Frederick the Great discussion post 15

[cahn]

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

Comments

Re: Ch 11-13

[selenak]

Yeah. And later on he's explicitly going to be all, "THE LATE KING never did this to me!"

It's a bit "the grass is always greener on the other side", of course, but... yeah. Incidentally, re: AU where Heinrich gets to do stuff, there are of course three obvious "what ifs", though I'm not sure they'd have ended all that happily for Heinrich:

- King Heinrich of Poland (if Fritz hadn't nixed that from the start)
- King/Prince Heinrich of Wallachia (ditto)
- King Henry I. of the United States of America

Since the first two would have inevitably brought Heinrich into clashing with Catherine sooner or later (much sooner, in the case of Poland), the third one, provided Steuben et al could have somehow convinced Congress that a gay Francophile Hohenzollern is just the ticket for a constitutional monarchy, is really the most promising opportunity. Just think of all the Hamilton crossovers. :) Seriously though, which Founding Fathers would Heinrich have gotten along with, which not? Would there have been a constitution similar to Britain's where there's a head of state (Heinrich) and a head of Government (whether the later is called PM or President), with the later being voted for, and how would the two have worked together?


Re: Voltaire memoirs, the sympathy of our minds strikes again! (We also posted simultaneously.:)

So either Ziebura's bowdlerizing, or MacDonogh's misquoting. My vote is on the latter, but it would be interesting to check. Source seems to be Henckel Donnersmarck's "letters to my grandparents."

Give me a link, and I'll try to look it up. (BTW, the Allgemeine Deutsche Biography article with its Fritz fan Richard von M. of course bitches that the author "has adopted the UNFAIR attitude of his grandfather & the King's Brothers towards Frederick the Great".)

Heinrich refuting his authorship of an anonymous pamphlet by saying that if he had something to say, he would say it under his real name--says Marshal Gessler! :P

I mean, I'm sure 1787 Heinrich would, and 1753 Heinrich was in a radically different power differential, but still. IT was pretty funny.

:) True. Also, it's Voltaire's standard excuse whenever he leaked a letter or issued a pamphlet.

so two 18th-C contemporaries walk into a bar...

[cahn]

I can't believe that when you guys were knocking back and forth suggestions about different people getting together that it didn't even occur to me that it could crossover with US Founding Fathers! I'd totally forgotten about King Henry I :) Oh man, I don't even know. Assuming, like you say, that everyone was on board with a gay Francophile Hohenzollern, I feel like he and Washington would have gotten along, they would both recognize in each other someone who would put the state first. I feel like Heinrich and Alexander Hamilton would either have been really good friends or would have hated each other, they're both extremely smart and competent but from sort of opposite ends, Hamilton might have despised Heinrich as naive royalty and Heinrich might have thought Hamilton was irritatingly brash. Jefferson would have gotten along with Heinrich great as a fellow Francophile and aristocrat-ish, I think, at least at first, but... I suppose it might have come down to how Heinrich felt about Hamilton's view of economics/society as opposed to Jefferson... I suppose, given that he was affected by FW and Fritz, and even more so if he was the monarch (even if it was less of a strong position than in Prussia), he would have wanted a strong central government and would have come down fairly hard on Hamilton's side.

Re: so two 18th-C contemporaries walk into a bar...

[selenak]

Jefferson and Heinrich actually could have met (in a bar or out of it) in rl, since I think Heinrich's second visit to Paris overlaps with Jefferson's time as American envoy there. But otoh, undoubtedly biographers would have unearthed a Meeting by now, at least German ones. I've come across the mention that John Quincy Adams was present as American envoy - he was in fact the first US envoy in Prussia - at Fritz' funeral three times in three different (German) sources, after all, so it's not like German Hohenzollern biographers lack interest in US Founding Fathers (and their offspring). Anyway, I'm with you that I can see Heinrich and Jefferson getting along splendidly at first, but clash since I doubt Heinrich would be on board with Jefferson's economics.

Re: central government, hmmmm. I think you can argue either way. Otoh, Heinrich is used to micromanaging Fritz as way too much centralized goverment. Otoh, Heinrich is also aware that one reason why the HRE in his life time is a collapsing antique is that by the 18th century, every German prince has started to do his own thing (and if he's an elector, also aquiring kingdoms). I mean, in the really long term, this actually is beneficial in that I think current day Germany profits from having a federal states structure with the Federal states having a lot of authority, as opposed to a centralized goverment and a lot of angry provinces like France. But I doubt anyone would have predicted that then.

Would Franklin have still been alive for Heinrich to have a relationship with? Because I can definitely see them hit it off.

Re: so two 18th-C contemporaries walk into a bar...

[cahn]

Oh, I think Henry I would still be for centralized government to an extent that Jefferson might not have been, but yes, I can see him trying very hard not to be micromanaging like Fritz, and catching himself sometimes when he found himself sliding that way. except for when he had to micromanage a wedding, then you'll see

Let's see, wiki tells me that Franklin doesn't die until 1790. I agree, they would totally have hit it off!