Frederick the Great, discussion post 16

[cahn]

We 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

Comments

Re: With You, There's a Heaven - Music

[mildred_of_midgard]

I was writing the Fritz+Wilhelmine flute+lute duet, and I went looking for a composer that would fit the bill and that Fritz might approve of. (This is the hard part for me: I have no knowledge of music, so unless someone specifically says Fritz liked/did not like this composer, I have no way of deciding, "This kind of music falls into a category that Fritz liked/disliked.")

I found Ernst Gottlieb Baron, who joined Fritz at Rheinsberg, followed him to court when he became king, and died in his service. He composed for the flute and lute. Perfect!

Since he was a string player (lute and theorbo) himself, and his compositions don't come with dates on Wikipedia, it's possible he only started composing for the flute after working for Fritz, which he hadn't yet done in 1732. But since we don't know, by authorial fiat, I say he composed for the flute and lute already in 1732, and Wilhelmine, who was looking for duets to play with her brother, acquired some by him.

Then I found that he was also a musical theorist who wrote books, and I wanted a recently published music theory book in German for Wilhelmine to mention to Fritz, and for Fritz to pass on to Fredersdorf. I tried to use Baron, but then it turned out his only publication before 1732 was on the lute specifically.

So after conferring with cahn and agreeing that his 1727 book on the lute wasn't quite suitable, I had to go digging again.

I found Johann David Heinichen. He published Der General Bass in der Composition, or Basso Continuo in Composition, in 1728. Googling around told me this was an expanded version of a volume he'd written earlier, and gave me this abstract:

Johann David Heinichen’s General-Bass in der Composition (Dresden, 1728) is one of the major sources on the study and practice of harmony in eighteenth-century Europe. It stands alongside writings by Mattheson, Rameau, and C. P. E. Bach as an expression of Enlightenment-era rationalization and rule-making about not only harmony but performance, composition, and even aesthetics.

cahn agreed that this would be of potential interest to Fritz and Fredersdorf in 1732.

But how does Fritz feel about Heinichen? He was a composer at the Dresden court who produced mostly religious music, so could go either way, and he died in 1729, so there was no chance of him being hired by Fritz, and relatively little chance of him being badmouthed by name. Then I found that, like Blavet, Heinichen gave Quantz composition lessons. Perfect!

I even told myself that because he came from Dresden, it was even more likely that Suhm would have a copy of his book lying around in his library than Baron's, since if Suhm had any great interest in music, I haven't run across it.

So that's how these passages, with the help of my wonderful music beta, evolved.

In anticipation of his visit, Wilhelmine had acquired some pieces for flute and lute by Ernst Baron. When she mentioned that she'd read his book on the lute, and found it interesting, she did so expecting Fritz to scoff when she had to admit that it hadn't yet been translated into French, but instead he looked oddly interested. So they talked for a while about music theory, and then they began to play.

Then he looked down at his book, and up at Fredersdorf, in one of his rapid-fire changes of topic. "If I could get you some books in German, would you be interested? There's one on the theory of composition that might be to your liking."

"Basso Continuo in Composition," Fredersdorf murmured, as his eyes lingered on the covers. "Thank you, sir. Thank you."

Re: With You, There's a Heaven - Suhm

[mildred_of_midgard]

It just occurred to me that this quote, from Fritz to Suhm, which I put in the daddykink comment for iberiandoctor, is *more* indirect evidence for my explanation of the "Diaphanes" nickname:

for I feel that I need your eyes to see, and that, losing sight of my guide, I run the risk of losing my way.

Headcanon!

Servants - part 1

[mildred_of_midgard]

As part of the research for "How I Survived My First Christmas with the Hohenzollerns", cahn and I split the costs for a book called Domestic Enemies: Servants and Their Masters in Old Regime France, and I read and summarized parts of it for her!

There were way more parts that I thought were interesting, but due to limited computer time, I will copy-paste what I emailed her for now, and will at some point get around to summarizing or at least copy-pasting the best parts from the rest of the book. But for now, here's the email I sent (in two parts because comment length restrictions).

You will notice that I'm addressing very specific historical beta questions she had. Please weigh in on any opinions, additional evidence, or counterevidence you may have. In many cases, I'm blatantly speculating and even throwing my hands up, because of the perennial "FW is sui generis" problem.

---

Caveat that this is France, but I'll try to make allowances for both Prussia and FW when answering your specific questions.

Oh, the author is a history professor, and it's full of notes and charts and graphs and data and stuff, and reliance on primary sources. I don't promise it's all correct or representative, or that I would agree with her interpretations of everything if I went through the data myself, but it's a promising start. (Totally worth our combined $10!)

Dragooning Fredersdorf: Yes!
"From gentlemanly secretary to lowly servante: this then was the servant hierarchy in seventeenth- and early eighteenth -century households. But we should not take either the status distinctions or the division of labor it implied too seriously. For Old Regime French households were not like English country houses of the nineteenth century, where each servant's task was strictly delimited (at Hatfield House servants' duties were spelled out in printed regulations), and the lady's maid would have felt insulted had she been asked to clean the parlor. Instead, memoirs show that even specialized servants often stepped outside their usual roles. Valets de chambre cooked for their employers when the need arose; cooks were summoned from the kitchen to run errands when no one else was available; a mere lackey who caught his master's fancy might be asked to play the role of valet de chambre and read to his employer or amuse his guests."

I feel comfortable translating this to FW's household.

Where does Fredersdorf sleep? Depends.
Either in a small room adjoining Fritz's so as to be on call 24/7, or in the servants' quarters. If in the servants' quarters, in France it would be a dormitory separated by gender, and the room would probably be filled with just beds. Servants might have beds of their own or might have to share a bed with other servants. FW is no doubt trying to save money, so servants probably have to share beds. But the author points out that a bed of one's own would be a luxury to someone from a peasant background anyway (which I already knew).

Fritz was allowed to have the servant who shaved him sleep with him even in Küstrin, except for the very strictest part of his confinement, so I assume FW would let Fredersdorf sleep with/near him at court. But if you want Fredersdorf with the other servants, you could have someone else sleeping with Fritz and Fredersdorf not having gotten that promotion yet (it's only been a year).

Where does Fredersdorf eat? Kitchen.
In a French nobleman's establishment, in a very specific kitchen. In FW's world, I kind of doubt he's paying for a separate room that has to be especially heated, just to produce desserts, so probably just the only kitchen.

But since I found the bit about multiple kitchens fascinating, here's what French nobles got up to:

"Most noble hôtels had at least two kitchens, the kitchen proper, where the maître d'hôtel and the cuisinier, assisted by numerous aides and garçons de cuisine, reigned supreme, and the office, domain of the officier who had charge of the household's bread, wine, silver, and linen and created its preserves, candies, liqueurs,and desserts. The office was necessary because the preparation of desserts and reserves involved sugar, which absorbs moisture readily from the air and is then useless in many recipes. Such preparations therefore had to be done away from the moist and steamy air ofthe main kitchen. The main feature of the office was an étuve, a storage space for sugar, candy, and the like, heated with a charcoal brazier to insure a constant flow of warm dry air. Because of its pleasant atmosphere, the office was the place where the households' servants ate their meals and spent their free time."

Does Fredersdorf talk to Pannewitz? Probably not, but for different reasons than I thought.
So as I said in one of my previous rambly emails, the 18th century is a transitional period for servants. They start out occupying the same physical space as their masters, maybe just hanging out in a different part of the room, eating lower at the table, but extremely visible. In this case, they interact a lot. By the 19th century, architecture is set up to keep them completely separate. In our period? It varies by decade and country.

In 17th century England, Pepys took it for granted that servants were included in their masters' games and conversations. In the late 18th century, an English visitor to Italy is shocked that the servants are behaving so improperly as to occasionally comment on what their master is saying to someone else.

In early 18th century France, lackeys are hanging out in antechambers, in the same physical space as the masters' guests, and are joining in their card games and talking to them. Are they trash talking their masters? Hopefully not often; the masters are in the next room. But are they talking about innocuous stuff, or at least having comments addressed to them? Evidently.

Late 18th century France, this is a no go.

Early 18th century Prussia? So the interesting thing here is not only that Prussia is a much less elaborate version of France. It's that FW behaves like a middle-class man (the fact that he picks out his ideal wife--EC--as someone Lehndorff says would be well suited as a burgher's wife is very telling), emphasis on privacy, intimacy, sexual fidelity, and responsible money management over public display. Fritz is an absolutely fascinating contradiction between the French style and his father's middle class style that drove contemporaries and posterity alike crazy, but in his personal life, he was known for an unusual craving for privacy compared to his contemporaries, even German ones. There's a reason Versailles has one gazillion rooms and Sanssouci had 12 people in residence, including staff, when Fritz wasn't entertaining important guests.

So you're going to simultaneously see Fritz and FW putting their lives less on public display in front of servants, and doing more things that servants would do, which will lead to both more and less mingling with servants.

Then there's SD, who's trying to be all French, all the way. So she might really want a lot of lackeys standing around looking good in her room, and they might then have a chance to mingle with the guests. But! The antechamber is for the people who haven't (yet) been admitted to the inner chamber, and they're desperately trying to get in. So I doubt Pannewitz, as a personal friend of the Queen, is often going to be left cooling her heels outside the inner circle. And if she is, if she does end up talking to Fredersdorf, it's going to be in a very public venue, so anything she says will reach the Queen.

This French arrangement is probably also when FW is not in residence, which is not the case for the Christmas visit. (Things apparently got much more French when he was away.)

So for slightly different and more decade-appropriate reasons, I'm going to go with: Pannewitz is not the person to dish out the gossip on the Hohenzollerns to Fredersdorf.

How does Fredersdorf spend his time with the other servants? Good question.
In France, he would spend it playing cards and gossiping. Including in the antechamber, where apparently, if you sat off to the side and read a book and didn't participate in the communal activities, you were snubbed forever by the other servants. Which, of course, tells you people did it (that so would have been me), but that they should take some heat for it.

In Prussia...well, SD was apparently allowed by FW to play cards as long as she pretended she was gambling for coffee beans, i.e. just playing for fun, and not gambling for high stakes. As soon as he left the room, of course, she went back to gambling like a proper royal/noblewoman of France.

Thanks to Lehndorff, we know a lot of card-playing happened among the nobility at EC's court, and she was FW-approved pious lady. So unless Selena knows something very specific about servants at FW's court in 1732 that I don't, the way for Fredersdorf to bond with the other servants is to play cards with them when he's not busy doing something else. Small problem: normal servant life in our period is typically long periods of boredom, standing around waiting on your master to need you, interspersed with briefer periods of actual activity. FW hates idleness and will beat you with his cane if he sees you being idle. How this translates to what his servants did on an hour-to-hour basis, who tf knows.

But assuming FW isn't in the room or the next room, which will be the case a lot of the time, Fredersdorf might find himself in a place where card games (licit or illicit) were taking place, needing to take part in order not to be snubbed, and wanting to gather some gossip, both for his own purposes and for Fritz's (what kind of mood is FW in, that sort of thing). Remember, servants are a useful source of gossip, and Fritz is always on the lookout for "tell me everything Dad is saying about me!" info from everyone he knows, from page Peter Keith in the 1720s to AW in the 1730s. So Fredersdorf might well be under orders to gossip with the other servants. Who can then tell him all *sorts* of things Fritz hasn't mentioned.

Servants - part 2

[mildred_of_midgard]

The second half of the email to cahn during historical beta times:

---

Everything else I thought was cool in these first 60 pages. Typed as fast as I can, hence the telegraph speech. Please forgive mistakes.

Our Period
Originally (Middle Ages), servants "domestiques" included everyone in the household, including wives and children. Live-in servants were thus also considered members of the family.

Paternalist arrangements, where servants owed their loyalty and labor to their master, who took care of their material and spiritual needs and gave them money out of the goodness of his heart, for exceptional service or in his will. Wages were thus irregular. Even when a servant was hired for wages, the master would often let payment fall into arrears for many years. Servants didn't like this, obviously, but it went along with the paternalist mindset.

In our period, the early 18th century, servants among the upper classes in France were more status symbols than practical. Lackeys spent a lot of time standing around in livery looking good, protecting their master's status in a variety of ways, not actually doing physical labor. A male servant was a sign of status, so upper classes had male-servant-dominated households, bourgeoisie had female-dominated servants. In fact, bourgeoisie often avoided hiring men, to avoid seeming like they were getting above themselves.

According to a contemporary anecdote, one Parisian miser, who didn't want to pay a servant, purchased some livery and wore it himself while parading in front of the windows, in hopes his neighbors would think he had a lackey.

Lower down the hierarchy, of course, people hired servants because they needed the extra pair of hands: in the inn, on the farm, etc.

Most emphasis in the "how to be a good servant" was *not* on how to keep the place livable. Houses, including noble establishments, in France were notably filthy, messy places. French visitors to England and the Netherlands were astonished by how things were kept clean and comfortable.

In France, nobles emphasized public life over domesticity. Servants were extremely visible, since that was their point. Less manual labor. Little family closeness: arranged marriages, spouses distant, lots of affairs, children raised by servants.

Thus, in French upper class households, lackeys spent a lot of time in the antechamber while their masters were in the chamber proper entertaining guests. The lackeys' main function was to control who got access to the chamber. Obviously, the opportunities for bribery here were rampant. See also: Fredersdorf's main job for Fritz and the reason he was often so resented! See also: foreign ambassadors speculating about his bribery potential.

Servants also in charge of going to the market, buying things, getting a good price, and doing the accounts. In many cases, they take advantage of this to fill their own purses. Kickbacks from merchants, reporting that things cost more than they did, losing this week's money, juggling the books. Embezzlement, basically.

Some masters objected, some just saw it as a perk of the job or a necessary evil. Most had had to look the other way regardless of how they felt. After all, they can't go down to the market and haggle over the price of fish themselves, not if they want to keep their status! The whole point of being rich in this period is to display to everyone that you don't have to do things yourself.

One lovely anecdote about a young man who told his tutor that if the tutor would look the other way from his peccadilloes, he'd give the tutor complete control over the household money, and then the tutor would be set for life. Implication: tutor will line his own pockets. Quid pro quo.

It was not unusual for a trusted servant to have complete control over his master's purse, and to dole out money to his master and tell him when it was getting low. In any case, doing the accounts and generally deciding how to manage money was part of a servant's job. See also: Fredersdorf becoming treasurer!

Things Change
Later on, transition to servants as employees, whose labor was a commodity for which they were entitled to pay. Increasing servants among bourgeois households. Increasing dominance of females among servants.

English emphasis on domesticity begins to spread. By the end of the 18th century, more emphasis on hiring servants to make the house more comfortable, marrying for love or at least having a closer relationship with your family after entering an arranged marriage. Bedrooms heated adequately for comfort for the first time!

More emphasis on privacy and intimacy. Instead of an extremely public and ritualized calling system, where you entertain guests in your bed or while dressing, more informal calls, more hiding of affairs, more emphasis on marital fidelity. Standards for manual labor among servants much higher now. Servants have to work all day, because time is money. No more standing around looking good so everyone knows your master is rich. Servants supposed to be more invisible, now kept physically separated. The entire architecture changes so that servants can do as much as possible their jobs without running into their masters. There are now much more servants' quarters and there's a separate staircase "backstairs" for the servants to use. Much less likely to sleep in the same room or adjoining their master's/mistress's room.

Servant becomes a much less prestigious position. "Service" now defined as housework. Everyone who isn't doing housework is now scrambling to redefine themselves as a professional instead of a servant: tutors, secretaries, musicians, etc. Wives and children no longer classed with servants! (Still subordinate, obv., but different categories of subordination.) Even cooks try to get themselves reclassified as professionals, although their success is limited, especially as the trend shifts from male cooks to female. Cooking itself also becomes less elaborate and thus less of a highly skilled job, as food is less an opportunity for conspicuous consumption than a chance to spend time alone with your family and a few close friends.

Earlier in our period, where servants slept depended on household wealth, their own status, and their master's preferences. If there wasn't room for separate quarters, the servants slept in the same space as their master. Privacy wasn't a thing for most people during this time. If there was a separate wing or floor for servants' quarters, a body servant might still sleep in the room next to their master or mistress, in case they were at night or in the early morning. If there was a separate dormitory, it was mostly a room full of beds and little else. Separated by gender, of course. Servants might get their own bed, which would be a great luxury for someone from a peasant background, or they might have to share beds with each other. Very rare skilled servants in the upper classes sometimes got their own rooms and got to furnish them, sometimes quite nicely.

The switch to separate quarters and increasing physical separation between masters and servants had pros and cons for the servants. Cons: in the olden days, your living conditions were pretty much the same as the masters'. If you were cold, they were cold. Now, separate quarters and increasing emphasis on servants not as members of the family but as housework-performing machines (this term was actually used!), and increasing emphasis on domestic comfort for the middle classes, means the masters' quarters have running water, adequate eating, etc., and the servants' quarters often don't. On the other hand, there's one more barrier between the servants and sexual abuse from the master.

It's also more isolated in the servant's quarters, in your all-day labor-intensive regimented job. In the olden days, you'd spend a lot of time hanging out in public, and in antechambers, interacting with your masters, their guests, the public, and other people's servants. You had a lot of leisure time, which you'd spend at the tavern, at fairs, in the parks, seeing your girlfriend, w/e. Once you're basically not allowed to leave the house or entertain visitors except for half a day every other Sunday or whatever, and the masters don't want to see you except when they ring a bell (this is when servants' bells become a thing: when they're not within eye-catching or shouting distance), your entire social life is the other servants. Which means a small group of people trapped with each other, which means very intense passions, both love affairs and feuds.

Re: Learning Frederick

[mildred_of_midgard]

...though Cahn and I also believe in seeing other men close to his prince helped. I mean, we're talking about the man later suspected of driving handsome husars to suicide. ;)

You know what just occurred to me? I have this abandoned (but I still think about it from time to time) WIP where Katte gets life imprisonment, and Fritz's first act as king is to pardon him and summon him to his side and never ever let him go.

We've speculated about how Katte might react to Fritz after 10 years, but...how is Fredersdorf going to react to the appearance of the former lover who gave ten years of his life out of loyalty to Fritz, and is a nobleman from a prominent family? Right in that period of 1740-1741 when Fredersdorf is feeling most insecure!

August 17

[mildred_of_midgard]

234 years ago today (since it's after midnight in Potsdam), at 2:20 am, Old Fritz died in his armchair, aged 74.

RIP, problematic fave. Have a heart-shaped potato on your grave, and a reincarnation AU where it all goes much better.

But August 17 marks not just an end, but also a beginning. On this day in 2019, cahn uttered these fateful words:

I wonder if we should invite selenak!

The following day, August 18, three-way conversations began, and all of our lives were changed for the better.

<3333 to you both!

Second most fateful words uttered in this fandom, as I never get tired of pointing out:

OK... tell me more about Lehndorff? So I know from your previous posts that he was EC's chamberlain and Heinrich's friend-with-benefits and had a diary... did he write about Heinrich in his diary??

:D

Clearly cahn knows a good thing when she sees it!

Re: With You, There's a Heaven - Suhm

[mildred_of_midgard]

The conversation would indeed be lively! And let's not forget French Comte Rottembourg, BFF of Katte and conspirator to overthrow FW and put Fritz on the throne at the age of 14! (Man, he must have been upset in 1730.)

Re: Learning Frederick

[selenak]

Ohhhhh, good question. On the one hand, we don't know that he had a problem with, say, Algarotti, and might have been able to file this under "the two of us cover different parts of Fritz' life". (Whereas handsome husars drafted to personal service might be competetion.) Otoh, this is Katte, and I've recently written a story where Fredersdorf does go "if he wants to kiss anyone, it's surely Katte", and as we've said this is the year where everyone's relationships with Fritz shift and have to be reestablished, and Fredersdorf is most insecure. As opposed to some stranger named or not named Grigorij, he wouldn't be able to tell himself Katte is bad for Fritz and/or suspicious.

...at the very least he'd have a very angsty time of it, I think, wondering whether Fritz is going to treat him now as valet only and wants him to step back into the servant role, and/or whether Zernikow is meant as a gracious pay off the way mistresses to Kings are usually paid off when their time is over.

(Maybe AU Fredersdorf has a drink with equally returning Peter?)

Now, if the whole husar story wasn't idle gossip the Saxon ambassador heard, Fredersdorf in rl was willing to fight for Fritz, but again, that wasn't with someone who had an undeniable and gigantic claim to his affection. Hmmm. Maybe... well, we don't know how ten years in prison would have affected Katte, of course. But before going to prison, he wasn't exactly good at money management. So maybe Fredersdorf while being at his most angsty ready to step back and become a private land owner in Zernikow thinks, but wait, what if Katte, no matter how loving and loyal, still is no good at keeping secrets or organisation or money, so clearly Fritz still needs me to keep an eye on things, and who knows, once Katte isn't a loved and missed martyr in prison anymore but someone he sees every day and who will inevitably have good and bad hours, it'll turn out he still needs me emotionally as well and Katte alone won't do, because we've already passed that test of time, whereas Katte and he had at most a year?

...and then the oldest of the Katte half brothers, figuring this is clearly the opportunity to get loaded, comes to court after Hans Heinrich dies (still at the same time) and tries to exploit being the favorite's brother for all that's worth, at which point Consiglieri Mike springs into action!

Re: Servants - part 2

[selenak]

Thank you for typing all this down for the rest of us to read! I hadn't come across this book before, but will see whether my libraries have it, in the long term.

Some tiny observations: re: servant's quarters and the shift to make them separate - cahn may recall a big plot point right at the start of Figaro's Wedding, which is that Susanna does not want hers and Figaro's bedroom to be so close to their master and mistresse's rooms so Almaviva has it even easier if he wants to molest her.

If either of you ever gets around to watching Farewell My Queen with Lea Seydoux - that was really filmed at Versailles and is the first movie to show so much of the "backstage" rooms which tourists usually don't see - for the servants but also for the inbetween people, like the heroine, a reader to the Queen, who technically sleeps outside the palace (Versailles was notoriously overfilled) but gets around a lot in the small floors and tiny rooms behind the scenes.

Lessing's drama Minna von Barnhelm, a ka the first German (contemporary) drama dealing with the fallout of the 7 Years War which I mentioned to you already premiered in 1767. It has two servant characters as part of the four leads - the titular Minna and Major Tellheim are the leading couple, and her lady's maid Franziska and his servant Just. Just's loyalty to Tellheim partly shows itself in his refusal to get paid (because Tellheim, through no fault of his own, is seriously in debt), and he speaks very bluntly to his master; Franziska is Minna's confidant. Both seem to live at close quarters with their master and mistress (well, Just and Tellheim can't afford anything else, but Mina could). Franziska does NOT end up with Just but with Major Werner, who used to be Tellheim's Sergeant in the war and helps bringing about the happy resolution; class wise, he's clearly above her, so that was possible (being presented as such, and not as scandalous, in a very successful comedy).

Re: August 17

[selenak]

cahn has the unerring instinct of a pathfinder in the wilderness, a gold seeker in Alaska, a Fritz in search of serious boyfriends! All hail to thee, most kind hostess!

And what a year this has been. To think that a year ago, I could have named just three (at most!) of Fritz' siblings without knowing much of their personalities beyond Wilhelmine (and that Heinrich was the other one with military gifts and gayness) and did not know Lehndorff existed. I knew Fredersdorf had existed, but not much more. Algarotti and Suhm? Never heard of them. (All hail Mildred, expert on Frederician boyfriends!) Voltaire, sure, heard of him, but those hilarious letters (fake and real)? Nope. Émilie I knew by name, but nothing more. And so forth.

...I learned so much through you two, and you are the most delightful of friends! <33333

Re: Learning Frederick

[mildred_of_midgard]

Sounds very plausible! And now that I have the gossip on the inheritance, I'm totally thinking about ways that would fit into my AUs.

So can Hans Heinrich just write a will and say everything goes to the younger son and that has legal validity?

Oh, that reminds me:

The duel took place not too long after he'd reached his majority

What's the legal majority in our period? The younger brother was 23 when the duel took place. Though I'd like to think several years of non-violent measures were attempted first, so I guess that makes sense.

Also, remind me what our evidence is for Hans Hermann not being great at money management? I still haven't read Kloosterhuis, and Google translate is not really feasible with all the footnotes, so I'm having to wait until I'm up to the job myself.

Consiglieri Mike

Consigliere Mike is still the best. <3

Re: August 17

[cahn]

You guys are SO AMAZING. I'm kind of in awe that you guys let me hang out with you and benefit from all your awesomeness! :D

A year ago I knew about Katte (and that only because selenak told me), and... that was it. I didn't even know whether Fritz had any siblings!

a Fritz in search of serious boyfriends!

heeeee! Well, that's a compliment!

Re: August 17

[mildred_of_midgard]

But we wouldn't be nearly as awesome without you! Do you think *I* was going to ask who Lehndorff was? I was not!

a Fritz in search of serious boyfriends!

heeeee! Well, that's a compliment!

My reaction exactly! <3

Re: August 17

[mildred_of_midgard]

To think that a year ago, I could have named just three (at most!) of Fritz' siblings without knowing much of their personalities beyond Wilhelmine (and that Heinrich was the other one with military gifts and gayness)

Same!

did not know Lehndorff existed.

Same!

I knew Fredersdorf had existed, but not much more.

Yeah, we both knew he was in the "six most loved" and a candidate for possible lover, but that was about it.

Algarotti and Suhm? Never heard of them.

Algarotti I knew only thanks to mobster AU, where he ends up being Fritz's long-term partner. Suhm: no idea.

Voltaire: I knew they corresponded passionately, lived together briefly, then had a messy breakup that both were responsible for, then resumed correspondence, but no details at all!

Émilie I knew by name, but nothing more.

Same, and only from mobster AU. If we go back and ask me 14 months ago, I can't name any Fritz siblings, I only know he had a brother who predeceased him but not before fathering FW2, haven't heard of Fredersdorf, Algarotti, or Émilie. (In the same sense that I had never heard of Lehndorff: the names got mentioned in bios I had read, but left no mark whatsoever in my memory.)

Between 14 and 12 months ago, I read MacDonogh and Blanning, some of Wilhelmine's memoirs, all the AO3 fanfic I could stand to read, and some Wikipedia and tumblr, then started chatting with cahn. By the time you came along, I was a good deal more prepared to chat than I would have been just two months before.

But now!

I wanted to write fic back then, but I didn't know any of the players outside of Fritz, Wilhelmine, FW, SD, and Katte, and I had no idea about the lives of even these people other than the major high points, of which there are generally only one or two a year. But in the last two months, I was able to knock out fic about Lehndorff and Peter on short notice!

Which brings me to: a year ago, there was no AO3 tag for Fredersdorf, and now he has 9 fics, 4 of which he stars in! <3 Not to mention all the other characters who now have fic for the first time, such as Heinrich.

Re: Learning Frederick

[selenak]

What's the legal majority in our period?

I would have to check to be sure, but I do know it was 21 for the longest time. (Not for Kings, though. They got to rule earlier.)

Also, remind me what our evidence is for Hans Hermann not being great at money management?

I'd have to reread Klosterhuis, but I dimly recall something about having debts as a student. (Though that's par the course for noble students.) I guess aiding and abetting Fritz' debt-making doesn't really count, because what's one to do if the King is so miserly towards his son, etc., but: given Grandpa Wartensleben was a key influence on his life, and Grandpa Wartensleben, unlike Dad, was a F1 period big spending nobleman...

So can Hans Heinrich just write a will and say everything goes to the younger son and that has legal validity?

He didn't leave everything to him (aside from the older son, there were also the daughters! and the wife!), but apparantly he wanted him to be the main heir and get Wust. So I guess primogeniture wasn't a must for Prussian nobility. Son #2 wasn't disinherited, he just wasn't to be the designed successor.

There's one bit about Prussian inheritances I do know a bit about, and that's because of Wilhelmine. The case isn't exactly comparable, but: think of the three Marwitz sisters Wilhelmine took with her when she left Prussia. She had to promise FW none of the three would marry a non-Prussian. (We talked about neither FW nor Fritz wanting the nobility to marry outside the country because of potentially foreigners having legal claims to Prussian territory.) As Wilhelmine later during the big Marwitz affair (female version) pointed out, she kept her word while FW was still alive. Then the youngest Marwitz sister ran off to get married. Her father was pissed, and wanted his other daughters back. The middle Marwitz sister did go back and obediently got married to a Podewils. (I.e. Prussian family, several memmbers in Fritz' service.) The oldest remained and had her affair with the Margrave as we know, leading to marriage with an Austrian and one more step in the big Fritz/Wilhelmine crisis of the 1740s. Now, what Dad Marwitz could do was leaving most of the money only to the obedient daughter, but what he couldn't do was disinhereting the two disobedient ones altogether. They still had claim to a "Pflichtteil", their "share of duty" from the Marwitz inheritance after he died. We know this because later, post reconciliation, when Wihelmine finally came clean with Fritz about why she wanted her quondam friend and lady-in-waiting out of Bayreuth, she told him Female Marwitz' condition was that Fritz releases her Pflichtteil to her, which he previously had refused to do (as King, he could sit on the inheritance as long as he wanted). (Fritz then agreed to this and Female Marwitz moved to Vienna.)

If Dad Marwitz could not disinherit his daughters altogether, I'm pretty sure Hans Heinrich could not have disinherited his son even if he'd wanted to. He could, however, decide who was to get the lion's share.

...how he'd have decided in a scenario where Hans Herrmann survives and is now the new King's favorite is another question altogether...

Re: With You, There's a Heaven - Suhm

[selenak]

Wasn't he also the Biche donator? Or was that German Rothenburg? Anyway, yes, him, too.

Valory to Rottembourg: Granted, I only met him once he was on the throne, but seriously? I shudder to think what he'd have been like with absolute power at age 14!

All the Ambassadors from FW's era except Seckendorf: But he's so sensitive, so smart, so abused! We want to adopt him and cherish him!

Seckendorf: ...yeah, well, no. Some cash, that's as far as I'm willing to go, and will I get any thanks for it? No. First he bitches about me in "History of the House of Brandenburg", and then he kidnaps me in my retirement. All just because I ensured he didn't get married to an English princess, which, given the rest of his life, really, what's the problem there?

All the Ambassadors from Fritz' era except Charles Williams: Okay, he is very charming when first you meet him, but then you better be up for verbal fencing, and good lord, that poetry.

Charles Williams (pre 1756): He sucks. Listen to me, young Stanislav: that man's an overrated asshole.
Charles Williams (1756): I'm entering the third stage of syphilis and also Prussia has just become our ally. I therefore turn my opinion on the King of Prussia around by 180 degrees and declare him a total genius and wonderful. I even kiss his portrait.

Stanislav Poniatowski: You're breaking my heart!

Re: The Mara Stradivari

[selenak]

Having just read the article, I have to add this re: Mara's playing: given his alcoholism, I can believe he was on a downslide in the later 1780s when the writer critiquing him heard him, but he must have been really good at first, because Heinrich (and Schmeling-Mara) weren't the only ones raving about his talent when besotted with him. The very much not besotted Lehndorff also thought he was superb. The first time Mara shows up in his diaries is as a 13 years old boy musician playing in the gardens of Oranienburg for AW and guests, just before the war, and Lehndorff remarks on his musical excellence even then. The next time Mara shows up in Lehndorff's diaries is many years later when he's an adult, back from Paris and Heinrich's favorite, and Lehndorff has a lot to say about his impudence, but he admits that Mara is a superb musician.

So: Gertrud Elisabeth in her public memoirs defending him might have been because she didn't want to admit she'd been taken in by someone who turned out to be a money wasting abuser and drunkard, but also not even that great a cellist. But Lehndorff in his personal diaries really has no reason to applaud one of Heinrich's boyfriends he can't stand as a person.

Ambassadors

[cahn]

All just because I ensured he didn't get married to an English princess, which, given the rest of his life, really, what's the problem there?

Lol Seckendorf!

...have we talked about Charles Williams before?? *goes to look* Oh, he has a middle name, go figure :) (Charles Williams is the name of one of the Inklings who wrote really bizarre poetry and novels which I love, so I think (?) I would have remembered if we'd talked about him using exactly that name. :) )

Re: The Mara Stradivari

[cahn]

*nods* Also, mediocre players don't play Strads. They just don't! (Well, IDK about the 18th century, okay, maybe it was different then, but...)

Re: Ambassadors

[mildred_of_midgard]

Yeah, we've met him as the Chevalier Williams and Hanbury-Williams. I haven't read the other Charles Williams, but I'm enough of a Tolkienist that that's where my mind immediately went too! (I've read Humphrey Carpenter's The Inklings, which is where most of my indirect knowledge of him comes from.)

Re: The Mara Stradivari

[mildred_of_midgard]

Mara's playing: given his alcoholism, I can believe he was on a downslide in the later 1780s when the writer critiquing him heard him, but he must have been really good at first

That's exactly what I thought when I read it! My headcanon for Mara is that he started out as a child prodigy under a lot of pressure, turned to alcohol to cope with his perfectionism, and eventually burned out. (I wanted to work this into "Lovers", but it didn't want to fit in.)

ETA: But I just think it's neat I wrote a story in which this cello appeared and then discovered that it's still around and even on YouTube for our viewing and listening pleasure. :D

Re: Learning Frederick

[mildred_of_midgard]

Thank you for all this!

They still had claim to a "Pflichtteil", their "share of duty"

Makes sense--it's the same in French inheritance law. I can see I'm going to have to research Prussian inheritance law as much as I did French for this AU!

...how he'd have decided in a scenario where Hans Herrmann survives and is now the new King's favorite is another question altogether...

Yeah...

But even more interesting to me, since I might actually write this AU, is the one where Hans Hermann, eldest son, has deserted the army, has been living in exile under a death sentence for ten years, and only one year before Hans Heinrich's death, has been pardoned by the new king, but is still living in France.

I kind of feel like maybe Hans Heinrich, even if they have a reconciliation, does not approve of all the deserting and still goes with youngest son, thus passing over *two* older brothers.

But if the two brothers then kill each other after the younger one comes to majority, I guess it reverts to the remaining son, French exile Hans Hermann? Whose boyfriend, even if he's inherited the estate of the "très riche" Comte Rottembourg (reason for all my knowledge about French inheritance law), could probably use the inheritance of the "loaded" Hans Heinrich. :D

Ambassadors

[mildred_of_midgard]

Wasn't he also the Biche donator? Or was that German Rothenburg? Anyway, yes, him, too.

German Rothenburg. But yes.

Valory to Rottembourg: Granted, I only met him once he was on the throne, but seriously? I shudder to think what he'd have been like with absolute power at age 14!

Less abused! Everyone wins! (Except maybe the French, who aren't going to get anything like the gratitude or dependence they expect, but hey, you can't win them all.)

All the Ambassadors from FW's era except Seckendorf: But he's so sensitive, so smart, so abused! We want to adopt him and cherish him!

Suhm: Adopt! Right, yes, that's what I want to do with him.

:P

(At least for the later stages of the FW era. I would never accuse Suhm of anything inappropriate. The earliest evidence we have of friendship is with the 16-yo, and romantic leanings the 24-yo.)

All just because I ensured he didn't get married to an English princess, which, given the rest of his life, really, what's the problem there?

Lol. But the escaping to Hanover, where FW is not!

Charles Williams (1756): I'm entering the third stage of syphilis and also Prussia has just become our ally. I therefore turn my opinion on the King of Prussia around by 180 degrees and declare him a total genius and wonderful. I even kiss his portrait.

Third stage of syphilis, LOL forever. The envoys keep it interesting!

Re: Learning Frederick

[selenak]

Yes, I figure that's how it would go. I mean, AW as King could still hold Hans Herrmann's duty inheritance back and/or decide the majority of the money should go to cousin Ludolf, not out of spite but because of the same reason Fritz didn't want any Prussian nobility marrying non Prussians in rl (and neither had FW)- fear of foreign claims to Prussian estates thereafter. Otoh, Hans Herrmann living in French exile without a sign of marrying into French nobility isn't likely to pass the estate on to a French family, so that's not so much an issue, and also, I figure that Katte's stepmom, after going through the horror of her sons killing each other, is going to need consolation. In an ideal scenario, AW has already pardoned both Fritz and Katte (and Peter) for the desertion when he came to the throne, so Hans Herrmann can come back (not for good, just for a visit) to console Stepmom, and then she petitions the King to grant the estate and lion's share of the money to her beloved stepson.

Re: Learning Frederick

[mildred_of_midgard]

In an ideal scenario, AW has already pardoned both Fritz and Katte (and Peter) for the desertion when he came to the throne

Yep, he has. Even before Hans Heinrich dies the following year, so I've been planning for Hans Hermann to make a trip back to visit dying dad in 1741. Then yes, a visit in 1748 to grieving stepmom, and yes, I absolutely thought stepmom would petition for Hans Hermann. I'm glad you think this is plausible! Also, I'm glad we get to keep the duel. It's terrible irl, but it makes great fiction!

Good point about the marriage: he'll be 44 in 1748, have lived in France for almost 20 years, and be married to Fritz unmarried. So while it's not impossible he might still marry into a French family, it's reasonable to assume he won't, especially if he says Fritz will kill him he has no intention of it, and will let it pass to Heinrich Christoph's line after his death.

Fritz, btw, I think *doesn't* go back to Prussia, at least not in 1740 when he doesn't trust koolaid-drinking Dad-favored younger brother at all, pardon or no pardon. But AW can travel west to inspect his domains, and the brothers can meet up in Strasbourg, or maybe Aachen (because historically, Suhm is sick around this time, though I'm going to have a hard time letting him die in his 40s and will probably save him at least a little while longer :P).