cahn | Frederick the Great, discussion post 16

I'll add that just from my personal experience, having a kid who is super charming and genial definitely really really helps that positive feedback loop gets started. I mean, I think AW liking cannons and toy soldiers was definitely a necessary part of FW liking him, but I'd bet that AW's personality had somethign to do with it too -- after all, FW did want his kids to love him -- even though he wasn't like FW in personality in a lot of ways. (I'd go so far as to say that AW not being like FW in personality in some ways actually helped -- like mildred says, Fritz was the one who was as stubborn as FW, but that didn't help them get along.)

(Source: one of my kids is super charming and good-natured, and you can practically see that positive feedback loop taking place when that child is around adults, while my other kid is a perfectly nice kid but hasn't got nearly the amount of innate charm. Adults seem to like that child as well, but it's definitely more of an effort, and FW wasn't the sort of person who would have even understood making an effort. (As opposed to Lehndorff :P :) ) )

Me too. No corporal punishment in school, totally seen as OK for parents to do. I got spanked a couple of times, I think it probably stung but it wasn't a big deal. I should ask my parents what it was like for them in Korea, I have no idea (and they probably don't remember much at this point either).

OH! OK, I had the English bowdlerized quote in "Survived" but now I am totally going to amend it to put the vomiting in. And maybe the fistulas too? (With your permission, of course, but I would assume you'd rather have the actual quote...)

This now makes WAY more sense that Wilhelmine was all "but there are servants here listening!!" which as mildred remarked in response to the V. Secret Diary, of course usually servants would be around to listen to things, it seemed with the bowderlized version that it was a sort of mild thing to object to. I thought at the time that maybe it was not the Done Thing to complain about one's future relations in front of the servants? But now I can totally see why she would be all !! about it.

Yeah, poor EC :( I would be terrified of saying anything but yes or no either :(

Edited 2020-08-30 05:01 (UTC)

Ahhhh, thank you!

Note the font and color on Finland.

Me: Uh, I can't even find where it says Finland! I don't see it in bold font -- oh.

lololol I noticed the orange peel thing too! I was quite proud that I could be all "well actually..." about it :D (Though of course credit should go to

gambitten, thank you!!)

My German is on a 6-year-old level for sure; in the next set of AW letters which is described as being a 12-year-old writing on an 8-year-old level in vocab and syntax, I could mostly make out the syntax but not the vocab :P

Legal rights to grandkids: no, SC would not have had any (once her husband was dead, anyway, and she was no longer the reigning queen). As for today, yes, grandparents have no visitation rights, unless there's something wrong with the parents and they have become the caretakers.

But Sophie Charlotte's presumably behind the English marriage, right? Is it possible they just become allies in the face of FW's crazy, and SC makes it so SD can have more glamor at her own court?

Could be. As to whether SC would have been on Team Hannover, initially yes, of course, but I'm not sure she'd have insisted the way SD did once it turned into such a controversial subject, not least because she wouldn't have felt the need for Wilhelmine to live the life she didn't get the way SD did. She also in rl wasn't partisan in the marriage negotiations she did live long enough to experience, i.e. for foster daughter Caroline. Remember, for a hot minute Caroline was considered as a bride for MT's future dad before he settled on a Brunswick princess instead. Sophie Charlotte would have been on board with that and wouldn't have minded the need to convert; she herself had, also for a hot minute, been considered for marriage into the French Royal family, after all, which also would have necessitated conversion, and her mother Sophie, aka The Protestant Heir To The English Throne, was utterly nonchalant and practical about this.

So I'm not sure that SC would have been all "my grandson must marry a Hannover princess by all means!" once FW started to be against it (which he wasn't from the get go). Who knows, maybe this would have happened:

FW: Mom, please tell me you're not encouraging my wife this Hannover/Britain Or Nothing! campaign.
SC: I don't. It would have been nice, but if you're that much against it, darling, well, I'm sure my brother George can find other suitors.
FW: Thank you, you're a good mother.
SC:...which is why I've thought of an alternate match. After all, it doesn't look like that Brunswick girl whom the Emperor took instead of Caroline will provide him with sons any time soon. So, I've been thinking: how about an Archduchess for our Fritz? Especially considering how strongly you feel about your loyalty to the Emperor. And I'm sure he'd have no choice but to back your claims to Berg and Jülich then.
FW: ....BUT WHAT ABOUT THE POPERY?!? NO SON OF MINE...
SC: Oh, hush. It would only be for show, and I'm sure he'll return to the true faith as soon as the Emperor has kicked the bucket and introduce Protestantism in Vienna. Isn't that a godly cause worthy to cheer for? Along with making the House of Brandenburg the ruling dynasty of the HRE?

How much of that was because she despised her daughters-in-law, though? How would she have reacted to Mina as Fritz's wife? (Not a rhetorical question.)

Hm. On the one hand: Mina has all the refinement and beauty SD requires. On the other: she's really minor nobility - the daughter not even of a ruling prince but a younger prince from a Hesse sideline. Good enough for third son Heinrich, but for beloved first son and future King Fritz? Then again: this means SD still is the superior woman, as she's the daughter and sister of English Kings and can trace her bloodline back for a thousand years.

Lastly: let's not forget that in addition to SD taking against Wilhelmine because of the Bayreuth marriage, there's also an undertone of "who gets to be the most important woman to Fritz?" While she calmed down towards EC once it became clear EC never would even be in the running, and certainly would not be treated as more important than SD by anyone, from Fritz to the lowest Berlin citizen.

Now, Fritz presumably would not have been in love with Mina any more than he was with EC, but he might have gotten along with her better (and certainly would have been pleased she could do all the courtly stuff and was regarded as an ornament to the court). Still, even under the best of circumstances I can't see him letting her get close to him emotionally.

In conclusion: while I don't think SD would have been as enthusiastic about Mina as wife to her first son the way she was about her as wife to her third, for as long as it's made clear she's still the most important woman in Prussia both in terms of social standing and to Fritz, she'd have been okay with her, limiting herself to a few asides about Mina's lower nobility status early on and later a few pointed questions as to why there's no grandkid yet in terms of criticism.

Progress: didn't get very far today, only up to a bit past I.; not nearly caught up to mildred, but should be able to do more tomorrow.

-Thought it was interesting that AW wasn't religious because Fritz had so much of an influence on him, but he did do all the religious things because he felt like he had to be a good example.

-I am sure mildred told me that FW abdicated when he was still alive, but I had forgotten. That... is one of the more endearing things I know about him, which is not saying a lot at ALL, but there it is.

Hopefully he looked forward to his future at the side of his big brother, who had so often assured him of his appreciation and love.

WHY ARE YOU TWISTING MY HEART LIKE THIS, ZIEBURA

:D Yay, thank you for the pic!

Abdication: Mildred and I mentioned it, because she wanted to know when exactly in the AU where Katte gets a prison sentence Fritz could pardon him. Without looking it up again, it as on a Tuesday at 5 in the morning, I think; we do know the exact time because Fritz describes FW's last few days, including the abdication, to Voltaire in detail in a letter.

No kidding, and yes, of course, edit by all means. <3

Here's how I think 18th century fathers stacked up:

I agree with your examples but would add some (marked in bold):

- Expecting blind obedience beyond what we would consider healthy now: normal.

- Corporal punishment: varied.

- Micromanaging your kid's life and trying to break his will so that he never does anything he wants even when you're not around: weird.

- leaving your kid for fourteen years elsewhere without visits: a bit cold, but the weather is nicer in Hannover anyway?

- openly rooting for your fave to inherit instead of your oldest kid: when combined with:

- Threatening to kill your kid: WTF???

(...but okay if you do it via spreading rumors your oldest kid is impotent)

- having sex with your kid (according to gossip): you're clearly either August(us) the Strong or Philippe d'Orleans the Younger

- participating in orgiastic parties at the same time your daughter does and being on board with your daughter having an active sex life with other people in general: you're DEFINITELY August(us) the Strong or Philippe d'Orleans the Younger

- Actually killing your kid: Peter the Great.

"Do not speak unless spoken to": imo in general more a 19th century thing. If guests are present, you're certainly supposed to show you can carry a conversation if you're a prince or princess. Other Seckendorff in his diary notes with disapproval young Aw fainting in the tobacco parliament, and with approval later that on another occasion kid Ferdinand (future menace) cheeked Grumbkow about passing him some dish by enganging in a joke with him about Grumbkow being a field marshal now, so he an be gracious like a King.

Of course, the problem with judging as to whether or not children were expected to talk during family only meals is that most of the reports we have are from family and other people meals, by necessity. The one example that popped immediately in my mind about a royal family meal with no other people present is from one of Liselotte's letters (to aunt Sophie of Hannover, as it happens) about a moment of levity chez Orleans, where the people present are she, Philippe the older and Philippe the Younger, and then one of them farts and the others join in for a laugh. But not only is this two generals pre Fritz and FW, I also think Philippe the Younger was at least a teenager by then.

Oh, just remembered: if I recall Horowitz correctly, one of the complaints about Fritz of Wales from his family was that after he joined them after fourteen years alone in Hannover, he hardly spoke to any of them unless spoken to. Given the circumstances, this is hardly surprising, but it does show he was expected to talk during family meals, not wait for his parents to adress him.

Ziebura says that AW had to keep FW from finding out that he was reading. (Whether this is a recorded fact or an inference, I'm not sure.)

Having just checked and reread the passage, it sounds like inference to me, based on the fact Wolff was still on the Prussian index.

Did AW read some Wolff at Fritz's suggestion and then tell FW that it was full of things he would agree with, and FW decided to give it a try on the basis of his favorite, not very bookish, son liking it?

This sounds very plausible to me! Especially if AW managed to keep it hidden from Dad how he'd come across Wolff to begin with. The timing fits, and I salute your detective skills once more.

Wonderful, that's where I *thought* they might be, but I wasn't sure. Thank you for the picture!

"Inexpressibly displeasing" instead of "makes me want to vomit" and censoring the entire Charlotte-authored slander sounds like someone did not like their royal ladies mentioning bodily functions, to put it mildly.

Exactly what I thought.

The edition I used was the one put up on German Amazon Kindle for free, here.

Wonderful! It's also free on Kindle in the US, and sure enough, there are the fistulas.

RIGHT? This makes so much more sense now! I don't think I would have raised an eyebrow at Wilhelmine silently protesting about the vomiting and fistula discussion taking place in front of the servants. Yeah, I guess I went with "don't let the servants hear you dissing the future queen," and now it's all clear!

now I am totally going to amend it to put the vomiting in. And maybe the fistulas too?

Hee! I deliberately avoided using the quote in mine and kept it to indirect discourse, to reduce overlap between our fics. So if anyone reads both of ours, it would be cool if they got to see the complete quote in yours.

Yeah, poor EC :( I would be terrified of saying anything but yes or no either :(

MacDonogh quote of unknown veracity, from the first meeting of Fritz and EC:

Elisabeth Christine was now informed of the identity of her future husband for the first time. She was asked if she liked him. She turned red and said, ‘Ja’.

Who was it who speculated that Fritz had prepared a bunch of witty one-liners beforehand to see if she could keep up, and then immediately wrote her off when she wasn't prepared for a pop quiz? I thought, "Ooh, that would be just like him," but I can't remember who it was.

lololol I noticed the orange peel thing too! I was quite proud that I could be all "well actually..." about it :D

It's so awesome how much you know now! Starting from zero, that's pretty great. :D

My German is on a 6-year-old level for sure; in the next set of AW letters which is described as being a 12-year-old writing on an 8-year-old level in vocab and syntax, I could mostly make out the syntax but not the vocab :P

I laughed so hard. 6 but not 8! But remember some of that letter was supplied by his tutor! So make sure you're judging only by what's not in parentheses. ;)

Well, dear friends, if you want a true challenge, try Wilhelmine, age 10, writing to FW (something I already translated into English when reviewing Oster's biography, but here's the German for you to practice:

"Ich bin sehr gekränkt darüber gewesen, daß Sie meinem Bruder die EHre erwiesen haben, ihm zu schreiben, und ich, die (Ihnen) schon 100 000 Briefe geschrieben hat, habe nie die Gnade gehabt, auch nur ein Wort aus Ihrer Hand zu empfangen. Ich weiß gut, daß mein Bruder mehr Anerkennung verdient als ich, weil er ein Junge ist, aber das ist nicht mein Fehler, wenn ich keiner bin, und ich bin doch auch die Tochter meines lieben Papa, und ich liebe ihn (...). Man hat mir auch gesagt, daß mein lieber Papa niemand anderem schreibt als Offizieren, und wenn das wahr ist, würde ich auch gerne einen militärischen Rang haben; Mademoiselle Leti sagt, daß ich gut ein Dragonerhauptmann sein könnte, wenn mein lieber Papa einen mit langen Kleid haben wollte, aber ich glaube, daß sie sich über mich lustig macht, indem sie das sagt."

Of course, Wilhelmine was the kid who already started writing letters when not yet five years old and who was the future bestelling author of the family. (Sorry, Fritz, but her memoirs outsold your poems by any standard.) (Your various historical works, too. They don't have FW getting punched.)

You did say that, and since Google is telling me that May 31 was a Tuesday, I'm assuming that was the day of his death.

However, I noticed that your translation, from Pleschinski's translation, goes like this:

I arrived on Friday evening in Potsdam, where I found the late King in such a sad state that I knew his ending was near. He gave me a thousand signs of his friendship and talked to me for a good hour about inner and foreighn affairs, and did this in complete clarity of mind, and with the firmest common sense. On Saturday, Sunday and Monday, too, he appeared very calm, did not hope for any improvement regarding himself, and bore his immense suffering with the greatest firmness; on Tuesday morning at 5 am, he put the government into my hands, and tenderly said farewell to my brothers, of all deserving officers, and of myself.

However, Trier has:

J'arrivai, le vendredi au soir, à Potsdam, où je trouvai le Roi dans une si triste situation, que j'augurai bientôt que sa fin était prochaine. Il me témoigna mille amitiés; il me parla plus d'une grande heure sur les affaires, tant internes qu'étrangères, avec toute la justesse d'esprit et le bon sens imaginables. Il me parla de même le samedi et le dimanche; le lundi, paraissant très-tranquille, très-résigné, et soutenant ses souffrances avec beaucoup de fermeté, il résigna la régence entre mes mains. Le mardi matin à cinq heures, il prit tendrement congé de mes frères, de tous les officiers de marque, et de moi.

I arrived on Friday evening in Potsdam, where I found the late King in such a sad state that I knew his ending was near. He gave me a thousand signs of his friendship and talked to me for a good hour about internal and foreign affairs, and did this in complete clarity of mind, and with the firmest common sense. He spoke to me of the same on Saturday and Sunday; on Monday, appearing very calm, not hoping for any improvement regarding himself, and bearing his immense suffering with the greatest firmness, he put the government into my hands. On Tuesday morning at 5 am, he tenderly took leave of my brothers, of all deserving officers, and of myself.

I'm guessing the punctuation in Fritz's original just isn't clearly decipherable. Did FW give over the reins of the government on Monday, or on Tuesday at 5 am?

The good news: if we don't know for sure, I can do what I want! Woohoo! (I mean, I can anyway, but I like to know when I'm departing from history intentionally.)

Tsk. Alas I can't ask Pleschinski what was up with the punctation! But yes, you can anyway. ;)

About 33 pages yesterday. SD is visiting Oranienburg.

Not much to comment on, except that that quote about AW and sex was not one you'd shared with us, Selena!

Im Gegensatz zu ihren Gatten fehlte es ihr offenbar an Humor

Google wants that to be that Louise lacked a sense of humor. Does it mean that, or does it mean that the gesture (the straw wreath symbolizing her virginity) was lacking in humor in her opinion? Because given the context and what Ziebura later says about being able to see why she didn't find it funny, the latter makes more sense to me. The former seems a bit harsh.

Given the letter AW writes about cunts, *I* can see why she didn't find it funny!

Google is right in that instance, but the implication by the larger text is "lacking in humor about this particular gesture", not lacking in humor in general.

And yes, the fratboy letter: welcome to 18th century misogyny, straight variation. I would not have wanted to be married to any of these brothers. (Sorry, Ferdinand, I know you were supposedly a good husband, but I'm not into uncle/niece incest.)

Mind you, I hope he was at least polite to Louise (and there's no report to the contrary), and clearly when later falling in love he did clue into the fact that there was more to both sex and women than that, but that letter certainly is something!

It's perhaps unfair to compare young AW with mature Franz Stephan, but just think of FS' advice to about to get married son Leopold for how to behave towards your wife for comparison. (A quick reminder: with gentilesse et courtoisie, humor and also the ability to look at things from her pov as well.) MT really got the best of them, his occasional affairs not withstanding.

Hmm, interesting. I could very well be mis-extrapolating! However, I would point out that even in the 19th century and well into the 20th centuries, I would fully expect Fritz of Wales, who was 21 when he went to England, to be treated like an adult at the dinner table, not a child! But Heinrich was like 6 in 1732, and that's what I was thinking of--not the adult or nearly-adult children. In which case, maybe I'm wrong and the 6-year-old could pipe up with his opinions whenever he wanted to, but "the adults are talking about things of interest to them while expecting the 6-year-old to be quiet" wouldn't necessarily strike me as a red flag for abuse.

"The adults and nearly-adults are talking about the future queen's alleged fistulas at dinner" does strike me as a very very dysfunctional family at best. :P

And the Tobacco Parliament was explicitly supposed to be etiquette-free, right? I doubt anyone for a moment forgot that FW was their monarch in terms of *what* they said, but as they drank and smoked and played practical jokes, I imagine he got spontaneously interrupted in the middle of a sentence during a lively discussion and was pleased rather than otherwise by the casualness.

But maybe even the little kids did always get to pipe up at will this century. I will keep that in mind, thank you. (When doing the servant research, I did initially project late 18th and early 19th century mores back in time, only to find out that the 18th century was a transitional period, with the early part of the century looking different than the latter, and the transition happening at different rates in different regions, so that travelers to other countries were shocked by the local customs. So that's when I started pulling my hair out at "I don't know what expectations of servants were like in 1732 Prussia, much less the weirdo court where FW wants to be a German burgher and SD wants to be a French queen! It was probably different on different days, depending on whether he was in residence or not.")

Having just checked and reread the passage, it sounds like inference to me, based on the fact Wolff was still on the Prussian index.

It read like an inference, but I couldn't tell if it was backed by a documentary fact.

Have we explained the index to

cahn? Are you familiar with this? It was the index of forbidden books, Index Librorum Prohibitorum, put out by the Pope/Catholic Church. Other states, like France and Spain, were theoretically bound by it, but the civil authorities also got to set their their own standards for legally enforceable censorship, so your work could end up banned in, say, France but not on the Index with a capital I, or vice versa. Or, as often happened, both. This is why a lot of publication happened in the Netherlands and England (and eventually Fritz's Prussia, as long as he didn't feel personally threatened by your work--freedom of speech ideals notwithstanding, he wasn't very consistent about how he dealt with criticisms of his own leadership¹. But you could at least challenge the Catholic Church there! Which was a huge boon to much of Europe.)

1: For example, the one

selenak likes to tell us about:

Fritz: ARREST that scoundr--oh, wait, I'm an enlightened monarch, aren't I? Darn.
Wilhelmine: Oh, good, because I was about to have to report his regrettable and totally unpreventable escape.

This sounds very plausible to me! Especially if AW managed to keep it hidden from Dad how he'd come across Wolff to begin with.

Oh, good point!

AW: Dad, I totally heard about this from some very respectable visiting officer from another country, who says he uses Wolff's arguments to argue for obedience to authority.
FW: Really? I thought people used him to argue that everything was predestined, so if you disobeyed your monarch and deserted the army, you weren't at fault. So that's why I kicked him out of the country without reading him.
FW: *reads Wolff*
FW: This is not at all what I thought he said. Mandatory reading for everyone! Money for Wolff!
Fritz to Suhm: That I should have lived to see the day! Triumph of reason ~~and AW's ability to get things out of Dad since the age of 5~~.

Google is right in that instance, but the implication by the larger text is "lacking in humor about this particular gesture", not lacking in humor in general.

Ah, thank you. In that case, I would definitely phrase that differently if I were writing this in English, because "she lacked a sense of humor" can only mean "in general" to me.

And yes, the fratboy letter: welcome to 18th century misogyny, straight variation. I would not have wanted to be married to any of these brothers.

Yeah, noooope.

(A quick reminder: with gentilesse et courtoisie, humor and also the ability to look at things from her pov as well.)

Thank you, I had indeed forgotten! Go FS.

I can read 10-year-old Wilhelmine! Only helped slightly by your previous translations. :D

Also, poor Wilhelmine. :(

They don't have FW getting punched.

At least one bowdlerized version of her memoirs doesn't either!

Frederick the Great, discussion post 16

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