Frederick the Great, discussion post 16
Jul. 14th, 2020 09:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cahnWe 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
Date: 2020-08-31 01:04 am (UTC)* I had forgotten that Pöllnitz got F1's nightclothes, but now that I'm reminded, I am charmed.
* AW and Sophie: the longer she resisted, the more his passion grew. Yeah, I feel like this is a common dynamic.
* Okay, so Ziebura says FW-puncher and heroine of our fandom was the aunt of Sophie. ?? I thought it was Sophie's mom, Johanna? Is she confusing Sophie the aunt of FW2 flame Julie? Or are we missing something? Wilhelmine says the woman in question was a lady in waiting of SD, and Sophie's memoirs (at least as quoted by unreliable editor) say Sophie's mom was a close friend of SD who spent almost the whole day at court, which I could easily see Wilhelmine remembering or simplifying as "lady-in-waiting." But I guess Johanna could have had a sister?
The thing that makes me think Ziebura could be wrong is that she calls Peter III the son of Elizaveta instead of the nephew. The thing that makes me think she could be right is that we had to apologize to her about Marwitz. :P
The other thing that nagged me when I first ran into the "Sophie as FW-puncher" claim of unreliable editor was that Wilhelmine refers to the lady in question as "fille" and "demoiselle." Johanna was, if Wikipedia can be trusted, 31 at Fritz's wedding, married, with at least one kid. Now, "fille" and "demoiselle" can/could in French be used of a lady-in-waiting as a job title, regardless of marital status. But as much as I trust FW not to go for a 3-year-old sexually (or even an 11-year old), I was actually surprised when I first looked her up and realized she was in her 30s. That's not young for a woman by the standards of the 18th century.
So maybe Wikipedia is wrong! Or Johanna looked especially attractive for her age (by the standards of a very ageist and misogynist society! where men can be attractive at 70 but women start going downhill after 25). Or FW, no spring chicken himself (44), was drawn to her anyway. I guess I just feel like if you're normally rigidly faithful to your wife and are breaking down because you haven't had any in 3 years and don't believe in masturbation1, you're going to go after the hottest young thing in the place. But maybe that's stereotyping both middle-aged men and 30-yo women. Idk.
1: Remember our crackfic where Heinrich and FS debate whether Fritz might chill the fuck out if he were getting laid more regularly? This might be even more true of FW, who didn't believe in masturbation. I feel reasonably sure if that if Fritz felt like masturbating, he did, no second thoughts. Even if he was traumatized into having difficulties taking that last step with people, which I still think is unlikely but not impossible.
FW, on the other hand...think of all those trips he made without SD! And also, did he believe in non-reproductive sex with pregnant women? Because she was pregnant quite a lot! (Although apparently didn't always realize it.)
* I love (sarcasm alert) Fritz writing a letter where it sounds like he's trying to talk AW into learning more about Prussia (remember, it has to be *his* idea!), then taking him on a trip and not letting him learn anything. *headdesk*
That one really feels like trauma to me. Because Fritz's willingness to share information seems to have done a 180 after late 1730.
And btw, remember when he told Grumbkow he "could complain on several grounds" about Katte? I'd put money on that including 1) Katte was supposed to get permission to go on a recruiting trip out west so he could run away with Fritz, and he not only failed to convince his commander, he didn't keep trying once he got a no, 2) Katte had the opportunity to escape Berlin in time (according to Fritz), and for whatever reason (a girl? Wilhelmine?), didn't. I think it has to be much easier to live with Katte's death and Fritz's role in it if he can pin some of the blame on Katte. Survivor's guilt is never rational.
But what I'm thinking his takeaway from 1730 was is that if you tell people what you're planning, they may betray you (not!Robert Keith), or they may loyally but incompetently die for you (Katte), but either way it's not going to end well. Better to keep things to yourself.
Which is why I think Fredersdorf met him at just the right time, just enough to get a foot in that door before it closed. (And being a commoner helped.) Sorry, AW.
* Fritz gets sick in 1747 (this is the year of "Pulvis et Umbra",
* AW writes up some "absolute power is bad" notes to self, Ziebura concludes, "From this we can conclude that AW, as the heir, would not have followed the absolute ruling style of his brother in everything."
In everything, no, but I can't help remarking...
I hear Fritz wrote down some opinions about ruling styles before he became king too. :D
More seriously, what I think this shows is that AW would not have followed the *micromanaging* style of his father and brother. Most absolute monarchs, enlightened or not, don't have the energy, paranoia, masochism for that, and that's a major reason Fritz got called der einzige. He wasn't the most absolute monarch of his age so much as the most meddling. MT may have been a demanding workaholic, but I think she was less of a paranoid micromanager? Maybe? I haven't read a bio of her in 20 years.
Google fail:
Fritz makes fun of AW when he goes to communion, not supper. Evening meal = Last Supper = reenacting the Last Supper = communion.
You probably got the real meaning from common sense, never mind looking at the German, but I thought Google's take was funny and worth sharing:
The prince saw the task of the church in preaching hope of eternal bliss to the poor and the unfortunate, and virtue, benevolence and moderation to the soldiers, and bravery to the rich and careless.
Soldiers, be more benevolent and moderate! Rich people, be more brave! The true purpose of religion.
:P
Re: AW readthrough
Date: 2020-08-31 04:28 am (UTC)Heh, yeah, I bet.
(Ziebura knew what she was about, putting that fratboy letter fairly close to the beginning... it definitely has affected my outlook on him.
Though I would also like to say here: I am even more convinced I made a good choice asking for AW first and wives second!)
in February 1747 he suffered a stroke during a flute concert in Potsdam
Wow, he really recovered very quickly from -- *goes back and checks the notes to Pulvis et Umbra, because I know mildred would have said something about -- ah, "might actually have been an acute neuritis episode." :)
Re: AW readthrough
Date: 2020-08-31 05:33 am (UTC)When I originally read the biography, I remember my readerly sympathy was affected until the chapter "AW and his sisters", in which he's being a loyal brother and helper to Wilhelmine and Ulrike, letting me to conclude that while I definitely would not have wanted to be in a romantic relationship with him, let alone marry him, any more than his brothers, he was a good friend and relation to have.
Re: AW readthrough
Date: 2020-09-01 01:11 am (UTC)Re: AW readthrough
Date: 2020-09-01 01:06 am (UTC)LOL! My fic as reference work. I'm so proud. :D
Re: AW readthrough
Date: 2020-08-31 06:32 am (UTC)A sister wouldn't have been Fräulein von Pannewitz, though, but Fräulein von Jasmund (Johanna's maiden name). Checking Ziebura again, I find the footnote says it was Anna Helene von Pannwitz, i.e. the sister of Johanna's husband, Katte's commander, who was SD's lady-in-waiting until 1736 and then married Rittmeister Christoph von Schöning. Googling that name, I found wiki only has Christoph von Schöning fils, son of Christoph von Schöning pére without an wiki entry of his own, and born in 1737, which would fit, except the mother of 1737!Christoph is named as Marie Eleonore von Bergen, not Anna Helene von Pannwitz. Googling Anna Helen von Pann(e)witz directly brought me nothing, though you may have more luck. Anyway, I must have overlooked that footnote the first time around.
On a tangent:
That's not young for a woman by the standards of the 18th century.
True, though it should be noted that when Madame de Pompadour dies in her early 40s, the Duc de Croy, making an entrance about this in his diary, refers to her as "young", and so does Voltaire in a letter about the same death. Of course, both of them are decades older than Reinette at that point and are writing from this pov.
But what I'm thinking his takeaway from 1730 was is that if you tell people what you're planning, they may betray you (not!Robert Keith), or they may loyally but incompetently die for you (Katte), but either way it's not going to end well. Better to keep things to yourself.
Agreed, though I would add the older he got, the more the need to control people also factored in. I mean, it's one thing to keep AW in the dark despite AW being his designated successor, because Fritz himself isn't yet that old during AW's life time. But it absolutely would have made sense to introduce future FW2 to government work, not just the military stuff. Or, if he absolutely did not want to give future FW2 any real responsibilities beyond regiment exercises, to go through with his "building up Heinrich as the power behind the throne" idea. As it was, FW2 had no job training, Heinrich had no established power base, and presto, FW2 having anti-Heinrich ministers who get the job because they show him affection and flattery and Prussian politics going haywire.
I hear Fritz wrote down some opinions about ruling styles before he became king too. :D
I'm also reminded of AW himself telling Lehndorff in January 1758 that he can't guarantee anything if he ever becomes King "because then the devil gets into one".
More seriously, what I think this shows is that AW would not have followed the *micromanaging* style of his father and brother.
Agreed. He was no slob by any means and willing to work hard, but FW and Fritz style of monarching meant an absolutely insane workload. Not to mention that Heinrich, as the envoys at the time guessed, would probably have become unofficial PM, and because unlike Fredersdorf, he was a member of the royal family, I'm not sure why it shouldn't have been official (i.e. "First Minister" - I mean, the title was there since Richelieu). And we do know Heinrich knew how to delegate.
MT may have been a demanding workaholic, but I think she was less of a paranoid micromanager?
Not when FS was still alive, but don't forget her frequent clashes with Joseph. Mind you, these were inevitable since Joseph, unlike FS, really wanted to co-govern, and they had some differences of opinion on several key issues. So I would say this was less paranoid micomanaging but the inevitable result of an absolute monarch used to rule on her lonesome suddenly having to share, with the added emotional baggage of a mother/son relationship and the confusing and paroxical demands that on the one hand, Joseph as the male ruler should have had precedence, but on the other, MT as the parent should have had precedence. (De facto, many courtiers if in doubt listened to MT, but Kaunitz, with an eye to the future and the invitability of Joseph outliving MT, changed sides.) Absolute monarchy, even the enlightened variation, just wasn't made for a co-governing model.
Re: AW readthrough
Date: 2020-09-01 01:54 am (UTC)WELL THEN
We've had the wrong Frau von Pannewitz this whole time! That *does* make more sense of her age and the discrepancy around whether she was a lady in waiting or not.
Darn, now I have to update my fic. Also, her ability to bring candles from home in "Survived" was predicated upon Sophie's memoirs saying she lived outside the palace and wasn't a lady-in-waiting.
In my fic, I went with the lady-in-waiting interpretation, not realizing it was a different person. Hmm. I could just change "Johanna" to "Anna", as I didn't use "Frau", and
I guess good thing we're doing the AW readthrough. Thank you for catching that,
Fics and headcanons become obsolete fast in this fandom. I told RP about the Voltaire letter-doctoring project yesterday (I had to-I had told him about the marriage letter!): he was *shocked*, just as we were. He kept saying, "Wooow." And he had heard about Catt and Trenck and Koser's takedown of Münchow fils back in the day!
Googling Anna Helen von Pann(e)witz directly brought me nothing, though you may have more luck.
It's on my to-do list. :)
I'm also reminded of AW himself telling Lehndorff in January 1758 that he can't guarantee anything if he ever becomes King "because then the devil gets into one".
Yup!
Agreed, though I would add the older he got, the more the need to control people also factored in.
Definitely. Though some (not all) of that need I think comes from his trauma. 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.
I mean, it's one thing to keep AW in the dark despite AW being his designated successor, because Fritz himself isn't yet that old during AW's life time.
But he does keep riding into battle in the front lines (and positioning his brothers in the front lines too!). I mean, that one shot at Prague could have taken all three of them out.
As it was, FW2 had no job training, Heinrich had no established power base, and presto, FW2 having anti-Heinrich ministers who get the job because they show him affection and flattery and Prussian politics going haywire.
I'm sort of reminded of that story (of unknown veracity) that Fritz in his last years refused to have maintenance done on Sanssouci because it was his, and no one was supposed to live there after him. I'm not saying he didn't care what happened to Prussia after him, but he didn't come up with a sustainable model of government, and he didn't take measures to make sure things continued after his death.
but don't forget her frequent clashes with Joseph.
Right, but as you say, that's a co-ruling problem, not a delegation problem. Not a "my ministers don't know what's going on because I deliberately keep them in the dark" problem. I think what AW's memorandum shows is that he wouldn't have done *that*, and regardless of how he turned out as monarch, I actually believe it. The way absolute power tends to go bad is not in the masochistic "do *all* the things!" way, but in the arbitrary way. AW might well have made very bad high-handed decisions, like many monarchs given that power, but I'm willing to believe that someone other than him might have known what was going on at any given time.
So, yes and no he wouldn't have followed Fritz's style. Yes, he wouldn't have had the micromanaging problem. No, I'm not sure he wouldn't have done some of the same (or differently bad) individual interfering acts/punching down/etc. Less trauma might have helped, but as LOTR taught us, that kind of power is just no good for even the well-meaning.
Fix-it fic where Fritz has lots of money and boyfriends and his favorite sister and NO power. (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?)
Re: AW readthrough
Date: 2020-09-01 04:49 am (UTC)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
Date: 2020-09-01 07:52 pm (UTC)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?