Frederick the Great discussion post 15

[cahn]

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

Comments

[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?

[selenak]

Ha, well, I've seen a post on Tumblr going for the simple equation "AW loses in War of Austrian Succession, no Prussian superpower, Germany stays disunited in the 19th century, no world wars in the 20th, which I think is wrong in practically every detail except arguably for the "no Prussian superpower" part. First of all, AW, becoming King at age 18, would not have invaded Silesia. Not because he'd think it wrong - AW at 18 thought Big Bro was the coolest for invading, he needed actual war experience to moderate his views on that - but because he would not have considered Silesia as a option to begin with. He'd have gone after Jülich and Berg a few years later, which were the ones Dad had drummed into him were Prussia's by right. Given he'd have had the same army and treasure at his disposal as Fritz did, and the same generals, and given that MT likely would have had to deal with French-backed Cousin Karl Albrecht as a rival Emperor for some years after her accession, he'd have gotten them. Whether, however, Jülich and Berg would have been enough to get AW the world's Attention the way Fritz got for Silesia is questionable, especially since there would not have been this big contradiction between what was expected of him pre ascension (nobody would have thought AW would become a philosopher king, living for the arts and peace) and what he became.

As for no German unification in the 19th century: this ignores the fact that the push for unification did not come just or even mainly from Prussia. Post Napoleonic wars (which would have happened regardless), it was massive in all the German principalities. The two questions everyone was debating were: a) with or without Austria (remember, regarding the Austrians as non-Germans wasn’t actually a thing until the 19th century; there’s a reason Joseph when temporarily renaming the Hofburg called it Deutsches Nationaltheater, not Österreichisches Nationaltheater), and b) what kind of state should it be. The 1848 revolutionary parliament creating the first constitution for a unified Germany (which was promptly squashed) imagined it as a parliamentary monarchy a la Britain or Sweden. It did offer the crown to that monarchy to the King of Prussia who rejected it because no crown from the rabble, but picking Prussia at this point was an acknowledgment of Prussia as the most powerful of the German principalities (once you’ve decided to exclude Austria). So chances are that German unification would have happened in the 19th century in some way – the question is whether or not Prussia would have dominated it the way it did in rl and put its imprint on the rest of the newly unified Germany. And that’s impossible to say for reasons I’ll go into in a moment.
Once you have a unified Germany in the 19th century, whether earlier (1848) or later (1870, as in rl), it will become a power to reckon with. However, even if against the odds Germany stays a loose collection of principalities, I reject the notion that there would have been no WWI in 1914. Nationalism was a vice rife in the 19th century everywhere. So was Empire building. And colonialism, good lord. And fighting about colonies. If there’d been no German Empire to ally against, among other things, I really doubt France and England would have ever stopped their traditional hostilities, as opposed to competing for territory and influence overseas and within Europe. The Balkan situation would have been just as explosive. The Russian Empire just as simultanously enormous and ripe for revolution. The Osman Empire, ditto. So there would have been a WWI in the 20th century, and it would be been just as vile as in rl.

Back to young King AW. Like I said, I think he would have waited a few years, between 3 and 5 perhaps, and then gone for Jülich and Berg. Since in a scenario where Fritz successfully escapes in 1730, he’d never have gotten influenced by Big Bro to consider his lack of education, courtesy of Dad, a bad thing, I doubt there’d been any of the attempts to get cool cultural people for Prussia early on. At least not until Heinrich’s grown up. (Who can’t already be advisor at age 14.) I think Heinrich would have figured out books are cool, music is great and we should do some encouraging pronto on his own, plus of course SD was still alive and I think AW, despite not being her fave, would have given her more splendour. So basically my prediction is that the first few years of AW’s reign are basically FW’s Prussia , light side version, and then once Heinrich is grown up, it’s both Jülich and Berg time and „let’s encourage the arts“ time.

Now, the big problem about speculation from this point onwards is that so much of AW’s and Heinrich’s personalities as we know them were formed both by and in opposition to Fritz. Take AW’s view as written to sister Ulrike about constitutional monarchies and how a good king should be the first servant of the state, with him using that very phrase. Since FW believed in kings needing to work, work, work, and drummed that into all his children, he might have come up with the concept without Fritz coining the phrase in his life – but would he also have regarded parliamentary monarchy a la Sweden as cool and absolute monarchy as not so much if he hadn’t, at the point of writing this to Ulrike, have lived with King Fritz for more than a decade?

And Heinrich: would a brief and successful campaign for Jülich and Berg have been enough to get him through the adolescent/early 20s „Wars are awesome!“ phase, or would they have wetted the appetite, so to speak? Not to mention that it’s impossible to say whether he would have been the same kind of cautious general if he hadn’t had to live with the knowledge that if he makes mistakes, he’d end up destroyed by his brother the king. (Since AW would not have done this to him.) It’s really an endless nurture vs nature debate, and beyond the earliest years, I just can’t say.

[mildred_of_midgard]

This is fascinating, thank you! This is why I ask you these things, and not random people on tumblr. I would write more, but I maxed out my body's computer stamina for now on Peter Keith research for this fic, sorry not sorry. ;)

[cahn]

*nods* I think I remember seeing that Blanning also thinks that Jülich and Berg would have made more sense for... someone who wasn't Fritz :P (I need to go back to reading Blanning!)

I wonder if King AW and Heinrich would have hit on using Heinrich as a diplomat, which he seems to have been really good at it, and I at least kind of imagine that Heinrich could have been good at it even in the absence of Fritz (although who knows).