cahn | Frederick the Great, discussion post 16

HAHAHA omg!! Yeeeeah that original French WITH the missing phrase is... something else. I agree with your translation :PP

I think we should write Blanning and let him know he used the WRONG edition of these letters, I bet he would love to know :D

Yes!! It explains all those things! The banging his head against FW2 and FW3 especially was something I didn't quite understand while reading Ziebura -- but this makes perfect sense of it.

haha as always this is a great writeup!!

Also *nods* It would be totally unsurprising to me that Fritz came out of his childhood with an addiction to praise and positive verbal reinforcement.

Oh, yeah. He did. So did FW2.

*stares pointedly at Fritz*

AHAHAHA YAY MORE BOOK SYNOPSES

Charles: Okay, but can you at least take a public stroll or two with me? Because then my creditors will be believe we're a match and will prolong my credit.
Sophie:.... I suppose.

AHAHAHA this is awesome!

Friedrich: Barbara Beuys likes me way more than my grandson did

HA.

Universal rejoicing: *happens* (Not an emotion FW would evoke much in future years)

heeeeee!

No, Barbara Beuys does not mention how I am related to chatty writer Pöllnitz. But I'm way more discreet. SC tells me everything but I destroy nearly all of her letters after her death.

Noooooo! How are we supposed to get our gossipy sensationalism hundreds of years later if you do that??

Friedrich: Frau von Wartensleben, you're now my official mistress. We don't need to have sex, do we?

HAHAHAHA

Selenak: Or maybe he decided to hate ballet for the rest of his life after having to dance in front of everyone as Cupid.

This... would... explain a lot, actually.

Sophie: Though I'm also thinking... how about your son FW marries my boy Georg Ludwig's daughter SD? Then you'd have a Hannover royal at court again!
Friedrich: This is a wonderful idea. Let's do that at once.

ooooof.

as a reminder, one of these is: That idiot Leibniz, who wants to teach me about the infinitesimally small! Has he therefore forgotten that I am the wife of Frederick the First, how can he imagine that I am unacquainted with my own husband?

I had forgotten, thank you for reminding me! It is still hilarious :P

have we mentioned this guy often enough that you know how he's related to a major actor of the Fritzian generation?

Uhh... no?

Katte's Grandpa Wartensleben! He of the "please don't kill my grandson" letter to FW and "no dice" response.

More Wartensleben background here. Ooh, I should put that in Rheinsberg.

TERRIER.

Oh, also, speaking of Heinrich and his money-wasting favorites, German wiki says the story that Fritz was involved in the decision to give Kaphengst Meseberg when he told Heinrich he had to kick him out of Rheinsberg is an oft-repeated but unsubstantiated claim. It says that Kaphengst was mostly living in Berlin at the time anyway.

If Fontane is our only source, and Ziebura doesn't mention it (at least that I remember in the one bio that I've read, and I was looking for it)...maybe? Do we think Fontane had access to a letter that we don't? If it was unprintable, it could have gotten disappeared!

Hahahaha. :DDD

Detective Mildred strikes again! It's funny, because I sat down this evening to talk about how I don't think Fritz would have said he wasn't having sex with Algarotti if he was, and use that as evidence for the low sex drive theory. But now that I was at the computer, I went and did my due diligence with Preuss (which is very hard to do on my phone), and lo and behold! Fritz is saying he DID have sex with Algarotti. And not as much as he wanted, at that. I had to do a 180 on my whole write-up!

Man, I have got to learn French and German. There's got to be a ton of goodies like that out there!

Oh, and now we're up to documentary evidence for a sexually active relationship with two of the boyfriends: Keith and Algarotti. (I still suspect I'm the first one to pick up on the very indirect but compelling evidence for the former. I would like to have a gander at the original FW order re Keyserlingk in the archives.

selenak, one day, post-pandemic, you're going to have to help me with this. ;) )

ETA: Also, props to Blanning for pointing me in the right direction. Long ago, I had skimmed the complete set of Algarotti letters in Preuss via Google translate, but I did *not* pick up on this aspect. Like MacDonogh, Blanning is a good person to have read. Both their books are chock full of useful information that I've been able to contribute to our discussions. They're just bad people to trust. (And to be fair, most authors are. Ziebura still gets flowers. And we take it back about Marwitz!)

Edited 2020-07-19 05:26 (UTC)

Fritz is saying he DID have sex with Algarotti. And not as much as he wanted, at that.

This is indeed a great discovery, and now I wonder how it might play into the story of the Hannover envoy about Georgii the handsome husar for whose sake Fredersdorf gets temporarily kicked out of the tent... in the summer of 1741, pray remember. Fritz, frustrated that sex with Algarotti is off the menu for now, goes for Georgii instead? With an additional bit of "I conquered Silesia, me!" power trip factoring in the temporary enstrangement with Fredersdorf?

I did remember! I was wondering exactly that! I honestly think the hussar story just became a tad more likely. Hmm. Did Fredersdorf find out Georgii had been concealing an STD?

Edited 2020-07-19 06:12 (UTC)

Hahaha, this is a great story.

I thought so, too, and very Charles II. #FavouriteStuartbyfar

My theory of seven years old FW's ballet appearance as Cupid causing life long aversion to ballet, and non-religious music: I see it meets with both your approval. :) To be fair, dancing ballet hadn't been coded as unmanly or undignified in that age, either. The Sun King himself famously performed as a ballet dancer in his younger years, FW's buddy Grumbkow danced as a child as well in court masques without this causing ballet trauma, and a generation later both MT and her sister as well as all of MT's children (male and female alike) would sing and dance at court performances as well. Still, Tiny Terror FW might have been the one kid of the age who regarded being made to hop around in public dressed up as Cupid as the height of parental injustice.

Is this perchance Carl Hinrichs, author of the 1936 publication Kronprinzenprozeß that you were so kind as to summarize for us?

The very same. (He does mention planning on a FW biography!) Beuys calls him an invaluable resource but says he was also "deeply tainted in brown" (tiefbraun eingefärbt), which in German means Nazi. (The NSDAP party uniform was in brown, so "Die Braunen" were the Nazis, just as "Die Roten" were the Social Democrats and Socialists.) (It is highly irritating to us Europeans that in the US the traditional color of socialism is used by the Conservatives.)

Re: Fénelon and his "how to be an enlightened man and monarch" book, Sophie Charlotte even had the man himself at her court for a while. And in terms of famous contemporary devoted readers who weren't monarchs, one of those was Leopold Mozart, who when the Mozarts did their first big European tour made a big detour in Western France just so that he could visit Fénelon's grave and put some flowers there. Given that the Mozarts, unlike modern day artists, had to finance their journeys themselves, that's true readerly devotion!

Friedrich: Barbara Beuys likes me way more than my grandson did

HA.

The more I read about Gramps, the more I am tempted to regard Fritz' withering critique as a combination of parental brainwashing and wanting make himself look better, because I'm with Voltaire: F1 had quite a few endearing qualities. He also loved playing the flute. (!) And he treated his wives far better than any of his grandsons (save Ferdinand), to say nothing of his son. Whether or not Beuys is right that the supposed quips SC made at his expense were just malicious gossip, he gave her Lietzenburg (later named Charlottenburg in her honor) so she'd have a place where he could only enter if she explicitly invited him and abided by that rule; there isn't a single misogynistic quip of his on record, and the sole woman he's reported to have shown a less than polite and gentlemanly attitude towards was his stepmother whom he suspected of having killed his brothers.

It's not in Ziebura, though it is in Christian von Krockow's double portrait of Fritz and Heinrich. (Which is where I first came across it, then I looked the sourceup in the relevant part of the Wanderungen.) Mind you, since Krockow uses Fontane as a source, it doesn't give a second citation. Otoh, Wiki also claims the Fredersdorf got dismissed because of money troubles tale without giving any citations for it, and I did not see anything in the footnote saying why they think the story about Fritz asking for Kaphengst's dismissal is wrong, either.

On the third hand: Fontane was a novelist. Though usually you can tell the part where he makes things up (like the description of Hans Heinrich returning from the wars and meeting his kid son) and where he tells stories he has from sources. Also, he provides an exact year for the order, the sum of the money, and the name of the man who supposedly delivered the order, so I do suspect he had the anecdote from a source, and money is on the page he names, von Wüllknitz. Here's the passage from the Wanderungen, verbatim:

Der König, der in seiner Sanssouci-Einsamkeit von allem unterrichtet war, mißbilligte, was in Rheinsberg vorging, und wollte dem »Verhältnis« à tout prix ein Ende machen. 1774 überbrachte deshalb ein Page des Königs (von Wülknitz) dem Prinzen Heinrich ein königliches Geschenk von 10000 Stück Friedrichsdor, freilich zugleich mit der Order, »daß er den Major von Kaphengst entlassen möge«, eine Order, deren Wortlaut sich hier der Möglichkeit der Mitteilung entzieht.

"Unanimously", wow. Dislike of Voltaire, of König, both, sympathy for Maupertuis, knowing which (Fritzian) side their bread was buttered? (Given that König did not, as far as I know, forge that Leipniz document.)

Thank you for the thorough write-up on the steady boyfriends and their shared traits. Also, poor EC. Even had she had the right gender, the only one of these she could have delivered was kindness/praise.

I hate to be a Debbie Downer, but it just occured to me why Preuss might have not censored that passage. Because les p.... might simply stand for „putains“, i.e. whores, which mid 19th century Preuss would not have written out, but indicated via p..., while still considering it within what the Hohenzollerns of his day would accept. Considering Fritz calling women „whores“ was published already elsewhere.

What‘s the French for „penis“ anyway?

Ah, no, you're right. That's a valid historical point and very plausible. I do see two occurrences of putain and two of putains allowed to stand in the correspondence (and none of pénis), per the search engine, but it's possible the context was more acceptable in those instances?

What‘s the French for „penis“ anyway?
According to Google translate, pénis or verge. I did check that before deciding to claim it could be "penis"! But I hadn't thought of putains.

I guess in this case the parallel structure would be we (Voltaire and I) can at least benefit from your esprit, even though the whores can't benefit from your body. I guess that makes more sense of the plural in "les p...", which was bothering me. This also means I have to retract my criticisms of Blanning's scholarship (well, not the literary trope one), pending further evidence. Apologies through the ether!

Huh. Okay, so if it's "whores," then the reason Fritz is only enjoying Algarotti's intellect is either because he now has an STD, or because they weren't having sex in the first place.

Blanning was interpreting it as likely to be the former, which I think influenced my reading of the passage when I first encountered it in the French. In favor of the latter: would Fritz be this cheerful about not getting to have sex with Algarotti, and would he be this blithe about "OMG, what if he infected me last time?"

ETA: Also, would Fritz say, "The whores can't enjoy your body" as code for "and neither can I, thanks a lot," if he were sleeping with Algarotti? I.e. would he class himself with the whores?

Back to thinking this might be low sex drive guy who doesn't care if he can't sleep with Algarotti...either that or Preuss did more censoring than we can tell without looking at the original.

Edited 2020-07-19 20:44 (UTC)

Also, would Fritz say, "The whores can't enjoy your body" as code for "and neither can I, thanks a lot," if he were sleeping with Algarotti? I.e. would he class himself with the whores?

Well, he does like those who pay better than those who get paid, so... Okay, more seriously now: if it‘s „putains“, I do think the passage makes it sound more likely he hasn‘t (yet?) had sex with Algarotti when he‘s writing it, and is definitely not concerned Algarotti might have infected him.

Mind you: that Algarotti tells him at all about the STD is interesting. Because when I recall Boswell‘s London journal, the first of his published diaries, and what I was reminded of when reading the Beuys biography again, Georg Wilhelm of Hannover telling Sophie about his, there‘s this common denominator: you tell your potential and actual sexual partners that you are infected, but you do not tell anyone else. (Your doctor, of course, knows.) It‘s definitely not something to boast of even among the guys, see also that sad scene of dying Seydlitz trying to hide his Syphilis-ravaged face when Fritz visits him the last time. Conversely, taunts that X had STD , amply documented in the thread, would not not work as taunts if it wasn‘t regarded as something shameful usually even by ribald guys.

Well, he does like those who pay better than those who get paid, so...

I laughed.

I do think the passage makes it sound more likely he hasn‘t (yet?) had sex with Algarotti

If he hasn't had sex with him yet, he's not going to, imo. The most likely times were those few days in September 1739, and July 1740 up until the time of writing of this letter. It's November 29, 1740; on December 16, Fritz will be in Silesia without Algarotti, and Algarotti will depart for Turin on December 24. He will then not see Fritz again for a year, when he will, thoroughly fed up, leave Breslau the day after Fritz arrives. He will soon after go to Saxony and not see him again until 1747, at which point things are still apparently somewhat tense between them.

but you do not tell anyone else. (Your doctor, of course, knows.)

Do you tell your king why you can't come to Rheinsberg to hang out with him and Voltaire? Or, if you've had as many partners as Algarotti probably has, does word get out anyway? I mean, do we think Ludwig v. Wreech had sex with Kaphengst? Lehndorff apparently knew (or "knew") without having had sex with Kaphengst! Containing information is hard, and I have low confidence that it was successful.

Also, Voltaire knows (from Fritz?), without having had sex with Algarotti, so again, I think the grapevine is at work. Fritz might have found out without Algarotti having had to tell him qua past or future partner.

I agree that Fritz seems markedly chill about Algarotti having an STD, and that that's evidence for no past sex between them and a lack of upset about the prospect of future sex. On the other hand, maybe what Blanning was getting at was that Fritz the extremely gay wanted to *start* having sex with Algarotti but never got to, because STD. I think I've read somewhere that Algarotti might have been infected already in 1739. If so, maybe Fritz is resigned and sympathetic but not upset in November 1740, because this is old news, and he hasn't been infected.

would not not work as taunts if it wasn‘t regarded as something shameful usually even by ribald guys.

I don't know. Sex jokes in general work because sex is a taboo topic, not because you're necessarily so ashamed of everything you've done that you wouldn't confess it to a friend or boast about it among the guys. And things that are shameful if the general public knows about them (Fritz and Heinrich being gay in Voltaire's pamphlet) aren't necessarily things that didn't come out in private (Fritz and Heinrich being open-secret gay among friends).

And as for Fritz accusing Marwitz of having an STD, it works as a taunt because he's trying to drive Marwitz and Heinrich apart as sexual partners, by accusing Marwitz of having been unfaithful and deceitful, which I think has no bearing on whether Algarotti would have confided in (not necessarily boasted to) Fritz about the effects of going to the brothels, or rumor would have reached Fritz indirectly. Maybe Algarotti's sex life is something he and Fritz talk openly about and write orgasm poems about, though they don't actively have sex. I think it's quite possible they had a flirtatious, sexually-charged, non-fluid-exchanging relationship, whether because of Fritz's sex drive or Algarotti's STD or both.

Btw, I don't consider your plausible putains hypothesis a Debbie Downer scenario; I've personally headcanoned Fritz with a low sex drive since 1999, and am only trying to be open to new evidence. ;) He may have had a normal sex drive and only avoided having sex with Algarotti because infections; that is a third possibility.

I mean, do we think Ludwig v. Wreech had sex with Kaphengst? Lehndorff apparently knew (or "knew") without having had sex with Kaphengst!

Well, Ludwig v. Wreech would have been in charge of paying the doctor(s) for both Kaphengst's and the actor(s) from Heinrich's troupe treatments. This said, I take your point about how the grapevine works.

I think it's quite possible they had a flirtatious, sexually-charged, non-fluid-exchanging relationship, whether because of Fritz's sex drive or Algarotti's STD or both.

Having read some of those early "my swan" letters, definitely sexually charged. Incidentally, wasn't Algarotti supposed to console Lord Hervey in 1739? To say nothing of the pining Lady Mary? One has to wonder why he never tried "I have an STD" to put her off? (Perhaps he knew she'd still go "we can have a beautiful meeting of the minds anyway"?)

Having read some of those early "my swan" letters, definitely sexually charged.

The swan letters and the orgasm poem!

Incidentally, wasn't Algarotti supposed to console Lord Hervey in 1739?

Early 1739. There was still time for him to pick up an STD in the 6 months between Hervey in London and Fritz in Rheinsberg, when he hit Helsinki, St. Petersburg, Danzig, Dresden (probably a good place to pick up an STD), and Leipzig. (Possibly Berlin and Potsdam, I'd have to check whether that was before or after Rheinsberg.)

One has to wonder why he never tried "I have an STD" to put her off?

Maybe he did and what we see are the results? (I knew someone who once told someone who wanted to make out with him that he had mono. Her response? "I don't mind!" His response: *backing away slowly*)

Not that I suspect Lady Mary of wanting to have sex with an STD-riddled Algarotti, but maybe what we're seeing is her desire to have a beautiful meeting of the minds anyway. Or, maybe it didn't occur to him until he actually had one, by which time she was on her way to Italy already.

ETA: Well, Ludwig v. Wreech would have been in charge of paying the doctor(s) for both Kaphengst's and the actor(s) from Heinrich's troupe treatments.

In Rheinsberg, your past self actually recorded the exact transmission to Lehndorff:

After a few days, I receive a letter from Buchholtz, the esteemed secretary of Prince Heinrich and without a doubt the most diligent of his servants. He tells me that the prince has travelled to Braunschweig with Herr v. Knyphausen, but has left Kaphengst behind, since the later has been stopped from travelling by a strong outbreak of the French sickness which he has picked up from German and French drama players.

I wonder if Fritz was paying for Algarotti's doctor?

Edited 2020-07-20 05:47 (UTC)

Possibly any or all of those, but also the fact that it was a copy and König couldn't produce the original. My impression is it took some serious Leibnizian scholarship a hundred years later to establish that it probably wasn't a forgery, scholarship probably none of the Academy members were prepared to do in 1752.

I don't know if anyone knew when they voted just how involved Fritz would end up getting, but Maupertuis *was* their boss and on good terms with the King, and Voltaire was the interloper, so there's that.

ETA: Now that I've checked the dates again, I see that when they first voted, Voltaire wasn't really involved yet. He got involved after the decision.

Edited 2020-07-20 05:31 (UTC)

Yes, I remember you saying it was in Krackow, but if he got it from Fontane, then Fontane is our source no matter how many people repeat him.

I did not see anything in the footnote saying why they think the story about Fritz asking for Kaphengst's dismissal is wrong, either.

No, they definitely don't make a convincing argument. The only reason (unsubstantiated) they give is that Kaphengst mostly lived in Berlin at the time anyway. Which, since that didn't stop him from spending all of Heinrich's money, wouldn't have stopped Fritz from saying "Dump him or else." Although I do wonder, if he mostly wasn't living in Rheinsberg, how on earth Fritz would have been satisfied with Heinrich buying him Meseberg as technically satisfying the terms of the conditions, especially since Lehndorff reports Kaphengst hanging out at Rheinsberg anyway.

Otoh, Wiki also claims the Fredersdorf got dismissed because of money troubles tale without giving any citations for it

Indeed, and if it were Wiki vs. Krackow/Fontane, I would accept Krackow/Fontane without further comment! But it seems to be Ziebura vs. Krackow/Fontane, since she not only omits the story but gives an alternate reason, and I was wondering if she knows something we don't know.

I think Fontane also got something else wrong, Fredersdorf's marriage year, maybe? but point taken about the convincing amount of detail in this account. I want to believe it's true. :P (The thing that makes *me* doubt is, as I've alluded to, Fritz taking Heinrich's defiance lying down. Especially if he really is worried about Kaphengst getting his hands on the treasury someday.)

Orgasm poem: this reminds me - do we have any kind of reaction from Algarotti about this? Either to Fritz himself or to third parties?

Because I might misremember, but I think Darget's reaction to him getting a starring role in the Palladion was at the very least mixed. With the caveat that I only read the old online translation, not the new one, I've seen reviewers of the new Palladion translation say it has sexually charged descriptions of Darget in it and go on about the homosexual gaze of it all. Even the defanged translation from Team Volz which is online (and does not have gay sex, both of the enforced and the voluntary type) does go on about what a handsome fellow he was. And Darget - who if the anecdote of his and D'Argens' rivalry which included D'Argens interfering in Darget's affair with a (female) ballet dancer (not the one D'Argens himself ended up with) that's up at Trier is anything to go by was at the very least bi, if not more het enclined - went eventually back to France Though maybe I'm misremembering and he just quit Fritz' service because Fritz was exhausting as a human being. But him and Heinrich remained close pen pals after Darget left Berlin, which btw makes Catt really the outlier among Fritz' readers since Heinrich also got alone fine with (pre treason) Abbé de Prades, and with Thiebault. Whereas I don't think Darget and Fritz remained in contact.

Now Algarotti, at the time world renowned intellectual and traveller, was a far more independent party than Darget, former secretary of the French envoy, so I'm assuming that Fritz writing the orgasm poem was just part of how they talked to and about each other at the time (i.e. sexually charged banter), that they both enjoyed it and that Algarotti might even have initialized it. But otoh, sexually charged poetry by itself is not necessarily a signal that the recipient/object of same is happy about it and fine with it. (Unless I'm misremembering about Darget.)

No, you're not misremembering. It's hard to find info on Darget, but I've turned up this letter from Voltaire to Madame Denis, dated October 9, 1751:

You must know that his Majesty, in his after-dinner stories, has insinuated a number of little things about his secretary, Darget, at which the secretary is horrified. He makes him play a very odd role in his poem, the Palladium: and the poem is in print. It is true, there are very few copies to be had.

What shall I say? That there is no need to be inconsolable if the great love the nobodies though they laugh at them? But suppose they laugh at them and do not love them--what then? We must laugh in our turn, in our sleeves, and leave them not the less. I must have a little time to remove the money I have invested in the funds here. I shall devote this time to work and patience: and the rest of my life to you.

I also remember us talking about this before, about how Darget was *not* happy about his poem, but Algarotti seems to have been. At least he stayed on good terms with Fritz afterward, as far as I can tell.

Now, Voltaire may not be the most reliable of sources when it comes to trashing Fritz, but I totally buy that Darget wasn't happy. Writing about how you had great sex with a woman (at least nominally) is not the same thing as writing about how you got repeatedly raped by men and/or had close calls with the same.

And Algarotti was regaling Fritz with bawdy songs and poems (admittedly not about Fritz) during that same trip on which the orgasm poem got written. Pending further evidence, I think they just sexually bantered a lot. This might actually have contributed to emotionally tone-deaf Fritz thinking that Darget would be perfectly happy with a royal poem about his imaginary sex life! After all, Algarotti was happy with his! Darn ungrateful readers.

(Aren't you glad you're a royal reader of the 21st century and not at Fritz's court?)

Frederick the Great, discussion post 16

Re: Algarotti's STD and Fritz's sexuality

Re: Not his type?

Re: Not his type?

Re: Not his type?

Re: All About Grandma: Barbara Beuys: Sophie Charlotte

Re: All About Grandma: Barbara Beuys: Sophie Charlotte

Re: All About Grandma: Barbara Beuys: Sophie Charlotte

Re: Not his type?

Re: Algarotti's STD and Fritz's sexuality

Re: Algarotti's STD and Fritz's sexuality

Re: Algarotti's STD and Fritz's sexuality

Re: All About Grandma: Barbara Beuys: Sophie Charlotte

Re: All About Grandma: Barbara Beuys: Sophie Charlotte

Re: Not his type?

Re: Not his type?

Re: Algarotti's STD and Fritz's sexuality

Re: Algarotti's STD and Fritz's sexuality

Re: Algarotti's STD and Fritz's sexuality

Re: Algarotti's STD and Fritz's sexuality

Re: Algarotti's STD and Fritz's sexuality

Re: Algarotti's STD and Fritz's sexuality

Re: Not his type?

Re: Not his type?

Re: Algarotti's STD and Fritz's sexuality

Re: Algarotti's STD and Fritz's sexuality