cahn | Frederick the Great, discussion post 16

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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

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From:

mildred_of_midgard

I keep waking up to a free and fascinating education! Thank you!

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.

Hahaha, this is a great story.

I've taken to the Hannover crowd as a replacement family like a duck to water.

This reminds me of your "they were incredibly blatant about favouring future Billy the Butcher and hoping Fritz of Wales would somehow drop out of the picture. No wonder he took to Hervey like a duckling." Everyone is so messed up. :(

Barbara Beuys: Now, I know you heard the tales of how he loved her but she didn't love him and made fun of him

cahn, 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?

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

I laughed so hard.

No, Barbara Beuys does not mention how I am related to chatty writer Pöllnitz.

Not closely as far as I can tell, that's all I can report. Computer limitations prevent me from spending more than 20 or 30 minutes on this question. (Yes, normally my genealogical endeavors take much, much more time.)

Friedrich: Wartensleben, want to become my new PM?

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

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

Selenak is on to something, methinks!

gift my son with the new besteller by Fènelon, Telemaque, about how to be a compassionate, art-loving ruler.

Which will end up being one of Fritz's first formative books, at age 9!

Nazi era biographer C. Hinrich

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

Beuys: Note the "his father". Just a few years earlier, she adored him as well.

Wow. That is pretty telling.

I'd like a reason given why Beuys is suspicious of the envoy report there, say, because "the surviving letters are respectful and affectionate" alone isn't it. I want something like Koser making mince meat out of Henri de Catt, preferably.

Yeah. Koser sets a high standard. I too am skeptical in the absence of firmer evidence.

Well, this was deeply entertaining and informative, as always! I still can't believe I lucked into having someone to read reams of books for me. :DD

(I wish I could tell you guys about all the stuff I'm reading, and I wish I could update our awesome chronology document. My Trello list is getting so long that items from a month or two ago, I'm no longer even sure from my cryptic shorthand what on earth I meant to talk about. :/)

From:

cahn

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?

From:

mildred_of_midgard

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.

From:

cahn

Ohhhhh! And yes, please do!

From:

selenak

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!

From:

cahn

Heh. Well, I also have some personal history here -- I took ballet for a year (at my own insistence, in fact), and was sufficiently awful at it that I basically ignored dance for years! (Though I then went on to have a dancer friend who got me to see his ballet in college and I thought it was wonderful, although it's still a branch of the arts I know extremely little about.) So I still think it is consistent for FW to be extremely irritated by it but other people not.