cahn | Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 18

...apparently reading group is the way to get lots of comments quickly?

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From:

selenak

Yowsers. The German reading Force is with you!

Currently we're at "Circle of Voltaire RPF", though I still think it's silly that past Yuletides in the last two years signed off on "19th Century German Literature RPF" (which in theory would have encompassed anyone from E.T.A. Hoffmann to Thomas Mann, who did start to publish before the century ended), and "19th Century British Writers RPF" (ditto, and did include Charles Dickens and Lewis Carroll as well as Byron and the Shelleys), i.e. an enormous amount of time, and a cast of thousands who don't have anything in common but geography, but "Enlightenment Writers and Scientists" is too broad. Ah well.

From:

cahn

Hmph! Yeah, I agree with you :D But Circle of Voltaire will work for our purposes... and seems like the natural title, especially given the nomination of Madame Denis :)

Kind of a moot point now, but would "Natural Philosophers" have fit the bill? I suppose Hervey not so much, but you might be able to make a slant case for Lady Mary given the inoculation stuff... But Circle of Voltaire is nice because we don't have to make a case for every single character being a natural philosopher, which I think we could do but would get tiresome.

...and now that I've read your defense, I think I should just co-opt that for the promo post! Because I think that should get anyone interested in this set of characters :)

From:

cahn

Hey, another Yuletide thought for both of you.

Last year

deathsblood nominated and requested Poniatowski, which at the time none of us were equipped to write. This year you have read his memoirs and summarized them for us, and I could probably read them too if necessary.

I'd like to mention to them that we'd be more equipped this year to write something if they nominated Poniatowski again (they seem to request him pretty consistently), but I don't want to do this if there's no chance that anyone will write anything. (I think this mainly means

selenak, since you've read the memoirs and you write quickly -- I should be able to read them, but the chance I can write anything in a historical fandom this year is kind of small given my time constraints and slow writing speed, but I could maybe pull off something short if I had substantial beta help :) And I guess the good thing about me writing something is that I would be less stressed about getting everything historically correct since I don't know what the correct things are :PP ) I do want to strongly encourage other people to hang out in our fandom, though! :D

(I would also read the heck out of a Poniatowski fic, he is hilarious!)

Edited Date: 2020-09-25 05:19 pm (UTC)

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Never say never, but I would say, don't count on me writing any Poniatowski. Would help beta to the best of my ability, though!

From:

selenak

I feel up to Poniatowski as a supporting character, though not necessarily as a main character. Mind you, that may change! (BTW, Mildred, he has a chapter of his own in Horowitz, titled "Poniatowski keeps his locks".) In any event,

deathsblood should nominate him, by all means.

From:

selenak

Aw, thanks. And co-opt away! (With your earlier explanation re: Émilie's accomplishments, of course.)

ETA: Morbane approved „Circle of Voltaire RPF“. Can you edit your nominations and our entries on the google spreadsheet accordingly?

Edited Date: 2020-09-26 12:58 am (UTC)

From:

mildred_of_midgard

50 pages of Oster again, hoping to leave comments and update the chronology this weekend.

(What's more impressive is that I read those 50 pages between 4:30 and 9 pm, meaning much faster than ever before. I could have done more, but I didn't want to burn out.)

Wilhelmine and SD are at the ball and have just learned that Fritz tried to escape.

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Victory! Well done. I've updated the Google spreadsheet, meaning

cahn only has to do her nominations.

From:

cahn

Thank you! I have now edited my nominations and made a promo post based on Selena's evidence writeup!

Selena, could you at some point put your Lord Hervey writeups in

rheinsberg? No rush, though :)

ETA: I just want to say how AWESOME

rheinsberg is. It's pretty amazing to have a central repository of all this stuff that I can just point people at!

Edited Date: 2020-09-26 05:43 am (UTC)

From:

cahn

Awesome! I am pacing you (didn't quite get to that point but will easily reach it tomorrow). I'm finding this much easier than Ziebura; I think it's meant for a somewhat less academic audience :) So I'm glad that you poked me into reading it!

(I also think the syntax is easier; I am still not really trying to read it, especially since I can't keep up with you if I even try to pick out bits, but I do feel like I can pick out more bits than I could in Ziebura.)

From:

cahn

OK! Maybe I won't say anything specifically to

deathsblood -- but they will be able to see it in the nomination spreadsheet, and they'll also know we're nominating Catherine. :)

From:

selenak

I will, and I also want to complete my Hervey trilogy (the Halsband biography and his memoirs being the first wo installments) with the write-up of the excellent Hephaistion essay about him and Fritz of Wales. However, writing up my paperback copy of Lady Mary's Embassy Letters which I'd taken with me on vacation came first, as I hope to interest people in her might get someone (other than us) to sign on in time, hence me posting the write up at my journal.

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Go everyone!

I can do the LH writeup: I was going to do it when I was on my big Rheinsberg kick recently, but large chunks of new material kept coming in, so I thought I'd hold off a bit. ;)

[ETA: I just went to add the embassy letters to my Trello list of things to add to Rheinsberg, and the only item still there was "Hervey memoirs". See? It really is on my list!]

ETA: I just want to say how AWESOME

rheinsberg is. It's pretty amazing to have a central repository of all this stuff that I can just point people at!

IKR? And let's be real, saying

rheinsberg is awesome is just another way of saying

selenak is AWESOME. *bows*

Edited Date: 2020-09-26 03:36 pm (UTC)

From:

selenak

No, leave the Hervey to me, I want to reorder some bits. And verily, I can shine only due to you two dazzling as well. :)

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Trello card deleted. ;) Thank you!

Do you want to take the embassy letters too, or should I leave that on my list?

Speaking of letters, LM's 3-volume set of complete letters is arriving in a few days, though of course I neither expect you to read them cover-to-cover, nor is there any deadline. I mostly want them as a reference work, and also I'd like to dip into them sometime myself (probably when German settles down and I can read English without feeling like I'm in danger of losing my German). When I checked them out to scan the Algarotti letters last year, I flipped through and thought she seemed very engaging and having been wanting to spend some time with her ever since. :)

From:

mildred_of_midgard

So I'm glad that you poked me into reading it!

Oh, good, I'm glad!

I'm also very interested in when you tell me which authors are easier than other authors; it's very hard for me to tell, because there are so many confounding variables, like my rapidly improving German, and the extent to which I already know the material. (Not having to parse the syntax and untangle the pronouns because I already know who did what to whom is huge.)

I'm hoping that reading Oster makes volume 2 of Wilhelmine's memoirs easier, which is why I decided to do it first. My entire approach to German is trying to make future reading easier, which is why the ordering of reading material is important, and why I'm starting with things you're interested in co-reading rather than the things that are ~~Katte related~~ highest on my own list. :)

Speaking of which, are you interested in doing MT together, after Lehndorff? If so, I should probably order it now, to give it time to arrive (since the Kindle version isn't available in the US, grrr) and me to format ONE THOUSAND pages. Looks like the cheapest copy (which I can cover) would be coming from the UK.

From:

mildred_of_midgard

BTW, Mildred, he has a chapter of his own in Horowitz, titled "Poniatowski keeps his locks"

Oh, good! Horowski (at least in part--I'm not committing to reading cover-to-cover) is on my list, either after or concurrently with Lehndorff (who in turns comes after the remaining Wilhelmine material and the very short Krockow volume on Heinrich and Fritz).

From:

cahn

Heh, the Wilhelmine is definitely also easier because I know much of the material already, but yeah, I can tell that in addition the English is just easier to read and that it's pitched to a less already-knowledgeable audience (me!) :)

Speaking of which, are you interested in doing MT together, after Lehndorff? If so, I should probably order it now, to give it time to arrive (since the Kindle version isn't available in the US, grrr) and me to format ONE THOUSAND pages.

Yes pleeeeease! OMG I forgot that because I have a translator now, I don't have to wait for the translation (which I just checked and is still in translator limbo). Yay!

From:

cahn

Yes, absolutely on board with trying to get other people interested! You probably saw I linked to your writeup in my promo post as well :) (And I'm going to comment on it too, I just haven't gotten around to it -- what with all the Yuletide stuff I'm terribly behind on commenting again :) )

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Yes pleeeeease! OMG I forgot that because I have a translator now, I don't have to wait for the translation (which I just checked and is still in translator limbo). Yay!

Oh, goody! I wasn't sure if me going, "read this thing with me!" "and also this other thing!" all the time at you ;) meant that you had too much on your plate now and weren't up for MT any more.

Because you were the one who said you might be interested in reading it together, back in June when we were plotting out our reading group. You said there wasn't much nonfic you were interested in reading in German, and then said you would be interested in MT. But then I proposed Lehndorff and got you to read Oster with me, and I didn't hear any more about MT, so I wasn't sure. But I kept it on my mental list, because I need a lot of German practice before I'm ready to start tackling things that I can't readily put through Google translate.

Ordered! Should arrive sometime in October. We'll probably end up doing it during Yuletide, but we can always go slowly, and I have Horowski to keep me in practice for German.

Also, I need to figure out just how bad a job Google OCR does at blackletter font, because I'm sure you'd like to read volume 2 of Lehndorff someday, maybe after Yuletide at this rate, and unlike volume 1, it hasn't been reprinted in modern font.

...Reading group is SO GREAT.

From:

mildred_of_midgard

* Oster confirms that Fritz's only baptismal name was Friedrich. Der Einzige! "This name has been luck-bringing to my house. Hopefully this baby is as fortunate/happy as his ancestors."

Oster: Well, Fritz won't be *happy*, exactly...

Me: :-(

* So remember when we discussed how Wilhelmine resented her first two brothers (named Fritz) and our Fritz was the first one she showed affection to? And

cahn, the only one of us with parental experience ;), says that 2 1/2 years is about right for a kid to start thinking babies are cute?

Well, Oster reports the following:

1707, November 23, 1707: Bb!Fritz1 born.
Barely six months later: Bb!Fritz1 dies. The internet gives me May 13, 1708.
1709, July 3: Wilhelmine born.
1710, August 16: Bb!Fritz2 born.
1711, July 31: Bb!Fritz2 dies.
1712, January 24: Bb!Fritz3 born.
1712, February 8: Grandpa F1 writes in a letter, "sie ihre zwei ersten Brüder nicht leiden konnte"--she couldn't stand her first two brothers.

What's wrong with this picture?

The first of the two brothers in question died before she was born!

What's up with that, F1? I can believe that she didn't like the one that was born when she was one and died when she was two, especially since he got all the attention that she didn't, but she's being falsely accused of things that happened before she was born!

I wonder if F1's having a memory lapse here, or if something else is going on.

* The bit about FW being impressed by Dutch burgher values, like cleanliness and orderliness, is relevant to why the servant book I read is specifically about servants in *France* during the period. The author makes the point that French upper class values were about conspicuous consumption, so servants did a lot of standing around in livery looking handsome and making you look wealthy, and very little attention in "how to run your household" manuals was devoted to things like making sure servants dusted and kept the fire going. So there was gold and marble and filth everywhere, and the living space was uncomfortable to live in but very eye-catching. French travelers who went to England or the Netherlands were amazed at how clean and comfortable the houses were, and the servants were actually supposed to take scrubbing the floors and such seriously.

* Heinrich Rüdiger von Ilgen: I'm recognizing more and more obscure names! This is the father of Baroness von Knyphausen, Ariane's mother, who receives that box from Fritz in the opening scene of "Lovers lying two and two."

Knyphausen, the minister who's pro-English marriage and eventually loses his job over it, is, as I said in the Wilhelmine memoir write-up recently, Ariane's father.

* Google wasn't able to translate "Knirps", as in "König Knirps", Wilhelmine and Fritz's not-so-respectful nickname for Dad, but when I put it in the browser, I got "midget, squirt, little fellow." Lol! The little fellow and his long fellows.

* Loved Oster pointing out what I had noticed when rereading the memoirs: evil governess Leti's introduction was all about how she was Italian, from no family to speak of, and had an unprestigious job correcting newspaper prints, whereas wonderful Sonsine's introduction is all about how noble her family was and how her ancestors distinguished themselves with all the services they performed. !!!

Lehndorff, who's not exactly not a snob himself: This Wilhelmine is a bit hung up on class.

This is why I put in two of the things that

selenak noticed in "With You, There's a Heaven": Wilhelmine not seeing Fredersdorf as a person but as an extension of her brother, and Fritz being afraid to admit that he's falling in love with a commoner. I threw in the line about Fritz remembering Wilhelmine accusing "even a von Katte" of not knowing his place, with the intention of conveying that this isn't her real (or at least her biggest) objection, but it's one she can admit to, unlike "But what about meeeee?!", and that Wilhelmine (along with SD, and society in general), was a formative influence on Fritz and his own classism.

Also, the servants book has a good section on the tension between servants and families that resulted in the cycle of abuse: badly treated servants were more likely to treat their masters' children badly. Including: total neglect, meaning wealthy kids were sometimes half-starved; sexual abuse: the older men in the house molest the maidservants, who molest the boys, who grow up with a fucked up attitude toward sex and proceed to molest their own servants.

As the century went on and middle-class family-and-home values started to percolate upwards in France, the thrust of moralizing works directed at servants charged with caring for children went in a little over a hundred years from "You are responsible before God for every child who dies as a result of your action or inaction," to, "It's probably not healthy to give kids everything they want all the time. Tell them no once in a while?"

* Oster doesn't think FW's kids went hungry, because Seckendorff didn't report inadequate portions. He thinks FW's tastes in food weren't to the liking of SD, who taught her kids to despise it. While I'm absolutely sure this happened, I'm not convinced the kids never went hungry, or that they didn't learn to associate it with their father.

Fritz's weight at Dresden, combined with his height, tell me he wasn't underweight at 16. But even if FW was starving the kids every chance he got (and I suspect it was more like small portion sizes than actual starvation), SD was apparently smuggling them food (I think this was in Lavisse?) *and* FW was away a lot. So it's quite possible that FW was frugal in terms of portion sizes and the kids got compensation later.

But that's not evidence that he *was*, just that he could have been.

The two additional pieces of evidence I have beyond Wilhelmine's memoirs are these:

Fritz writing a letter to Grumbkow (?) at Küstrin, saying he preferred to starve there than at Potsdam. Now, this is not when he's being his most fair to FW, and could be part of the SD "this is not acceptable food" rhetoric, but...

Ziebura says *AW* later said he and the other kids were often half-starved as kids. If Wilhelmine, Fritz, *and* AW all agree on something about FW...maybe they're not making it up. Now, I haven't seen the context, or even a direct quote, for that claim, but I'm keeping it as supporting evidence until I do.

From:

selenak

Hervey is up at Rheinsberg. Re:Embassy letters, since that review can go there unchanged, I‘d be glad if you just transferred it, but wait a day or so more.

Tomorrow is our last day on vacation, with one more hiking to be done, and on Monday we return to Bamberg, so that means even less online time for yours truly!

From:

mildred_of_midgard

I can't believe we're a third of the way through this book and we're still negotiating her marriage, zomg.

* The Hannovers (Guelphs) had to make permission to visit Hannover one of their conditions for accepting the throne of GB. This is ringing a bell, but I'd forgotten that. I can see why it became a point of contention.

* In 1724/1725, the Magdeburgers brought some sort of lawsuit against FW at the Imperial Court? Do you know anything more about this,

selenak?

* Lol, so we already knew Seckendorff sometimes couldn't write reports the next morning because of the insane hangover from keeping up with FW the night before, and we knew he used to suck on an empty pipe at the tobacco parliament, but it was entertaining reading Oster's write-up of how "the staunch non-smoker got permission to put an empty pipe in his mouth for form's sake," and how periodically Seckendorff had to go take the waters to recover a little from the hardcore job of being the most successful envoy at FW's court. This is why I maintain that if FW had wanted sex, Seckendorff would have done whatever it took to advance the cause of Seckendorff.

Also, he lived to be 90, so I guess the lifestyle didn't ruin his health *too* much. :P

* Another minor character: Adrian Bernhard von Borcke is the father of FW2 educator Borcke.

* In July 1728, French Count Rottembourg says he has reason to believe Fritz will try running away. Now, my sources all say that he was recalled from Prussia in 1727 and stationed in Spain. So either he has contacts that are keeping him up to date, or Fritz was talking about running away even before that, or both.

* Speaking of running away...remember how on January 21, 1730 Peter got sent to Wesel and Fritz's governors got strict instructions to sleep with him every single night? And Koser said that the governor order was because FW feared Fritz trying to escape?

This is the first time I've seen evidence for that (as opposed to other types of nocturnal shenanigans) being the reason: on January 31, Oster says FW returns to Berlin, where all the envoys write reports expressing their surprise at how he's letting Fritz off with a mild scolding, in light of a recent anonymous letter FW received warning him that Fritz has escape plans. Proposed envoy reasons for this uncharacteristic behavior:

- This milder treatment is only apparent, not real.
- FW's trying the carrot instead of the stick.
- FW's trying to keep Fritz from encouraging Wilhelmine in her resistance to her prospective bridegrooms.

No dice on the last one, says Oster: Fritz is willing to suffer anything if it keeps Wilhelmine out of a miserable marriage! Oster will later quote the letter from Fritz to Wilhelmine saying, "Don't get married just to get me out of prison, I mean it."

Aaaand, Oster cites Fritz writing in 1730 to the Margrave of Schwedt that if he marries Wilhelmine, he'll "regret it sooner or later," the implication being when Fritz becomes king. This would fit well in a Mafia AU, along with "You know who we should kidnap, Heinrich?" :P

Poor younger sister Sophia Dorothea. :/

* SD trying to forestall a marriage she doesn't want by arguing that Wilhelmine's too young and will reproach her parents someday if she ends up unhappily married...that's pretty brazen, considering the quote at the beginning of the book where SD is writing about two-year-old FoW asking about his future bride, aka TWO-MONTH-OLD Wilhelmine.

* I like the way Oster analyzes "But did event X in Wilhelmine's memoirs *really* happen?" every so often I've been wondering what's backed up with documentary evidence and what isn't.

1) FW wanting to marry her to August the Strong: probably not, says Oster, no external evidence, and surely SD would freak out.

2) August the Strong trying to get Wilhelmine married to Weißenfels: definitely not, says Oster.

I was not aware that Weißenfels was a possible rival to the Saxon electorate due to religion, and that this might lie behind FW's interest in getting Wilhelmine married to him. That was interesting!

3) August letting his son decide he didn't want to marry Wilhelmine: seems unlikely, says Oster.

I mean, I'm sure there would have been pressure, but not everyone is FW? Even Wilhelmine got to turn down a couple candidates (at a high price) before accepting one under duress. I'm neutral on this point, pending further evidence...

* When Ferdinand was born and SD was bedridden, FW showed favor to Wilhelmine by letting her look after 4-yo Heinrich...who at the time was his favorite? What about AW?

Friedrich Wilhelms gute Laune ging an diesem Tag sogar so weit, daß er Wilhelmine auftrug, während Sophie Dorothea im Wochen bett lag, für ihren Bruder Heinrich zu sorgen, der damals sein Liebling war.

* Huh. So I did remember that the idea of Fritz becoming governor in Hannover until FW died was proposed as part of the marriage deal, but Oster adds that the British agreed to this, only instead of giving the governorship to Fritz, they would give it to ~~A WOMAN~~ Amelia!

I take back what I said long ago about this marriage going better than the EC marriage.

Fritz: Franz Stephan, I am not. I'm also an expert in marital warfare even at this tender age. Bring it on.

* Also! G2 says that due to their youth, Fritz and Amelia would live in England at first. So I'm wrong, we *don't* need a successful escape AU in order to get Fritz at the British court while G2 and Caroline are accusing Wilhelmine of faking her pregnancy and FoW is trying to get her into a carriage to St. James in the presence of the brother who's perfectly willing to threaten her prospective husbands with vague but dire future consequences.

I wouldn't wish such a fate on Wilhelmine, but wooow, can you imagine Lord Hervey recording how this went down??

* Speaking of not wishing things on Wilhelmine, Oster says Melusine expressed pity for Wilhelmine as the future wife of FoW. I suppose our speculation about her being on good terms with FoW (politically, if nothing else) wouldn't rule out realizing he's not great husband material.

cahn, remember that any time you see the Duchess of Kendal, that's Katte's "aunt" Melusine, mistress of G1.

(I still can't believe that one lecturer thought she was a fictional character inspired by a Fontane novel; my copy of Zeithain has a Personenregister listing who everyone is and their dates, and she's in there!

EHRENGARD MELUSINE VON DER SCHULENBURG, Herzogin von Kendal (ab 1719), * 25.12.1667 in Emden; † 10.5.1743 in Kendal House, Isleworth bei Brentford, Mätresse von Georg I., König von England)

* Oster trusts Catt, sigh. Thanks be that you read prefaces,

selenak. Otherwise, *I* would still trust Catt!

Edited Date: 2020-09-26 10:21 pm (UTC)

From:

cahn

-That detail about the last letter Louise wrote starting out normally and then by the last page she can't control her hand anymore :(

* Heinrich started behaving a bit better toward Mina immediately after Fritz died? Of course he did. She's no longer a reminder of Fritz's ongoing power and abuse, but past power and abuse, which is slightly less painful.

Ohhhhh of course, I should have realized this but mostly I was just relieved for Mina *sigh*

* And FW2 is now siccing people Mina doesn't like on her staff? For ten plus years?? THERAPY.

I knoooooow! What was UP with that, "oh, I'll move him as soon as I can," TEN YEARS LATER??

Which made me realize that, yep, that marriage lasted 50 years. Fritz/EC, 53. As I said about my grandparents' 61-year unhappy and abusive marriage: what a waste. :/ Divorce for everyone!

Geez. That is really a waste. :(

Yeah, it was a good decision to read this after Heinrich and AW, although I'm seriously side-eyeing both of them way more now. (Still OK with Heinrich fic for Yuletide, though! Just saying :) )

From:

cahn

hahahaha, yeah, I remember from my Vol 1 readthrough that she really didn't like his boyfriends! Also that she tooooooold Fritz over and over again that escaping was was a bad idea! (It was a bad idea, Fritz, sorry.)