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Frederick the Great, discussion post 16
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
...I was asked to start a new thread so that STDs could be discussed. Really! :D
Re: AW readthrough
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
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?