much.

Makes sense to me. And note that in Volz "Fritz as seen by his contemporaries" collection, Bielfeld is quoted being very impressed by and complimentary about Fredersdorf in the Rheinsberg era already. So I'm assuming that Fredersdorf already did plenty of organizing and assuming responsibilities at this point, furthering and justifying Fritz' trust in him. All we know that Glasow did was go with Fritz to the Netherlands and back without causing an international incident.

Otoh, very good point that Glasow signed up for peace time Fritz and ended up with war time Fritz, and that Fritz did hit his servants at times. (Büsching says so, too, though in fairness that's Fritz in the 70s and 80s.) (BTW, I did wonder whether Glasow might also have been assuming Fritz would lose and thus working for the enemy could be a smart life investment, but if he was arrested during the Easter Holidays of 1757, that's pre-Kolin, and at that point Prussians still seem to have thought Fritz was invincible.) Despite ostensibly being in a much envied position, he could have been collecting resentments. Especially if he thought he would become the next Fredersdorf and started to realise this was not in the cards (especially not in war time).

In any event, that his own resentful servant turned out to be his doom - whether he confessed or framed him - could indicate Glasow himself had gotten high-handed. (Or bad at hiring people.) I'd like to know what the mitigating circumstances were, other than him being young, if there were any...

Marwitz Uncovered!

[selenak]

The Henckel v. Donnersmarck diaries: so worth it. I actually found the first non-Lehndorff, non-Fritz letters from 1746 REFERENCE TO MARWITZ THE PAGE! And what's more, apologies to Ms. Ziebura, because yes, indeed, MARWITZ THE PAGE IS MARWITZ THE OBELISK QUARTERMASTER.

Notes Henckel on page 220, June 5th 1757: "On the 5th, the King sent his Quartermaster-Lieutenant and AD, Hauptmann Marwitz, with two Saxon Regiments to Colonel Meier who was camping outside of Nuremberg in order to help him. However, the rumor spread that not this but to go to the Duke of Bevern had been his true mission. This Marwitz had played several roles in his life. He'd started as a page of the King and had sometimes been in favour, sometimes in disgrace. The King had lowered himself to teach him himself, had given him his own books and works to use, and had even comissioned him to write his history. (German phrasing doesn't make it heare whether "his history" means the King's history or Marwitz' history. Anyway. Henckel of course still doesn't give us a freaking first name. And note that as opposed to Lehndorff, he seems not to be informed about the history Marwitz has with Heinrich. (Which probably says something about the different types of relationships Heinrich has with Lehndorff and Henckel respectively.) But still: Marwitz!

Re: Marwitz Uncovered!

[mildred_of_midgard]

ZOMG! Breaking news! (I love how our 300-yo fandom has breaking news.)

Apologies to Ziebura, then!

I can't believe we still don't know which Marwitz is on the obelisk, though. Heinrich! You can't commemorate someone without a first name!

Looking through our old chats, we seem to have sources differing on whether quartermaster Marwitz on the obelisk is said to be 36 when he died in 1759, or born in 1724. If late 1724, then he could be 21 in March 1746, which I guess is not be too old to still be a page.

Anyway, good find!! Good thing you decided to do a deeper dive into Heinrich and the Seven Years' War. :D

A bunch of Scotsmen at King Frederick's Court: Dissing and Dancing

[selenak]

No big reveals, but amusing trivia which I found via my guy Boswell's Grand Tour. Here's a quote from Mitchell the envoy about Henri de Catt which didn't make it among the Bisset-edited volume, from a February 15, 1765 letter by Mitchell to Alexander Burnett, and where he describes the quondam Bambi and royal reader as: "the silliest, vainest, emptyest, fellow I ever was acquainted with".

Ouch. Now granted, Mitchell - which is one reason why I trust he's not hindsight-editing himself - is capable of changing his opinion on people, see his opinion of Heinrich doing a 180 Degree during the war, while he sees Fritz more critically (though still considers him a hero). But by 1765, he's known Henri de Catt for seven years, and those were the years where Catt is young and at his best.

Alexander Burnett (yet another Scot), whom Mitchell writes this diss to, was his secretary who after Mitchell's death in the 1770s became the de facto envoy for two years until being replaced and returning to Britain, so of course Burnett must have known Catt as well. Burnett had his own opinions on another young man, to wit, Boswell, hoping to meet Fritz. Writes Burnett to Mitchell: "He [Boswell] teases me to get him presented to [the King of Prussia] but I find he makes such absurd Distinctions between Englishmen and Scotchmen ... that I am certain something very ridiculous would happen on that Occasion. He has told me he must be presented as a Scotchman"

(Look here, Burnett, if you got constantly made fun of for your Scottishness by Dr. Samuel Johnson, you'd wave the Scottish Pride flag, too.)

Boswell, who'd studied law in Utrecht for a while, also had heard about de Catt from a mutual aquaitance, the Dutch female writer Belle de Zuylen, whose father wrote him a rec letter to de Catt once Boswell went on the Grand Tour and hoped to meet Fritz in 1764. When he presented his letter, he noted down in his journal that he found Catt "dry and even insipid", but it has to be said Catt was honest to him: he promised he'd mention young Boswell to Fritz but warned him he could not guarantee an audience by any means and that it was unlikely.

As it turned out, though, Boswell had another potential in, by which I don't mean his father's buddy Andrew Mitchell whose secretary advised against it. For lo, Boswell was third cousins with none other than George Keith, Lord Marischal. And the surviving Keith brother actually decided to take young Boswell under his wing. This did not result in a Fritz introduction, but Boswell was presented to EC (at Monbijou on July 15th, 1764), and Keith travelled with Boswell to Braunschweig/Brunswick as a consolation prize. That's how Boswell got to meet Fritz' sister Charlotte and danced with her daughter Elisabeth (future first wife of future FW2, or, as Lehndorff would put it, future MESSALINA!) at the court of Brunswick on August 13, 1764. Following his last night in Brunswick, August 21, he wrote that "I must not forget to mark that I fell in love with the beauteous Princess Elizabeth. I talked of carrying her off from the Prince of Prussia, and so occasioning a second Trojan War."

Boswell, considering how her marriage went, you'd have done her a favour, but it definitely would have embarrassed your third degree Cousin Keith, so best not.

When Boswell headed towards the south and left the German Courts behind, he said adieu to George Keith, Lord Marischal, and wrote in his journal, "[h]e took down from his bookcase the history of Robert the Bruce in old verse, and made me a present of it, writing upon it, "Scotus Scoto," and saying, "Now you must read this once every year." I had almost cried before the good old man. We dined with his Lordship."

Scotland forever, indeed.

Re: A bunch of Scotsmen at King Frederick's Court: Dissing and Dancing

[mildred_of_midgard]

LOL at Catt. He does not seem to have been popular! One of the things I want to read, if I get my French up to snuff, is the first volume of Thiébault's (actual) memoirs, partly for the Catt snark.

I find he makes such absurd Distinctions between Englishmen and Scotchmen

In context, this makes perfect sense. cahn, we've talked about how various Scots had varying degrees of attachment to their Scottishness at a time when Scots were being severely side-eyed by the politically and socially dominant English.

Boswell, considering how her marriage went, you'd have done her a favour, but it definitely would have embarrassed your third degree Cousin Keith, so best not.

Hahaha. Wasn't Keith the one about whom the (apocryphal) anecdote was told that he reported to her that Fritz said that if she discreetly got an heir on some respectable Prussian from an old noble family, he would look the other way, to which Elizabeth said, "If it's my duty to fuck for His Majesty, how about you and me, right here, right now, Monsieur Keith?" and Keith ran away screaming?

the history of Robert the Bruce in old verse

I'm going to guess that's The Brus, a 14th-century Middle English poem on Bruce and James Douglas, of which I have only read selections to practice my Middle English, long ago in a galaxy far away (pre-2010 UCLA grad school), so don't ask me for more details than that. ;)

MORE EMOJI FIC

[mildred_of_midgard]

Courtesy of our emoji fic writer: in my comments.

Had to share! I laughed so hard I had a difficult time neither choking on nor spitting out what I was eating. :P

The other one

[selenak]

I mention this only so you don't have to look it up, too, but: idly braving tumblr, I saw someone actually posted a quote from a 1733 letter from Fritz to Grumbkow complaining about "Prince Henri"'s visit and calling him rowdy, expressing relief he's going. Excited to find even more canon on Rokoko adventures in babysitting, I looked up the letter in question in Trier, but wouldn't you know, it's cousin Heinrich von Schwedt whom Fritz complains about here, go figure. Seven years old Heinrich is still in Potsdam and uncomplained about. (For two or three more years, then he gets to be a bad character along with Ferdinand for raiding the larder and/or kicking under the table in Other Seckendorff's report about Junior to Vienna.)

(All the Heinrichs and Friedrichs and Wilhelms and various combinations thereof in this era are a trial for the enterprising fan. Even name like Ferdinand, which is a bit rarer, has two relevant bearers, both princes, so every time someone says or write "Prince Ferdinand" one has to check whether it's Youngest Hohenzollern or EC's brother.)

Re: The other one

[mildred_of_midgard]

Hahaha. Thanks for passing on your latest finding.

Per English Wikipedia: In 1733, King Frederick William I was so incensed with the disorder in Frederick Henry's regiment that he was jailed for several weeks. Frederick the Great held little respect for Frederick Henry's abilities and did not employ him.

Seems so!

As genealogist, I dug a little, and this guy, Friedrich Heinrich von Schwedt, the "mad" Margrave, was the brother of Friedrich Wilhelm von Schwedt, the "bad" Margrave, who married one of Fritz's sisters in 1734, Sophie, and whose escort Katte was part of in 1730.

Anyway, Asprey's claim to know it was Heinrich notwithstanding, we still don't know which brother Fritz was complaining to Suhm about in 1736!

every time someone says or write "Prince Ferdinand" one has to check whether it's Youngest Hohenzollern or EC's brother

Indeed.

A second Heinrich readthrough thread: Ch 10-11 and beyond

[cahn]

Now that (a) we're at ~50% and (b) the other thread has gotten hopelessly tangled for me :)

I finished Ch 10! Of course, while I was doing that mildred went and read Ch 11, but I think now that I've caught up (and got through the War of Bavarian Succession, omg) I will be able to keep up, possibly catching up a day after she posts how much she's read :)

Some totally random thoughts up to the beginning of Ch 11:

-I told mildred this on her post, but wow do I not understand the War of Bavarian Succession, and I'm looking forward to reading Blanning on it

-Gosh, I realize Ziebura likes Heinrich, but he really does come across as a very good and levelheaded negotiator/diplomat/strategist

-I found the part SO hilarious where Fritz was like "Heinrich, I will never forget the wonderful service you have done me until I die!" and then TWO PAGES LATER is all "...so what have you done for me lately?" Friiiiiiitz!

-I also found it hilarious that the Wusterhausen interlude was a much less big deal than I was expecting, because it is my favorite WTF Hohenzollern story

-At the start of Ch 11, I also found it hilarious where Ziebura was like "Ulrike didn't think Gustav's kid was actually Gustav's" without going into the way more sensationalistic gossip of why Ulrike didn't think it was Gustav's! I realize that this would have derailed the book which is not about Gustav, but I also think it is hands-down The Most WTF story I have heard in this fandom, which is saying a lot.

Re: A second Heinrich readthrough thread: Ch 10-11 and beyond

[selenak]

It is indeed. :) And we know from Lucchesini's and Lehndorff's respective diaries that at least the part of the gossip for Munck was named as the probable bio dad made it to Prussia. (If not the part where Munck was careful to get it in writing that the threesome had been a) Gustav's idea, and b) Gustav's order.)

Gosh, I realize Ziebura likes Heinrich, but he really does come across as a very good and levelheaded negotiator/diplomat/strategist

He does. We'll never know what kind of King he would have made, but I think it's clear why even less Heinrich friendly historians than Ziebura regarded him as the most gifted of Fritz' siblings, and the tragedy of his life that, to quote Mitchell about both brothers, "there cannot be two suns at the same firmament". Not in Rokoko Prussia anyway. Btw, it's in chapter 11 where Heinrich after his record one and a half year of sulking with the firstborn silence has to face the fact he's bored to tears without Fritzian correspondance.

Answering to Mildred's comments from above here as well:

Also, I'm reminded of Heinrich writing to his brother Ferd about how his wife bores him, and I'm like...only because you're married! EC would have bored Fritz regardless, but Heinrich is clearly in "you are a PTSD trigger and walking incarnation of my brother's power to mess up my life!" mode toward Mina.

True. Poor Mina. She never had a shot.

(Not) asking Mom for help:
Ooof, yeah. That's an excellent point. They so avoid doing it that it hadn't even occurred to me as an option.

Me neither, until my current occupation, when it suddenly struck me that anyone not a Hohenzollern and living today encountering these events for the first time might wonder "but his mother is still alive and he makes a big production out of honoring her, not his wife, as the first Lady of the Country, why don't his younger siblings ask her for help?"


* I meant to say a while back, that Heinrich obviously isn't worried about his mail to Ferdinand being read by spies. !!

Yup. They must have been using the most trusted messengers ever. Then again, pray recall that the Fritz/Wilhelmine correspondance from the 1730s does include several highly critical comments form both of them about Dad (and a bit about Mom) as well as blatant longing for Fritz to become King. And they weren't busted, either.

Speaking of Heinrich's mail, checking where you two were I saw that early chapter 11, in the era when Heinrich has his record silence to Fritz time, also includes the bit I hadn't mentioned to you two before of how Melchior Grimm (Catherine's go to literary agent, friend of Voltaire) wants to persuade him to let Catherine have his (Heinrich's) letters form Voltaire after Voltaire's death, and Heinrich says no because of all the Fritz trashing in them. Which is intriguing on various levels. Evidently Heinrich had no problem reading Voltaire trashing Fritz out loud (complete with commentary of his own) to his close friends in 1784, when the memoirs are published (and Heinrich and Fritz are talking/corresponding again), see Lehndorff's diary entry on this, and God knows he shocked contemporaries who in his middle and old age met him for the first time and went on about how wonderful his brother was by responding with a withering remark about Fritz often enough. But evidently handing over Fritz-trashing material from Voltaire to a foreign monarch like Catherine was a bridge too far. Or: could be that the letters also contained info on Heinrich himself he didn't want to spread to all and sunder. Either way, it's a shame those letters didn't survive.

Heinrich plans his trips like he plans his campaigns! Very, very cautiously and deviously. "I won't tell Fritz I want to go to St. Petersburg/Paris, I'll just go most of the way there, get an invitation from the monarch, and then ask for permission for what's juuuust short of being a fait accompli." It's what a former boss of mine calls the "foot in door" approach to negotiation: get what you want in small increments that the other person can agree to, instead of getting a flat no from asking for the whole thing up front. And I totally see why that works with Fritz.

Also, when young Heinrich asked for the whole thing up front way back when, he got flatly denied and told "first you're not talking to me for six months and now you want to go on the Grand Tour? Like hell!" The seven years war was such a formative experience for him on all kinds of levels.

Also, Heinrich is made of patience when it comes to political and military affairs, and Fritz only rarely has a concept of patience. Switch their birth order, and I suspect that distribution of patience inverts. The power differential makes a big difference, as does the fact that Fritz got targeted by the hardest abuse the youngest.

Undoubtedly. Mind you, I do wonder what difference FW living longer would have made. As Christian von Krockow put it, to Heinrich Fritz was "die Schicksalsfigur", not Dad. His entire disposition was formed by Fritz as the authority figure, not FW. Would he have been different if FW, who after all died when only in his early 50s, would have lived a decade longer, at which point the fact that Heinrich was another gay, arts-loving, drill-hating son would have become apparant, or would the existence of AW as mediator and the fact Heinrich wasn't the crown prince and thus not so important for the future (for all that FW knew) have avoided any big Dad/Heinrich clashes?

Huh. I wonder if Heinrich is outright stating that Fritz never did anything for the Kattes, or if he's merely employing a Katte (which one?! in which role?! enquiring minds want to know) and complaining about his own lack of reward, and Thiébault is conflating the two. The latter seems more likely, but it's possible Heinrich wasn't entirely fair to Fritz.

Anyway, I think we have our source for that claim now.

Most likely. I mean, I can see either way happening, or simply:

Thiébault: So, back in the day, when your brother became king, did he do anything for tragic dead Katte's family?
Heinrich: You mean, like avoiding to destroy them? Because that's what passes as reward with my brother.

Thiébault: ZOMG! Must note this down for posterity without enquiring further.

Mind you: Thiébault also confidently ships Trenck/Amalie (based on one encounter with Trenck in Paris as well as reading Trenck's memoirs, as far as anyone knows), and has a version of Katte's death in the original version of his memoirs as you've discovered that's at best based on Voltaire, so I wouldn't put it beyond him to have done what Henri de Catt did, i.e. beef up the level in which he interacted with the Prussian royals by using various written sources in a historical novel fashion by putting them into their mouths.

Der Vater Revisited - I

[selenak]

So, about two months ago when I saw a reference to Jochen Klepper's novel Der Vater having 900 pages, I was surprised because the edition I'd read had been only about 300, two thirds of which were centred on the father/son drama. Turns out the edition I'd read was indeed severly cut, probably because some post war publisher figured that the Fritz of it was why most readers were interested in FW.

Now, I've read the original 900 plus pages edition, which was also the first time I read it since my teenage years. Which means it's the first time I've read it since aquiring enough historical knowledge to judge how Klepper works with or around the facts. (With the caveat: what facts and research he had access to, writing in the 1930s in Nazi Germany as an harrassed Protestant theologian and writer with a Jewish wife and daughter who would end up committing suicide with them not rather than see them taken away to camps not too long after Der Vater became his success against the odds.)

Some impressions: the 900 plus pages version is still immensely readable if you like well written 1920s/1930s style historical novels, which I do (by which I mean the language and psychology is of that time as much as it's rokoko when directly quoting from documents), and I can see from this version, as I could not from the 300 pages one, why one of the interpretations of Klepper's FW is that he's supposed to be a counter image to Hitler and Franco, the good, morally responsible ruler (despite being also a tragic human being) who reforms his country out of bankruptcy and despite his military fetish keeps it of war. Klepper makes much of the lesson young FW draws from participating in the battle of Malplaquet in 1709, which was the bloodiest, most devasting European battle (as a part of the Spanish War of Succession - essentially, think old Louis XIV against the rest of Europe) of that century until the 7 Years War, which was on the one hand celebrating the anniversary with fellow veterans like Grumbkow and Seckendorff every year but on the other doing his best to ensure something like this does not happen again within his life time, at least not involving Prussian/Brandenburg armies.

Unsurprisingly, Klepper is good with FW's religious struggles throughout his life. If you do know more history, however, it's noticeable that he goes out of his way to mitigate the abusive streak (that wasn't just there in the case of Fritz). For example, the 900 pages version has actually a lot of Gundling (the severly cut version I recall from my teenage years does not at all) , but Gundling is an alcoholic already when FW hires him. They have a truth-to-power King Lear/Fool relationship of sorts in that Gundling's historical parables often illuminate what FW doesn't want to face about a given situation, but nobody is forcing Gundling to drink, he does that himself, the humiliating gestures come from other courtiers, not FW, and FW sending Dessauer to get Gundling back is a self flaggellating gesture, because he knows he needs to hear what Gundling has to say at times. Stuff like Wilhelmine's husband being forced to drink does not happen. Doris Ritter brings her fate on herself by fantasizing herself into a love story (when Fritz really just wants a place away from Dad where to practice music) and when her house is searched claiming to be the prince's beloved. And the big gruesome homecoming scene from late August 1730 largely follows Wilhelmine's memoirs but starts with a significant alteration. Where in the memoirs FW tells SD Fritz is dead at first, in Klepper's novel SD, panicked, cries as soon as she sees him "my son is dead!" and FW immediately replies "he's dead to me". This leaves Fritz and Katte - and Wilhelmine but in her case only in some regards, I 'll get to that - as the only people to whom the narration has FW be abusive and unjust, with Katte as the only true innocent. Interestingly, Klepper does not follow the "guilty as of Prussian law" rationale re: Katte's death. Instead, he has FW being in a complete Abrahamitic mind frame at this point, and Katte is the replacement sacrifice after him presenting the sacrifice of his son is rejected by God (via the tribunal declaring themselves not qualified to judge the Crown Prince).

SD is, as I recalled, the one character in this novel presented without any sympathies whatsoever. She's also depicted as the primary guilty party for making the Hohenzollern family life a battlefield and poisoning the relationship between FW and his two oldest children. Now, a lot of what Klepper uses for this characterisation is based on his source material, but he sharpens even that. For example, where Wilhelmine's memoirs have Leti abusing her without her mother noticing until Fritz' governess talks to SD about this, Klepper's novel has Leti doing this with SD's explicit permission so Wilhelmine gets into future Queen of England shape, and he also has FW noticing the bruises and ordering an investigation, and then Fritz' governess speaking up. Also, FW is depicted as devastated about the deaths of the first two sons, remaining with the corpse of dead baby No.2 for eons, contributing to all the big fatal build up of fatherly/royal expectations for son No.3, i.e. Fritz, while SD is seen as only ever regarding her children as means for her ambition. (It's not that Klepper is without source material for this - see Wilhelmine's bitter remark in that regard - it's that he does edit out anything that makes her look more human.) There are no derogatory FW remarks about daughters. He hits Wilhelmine once during the gruesome homecoming scene and the narrative says that he wishes he could put her in front of a war tribunal, too, but the narrative also makes clear that this is wounded bear FW lashing out for his children hating him, and makes much of FW's visit to Bayreuth (which was a success in rl too according to Wilhelmine's letters) years later where Wilhelmine realizes that if she just approaches him lovingly, he's grateful for the chance to be a loving father back.

(The novel is a bit paradoxical about Wilhelmine in other regards. On the one hand, we do get to see her and Fritz as close in their childhood and teenage years, finding solace in each other, and we're told by the narration itself that they love each other. On the other hand, not only are we told that when Fritz introduces Wilhelmine to EC as his most beloved sister that in reality he no longer feels love for her, but we're also told during the FW visit to Bayreuth with his father-daughter reconciliation that Wilhelmine has to realise that she never really loved her brother, either, only the coming king in him. And since her husband in this version has already started to cheat on her, destroying her illusion that she found love in her marriage, this leaves FW as the only person who does love her, which she was too long blind to see. The novel also earlier, ca. 1729, chides Wilhelmine along with SD for not seeing how heartbroken FW is by the increasingly hellish state of family affairs, states that any other woman other than his wife and oldest daughter looking at ill and heartbroken FW would feel sorry for him. Part of it might be good old gender essentialism; i.e. the female characters depicted with complete approval by the narrative are the ones like EC, or, in a more cultivated way, Caroline - who are completely devoted without expecting any reward - and going with Wilhelmine's "he stopped loving me through the 1730s" from the memoirs while writing the entire correspondance of, but you're still left with two different claims and depictions within the same novel about the same relationship, as if the author changed his mind mid-way.)

FW is faulted for all the work schedule he heaps on his child and teenage oldest son, but not as much as SD for using the afternoons which FW had designed to being "for Fritz" to heap even more work (read: courtly lessons) on him. Klepper puts the beginning of FW's verbal and physical abuse as late as he can and as the climax of a father/son enstrangement caused by a combination of misunderstandings, FW having zero idea of child psychology, SD poisoning the ground and FW having this idea of "the King in Prussia" an institution which both he and his son must serve, which is why he can relate to AW solely as a loving father (since AW isn't the crown prince) but not to Fritz even before things have gone so bad that it's a mutual hate-on. (This is yet another instance which I think shows Klepper's primary source material must have been Koser, because that's Koser's argument, too, for why FW despite being so different from his father honored F1's wishes and bowed to his decisions - F1 being the King.) Klepper does go for genuine father/son reconciliation but in steps through the 1730s, and only starting with the August 1731 meeting, during most of which Fritz fakes his reactions (for which he's not condemned, I should add, Fritz is depicted with much sympathy throughout), with him only realising at the end for the first time his father actually loves him; therefore, only the last hug is real. The EC marriage isn't meant as submission on FW's part but part of his policy to ally all the Protestant German principalities behind Prussia after becoming disillusioned with the Habsburgs. Part of why he takes to his daughter-in-law as a person afterwards isn't just that she's kind and modest, it is also because he can see she truly loves Fritz, just like he loved SD, without being loved back, and because she gets ridiculed as uncultivated by his wife and kids much as he knows he is behind his back. By the time FW dies father and son are truly reconciled. Considering SD has been depicted as the true villain and FW has just died a painful death, the author evidently felt there needed to be some narrative punishment, and so we're told that SD has been judged by her son and by history, for while Fritz will give her honors, he won't let her interfere in politics and has stopped loving her. The part about politics is true (there's a famous Fritz quote to that effect from his late Crown Prince years, I think), but there's absolutely no evidence that Fritz stopped loving his mother, and on the contrary much evidence to prove he (and the other boys) did. (See our discussion about this.) (Klepper is on somewhat firmer ground with having the daughters see through her as they get older.) There's also zilch evidence that SD as much as tried to influence Fritz politically post 1740 and was foiled. But like I said: she's the primary villain of this novel, so the narration has to offer some catharsis.

Re: Der Vater Revisited - I

[cahn]

I forgot to say -- and I suppose I should put it in this comment reply since it's really talked about in this comment -- it's too bad he couldn't have done the same novelization trick with SD that he does with FW. For SD you could even have used a lot more of her canonical self, the things she went through making them no good for each other even if they individually weren't such terrible people like they were in real life. Sigh.

Der Vater Revisited - II

[selenak]

Late in the novel, Klepper has sickbed-bound FW observe his younger children - that's where the little Heinrich as an ancient man in a child body and a human clockwork without passion passages come from - and what surprised me most is that the description of Amalie doesn't just contain the hilarious anecdote of her driving Ulrike bonkers with all the cembalo playing but almost literally the passage from Lehndorff's diary about her being sometimes an angel and sometimes a devil. Now, since I can't imagine Klepper having read Lehndorff's journal and still emerging with the opinion that Heinrich was an unemotional human clock work, I suspect this means that the Fritz biographies of the 20s and 30s incorporate some Lehndorff quotes (since the Amalie passage is from the original voliume published in 1907, that's entirely possible).

Going back to the early part of the novel: Klepper actually gives young FW and Caroline, future wife of G2, a tender and partly unspoken, only delicately confessed youthful romance, with Caroline talked out of marrying FW after his mother tells her that the Hohenzollerns need someone with a better dowry, and if she truly loves him, she should step back. (Young FW knows nothing of this.) The SD/FW marriage starts out as pure politics as per history, and Klepper has him fall in love with her as she starts to bear him children because she's now the mother of his kids and he falls in love with what she represents, his idea of being a "normal" father with loving children, not with who she actually is, with him for the first time realising his mental image of SD does not quite match the reality when he finds out about Wilhelmine being abused by Leti, but he's still able to write it off as aberration and misunderstanding until the mid 1720s. Throughout, there's a regretful note on the author's part that FW/Caroline was not to be, as they'd been a perfect match. Now I haven't read a biography of the woman, only Horowski's chapter, but I haven't seen there or elsewhere any indication she regretted not having married FW.

Johanna von Pannewitz does not exist in this novel. Ototh, we're told that young FW's issues with his mother (and the famous "a good princess but not a good Christian" quote about Sophie Charlotte) was because she ordered one of her ladies in waiting, a Pöllnitz (presumably related to the chatty male Pöllnitz), to seduce and deflower her teenage son, on the baroque princess rationale that then maybe he'd relax and stop with all the accounting, austerity and hardcore Christianity. Instead, young FW did have sex with female Pöllnitz but was horribly ashamed of himself thereafter and did not touch another woman again, including his beloved Caroline, until the wedding night with SD. I have no idea whether this is in any way based on history, but it could well be, given everyone involved and the mores of the time. (Louis XIV' mother and Charles II' mother had their sons deflowered by order, too, in similar ways.) That this backfired and contributed to FW's hangups about any sexuality also seems possible.

Because the 900 pages novel offers all the FW founding hospitals and schools, scenes like his chat with one of the forcibly recruited Potsdam Giants (which is directly identical with the version in Der Thronfolger) come across as quite differently. BTW, considering Klepper has the Doris Ritter relationship take place in Doris' imagination, makes it very clear that Fritz does not have sex with EC and does not offer any other female love interest - no Madame Wreech mention, and while the Countess Orzelska does show up in Dresden, she at no point talks to Fritz - his Fritz does come across as gay, but I didn't get the impression he thinks FW had any repressed homosexual urges, his thing for the Potsdam Giants is more in the linen of unhappy father/father of the country seeking replacement sons.

Overall: Klepper's FW is presented as tragic but essentially good, at in the end understood as such by his children, including the two oldest ones, with his painful death being written as both atonment (like I said, Katte's death isn't presented as necessary or justified by Prussian law, but strictly because FW has convinced himself he needs a replacement sacrifice for his oldest son to God, in which he's wrong) and martyrdom (FW dies as justified in the Lutherian sense). This is achieved by a lot of editing, hardly unusual for a historical novel, of course, but at least it is a novel, not a biography. Would I reccommend it to you? Not exactly, not with some much else to read, and not with the awareness of all that's getting edited out which makes this a whitewashing despite its acknowledgment of some FW misdeeds. But it was very interesting for me to (partly re)read after all those years.

Not in Klepper, but found in yesterday's Frankfurter Allgemeinene Zeitung, an article about an exhibition about the Great Elector in Oranienburg, which clears up a minor mystery, i.e. what Fritz was thinking of when EC asked him how AW's posthumously born son should be called, and Fritz wrote back "I guess Karl Emil will do". I knew later F1 had in fact been the third born son, with his two older brothers dying which he blamed his stepmother for. But I hadn't known that F1's oldest brother was, in fact, called Karl Emil. As the article points out: if this Karl Emil had survived, then instead of the Hohenzollern naming their kids with endless variations and combinations of Friedrich, Wilhelm and Heinrich, and most of the Prussian nobility following suit, Prussian history would be littered with Karls and Emils!

Re: Der Vater Revisited - II

[mildred_of_midgard]

Wow. That is quite some whitewashing. I can totally see where it makes a good novel although bad history (totally valid choice, imo!). Also, seriously, good for you for your identifications of most likely sources! Look how far we've come in this fandom. :D

That is also a super interesting take on Katte an Isaac figure.

Would I reccommend it to you? Not exactly, not with some much else to read

I was thinking, as I read your write-up, thank you for reading this so I don't have to! Seriously, it was well worth the read as a summary, but I'm not rushing to read the book. So thanks!

But I hadn't known that F1's oldest brother was, in fact, called Karl Emil.

I just want to point out that I totally found this guy when you asked and, in my capacity as royal detective and genealogist, linked to him, here's the proof. ;) I just couldn't figure out what made Fritz particularly interested in him as opposed to the other possible namesakes. But yeah, maybe he was getting overloaded by the number of Friedrichs, Wilhelms, Heinrichs, and Ludwigs in the family, and "Hans Hermann" would have been too obvious. :P

Well, there are other things I would like to comment on, just as there are at least a dozen accumulated comments by now that I haven't replied to at all, but...my computer time for the last two months has been severely limited by muscle pain. I've increasingly been spending my time here on fanfic, since there is nowhere else I can write (handwriting is right out due to other types of muscle pain), and occasional lengthy write-ups on pedagogy. With my plans to return to work asap, my limited computer time is going to get sucked up completely by work, which means I probably won't be able to comment much, if at all, except possibly on weekends. That also means fanfic is going to take a hit. :(

Fortunately, I can still study German and read on my phone, and my concentration is coming back (hence the plans to return to work), so in the event that I'm able to start leaving comments, whether on weekends or in some mythical future in which there is an actual solution to one or more of these muscle pain types, I hope to have a lot more to say!

But if you don't hear from me as much, and in fact haven't seen me reply to a bunch of comments lately, do know that I'm delightedly reading and thinking lots of things that I wish I could more easily share.

Also, I just want to say that I've been off work and basically suffering from some combination of pain, sleep deprivation, and medication side effects for a year now, and my interactions with you two have seriously SAVED my SANITY. And given me a fantastic education to boot! Honestly, at least two thirds of what I know in this fandom comes from a magnificent royal reader, one that Fritz could only dream of and Henri de Catt envy, who read and summarized all the works I couldn't read.

This is by far the best fandom experience I've ever had, it was tailor-made for me at this time in my life, and I hope to be able to keep it up at least in truncated form, and perhaps even resume full participation if I manage to find a solution to the pain in time, in which case I dream of coming back with "Let me tell you all the OTHER things I've found out since the last installment!" :D

But in the meantime, thank you both, so much.

Rheinsberg ghost story

[mildred_of_midgard]

Okay, I *really* can't reply to comments, having a sciatica flare-up, but had to share this, which mobster AU author just shared with me.

So, Rheinsberg ghosts: Fritz, Heinrich, or both? Heinrich's the one who died and is buried there, but Fritz is more likely to get up to mischief. Both would be interested in having musicians to entertain them after death. Or as mobster author put it, "FRITZ I KNOW YOU LOVE MUSIC BUT LET THOSE BOLIVIANS GO"

Discuss!

Re: Rheinsberg ghost story

[selenak]

LOL. I say both.

Heinrich: You have Sanssouci to haunt. Why are you here?

Fritz: First of all, I was here first. Secondly, I was merely intending a brief visit, and then this Corona Virus struck. I say it's another case of medical incompetence.

Heinrich: We. Are. Ghosts. Virus caused restrictions do not affect us.

Fritz: Yes, they do. Since the shutdown, Sanssouci has had no visitors. I was bored without any Canadian savages to annoy.

Heinrich: You mean Americans.

Fritz: Stop being so pedantic. Admit it, you were bored, too.

Heinrich: Not really. I have a couple of Bolivian musicians to entertain me.

Fritz: Because I trapped them here, with the valiant aide of Italian greyhound ghosts. Whom they promptly mistook for wolves, which tells you everything about today's state of education. But are you grateful for my aid? Fat chance. You never show any gratitude for all the things I keep doing for you…

[selenak]

Mes amies, since you‘ve now both read the Ziebura biography - I don‘t recall it mentioning what Heinrich‘s Thiébault-mentioned dislike of Henri de Catt was all about, or when it started. Now, Thiébault is speaking from the pov of someone who only met both partes after the 7 Years War and mostly associates them with their 1770s selves. So it might just be on general „I dislike people who are that fannish about my brother after having known him for years!“ principle. I used to think on general „yeah, that into my brother = indifference/dislike“ principle, but then I realised Heinrich actually is on record for liking a couple of Fritz devoted people of the literary persuasion - Darget, the Abbé Prades, and if you believe him Thiebault himself - and of the non literary type - see him befriending the initially so suspicious Andrew Mitchell (and paying for his bust in the Dortheenstädter Kirche after his death). So young Henri de Catt being starry-eyed about Fritz by itself is no reason for Heinrich to dislike him. (If, that is, he did already during the war and it didn‘t come to be afterwards.)

Possible reasons: at least somewhat based on canon:

- Andrew Mitchell‘s withering „the vainest, most silly“ etc. assessment of de Catt from the 1760s was also Heinrich‘s impression (but then: even discounting Catt‘s exaggarations, Fritz WAS fond of him, so I‘m assuming he was more likeable than that in general

- Heinrich met Henri de Catt in 1758, after AW‘s death. This is not the year where Heinrich is given to great tolerance of Fritz worship, and it may have just rubbed him incredibly the wrong way, while Catt, for his part, could have somewhat grandiosely but good naturedly, believing himself to the the King‘s sole true confidant, decided he just needed to tell Heinrich how much his brother really loved the family in general and AW in particular, could have gotten his head bitten off for his trouble and decided that yeah, no, this is one Hohenzollern whom I‘ll stay away from

- Catt, pre-empting his later tendency as a memoirs writer, hears Heinrich‘s childhood story about Dad‘s homecoming, and two weeks later Heinrich by accident overhears Catt telling someone else this very story - as something Fritz told him. Presto dislike.

Other/same ideas?

[cahn]

Since you told me about Mitchell, I had always figured that that's what everyone else (except, I guess, Fritz) thought about him too. (I also figured Heinrich liked Mitchell simply because I, personally, think both of them are awesome. Which of course means zilch about whether they would like each other, but I am glad to see my assumption is correct :D )

just needed to tell Heinrich how much his brother really loved the family in general and AW in particular

But... yeah, I really like this one, actually. I could imagine Heinrich forming an instant dislike just from that. And then realizing he was kind of vain and silly from there.

Thorsten Becker: Fritz

[selenak]

I mentioned this book already to you once last year for having a great premise but alas failing in the execution, mainly because the author wants to do too many things and can't decide what his main subject should be, so all those balls in the air are crashing down.

The premise: Instead of dying on the eve of his departure from the United States, old Heinrich Mann lives, returns to (East) Germany where the new GDR has invited him to become president of the new German Academy in Berlin, and in his letters to brother Thomas suggest an idea for the two most famous writing siblings we have in literature, who also in their younger years had the most famous sibling feud in literature, apropos WWI, about which I've posted in my Journal. Thomas was Fritz-obsessed for a long time, and Heinrich was hostile-fashion intrigued, but sees him in a milder light now, so why not write a Fritz novel together, with a premise modelled on Thomas Mann's "Lotte in Weimar" about Charlotte Kastner, the lady who was Goethe's main inspiration for Lotte in "The Sufferings of Young Werther" in their youth, visiting Weimar in their old age, to wit: Old Fritz visited by Katte. But not in a ghostly manner; instead, there's a theatre company playing a Crown Prince and Katte drama, and the actor playing Katte really does look exactly like him. (His grandmother turns out to have had an affair with Katte when Katte was studying in Halle.) Thereby bringing together two different eras in Fritz' life, confronting him with the past etc. Brother Tommy says yes oh yes, but when he sends his first few chapters, it's evident that actually he's worked in another angle as much as the Katte stuff, because old Fritz, upon meeting the young actor (named Gottlust), after the first sentimental hour (cue a witty afffectionate spoof of Thomas Mann's repressed homoeroticism writing style) gets the idea of a mind game and sends young Gotthold to his brother Heinrich at Rheinsberg. Cue musings of Fritz on brother Heinrich.

Heinrich Mann in his reply is all "Do you REALLY think it's a good idea for us to roleplay Fritz and Heinrich? Given our history? also, good lord, Tommy, all this "the genius brother and the almost genius brother" is less than subtle, but you know what, I've visited Rheinsberg and decided Heinrich is cool, and there's a reason the Nazis could never use him for their propaganda unlike your guy, so screw it, let's do it."

And so far I was a delighted reader, but that's just a fifth into the novel. And then it starts falling apart, because Thorsten Becker can't decide what this novel is, really: two historical novels packed in one (one about the Mann brothers and one about the Hohenzollern)? A novel about post Germany (both East and West) and the role of the writer in same? A literary parody of the Manns' writing styles? And then all the timelines get more and more absurd. The Fritz novel turns into a shaggy dog story getting nowhere (though it does contain the bit where Heinrich when Gotthold the actor provides him with the script for the Katte drama decides he wants to act out one scene in it where he gets to play, wait for it, Wilhelmine) and the Mann novel ends up with Heinrich Mann, niece Erika and the materialized into 1953 reality Gotthold participating in the big worker protest/rise in East Berlin which was brutally repressed and die there, and I'm just thinking, editor, editor, why didn't Becker's editor tell him to go back and decide on one novel and redraft the whole thing?

This review brought to you in case you ever come across the book googling and wonder what it's about.

Re: Thorsten Becker: Fritz

[cahn]

:( That is too bad, because it sounds like it could have been SUCH a great book. I mean, everything I know about the Mann brothers is what you've told me, but they sound fascinating and obviously Heinrich and Fritz are fascinating, duh, and I feel like what I want is something along the lines of Possession only with all these guys. (I mean, of course it would be quite different, but I mean in the way of integrating the two storylines.) Alas.

[selenak]

We actually have an anniversary of sorts today - FW died on May 31st, 1740, making Fritz King, through he had transfered the government to him a day earlier. So - um, congratulations to 280 years as der einzige König, I suppose? Given that arguably he would have been happier had he not become King (whether his subjects would have is a up to debate - better laws and no more torture plus European superpower status vs a lot of dead soldiers), I thought The Best of all Possible Worlds from Candide is a good congratulatory chorus.

[mildred_of_midgard]

You're right! Happy anniversary, Fritz? I agree that the question mark is very appropriate.

Hans Heinrich von Katte also died either yesterday or today, in 1741, depending on which source you believe.

better laws and no more torture plus European superpower status vs a lot of dead soldiers

So, not that I'm planning on addressing this *at all*, but since I have a fix-it fic that consists of Fritz not becoming king and being happier...what do you think AW would have gotten up to as king? And how would Heinrich the influential adviser affect that?

Peter Keith eulogy

[mildred_of_midgard]

Remember when Lehndorff said that the Academy of Sciences was going to put together some words in honor of Peter after his death? And then Kloosterhuis cited this eulogy in his Katte monograph, thus attesting to the fact that it was still extant? And I couldn't find it and really wanted it?

I FOUND IT!

It's a gold mine: it's 16 pages long, and it's based on Peter's own memoirs, "Anecdotes of my Life." Which, no, I don't know if those are still extant, but I'm guessing no. (Stupid 1945.) Or if so, they're probably unpublished and languishing in some archive somewhere.

But we have a 16-page summary based on his own words! And the summary was done by someone who knew him, in 1757, i.e. shortly after he died on December 27, 1756. This excites me like you have no idea. It's going to be *so* useful for my fix-it fic. Seriously, when I imagined finding this eulogy, I was hoping for 1-2 pages.

So, here we go:

We get his family history going back to Scotland in the 1600s. Which, as you know, as royal genealogist, I always appreciate. ;)

He got educated as best his father could afford. Just that phrasing confirms Wilhelmine's "intelligent, but uneducated." More on that later.

He became personal page to the King. Until January 1730, when he left that job to become a lieutenant in Wesel. No mention of getting sent away because he got caught having sex with Fritz on January 20/21. :P

Then some stuff happened and he had to leave the country. Literally, "An unforeseen event meant he spent only a few months in this post." They mention that you can read up on this elsewhere. Back to Peter, he had to flee the country. The eulogy testifies that he left on August 6, which absolutely confirms the that he did not leave because he got wind that the gig was up and FW was onto him, as most versions of the story go, including Wilhelmine's and Peter's son's. I mean, we already knew from documentary sources that his room was searched on the 7th, because he'd disappeared, but I'd been wanting extra confirmation he left on the 6th, not the 7th. I mean, I guess it's technically not desertion until you're missing at roll-call the next morning.

But then FW does catch on, and Holland isn't safe. Some fishermen smuggle him across the English Channel. No mention of Chesterfield.

The Queen of England is awesome to Peter and gives him protection and a pension of 200 pounds sterling (useful for my fic!) for the several years he's in British territory, and takes a great and personal interest in his welfare. (Lehndorff also says this about the Queen, albeit in less detail.)

But in London, he's still being harassed---remember, FW sends his guy there a description of Peter and a warrant for his arrest--so he decides to go farther away. To Dublin. Where apparently he attends the University of Trinity for three years! I knew he went to Ireland (and I think Lehndorff says Scotland as well), but I didn't know he spent the whole time studying. I assumed it was in the British army. I'm glad!

But I don't know if he was officially enrolled or not, because he apparently spent the entire time locked in his room and never saw anyone or anything, just read all the time. I mean, I hear you could do this in 18th century universities, but I'm not actually sure if he was enrolled or not. It doesn't really matter. He studied English, the Classics in English translation--because he regretted not getting to learn Latin when he was young, see also limited education--and "experimental philosophy." This is awesome, because my fix-it fic totally has him into the Classics (in translation, because no Latin), and science. He hangs out with Algarotti and crushes on him a bit in my fic. :D

Back to the eulogy. He was apparently very good at languages, and picked up English very fluently, according to his eulogy, indistinguishable from a native speaker.

But then all this never leaving his room and only reading books (ILU, Peter, and I totally see why Fritz loved you!), after his previous life of activity in the Prussian army, made him sick. So he returned to England, where the Queen sent him doctors, who told him to go to the baths at Bath and Bristol. Then he got better. Then he hung out in London for a while and became part of society, by which we mean men of leters.

Then it's 1737. The War of Jenkins' Ear (1739-1748) is brewing. The English are sending a fleet to help Portugal against Spain. Peter wants to go! So he joins the navy. And the admiral treats Peter like a son and instructs him in all the aspects of naval life. Which is nice, but then Peter decides he's not well suited to the navy. I mean, everything I've heard about the British Navy makes it sound as bad as the Prussian army, so, yeah.

Then they get to Portugal, and the climate is amazing, and Peter wants to stay. But there's the whole problem of religion. But the Queen of England clears that up, in that, Portugal isn't in a position to refuse a recommendation from her, so he gets to join the Portuguese army. Where he has lots of leisure time, and spends it studying Portuguese, Spanish, and Italian, using their similarities to each other, his smattering of Latin, and his natural gift for languages.

Now it's early 1740, and he's supposed to go to India. (!) But then FW dies. And the guy writing Peter's eulogy is like, "I need to quote Peter here, because his memoir is wonderful in two ways: it usefully tells us all about his life, and it reveals the feelings of a beautiful soul."

Writes Peter: "His presently reigning majesty was kind enough to remember me, and to call me back; I hastened to go and find a Master, to whom I was born, and whom my heart had chosen, as soon as it was able to feel."

And apparently Peter is totally happy on his return with his wonderful reception by Fritz! No mention of any disappointment. Now, you have to consider the genre here (this is an extremely positive portrayal of FW, Fritz, and Peter), but I suspect Peter's memoirs were also written with the benefit of hindsight and a 1750s reconciliation with Fritz. I think the evidence points toward him being disgruntled in the 1740s (with my theory about him and Fritz miscommunicating, because Fritz *did* show him some favor from the beginning), and Fritz and him warming up toward each other again starting around 1750.

He meets Maupertuis in Berlin at this time! And they become BFFs! And Maupertuis is instrumental in getting Peter his honorary membership in 1744 and his curatorship in 1747, after the death of the previous curator, M. de Borcke. (No, I don't know how he's related to all our other Borckes.)

The eulogy doesn't give me dates on the Tiergarten or Charlottenburg Palace administration positions, which I badly want (all I know, thanks to Lehndorff, is he had charge of the Tiergarten by Feb. 1754), *but*, it says he enjoyed the countryside and a retired life, which is why Fritz gave him these particular responsibilities. And he used to spend summers at Charlottenburg. Awww.

Oh, the eulogy writer has to quote Peter again, because he's so touched by his description of his family: "In the year 1742, I was married to Ariane-Louise, Baroness von Cnyphausen, oldest daughter of the late Minister of State of that name. Providence seemed to want to make up for the sufferings of my youth with his happy union. Our marriage was blessed by two sons, for whom the hopes they gave us, made life sweet for us. We have a middling income/lifestyle, and don't envy anyone anything."

Eulogy writer: "No praise I could heap on him would do him half as much justice as these words from his own pen. Making up for the sufferings of his youth, OMG, <333 forever."

No wonder Lehndorff admires Peter. I actually feel like I've seen the last sentence of this quote before, and I wonder if Lehndorff cites or paraphrases it.

So eulogy writer, who has a lot of overlap with Lehndorff, says Peter had a happy marriage with a wonderful wife who united many excellent qualities of mind and heart.

Now, toward the end of his life, Peter started to get sick, but not in a way that made you think his end was near. His main complaint was heaviness of his head.

He spent the summer of 1756 in Charlottenburg, and didn't return to Berlin until August. This confirms my suspicion that he did not go off with the Prussian army when the Seven Years' War started and Fritz invaded Saxony in August! I was also wondering if his health might have had something to do with that, but I was hoping he didn't suffer too much. Sounds like his health was bad, but not terrible, and he might have stayed behind partly because he had important civilian jobs, had done his time in the army, and there was no manpower shortage yet. Which is what I was hoping! For all the people who died in Fritz's wars, I was hoping Peter wasn't one.

Toward the middle of November, age 45, he had a stroke that paralyzed one arm, and then other parts of the body, made it hard for him to speak, and made him very weak. No treatment helped. To the best of his ability, he used his remaining strength to carry out his religious duties and say goodbye to his family. He died on the 27th of December.

He was above middle height (but middle height by FW's standards, remember :P), and his eyes were peculiar, but once you got used to it, it wasn't bothersome. Remember Lehndorff's "He was handsome, and his squint wasn't as noticeable as in most such cases." He was quiet and reserved, but open with his friends (I knew it! This is total fix-it fic characterization!), and was frank and cordial in his manners. Which, eulogy writer says, is *far* superior to an artificial courtliness. Remember Lehndorff saying Peter had picked up English manners, but was so gracious it wasn't offensive, and selenak telling us that this means the English were more frank and casual than the etiquette-conscious French and Prussian courtiers.

So, we were right! He dies in Berlin, of illness, and not at war. I'm sorry he spent a month paralyzed and weak first. That sucks. But mostly this eulogy fleshes out and confirms what we had known and guessed, and I'm unbelievably delighted I found it. I just need to make a few minor fic changes, and there are so many things I can add now. I would love to have Peter's complete memoirs, but okay, I'll be happy with what I have. One reason I think they may not be extant is that his son's account in 1820 of his father's life has more in common with Wilhelmine's (1810) memoirs than with this 1757 account based on Peter's own memoirs. So they may have been lost by 1820 already.

Also, I just want to say, I still adore Fritz's taste in serious boyfriends. <333 Oh, and my Google-fu strikes again. This wasn't easy to find, but once I was sufficiently determined, I made it happen.

Re: Peter Keith eulogy

[selenak]

WOW. That's an incredible find. You are still die einzige Detektivin.

Re: Peter's memoirs, I suspect they must have disappeared before 1945, because surely Koser, who unearthed even obscure Saxon war memoirs to prove Catt had plagiarized from them and put the passages in Fritz' mouth, would have used Peter's memoirs if they'd been available to him? And remember, Heinrich's war time memoirs disappeared pretty quickly, too, and Voltaire's memoirs weren't allowed to be sold in Prussia (then the rest of Germany, post unification) until after WWI. So my guess is FW3 or FW4 (depending when the disappearing happened, but good point about the son's tale from 1820 resembling Wilhelmine's account more, thus indicating he can't have read the memoirs) did not want anything that would make national hero Fritz look other than the image Prussia was selling of him in the 19th century. And if Peter wasn't as polite about FW as the eulogy writer, his memoirs might gotten disappeared for that reason, too.

Do we know who the eulogy writer was?

An unforeseen event meant he spent only a few months in this post.

Now that's euphemism heightened to an art. :)

Queen Caroline taking such a liking to Peter: good for Peter! Also confirms my suspicion that Klepper was off base when he imagined a youthful romance between her and young FW, and that my original take (based on Horowitz presentation of her) that young Caroline, having grown up at FW's mother's court and thus familiar with him, had zero intention of marrying him. And probably wasn't surprised that Tiny Terror FW grew up into The Ogre King FW.

Incidentally, if FW found out that Caroline was sponsoring Peter like this (including a stint to study in Ireland, which, yay!even if it was mostly a hermit life), he must have been extra pissed off about the English relations. Remember, him finding out Fritz had written that letter to Caroline about promising to marry only one of her daughters triggered the final abusive phase of 1730.

If Peter was bff with Maupertuis, we don't have to guess which side he took in the big Voltaire implosion.

I'm glad the eulogy writer quoted that sentence from Peter about his marriage, because it finally gives us the two first names his wife was using, in presumably the spelling she was using!

That's sad about the stroke and the partial paralysis, but good about the rest. So, even discounting some glossing over as is common in obituaries, it does sound as if Peter had a good life, and well did he deserve it, too. Fritz' taste in serious boyfriends is indeed superb, even if his taste in handsome hussars leaves something to be desired. :)

The unknown heroics of Seydlitz

[selenak]

Today I went through the letter preceding that September (11th, yes, really, 1758) encounter between Fritz and Heinrich (I just remembered the letters Fritz wrote afterwards, once to Heinrich and one to Amalie) which was the first one after AW's death, and what can I say but General Seydlitz is an even braver man than his battle record suggests, for verily, quoth Fritz:

First (September 10th):

I will have dinner tomorrow at your house in Dresden, if you will. I will only bring Seydlitz with me, and if you can safely leave the camp for two hours, please come to Dresden, but take such good measures at the same time, whether you are hour by hour informed of the slightest movements of enemies.

Same day, later, insisting:

I will come to Dresden at noon with Seydlitz; if nothing prevents you, come too; the three of us can have dinner together and, having done so, go and go about our own work. You can explain yourself better in a quarter of an hour's conversation than in six pages of writing. If you have a neighborhood in Dresden, I will come there, and we will both be on our own.


Oh joy. Anyway, Seydlitz: champion who has dinner (or rather lunch, seeing as it's noon) alone with Fritz and Heinrich during this particular meeting. Nerves of steel, man. Nerves of steel. I mean, sure, it went well, given that Fritz the next day wrote to Heinrich:

I give you a thousand thanks for the pleasant day you gave me yesterday. Except for the moment when I saw my sister Amélie, nothing has happened to me for six months that has given me so much pleasure. Do not doubt, my dear brother, the tender friendship and the high esteem with which I am to the grave, my dear brother, etc.

But that wasn't by any means guaranteed. Could Seydlitz have been the cause why strangling or at least a black eye were prevented and fraternal harmony ensued? Also, at which point did he judge it save to withdraw? Enquiring minds want to know, and Fritz does not say.

Re: The unknown heroics of Seydlitz

[mildred_of_midgard]

Truly the most fearless general in the Prussian army! Maybe Mitchell should have started with him?

I'm now imagining this as a prompt for the Rare Male Slash Exchange Heinrich/Seydlitz pairing! (Possibly also incestuous hatesex? Feelings were never running higher than at this moment! Bonus points if Fritz and Heinrich have very, very different takes on whether it was hatesex or comfort sex. :P)

Prussia and the Holy Roman Empire

[mildred_of_midgard]

Remember when MacDonogh said Prussia got kicked out of the HRE? And we were skeptical, not least because Fritz later agreed to vote for Joseph as emperor, which presupposes Brandenburg/Prussia as a member state in the empire? Well, mystery solved, for reading Showalter gave me a date, which I incorporated into my google-fu to find this, aka the Reichsexekutionskrieg, which the HRE could declare on one of its member states, and did in the case of Prussia in January 1757.

To quote from Wikipedia, On 13 September 1756, the Emperor Francis I issued an advocate's mandate (mandata avocatoria) releasing imperial subjects from their oaths to the king of Prussia, Frederick II, and ordering them not to assist him in his illegal war. On 14 September, Francis requested the Imperial Diet sanction a Reichsexekution to restore peace to the empire...

On 17 January 1757, a Reichskrieg was declared against Prussia. A triple quota was called up for a Reichs-Exekutions-Armee. The representatives of the Prussian king were removed from imperial institutions, imperial postal service to Prussian territory was suspended and travel into and out of it was banned, although not trade (even in war materiel, which was only classed as contraband in 1760).

In February 1763, the Imperial Diet formally declared the Reichskrieg over and the Treaty of Hubertusburg restored the status quo ante bellum.

Now, if you want to summarize this as "Prussia kicked out of the HRE," that seems fair, but you need to specify that it was only for 6 years, so that they could make war on it, and that at the end, it was reincorporated. Otherwise, you leave the reader with the impression that Prussia was never again part of the HRE, which is just wrong, as the election of Joseph shows. Restoration of the status quo is important!

Besides, there's a reading of "releasing imperial subjects from their oaths to the king of Prussia, Frederick II" according to which Fritz personally got kicked out, and the rest of the Prussians were still considered imperial subjects. :P

Also, tangentially, apparently FS could sell war materiel to Prussia during the Silesian wars if he wanted to, lol. Whether he would want to, MT miniseries, is another matter...

Re: Prussia and the Holy Roman Empire

[cahn]

There is something kind of hilarious about "We're kicking you out so we can declare war on you, and will put you back once the war is over," hee.

Chronology

[mildred_of_midgard]

Remember, long ago, when we were going to put together super detailed chronologies in rheinsberg for the especially obsessed fan, especially the writer of fiction? Well, I tackled this for all of two days before I got daunted and never looked at it again, which is why you haven't heard anything on the subject since. And that's made me sad, because if there's one thing I like, it's organized and organizing information.

But last week, I figured out how to approach this project in a non-daunting way! Here's what I came up with:

- The super detailed chronology is a living document that will never be declared finished, only progressively added to.
- Updating it incrementally is totally legit. If you think of an item you want included, you don't have to look up the day, month, and year, and put it in its correct location, all at once.
- Instead, if you think of something you want to include, you can drop it in the doc, with no date at all, and you or someone else can add a date later.
- Adding just the year, or just the year and month, with the intention of looking up the exact day later, is legit. If you don't know the exact date, that's fine too. Add what you feel like adding, just to get it in the doc, instead of procrastinating until you've researched an event to 100% precision.
- Nobody is responsible for completing a chronology on a given topic. What even is "complete"?

And with that, I managed to knock out a 14-page master chronology, and divide it into topics, in just a few days, even with my various health limitations!

So, I give you this Google doc, which now lives in the increasingly amazing Fritzian library.

The doc should be viewable by everyone who has the link, and editable by selenak and cahn. If you want edit privileges, click on the "Request edit access" button in the doc and let me know who you are, if it's not obvious from your email handle.

The doc is organized thus: guidelines for editing at the topic, then a GIGANTIC master chronology, then the master chronology broken up by topic. I find looking at the topics spurs my memory to think of other things that should be included.

It's extremely incomplete, and I make no apologies for that! I was only able to un-paralyze myself once I abandoned "complete" as a goal. This is a starting point.

Atm, it's extremely heavy on boyfriends and light on everything else *cough cough*. I trust the balance will be restored with time. ;)

selenak, if, as you're looking things up for your own research purposes, you want to drop some findings into this doc, that would be most welcome! I've incorporated a couple items from our emails into the doc, but I'm sure you have more. Again, don't worry about comprehensiveness. There's just too much! "Add whatever is easiest to add on a given occasion" is our mantra.

cahn, if you like, your contribution could be thinking of some events that aren't included and making a note of them in the doc for us to look up. You're surprisingly qualified to do that! You'll notice that I've made notes of some events in the doc that I or selenak can date on a future occasion, and I will keep adding more.

Sheesh, I wish I had thought of this approach six months ago. I could have been adding things as I ran across them all this time. But better late than never.

Oh, it isn't linked from rheinsberg yet, but I will add and sticky it as soon as I get feedback from you two. :)

Re: Chronology

[cahn]

Holy cow, this is amazing!! And very helpful!!

I will think about it, but I like boyfriends as a good foundation :)

Frederic the Third aka Second

[mildred_of_midgard]

Really, really not supposed to be on the computer, but--one minor mystery solved!

Remember when I reported the following from Voltaire's memoirs?

It was presently evident, that Frederic the third, King of Prussia, was not so great an enemy of Machiavel as the Prince Royal appeared to have been.

And then this discussion ensued?

mildred_of_midgard: Frederic the third, hmm? I guess FW is Frederic the second? First I've heard of that.

selenak: Re: „Frederic the Third“ - how he comes up with that one is beyond me. It‘s not even right if you count the Hohenzollern as Margraves instead of Kings - Grandpa F1 was F3 by Margrave counting, for example.

This has been bugging me for six months. :P

Well, I was reading Horowski (in English :-( ), and he confirms my guess:

When the previous Elector Friedrich August I of Saxony was elected King of Poland in 1697, he adapted to the tradition according to which kings bore only one name, and thus became August II. To his cousin Friedrich Wilhelm, on the other hand, the master of ceremonies von Besser also explained this, when he ascended the throne in 1713, but that was also the last official act of the master of ceremonies, who of course switched to August's services, while Friedrich Wilhelm kept his two names out of sheer anti-convention defiance. In fact, it was so confusing that even in Prussia many still considered him named Friedrich II. Wilhelm and consequently his successor Friedrich III., whom we only know as the second, but the poor contemporaries could never have known for sure because the Prussian kings themselves, like many of their colleagues, did not use ordinal numbers.

Re: Frederic the Third aka Second

[selenak]

while Friedrich Wilhelm kept his two names out of sheer anti-convention defiance

Go figure. This is such a FW kind of gesture, isn't it?

As for Fritz, clearly this is another reason why his admirers came up with der einzige, which avoids the number altogether. :)

Lehndorff

[mildred_of_midgard]

In the interests of me doing more German, I'm trying again with books that cahn wants to read in English, which worked really well last time, instead of books that are at the top of my to-read list, which doesn't seem to be working nearly as well. So! In addition to the remaining Ziebura books, I have managed to interest her in reading some Lehndorff. :D

Now, selenak, royal reader extraordinaire, you have told me that the first volume of his diary was reprinted in 2007. Before I spend $50, can you confirm whether this was reprinted in a modern font and not the 1907 blackletter font? I want to make sure Google's OCR API can handle it.

And speaking of Lehndorff, something that occurred to me I don't know: religious belief. I didn't get a sense of him being especially devout from your summaries, but could you tell: casual Christian, nominal Christian, questioning, confirmed nonbeliever? I'm always curious where 18th century individuals stood on this point, especially the upper class ones where "confirmed nonbeliever" was a feasible option.

Re: Lehndorff

[selenak]

It's reprinted in modern font. The text is identical, but the font is modern.

Religious belief: mellow Protestant. He mentions going to church a couple of times, and not just when there's a victory Te Deum to be sung during the 7 Years War; he also does things like holding his servants' children during their baptism. Not to mention in his later years the occasional "Kaphengst + double chin = divine justice!" type of observation. Otoh, he clearly sees no conflict between that and reading lots of Voltaire and Rousseau, hence the "mellow", and is cool with the occasional Catholic instead of going "no Popery!" When he's visiting Austrian territory in the early 1780s and writes about how everyone is shocked by how Joseph treats the (Catholic) church in his reforms, his sympathies seem to be with the shocked priests, even.

What is utterly lacking is a sense of religious guilt, though. When we find out that a friend advised him to try a prostitute in his post-Hotham depression, and he, L, later regrets it, this isn't because he's had extramarital sex (of either variety), but because he's checked out the STD patients at the Berlin Charité, and OMG, no more prostitutes ever! Also it's awkward because you don't know whether to send them away directly afterwards or wait a while, which is the polite thing to do? There is no "I have sinned, oh Lord!" going on.

Otoh, when he has trouble with his mother, he does tell himself Gods wants us to respect our parents, even if they are harsh and unreasonable to us.

That time when...

[selenak]

Remember when I read Austrian Trenck's memoirs and found out the infamous raid of Fritz' camp by Austrian Trenck and his Pandurs at Soor didn't just led to dognapping, Eichel kidnapping and them taking the war chest, but also the clothing of Fritz, Heinrich and AW? I just checked out something else in the AW biography and came across one bit I must have overlooked before, where Ziebura tells the same story and adds that the one exception to the clothing situation was one unrobbed wagon in which there'd been AW's bed sheats and underwear. Then she adds a direct quote from AW, from a letter to Ferdinand (still a child and hence not present) dated October 5th, where AW makes fun of the situation: "Now the King and Heinrich are wearing my shirts and are sleeping on cushions made of my sheets."

I thought this was valuable data in case anyone wants to write (again) about Fritz' really bad post Soor week. :)

Re: That time when...

[mildred_of_midgard]

This is SO GREAT. I wish I had known this back in October! *takes notes*

AW Ziebura bio has been obtained and is next on our reading list, but I'm waiting for cahn to finish her Hugo stuff and me to have more computer time so I can fit in manually formatting the document so it can be machine translated.

Hmm, I wonder if this is when SD's tradition of sending Fritz clean shirts started.

Heinrich: Where are MY shirts, Mom?
SD: Never mind that! Did you hear about what your sister did?
Volz: Noble SD, holding the family together!

The Voss Recollections

[selenak]

Okay, your royal reader has now taken a gander at the Countess von Voss, née Sophie von Pannewitz book (beyond the first twenty pages, that is, which is all I originally had time to look at), and the editor really does deserve all of Gustav Volz' chiding. Misidentifying which Pannewitz lady had the honor of punching FW is no singular accident. Said editor also tells us that "the learned Thiebault", who in reality only arrived in Prussia in the later 1760s, was an eye witness to the AW/Sophie saga. We're also told AW never loved another all his life after falling for her, which even if we assume the letters to Mina aren't published yet is a large claim for someone famously promiscuous. And poor Louise, the editor tells us, was "cold" towards AW, hence him straying from the marriage bed. Good grief. Gimme our Lehndorff, who adored AW but was very clear on the fact his dear Prince of Prussia had been a lousy husband and that his wife had every reason not to mourn him as a person.

(Later, FW2's second wife is also described - not by Sophie but by the editor - as "cold" to explain all the extramarital sex, I suppose, though in FW2's case he's also described as weak, and besides the woman most dissed by both the editor and Sophie von Voss re: FW2 is Wilhelmine Encke. This appears mostly snobbery on Sophie's part; the editor calls her "pernicious" without giving any examples of her perfidy beyond "she kept her hold on FW2 long after they stopped having sex and through all the other mistresses, he kept having dinner at least twice a week with her and wanted her with him.)

I already mentioned the otherwise completely unknown death bed reconciliation between AW and Fritz according to the editor, who says it's from a letter Sophie received but does not provide the actual letter. The editor also takes it for granted the Amalie/Trenck affair happened (Trenck said so!) but includes the new detail - which I don't think is in Trenck, but maybe it's in the three volume original edition, of which I only read bits as opposed to the one volume edition I read in totem - that supposedly Amalie bribed some Austrian official with thousands of ducats so he could make MT ask for Trenck's release as part of the peace conditions. This actually would be as good an explanation as any of why MT asked for Trenck's release, but I don't know where Amalie, who was - along with everyone else - notoriously short of cash in the 7 Years War (at one point, she tells Lehndorff she only has 17 taler left in coin) - was supposed to have gotten those thousands of ducats from, and how she got a hold on an Austrian official with access to MT. Anyway, the inclusion of the Trenck saga is all the editor, who definitely is a Trenck fan, but also a Fritz fan and so assures us the "hero king" had no idea Trenck was sitting on a tombstone and chained to the wall etc, those were all overzealous Magdeburg guards, clearly.

By which you can gather there's a lot of editor text. What's quoted from Madame Voss, née Pannewitz, is firstly from a description of her life she must have written in her old age, and then from her diaries, which start in 1760, not earlier, and go until shortly before her death. The editor complains that the diaries are laconic and cautiously discreet and rarely betray her feelings, but then proceeds to give a selecton from the 7 Years War diaries that show her feelings, alright: like Lehndorff, extremely bored by poor EC, vexed by Amalie (if Lehndorff makes the "sometimes angel, sometimes fiend" distinction, Sophie von Voss just thinks Amalie is a trial and a brat), also worried about her oldest son's illness (he survives), and adoring of Mina.

Consequently, it's not a big surprise she can't stand Heinrich. (Fair, as he was horrid to Mina.) Mind you, the passages that include this fact come much, much later, in the selections from FW2's and early FW3's reign, and they are bit parts like "Prince Henry was there, whom I cannot bear" or "Prince Henry left, thank God", without explaining the reason for her aversion. The editor doesn't comment on it, either, so if you're not aware of the context already, you wouldn't know. The editor does not mention the entire Heinrich/Mina disaster at all. The royal soap opera that's detailed, after Sophie/AW, is, of course, Sophie's niece Julie/FW2. And that's where after the selection from the later 7 Years War, we get our next big selection of diaries from. (Where again, Sophie's feelings are made quite clear.)

It is hard to compare this kind of publication with the Lehndorff diaries, for all that Schmidt-Lötzen in the original first volume also in the later part of the war suddenly gives us much narrative editing text (for which we'll get the direct entries in volume 2) and then jumps through the 60s and 70s with only a few direct diary entries until Lehndorff retires, because even so, there are so many more diary entries in the original Lehndorff volume that give you an impression of both what he describes and what he himself is like. Whereas in the Voss book, there is much, much more editorializing and narrating, and it's correspondingly harder to form one's own impression of the diary writer independent from the editor.

This said, here are some more thoughts:

- our Lehndorff shows up a few times to play cards with Sophie, but not with anything said about him other than that, which is fair enough, as she shows up in his diaries only in the same capacity, except for one remark where he thinks she's still pining for AW

- The quotes from old Madame von Voss writing down her life show a radically changing relationship with her mother; as a girl, she says she feared her (and hence did not confide in her in the entire AW mess), but a few passages quoted later, shortly after her marriage, her new husband gets the small pox and her mother unhesitatingly shows up to help Sophie nurse him without fear of her own safety, and afterwards, she's Stalwart Support Mom, again lots of editing text later there's another quote from the life description about her death, where Sophie praises her for her cheerful spirit and bravery and support through the years and adds as sole criticism that in her childhood and youth maybe Mom loved Sophie's brother more, but that this changed after the marriage

- as mentioned, Sophie's criticisms of EC in the 7 Years War entries are basically identical to Lehndorff's: boring yet talking incessantly, moody outbursts (like the one at Wartensleben) at her courtiers whom she's convinced disdain her and talk about her behind her back; however, in the later quotes form the last years of Fritz' life and from the reign of FW2, EC comes across as much more sympathetically and even-tempered, and Sophie is in fact with her when she dies, holding her hand

- while there is a lot of Mina praise in the 7 Years War entries (of her beauty and charm and kindness), it's hard to get an impression of her personality from this; Sophie doesn't have Lehndorff's gift of sketching character portraits of people, let alone provide more long term running portraits

- nothing about Fritz at all beyond news from the front; if Sophie makes a connection between EC's unhappiness and him, she does not mention it anywhere (or the editor doesn't leave it in if she did)

- Sophie is an early reader of La Nouvelle Heloise and despite dutifully registering moral disapproval can't help but sympathizing with the heroine, which isn't surprising if you know what it is about

- otoh, all the moral disapproval later of every mistress of FW2's except for her niece (who is a morganatic wife) comes across as incredibly self righteous (though maybe motivated by "I resisted, you could have, too, fallen women!" ?), especially since she leaves the chiding of FW2 at "why must he be so weak?" and otherwise continues her affection for him as being nice and charming and what not

- like I said, the very few half-sentence mentions of Heinrich are solid ice but don't contain anything beyond "ugh, can't stand him". Here, too, Lehndorff has the advantage, because if he can't stand someone, he doesn't hesitate to provide us with a few gory (or just salty) details as to why, which enliven the narrative

- Sophie doesn't come across as having much of a sense of humor, though again, this might be due to the selections her editor made from her entries. Because while I sympathize when she complains about Amalie's temper, there's this one entry where she complains that Amalie's idea of a masque ball was to ask all the men to dress as women and all the women to dress as men. Sophie disapproves strongly and hates it and thinks one has to be an odious brat like Amalie to come up with such a plan. Which, if you've read Lehndorff's diaries, is just a tad disingenious, because in the early 1750s, there was already a crossdressing masque organized by none other than AW, and while Sophie in the Amalie case is sure the men must have hated every second of such an indignity, Lehndorff back in the day reports they thought it was a hoot

- Sophie is an SD fan (this, btw, did not surprise in conjunction with the above) and longs for the dignity and superior poise SD had which among the younger generation of female royals she only finds in Mina

And that's it, in terms of the people we're interested in.

Re: The Voss Recollections

[mildred_of_midgard]

I can't reply fully, but thank you as always for the write-up!