cahn | Frederick the Great discussion post 15

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cahn

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

rheinsberg

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From:

selenak

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

This said, I now finally know where Jochen Klepper in his FW novel "Der Vater" got his Heinrich characterisation from. Heinrich shows up just in two paragraphs - naturally, since the core of the novel is 1730 - but these paragraphs are just explainable if Koser was their source, for:

Heinrich at 4: "a miniature geriatric" - (Greislein in German) , with facial lines, weak, with a grey face, so the four years old stood, a frown on his face and the hands folded behind his back, in front of the too high window and stared into the clouds, but with a pained expression as if the light was blinding his tired and too weak eyes."

Heinrich at 13, near the novel's end: " Sometimes, at the tablel, the King listened just to Heinrich. Was this thirteen years old the most clever of his children? What a stubborn desire to educate himself - much beyond the already full schedule! What passion for the sciences, strict music and old paintings! What observational skills, what deliberation, what intelligence in conversation! What cool determination when he constructed wars with his pen! But in nothing which the boy Heinrich did, there was even a spark of joy. IN all there was balance and waiting without hope or passion. His intelligence, his eagerness, his thorougness - all was there without even a breath of youth. Old in spirit, small and slender was the boy, and the big eyes were only burning with the fire of an indomitable wllpower. (...) The King knew that his oldest son thought a lot of this second brother. And he's written a mirror for princes for this second brother. And the boy understood him, line by line, and now more than ever kept his hard, hot gaze on the brother who would be a King one day. Even August Wilhelm's tender, kind and wooing speeches could not draw him out of his contemplation, which wasn't the contemplation of a dreamer, but of a mourner. Words of love did not touch him. And no one could think of an hour, a circumstance, a sentence even in which Heinrich had asked for his father. There seemed to be no connection between them, not even a primary, natural feeling. From this, the Queen drew her hopes that Heinrich might be a Hannover. But the son drew away from her, too. He didn't love his brother, either: he saw the future King - cool, judging, in contemplating endurance.

Siince Klepper's characterisations of everyone else are pretty sound - or at least tracable to specific "canon" events - I was always wondering how on earth he came across Heinrich the human clock work. I guess if Koser, one of the biggest Fritz experts that ever was, wrote him this way, one can't Klepper, novelist in Nazi Germany with very limited access to source material and only a few more years to live, for following suit...

...but Koser, I still don't get you. No passion? At all? What?

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Well, that's one mystery solved, if not the mystery-behind-the-mystery of "WTF, Koser?" I guess it comes back to Koser being good at facts and bad at opinions.

From:

selenak

Overnight, I've come up with a new theory. If Koser was a no-homo type of historian not just for Fritz but also for Heinrich, he's left with a Heinrich who never had a mistress and whose marriage consisted of, except for the first few years, husband and wife staying the hell away from each other. Add to this that Heinrich was a cautious general in the sense of not doing the attack attack attack strategy Fritz did (not in the sense of not risking his own life, see Mitchell in his reports saying Heinrich and Fritz were alike in this, and Koser has read Mitchell), and no, he never threatened to kill himself in the case of defeat. So maybe if you take "no het passion" to mean "no love life at all", add "general trying not to get his men killed" and "even when depressed, does not yearn for death", you come up with "human clockwork, dead inside" if you're Koser?

Otoh: for God's sake, there's a letter from Fritz to Heinrich, quoted by Ziebura on page 51, where he writes "Young people at your age do only follow their passions, and I am the only one who can make you follow reason. At your age, one has to listen to criticism and good advice. You will recognize one day that my intentions are good and that only your hot temper rebels against me who wants only what's best for you." Koser, if your hero thinks Heinrich has a hot temper, do you think he's kidding?

From:

mildred_of_midgard

That does make sense. I endorse your theory. I guess if sexual passion is the only passion--he clearly had *some* kind of passion for these "favorites", but, you know, "no homo" blinders--then, yes, you could get to a passionless Heinrich. I mean, all these guys who are good at facts are selective about their facts when it comes to interpretation, like Volz leaving out Seydlitz and Zieten as AW advisors.

Koser, if your hero thinks Heinrich has a hot temper, do you think he's kidding?

Maaaaybe...he thinks Fritz sees other people's behavior through the lens of his own passionate nature?

But really, I think "fitting the facts to the theory instead of the theory to the facts" is what's at work here. It's surprisingly common in all walks of life--read Thomas Kuhn for its application to the development of scientific theory.