cahn | 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

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From:

mildred_of_midgard

6 pages. Fritz is writing a very long poem to AW.

I tried to do more than 6. I stared very hard at the screen and went, "Work, brain! Work!" But my brain was too tired to work. :(

On the plus side, all week long, I kept to my goal of waking up ~8 am instead of ~noon, as I was doing until this week. On the minus side, I've done maybe 25 pages of German and 12 hours of work all week. #sleepdeprivation

Notes on the reading:

* Google dropped the first three quarters of a sentence, when AW is asking FW for permission to paint:

After all, painting was also his hobby and the only relaxation that he allowed himself other than hunting.

Rendered by Google as "the hunt indulged."

* Which leads me to: already in 1729 when this letter was written? I'd thought it was a late-in-life discovery, but admittedly I have never read a dedicated bio of FW. :P

* 15-yo Fritz has to cut the meat and serve it to his family: is this normal for a crown prince?

cahn can tell you what you already gleaned from the servants write-up: when doing historical beta for her fic, I had very little idea what normal etiquette was like at FW's court, because you can't just go applying Versailles etiquette, Fritz like his father invented his own etiquette and discarded what he didn't like, and I have no idea who's cutting and serving at FW's table. So I made some best guesses for "How I Survived", tried to be conservative, and hoped it would pass muster.

* I want to say "lol" at AW having the emotional intelligence to answer a question with a question, but it very much shows that he was afraid to give the wrong answer, and ugh.

* Also. AW turning pale at the finger-chopping joke before going, "You would never do that!" This is not a child who grew up in a stress-free environment!

Also, I can imagine Fritz silently thinking, To you, maybe.

THOSE KIDS.

* Ziebura citing the Voltaire to Madame Denis letter about the orange peel to support the claim that Fritz used people: oops! *checks publication date* 2006. I guess she just missed the scholarship on that one.

Whether or not she's right that Fritz might have been latching onto AW emotionally in Wilhelmine's absence, I'm also much more willing to excuse 1730s Fritz cold-bloodedly trying to survive an abusive situation than I am 1740s and beyond Fritz roleplaying the abuser.

* Speaking of using AW to survive abusive situations: why does SD care more about a random soldier than her own kid? Does she hate FW's favorite kid because marital warfare? Why is she so invested in a Potsdam Giant? Is it related to the English marriage somehow?

From:

selenak

Meat-cutting: sorry, the only thing that immediately popped into my mind was that knights were supposed to do this for their ladies in the 1200s, which isn't useful in this context at all. However, if Frau von Kameke specifically says to the preacher that Fritz "had to" do this these last two days ("mußte"), and since he's entirely silent throughout, I bet it was meant as a punishment, or at least as an exercise in humility.

Incidentally,

cahn, a reminder: Frau von Kameke was much loved by Fritz who called her "Mama" (and made a point of greeting her thusly in the big post 7 Years War reception); it's also worth pointing out AW asks her, not SD, what "hanging" means, whether it hurts and whether you die of it. Oh, and she's depicted along with Wilhelmine and Amalie in Menzel's painting "Flute Concert at Sanssouci".

(ETA: no, got it wrong, looked it up again. Much loved "Mama" who is depicted at the flute concert and was hugged post 7 Years War was the Countess Camas. Sorry for the confusion./ ETA)

When exactly FW takes up painting: search me. The painting exhibited at Wusterhausen is from the 1730s, but that doesn't mean he didn't do it before. Certainly his health started its decline in the later 1720s, with the wheelchair getting its first use then, and this was something he could do while sitting or lying, even.

why does SD care more about a random soldier than her own kid? Does she hate FW's favorite kid because marital warfare? Why is she so invested in a Potsdam Giant? Is it related to the English marriage somehow?

I did wonder, too - why this soldier? And my current theory is this: if this happens when AW is a toddler, then Fritz, ca. 15, has just started to enter the phase where FW begins to openly admit he hates his kid. Also when the marital battle intensifies around anything connected to the English marriage project. Now here's this kid who it just turns out does have FW's approval and whom FW behaves downright indulgently towards. Maybe SD just wanted to test how far this indulgence goes. So the point wasn't this particular soldier, it was saving a soldier from hanging, since she knew how serious FW took his military punishments. If little AW could achieve this, then maybe he could achieve more in the future. After all, her children were her weapons in the marital battle.

Next question: why are Grumbkow & Seckendorff also having a go at little AW to plead for this guy? What's the angle for our enterprising duo? I mean, it doesn't serve the Imperial cause whether or not FW executes one of his Potsdam Giants. And it doesn't serve the cause of G & S's advancement, either. Maybe they, too, were curious and wanted to test what you could do via this kid?

Edited Date: 2020-08-29 01:58 pm (UTC)

From:

mildred_of_midgard

However, if Frau von Kameke specifically says to the preacher that Fritz "had to" do this these last two days ("mußte"), and since he's entirely silent throughout, I bet it was meant as a punishment, or at least as an exercise in humility.

That's what I was thinking, but I wanted to check. Especially the being silent part: I had to do lots of things when I was a kid that weren't punishments or humiliation, just doing what my parents told me. But in the absence of you knowing this was a standard thing for princes, I'm going with "FW is mad at him."

Btw,

cahn, you may have looked at the German and figured this out, but I'm preeeetty sure FW didn't bake the apples himself. :P He himself presented the baked apples to the guest.

(ETA: no, got it wrong, looked it up again. Much loved "Mama" who is depicted at the flute concert and was hugged post 7 Years War was the Countess Camas. Sorry for the confusion./ ETA)

I was about to look up if somehow they were the same person in different marriages! Thank you for clarifying.

Jsyk, Countess Camas has a correspondence with Fritz in the Trier archive, which I haven't checked to see if it has anything interesting.

When exactly FW takes up painting: search me. The painting exhibited at Wusterhausen is from the 1730s, but that doesn't mean he didn't do it before.

So what I was remembering, in addition to my general impression that it was a couple years before he died, was a letter exchange you reported between Fritz and Wilhelmine, where Fritz is telling Wilhelmine that FW has taken up painting. Which means it would have to be 1732 or later. I turned up the comment in question, and sure enough, you said "around 1737":

And, around 1737:

W: Have just heard rumors that Mom and Dad have done a 180%. She's supposed to have gone religious while he's supposed to have discovered music. What the hell?

F: Don't worry, it's not true. Mom's no more religious than before and Dad has discovered painting, not music. That can still be our thing.

Since that jives with my 1737/1738 impression, I'm surprised to see Ziebura implying he was into painting in 1727.

Another interesting bit of chronology: in spring of 1739, Fritz sends AW some Wolff as consolation for having to put up with sick Dad. Ziebura says that AW had to keep FW from finding out that he was reading. (Whether this is a recorded fact or an inference, I'm not sure.) In October 1739, Fritz writes to Suhm that FW has now spent three hours reading Wolff and is retracting the banishment on pain of death and offering Wolff a pension!

Did AW read some Wolff at Fritz's suggestion and then tell FW that it was full of things he would agree with, and FW decided to give it a try on the basis of his favorite, not very bookish, son liking it?

So the point wasn't this particular soldier, it was saving a soldier from hanging, since she knew how serious FW took his military punishments. If little AW could achieve this, then maybe he could achieve more in the future. After all, her children were her weapons in the marital battle.

Ahhh, okay, that makes sense! Yeah, I bet that's it. Ditto Grumbkow and Seckendorff, who are always looking for ways to get what they want out of FW.

From:

selenak

Ziebura says that AW had to keep FW from finding out that he was reading. (Whether this is a recorded fact or an inference, I'm not sure.)

Having just checked and reread the passage, it sounds like inference to me, based on the fact Wolff was still on the Prussian index.

Did AW read some Wolff at Fritz's suggestion and then tell FW that it was full of things he would agree with, and FW decided to give it a try on the basis of his favorite, not very bookish, son liking it?

This sounds very plausible to me! Especially if AW managed to keep it hidden from Dad how he'd come across Wolff to begin with. The timing fits, and I salute your detective skills once more.

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Having just checked and reread the passage, it sounds like inference to me, based on the fact Wolff was still on the Prussian index.

It read like an inference, but I couldn't tell if it was backed by a documentary fact.

Have we explained the index to

cahn? Are you familiar with this? It was the index of forbidden books, Index Librorum Prohibitorum, put out by the Pope/Catholic Church. Other states, like France and Spain, were theoretically bound by it, but the civil authorities also got to set their their own standards for legally enforceable censorship, so your work could end up banned in, say, France but not on the Index with a capital I, or vice versa. Or, as often happened, both. This is why a lot of publication happened in the Netherlands and England (and eventually Fritz's Prussia, as long as he didn't feel personally threatened by your work--freedom of speech ideals notwithstanding, he wasn't very consistent about how he dealt with criticisms of his own leadership¹. But you could at least challenge the Catholic Church there! Which was a huge boon to much of Europe.)

1: For example, the one

selenak likes to tell us about:

Fritz: ARREST that scoundr--oh, wait, I'm an enlightened monarch, aren't I? Darn.
Wilhelmine: Oh, good, because I was about to have to report his regrettable and totally unpreventable escape.

This sounds very plausible to me! Especially if AW managed to keep it hidden from Dad how he'd come across Wolff to begin with.

Oh, good point!

AW: Dad, I totally heard about this from some very respectable visiting officer from another country, who says he uses Wolff's arguments to argue for obedience to authority.
FW: Really? I thought people used him to argue that everything was predestined, so if you disobeyed your monarch and deserted the army, you weren't at fault. So that's why I kicked him out of the country without reading him.
FW: *reads Wolff*
FW: This is not at all what I thought he said. Mandatory reading for everyone! Money for Wolff!
Fritz to Suhm: That I should have lived to see the day! Triumph of reason ~~and AW's ability to get things out of Dad since the age of 5~~.

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Oh, speaking of meal customs, something I had been wondering during my historical beta and fic-writing pastimes of recent months: which palace would Christmas 1732 have taken place in? Afaik, it's too late in the year for Wusterhausen and Monbijou.

If this is in the memoirs...I'm going to do a close reading of them when I get to studying French, I swear!

From:

selenak

They were in the main Berlin town palace. Wilhelmine mentions arrving at Berlin while her father was still at Potsdam, though the rest of the family minus Fritz were in Berlin. As far as I recall from all the biographies, they always spent the Winter months in the Berliner Stadtschloss. That one was utterly destroyed in WWII. (No wonder, since it had a central city location.) In its place, the GDR then built the "Palast der Republik". For which a lot of Asbest was used, and thus they ended up with a poisonous building, which is why post reunification it was first closed and then torn down. Then, after much debate, the old Hohenzollern palace was rebuild, which btw I was totally against, because there are such a lot of other things you could have spend that money on, and it's not like Berlin is lacking in palaces anyway. At least they're using it for the Humboldt Forum.

This reminds me: ever since Ziebura's Heinrich biography mentioned that Heinrich's Berlin town palace (which he hardly lived in, since it wasn't even finished pre 7 Years War, then it was destroyed after the second occupation of Berlin, then when it was restored his main residence had become Rheinsberg and he'd given it to Mina to live in, though he did occupy one of the wings (and she the other) when he was in Berlin for the winter) had post WWII become the first building used by the Alaexander-von-Humboldt-Universität (not to be confused with the above mentioned Humboldt Forum), I meant to take a photo for you two, and I did on my recent trip. It's this:

From:

cahn

:D Yay, thank you for the pic!

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Wonderful, that's where I *thought* they might be, but I wasn't sure. Thank you for the picture!

From:

cahn

lololol I noticed the orange peel thing too! I was quite proud that I could be all "well actually..." about it :D (Though of course credit should go to

gambitten, thank you!!)

My German is on a 6-year-old level for sure; in the next set of AW letters which is described as being a 12-year-old writing on an 8-year-old level in vocab and syntax, I could mostly make out the syntax but not the vocab :P

From:

mildred_of_midgard

lololol I noticed the orange peel thing too! I was quite proud that I could be all "well actually..." about it :D

It's so awesome how much you know now! Starting from zero, that's pretty great. :D

My German is on a 6-year-old level for sure; in the next set of AW letters which is described as being a 12-year-old writing on an 8-year-old level in vocab and syntax, I could mostly make out the syntax but not the vocab :P

I laughed so hard. 6 but not 8! But remember some of that letter was supplied by his tutor! So make sure you're judging only by what's not in parentheses. ;)

From:

selenak

Well, dear friends, if you want a true challenge, try Wilhelmine, age 10, writing to FW (something I already translated into English when reviewing Oster's biography, but here's the German for you to practice:

"Ich bin sehr gekränkt darüber gewesen, daß Sie meinem Bruder die EHre erwiesen haben, ihm zu schreiben, und ich, die (Ihnen) schon 100 000 Briefe geschrieben hat, habe nie die Gnade gehabt, auch nur ein Wort aus Ihrer Hand zu empfangen. Ich weiß gut, daß mein Bruder mehr Anerkennung verdient als ich, weil er ein Junge ist, aber das ist nicht mein Fehler, wenn ich keiner bin, und ich bin doch auch die Tochter meines lieben Papa, und ich liebe ihn (...). Man hat mir auch gesagt, daß mein lieber Papa niemand anderem schreibt als Offizieren, und wenn das wahr ist, würde ich auch gerne einen militärischen Rang haben; Mademoiselle Leti sagt, daß ich gut ein Dragonerhauptmann sein könnte, wenn mein lieber Papa einen mit langen Kleid haben wollte, aber ich glaube, daß sie sich über mich lustig macht, indem sie das sagt."

Of course, Wilhelmine was the kid who already started writing letters when not yet five years old and who was the future bestelling author of the family. (Sorry, Fritz, but her memoirs outsold your poems by any standard.) (Your various historical works, too. They don't have FW getting punched.)

From:

mildred_of_midgard

I can read 10-year-old Wilhelmine! Only helped slightly by your previous translations. :D

Also, poor Wilhelmine. :(

They don't have FW getting punched.

At least one bowdlerized version of her memoirs doesn't either!