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:

cahn

eeeeeee wow! :D I feel vindicated on Ziebura's behalf :D (I mean, I was always a little sad that she was/is otherwise so great and we were ragging on her for that one thing.) This is awesome! :)

From:

selenak

It is indeed. Not to mention that it gives us, well, me, someone dying in the 7 Years War in battle who is a person previously known, not a statistic. And it gives us a somewhat better sense of Marwitz and his relationships with both Heinrich and Fritz. I mean, I still think the fact that Marwitz ended up on the Obelisk together with all the other dead (and not literally screwed by Fritz) people Heinrich wanted to honor says nothing, either way, about whether or not Fritz made up the stuff about STD and cheating in 1746, because, see above re: Seydlitz. But Heinrich must have respected Marwitz as a person beyond his youthful infatuation if he put him there. (And conversely, Fritz must have actually liked him beyond having a go at his little brother in 1746 if he not just kept him around but gave him a militarily responsible job in a critical war, which quartermaster is.)

From:

cahn

Ah, this is great, yes! I am rather relieved that both Fritz and Heinrich must have actually liked and/or respected him after that incident. :D

There's a bit in Ziebura I just read -- after work lets up I really want to go back through thoes chapters and find all the parts I wanted to talk about -- where she talks about, I'm going to paraphrase this awfully, but it was something like, how Heinrich had disastrous love affairs but really great friendships that lasted. At the time I of course was like "Yes! Lehndorff! You were the one with the staying power, go you! <3" but now I'm also thinking, how great if Marwitz was also in that category.

From:

selenak

No, I know which quote you mean, it's on page 68 - "Heinrich war zwar ein unbeständiger Liebhaber, aber ein treuer Freund."

It's also interesting to compare Marwitz here with Kalckreuth, who definitely got frozen out by Heinrich after their affair had ended. (See Lehndorff's journal entry about Heinrich telling him to tell Kalckreuth he wouldn't be mistreated but there was also nothing left between them when Kalckreuth, on the occasion of Heinrich coming through East Prussia en route to Russia, tries to see him again in the 1770s.) So a former lover making it to amiable ex status was by no means a given.

Of course, still lacking a first name and letters or a journal from Marwitz himself, we'll never know how he felt about either brother. I think being ambitious is a solid guess. But given that unlike Glasow or Georgi, he didn't die in a mysterious suicide or in prison but in battle after more than a decade of serving Fritz and on good terms with Heinrich, he presumably had not only more common sense and diplomatic abilities than the handsome husars but probably some actual affection for his dysfunctional Hohenzollern brothers.

From:

mildred_of_midgard

still lacking a first name and letters or a journal from Marwitz himself

Dammit. If he was a quartermaster, we know when he died, and he was dismissed and rehired as page, there *has* to be some documentary evidence to give us a first name! I suppose barring everything being destroyed in WWII. I suppose if Kloosterhuis, professional archivist, can't figure out who not!Robert Keith is, then the info just might not be out there any more. But I do wonder who's looked and how hard. Given the no homo-ing and all.

If I can beef my rococo German and French up, and you your French, and we both master 18th century handwriting, and the plague ends...there's a lot of work for us to do in Germany. :P I vaguely recall some Fredersdorf digging that needed to be done. Oh, right, this exchange:

You: Hahn says the Richter edition of the Fredersdorf letters was slightly censored, but he doesn’t say whether he’s basing this on the Burchardt edition (like I said, my quick once over gave me only one letter that I thought was new to me, the one joking about male powers of love being affected by all the wrong medicine), or because he’s read the originals.

Me: The letters are still out there in some archives, right? And they're in German, so you can read them for us. :P Good luck with the handwriting!

You: Somehow I knew you'd ask me to check out the Fredersdorf letters sooner or later. ;) Maaaybe, but in the far, far future, if they are available somewhere. I mean, given that the worst fanboy had them during WWII.

:-PP

Oh, right, and there's that Peter Keith eulogy from the Academy of Sciences that Kloosterhuis says is still out there, and a letter from Suhm about his family (immediate or extended, I don't know) that's in the Saxon archives, and we still need that Katte manuscript, and the unpublished Lehndorff papers...

Gossipy sensationalists with scholarly instincts have our work cut out for us!

From:

cahn

Yes! That quote! :D

Ah, I like that comparison with Kalckreuth; that definitely seems to point to Marwitz being rather less dysfunctional than Kalckreuth. :) (Not that that would be hard... although where Heinrich's lovers are concerned, maybe it is hard!) I do hope, as you say, he had some affection for the brothers, and vice versa :)