Frederick the Great, discussion post 16
Jul. 14th, 2020 09:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cahnWe have slowed down a lot, but are still (sporadically) going! And somehow filled up the last post while I wasn't looking!
...I was asked to start a new thread so that STDs could be discussed. Really! :D
...I was asked to start a new thread so that STDs could be discussed. Really! :D
Re: AW readthrough
Date: 2020-09-01 02:14 am (UTC)Yeah. :/ Unfortunately, unlike (parts of) his bad condolence letters, I don't think the part that
See, this is why I'm loving the apocryphal story about Elisabeth's reaction to a similar Fritz command so much. (And am without pity for George Keith, if it was him who brought the command.)
I so hope that story was real. You go, Messalina!
Re: "How I Survived..." and "A Family Affair"
Date: 2020-09-01 02:17 am (UTC)Re: AW readthrough
Date: 2020-09-01 03:15 am (UTC)She thought it was hilarious and had a great laugh.
Unfortunately, I couldn't convey the last part, which was JUST AS GREAT.
You win this round by A LOT, Heinrich! :DDDDD
Selena wins all the internets!
Re: AW readthrough
Date: 2020-09-01 03:35 am (UTC)Re: AW readthrough
Date: 2020-09-01 04:28 am (UTC)Selena wins all the internets!
Yes! Yes she does!!
Re: AW readthrough
Date: 2020-09-01 04:29 am (UTC)Re: AW readthrough
Date: 2020-09-01 04:49 am (UTC)Ah, but wouldn't it make sense for an unmarried young woman to live with her brother and his wife instead of in the palace? Especially if the King has started to make unwanted eyes at her?
Anything he doesn't control is going to end badly for him. And it does get worse with age, because he gets into a bad feedback loop, and the people he used to kinda sorta trust, because he got to know them when he was younger, keep dying off, and trusting new people is Not On.
Otoh: Lucchessini! Now granted, just because people as different as Zimmermann and Lehndorff think Fritz totally opened up to him doesn't have to mean it's true; Lucchessini's published diary doesn't contain any new soul baring reveals, after all, and it's only our guesswork he's the confidant from Fritz' last years who temporarily made Zimmermann doubt his broken penis thesis by telling him Fritz said he had sex shortly before the 7 Years War. But: Lehndorff could be on to something with his theory that Luccessini reminded Fritz of Algarotti, and it is true that Lucchessini was around Fritz constantly through the 80s, and as opposed to several of the other readers managed not to either make enemies or end things badly with Fritz, but went on to make a career in politics (and get a half admiring, half sarcastic remark about his flexible stomach on the table of the powerful from Goethe years later).
Something else worth pointing out is that Fritz was more the norm than the exception when it comes to being a powerful man emotionally unable to encourage and train a successor in time. This is true for non-monarchs as well: as many a historian has said, Bismarck's most fatal mistake was firstly, creating a system which worked with Bismarck as Chancellor, but had absolutely no safety nets if you got the combination of a) an Emperor like Willy, and b) chancellors less able than Bismarck, and secondly, not in his later years to promote and mentor able people who could have followed him. It's the power instinct/corruption, the control issues, the unability of staring your own mortality in the face, of this, and it's really true for more people of power than not.
The one fascinating exception I can think of is Richelieu. Who was as despotic as they come and invented the absolute monarchy a generation before Louis XIV, but who when he met young Giulio Mazzarini thought "Aha!", wooed him away from Italy, mentored him in his service, got him that Cardinal's hat in his (Richelieu's) last year of life and on his deathbead made the also ailing Louis XIII. promise he'd appoint Mazarin to take over from Richelieu, thus ensuring a smooth transition of administration to someone who actually knew what they were doing.
Most other men (and a few women) of power, though, seem to have suffered from that syndrome described in Robert Graves' "I, Claudius", where successive emperors are absolutely on board with appointing someone they know to be worse as their successor because it'll make them look better in the eyes of posterity instead of them being outshone.
The fact that he's inheriting feudal estates from Comte Rottembourg is already something I'm wrestling with: where do Enlightenment values intersect with slightly-less-traumatized-but-still-traumatized control issues and desire to make a profit off the estates?
Well, you can actually make more profit if your peasants don't drop like flies but are in good physical shape and have reason to think you're a good boss. I'd like to point to one Voltaire here, who managed to turn Ferney into a model estate (which also included school for all the children) and profitted handsomely from it.
Re: AW readthrough
Date: 2020-09-01 07:52 pm (UTC)Maybe, but was that a thing? I rather thought ladies-in-waiting lived in the palace, particularly if the Queen needed something at night. Though I guess you don't need the *whole* array of ladies for that... Also, I would think not having to pay rent in expensive Berlin (or at least it was expensive ten years later) would be a major perk of working at the palace.
Related: I remembered you saying recently that *Volz* says that FW-puncher was the mother of Sophie von Voss, but looking at the Volz passage in question, I don't see where he talks about the punching. Admittedly, my ability to read German in any font is still limited, never mind that font. But rereading your report, it's possible you meant that Volz and you both independently noticed that the editor sucks at details, and the bit about FW puncher being the mother of Sophie was your own example? (He sucks either way.)
Did Volz say it was her mother, or was that, as I now think, you?
the "Frau von Pannewitz" which Wilhelmine mentions as the FW puncher
I had (only after running across Sophie's memoirs while betaing for "Survived") looked at the French and noticed it was "la demoiselle de Pannewitz," but because she was a lady in waiting, I was willing to accept that maybe she was married, or Wilhelmine had misremembered her age at the time of the punching.
The English just says "young lady," which could go either way for someone who was 30, especially being written about ten years later by someone who wasn't there and might have remembered her as being young, before she moved to Bayreuth. (My brothers are forever 3 and 10 in my head, the age at which I went to college and stopped seeing them regularly.)
But now that I have the German in my possession, I see that it is indeed "Fräulein von Pannewitz," not "Frau."
My fic has been updated, and I'm now struggling with my mental Rolodex. :P (Notice how long it took to update all mental database entries referring to Katte's stepmother's death!)
Otoh: Lucchessini!
For personal confidences, yes; for political/administrative delegation?
as opposed to several of the other readers managed not to either make enemies or end things badly with Fritz
Hmm. I think it goes:
Jordan: died in 1745 on good terms with Fritz.
Darget: 1746 - ~1752, apparently unhappy about starring in the satirical porn, according to a doctored letter from Voltaire to Madame Denis, but possibly also supported by a poem from Fritz to Darget saying, in essence, "I know it's not always easy working for me."
"Le roi m'a dit" de Prades: 1753 - 1757, imprisoned briefly for espionage.
L'autre "le roi m'a dit" Catt: 1758 - 1782, dismissed for financial irregularities.
Lucchesini: 1780?-1786, lasted out Fritz's lifetime on good terms.
So yeah, it had been a while since a reader managed that!
Something else worth pointing out is that Fritz was more the norm than the exception when it comes to being a powerful man emotionally unable to encourage and train a successor in time.
True, and even in the corporate world, you get leaders who would rather shine than allow anyone else to shine. Again, it's the zero-sum approach.
Well, you can actually make more profit if your peasants don't drop like flies but are in good physical shape and have reason to think you're a good boss. I'd like to point to one Voltaire here, who managed to turn Ferney into a model estate (which also included school for all the children) and profitted handsomely from it.
Very true. What I'm wondering is not so much how well he treats them, but how much does he protest, either publicly or privately, against the existence of feudalism when he lives in France and isn't a monarch but a feudal landholder?
Re: AW readthrough
Date: 2020-09-02 03:00 am (UTC)Read 20 pages, through the end of chapter 4. AW is a fratboy but loyal (if somewhat naive) brother. I guess when everyone likes you, you give people the benefit of the doubt
until they repeatedly and publicly do their level best to crush you.* Fritz is beginning the military humiliation of AW already, AW actually submits this time and Fritz acts all benevolently forgiving but fools no one. I can see why 1) Fritz expected him to do it again a few years later, and 2) AW refused to.
* Fritz: "I don't owe anyone an accounting of my decisions."
Peter Keith, in "Lovers": "I wish he would talk to me, instead of handing down judgments on stone tablets from Mount Sinai. I know he's made a point of never explaining himself since he became king, but..."
:/
* Fritz: When my siblings marry into HRE principalities, that makes them part of Prussia and subject to me, right? That's how it works? I'm pretty sure that's how it works.
* Wilhelmine writes to Fritz that she married in order to get him out of Küstrin. Previously, the only place I'd seen this claim was in her memoirs. Now, since she married in November and he wasn't released until February, after *he'd* agreed to marry, I've always wondered what was up with that. In my Christmas '32 fic, I went with "FW lied." This seems entirely consistent with, "Fritz, have some boundaries with your sister. Wilhelmine, I have no idea why he's being so cold toward you, but if it's because he's afraid of me, I'm extremely offended. It's like he doesn't trust me or something!"
But...is there any documentary evidence that FW told her he'd let Fritz out if she married? Or that it did indeed influence his decision?
* OMG, Fritz is withholding money from Sonsine now? I like Sonsine! *frowny face*
* Aww, the most beautiful skeleton in Europe. I remember that. It's touching and sad at the same time.
* Ahh, Amalie and Ulrike would rather have been boys. I bet! Enforced gender roles suck. :/
* Spoiler request: is Ulrike going to stay happy with her marriage?
* Der Bankier habe seinem Sekretär erzählt, dass man mit der Annahme von Juwelen als Pfand sehr vorsichtig geworden sei, seitdem der Vater des russischen Thronfolges die Bank betrogen hätte, indem sich erst bei näherer Prüfung herausgestellt hatte, dass ein Teil der Steine falsch waren.
Help me out with the German here? Because once upon a time, you told us that Ulrike's jewels were found to be fake, but if I were encountering this sentence without having been told that, I would have concluded that the banker explained to the secretary that the bank had become very cautious about accepting jewelry as collateral, ever since the time the father of the Russian heir to the throne (future Prussian Pete's late father, the Duke of Holstein-Gottorp and one-time claimant to the Swedish throne) had swindled the bank, in that on closer inspection, part of his jewels turned out to be fake.
But this is saying that part of *Ulrike's* jewels are fake? I read through the rest of the chapter to see if there was a different passage that referred to her jewels being fake, but I didn't find anything. Or does this say what I think it says, but you got the part about Ulrike's jewels being fake from somewhere else?
* AW: I learned two things from my brother. One, the ruler being the first servant of the state is the way to go. Two, unrestricted power with no accountability is not.
* "my brother" means AW, and "the King" is Fritz (who previously was "my brother" throughout). You bet that sentence was written at the height of the quarrel.
Ziebura seems to think that sentence reflects Wilhelmine's feelings at the time: that like a seismograph (a Fritzmograph?), she had already picked up on the first signs of Fritz isolating himself and driving everyone else away. But the evidence Ziebura gives is largely from the memoirs, which were written during the quarrel, and also Wilhelmine's "But why don't you write me more?!" letters from before that, when she's worried about him dying during the war.
* Oh,
Re: AW readthrough
Date: 2020-09-02 04:00 am (UTC)I'm... possibly going to be running behind again, because I have to finish more RL stuff (kid school starting is taking more time than I expected) but I promise I will catch up at some point.
Meanwhile... I have a request for the new post; when you make a readthrough post, can you change the subject header so that it reflects something about what the reading was about? That would be helpful to me if possible :)
Re: Daddykink for iberiandoctor
Date: 2020-10-05 07:42 am (UTC)But, my dear Suhm, do not forget the tenderness which you owe to an infant whom you have not yet weaned in the school of philosophy. What would I have become?
He weaned him on something, all right, like all good daddies would XD
Re: Daddykink for iberiandoctor
Date: 2020-10-05 10:26 pm (UTC)Your AO3 comment on the Fritz/Fredersdorf fic you got for RMSE! We tend to do historical discussion of AO3 fics here on DW, to keep things together, but I should have realized you wouldn't be getting notified of 1 million comments per day like the rest of us. ;)
He weaned him on something, all right, like all good daddies would XD
Suhm was certainly a sugar daddy!