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
Heinrich! You can't commemorate someone without a first name!
Well, in fairness, most of the Obelisk inscriptions do not mention the first name. I just checked with Fontane who reproduces all the inscriptions (and a good thing, too, because they had to be reconstructed post WWII), and other than Heinrich's two brothers (Ferdinand is on the Obelisk, too, for early war bravery), the only guy whose first name is mentioned is the old Dessauer (Leopold). Everyone else is listed by last name only, so Marwitz is not singled out here. It's just that it's easier to trace for historians who everyone else was, and none of the others was in a love triangle with Fritz and Heinrich! (That we know of.)
Incidentally, if Marwitz was 21 in 1746, then I'm plausibly good with my characterisation of him as the more experienced party (between him and 19 years old Heinrich). And in fiction, I can go with Ziebura's first love theory without having to declare it speculation.
(Btw, I'm assuming that other than us not knowing about a previous boyfriend, it's a question of timing. No boyfriends before he's fourteen, because Dad is still alive. Then he's supposed to catch up with his education along with Big Bro's improvement project for his brothers in that regard. Then he's off to his first brush with war at Fritz' side in Silesia 2. The Carnival months of 1746 were really the ideal time to fall in love unsupervised (more or less) and with lots of free time at his hands for the first time.)
Back to Henckel's entry: the least surprising thing to find out was that Marwitz, too, was gifted with Fritz' poetry. (At least I assume that's what "his works" mean.) (Unless Fritz did write that novel?) Mind you, if you've read Fritz' letters, then Henckel's description of the King "lowering himself" ("ließ sich dazu herab") to educate Young Marwitz with books and his own masterpieces make for an iiiinteresting juxtaposition. I mean: this is the guy Fritz writes thusly about: If I had the courage, I'd tell this charming sad person: "That's no more than you deserve, you damned whore! Didn't you want to infect my poor brother with your gonorhoe? Oh! If he listened to me, he'd turn his love towards a worthier object and would send you to hell with all your nice little qualities, of which your STD, your vanity, your lies and your recklessness are but the least.
(This reminds me, I can now edit the original male Marwitz entry and update it with this new Intel!)
Mind you: given that Henckel seems to be clueless about the love triangle (and this is before Kalckreuth, so he hasn't yet realised Heinrich's own preferences for charming jerks), I'm assuming he only got the bowlderized Version of Marwitz' backstory anyway. ("So, you started out as the King's page, then as a guard, and now you're a quartermaster. You must know him pretty well." "Yyyeeeah. He used to lend me his books to make sure I got an education.")
(Again: that Lehndorff, by contrast, does know the gory details says something about what Heinrich confides in him with.)
BTW, Henckel in general is not a fan of Fritz' literary output due to non-literary reasons. When Heinrich's star rises with Fritz through 1757, Henckel for a brief time hopes that Heinrich can talk Fritz into making a separate peace with the French. (This is about the same time when Mitchell is afraid Heinrich will make a separate peace behind Fritz' back.) And then he learns that Fritz is sending satiric verses about the French leadership to Voltaire (since this is in the de Prades era, not yet the de Catt era of Readers, he hears it via Monsieur Le Roi m'a dit). Cue Henckel going head, desk, and "so much for peace".)
(Of course, we know that Fritz could have offered to write love poetry to Madame de Pompadour and the French still would not have made peace with him, but Henckel doesn't know that.)
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timeasmymeasure
Re: Marwitz Uncovered!
Date: 2020-05-06 09:11 pm (UTC)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
Re: Marwitz Uncovered!
Date: 2020-05-07 07:13 am (UTC)Well, in fairness, most of the Obelisk inscriptions do not mention the first name. I just checked with Fontane who reproduces all the inscriptions (and a good thing, too, because they had to be reconstructed post WWII), and other than Heinrich's two brothers (Ferdinand is on the Obelisk, too, for early war bravery), the only guy whose first name is mentioned is the old Dessauer (Leopold). Everyone else is listed by last name only, so Marwitz is not singled out here. It's just that it's easier to trace for historians who everyone else was, and none of the others was in a love triangle with Fritz and Heinrich! (That we know of.)
Incidentally, if Marwitz was 21 in 1746, then I'm plausibly good with my characterisation of him as the more experienced party (between him and 19 years old Heinrich). And in fiction, I can go with Ziebura's first love theory without having to declare it speculation.
(Btw, I'm assuming that other than us not knowing about a previous boyfriend, it's a question of timing. No boyfriends before he's fourteen, because Dad is still alive. Then he's supposed to catch up with his education along with Big Bro's improvement project for his brothers in that regard. Then he's off to his first brush with war at Fritz' side in Silesia 2. The Carnival months of 1746 were really the ideal time to fall in love unsupervised (more or less) and with lots of free time at his hands for the first time.)
Back to Henckel's entry: the least surprising thing to find out was that Marwitz, too, was gifted with Fritz' poetry. (At least I assume that's what "his works" mean.) (Unless Fritz did write that novel?) Mind you, if you've read Fritz' letters, then Henckel's description of the King "lowering himself" ("ließ sich dazu herab") to educate Young Marwitz with books and his own masterpieces make for an iiiinteresting juxtaposition. I mean: this is the guy Fritz writes thusly about: If I had the courage, I'd tell this charming sad person: "That's no more than you deserve, you damned whore! Didn't you want to infect my poor brother with your gonorhoe? Oh! If he listened to me, he'd turn his love towards a worthier object and would send you to hell with all your nice little qualities, of which your STD, your vanity, your lies and your recklessness are but the least.
(This reminds me, I can now edit the original male Marwitz entry and update it with this new Intel!)
Mind you: given that Henckel seems to be clueless about the love triangle (and this is before Kalckreuth, so he hasn't yet realised Heinrich's own preferences for charming jerks), I'm assuming he only got the bowlderized Version of Marwitz' backstory anyway. ("So, you started out as the King's page, then as a guard, and now you're a quartermaster. You must know him pretty well." "Yyyeeeah. He used to lend me his books to make sure I got an education.")
(Again: that Lehndorff, by contrast, does know the gory details says something about what Heinrich confides in him with.)
BTW, Henckel in general is not a fan of Fritz' literary output due to non-literary reasons. When Heinrich's star rises with Fritz through 1757, Henckel for a brief time hopes that Heinrich can talk Fritz into making a separate peace with the French. (This is about the same time when Mitchell is afraid Heinrich will make a separate peace behind Fritz' back.) And then he learns that Fritz is sending satiric verses about the French leadership to Voltaire (since this is in the de Prades era, not yet the de Catt era of Readers, he hears it via Monsieur Le Roi m'a dit). Cue Henckel going head, desk, and "so much for peace".)
(Of course, we know that Fritz could have offered to write love poetry to Madame de Pompadour and the French still would not have made peace with him, but Henckel doesn't know that.)